Part 56 (2/2)

It came on us like a blot of swift but total seeing, turning lips electrically vivid, nearly blue with vividness, the veins x-rayed to a sudden deep visibility; the image of my father's mouth like a carved silver bar froze in my mind, part of a torso. I saw him not like a photograph-though half the vividness was in the stillness and stiffness of him registered in surprise, preserved-but solidly, thickly, one of those small haughty straight-backed Egyptian figurines, all silver, a G.o.d of the Nile reduced to a curio. It was not he who had shrunk; it was the world-that hardening shrinking world which withdraws, age by age, from its fierce little G.o.ds. My mother's fantastic lover! And now thunder was bursting out of the keys, as though something had exploded in his fingertips, producing-behold!-Stefanie herself, howling into s.p.a.ciousness. ”Hey, that was a close one! Did y'see it? Shook the G.o.dd.a.m.n roof!”-she: hanging dewy and plaintive over the bannister.

”Thor at the clavier,” my father said. ”He-I, understand-he presses the note long silent, and presto, the voice of G.o.d in B flat.”

”Don't give me that, that was no piano,” Stefanie argued from the stairs. ”That was real thunder.”

”Bad thinking,” Tilbeck said. ”It leaves out a possible alternative. Never leave out a possible alternative. It might've been the piano and thunder, in conjunction. A duet. Gustave Nicholas Tilbeck and G.o.d making music together.”

”Oh Christ,” she threw down.

”Is Christ G.o.d?” Tilbeck asked, and began, in waltz time, Onward, Christian Soldiers. ”Dance, children, dance!”

But the Purselets had, at G.o.d's great stroke, vibrated toward the front door. It was open; they cl.u.s.tered on the sill in admiration of the s.h.i.+ning storm, above which my grandfather's uncommon romantic imported lintel made a kind of Gothic picture-frame. And faintly, a far growl, we heard the rain grunting against the canvas cheeks of the tents. A draft like the devil's breath seized the room.

”Shut that door!” Purse called.

”Colds! Colds! You'll all catch colds!” cried his wife; slung between her legs was a baby like a white snail; curled, porcelain, bruised.

Tilbeck asked, ”Where's the lawyer's boy?”

”Looking around,” said Stefanie.

”Come down,” he invited.

”Come up.”

”I know what's up there.”

”Books. Filthy old books. Phew, dust makes me sneeze.” Languidly she hooked her shoulders over the rail and dangled her bright arms loose as a monkey's. ”You're not the only one, my p.u.s.s.yhead knows what's up there and he's never even seen this place before. He knows all about it just the same. He even found a part of a new wall they started to put up once.”

I broke in, ”You want to bet he's seen the plans? Snooped everything out of the files, even the blueprints-”

My father viewed me. ”Don't hold a brief for the lawyer's boy, hah?”

”Yes she does. If you ask me she's crazy about him. Admit it!” she dared me. ”I could tell the first time I ever saw you. I can always tell when somebody's jealous.”

”I'm not jealous.”

”Aren't you though,” she mocked, and switched to what she supposed me jealous of. ”You know where we're putting our sleeping bags tonight? We were going to put them in the woods-like Indians-only you don't catch me in mud up to my ears, thank you. So p.u.s.s.yhead said O.K., then let's spend the night in the upstairs part of a real house, just like when we're married. We're supposed to move into this house when we get back from our honeymoon, it's this sort of town house. Know where we're going? Venezuela. It's all arranged, it's part a business trip we have to do for Willie though. Anyhow now all we need is to pick out where. Which room I mean. There're thousands up there. You want to come help choose?”

”All right,” I said, but it was not I she was appealing to.

”That's the way,” Tilbeck said. ”Bed 'em down. Watch 'em at it.”

”You've got your nerve,” Stefanie clucked, but she had no indignation. ”You I mean. You coming up? The two of you.”

”The two of us?” Tilbeck said acutely.

”We like to do-everything together,” she explained.

”Is that why you're downstairs and p.u.s.s.yhead's upstairs?” I said.

”Smarty.” She blew out a loud breath. ”Well it's such a bore. All that oceany stuff, I can't be bothered with that stuff. There's a whole moldy old shelf full of maritime law or whatever you call it and he's all squatted over it with one of those flashlights. First he says come look around and then next thing you know he's drowning in some stupid moldy old book.”

I said sympathetically, ”Maybe they won't have any books in Venezuela.”

This somehow struck her. ”Say! Isn't that where your stepfather's going to be Amba.s.sador?”

”No,” I said. ”Not Venezuela.”

”Venice was it? Vienna?”

”No.”

”Well I give up. It's such a bother remembering those countries with those names. I don't know how anybody who doesn't live in America remembers where they live.”

Tilbeck was delighted. ”They have special propaganda for it. They write it on billboards. You'll notice this when you get to Venezuela, watch for it especially up around the rain forests where the natives are more primitive and can't read. In other countries they have to actually tattoo the babies at birth. You take a place like Czechoslovakia, if the baby's foot's too short to hold it, they tattoo it right down the s.h.i.+n for easy reference when it gets to be an adult-”

She said suspiciously, ”If you ask me that sounds Fascist.”

”No,” he denied, ”it's just fair and equal. Reduces capital punishment in fact. I knew a fellow once had 'Bermuda' in red, white, and blue, right across the palm of his right hand, and there he was, standing in front of a firing squad in the noonday sun, they were going to shoot him for spying for Luxemburg. He puts up his right hand to get the sun out of his eyes and then they see he was born in Bermuda. So they abandoned the whole project. He's alive today.”

”I don't believe any of that,” Stefanie said. ”Luxemburg might've paid him to be a spy. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with patriotism or anything like that, he might've been doing it for the money.”

Tilbeck gleamed. ”She's O.K. Don't kid yourself, she's got the world figured out.”

”I never heard about any of that,” she was insisting. ”That tattooing business.”

”Look, you don't learn Realpolitik in finis.h.i.+ng schools. If you don't trust me, ask the Amba.s.sador.”

”He's going to be Amba.s.sador,” I bit off.

”To Bermuda?” Stefanie cried. ”You mean your stepfather?”

”Well who said no?”-My father blinked bluntly at another st.i.tch of lightning. But each time there was a lengthening interval before the catarrh.

”Enoch's going to get that job,” I said, ”whatever you do.”

”That's right,” he obliged.

”No, it's true, whatever you do. It doesn't matter about you. It's too late.”

”It's always too late. That's philosophy,” he said mildly.

”He's probably already got it They had the hearings this morning. By now he's got it. It doesn't matter about you. It doesn't matter about any newspapers either.”

”You get this from the lawyer's boy?”

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