Youngblood hawke, p.70
Youngblood Hawke, page 70
Evelyn Biggers
A Novel by
Youngblood Hawke
From the kitchenette came the brisk noises of Jeanne's short-order cookery, and a wonderful smell of corn meal frying in oil. The door leading to the bedrooms was closed. Jeanne poked her head into the room. "I forget how you like your tacos. Lots of hot sauce, or a little bit?"
Hawke said, "Half a bottle per taco."
"Of course. It's Karl who can't take hot sauce . . . Reading your own book?"
"Well, looking at it. I see a million disgusting mistakes in English."
"No doubt. That's what happens at the peak of the profession. Beer?"
"Jeanne, stop pretending we're strangers."
She laughed. "Well, it's been nearly two years. What makes you think your little tastes are so memorable to me?"
In a few minutes she came out with a tray of tacos and two bottles of beer. "All for you," she said. "None for Jolly Jeanne, sweetheart of the freak show, four hundred pounds of quivering female pulchritude."
"Sit down and eat with me. Stop being a fool."
"Arthur, you can't imagine how I hate being fat. I look in the mirror and cry."
He wolfed one taco and took another. "Marvellous. I haven't felt like eating for weeks. Where the devil did you learn Mexican cooking, anyway?"
"Dear, those are sold like hot dogs in California. There's nothing to it, you just fry up tortillas and fold in the meat and vegetables."
Hawke said with his mouth full, "This is the way you always make them best, too, with chicken—What the hell are you grinning about? I can't help being hungry."
Jeanne said, "It's not chicken, honey. It's turkey. From Karl's birthday party last Sunday."
"Christ, when is turkey going to stop being a dirty word between you and me? Jeanne, take a taco and some beer or I'll go home."
"Well, I'll eat one. Didn't Frieda look magnificent at the theatre?"
"She looked the same as always."
"Arthur, she had on a beautiful tiara I've never seen before, and neither have you, I'll bet."
"I didn't notice. She didn't have a tiara in Europe. I don't think she did. We went to the opera once."
"Didn't you treat her shabbily tonight? In the lobby, during intermission?"
"I was very polite to her."
"Exactly, dear."
Hawke was on his third taco. He picked up a bottle of beer and drained it. "Good. Very cold."
Jeanne went to the kitchen and brought him another. She sat beside him, and said casually, "Whatever happened in Venice, it seems to have been cataclysmic."
"Not at all. Don't worry, I'll tell you about it. Just let me eat first."
"Arthur, I'm not trying to pump you."
"Not much! It was a dismal business, and it's soon told." He drank half his beer, looking off wryly and absently at a wall. "She got me to meet her in London, you know. Never mind how, Frieda is an ingenious woman. This was back in August. Then we went to Paris, then after awhile we went to Venice. Frieda's purpose of course, for all her talk of friendship, was to fan the embers. The trouble was that I couldn't do the adoring mountain boy of twenty-six any more, for many obvious reasons. It was all pretty unsatisfactory. Fanned embers, Jeanie, are not fresh logs. In Venice she began to get annoyed. I was just drifting along. I'd finished Evelyn and I was in the semi-comatose state I fall into sometimes, really an acute depression stemming from a sense of failure, but it took the form of a certain, shall we say, masculine indifference? Frieda doesn't like that. I guess she decided to try some strong medicine. We were in this bar where this extremely good-looking and talented colored pianist was—I'm sure he'll come over here some day and make a sensation, he's from the French West Indies and he's the kind that makes silly white women breathe hard and giggle nervously—and aside from that he plays and sings good jazz. There were these two little pianos in the bar, back to back. The idea is that amateurs come and play at the other piano, and he improvises along and makes them look good. You can imagine how this wows the sissies with bleached hair who haunt the bar. Well, what happened was that my beloved Frieda started to play a jazz duet with the colored man, flirting with him over the top of the piano as she played, to see if she could strike some sparks out of me. Or maybe she just enjoyed doing it. I've never pretended to fathom her mind. She sat down at the second piano, anyway, and started to go. Have you ever heard Frieda play jazz?"
"I don't think so. Only Christmas carols."
"Well, believe me she plays jazz, as she does everything else, with enormous competence—and when she's in the mood, with something more. That Negro's eyes all but fell out of his head when Frieda sat and slammed out four chords. Then he grinned a mouthful of piano keys and hopped aboard.
"It was something. Somebody should have made a tape recording of that performance. Or better yet a color movie—that smoky dingy bar with its chrome and beige leather for the American trade, and the faggots in their skimpy Italian suits twittering and clustering around those two toy pianos, drinks in hand, and Frieda in a low-cut green dress with no sleeves smashing away with those thin strong arms of hers and spider fingers, and the Negro in a red sports jacket grinning and rolling with sweat and pounding his little box till it danced and the angled mirror over his head shook. And of course the big oafish American who had brought this divine woman, sitting glowering alone at a table and getting drunker and drunker. Let's not forget that comical slob.
"After they roared through twenty minutes of fast numbers and boogie-woogie they played a couple of slow ones. That was something to hear. They didn't have to flirt with grins and winks any more. They brushed each other with little tendrils of notes. I swear to God Jeanie, that's the way to make love if you can do it, on two pianos, there's so much more room for nuances of tenderness and passion than in the comical gymnastics of the real thing. Believe me, I couldn't help appreciating the beauty of it, but at the same time it irritated the hell out of me, of course. Especially when this crowd of pretty boys began glancing at me and nudging each other. Imagine being cuckolded in public on two pianos! That was about the size of it. It just went on and on. They began to play fast again. Frieda really got caught up. She was perspiring like this Negro. The homos began to utter little shrieks of carnal delight. I finally walked up to her and said, 'Let's go, Frieda.' She said, 'Oh, go on to bed if you're tired. I'm having fun!' And she went right on banging away, looking the Negro in the eyes over the piano tops. I got squeaks and titters and amused looks from the fairies. It was smash up the place or leave."
Jeanne said, "So you smashed it up."
"No. I'm a good citizen. I walked out. I went back to our suite at the Royal Danieli, but of course I couldn't sleep. I waited one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, five hours, watching the clock and watching the entrance of the hotel. I watched the sky grow light and the sun come up. It was after eight when Frieda came chugging up in a motorboat taxi. The Negro helped her get out and I heard him shout goodbye to her and laugh.
"Well, then, here comes Frieda into our sitting room, see, humming cheerily, fresh as a buttercup, obviously much the better for a shower and a new makeup job, and altogether in a glow. 'What?' she chirrups. 'Up already, dear? I thought you were so tired.' "
Jeanne raised her palm to silence Hawke. A loud whimpering came from the back of the apartment. She glanced at her watch. "That little devil! He's not due to eat again for hours. Go ahead, maybe he'll shut up."
The baby, as though answering her, uttered a protesting howl. She shrugged and stood. When she opened the door to the bedrooms Karl called sleepily, "Jeanne?"
"Yes, I'll get him."
"Thanks. I gave the greedy bastard a bottle and a half at two."
Hawke heard Jeanne say, "Arthur's here." Fry replied, "Good. How are the notices?" Jeanne said, "It's a smash hit." Her husband replied, "Well, tell him congratulations, and if he wants to adopt a baby I think we can do business."
Jeanne reappeared with Jim wrapped in a blue blanket. "Here. Hold him while I warm the bottle. He likes men."
Hawke said, looking dubiously at the small pink-faced creature, "How do you hold a baby?"
"Easy." Jeanne firmly placed the baby in his arms. "Jim, you keep your yap shut now, this man won the Pulitzer Prize and he's at the peak of his profession."
The baby and Hawke inspected each other. Jim was an extremely handsome baby, with a square jaw and wide mouth like Jeanne's, and gigantic blue eyes. He blinked at Hawke, and his face folded in a toothless grin. Hawke called into the kitchen, "Jeanne, this thing is smiling at me."
"Better smiling than yelling. Don't panic if he throws up, just let him do it. He often throws up after smiling." Jeanne came in with a saucepan of steaming water in which a nursing bottle stood. "Good lord, you hold him as though he were a rattlesnake. Let me have him. What do you think of him?"
"Well, he's a baby," Hawke said.
"He sure is," Jeanne said, settling on the sofa with Jim in her arms. "I really did it. I couldn't have been more surprised. I never thought I'd produce anything but inter-office memos."
"He's beautiful, Jeanne. If you can call a fellow beautiful."
Jeanne gave him a shy smile, and ran her fingers along the baby's cheek. Jim yawned. She looked at Hawke expectantly. "Well?"
"Well, what? I'll go home and leave you with Jim. Thanks for the tacos and the beer, Jeanie."
"Arthur Hawke, don't you dare, you sit right there and finish that story, for God's sake." She shook water off the bottle and inserted the nipple in Jim's mouth.
Hawke studied Jeanne as she sat placidly in her black evening dress, holding the bottle to the mouth of the blue-wrapped baby cradled in an arm. The calm sweetness of her face made him feel at once sad and exhilarated. "I don't know. It hardly seems a fit topic to pursue in the presence of the madonna and child. Some other time."
"Oh, cut it out, it's delicious for a trapped cow like me to hear how the carefree wicked live. It's better than a movie. Frieda has just walked in at an ungodly hour long after sunrise, having apparently had herself one hell of a time."
"Yes, well, you can imagine what my mood was," Hawke said reluctantly. "I'm afraid I sort of manhandled her. I'd feel worse about that if I didn't know—if I didn't perceive even at the time with complete clarity—that she was bent on provoking just such a reaction. It worked, to be sure. We had a full-fledged lovers' quarrel spiced by physical violence, with the usual aftermath. What Frieda wanted was the aftermath. She got it, but the price was too high. I didn't believe her story, you see, though she stuck to it through some roughhouse that damned near shook the teeth out of her head. Her story was that when the joint closed at four a bunch of them, including the piano player and herself, adjourned to a palazzo rented by some fat old sodomite with red-dyed hair whom I'd seen in the bar. She said he was a tremendously rich Englishman, but she couldn't remember his name and she was vague on where the palazzo was, too. Claimed they all piled hilariously into gondolas and just went there. She said there was a grand piano, and she played and the colored man played and they had herb omelettes and caviar and champagne, and pretty soon it was sunrise, so she took a shower and came back to the hotel. It was a plausible enough story but there was something that prevented me from believing it, and if you want to know, it was the way I'd seen her walk half a dozen steps from the boat into the hotel. I know Frieda's various gaits, or I think I do. I told her I didn't believe her, and for all the red-hot reconciliation after the fight I didn't. I left her sleeping and went to the bar to ask some questions but of course it was closed, it wasn't even noon.
"I spent the day wandering around Venice in a daze. I can't describe to you how sick I was. I'll never be that sick at heart again. You can only go through that kind of agony once, Jeanne, then something in your heart gives way for good."
Hawke did not see the spasm that crossed Jeanne's face, followed by a shadowy melancholy smile. He was staring at the empty air.
"What seemed to bother me most was that I had gone through the physical act of reconciliation with her. I felt as though my body were coated with some dirty grease that I would never get off. All this, mind you, was whirling around in my head while I walked in St. Mark's Cathedral, and the Doge's Palace, and half a dozen churches and museums. I'm a conscientious boy, I'd been meaning to do the sights for a week, but between Frieda and my publisher I'd mainly been eating tremendous elegant lunches and dinners at the luxury restaurants and going to long chatterbox parties of very flossy Venetians and Britishers.
"Jeanne, Venice is unspeakably enchanting. The water is dirty and stinks and the gondolas are just a prop for tourists now—you take a motor boat if you want to get somewhere—but you have no idea how much art, how much architectural treasure, how much incredible man-made beauty there is mouldering away in Venice. There is more art in any one street of old Venice—dying, blackening, crumbling great art—than there is in the whole United States, in the whole Western Hemisphere. An obscure stairway in an old palazzo, not one of the great ones, will be covered with paintings and lined with sculptures, all masterpieces. And it goes on and on, there's no end to it, one treasure trove more breathtaking than the next. Yet here we had been for a week in this shrine of glory, this great monument to the dignity and wit of the human race, and all our trip had come down to—despite Frieda's prattle of art and beauty, and she really knows a hell of a lot more about painting and architecture than I ever will—all it had come down to, I say, was a lot of rich stuffing and guzzling and snobbish chit-chat, and at last a nigger pianist in a lousy pseudo-American bar full of fairies."
Jeanne said, "I was waiting for you to say that word."
"What word?"
"Nigger. That's the whole point of the story, isn't it? What else had Frieda done, or what else did you suspect her of doing, that was new to you?"
Hawke nodded slowly. "I've had that thought, of course. You don't get the South out of your bones by reading liberal books and going to New York parties where there are clever and charming colored people. But I think the crude public way she set about putting the screws on me, just to squeeze out a few last drops of an old passion, was the thing—not the colored man."
Jeanne smiled skeptically, turning the bottle in the baby's mouth so that it burbled.
"Be that as it may, I got back to the hotel and found my beloved singing like a lark and putting an extra special golden polish on herself, because we were going to dine at the palace of a duchess. This was di Strozzi's doing. He's my Italian publisher, you know, a mild smooth little man with beautiful thick gray hair, from a terrific old family, with manners like October sunlight, cool and warm at once, and charming in his every gesture, he lights a cigarette for a woman and you hear an invisible violin break into a minuet. A delightful sweet fellow, cultured to the marrow, unbelievably rich, and absolutely nothing interests him but money. My books sell like hell in Italy, you know. Oblivion did better there than even in West Germany. Carlo di Strozzi can't do enough for me, and anyway I amuse him.
"He, by the way, was far less impressed with Frieda than most New Yorkers are. He seemed to take stock of her at a glance. The measured politeness Carlo doled out to her with a tincture of disapproval one tenth of one percent short of contempt, was really something to behold. Frieda knocked herself out to look well and to watch her company manners whenever we were with di Strozzi. We went to this palace on one of the side canals, not a grandiose building but my God, Jeanne, the wealth, the wealth! We ate off gold plates, each one engraved with different pictures. The ceiling was covered with frescoes that looked like Tintorettos and may well have been. I should have asked but I thought it would be vulgar. The duchess was a magnificent gloomy old bat in black dragging silk, with a black wiggy-looking wig. There were several other people there, Italian and British, all with the offhand cream-of-the-cream manners and the subtle eye signals of the very rich. Now I get by in such situations because I so obviously don't belong, and I've learned long ago to overdo the bull in the china shop, the note of fresh air, and so make them laugh and feel superior and at the same time in good company. Once a British noblewoman, Lady Somethingdale, said to me in flirting tones, 'I do so like Creative.' Not creative people, mind you. She said, 'I like Creative,' the way you would say you like Wedgwood. That's how I pass in those circles.
"But Frieda really doesn't, you know. I once thought Frieda was an aristocrat. She's sort of middle-crust for New York, but in Italy believe me she's nobody. Not that I give a damn for European aristocrats, either. God knows they're all playing the last cards of a losing hand, and all they have really is their creature comforts, their self-importance, and a life of fear."
Hawke coughed. His voice was hardly more than a grating whisper; it had been steadily weakening. "I don't know how I can drivel on like this. I haven't slept in days but that food gave me a new lease on life. Since Frieda left Venice I've done very little eating."
"How about some hot coffee?" Jeanne said.
"No. I've got to go to the hotel and get some rest. I have several business conferences tomorrow and—Christ, it's half-past four, Jeanne!"
"I know."
Hawke stretched, and began to put on his shoes. "Well, you can guess the rest, can't you? When we finally shook free of the duchess and di Strozzi around midnight, I headed straight for the Expatriates Bar with Frieda. She didn't want to go, Lord she really didn't, she seemed to sense what would happen, said she'd had it, once was fun but a second time would be boring and so forth. But I dragged her there, all right. The faggots all burst into applause when they saw her come in. The pianist was belting away, but he stopped and grinned from ear to ear and shouted, 'Hi Frieda honey, wheah you been? One drink and you on!'
