Disturbances in the Field Read online

  “But the angler is death, you see. The narrator has seen how death works. He gets his victims by trickery, making the water muddy.”

  “Oh, you’re getting as bad as Gabrielle. Since she’s an English major she sees symbols in every little thing.”

  “That trout was so easy to get. He should have been more alert. Put up more of a fight, at least.”

  “I just want to put up enough of a fight to get picked. The only real competition is Henrietta Frye. And she never even catches a cold. Healthy as a horse.”

  “Henrietta’s very nice, actually.”

  “I know. I don’t really mean it. … You haven’t slept with her too?”

  “No, Lydia. Can’t I say someone is a nice person without—”

  “Sure. I was just curious.”

  “Do you know what that song reminds me of? Freud says somewhere that what we call the instinct of self-preservation might be nothing but an organism’s wish to die in its own way, in its own time. That’s why it fights off any outside danger. It’s funny, isn’t it? We like to think we persevere because of the will to live, but maybe it’s really the will to die our own kind of death. A fitting death.”

  “Sometimes I feel if I don’t get to do the ‘Trout,’ I’ll die. I mean it—I’ll want to die, I want it so badly. I’ve spent seven months—”

  “Now that is truly asinine.” His voice was new to me, harsh. “How can you even think that? People spend years and years. There’ll be plenty of other times if you don’t make this one.”

  “It’s because of you I’m like this. Everything is too … heady. Before, I didn’t use to feel I would die if I didn’t have what I wanted.”

  “Oh, it’s a sexual thing? Is that what you’re telling me?” He slammed the book of songs shut and tossed it to the floor. “Should I apologize for waking you out of your, uh, prolonged latency? Did I do too good a job?” I had never heard him nasty either, only rueful.

  “George! Take it easy. Sensual, I meant. All cravings are the same, the object isn’t important.”

  “All cravings are the same, huh? Tell me something. What if I tied you to the bed and I sucked you, licked and licked, and at the moment before you were about to come I got up and walked away. Would you feel you would die?”

  I looked away. Those words. “What an awful thing to say. How disgusting you can be.” I moved across the bed, as far away as I could.

  “All right, I’m aware of that. But would you?”

  “I don’t know. I might.” There was an unpleasant, perverse silence. “You couldn’t tell the moment, though.”

  “Oh no?”

  And then he did it. Of course without tying me to the bed. That was hardly our style, nor was it necessary. I let him. I was curious. I didn’t think he would really stop. He got up and walked to the window, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and lit a cigarette. I said, “I don’t believe this.”

  “Wait it out. See if you die. Or if you’re afraid to die you can do it yourself.”

  “I’m not Patient Griselda, you know. I don’t have to go along with your strange urges, your marvelous desires.”

  “You’re not tied to the bed either. The door is unlocked.”

  I didn’t die. I put on my clothes and left. He caught up with me an hour and a half later, coming out of a theory class, and he apologized.

  “Go away. I didn’t want a teacher. I wanted a lover.” That was hard enough to say. I ran on ahead.

  He ran too, and stopped me. “Listen. My mother died. You throw that word around so lightly. But she really died. I was four. I don’t think I ever told you. They said she had to go on a long trip. Later, when I understood what had happened, I thought I would die if I couldn’t have a mother like everyone else. But I didn’t die. It’s not so easy to die. I grew up and did without. It makes me very angry to hear people magnify small things, their little needs. Whether you play the ‘Trout’ this year or next, whether you come today or tomorrow, is of very small consequence, and it’s about time you knew it.”

  That was the most intimate thing he ever said to me. I treasured it, not because I liked it or liked his tone—I hated his tone—but because of its intimacy. I knew that for George it was a great deal to part with.

  “I’m sorry about your mother. I wondered, but I didn’t like to ask. Still. That is no reason to humiliate a person. Some pacifist you are.”

  “I’m sorry.” He hung his head like a four-year-old. “Are we still friends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You said friends for life.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, in a moment of weakness.”

  “I guess I’ll have to stick to it, then. But for the moment would you just go away?”

  The issue became academic. I was chosen to do the “Trout.” Henrietta didn’t try out for it; she preferred to do Bach. I went downtown to Carnegie Hall to hear what Rudolf Serkin made of it: he liquefied it, gave it fluidity and luminescence. I listened to other pianists in the library till I was mesmerized. Nina would come to fetch me, tapping gently on my shoulder, making me jump in my seat. I moved an earphone aside. “Come on, Lydia. Esther’s making a pot of spaghetti.” Or chili. Curried chicken. We were tired of dormitory food. Esther cooked every few days, in one of the apartments the boys rented, sometimes in the apartment I slept in with George and in which Victor kept one room for his work. I wondered whom he made love to on that bare mattress, if anyone. He didn’t look ascetic. But why should I care? I was hearing the quintet in my sleep, waking to it. I played it on classroom desks and on my pillow, I sang it to the sleeping Melanie amid the banana peels. But when I practiced I didn’t allow myself my fill of emotion. I was ascetic. I played the notes slower than their proper tempo, with a metronome, and concentrated on accurate dynamics and fingering and phrasing. I was hoarding it, trusting that on the night of the performance the suppressed emotion would find its way out, steadily and serenely controlled, all the more resonant for having been suppressed. I knew the “Trout” so well I almost felt I had composed it. It was a fertile, exuberant work of perfect balance—the themes were balanced, and the contribution of each instrument. The story goes that Schubert composed it on request, to while away an evening in his patron’s drawing room. A diversion, like a romantic novel. And yet it seemed to me the rich exuberance was a screen for its poignancy, a sense of loss and nostalgia amid plenty, of death in the midst of fertility. If you gave in to the poignancy, though, you lost the exuberance, equally important. Neither could exist without a reminder of the other; the two qualities hung in dependency, a mobile. I resolved to remember, also, that lively and beautiful fish, too innocent for the angler, an image I would never tell the other four doing the quintet, all boys and all more experienced performers than I.

  Music students dropped in on the rehearsals, mostly to hear Professor Duffy’s astute comments. I didn’t mind the traffic. I never suffered greatly from stage fright, which I suspect is a form of pretension. I felt unassuming, simply making a small contribution to a vast fund. (Yet Victor called that unassuming feeling arrogance, or pride, the special careless and secretive pride of the anonymous donor.) I didn’t mind Professor Duffy’s public corrections either—he told me I was a good ensemble player, but I must be sure to stand forth and claim my own in the solos. I was perhaps too comfortable merged with the group, he suggested. I would nod calmly and sometimes mark places to remember. But I did get uneasy the afternoon Victor walked in and took a chair at the back. He was not a music student. I knew quite well he had not come to hear Duffy or even Schubert but to hear me, that self I thought each person accumulated but George said didn’t exist.

  After the rehearsal he came up and, with a strained smile, asked, “Would you come have a beer with me?” He was wearing a maroon sweater and the usual tan chinos and sneakers with red socks. His eyes were not blue but slaty. He didn’t look ascetic, only drawn and tense as if he needed a good night’s sleep, but still unnervingly beautiful. I sai
d yes because I didn’t know how to refuse smoothly. His body moved with a proprietary sense of space. Walking alongside him, fast, to keep up, I felt I was on his territory.

  “Where are we going, the Lion’s Den?”

  “No, you meet everyone you know there.”

  “How about the West End?”

  “Too crowded.”

  He took me to a dim, warm neighborhood place on Amsterdam Avenue, near the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, magnificently Gothic but unfinished. It would remain unfinished, the minister once explained, to symbolize the unfulfilled aspirations of the people in the ghetto it bordered. I was determined, once we sat down, to establish my own territory. But it was not a student hangout—men in work clothes, a couple of stout old women, black teenagers, Spanish girls with sharp voices. There was a world outside of school, close by. And in it Victor didn’t look like a student. He ordered two beers.

  “I hate beer. I’ll take a coffee.”

  “Oh. I should have asked.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No? Look, I’ve wanted to talk to you alone for a long time.”

  “Yes, I remember you did suggest it once.”

  “I did once, and you said you couldn’t. I wanted—” This time the smile was genuine. “I wanted to go out on a real date. Hold hands in the movies, walk in the park, all that kind of thing.”

  “You like all that?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “I don’t know. I had the impression …”

  “What impression?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” I paused. “But now I’m seeing George.”

  “Now you’re seeing George.” He stopped talking while the waitress brought the beer and coffee. “But not for long.”

  “What do you mean, not for long? Did he say something to you?”

  “Oh no. He doesn’t talk about you.” My alarm amused him. “All he ever says is that you like to eat. He has to go to the grocery before you come over. No, I just have a feeling. I know him, and you, a little.”

  “Very little.”

  “That’s the point. I would like to know more.”

  “Oh. What is this, an interview?”

  “No.” He stretched his hands out flat on the table. “The position is yours, if you want it.”

  “Oh Lord! I’m … I’m …”

  “Touched?”

  “Touched! No! Just the opposite.”

  “I’m sorry, then. You must have misunderstood.”

  “I’m not sure. If George is such a good friend of yours, how come you’re doing this?”

  “Esther is your friend.”

  “Oh, but that was different,” I burst out. “She said—” I glanced up at Victor. I had a horrible thought.

  “It’s nothing like that. This hasn’t been engineered. I’m being openly underhanded. I got tired of waiting till you got tired of him.”

  “I see.” I had no footing at all, no words. “Do you always operate this way?”

  “No. I thought I’d take a chance.” He gave a wistful look. He would never be at a loss.

  “Well, I don’t know what to say. I know even less than you do. Tell me something. Tell me about the painting.”

  “All right, that’s fair enough. There’s not a lot to tell, though. I’m going to do it as soon as I’m out. For the rest of my life. I don’t care about much else.”

  “Why did you bother going to school, then? Why didn’t you just stay home and paint?”

  “I wanted to. But my parents were very insistent, my father in particular. For these four years we have a bargain. Then I’m through pleasing people.”

  “What’s the bargain? Oh, I know. The apartment.”

  “Yes. I need a place to work. I get the degree, they pay seventy-five bucks a month towards the apartment. I also get to hear Meyer Schapiro and the others. It’s not a bad deal.”

  “I don’t suppose they know what else they’re paying for?”

  He grinned. “They only pay half. I’m not responsible for what goes on in the other rooms.”

  “They must be rich.”

  “Not very.”

  “It’s more than my parents could afford.”

  “Why, what do your parents do?”

  “My father sells insurance in Hartford and my mother is a mother. Very good at it. I have a little sister who’s graduating from high school this spring. Evelyn. She’s a bit of a sylph. The White Rock Girl, you know? I’m the practical one.”

  “My father is a lawyer. Workmen’s compensation, but he’s usually not on the side of the workmen. My mother is a mother too. She also does good works and takes elevating courses. Ethical Culture, things like that. She’s very, oh, fashionable, but still I like her a lot. She’s more ethical than cultured. I bet you would like her too. I have an older sister, Lily. She’s a chain-smoker at twenty-four. They didn’t make her finish college because she married a urologist. Now they’re buying a house in Westchester, which a year of prostates will pay for, I suppose. Lily is pregnant—soon I’ll be an uncle. How do you like that? Uncle Victor.” He grinned with pleasure.

  Each fact seemed to amuse him in a fresh, kindly way. His face was mobile and expressive—it altered for every sentence, every nuance. And the nicer he got, the more wary I felt. “Where did you grow up, Park Avenue?” I asked.

  “Will you hold it against me?”

  “Probably.” I risked a smile.

  “I’m never going to use a penny of their money, after college. I don’t believe in inherited wealth.” He waved to the waitress for another beer. His wave, it struck me, would have been equally at home in a downtown restaurant with waiters in starched, ruffled shirts and cummerbunds, as it was in this Upper West Side bar where the waitress wore an aqua uniform like a hospital orderly. “Besides, it wouldn’t be right to use their money for things they don’t believe in. They think it’s peculiar to be a painter. They’d rather someone else’s son did it, if it has to be done. I have it all worked out. I can work in a bar or something, nights. Would you like a person who worked in a bar better than a person from Park Avenue?” His eyes were teasing.

  “That one hit home, I see.”

  “Well, it was a switch. In the old days girls didn’t want to marry men who were poor. Well, would you?”

  “What, marry you when you’re poor?”

  He started to laugh. “Like me better poor. To begin with, anyhow.”

  “I hardly know you. I’m not sure I would like you under any circumstances.”

  “You might get to like me. It’s been known to happen.”

  He had a terrific scriptwriter, I thought, smooth, much better than mine. “I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised at this. I remember you once said you didn’t like the vestiges of courtly love. It figures that you wouldn’t bother with any proprieties.”

  “On the contrary. I imagine this is how the knights did it, more or less. Don’t you think? They certainly didn’t suggest going to the movies.”

  “But you said the feelings were all instilled by custom.”

  “So what? I didn’t say I was immune, did I? Anyhow, when you major in anthropology, it gets to you.” He poured his beer. “Look, why are you so bristly? I know I’m not very good at this. But am I being so presumptuous?”

  “It reminds me of Walter and Griselda. You’ve chosen me in my humble surroundings. It never occurs to you that I might not care to go along. I might like things as they are.”

  “That Walter and Griselda idea is baloney and you know it.” He said it quite serenely. “But suppose I did pick you out. Someone has to pick someone out, don’t they? Is it only that you didn’t do the picking? What do you find unacceptable about me?”

  “This is absurd!” I put the coffee cup down sharply. Some splashed over the rim and I wiped it up with a napkin—Victor seemed so well-bred. “I mean the way you talk. What is unacceptable about you? Asking that question is what’s unacceptable. Your whole approach. You expect me to feel what you
feel because you feel it. And on the spot! You’re distorting all the ordinary ways of … of …”

  “Only by saying what I mean. And you’re enjoying it!” He tossed his head back in a swift movement, a blend of weariness and delight, a very private gesture. I watched the pulses in his throat. “Confess you’re enjoying it. Say something straight, Lydia. You haven’t said one straightforward thing since we sat down. Except that your father sells insurance.”

  “Okay! The novelty and the flattery I enjoy. But against my better judgment.”

  “Oh, the hell with your better judgment.” He leaned over the table towards me. “We’re alike, don’t you see? We’re the same. We could understand without saying a word. We seem unapproachable, but we could approach each other easily.”

  “I am not in the least unapproachable. … Why, do I seem that way?”

  “Yes. Proud. Confident.”

  “Me!” I forgot about sounding well-bred. “You’re the one who’s proud. I am an ordinary nice person.” Even I had to laugh at that.

  “You are.’ But you have great potential for pride. Great hidden reserves. I don’t mean in the bad sense. Not haughty. I mean you’re not afraid to think very well of yourself, what you can do. It’s lovely. I love it in you.”

  “Don’t, please. You’re embarrassing me terribly. … Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you were more subtle.”

  “I guess I’m not.”

  “No. But anyhow, the way you played the ‘Trout’ was subtle. I don’t know what Schubert had in mind, but …”

  “Tell me. Tell me anything about it, really, good or bad. I’m not sensitive. I just want to do it well.”

  “I can’t tell you how to do it well,” he said softly. “I don’t know anything about it. But I loved the way you did it.” He reached out his hand as if to place it over mine, then drew back. “I loved what you kept back as much as what you put in. I know it was only a run-through and you’ll give more when you really do it. Still, the suggestion … When I could look up again his face was transformed, transparent. It was hard to keep my eyes on him, as if I were seeing more nakedness than I should in a stranger. “You made it very poignant,” he said.