Youngblood hawke, p.27
Youngblood Hawke, page 27
"I don't know. He's hardly said two words to me so far. He's an awfully ugly devil."
Mrs. Hawke said, "Isn't he, though? I can't get used to that wig. It's really a sad story. His mother came from a family where everybody was bald. She was bald, she lived in a wig, slept in it. She had two normal children and then when John came along and was bald she turned queer and killed herself. He told all this to Nancy, but not before they'd been going together for months. The man's all pulled inside of himself like a turtle. Of course Nancy's no age to be choosy but—and he sort of talks like a foreigner, Art, but she says he was born in Cincinnati."
The subject of this discussion, when Hawke came out of the hotel a half hour later with his mother and sister, was sitting in a taxicab at the door, waiting for them. A summer thundershower was flooding the streets. No unoccupied taxis were in view, doormen's whistles were cawing and shrieking all over Central Park South, and perhaps twenty couples in evening dress were piled up at the hotel entrance, gloomily waiting for transportation. The Hawkes did not have to wait at all. John Weltmann had seen to that.
2
Hawke had not been in Frieda Winter's home since the Christmas afternoon which had changed the course of his life as a dam alters a riverbed beyond it for a thousand miles and more. Now here he was in that living room again, and his mother and sister were sitting with Fanny Prince on the very couch where he and Mrs. Winter had made love. Mrs. Hawke was talking a mile a minute, and Fanny was nodding and smiling while her eyes shifted every few seconds around the room. Frieda herself, in a prudish blue-gray dress with long sleeves, and a collar closed up to the throat, stood at the wheeled bar talking to Quentin Judd, refilling his martini glass every minute or two. When Hawke had greeted the critic, upon coming into the room, Judd had looked at him over the rim of his glass as at a stranger jostling him on the street, and had uttered an unfriendly growl. But he had been drinking ever since, and he now looked more cheerful. Mr. Winter sat on one of the two petit-point covered seats near the red marble fireplace, in conversation with Jay Prince, Ross Hodge, and John Weltmann; though the wigged man appeared to be merely sitting and listening with a silly grin. The young author sat alone in an armchair, smoking a cigar and downing his third Scotch and soda though he did not want it.
He had been keyed up for some kind of debonair double game. He had imagined himself fencing with Mr. Winter, covering up for Frieda, protecting her honor, shielding his mother and sister from any suspicion of what was going on with a flow of brilliant talk. Nothing of the kind was happening. Nobody was paying much attention to him, and there was not a trace of drama or tension in the air. Yet the dinner party seemed to him the most transparent possible betrayal of his affair with Frieda. Why had he been invited to this luxurious home with his dowdy mother and sister—and they were dowdy, he knew, the moment he saw Fanny and Frieda again—if not because he was Mrs. Winter's lover? But none of the guests acted even faintly suspicious or ironic or puzzled; they were, so to say, unnaturally natural about the whole thing.
Frieda herself was unbelievable. On being presented to his mother she had put her arm around his waist and said, "You have a wonderful boy here. I wish he were mine." Mrs. Hawke had answered that he had always seemed more trouble than he was worth, but now she wasn't sure, and the two women had had a merry little exchange about raising children, while he stood in Frieda's loose embrace, paralyzed with embarrassment. And then Mr. Winter had come up, while Frieda still held him so, had shaken hands and told him he was halfway through Alms for Oblivion and for once he was inclined to agree with Frieda's taste, Hawke had remarkable talent. That was all. The husband had led Nancy and Weltmann off to the bar, and the confrontation was over!
Frieda left Judd hovering over the martini pitcher, and dropped on the ottoman in front of Hawke's chair. "Hi. Everybody's neglecting the guest of honor." Hawke looked to the husband. Winter sat facing them and clearly saw Frieda's move, but he went on chatting as though she had gone to a table to pick up a cigarette. "You seem sad, my boy. The purpose of all this is to cheer you up. Pretend it's working, at least. I love your mother."
"She sure likes you. Just as you predicted."
"Did I? Well, why shouldn't she? I'm very lovable. I have good news. Brace yourself. Quentin Judd likes your book! Likes it enormously."
Hawke sat up. "Judd? What is this, your doing?" He glanced toward the critic, who had dropped into a chair with a martini pitcher on a small table beside him, and was now feeding himself peanuts from a large fistful, blinking around with Pickwickian benevolence.
"Don't be an idiot. You're a great writer, that's all. What great writer was ever recognized at first by the hacks who write reviews? It takes a Quentin Judd to spot you. . . . Here are my girls. Emily! Charlotte! Come and meet Youngblood Hawke."
Neither of them looked like Frieda. They were sallow girls in their early teens, both dumpy and ill-favored, wearing their expensive clothes awkwardly. "Is Paul in bed?" Frieda said.
Emily, the older and fatter one, shook her head. "He keeps asking for you."
"Tina thinks maybe he's sick," Charlotte piped.
"Nonsense," Frieda said, but she got off the ottoman. "This is his standard act for dinner party nights. Arthur, want to come and meet my youngest? He's a terrible monster, but sweet."
"Sure," Hawke said.
"Is your name Arthur?" the younger girl said. "I thought it was Youngblood."
The older one said with huge disgust, "That's just a pen name, silly."
Frieda went up two flights of stairs with Hawke. Before they got to the boy's room they heard him crying. He stood with his back against the bright wallpaper figured with circus designs, under a huge grinning clown face, a slight boy of six in yellow pajamas, with thick tumbled brown hair, Frieda's gray eyes, Frieda's face, a little male Frieda, complete to the determined slant-eyed scowl, his cheeks drenched with tears. Crouching before him, holding out a glass of milk, was a stout Negress in a green starched uniform, and she was crying too. "You cain' have no chocolate syrup, Paul, doan' blame me, you ma say not."
"Then I won't drink it—mama! Mama!" He rushed to Frieda and threw his arms around her legs.
The Negress stood and dashed tears from her eyes. "He call me a big ole black thing, Miz Winter."
Frieda dropped beside Paul on the floor, in a single motion that spread her skirt charmingly around her. She talked to the boy, and had him laughing through his tears in half a minute.
"This is my friend Arthur," she said. "He writes stories. Maybe he'll write one about you."
Hawke said, "If you drink that milk I will."
The boy turned wise, tired gray eyes on him. "No, tell me a story."
"Will you drink the milk?"
Paul hesitated, then held out a little curved hand to the Negress, and accepted the glass. He took a noisy formal sip, and Hawke began a tale about the big clown on the wall; he had been a real clown in a real circus, but he had offended a witch who had flattened him and put him into the wallpaper. The boy listened and drank, emptying the glass. He was very pale, and his eyes were heavily shadowed. Hawke broke off in the middle of his story. "Next time I'll tell you how he got out of the wallpaper."
"But he didn't," said Paul. "He's still there." He pointed with a thumb and forefinger, pistol fashion, at the clown.
"Well, he did get out," Hawke said, "and then the best part is how he got put back in."
"By the witch?"
"No," Hawke said, "by God."
The boy looked at the Negress. "Well, then, he'll never get out."
"He may," Hawke said. "You may be able to help him." He picked up Paul, and swung him—the boy was feather-light—and gave him a brief hug. "You smell soapy. Good night." He put him into the Negress' outstretched arms.
"Come back and tell me about God and the clown after dinner," the boy said.
On the stairs Frieda caught Hawke's hand in hers, and pressed it against her soft hip. "You were very nice to him. His father's forgotten how to tell stories."
"I like the boy," Hawke said, stirred as always by contact with Frieda's flesh, yet feeling a distaste for touching her here and now. "What's Ross Hodge doing here, Frieda?"
"Oh, I thought he would keep Jay and Fanny on their toes. They're such rabbits, I'm sure they're ready to panic away from your book."
Hawke had been fearing that his mother would gabble all through the dinner. But Mrs. Hawke behaved remarkably well, speaking only when spoken to, and then answering up usually with rough wit. Possibly she was overawed by the gold-trimmed scarlet china service for twelve, the immense mahogany table left bare and gleaming except for place mats, candles and a huge centerpiece of roses, and the procession of the butler and two maids, passing in and out of the high-ceilinged room with silver serving platters. Nancy and her grotesque suitor sat mum, far apart from each other, seemingly stupefied by the grand company.
It was Ross Hodge who lifted his glass of white wine that came with the crabmeat, and said, "Well, here's to Alms for Oblivion, a book I wish I'd published, and the start of an important career." His gestures were formal, and his speech had a New England precision, with a marked flat A.
Hawke, responding to the raising of glasses along the table, and a chorus of "Alms for Oblivion!" picked up his glass and said, "Death to all critics, present company excepted—until he reviews me."
There was a generous laugh. Quentin Judd said, speaking with austere clarity despite the martini pitcher which he had emptied, "You wrote a good book. I'm going to say as much."
Jay Prince looked amazed and delighted.
"Where will you review it, Quentin?" Frieda said. "The Dandy?"
"No. In Midchannel. Circulation about twelve hundred, unfortunately."
"And a quarterly, at that," Prince said, his elated look fading. "It won't be out till Thanksgiving. The life of a novel is only ninety days. It won't help much, Quent, but thanks anyway."
"Never thank or blame a critic," Judd said.
"Alms for Oblivion will live longer than ninety days," said Paul Winter from the head of the table, patting his white mustache with a napkin.
Prince said, "Paul, if a new novel doesn't become visible in the first three months that's it. It's buried. Fifty years later it may be exhumed and acquire a vogue, like Moby Dick. That doesn't do much good to the stockholders."
"I don't think the returns are in on Oblivion," Hodge said. "A few stupid notices—"
"Of course not," Prince said. "We're going to go right on pushing it like mad, and as a matter of fact sales right now are absolutely amazing."
"I read it. I liked it," the stout girl Emily spoke up. "In fact I'm writing a book report on it. It's the longest book I ever got through. It has a good story."
"That's almost precisely what I'm going to say in my notice," Judd said, baring his upper teeth at the girl. "I'm getting a little tired of this cult of college professors who keep writing and reviewing novels for each other and about each other, just passing back and forth their own slightly damp gray laundry. Alms for Oblivion isn't all it should be, by any means. It's a readable narrative, which removes it from the category of university laundry. It offers some diverting invention, a bit forced here and there. There's a concern in it with the psychology of the old, and some accurate reporting of the way people act in the presence of money. It's not a marshmallow about sex or high society, and it's not a bleat about adolescent problems or the military life. It's distinctly possible that our friend here can write serious fiction. In fact I think he has started to." He turned to Hawke, who was sitting to his right on the other side of Nancy, and he craned his neck forward and looked up at him with the scary ice-blue eyes set in eyeballs almost wholly bloodshot—and he added, "So as not to allow you to rest on your oars, I'm going to be very difficult about your overwriting and some of the coincidences. The day of Dickens is over, Mr. Hawke. The comic strips have pre-empted those freehand tricks. You have to be cleaner and more honest in your plotting. The Russians made that change. It's permanent. But all in all, I'm for you."
"That's marvellous, Quent," Prince said. "I wish you were saying all that in the Times next Sunday, instead of in Midchannel next November, that's all."
John Weltmann, speaking at the table for the first time, said, "Are any facts known about the relationship between reviews and the sales of a novel?" He addressed Prince in a heavy way, German in manner rather than accent, and swung his big head around when Hodge spoke up from the other end of the table.
"There's no relationship. It's not like the theatre. Critics can't get people to read a dull book, and they can't stop them from reading a good book."
Weltmann said to Prince, "If that's so, why do you pay attention to the notices?"
"Well, it's better to have them with you than against you."
Hawke said, "Not to mention that a writer wants to be admired as well as rich.
Weltmann said, "Would you settle for being rich?"
"Yes," Hawke said instantly.
"That's because you get all the admiration you need from the one person who matters," Frieda said.
"His mother?" Judd said.
"Himself," Frieda said, winning a laugh.
Mrs. Hawke said, "I took Art to see Henry Clay's tomb in Lexington when he was twelve. The Youngbloods, that's my family, we're kin to the Clay family through the Hunt connection. Well, Art looked at this column about eighty feet high they've got over Clay's tomb and he said, 'My column's going to be a good twenty feet higher than that.' "
In the laugh that followed Hawke said, "It was before I knew that pillars are only for politicians."
"It's not too late for you to take up politics," Paul Winter said.
"I'm not that talented at fiction," Hawke said. He drank off his wine, feeling better and bolder in the laughter. The ice was broken. Everybody had faced the fact that the reviews of his book were wretched. Judd's unexpected support was heartwarming. His adultery with Frieda, which for him ran like a red diagonal across the table from himself to her, evidently was not visible to anyone else.
Ross Hodge said, "Hawke, the new girl in our mystery department, Jeanne Green, edited Oblivion, didn't she?"
"Edited it? She all but rewrote it," Hawke said. "She would have if I'd allowed her to. A strong-minded girl."
"A good girl. We hated to lose her," Prince said.
"A pretty girl," Fanny said.
"Very pretty," Frieda said.
Hodge said, "She's convinced you're the coming American novelist, Hawke. She says your new one is better than the first."
"Did she tell you anything about it?"
"Not a word more than that. She gave us the clear impression that thumbscrews wouldn't get more out of her."
Hawke said, "I'm fond of her and I'm sorry you stole her away."
"Just offered her more money than she was getting."
Prince said to Hawke, "Would the new one be the war novel you outlined to Waldo the other day?"
"Yes."
Hodge said, "Is Fipps as enthusiastic about it as Jeanne is?"
"Oh, he's enthusiastic," Prince said. "In his fashion. Waldo seldom runs a temperature, you know, about writers who are above the ground."
"Jeanne says it's a masterpiece."
Fanny Prince said, eating her soup daintily, "I think she also admires, a little bit, Mr. Hoke's broad shoulders."
Hawke quickly spoke into the titter, "Maybe Jeanie likes the book because she had a hand in it from the first. She was invaluable. I miss her."
He saw Quentin Judd make an odd motion in his chair, a restless weaving back and forth. Then the critic shot his head forward to speak to him across Nancy. "In what way was she invaluable?"
"In every way."
"Does she have a plot sense? I've fooled with a novel for years and I've always felt an editor with a plot sense could get me to finish it," Judd said.
"Many of her comments amounted to plot ideas. She'd probably be terrified of you. Otherwise I'd say you could hardly do better."
"What's terrifying about me?" Judd said plaintively to Mrs. Hawke.
"Why, I'm sure I don't know," Hawke's mother said. "You sort of look like Reverend Yeager back home, and he's the most henpecked man in Hovey."
Judd joined in the laughter as though she had paid him a compliment. Hawke laughed louder than anyone, because the critic really did look like Yeager. The wine was taking hold, and Hawke was beginning to feel exhilarated at the manner in which he was getting away with murder. There sat Frieda, about six feet away from him, demure, elegant, softly beautiful. In his first months in the city, in the lobbies of theatres and concert halls, he had seen many such remote jewel-like New York women, dressed with the exquisite finish of European noblewomen in old paintings, but with the added American sparkle of informality. More than once he had followed such a woman at a distance, with no thought in his mind except to keep looking at her as long as he could. And now he had won one of the best of them, a woman as clever as she was lovely; and here he was dining in her own home with her husband, and his mother and sister, and it was all going off smooth as water!
When the company moved into the living room for brandy and coffee, a lively conversation was going on about Hawke's picture of Hovey life in his book. Both Hodge and Judd came from small towns; they were baiting Mrs. Hawke in a good-natured way, and she was holding her own surprisingly well. The party grew very convivial. It was an extraordinary success, considering its queer components; and Hawke was surprised to note that it was past midnight when Jay and Fanny Prince made the move to leave which swiftly broke it up.
Mr. Winter shook his hand with great cordiality when he was leaving. "About your notices, Arthur, just remember that the criticism an artist gets is the shadow he casts. You're starting out with a long shadow. It's the ones who make a debut to universal acclaim who usually turn out to be runts."
"That's very good of you," Hawke said, "but it's a little hard for me to be philosophic, at least right now. I have the feeling that nobody loves me."
