Rough Strife Read online

  “Why, off and left you at last?” His chuckle was like a rake dragged along concrete.

  “He went out jogging a couple of hours ago. I thought maybe you’d seen him around the building.” She swallowed hard her abandoned pride. Mr. Abrey would be dead soon anyway.

  “Jogging. Ha! Run themselves into the ground. The park ain’t what it used to be, either. They hide in the bushes and wait for people to come by. I ain’t seen him.” He coughed, spit into a handkerchief, and turned away to tap his screwdriver against the hollow metal of the box. His frame was wasted from disease and radiation treatments—x-rays, he called them. There were no contours discernible beneath the dingy gray of his work pants; the fabric hung as if suspended on bone. In the presence of a dying man her visions of disaster did not seem far-fetched at all. She stood a moment longer, mesmerized by Mr. Abrey’s tapping and the mortifications of his flesh, then darted out the door, around moving cars and into the lonesome park.

  An occasional jogger passed with a salute. They must take her for one of their legion, even without the uniform. Perhaps she could stop one and ask if he had seen a tall man in blue running shoes and white shorts. But their eyes were glazed and they stopped for nothing. After a few minutes she had to slow down to a walk. Ivan was nowhere, not on the path or the narrow shaded lanes branching off, nor lying in the clumps of trees beyond. No tire tracks from ambulance or police car. When Caroline finished her search there came the quiet satisfaction of obligations discharged. Nothing more could be expected of her. She walked slowly home. The truth was nothing, a gap; not crime, nor sudden illness, nor abandonment. Her mind, filled before with extravagant fancies, was hollowed out, as when a show of fireworks is scraped from the dome of the sky, leaving a black arc.

  Back home, the bedroom was too light. It seemed night should have fallen, she had ranged through such vastnesses of time. But it was not quite one-thirty. She drew the shades. Sitting down in the soft chair, she let her head drop and her eyelids fall closed. In the darkness, the ordeal she had put herself through seemed gross, and inappropriate at her age. Was that love? She made herself recollect viscerally Ivan making love to her this morning, and was not surprised to be touched by longing. But the longing was remote. She could regard herself and her reflexive longing with a large, condescending indifference. Ivan had said their love was not the habituation of the middle-aged because they were still on the other side, in the sexual excitement of the young. Very likely he had been mistaken; very likely she had skipped right from the sexual excitement of the young to the pathetic dependence of the old, with never any relaxing habituation in between.

  She must have fallen asleep. At the touch of his hand on her head she gasped and the breath stuck in her throat.

  He was grinning. “Sleeping again. As soon as I go out, you sink into decadence.”

  He was unaltered save for the dripping sweat of exertion, while she felt years older, dry. “My God! Where the hell have you been? I thought you dropped dead or something. Why couldn’t you call, at least?”

  “You know I don’t carry any change.” He waved at the pocketless white front of his shorts.

  “How did you get in?”

  “I met Mr. Abrey out front. He told me you went out, so I borrowed his keys. What’s the trouble?”

  “What’s the trouble! Didn’t it occur to you I might be curious? I went out to look for you! I didn’t know what became of you.”

  Ivan was quite calm. “I thought you would realize I had things to do. I brought the car in to Angel’s, and I had to wait there. The carburetor’s clogged. I have to go pick it up later.”

  “But you didn’t even take the car keys.”

  “Oh. I met Vic running at the south end of the reservoir. So I figured, rather than come back home I would take his keys. He still had that spare set. Anyway, I stayed at Vic’s awhile.”

  “But why couldn’t you call me from there?”

  “I didn’t know the car would take so long. Come on, Caroline, you sound like the Spanish Inquisition.” A private joke—she was expected to laugh on cue. Ivan reached for her hand but she folded her arms.

  “How are things at Vic’s?” she asked dully.

  “Not so good. There’s a problem with Cindy’s leg. You remember that knee injury she had in the winter? It seems the bones didn’t knit together properly. She’s in a lot of pain. She’ll probably need a leg brace or maybe an operation.”

  The intrusion of other people’s troubles was revitalizing. “You know, it really kills me how you can walk in blithely after three hours and tell me all about the carburetor and Cindy’s knee and whatnot. People don’t just disappear like that, in shorts, dammit. Don’t give me that crap about money. I’m sure Angel would have loaned you a dime—you’re one of his best customers.”

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up!” A powerful assault of sound. What did he do with all that power, where did he keep it trapped, all the hours he was not shouting? “I will not have you keeping track of my comings and goings! I don’t do it to you. I can remember days at a stretch when I barely saw you. If you have to worry, that’s your business!”

  He stopped short and gazed around the room blinking, as if he had stunned himself as well. The silence was heavy. At least she had left him notes, she thought, so that he knew she was alive. Ivan raised the shade and opened the window wide. He leaned out and looked over the park. “As a matter of fact,” he said in an ordinary tone, turning to her once more, “I was concerned about Cindy, and then I was thinking about Greta and Isabel, away. What a risk it all is. I didn’t think of calling you. I thought you were busy packing.” He tossed the car keys over to the dresser. They struck the edge and landed at her feet. As Caroline picked them up and handed them to him their fingers touched; she pressed his.

  “I’m concerned about Cindy too,” she said quietly. “And you know I don’t keep track. But Ivan. More than three hours just for a quick run around the park? I thought you were bleeding to death on the grass.”

  “This is sweat, not blood.” He pulled her to her feet, beginning to smile. “Blood is red. Sweat is colorless. I jogged back from Angel’s too. Feel.” He grabbed her hand.

  He knew she hated clammy clothes. Caroline tried to pull away but he held her wrist tightly, forcing her hand to his cold, wet shirt, where the sweat made a grayish arc on his chest. “Stop! You’re disgusting,” she cried, but she laughed. He had both her wrists in his hands; she struggled in vain.

  “Come on, show some affection. Sweat is very good for you. You know you love it.” He tried to force her arms around him, but she kicked and twisted in his grasp. They were laughing wildly, but suddenly Caroline went limp and silent.

  “Let me be. I’m not in the mood,” she said.

  He released her and pulled the T-shirt off. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “That’s an excellent idea.”

  Ivan threw the wet shirt at her. She caught it in one hand and threw it back at his head. “Mr. Abrey said you probably left me at last.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you right before we go camping. I’m scared to sleep in the woods all by myself.” He picked up the shirt, rolled it in a ball and stalked off to the bathroom.

  Only when she heard the steady stream of the shower did she feel full relief, a protean relief that took the eerie shapes of disappointment. What high drama it would have been: his funeral, her grief, the shock and sympathy of friends; or his hospital stay and her saintly nursing; or even his sudden abandonment and her rectitude in the face of despair. Now she would have the packing instead, while he attended to the carburetor. Drama indeed.

  In fifteen minutes he was back, wearing the red kimono she bought him for their last anniversary. He was addicted to Japanese kimonos. When they wore out she bought him new ones, in vibrant colors. He had washed his hair too. She watched him brush it with rhythmic, energetic strokes. His father had told him, when he was a small boy, that if he brushed his hair vigorously twice a day he would ne
ver become bald, and Ivan still believed it. For as long as she had known him, over twenty years, morning and night he brushed his hair with unflagging vigor. No doubt he would brush it in the woods as well, outside their tent. And in fact his hair had thinned only a bit since the days of his youth. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he turned midstroke, caught her gaze and lowered his lids momentarily, as if in code. When he was quite finished brushing, he knelt down beside her chair. “My sins are washed away,” he said.

  She leaned forward and put her arms around his neck, and he rested his head on her lap.

  “Move over.” He got into the chair with her. She loosened the front of the red kimono.

  “I thought for a while you had decided to disappear.”

  “What did you say?” he mumbled.

  “I thought you had finally had it.”

  “Had what?”

  “You know. With us, I mean.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He was fumbling with her clothes. “Why are women’s things constructed in such an infernal manner?”

  “I should think you could manage by now, with all your experience. Let me do it.”

  “Much obliged.” He kissed her. “You have strange lapses, you know, Caroline? If I didn’t leave before, why would I now?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it, though. Don’t you ever have fantasies like that, about me?”

  It was pointless to ask such a question of Ivan. He never lied to her; he only abstained. Instead he moved his hands over her body, lovingly. It was not true that there was no progress. Progress seeped through as slowly and secretly as exposed wood darkened with age. Five years ago she would have shouted much longer, and Ivan would have mocked her fears. There would have been days of gelid silence before they came close again. Now none of that had happened. All that had happened was that he had forced her to discover, one more time out of many, the great reaches of inner space. Just as she shifted in the chair to accommodate Ivan, she would accommodate the repetitions of the future.

  Perhaps he noticed a wandering of her attention, for he opened his eyes and stared hard at her face, all of him concentrated and given to that gaze. Nothing elusive about him now. “You’re not going to cry over this, are you?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” she replied. “Oh no, I don’t cry so easily these days.”

  “These days? That’s funny. I remember when I first saw you, you seemed pretty tough even then.”

  “Did I?” She laughed dryly. “Back then? That was nothing, Ivan.”

  His hand on her breast stopped moving, and he looked at her with a sad frown. “Am I that bad?”

  “I didn’t say that. No.”

  There had been a quiver of recognition when they first met. Not love at first sight, but bowing to destiny. Since then, periodically she would fall in love with him over again, and in cooler phases, knowing it would recur, anticipated it almost as some transcendent ordeal. Living with him, she had come to believe that men and women are given, or seek unawares, the experience they require for their own particular ignorance, that pain is not random. She thought often about Michelangelo’s statues that they had seen years ago in Florence in the first excitement of their love, figures hidden in the block of stone, uncovered only by the artist’s chipping away the excess, the superficial blur, till smooth and spare, the true shape is revealed. She and Ivan were hammer and chisel to each other.

  “Well, you looked scary to me,” he said. “Classy. Very sure of yourself.”

  “That was just the champagne.”

  “‘You may see a stranger,’” he sang, “‘across a crowded room.’”

  She ran her fingers lightly over his lips. “Don’t sing, love, please. The way you sing, you spoil everything. And anyway, it wasn’t a crowded room. It was a crowded roof. I’ve told you a million times.”

  THEY MET ACROSS A crowded roof, where the trappings of romance ensnared them. The occasion was a sunny June wedding in Rome in the late fifties. She was a friend of the bride, Ivan a friend of the groom. Cory and Joan, the nuptial pair, were later divorced, for intricate reasons, back in the States. Caroline and Ivan, for reasons no less intricate, endured.

  Ivan and the bridegroom had Fulbrights; almost all the laughers and drinkers on the noisy crowded roof had Fulbrights, and with the Fulbright year drawing to a close, the party had an aura of ritual joy, consummating the year’s friendships and leisurely labors. There was an accordionist, a short stocky man with glittering gray eyes and ruddy cheeks, who swerved among the clumps of wedding guests smiling beatifically, his belly gravid with the instrument that hung from thick straps on his shoulders. He was playing the most beautiful melody Caroline had ever heard. Or perhaps it just seemed the most beautiful. She was aware that it might be the champagne. Even the goblet seemed to refract the melody in its cut-glass surfaces, beaming flashes of red and blue and green in the sunlight. Intoxicating too were the red flowers in boxes lining the walls of the roof, the heady smells of cheese and sausage leavening the fragrant air, and the array of dresses, the filmy dresses of the women. She wore a shimmering romantic dress herself, lavender, a throwback to an older era, with ropes of beads and a pearl-gray garden party hat whose great brim hid most of her fair hair and shaded her inquisitive, stern, and rather fragile face. She felt she was masquerading. The accordionist’s tune rose like a kite, then dipped, rose again and plunged. In the curve of every plunge, as in a kite, was the promise of the rise to come. The melody shifted from major to minor and back again, showing a touching faith, Caroline thought, in the recurrence of opposites: that the crooked would become straight and the broken mend. The tune must have a name, maybe even words; it came from somewhere. The little accordionist drew her like a Pied Piper. Carefully, she shaped a sentence of inquiry in her minimal Italian, and plucked the man by the sleeve.

  “Scusi, ma come si chiama questa canzone?”

  He bent his head towards her, adjusted his smile, and shrugged in the classic Mediterranean way, ambiguity elevated to an art. Then tipping an invisible hat, he receded, moving backwards through the crowd, facing her with a rueful smiling mouth, so sorry he couldn’t explain. Puzzled, she turned to the panorama of tiled roofs below. Rome was a mosaic of segments of earth—amber, ochre and brown, the churches and the bridges spanning the somber river gray and white cutouts pasted on. Above, the sky hung flat and static, the artificial blue of postcards. She felt like throwing her head back and laughing, though why she should feel so happy she didn’t know; she didn’t know a soul at the party except Joan, the bride; didn’t know a soul in Italy, for that matter. She was a stranger to everyone, and had recently buried her father in chilly dark New England earth. April in Massachusetts had been not only cruel but cold. An only child, she sat at his bedside during the prolonged illness whenever she could, stitching a needlepoint hanging from the hospital gift shop, later to be tossed out unfinished, the horse in the center incomplete. For weeks her life was circumscribed by his death, the four walls of the square hospital room, the four fibrous edges of the square hanging. Finally he died. The cold, pebbly soil resisted the spades. The diggers struggled while she watched with her heart dulled, out of patience at last. Afterwards she bought herself this trip with the savings he left, like a treat for a child who has behaved exceptionally and unexpectedly well in a difficult situation. Good-natured Joan arranged for her to stay in the apartment of a nomadic Fulbright who was off in the south. Caroline was drunk on the unreality of it.

  Turning back, she leaned against the low wall and surveyed the party. A quite tall man with darkish skin or a permanent suntan seemed to be looking at her, glowering almost, with concentrated feline eyes, above the heads of the crowd. His expression was strained, as though he couldn’t make her out clearly, or couldn’t remember where he knew her from. He did not smile, and he appeared solitary, distinct from the people surrounding him. His stare was so prolonged it might have been rude, except that it was utterly without hostility. An elegant stare. She could be mistake
n; no doubt she was. He was squinting not at her but at the splendor behind her—history, gloria mundi, while she was only a particular young woman at a party in a romantic hat. As if on a dare, she winked at him. So faint, a mere twitch of the lid, he would never notice. The probability that he would, considering the distance between them, the number of people present, the faintness of the gesture and his state of readiness, was something infinitesimal, which she might attempt to calculate were she not high on champagne. Immediately he started towards her, clearing a path through the guests, moving with a sort of stealthy grace, all unaware. Aha, the noble savage approaches, thought Caroline. She drank some more, her eyes cast down.

  “Hello. You winked,” he said soberly, halfway between question and statement. He was less elegant, less finished, close up. Shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, red tie hanging loose and askew, and longish hair mussed from the breeze, he might have been one of the broad-backed Roman stonecutters in his Sunday best, out slumming among his social betters, proud and wary.

  “I’m really not that sort of person at all,” said Caroline. “I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t think you’d see from so far away.”

  “I have contacts.”

  “Contacts? Oh, contact lenses.” She laughed and peered up at his face from beneath the brim of her hat. “I can’t tell they’re there.”

  “Of course not. That’s the idea.” His name was Ivan, he said. What was hers?

  She hesitated. People of primitive tribes, she once read, do not give their names away; they cannot so readily entrust that emblem to strangers. Her name, too, seemed more than she could afford to give away to this large and sober person. He looked tenacious; she might never get it back. Besides, his eyes were peculiarly powerful, not from any supernatural glow but because they did not always focus accurately. When she thought he had been looking past her they saw her wink. And just now, while they gave the impression of profound penetration, Ivan was nodding to someone passing by. Only a fraction off—there must be a term for it in pathology—but it certainly gave him an air, and made her suspicious.