A Gay and Melancholy Sound (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) Read online

  I laughed, and during the next few minutes George said almost everything I expected him to say as well as a few things I didn’t expect. He said that my finances were in the worst shape they had ever been, not true but not unexpected. He said again that he did not understand me, also not unexpected and not true. George understands me very well, and he always has.

  He said, “The contemplation of the navel has never interested me. I can’t understand why it interests you.”

  He said, “Which are you going to be, Zen-Buddhist, a Yogi, a Beat?”

  He said, “I realize, of course, that I am speaking to a child of thirty-seven. Look, darling [George recently returned from a month Out There], look, the last client of mine who took time off to look into his true nature was pulling down three hundred thousand dollars per annum not more than five years ago. You know where he is now? He has the twelve-to-three A.M. shift as disk jockey on a 250-watt radio station in San Luis Obispo, California.”

  He said, “Another four years, the way things are going, you’ll be a rich man. You can spend the rest of your life searching for the ultimate truth. You can let your hair grow; you’ve already got the beard. You can take to the streets wearing sandals and a toga and carrying a sandwich board proclaiming what you have discovered. Most prophets need a rich widow to provide them with lichee nuts. You won’t. You can sprinkle lichee nuts on your filet mignon. You’ll be a rich prophet, a well-to-do wise man. People will know at a glance that you are wise because you can buy your togas at Sulka.”

  I nodded to the waiter, who refilled my demitasse.

  “Believe me,” said George. “I have been through this many, many times. I have held the hands of a great many of my clients while they were going through it. You are simply passing through male menopause, a period during which a man suddenly realizes that he has finished the major part of his life, that he is not immortal. Faced with this humbling thought, he occasionally makes up his mind to examine his navel, or he starts pinching an occasional bottom or takes a mistress, or starts drinking a little too much.

  “For you I would suggest a third, charming try at matrimony. In the meantime—” George paused delicately—“I suggest a few days’ rest. Take a few grains of Nembutal for a few nights.”

  “I’ve been doing that every night for five years now,” I said, “the sleeping pills at night, the pep-up pills in the morning.”

  George sighed largely. “Maybe you’ll change agents,” he said. “It’s part of the pattern. They come to me penniless and obscure. They say, ‘Make me rich, Mr. Banning. Make me famous, if you please.’ With some little co-operation from them, I do exactly that. Then along about menopause time, they abandon their latest head-shrinker. They find Zen isn’t all it was cracked up to be. They snap on a chastity belt, and they blame me for leading them away from The Actors Studio where their necks may have been dirty but their hearts were pure.

  “If they’re writers, they scream that if I hadn’t corrupted them with a lousy swimming pool and a six-figure bank account and the kids at Groton and Yale and Bennington they’d be up for the Nobel Prize.

  “Naturally, I have to be made to pay for said corruption. So they break their contracts with me, and after a short, disappointing run down the road to Damascus, they end up in the virginal arms of the William Morris Agency or the Music Corporation of America.”

  George motioned for the check and, as always, signed it without looking at it and, as always, overtipped the waiter.

  “Myself, of course, I have none of these problems,” he went on. “I am a barbarian. When I hear a young lady speak of her libido—as young ladies often do these days—I pretend to believe she is talking about an undergarment.”

  He sighed. “It was not always thus,” he said. “In my youth I, too, was concerned with deeper meanings. When I was at N.Y.U., I used to wander around Washington Square at lunchtime—eager, energetic, argumentative. Why, there were times when, if no other possibilities were open to me, I’d stop somebody I’d never seen before and say, ‘What about God? Take either side.’”

  George leaned back and put a cigarette in the outrageous-looking holder he has been using lately. He didn’t light the cigarette. He never does.

  “Now except on those rare occasions when I am having lunch with a client and a friend,” he said, making a bow in my direction, “I speak not of God but of Mammon. When I am having lunch with a producer from Out There, I say, ‘At the mention of the figure one hundred thousand dollars, my client would laugh in your face.’”

  George drew in on the unlighted cigarette. “I am no longer nineteen,” he said, “and neither are you.”

  As he and I walked to the door of the Chambord, several waiters bowed, very low.

  On the street, while we waited for cabs, George said, “I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but I, too, once lusted for a Ph.D. I was a philosophy major.”

  He paused, thinking of it. Then he said, “Why don’t you ask me what happened?”

  “All right. What happened?”

  George gave a short laugh. “Well, my father died, and after the funeral expenses were paid, his estate amounted to nine dollars and fifty-four cents, five pairs of pants customers hadn’t called for, and a half-finished double-breasted suit not my size. Besides, I had met Shirley, who was also a student at N.Y.U., majoring in overthrowing the government, with a minor in picketing. We hopped into bed one night after Shirley convinced me that Clifford Odets and Karl Marx were the voices of the future. We got married; within six months, Jon was born, and I got the only job available at the moment, in the office of Fred Herman, actors’ agent. In the beginning, I was going to devote my evenings to study. I still hoped to get my degree. I did study, too, for all of three months, but during that time I discovered that in the line of work I was in charm is more important than wisdom, so I began cultivating charm. It has paid off very, very handsomely.”

  “No regrets?” I asked.

  “I leave the breast-beating and the soul-searching to my clients.”

  George made another short bow in my direction.

  “Besides,” he went on, “I don’t despise money. I don’t say it’s the most important thing in the world, but, believe me, it’s way ahead of whatever’s next on the list. What’s more, if they ever start up the bake ovens again, I’d like enough money to buy off the head baker. You know how I am about heat.”

  The doorman, who was holding the cab door open, gave George a look, and George gave him a dollar bill.

  “To repeat, I predict you’ll be back in the fray in a couple of weeks,” George said. “You’re too old to turn philosopher. You’ve been too old for about sixteen years now. Besides, kid, you never were a fellow that was satisfied to go around in a barrel, carrying a lantern.”

  He paused a moment, then said, “You know what your trouble is?”

  Paraphrasing a speech from a play I wish I had produced—as if I hadn’t already lost enough money that year—I said, “No, George, tell me what my trouble is.”

  “Your trouble is you should have been a preacher,” said George. “You’re always lecturing people on how they ought to shape up, and the only trouble is—”

  I interrupted quickly. “The theater is not a pulpit,” I said. “I know. I’ve been told.”

  “Russell Grierson,” said George. “I’d rather do business with the commandant of Auschwitz.”

  I said, “I’ll see you and Russ on the fifteenth then and don’t be calling me all the time because I’ve got a lot of stuff to get ready, and don’t be late because I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “I am never late,” said George. He touched me affectionately, another habit he picked up Out There. They are all big touchers Out There, but there isn’t an ounce of affection in a carload of them. The reason people Out There touch you is that they want to see how tender you’ll be when they get ready to eat you alive.

  But this is not the place for my sermonette on Out There.

  George got
into the cab and was driven off. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching.

  So much for Item Number Four. Meaning? Why, that George confirmed what I already knew. It is too late for me to change. It has been too late for a very long time.

  On Thursday I was not quite ready to face what you might call the ultimate fact. As I said, that came yesterday, shortly after I left Bryant Park.

  Item Number Five, the last, also happened on Thursday afternoon.

  After I got back from Chambord, my secretary Pan came into my office. She was doing a word game; she is nearly always doing a word game. Pan is a great self-improver. This fall she will enroll in at least two courses at the New School, and she is studying Esperanto or something like that with the Berlitz folks, and she is studying guitar, and she regular-paints on Thursdays, and she fingerpaints on Fridays, and she is one of the most skilled game players of our time. She is also a pretty good secretary.

  Anyway, Thursday afternoon she was doing a word game, and she said, “I’ve got one for you. What is the meaning of insouciance? That’s one everybody gets wrong.”

  “What does everybody say?”

  “Almost everybody says it means perky, lively, or sprightly, and Mr. Russell Grierson, your esteemed partner and successor, said it means officious.”

  “Mr. Russell Grierson, my partner and successor, is officious,” I said. “Officious means volunteering one’s services, or disposed to volunteer one’s services where they are neither asked for nor needed, and that is Mr. Grierson all over. Insouciance, on the other hand, means want of concern, indifference, especially as an attitude of mind.”

  Pan said, “If anybody had told me I would end up working for an aging Quiz Kid, I would have shot anybody.”

  “I wasn’t a Quiz Kid,” I said. “It was called, ‘Can You Top Them?’ and I am only about thirty-five.”

  “Thirty-five is a very popular age this year,” said Pan. “Practically every man I meet is thirty-five. It seems only yesterday that they were all thirty.”

  “Thirty-five,” I said.

  “Aging,” said Pan.

  At the door she turned and, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice, said, “Well, I say now what if I’d been in my right mind I’d have said on the first day I met you, some fourteen years ago. I say good-bye, Mr. Bland.”

  “I’ll be in tomorrow. Won’t you?”

  “Uh-uh. I won’t be in at all any more. I have quit.”

  “Pan, what’s all this? We’ve been through all this before. You and Russ will get along all right. I’ve told you. Once you get to know him well, he’s no more than despicable.”

  “Yes, I do remember your saying that. I remember your saying so many things. One sentence in particular. You said, ‘I’ve never told anybody I loved them unless I meant it.’ That was quite a sentence. I have sent it off to Bartlett’s.”

  I rose and walked to where she was, but Pan eluded me.

  “I think you’re kidding,” I said, knowing better.

  “I’m not even married,” said Pan. “I was just waiting for an excuse, and a couple of days ago Russ’s wife entered the office, scented with frankincense and myrrh and the cloying odor of money, and she stood over my desk, all three graceless tons of her. She said, ‘Get me Elizabeth Arden on the phone.’ I said what I’ve often thought of saying but not said. I said—well, it’s really too vulgar for your tender ears, but considering the size of everything visible about the lady, I see no reason why it wouldn’t be a perfect fit. Then I quit.”

  After a moment, I said, “Pan, Russ didn’t say anything about your quitting.”

  “I know. He was all set to go to Washington, where as one of the rulers and shakers of this proud era he is in charge of the committee to get everything in the hands of five or six people, and I told him to say nothing to you. I wanted to save that pleasure for myself, and I wanted to save it for last so that I wouldn’t have to watch you go through all the nauseous motions of pretending to care.”

  Pan was crying, but when I tried to put my arm around her, she said, “I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “There are very few things I’d have been willing to bet on, but that you’d say you were sorry was one of them.”

  “Pan, you mean you’ve been sitting in that office out there all these years, hating me?”

  “Nope,” said Pan. “I’m not what you’d call one of your big haters. I know that because I’ve been associated with an expert. No, for a long time I sat in that outer office loving you and hoping—silly girl—that you’d—well, change your mind. But not lately. Lately I haven’t hoped, and I haven’t been in love with you. What I have been is indifferent to you. I think that if they get up any competition to find the prize bastard of the world you ought to enter, because you’d at least get a very honorable mention. I think that, and I pity you, but that’s all. That is absolutely all.”

  “I wish I’d known,” I said.

  Pan smiled at me. “I guess it’s a good thing you think so.”

  “Pan, our extra-curricular—it’s been over for more than five years now.”

  “Oh, indeed, and I’m not blaming you. I was over twenty-one, and no force was required on your part. No, my trouble was and still is that I’m willing to settle for the crumbs that drop off other people’s tables.”

  She opened the door, and she said, “And don’t say you’ll be seeing me, because you won’t. Not, as they say in Grand Island, Nebraska, which is where I come from, if I see you first.”

  I thought that that was Pan’s exit line, but it wasn’t. The last words she said were these: “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they invented the word insouciance to describe you.”

  And that is the end of Item Number Five, which I’ll call The Meaning of Insouciance.

  You can see what I mean. They don’t give it to you in dribs and drabs. Oh, no. They store these things up so you can have it all at once. These people, whoever they are, are very clever. They forget nothing.

  But, getting back to yesterday afternoon, after writing down the five items I’ve just mentioned, I folded the sheet of memo paper and put it in my pocket.

  I went through my desk, finding only one item I wanted to take with me, a letter from my daughter Taffy. I put that in my wallet.

  I thought, How strange that after ten years in a room, there is nothing except one letter that I care about.

  I thought, The walls are covered with pictures of a large number of people whose names are almost all Household Words, and all of them have autographed their pictures for me and have written messages proclaiming in one extravagant way or another that until they met me their lives were drab indeed. And I thought, There isn’t one of them who on hearing that I have dropped out of the race will say much more than, “Oh? How did he do it?” Then they will all say something like, “Well, I never liked him anyway. Let’s talk about me.”

  I looked at the photographs of all those prosperous and famous and always dissatisfied Household Words, including the one of the woman to whom I was married before I married Charley. I said, “So long, you worthless bastards.”

  I closed the door of what had been my office, and I locked it.

  Then for the last time I left the house on Thirty-fourth Street.

  Maybe you saw a picture of it in the white man’s Ebony, lots of pictures. I was interviewed four or five years ago by a reportress from that publication, which is edited on the theory that one picture is worth a thousand words. Not so. None of the pictures in that magazine is worth a damn.

  Anyway, this reportress wrote, “The brownstone house in the Murray Hill district of New York which is business headquarters for Joshua Bland is a reflection of his personality. More like a series of living rooms really.”

  I read that, and then I read it again, and then I said, not aloud (I hadn’t started talking to myself yet), “Yes, yes, go on.”

  But that was all. That was it. Gives you something to think abo
ut, doesn’t it? I’ve got a personality like a series of living rooms. Really.

  She quoted me as saying, “Toots, when I was nine years old, my name appeared in a crossword puzzle in The New York Times. I was thirty-six horizontal. At the age of fourteen I was thirty-nine vertical in The Chicago Tribune, and not a hell of a lot of any importance has happened to me since.”

  The reportress hinted that I had been t-i-p-p-l-i-n-g. She didn’t come right out and say so; she hinted. They’re always hinting in that magazine.

  Anyway, for the benefit of those who happened to see the pictures of my office and the simple words accompanying them, I hadn’t been t-i-p-p-l-i-n-g. I had prepared for that interview by having a long talk with one of my oldest and best friends, a fellow by the name of Jack Daniel.

  By the time the reportress arrived, I couldn’t have pronounced insouciance for love or money. Especially not for love. I was stoned. I was d-r-u-n-k.

  But to get back to yesterday afternoon, because that is what I was talking about when I started getting into what’s wrong with the white man’s Ebony and/or Burden.

  After leaving my office, I walked to Grand Central, taking my time, watching the incredible number of people who on a humid evening in mid-August managed to appear happy, some of them even joyous.

  A man of sixty or so who was wearing a handsome coconut straw hat spoke softly to a woman who was surely his wife. She smiled back. A girl who looked as if nothing had ever disappointed her leaned over and kissed the boy she was with. The boy looked contented.

  It occurred to me then that I would never return to the city which, as you will see, has played so large a part in my life, but there was nothing I wanted to look at again, nobody I wanted to see.

  Nothing in it belonged to me, and there was nothing to which I belonged, and nobody—which is the way with New York, I suppose. It is a city of displaced persons.