opinions, experiences and information. We learn something every day, don't we? We see something interesting every day. Surely during your day you learn or observe something that will be interesting to me and my guests and I want you to take a more active part in the conversation.' I asked to be returned to the pantry but Grandmother didn't seem to hear me and I was nervous when I went to the table that night. The talk rattled on and then Grandmother smiled at me to signify that my turn had come. All I could remember was that walking home from school I saw a lady in the public park stealing marigolds. When she heard my footstep she hid the marigolds under her coat. As soon as I passed she went on picking flowers.
'I saw a lady in the park,' I said, 'stealing marigolds.'
'Is that all you saw,' asked Grandmother. 'I saw the basketball game.' The adults picked up the talk again but I knew I had failed and would have to prepare myself. I was taking a course in ancient history and I began each night to memorize the gist of two pages from my textbook. 'Of all the Greek states,' I said, 'that stretched from the Black Sea to the western shores of the Mediterranean, none approached Athens, and the man responsible for this achievement was Pericles…' The next night we had Solon in Sardis and the night after that we had the Athenian constitution. At the end of the week Grandmother said kindly: 'I guess perhaps it would be better if you listened to the conversation.'
Grandmother was rich, and I won't go into this. She was a stout woman with a plain face but the fact that she happened never to have worried about money had left her, even as an old woman, with an uncommon freshness. She seemed through luck and money to have missed one of the principal sources of anxiety. We were great friends although I sometimes teased her. When I was about twelve-I hadn't gone away to school-she was expecting for dinner an English earl named Penwright. Titles excited her and for some reason her excitement about the arrival of Lord Penwright put me in a bad humor. I was expected to attend the dinner. I learned that we were going to have oysters and I walked into the village and bought a large phony pearl at Woolworth's. I had Olga, the waitress, put this into one of the oysters on Lord Penwright's plate. There were maybe twelve people at the table and we were all chatting when Lord Penwright exclaimed, 'Oh, my word,' or 'I say,' and held up his pearl. It was the biggest pearl that Woolworth's had and it looked, in the candlelight, priceless. 'What a charming favor,' said his lordship.
'Hmmm,' said Grandmother. Her face, usually quite bright, was troubled.
'I shall have it set and give it to my wife,' said the lord.
'But it's my pearl,' Grandmother said. 'This is my house. These are my oysters. The pearl is mine.'
'I hadn't quite thought of it that way,' said the lord. He sighed and gave the pearl to Grandmother.
As soon as she had it in her hands she saw that it was Woolworth's and, turning to me at the end of the table, she said, 'Go to your room.' I went to the kitchen, had dinner and then went to my room. She never mentioned the pearl again but things between us were never the same. I was sent away to school in September.
XIII
Grandmother died in my last year at school nd I had no place to go for Christmas. I had plenty of friends, as I recall, but I either didn't receive any Christmas invitations or I didn't accept any. I was left alone in the dormitory when school closed for the holidays. I was terribly lonely in the empty building and felt that my illegitimacy was a cruel injustice. Everyone else in school had at least one parent while I had none. It seemed that my father could at least buy me a beer on the Christmas holidays. That's all I wanted from him. I knew that he was married and living in Boston and I flew to Boston that night. I found his name in one of the suburban telephone directories and drove out to Dedham, where he lived. I was just going to ask him to buy me a beer. That's really all I had in mind. I rang the bell and when his wife opened the door I was surprised to see a very homely white-haired woman. Her face was sallow and her teeth were long but having so little or nothing at all to do with physical charm she seemed to have mustered another kind of charm. She seemed kindly and intelligent. Her mouth was large and thin-lipped but her smile was beautiful. I said that I was Paul Hammer and that I wanted to see Mr.
Taylor. I think she knew who I was. She said he was in the city.
'He went in for a party on Wednesday,' she said, 'and when he goes to a party it's usually several days before he returns. He stays at the Ritz.'
There was nothing long-suffering in her tone. Maybe she was happy to have him out of the house. I thanked her and drove to the Ritz. He was registered but he didn't answer the house phone and I took the elevator up to his floor. He didn't answer the doorbell either, but the door was unlocked and I went in.
There had been a party all right. The living room was full of the usual empty bottles and dirty glasses without which you can't, after all, have a party. He was in the bedroom. There were two unmade beds, both of which had seen some venereal mileage. He lay on one in a poleaxed, drunken sleep, naked. Around his neck he wore a chain of champagne corks-seventeen-which I guessed some friend had put there after he had stoned out. He was over fifty then but weight-lifting had paid off and if you couldn't see very well you might think he was a much younger man. He was lithe, really lithe, but this unseasonable litheness seemed to be obscene. He looked, hurled onto his bed by liquor, like the faded figure of some Icarus or Ganymede that you might find painted on the wall of some old-fashioned, second-rate Italian restaurant, flyspecked and badly drawn. I don't think he would have waked if I'd shouted in his ears, and anyhow he needed the sleep. I was that charitable.
I was even more charitable. He was my father, the author with some collaboration of my heart, vitals, lights and mind, and how far could a man go with such a creator? I could kill him, I could abuse him and I could forgive him but I had to do something so I settled on an uneasy brand of forgiveness and went away. My next stop was Kitzbuhel. If my father wouldn't buy me a beer maybe I could get a cup of tea out of Mother.
We speak of travel-world travel-as if it were the most natural human condition. 'Mr. X,' we read, 'then traveled from Boston to Kitzbuhel.' How far this is from the truth! I got an evening plane for London at Logan Airport. The plane was delayed and I drank five martinis at the airport bar and crossed the Atlantic in a drunken stupor. We got to London at daybreak, where I discovered that my bag had been lost. I wandered around the airport until three that afternoon when my bag was found and took a cab to the Dorchester. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get some sleep and then went out to a movie and got stoned at a pub. I had tickets for an early-morning flight to Frankfurt-am-Main but there was a thick fog over London that morning and when I got to the airport everything was grounded. It was announced at half-hour intervals that the fog was expected to lift. I ate my complimentary breakfast. Then I ate my complimentary lunch. At three o'clock the airport was declared closed for the day. I went back to the Dorchester but there were no rooms and after trying four other hotels I ended up in a rooming house in Parkman Square where I was kept awake most of the night by noises that I do not choose to describe. In the morning it was still foggy but it seemed to be lifting and I returned to the airport. I drank a cup of abominable coffee and a glass of orange-colored water. The effect of this on my digestion was galvanic and I quick-stepped to the men's room. I had been there about fifteen minutes when I heard my flight announced. I pulled up my pants, ran the length of the airport and just caught the Frankfurt plane. My digestive troubles were not over and I spent the flight from London to Frankfurt in the toilet. Lighted signs in three languages commanded me to return to my seat but how could I? In Frankfurt, where I got a plane for Innsbruck, it was very cold. In Innsbruck I got the Transalpini to Kitzbuhel, arriving at my destination at four in the afternoon, but I did not, in fact, seem to have arrived anywhere. I seemed merely to have scattered my guts and vitals a third of the way around the world.
Mother's address was the Pension Bellevue. The facade of the wooden building was decked with horns and I wondered if the Tyrolese had failed to make the connection with cuckoldry or was it that kind of a pension? When I asked to see my mother they seemed astonished. She was a Fraulein. A maid went upstairs and brought Mother down. She cried with delight when she saw me and I took her in my arms. Her hair had begun to turn gray but she was not heavy. The color of her eyes remained a brilliant blue.
'Have you come for Christmas, Paul,' she asked. 'Have you come to spend Christmas with your mother? I usually go to the Estoril long before this but there hasn't been any snow this year and so I'm simply hanging on until the first flakes fall.'
They gave me a room next to hers and we went upstairs together. She made some tea on a spirit lamp and poured me a cup. Then the door flew open and a bony woman flew in, exclaiming: 'You've taken our sugarbowl! You borrowed our sugarbowl yesterday at teatime and you neglected to return it.'
