TWO ELDERLY GENTLEMEN came out of a restaurant, put on their hats and gloves and stood talking and smiling beside a limousine. They were taking leave of each other when an apparition out of the past sauntered between them. The chauffeur gave a start.
–Why Arkwright, one of the old men said, belching. I thought you were disposed of years ago like a paper napkin.
–Not at all, said the apparition. I've been with my Baby Mother.
The other old gent goffered his lips and got into the Imperial. He was going to see his Schnickelfritz.
–Take me to the Schnickelfritz, he said to the chauffeur, and gave a wave of the hand to his luncheon companion as the car pulled away.
Arkwright was still tall and muscular though a little stooped, now, and shambling. There was the tryst that time with Pernille. She brought a blanket out onto the landing, Arkwright's hat on the stairs. When they were finished and came down afterwards she just flounced her skirt and started skipping rope. Her thighs were red and everybody knew she let him get into her fitta.
–Come on. Buy you a drink.
–I know a place.
Arkwright smiled with those blue eyes. He showed the other man down the street and around the corner, held the door for him.
–I suppose this is where you were going, said the other man looking around the dimly lighted premises. The girl behind the bar smiled to Arkwright, her breasts like quicksilver under her chemise. The man asked him what he was drinking, ordered, remarked:
–You must be on Antabuse.
–Not at all. They're just easy to walk away from.
The girl set them up. He winked at the man and poured his club soda, glanced at the clock, at the girl. Aurelia's time signals were always incredibly lovely, maybe because her Daddy was a railroad man.
–Cheers, he said.
–Cheers, said the other man. Sullener, his name was. Insisted on speaking English though it probably pained him.
–I see you still have all your hair. How do you manage that? By clean living?
Arkwright laughed.
–There used to be an old nigger barber in the barbershop of the old Senate Office Building in Washington, he said. One day Senator Calhoun came in and asked for a haircut. As he was cutting his hair the old darky said, Yo has a good head of hair, Senatuh. That shows yo has a big brain. How is that, Fustis? the senator asked. Well, suh, said the colored man, de brain nourishes the roots ob de hair.
He guffawed and slapped his thigh.
Sullener pursed his lips and looked into his glass of brandy, scowled and drank.
–You Americans, he said. My most vivid memory from the war is of some GIs who were standing in line to, how do you say it? to cornhole a corpse.
–But what were they saying? Do you remember their wisecracks?
–Ah, yes...the wisecracks.
Why he even had a memorial to Arkwright on a shelf in the gun room, a handful of double-ought buckshot in a saucer stolen from the old Princess Hotel in Bangkok. And recently this seige of religious experiences, stupefying phantasmagoria of his flesh consummated in a little girl's. Surely they had to do with Arkwright's little bottle of Dead Sea water that time with its deceptive specific gravity and which he had always wanted to taste.
Aurelia's Caerphilly cheese-it came right away and like an epiphany. She had just served one of the tables, the cassette deck was playing a Vivaldi oboe concerto, she smiled to him then turned and lightly stepped out of the café. A moment later the door opened and she came in again, her loins silhouetted in the snowy afternoon light.
–Maybe they were saying, Arwright said, using the other man's language. Maybe they were saying The day shit turns to gold is the day the poor are born without assholes.
He left his glass half emptied on the bar and walked out. Halfway up the block he came upon a street pogue who was scraping snow off the hood of a car and packing it into a snowball. When he saw Arkwright he hefted it and said
–Hey, Pops. How'd you like to get your face washed?
–How'd you like to get your ass in a cast? Arkwright replied. Or maybe you'd rather have it in a traction splint.
–The kid stood blocking the sidewalk looking at him with big brown eyes. Suddenly he showed an interest in his lapel ornament.
–Gee, Mister, he said. Is that really a...
Arkwright brought his left hand down sharply and knocked the snowball out of the hands. The face crumpled in astonishment.
–You're not Danish, the kid said. You're a shitty American.
The bells of Our Lady cathedral and Holy Ghost church started ringing the vespers and their melodious bonging raised his spirits as the pogue's jeer followed him down the street – Shitty American! Shitty American! – so his heart's joy became the joy of anger. He walked the streets for half an hour counting couples and mothers with children. Four couples window-shopping in the snow and two parents with small children were enjoying his invention. He watched as a mother and her little son hurried to catch a bus. The driver waited for them. His soul sang. He smiled to his reflection in a store window.
That magnificent man in the disguise of age. He went inside a cafeteria and played some prayer wheels he knew. In a few minutes he pulled the jackpot, used some of it to buy the day's special. Sat at a window table watching the people on the street. He liked to mash the potatoes with his fork and sop the gravy.
Rollie Arkwright. Some called him Texas Blue, on account of the color of his eyes which is the color of lightning on a clear day. The snow was old and deep and he floundered slightly crossing the ice on the lake in the circus lights of neon signs and the traffic on Queen Louise's bridge. Hat off, arms out, Rollie. Navigating by the lights of a café on the other shore, humming, dancing. He clambered onto the embankment at the foot of Rood Street in the Northbridge section of Copenhagen, stood looking back letting his breath catch up with him.Then he turned and slouched through the streets.
Stood outside a tenement for a minute. Went inside, stood looking out the window in the door. He pushed the light button, turned and stamped the snow off his rubber boots and climbed the stairs. Slow and heavy, pausing on the landings. Most of the doors still had the original letter slot. Just broad enough for a reminder and too narrow for a newspaper. The lights went out and he groped for the pushbutton, panting, talking to himself, the buttons on his overcoat cuffs scraping. Found it. The solenoid thudded and the timer ticked in its box down by the street door as the lights came on. On the fifth floor he stood in front of a door contemplating closely a piece of Dymo tape with the name A. Tiger. Just then the neighbor's door opened and the man came out wearing a sleeveless undershirt and carrying a bag of beer bottles. His face had a look of brutish displeasure. Without glancing at Arkwright he tramped down the stairs, bottles clinking, and went out. Arkwright knocked. Inside a dog started barking.
–Who is it?
–It's Rollie.
The dog was shushed and the door unlocked and opened. Arkwright brushed the snow off and toed off his rubber boots.
–Hi, Tiger.
He hung his hat and coat. Took a bottle out of a pocket.
–Here's something for the weather. Incidentally, that's an incriminating coathanger. I've been meaning to tell you.
Tiger reached up on his tiptoes and opened Arkwright's overcoat. It was hanging on an old wooden coathanger with a dowel for the pants. Printed on the hanger was J. Lebowitz & Noble 83 Stanton St. N.Y.C. and an obsolete telephone number. Tiger laughed.
–You want a Russian hanger? I'll give you a Russian hanger.
–I know. That's why I came.
Tiger was a two-thousand year old Jew and he liked Ballantine's scotch. They went into the living room, the old man's beard wagging.
–I don't know how long I can keep it up. My son is looking for another job. He's been working at the junkyard for seven years and he's tired of doing the junkyard thing. I don't blame him. He should be working in a bank.
He fetched two wine glasses and poured a little whiskey into them. The two men looked a toast at each other and drank.
–Sure. He's got a talent. He can tell good money from bad.
Arkwright fondled the ears of the old man's dog, a part collie bitch named Abe. They sat for a minute feeling the whiskey and listening to the draft in the stove. Suddenly the dog jumped up and went growling to the hall door. They heard the neighbor stamp up the stairs, go into his apartment and slam the door. The old man looked at him.
–He's a Nazi. And you should see what my son has to wash his hands with.
Arkwright patted the dog.
–Let's see what you've got, he said.
The old man got up and went into another room. The walls of the apartment were covered with original art Tiger's friends had given him. Arkwright liked a painting of a gray room with a white chair with a pair of red pantyhose slung over its back. Hanging alongside it was one of his own mechanical switches.
He sat sipping whiskey and looking at the two oeuvres together. Tiger came in. He had put on his beret. He even wore it in the synagogue. Anyway Arkwright couldn't imagine him wearing anything else. It was from the Spanish Civil War, the old man said. He came over, placed a greasy envelope on the table then turned and busied himself with the coke bucket. Arkwright emptied the envelope onto the piece of red floor tile the old man's teapot had been standing on.
–Sounds good, he said.
Tiger closed the door of the stove and came to the table. Arkwright used the edge of his palm and scooped the little pile onto the envelope, picked one up and dropped it on the tile. It rang like hard money. Rectangular metal frames about the dimensions of a modern machine-countable securities cupon, hooked at one end like the fingers of a hand. He shined one of them with his thumb and held it up to the light. There was a serial number stamped into the metal. He showed it to Tiger. The dog whined once and the old man shushed her.
Arkwright hooked the objects, there were twelve, into a greasy chain, held it into the light and tapped it so that it swung. He grinned.
–Lucky links, he said and dropped the chain into the envelope.
He stood, pulled a wad of money out of his pants pocket, counted out twenty-four hundred kroner notes and lay them on the table. The old man picked them up and folded them and put them in his pocket.
–You're a pretty good old guy, Tiger. Ever see a movie called Lifeboat?
–Yes. I saw it in Sweden during the war. The old man's face wrinkled into a caricature of cunning. The German was thrifty like a Jew and that's why they killed him.
–Maybe I should play like I'm a Talullah Bankhead fan, Arkwright said putting the envelope in his shirt pocket and patting it. He struck a pose and batted his eyelashes.
–But you're not, said Tiger. You like the young putke and everybody knows it.
Where would you hide something so the louts won't find it? Dirt is too obvious a place, the grease trap in a restaurant or institutional scullery and anyway they would find it there. They don't mind the dirt of faulty personal hygiene and they are all too sensitive to food grease, something constantly evident to them in the adult male paunch and the remembered fat kid, his name doesn't matter. It fools nobody, the fat man's dummy gizzard full of broken keys, can opener lint and chandelier odds and ends. Perhaps industrial refuse, but that's been tried. The gaffers would find it in any overlooked accumulation of scrap for they have a memory. That is where Arkwright finds it. There is nothing less blue collar than a Russian emigré. A Czarist working stiff is as unimaginable as an indigent Jew. The old men know too much. That's why they act the way they do, drooling and lurching, so the louts won't kick the shit out of them.
–Hey Rollie. Got a light?
It was Gopher, niched like a post in a gateway. He gestured with the cigarette. Arkwright got out his Zippo and lighted it for him.
–Thanks.
He took a few deep drags one after the other. They stood looking out into the street. He pulled a medicine bottle out of his pocket and held it into the light. It was half full of a milky fluid.
–Want some? It's warm, like the snow.
Arkwright didn't reply. It was ether cut with milk. The other man opened the bottle and drank.
–No, you have other interests. He wheezed like a dog coughing. You have the temptation that is sobriety.
The sky glowed salmon from a fire a couple of blocks away. The shy Gopher leaned back into the shadows, gusty light playing on his cheekbones.
–You have other interests, he repeated. I'm like a house cat. Puss gets enough to eat and enough time and watches all day or all night, catches flies, watches the wee ghosties in the corner. A lucky Puss has a cushion on the windowsill. Ever see a cat looking out a window at night?
–The cat is busy, Arkwright said gesturing at the snow in the streetlight. Puss has another weather to watch.
He walked on.
There was a pyromaniac in the neighborhood. Part of the roof collapsed and sparks shot up. Arkwright stood watching with the little crowd. The building had been evacuated and the tenants stood in a huddle on the opposite sidewalk. They were wearing the city's blankets and the snow made them look like a Rodin sculpture. Blue blinkerlights flashed in windows and the ladder truck's hydraulics whined. There were slates all over the street. The firemen had broken through the roof and were attacking the blaze with the ladder nozzle. Water ran down the front of the building and froze, forming an icicle five stories high. It was the same pattern. The fire started in the basement under the back stairs and in less than ten minutes had ignited the junk in the attic.
He found himself looking in the windows of his own storefront. There was an old pier glass on the rear wall and it effectively riveted the attention of passersby. He made himself look away from his reflection and at the things in the window. The night light could be suggestive. They could be parts of kitchen gadgets, enlarged and sectioned for instructional purposes in a trade school or an armed force with an uncanny and not unpleasing resemblance to the products of nature, the way a potato peeler or apple corer might be fashioned so as to lure the produce into its improving attentions. He had hung a Chinese wind chime over the store and its brass tubes tink-tinked like a pentatonic bird call.
A police car crawled past and gave him the onceover. Stopped in front of the tavern a few doors down, drove on.
He unlocked the shop door and stepped inside. Stamped the snow off his boots. Toed them off and stepped into his clogs. He stood in front of the pier glass and looked at himself.
–Who did you expect?
Took his coat off and shook it, hung it on the nail in the apartment door. Stood in front of the glass with his hat on and the snow on it. He smiled like a pagoda.
–You're the Duke's strawberries.
–You're your own Grandpa, too.
–You mean my brother Clifford Arkwright. He's a henpecked runt and he's also a weasel. He lives on welfare in Catawba, East Virginia, and all he does all day is drink wine. He married Barbara Bouchardeau, our mutual kissin cousin. Lord, was she fun.
He hung his hat on the nail and let himself into the apartment. Cozy. Wood fires and soap. Turned on the kitchen light and put a kettle of water on the gas. Her homework lay on the table, books neatly stacked and her essay immaculate in a clear vinyl folder. He opened the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of buttermilk. Sipped it while the kettle came to a boil. Put the plastic basin in the sink, emptied the kettle into it and added cold, undressed and washed himself. As he dried with the bathtowel he glanced at her essay. Its title was Vanity:
There are many kinds of vanity, including the vanity of appearing to have none. Vanity is one of the most universal human traits and it must exist for a purpose. It seems to me that a person who truly has no vanity is lacking part of the ability to communicate with other people...
He put on his bathrobe and used the toilet. There were letters on the entryway table. Glanced at them while brushing his hair in the mirror. One from his attorney. One from Monique. He opened them.
Went to the kitchen again and brushed his teeth. Then he turned the light out and softly opened the bedroom door.
He lighted the candle and checked the stove. Pignon had banked it for the night. He dropped another couple of chunks in. The noise woke her and she sat up in the bed.
–Rollie, she said.
He took off the bathrobe and knelt on the bed beside her. She had long red hair and a salmon-colored light seemed to radiate from her loins. She touched his face with her fingertips.
–Rollie.
–Baby Mother.
He kissed her bosom. She was eleven years old and she smelled like cedar and wild lavender.
Ida Jacobsen lighted the gas ring. Because her hands were weak and there wasn't much force in her faucet, she placed the kettle in the sink the time it took to fill with water. Outside it was snowing.
–A bushel of water for a little coffee, she said. Afterwards I'll wash the cup and saucer.
The building trembled. They were tearing down the building next door and the bulldozer made the earth shake. To knock the walls down they used a great heavy shovel bucket on a crane. The cables squealed in their sheaves like a clothesline and it made such a dust. A patch of mildew radiated from the windowframe as though someone had thrown a handful of earth from an angle onto a freshly painted wall. It was since they began tearing the buildings down.
Ida Jacobsen was seventy-nine years old and didn't sleep much. She was making herself an early morning cup of coffee. She had forgotten to put coffee filters on the list for the home helper when the girl did the shopping, and so there weren't any in the heart-shaped holder. Perhaps there were a few in a carton on the top cupboard shelf. She had lived alone for twenty years and was provident.
It must have been a year since the last time she looked for anything on the top shelf. Reserves of staples were kept up there, but because she didn't rotate them it was difficult for her to remember what they were. Possibly there were coffee filters.
Ida Jacobsen was what is called spry. She climbed her safety stepladder and rummaged on the top shelf. She found a package of faded birthday candles and a glass of colored cake icing sprinkle. There were some tins of mackerel fillets in tomato sauce; she couldn't say how long they had been there. A kilo bag of rice, an unopened box of instant mashed potatoes and a couple of boxes of pudding mix. A box of confectioner's sugar. She thought she noticed a peculiar odor, somewhat tangy, and thought of pickled gherkins. She would ask the girl to clean the shelves and put new shelf paper on them.
She had never gotten used to living alone for the simple reason that she married early and had always considered the bachelor state unclean. She was making herself some morning coffee. It was dark outside and snowing. The building was shaking. The kettle had begun to whistle. There was a box of oatmeal on the shelf and it had been opened at some time. She opened it and looked inside to see if the oatmeal had become weevily and the weevils got in her hair. She slapped at them. The box dropped and its contents sprayed across the kitchen floor. She was infested. She cried out.
–God in heaven!
Arkwright was awakened by the sound of a cat's skin scraping on galvanized metal. The wild street cats wintered in the basement of the building, coming and going through a torn piece of punched metal over the cellar light under his bedroom window. He got up and stoked the fire. Padded out to the kitchen.
Crawled back into bed. Pignon stretched and nuzzled him. Her armpits were as sweet as cantaloupe halves. He got down under the featherbed and kissed her tummy.
–This is the bellybutton inspector, he said buzzing like a bee.
He kissed her airplane.
Afterwards she stood in Rollie's huge clogs in the steamy kitchen and washed. He lifted her hair away from her shoulders and kissed them. She was a Capricorn and he had bought her some expensive Swiss goat's milk soap. He watched her wash her feet. She lightly splashed with her toes and said
–Twilight waters warm with day
Walking my oars in the Milky Way.
Earshaped purls twinkle and ring
Rowing my boat in the morning.
Rollie, what's horsefeathers?
–Well, horsefeathers implies a horse's egg...
–But that's nonsense!
–That's horsefeathers.
He made a stack of buttered toast. Opened a new pound block of Norwegian goat cheese. Capricorn food. She played a tune on the wire cheese knife, smiling, eyes unblinking and with big irises. It tinkled like a little zither. She laughed and devoured her breakfast.
–Hey Rollie. Yesterday I heard burglars in the cellar.
–In my cellar?
–No, outside in the passageway. They did something to the door, said some awful things and went away.
–It's bolted from inside. They must have cut the hasp. Listen, Baby Mother...
–Mmmm?
–I got a letter from Monique...
–I know.
–She wants me to come to Stockholm. Do you mind staying at your mother's for a few days?
She looked good. He stood in his bathrobe watching her play with one of the mechanical switches in the store. A mechanical switch is a physical analog of a thought. It was one called The Volition of Desire. The construction was basically a couple of masonite panels with an old MG gearshift stick which could be moved in a three-dimensional pattern reminiscent of the conductor's baton figure for ¾ time. The shift stick actuated a flywheel. Pignon was wearing oiled hiking boots and a stout pair of ribbed woollen pantyhose, a gray flannel skirt and her Norwegian cardigan. Her long red hair swayed over her caboose as she played with it one two three one two three. She turned and smiled at him with those Bally-blue eyes and all the lights went out.
–Oh, Rollie, she said hugging him. Do you think it was the pyromaniac in the cellar?
–Hmm, it was more likely the GOP Truth Squad. Come on. You'll be late for school.
He lighted the candle on the entryway table and helped her on with her reefer and her school knapsack with the transit pass on a string.
–Got your lunch pack?
–Yes, thank you.
–Money?
–Yes...oh Rollie. Thanks... Have a good time in Stockholm!
She kissed him warmly and hurried out the door. He went back to bed and slept for another hour.
Got up and heated the coffee. Drank a cup. Got up and got dressed and lighted a lantern. Drew the curtains on the store windows, opened the trapdoor to the cellar room and went down and sawed and split firewood for half an hour. It pumped his muscles up hard.
He picked up the lantern, pulled the bolts and gave the door a kick. Sure enough, somebody had cut the hasp. He left the padlock lying on the floor. Directly across the passageway was the space under his bedroom. The door was open. He walked inside. The light from the lantern was reflected in a couple of pairs of cat's eyes looking at him. The place stank of cat meals and excrement.
He made a show of going traveling. He took his firewood hatchet and put it in his valise, went out the shop door and ostentatiously shook it to make sure it was locked. The lights were still out in the neighborhood and the power company repair crew were digging up the sidewalk. As he made his way through the bystanders he heard a voice say
–I only dance with girls who have had a good childhood.
Of course it was Bib, who could have made it on the variety circuit as a ventriloquist. He located the lordly rotunda at the edge of the crowd and rejoindered
–I give the girls a good childhood.
The big fellow grinned as he eyed Arkwright's valise.
–Going to visit the folks back in Texas?
–Naw I think I'll make it the Costa del Sol this time.
He moseyed to Northbridge Road and stood with the people waiting at a bus stop. The buses were jammed. He let three or four go by.
Walked a ways and turned a corner. Halfway down the block he ducked into a gateway and came out through a courtyard. Crossed the vacant lots. A good deal of open terrain in the thickening weather. He stood in the middle of it. Where he was standing was once a labyrinth of cheap housing, courtyard on dank courtyard of real estate speculation, a crawling slum where exploited men beat their wives and used their children for footballs. He tucked the hatchet into his inside overcoat pocket, dropped the valise on the ground and stood watching a neighboring tenement being demolished. The wreckers' crane delicately swung the bucket and part of a wall came crunching down sending a cloud of stinking plaster dust into the falling snow. He walked away from the valise as though he had forgotten it.
Humming through his teeth he went down a set of steps and into the basement of his building. Stepped out of his good shoes and felt his way between the rows of storage rooms. Most of them were unused and full of junk, things from the War, from before television. Somebody was heard moving about overhead and liquid swirling down a drainpipe. The ground shook.
In most cases the things in the storage rooms were put there by tenants long since deceased or moved away.
He came to a damp brick wall, felt along it on stocking feet. Turned a corner. There was a light at the end of the passageway. Two rats were breaking into his cellar room with a crowbar. One of them was holding a bike light. He stood and watched them. Just then somebody came into the basement by the back stair and they doused the light. He knew who it was. It was Pistol Grip who was deaf and blind and pushing ninety, and it didn't matter to him that the lights were out. In the darkness the scrape of the shovel on the pitted concrete floor, coke rattling into the scuttle, the old man's heavy breathing. He lived with his sister and they hadn't spoken to each other in forty years. The shovel dropped with a clang, then the awkward scraping steps out the stair door, the treads and risers groaning, shoesoles pausing, scraping.
The rats were quiet. He listened with them to the jarring of the demolition company's bulldozer.
Pistol Grip went down to the cellar every morning to fill his scuttle. Arkwright took his hatchet out of his overcoat pocket.
They turned their bike light on. He got a good look at them. They were monkeys, not rats. He inched up cautiously. Monkeys take themselves too seriously. Monkeys don't tickle each other. Suddenly he was in their midst. Their crowbar was stuck. He slammed the flat of the hatchet in the face of the one holding the light.
–Don't. Please, said the other one.
–I'll kill you, he said.
They were already in the other space. A cat spat. He nailed the door shut all the way around with the sixpenny nails he had in his pocket. Found some boards in another cubicle and nailed them across for good measure.
He went back and found his shoes, went out and picked up his valise. Let himself into the apartment by the back door just as the lights went on. He hung his coat in the store and looked at himself in the pier glass.
–Eddie Constantine du GI Bill, he said winking.
He had two monkeys in the cellar, two thieves in the cat pit tellingly, oh tellingly, whatever notions of purpose you have entertained, whatever agency you have seen fit to bestir yourselves on, the principle you regard as your employer. It was the fulfillment of a morning last summer when two rats as long as a child's calf were found in the street outside the store. They had been running away from the building in the middle of the night and were run over by a car. Unbelievable. People got off their bicycles to look at them, and Bib said There's no question as to the zoological classification.
–Scrub your back, sir?
The scullery of the public baths. The goodness and warmth of it. In the steam room like the other pink sacks of potatoes lying there sweating, paunches going up and down. But there was a difference. Mature men have paunches for the biological reason of the risk of the women driving them from the dwellings. Arkwright had one because he was rich. He got up and carefully stepped down off the tiers, went out and took a brief shower and hopped into the icewater plunge. A young lounger sitting on one of the benches whistled.
–Be careful of your heart, man.
–Yeah, you might fall in love, Arkwright rejoindered gasping.
Back to the steam room. Played the cold nozzle on the boards, climbed up and lay down again.
Pignon at eleven years. Bally blue eyes. Long red hair. Long as to her dimpled elbows. Somewhat narrow shoulders. Slender arms but broad wrists like many redheaded women. Soft sweet upper arms. Chest soft and with prominent rose pink nipples. Long waist. Soft hips and thighs. Comfortable, moist lap. Long calves and muscular ankles with freckles. Slender feet with high arches. The shining countenance of the water. The sensation of Bettina's little legs curling around his thigh. A sea child with two scaly tails and blowing a conch. Bettina loved to sit on his knee. Such a pretty ear for all to see. He touched her ear and her dark, fragrant hair with the backs of his fingers and adjusted her hair ribbon. She hopped down. Facing him she raised her arms and pulled off the hair ribbon and shook her hair, turned around so he could see her. Giggled and came and leaned up against him. Pignon's caboose was warm and of an incredible softness more like two helical auras of warmly radiating electromagnetic energy. The crease was slightly moist. It required great patience. –Got an itchy tail? He rubbed her there and she arched her back and wiggled it. –There are too many airplanes. –How many airplanes are there? –I don't know but there are just too many. On the other hand I'm not sure there are enough or that they are being washed properly. It wouldn't do to have dirty airplanes.
Gentlemen cleared their throats and began speaking to one another about the weather and one of them said something about the Devil and his pump handle. The red sack of potatoes. He resolutely got up and went out and took another icewater plunge.
After a suitable interval he went to the bathmaster and asked if he could borrow a razor. The bathmaster went into his little room and came out again and handed him the big chrome shoehorn. He looked at it.
–All I want is a shave. I didn't ask for a public thermometer.
–Oh. You want a razor? I thought you wanted the shoehorn.
He took the razor into the steam room and wiped the fog off the mirror. When he was finished shaving he smiled his most ingratiating smile.
–You old shitkicker. Do you realize this breach of image almost jeopardized the fetus?
Ah the unconstrained knightish pangs surge to the horizon like tides creating a moon for a reason or a shadow conjuring stagecraft for meat. He could see in through the station door. Notices were thumbtacked to the dado beside the stationmaster's office, a railroad functionary passed them on his way inside the building and they fluttered. The station interior was painted a green which might have been a remembered approximation of the "Spanish green" which was so popular among the gentry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it dominated absolutely the rooms of the manor houses and the silks of the ladies and gentlemen, the green people drinking coffee. The little train pulled out of Fredensborg and continued on its way, stopping at all the stations. Arkwright wiped the condensation off the window with the sleeve of his overcoat. A little to the north of the railroad line his daughter had her comings and goings. There occurred a spotlight of sun in the clouds and all at once the fluffy landscape was illuminated, potato chiplike flakes slowly falling.
Christance Arkwright rode from Gurre to Hare Hill and she was sweet in the saddle her father bought her. She trotted out of the snowy woods and across a frozen meadow, cheeks rosy and her horse steaming. She was humming through her teeth.
The train rounded into Shipstone and there was the Sound, the traffic on it distant in the channel the icebreakers kept open, the Swedish coast a soft pencil stroke under the gray sky. In a few minutes the train pulled into the last stop. He got off with the remaining passengers and made his way down the grand staircase of Elsinore Station. There was Gyg. The man gave the cool signal of tipping his beer to his lips. Arkwright went right up to him, took him by the lapel and pointed up to the door of the station restaurant.
–What's that ship? he demanded.
–What ship?
–The one on the restaurant door? Are you hungry?
There was the sihouette in gilt of a four mast bark.
–The Erik of Pommern?
–Herzogin Caecilie, Arkwright said and slipped him a hundred kroner note.
All the Spratt's jacks in Elsinore harbor, he thought. He crossed the street and went inside the ferry terminal. He bought a ticket. A man was having a nosebleed and the lavatory was in use. Arkwright gave him a styptic pencil.
–I have a cigar box full of them, he explained smiling.
The ferry was carrying cars of the Stockholm express. On the boat deck he spoke with a Swedish girl as the hull resounded through the sheet ice.
–This damned winter, he shouted. They went below and had coffee.
–I was in Paris, she said.
–I used to live in Paris, he said.
Copyright © 1986 by Kenneth Tindall
