Little, Big Part 20

A Winged Messenger Riding racketing uptown on the B train underground, Auberona"with no experience at all of such things to guide hima"tried to puzzle out what relation there might be between George and Sylvie. He was old enough to be her father, and Auberon was young enough to find the possibility of that kind of May-December coupling unlikely and repellent. Yet she had been making breakfast for him. What bed did she go to, when she went to bed? He wished, well, he didn't know quite what he wished, and just then an emergency occurred on the train which threw all that out of his mind. The train began shaking violently to and fro; it screamed as though tormented; it was apparently about to burst apart. Auberon leapt up. Loud metallic knockings beat on his ears, and the lights shuddered and went out. Clutching a cold pole, Auberon waited for the imminent collision or derailment. Then he noticed that no one on the train seemed the least concerned; stony-faced, they read foreign-language newspapers or rocked baby carriages or rooted in shopping bags or chewed gum placidly, my G.o.d those asleep didn't even stir. The only thing they seemed to find odd was his own leaping up, and this they only glanced at furtively. But here was the disaster! Outside the almost comically filthy windows he saw another train, on a parallel track, sweeping toward them, whistles and iron shrieks, they were about to sideswipe, the yellow windows (all that was visible) of the other train rushed at them like eyes aghast. At the last possible instant the two trains s.h.i.+fted minutely and resumed their furious parallel, inches from one another's flanks, racing madly. In the other train Auberon could see placid overcoated riders reading foreign newspapers and rooting in shopping bags. He sat down.

An aged black man in ancient clothes, who through all of this had been lightly holding a pole in the middle of the car, was saying as the noise diminished, "Now don't get me wronga"don't get me wrong," holding out a long, gray-palmed hand to the pa.s.sengers in general, whom, studiously ignoring him, he was rea.s.suring. "Don't get me wrong. A well-dressed woman's sumpm to see, now, y'know, y'know, a thing of beauty's, yunnastan, a joy fevvah; what I'm talkin *bout's a woman who wears a fuh. Now don't get me wronga"" a deprecatory shake of the head to forestall criticism "a"but y'see a woman who wears a fuh takes on the propensities of that animal. Y'see. Takes on the propensities of the animal of whose fuh she wears. Tha.s.s right." He struck a casual, raconteur's pose and glanced around at his hearers with benign intimacy. As he pushed aside his unspeakable overcoat to place his knuckles on his hip, Auberon saw the heavy swing of a bottle in the pocket. "Now I was in Saks Fiff Avenue thutha day," he said, "and there was ladies pricin' a coat made from the fuh of the sable." He shook his head to think of it. "Now, now, of all th'animals in G.o.d's creation the sable animal has got to be the lowest. The sable animal, my friends, will eat its own children. Y'hear what I'm sayin'? Tha.s.s right. The sable is the dirtiest, low-downest, meanesta"the sable is a meaner and a lower thing than a mink, people, than a mink, and surely you know where the mink is at. Well! And here was these nice ladies, wouldn't hurt a fly, feelin' up this coat made of the sable animal, yas yas, ain't it finea"" He laughed, delicately, unable to check his amus.e.m.e.nt any longer. "Yas, yas, the propensities of the animal, no doubt about ita" His yellow eyes fell on Auberon, the only one there who'd followed him with any attention, wondering if he were right. "Mmm-mmm-mmm," he said, absently, his discourse done, a half-smile on his face; his eyes, wise, humorous, and reptilian at once, seemed to find something amusing in Auberon. The train just then turned a shrieking corner, propelling the man forward down the car. He gavotted away neatly, never falling, though without balance, the bottleweighted pocket clanking on the poles. As he pa.s.sed, Auberon heard him say "Fans and furred robes hide all." He was brought up by the train's coming to a halt, began to dance backward; the doors slid open, and a final lurch of the train tossed him out. Just in time, Auberon recognized his own stop, and leapt out also.

Clamor and acrid smoke, urgent announcements that were a garble of static and drowned anyway by the metal roar of trains and the constant echo and re-echo. Auberon, utterly disoriented, followed herds of riders upward along stairs, ramps, and escalators, and found himself still apparently underground. At a turning, he caught a glimpse of the black man's overcoat; at the nexta"which seemed intent on leading him downward againa"he was beside him. He seemed now preoccupied, walking aimlessly; the garrulousness he had shown in the train was gone. An actor offstage, with troubles of his own.

"Excuse me," Auberon said, fis.h.i.+ng in his pocket. The black man, with no surprise, held out a hand to receive what Auberon would offer, and with no surprise withdrew the hand when Auberon came up with only the card of Petty, Smilodon Ruth. "Can you help me find this address?" He read it. The black man looked doubtful.

"A tricky one," he said. "Seems to mean one thing, but it don't. Oh, tricky. Take some findin'." He shuffled off, bent and dreaming, but his hand down at his side motioned with a quick motion that Auberon should follow. "Ever'man I will go with thee," he muttered, "and be thy guide, in thy mose need to be by thy side."

"Thanks," Auberon said, though not quite sure this was meant for him. He grew less sure as the man (whose gait was quicker than it looked, and who gave no warning at turnings) led him through dark tunnels reeking of urine, where rainwater dripped as though in a cave, and along echoing pa.s.sages, and up into a vast basilica (the old terminal), and further upward by s.h.i.+ning stairs into marble halls, he seeming to grow shabbier and smell stronger as they ascended into clean public places.

"Lemme see that again one time," he said as they stood before a rank of swiftly-revolving doors, gla.s.s and steel, through which a continual stream of people pa.s.sed. Auberon and his guide stood directly in their path, the black man unconscious of them as he studied the little card, and the people flowed around them neatly, their faces fixed in angry looks, though whether because of this obstruction or for reasons of their own Auberon couldn't tell.

"Maybe I could ask someone else," Auberon said.

"No," said the black man without rancor. "You got the one. Y'see I'm a messenger." He looked up at Auberon, his snake eyes full of unreadable meaning. "A messenger. Fred Savage is my name, Winged Messenger Service, I only am escaped to tell thee." With quick grace he entered the thres.h.i.+ng blades of the door. Auberon, hesitating, nearly lost him, threw himself into an empty segment, and was spun out rapidly into a thin cold rain, outdoors at least, and stepped rapidly to catch up with Fred Savage. "My man Duke, y'know," he was saying, "met the Duke *bout midnight in a lane behind of the churchyard, with the leg of a man over his shoulder. I says hey, Duke, my man. Said he was a woofa"only difference was, a woof is hairy on the outside, y'see, and he was hairy on the insidea"said I could rip up his skin and try a"

Auberon dodged after him through the well-drilled march and press of people, doubly afraid of losing him now since Fred Savage hadn't given back the lawyers' card. But still he was distracted, his eye drawn upward to heights of buildings, some lost in the rainy clouds, so chaste and n.o.ble at the tops and, at their bases, so ign.o.ble, stuffed with shops, lettered, scarred, imposed upon, overlaid like mammoth oaks on which generations have carved hearts and nailed horseshoes. He felt a tug at his sleeve.

"Don't be gawking upward," Fred Savage said, amused. "Good way to get your pocket picked. Besides"a"his grin was wide, either his teeth were extraordinarily perfect or these were dentures of the cheapest kinda""they're not for lookin' up at anyway by the likes of you, y'know, no, they're for lookin' out of by the type of folks inside, yunnastan. You'll learn that, heehee." He drew Auberon with him around a corner and along a street where trucks contested with one another and with taxis and people. "Now if you look close," Fred Savage said, "you see this ad-dress seems to be on the avenue, but tha.s.s a fake. It's on thisere street, though they don't want you to guess it."

Cries and warnings from above. Out of a second-story window, an enormous ormolu mirror was being extruded, hung on guy-ropes and tackle. On the street below were desks, chairs, filing cabinets, an office in the street, people had to step out into the loathsome gutter to get around it; only just then trucks clogged the street, the warnings increaseda""Watcha back, watcha back!"a"and no one could move. The mirror swung free out into the air, its face which had before reflected only quiet interiors now filled with shuddering, madly-swinging City. It looked ravished, aghast. It descended slowly, rotating, flinging buildings and backward-reading signs to and fro within it. The people stood gaping, waiting for their own selves, overcoated and umbrella'd, to be revealed.

"C'mon," Fred said, and took Auberon's hand in a strong grip. He dodged amid the furniture, drawing Auberon after him. Shouts of horror and anger from the mirror's attendants. Something was wrong: the ropes suddenly paid out, the mirror tilted madly only feet above the street, a groan from the watchers, worlds came and went as it righted itself. Fred shuffled beneath it, his hat-crown grazing its gilding. There was the briefest moment when Auberon, though looking into the street behind him, felt himself to be looking into the street ahead, a street from which or into which Fred Savage had disappeared. The he crouched and pa.s.sed under.

On the other side, still followed by the curses of the mirror men, and by some kind of thunder as well from somewhere, Fred led Auberon up the vast arched entrance to a building. "Be prepared is my motto," he said, pleased with himself, "be sure you're right then go ahead." He pointed out the number of the building, which was indeed an avenue number, and handed back the little card; he patted Auberon's back to encourage him in.

"Hey, thanks," Auberon said, and, bethinking himself, dug in his pocket, and came up with a crumpled dollar.

"The service is free," Fred Savage said, but took the dollar anyway delicately in thumb and index. There was a rich history incised in his palm. "Now go ahead. Be sure you're right, then go ahead." He propelled Auberon toward the bra.s.s-bound gla.s.s doors. As he entered, Auberon heard the thunder, or felt the bombblast, or whatever it was, again, only much huger; it made him duck, a long tearing roll as though the world, starting at one corner, were being bisected. As it rolled away, there came a gasp, a groan from many throats together, with high-shrieking feminine overtones; and Auheron braced himself against the unmistakable noise of an enormous, a great gla.s.s smas.h.i.+nga"unmistakable though Auberon had never before heard a piece that size s.h.i.+vered.

Now how many years' bad luck is that for someone, he thought, wondering if he had escaped something.

A Folding Bedroom "I'm putting you in the folding bedroom," George said as he led Auberon by flashlight through the mostly empty warren of buildings that surrounded Old Law Farm. "It's got a fireplace at least. Watch that stuff there. Up we go."

Auberon followed, s.h.i.+vering, carrying his bag and a bottle of Dona Mariposa rum. A sleety rain had caught him on his way downtown, slicing cleanly through his overcoat and, so it felt, through his skinny flesh as well to chill his heart. He had hidden from it for a while in a little liquor store whose red signa"LIQUORa"went on and off in the puddles outside the door. Feeling intensely the shopkeeper's impatience at his free use of a place of business for profitless shelter, Auberon had begun staring at the various bottles, and at last bought the rum because the girl on its label, in a peasant blouse, arms full of green cane-stalks, reminded him of Sylvie; or rather seemed to him what Sylvie would look like if she were imaginary.

George took out his bunch of keys and began hunting through them abstractedly. His manner since Auberon had returned had been glum, distracted, unaccommodating. He talked ramblingly about the difficulties of life. Auberon had questions to ask him, but felt he would get no answers to them from George in this state of mind, so he only followed silently.

The folding bedroom was double-locked, and George was some time opening it. There was electric light inside though, a lamp that on its cylindrical shade carried a panorama, a country scene through which a train moved, its locomotive almost devouring its caboose, like the Worm. George looked around the room, finger to his lips, as though long ago he had lost something here. "Now the thing is," he said, and then nothing more. He gazed at the spines of a shelf of paperbacks. The locomotive on the lampshade began to travel slowly through the landscape, caused to move by the heat of the bulb. "See, we all pull together here," George said. "Everybody does his part. You can dig that. I mean the work's never done and all. So. This is all right, I guess. That john's the closet, the other way around I mean. The stove and stuff is off, but eat with us, everybody chips in. Well. Listen." He counted his keys again, and Auberon had the feeling he was about to be locked in; but George slipped three from the ring and gave them to him. "Don't for G.o.d's sake lose them." He managed a bleak smile. "Hey, welcome to Big-town, man, and don't take any wooden nickels."

Wooden nickels? It seemed to Auberon as he closed the door that his cousin's speech was as full of antique rubbish and battered ornament as his Farm. A card, maybe he'd call himself. Well: a peculiarity felt more than perceived about this folding bedroom became clear to him as he looked around: there was no bed in it. There was a wine-red velvet boudoir chair, and a creaky wicker one with pillows tied on; there was a shabby rug, and an enormous wardrobe or something of glossy wood, with a bevelled looking-gla.s.s on its front and drawers with bra.s.s pulls at the bottom; this he couldn't figure out how to open. But there was no bed. From a wooden apricot crate (Golden Dreams) he took wood and paper and made a fire with trembling fingers, contemplating a night on the chairs; for sure he wasn't going to try threading his way back through Old Law Farm to complain.

When the fire was hot he began to feel somewhat less sorry for himself; in fact as his clothes dried he felt almost an elation. Kind Mr. Petty of Petty, Smilodon Ruth had been oddly evasive about the status of his inheritance, but they had willingly advanced him a sum against it. He had it in his pocket. He had come to the City and not died or been beaten; he had money, and the prospect of more; real life was beginning. The long, long ambiguity of Edgewood, the stifling sense of mysteries continually propounded, never solved, the endless waiting for purposes to be made clear and directions pointed outa"all over. He had taken charge. A free agent, he would make a million, win love, and never go home at bedtime any more. He went to the tiny kitchen attached to the folding bedroom, where the dead stove and a lumpish refrigerator presumably also dead shared the floor with a tub and a sink; he dug up a white coffee mug all crazed, wiped the husk of a bug from it, and got out his bottle of Dona Mariposa rum.

He was holding a mugful of this in his lap, looking into the fire with a grin on his face, when there came a knocking at the door.

Sylvie and Destiny It took him a moment to see that the dark shy girl at his door was the same he had seen breaking eggs in a golden gown. Dressed now in jeans faded and soft as homespun, and clutching herself so tightly against the cold that her multiform earrings shook, she looked far less large; that is, she was just as small, but she had hidden the energy that had made her seem so large before under the bushel of her compact shape.

"Sylvie," he said.

"Yah." She looked away down the dark hall, and then back at him, in some kind of hurry, or in some annoyance, or something; what? "I didn't know anybody was in here. I thought it was empty."

He so obviously filled the doorway that there was no answer he could make to this.

"Okay," she said. She allowed one cold hand out from where it hid in her armpit, so it could press her lip against her teeth to be bitten, and glanced away again, as though he were compelling her to stay here and she were impatient to get away.

"Did you leave something here?" She didn't respond. "How's your son?" At this the hand that had been pressing her lip covered her mouth altogether, and she seemed to weep, or laugh, or both, still looking away though it was obvious she had no place to go; at last he saw that. "Come in," he said, and motioned her in, stepping aside so she could enter and nodding encouragement.

"Sometimes I come here," she said as she came in, "when I want to be, you know, alone." She looked around her with what Auberon supposed was a justified air of grievance. He was the intruder. He wondered if he should yield it to her, and go sleep in the street. Instead he said: "Would you like some rum?"

She appeared not to hear. "So listen," she said, and then nothing more. It would be some time before Auberon realized that these words were often as not a mere vocable in City speech, and not intended to roughly command his attention, as they seemed. He listened. She sat on the little velvet chair and said at last, as though to herself, "It's cozy here."

"Mm."

"Nice fire. What are you drinking?"

"Rum. Would you like some?"

"Sure."

There was, it appeared, only the one cup, so she and he pa.s.sed it back and forth between them. "He's not my son," Sylvie said.

"I'm sorry if I a"

"He's my brother's kid. I got a crazy brother. Named Bruno. Like the kid." She pondered, staring into the fire. "What a kid. So sweet. And smart. And bad?" She smiled. "Just like his papo." She gripped herself more tightly, drawing her knees up almost to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and he could see she wept inwardly, and only by this constant pressure against herself kept it from spilling out.

"You and he seemed to get along well," Auberon said, nodding in what he realized was an absurdly solemn fas.h.i.+on. "I thought you were his mother."

"Oh, his mother, man," with a look of pure disdain touched only faintly with pity, "she's sad. She's a sad case. Pitiful." She brooded. "The way they treat him, man. He's going to turn out just like his father."

This was apparently not a good thing. Auberon wished he could think of a question that would draw the whole story from her. "Well, sons do turn out like their fathers," he said, wondering if it would ever seem true of him. "After all, they're around them a lot."

She snorted in disgust. "s.h.i.+t, Bruno hasn't seen this kid in a year. Now he shows up and says, *Hey, my son,' and all this. Just because he got religion."

"Hm."

"Not religion. But this guy he works for. Or follows. Russella"what is it, I don't knowa"I go blank. Anyway, he says, love, family, blahblahblah. So here he is on the doorstep."

"Hm."

"They'll kill that lad." Tears did gather in her eyes, but she blinked them away, none fell. "d.a.m.n George Mouse. How could he be so dumb?"

"What did he do?"

"He says he was drunk. Had a knife."

"Oh." There being no reflexive in the language Sylvie had to speak here, Auberon was soon lost among the "he"s and had no idea who had a knife or who said whd was drunk. He would have to hear the story twice more in the next days before he sorted out that brother Bruno had come drunk to Old Law Farm and, under the press of his new faith or philosophy, demanded nephew Bruno from George Mouse, who in Sylvie's absence and after a prolonged debate which had threatened to turn violent, had yielded him up. And that nephew Bruno was now in the hands of bedeviling and loving and deeply stupid female relatives (brother Bruno wouldn't stay, she was sure of that) who would raise him just as her brother had been raised after his father's desertion, to vanity, and wildness, a touchy ungovemability and a sweet selfishness no woman could resist, and few men for that matter; and that (even if the child avoided being put in a Home) Sylvie's plan to rescue him had failed: George had forbidden the Farm to her relatives, he had enough troubles.

"So I can't live with him any more," she saida"George this time, doubtless.

A strange hope rose in Auberon.

"I mean it's not his fault," she said. "Not his fault, really. I just couldn't any more. I'd always think of it. And anyway." She pressed her temples, pressing in the thing there. "s.h.i.+t. If I had the nerve to tell them off. All of them." Her grief and bedevilment were reaching a climax. "I never want to see them again myself. Never. Never never." She almost laughed. "And that's really stupid, *cause if I leave here I got no place else to go. No place else."

She wouldn't weep. She hadn't, and the moment was past now; now blank despair was in her face as she looked into the fire, both cheeks in her hands.

Auberon clasped his hands behind him, studied an offhand, neighborly tone, and said, "Well of course you can stay here, you're welcome to," and realized he was offering her a place which was much more hers than his, and flushed. "I mean of course you can stay here, if you don't mind my staying too."

She looked at him, warily he thought, which was proper considering a certain ba.s.s...o...b..igato in his feelings just then which he was in fact trying to conceal. "Really?" she said. She smiled. "I wouldn't take up much room."

"Well, there's not much room to take up." Become host, he looked the place over thoughtfully. "I don't know how we'd arrange it, but there's the chair, and, well, there's my overcoat almost dry, you could use that for a blanketa ." He saw that he himself, curled up in a corner, would probably not sleep at all. Now, though, her face had closed somewhat at these cheerless arrangements. He couldn't think what else to yield up to her.

"I couldn't," she said, "have just a corner of the bed? Like down at the foot? I'll curl up real small."

"Bed?"

"The bed!" she said, growing impatient.

"What bed?"

Suddenly getting it, she laughed aloud. "Oh wow," she said, "oh no, you were going to sleep on the flawa"I don't believe it!" She went to the ma.s.sy wardrobe or highboy which stood against one wall, and, reaching up along its hidden side, she turned a k.n.o.b or pulled a lever, and enormously pleased, let down the whole tall front of the thing. Counterweighted (the dummy drawers held lead weights), it swung gently, dreamily down; the mirror reflected floor, and then was gone; bra.s.s k.n.o.bs at each upper corner extruded themselves, slipping out as the front came down, and became legs, locking in place by a gravity-worked mechanism whose ingenuity he would later marvel at. It was a bed. It had a carved headboard; the top of it, as wardrobe, had become the footboard, as bed; it had a mattress, bedclothes, and two plump pillows.

He laughed with her. Displayed, the bed took up most the room. The folding bed room.

"Isn't it great?" she said.

"Great."

"Room enough for two, isn't there?"

"Oh sure. In fact a" He was about to offer the whole of it to her; that was only right, and he would instantly have done so in the first place if he'd known it to be hidden there. But he saw that she a.s.sumed he was ungentlemanly enough to a.s.sume that she would be grateful for half, and a.s.sumed that he a.s.sumed that shea A sudden cunning shut his mouth.

"You're sure you don't mind?" she asked.

"Oh no. If you're sure you don't mind."

"Nah. I've always slept with people. My granny and I slept together for years, usually with my sister too." She sat on the beda"it was so plumply high she had to hoist herself up with her hands, and her feet didn't reach the floor from ita"and smiled at him, and he smiled back. "So," she said.

The room transformed was the rest of his life transformed, everything not already metamorphosed by the departure and the bus and the City and the lawyers and the rain. Nothing now would ever be the same again. He realized he had been staring wildly at her, and that she had lowered her eyes. "Well," he said, holding up the cup, "how about a little more of this?"

"Okay." While he was pouring it, she said, "So how come you came to the City, by the way?"

"To seek my fortune."

"Huh?"

"Well, I want to be a writer." Rum and intimacy made it easy to say. "I'm going to look for a job writing. Something. Maybe television."

"Hey, great. Big bucks."

"Mm."

"You could write, like, *A World Elsewhere'?"

"What's that?"

"You know. The show."

He didn't. An absurdity in his ambitions became clear to him when they bounced back, as it were, from Sylvie, instead of (as they always had before) paying out endlessly into futurity. "Actually, we never had a television set," he said.

"Really? Well, I'll be." She sipped the rum he gave her. "Couldn't afford one? George told me you guys were real rich. Oops."

"Well, *rich'. I don't know about *rich' a ." Well! There was an inflection like Smoky's, which Auberon heard for the first time in his own voicea"that putting of imaginary doubt-quotes around a word. Was he growing old? "We could have bought a TV, certainly. a What's this show like?"

"*A World Elsewhere'? It's a daytime drama."

"Oh."

"The endless kind. You just get over one problem and another starts. Mostly dumb. But you get hooked." She had begun to tremble again, and drew her feet up on the bed; she pulled down the quilt and wrapped it around her legs. Auberon busied himself with the fire. "There's a girl on it who reminds me of me." She said it with a self-deprecating laugh. "Boy has she got problems. She's supposed to be Italian, but she's played by a P.R. And she's beautiful." She said this as though she said She has one leg, and is like me in that. "And she has a Destiny. She knows it. All these terrible problems, but she has a Destiny, and sometimes they show her just looking out mistyeyed while these voices sing in the backgrounda"aa-aa-aaaha"and you know she's thinking of her Destiny."

"Hm." All the wood in the woodbox was sc.r.a.p, most of it parts of furniture, though there were pieces that bore lettering too. The varnish on fluted and turned wood sizzled and blistered. Auberon felt an exhilaration: he was part of a community of strangers, burning unbeknown to them their furniture and belongings, just as they not knowing him took his money at change-booths and made room for him on buses. "A Destiny, huh."

"Yah." She looked at the locomotive on the lampshade, turning through its little landscape. "I have a Destiny," she said.