“Is it very cold out?”
“No,” he says. “I’m sick. My throat.”
“Oh. Have you tried honey? Let me make you some tea.”
“It’s not important,” he says. His coat is torn he notices as he unbuttons slowly. “I had an awful time getting here. But you’re looking well.” Brought me the papers I left in his closet.
“You’re moving, you say?”
“I have never seen you look so well,” he says, “The sea seems to agree with you.”
“Oh I like it here at the bottom of the sea.”
“I came to tell you that I’m getting married.”
Telling me in that dreary voice just when I’m pouring the tea. Maybe he thinks the dead must be addressed in a special funereal tone. Congratulate him anyway?
“You’re getting married?”
“It looks like it. I haven’t told anyone yet, but it’s decided. Everything points that way. I mean, it’s just the obvious step. I can’t go on with the life I’ve been living...I suppose I’m going into it like every other idiot...”
How he goes on. Reminds me of the letter Nicholas wrote me the day before his wedding: “...going the way of all flesh,” “...caught in the inescapable net of fate.”
“Whom are you going to marry?”
“Not someone you know...”
Can’t say a really nice thing about the poor girl. Protecting her from my jealousy, I suppose. Still, why so dreary about it all? If you’re worried about the propriety of our meeting under water—but it’s a fish pool now, my lap. Besides, we’re just having tea.
“The time has come,” he says, “I can’t say no to a risk. You look so shocked. But you should understand. You took this risk. I know it’s no answer...”
So that’s what you really wanted all the time. Get married. Can’t think all that weight of years I just threw off. How terrifying it must be for you.
“This is excellent tea. I think I’ll have some more. Is your watch right? I must be somewhere at five. You’re so silent. I can’t blame you for thinking...It’s too late to begin to explain...”
“I wish you all the happiness.” Suddenly everything is clear. I see you stand before me in your coat, ten of you, cardboard flat, each differently intriguing. Love, I can’t put you together again. You will join the happy people in Father Time’s family album.
You must be leaving; of course. I watch you button up gravely. A nice stranger, you ask about my work. Now that I’m dead I can write my autobiography at last. Of course I’m not serious.
“But you should,” he says. “I’m sorry I can’t stay longer. But I hope...” You look at me kindly, in a shy new way. Have I changed into someone else? You look lost. I’ll go with you part of the way if you like. Yes, I have time, all the time in the world. And I’ve been wanting to see the Statue of Liberty.
“Come,” you say and take my arm. It’s all right now that we are strangers. My love is as secret as on the day I flew out of Idlewild thinking I’d never see you again. It’s perfectly all right to adore your profile; you should be dictator. Did I tell you about my crush on Mussolini? Il Duce, Count Ciano...What beautiful names they had. I don’t see the Statue of Liberty, do you? Missed it again. You walk so fast, it feels like flying. No, I don’t mind. I love it. Where are you taking me? You realize I’m only a child. Kidnap—that’s an American word. Are you Lindbergh? White skies over skyscrapers like in a movie, are we really flying?
As soon as this dream is over I’ll jump out of bed and get under the cold shower, so help me God.
A cup of coffee? Sure, why not. This is where we had breakfast the morning I left for Paris. I remember your look of triumph that said: Ezra was slain, and smiling at you with amused complicity. Why should I have told you it wasn’t Ezra you slew but the old dream lover conceived long ago behind black air-raid curtains in my father’s house, to whom I turned unfaithfully with Ezra, with you—dreams are invincible. Still, you chopped off at least one of his heads. And does it now sit on you? Alas. My greed for reality that winter in Paris, if you can forgive...
“The book I’m working on? Yes, I’ve begun...” Reading love sonnets on the plane; of course I didn’t miss you. “It’s about a dead woman.”
“I remember, you wrote me about it from Paris.”
“This is something else. It’s told by the dead woman.”
“You would do something like that,” he laughs.
“It’s not so easy. You can’t remember a dream till you awake.”
“How will you do that?”
“You wake up when you have to.”
“You must know.”
How very well I look, you say for the hundredth time, saying good-bye before the subway station. Just now when you smiled a storeroom of plaster casts exploded into powder. Thank God for all this wind blowing. You kissed me so fast I didn’t know it happened till I saw you step off the curb, you will take a taxi downtown after all. Queer to be standing on Broadway in the daylight. Stroll down the street, stare at mannikins in new spring shades, wander into discount stores. Bedspreads on sale. See what’s playing at the New Yorker. If anyone asks how I came, what I’m doing here, who I am—nobody asks, this is America.
IT IS AT a calamitous moment that the past opens into view. A block of high apartment buildings raised in fifteen years of marriage has been bombed away, revealing a long-forgotten landscape which lay hidden behind the walls. The clearing of the wreckage must wait. As for the price or damage to body, soul and mind of
