Collected Stories

“Let’s get back to the theft, if it is a theft.”

“It has to be. I didn’t misplace it again.”

“However, it gave you daily anxiety. Why did it occupy so big a place in you?”

“What did I come up with last time we discussed it? I cheated the insurance company and had the ring and the money. You could call that white-collar crime. It all added to the importance of my emerald, but I would never have guessed that it would be so shattering to lose it.”

“I can suggest a coincidence,” said the doctor. “At this bad moment for you I am going on a holiday. My support is removed. And my name is Gladstone. Is that why you take the loss so hard?”

Astonished, she gave him a real stare, not a fitting or becoming one. She said, You may be a stone, but you’re not a gem.”

When she returned to her office she telephoned Ithiel, her only dependable adviser, to discuss matters.

‘I wish you were coming up to New York,” she said. “I used to call on Steinsalz when things were urgent.”

“He was a great loss to me too.”

“He took such interest in people. Short of lending them money. He’d treat you to dinner but never lend a cent. He did listen, though.”

“It so happens,” said Ithiel (when he was being methodical, a sort of broken flatness entered his voice), “that I have a lunch date next Tuesday with a man in New York.”

“Let’s say half past three, then?”

Their customary meeting place was St. Patrick’s cathedral, near Clara’s office, a central location and a shelter in bad weather. “Like a drop for secret agents,” Ithiel said. They left the cathedral and went directly to the Helmsley Palace. A quiet corner of the bar was still available at that early hour. “This is on my Gold Card,” said Clara. “Now let’s see how you look—somewhere between a Spanish grandee and a Mennonite.”

Then with executive rapidity she set forth the main facts.

“What’s your opinion of Frederic—an occasional stealer or a pro?”

“I think he improvises,” said Clara. “Dope? Probably.”

“You could find out about his police record, if any. Then ask the Austrian consulate about her. Not telephone her folks in Vienna.”

“I knew it would be a relief to talk to you. Now tell me… about the ring.”

“A loss, I’d guess. Write it off.”

“I suppose I’ll have to. I indulged myself about it, and look at the trouble it made. There’s nothing appropriate. For instance, this luxury bar that fits neither you nor me. In my true feelings you and I are as naked as Adam and Eve. I’m not being suggestive, either. It’s not an erotic suggestion, just a simile.”

Talk like this, the hint of wildness in it, had the effect of forcing him into earnestness. She could see him applying his good mind to her difficulties, like a person outside pressing his forehead on the windowpane to see what’s going on.

As she figured it, he counted on the executive Clara to gain on the subjective Clara. She did have the ability to put her house in order. Yet his sympathy for the subjective, personal Clara was very strong. Considering the greater tumult in her, she had done better than he. Even now her life was more coherent than his.

“For a few hundred bucks, I think you can find out where the girl is. Investigators are easy to hire.”

“Tell me! I can see why General Haig and such people call on you to analyze the Iranians or the Russians. By the way, Wilder thought you were great on TV with Dobrynin, week before last.”

When Ithiel smiled, his teeth were so good you suspected Hollywood dentistry, but they were all his own.

“Dobrynin has some genius, of a low kind. He convinces Americans that Russians are exactly like them. Sometimes he behaves as if he were the senior senator from a fifty-first, ail-Russian state. Just a slight accent, but the guys from the Deep South have one also. He sold Gorbachev on this completely, and Gorbachev is selling the whole U. S. A. Which craves to be sold. Deceived, if you prefer.”

“Like me, in a way, about the Human Pair.”

“You’re close to that girl, I see.”

“Very close. It would be easy for you to put her down as a well-brought-up kid with a taste for low sex. Resembling me. You’d be wrong. Too bad you can’t see her yourself. Your opinion would interest me.”

“So she isn’t like you?”

“I sure hope not.” Clara made a gesture, as if saying, Wipe out these Helmsley Palace surroundings and listen to me. “Don’t forget my two suicide attempts. I have a spoonful of something wild in my mixture, my whole sense of…”

“Of life…”

“Listen to me. You have no idea really how wild and how mixed, or how much territory it takes in. The territory stretches over into death. When I’m drunk with agitation—and it is like being drunk—there’s one pulse in me that’s a death-beat pulse, and it tempts me to make out with death. It says, Why wait! When I get as intense as that, existence won’t hold me. That’s the internal horror side of the thing. I’m open to seduction by death. Now you’re going to remind me that I’m the mother of three kids.”

“Exactly what I was about to do.”

“There’s no one in the world but you that I’d say this to. You’re the one human being I fully confide in. Neither do you have secrets from me. Whatever you didn’t admit I saw for myself.”

“You certainly did, Clara.”

“But we’ll never be man and wife. Oh, you don’t have to say anything. You love me, but the rest is counterindicated. It’s one of those damn paradoxes that have to be waited out. There may even be a parallel to it in your field, in politics. We have the power to destroy ourselves, and maybe the desire, and we keep ourselves in permanent suspense—waiting. Isn’t that wild, too? You could tell me. You’re the expert. You’re going to write the book of books about it.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“Not really, Ithiel. If it is the book of books on the subject, it should be written. You may be the man to write it, and I’m not making fun. For me it would be funny. Think of a great odalisque, nude and beautiful. And now think of her in eyeglasses and writing books on a lap board.”

Over the table they smiled briefly at each other.

‘But I want to get back to Gina,” said Clara. “You’re going to find me a dependable investigator to check out Frederic, and the rest of it. I doubt that she is like me, except in taking chances. But when I told her that the ring was given by a man who loved me, the fact registered completely. What I didn’t add was that I bullied you into giving it to me. Don’t deny it. I twisted your arm. Then I sentimentalized it. Then I figured out that you continued to love me because we didn’t marry. And now the ring… The girl understands about the ring. The love part of it.”

Teddy was stirred, and looked aside. He wasn’t ready, and perhaps never would be ready, to go further. No, they never would be man and wife. When they stood up to go, they kissed like friends.

“You’ll get me an investigator with a little class… the minimum sleaze?”

“I’ll tell the man to go to your office, so you can look him over.”

“A few things have to be done for you too,” said Clara. “That Francine left you in bad shape. You have that somber look that you get when you’re up against it.”

“Is that what you mean by the Mennonite?”

“There were plenty of Mennonites in Indiana—I can tell that you didn’t have any business in New York today except me.”

Within ten days she had Gina’s address—a fourth-floor walk-up on East 128th Street, care of F. Vigneron. She had a phone number as well. Call? No, she wouldn’t speak to her yet. She brought her executive judgment to bear on this, and the advice from this source was to send a note. In her note, she wrote that the children asked for Gina often. Lucy missed her. Even so, she had done Lucy good. You could see the improvements. There was a lot of woman in that small girl, already visible. Then, speaking for herself, she said that she was sorry to have come down so hard on a matter that needn’t be spelled out now. She had left Gina few options. She had had no choice but to