Part 27 (1/2)

”Oh-yes, I see,” Connelly said again, but weakly. ”How amusing.”

”Euphoria is a very amusing manipulator,” Karp grumbled-was it out of self-defense?-”of wit.”

”Yes indeed,” his wife confessed. ”I'm a po-wit in fact”

”Specializing in witty lines on Poe?” I wondered coa.r.s.ely.

She turned on me in delight. ”I never thought of that! How charming of you; I must use it somehow. You know I adore puns. And more than that I adore puns on puns-they're even rarer. I do so appreciate people who have a sensitivity to humor. They're so few. But I really ought to be able to make something of that-” Her active clever eyes with their faint tendency to bulge, exaggerated this proclivity; she plainly strained: her moment was upon her, and loudly, rapidly, precisely, and without a single intake of breath she rattled out the following: Edgar Allan Poe

Died of drink, you know.

He lived his life in squalor

And never had a dollar,

Which news by word of mouth

Reached the Deepest South

Where they maintained it wasn't gin

That did him in-

”He sho'ly daid

Cuz he war po',” they said.

”Good Christ!” Connelly pealed out in an access of amazement.

”Don't let it bother you, she does it all the time,” Karp said, embarra.s.sed. ”It's really nothing to be perturbed about. She can't help it. She just happens to have that sort of brain.”

”But it's not good,” Mrs. Karp said peevishly. ”I don't like it. It's not worth writing down; it's not funny enough, is it, 'Rome? I mean it's too tritely philosophical: it only makes that silly old point about character being fate, did you catch that, William? And then all that build-up just for the play-on-words at the end.”

”I'm afraid I can never understand dialect,” he apologized; his ears were vaguely pink, and I pitied him.

”You mean you disapprove of it,” said Mrs. Karp. ”I believe you're a liberal after all, William.”

”Now, now, no name-calling,” Connelly said; this was his little joke, and he indulged himself in a marginal laugh, like the creasing of tinfoil, which no one shared, though Mrs. Karp looked ready to put her tongue out at him.

Nevertheless she refrained, and instead wagged it for another purpose: ”Tell me, do you help out with Bushelbasket?” she asked me. ”No? What a shame, I've got a revision of the placebo thing in my bag-that's the one I've already sent to your mother's editor, you see; I thought you might take the new version with you, to hand over to him. It's ever so much better now, you know.”

”It's twice as long,” Karp sighed.

”Which logically makes it twice as good,” Mrs. Karp took up stoutheartedly. ”Would you mind delivering it?”

”Not at all,” I said, ”except that he's in San Francisco.”

”Who do you say is in San Francisco?” William demanded, suddenly attentive.

”Ed McGovern. My mother's editor. She gave him a check and he went.”

”What the devil for?”

”I don't know. To spend it, I guess.”

”To freshen his point of view, you might put it,” Mrs. Karp said helpfully.

”Wastrel,” Connelly muttered, with a quick peep at William. ”Parasite.”

”Printing costs are so high,” Mrs. Karp added; she was, on principle, admirably pumping up the conversation. ”I hear your mother saves on capital letters.”

”She leaves them out,” I admitted. ”Commas too.”

”How economical!” Mrs. Karp marveled. ”Though I hope it won't harm the placebo,” and reached into her big deep pocketbook, thick with sc.r.a.ps of paper, wherefrom, as though it were a pickle, she unerringly picked her poem.

I took it and saw that it was very narrow and very long. ”My mother's favorite shape in a poem,” I remarked out of politeness.

”Oh, 'Rome, you hear that, isn't that fine? It's Mrs. Vand's favorite poem! In that case she's sure to care for the new version, don't you think?”

”That McGovern fellow,” Connelly interrupted crossly, brooding. ”She pays plenty for him. Well, look at it this way: it's one of her questionable investments, same as Michigan Laminated. That's the only way to look at it.”

”It's one of her pleasures,” William corrected: which startled Connelly, who at once began to cast around for a qualification that would not sound directly like an apology.

”There's no money in pleasure,” was all he came up with on short notice.

Mrs. Karp could not permit so manifest an opportunity to go by unpounced-upon. ”But there's lots of pleasure in money!” she cried, and looked to me to join her in her gratification. ”That's what wit is,” she explained civilly; somehow she had taken me for her partner in metaphysics. ”You have to seize on every chance. You have to listen. You know most people don't listen, not even to themselves. It's what leaves them wide open to becoming someone else's b.u.t.t. That's why I always make a point of listening to myself.”

”Sometimes you're the only one who does,” said her husband.

Meanwhile I occupied myself with an investigation of William. The presence of the Karps, teasing around him like a school of carnivorous fish (only afterward did I suppose that, the name had supplied the image: watching them, I simply derived it from the way they kept him cornered at the bottom of their part of the ocean, a place unfamiliar-too warm, perhaps-to his cool kind), rejoiced him so little that he had no disposition to feel anger at me. Though earlier I might have counted myself lucky in this, it struck me now that he was not merely -”behaving well,” as I had expected of him: he was hardly aware that I was there. He looked at me, and thought all the while of my mother-but not because I had come as a reminder. On the contrary, my mother was the substance of the Karps' surveillance. ”About this Russian business,” he said abruptly to Professor Karp, cutting Euphoria off without realizing he was doing it. She stood with her long, meagre-gummed teeth glistening, eager to oblige him by withdrawing-as some fish swim backwards momentarily before darting out for a bite of their victim's side. ” About this Russian business,” he began, and Connelly pressed in, making the circle tight against women and children: they talked of visas, and officials, and then of ”prospects” which Connelly said were unfavorable until William said well, it couldn't be predicted in advance-”oh,” said Connelly then, ”I don't predict, I go by what's been the case for the last two decades,” while Karp worked the two parallel ditches between his eyes. William had endured trivialities long enough, apparently; he was after the issue, and could not bear the boredom of the dance on either side of it and all around it. It was of my mother they were talking, it developed in fact-of her unpaid Russian royalties. I was surprised, though Stefanie had warned me of it. ”Out-and-out thieves,” Connelly put it without extenuation: but William listened steadfastly to Karp. They spoke of the formation of a Commission. ”Five of us,” Karp said. ”In a quiet way. The lot that went over last year made too much noise. You can't have an ex-candidate for the Presidency, lawyer or no lawyer, do this sort of thing. It's got to be quiet and obscure, no known names, nothing political, just plain lawyerlike negotiation-” Connelly asked what the money would be, in the aggregate. ”Well, we'd have to see what their terms are, after all. What percentage they'd be willing to agree to. I wouldn't expect it to correspond with their domestic practise.” William said he thought not. ”Though I didn't get you down here for details,” he murmured; ”only for the general question. Pity it had to be just today, in the middle of all this-” He waved a hand of despair and censure into limitless fields of light overgrown with Cabbages: the despair was for these, but the disapproval was for Karps. ”The young people,” he said, somewhat more loudly, noticing me as though I were a footnote authenticating this explanation.