Wild Nights! Page 6

  He saw that the room, so expensively furnished by the wife, into which he had not been invited since the poet’s arrival months before, though he suspected that the wife had been invited inside, many times!—this room was illuminated by firelight: an antique hurricane lamp on the table beside the sleigh bed, several candles in wooden holders on the writing table. Lurid shadows leapt on the walls, to the height of the ceiling. “Why, Master—it is very late, you know—” cowering before him not in the white pleated gown but in—was it a nightgown?—a plain white cotton nightgown—not in her tiny, tidy buckled shoes but barefoot. And her dark hair lately threaded with glinting silver was loosened from its tight knot to spill in lank, wanly lustrous waves onto her narrow shoulders.

  It was the first time since the poet’s arrival that the husband and the poet had been alone together. Surely the first time, alone together in a room with a shut door.

  “‘Emily’—”

  “Master, no—this is not worthy of you, Master—”

  The lashless eyes shone with fear. The thin fingers clutched at the bosom of the nightgown. As the husband advanced stumbling upon the poet, the poet retreated, in childlike desperation, to the farther side of the sleigh bed. The husband liked it that the poet’s voice was not coy now, not teasing and seductive but pleading. To be called master was an incitement, an excitement, for of course in this household Harold Krim was master, a fact to be acknowledged.

  Still he meant to reason with her, or to explain to her, except she was so very agitated, he loomed over her swaying and immense as a bear on its hind legs looming over a terrified child, it can’t be the bear’s fault that the child is terrified. Gripping the small frantic head in both his hands, stooping to reason with the poet, or to kiss her mouth, struck then by the depravity, the perversity, of his behavior: he, so large; she, so small. The husband wasn’t himself but a man provoked beyond endurance, not just tonight, so many nights, so many years of so many nights, it was offensive to him that the poet tried to escape from him, squirming like a frightened cat, and cat-like her nails were digging into his hands, swiping against his over-heated face. In her haste to escape the poet somehow fell onto the bed, the antique springs creaked, the husband knelt above her, a knee on her flat belly to secure her, to calm her, to prevent her from injuring herself in her hysteria, his hand pawing at the nightgown, the tiny flattened breasts, flatter breasts than the husband’s own, he was pulling up the nightgown, impatient with the nightgown, tearing the flimsy cotton fabric, how like this prissy woman to wear cotton undergarments beneath her nightgown! In a rage the husband tore at these, he was owed this, he had a right to this, he’d paid for this, under U.S. law this model of EDickinsonRepliLuxe was his possession and he was legally blameless in anything he might do with her or to her for he hadn’t even wanted her, he’d wanted a virile male artist, if it hadn’t been her, this wouldn’t be him, and so how was he to blame? He was not to blame.

  All this while the poet was struggling desperately, sobbing like a child and not a seemingly mature woman of at least thirty, but her master outweighed her by one hundred pounds and was empowered by the authority of possession, she was his to dispose of as he wished. It was in the contract, he was a man of the law and respected and feared the law and he was within his legal limits and not to be dissuaded. Groping and fumbling between the poet’s legs, confused and then sickened by what he discovered: a smooth featureless surface that resembled human skin, or a kind of suede, or pelt, only a shallow indentation where a vagina should have been, in a normal woman. Under federal law, RepliLuxes had to be manufactured without sexual organs, as they were manufactured without internal organs, the husband knew this, of course the husband knew, though in the excitement of the moment he’d forgotten, so repulsed, the poet’s hairlessness was offensive to him, too, not a trace of pubic hair, for how like a pervert he was being made to feel, here was an oversized obscene doll to mock him. Pushed her back onto the bed as she tried to detach herself from him, blindly he struck at her, seized the large goose-feather pillow to press over her face, then in revulsion backed away, panting, eager to escape the candlelit room where flames fluttered as in an anteroom of Hell.

  Here was the husband’s last glimpse of EDickinsonRepliLuxe: a figure in a torn white gown broken like a child’s discarded doll, her eyes open and sightless and her thin pale legs obscenely spread, exposed to the waist.

  This long day: the wife was keenly aware of the poet upstairs in her room, in seclusion.

  “Emily? May I…”

  Diffidently the wife pushed open the door to the poet’s room. And what a sight greeted her: the room, which was always so meticulously neat, looked as if a storm had blown through it. Bed linens on the sleigh bed were rumpled and churned, a chair was overturned on the floor, the poet in a torn nightgown, a blanket over her shoulders, was seated at her writing desk by the window, slumped as if broken-backed. Emily, in a nightgown! And with her hair loose! The wife stared seeing that the poet’s face had been injured somehow, not bruised but dented, a tear in the papery-thin skin at her hairline that gaped white, bloodless. She has no blood to spill the wife thought. “Oh, Emily! What has…” The poet’s eyes lifted to the wife, shadowed in hurt, shame.

  There was something very wrong here: scattered on the carpet at the poet’s bare feet were her precious poetry-scraps, crumpled and torn like litter.

  The wife felt a pang of alarm recalling that nearly one-third of RepliLuxes did not survive their first year.

  “Emily, has he hurt you? He?”

  It had to have been the husband. For that morning, before she’d wakened, he had fled the house. In her sleep which had been a restless troubled sleep she had sensed the man fleeing. He hadn’t slept in his (twin) bed in their bedroom but, as the wife later discovered, on the leather sofa in his study, and before dawn he must have showered in a downstairs guest bathroom, shaved, dressed in stealth and fled to an earlier train than usual. In a quavering voice the wife said, “You must tell me, Emily. I will help you.”

  The poet held herself more tightly in the blanket, and shuddered. The wife went to the window and tugged it up a few inches for there was a close, stale odor in the room, a smell of sweat, repulsive.

  “Emily, what can I do for you? We must think!”

  “Mistress! I beg you…”

  “Emily, what? ‘Beg’—what?”

  “Freedom, Mistress.”

  “‘Freedom!’ But—”

  “Accelerate, Mistress. Lift the wand and—there’s freedom!”

  The wife was stricken to the heart. The poet should not have known about accelerate—or sleep mode—how had she come to such knowledge? The wife could not protest But you are ours, Emily. You were manufactured for Mr. Krim and me and you could not exist except for us. Instead the wife knelt beside the poet and took one of her hands. A child’s hand, bones delicate as a sparrow’s bones yet unexpectedly strong, gripping the wife’s fingers.

  “Dear Emily! We must think.”

  That night the husband returned late from the city. He saw that the house was darkened, downstairs and up. “Madelyn?” Something was very wrong. He switched on lights, hurrying from room to room. On the stairs he called hesitantly, “Madelyn? Emily? Are you hiding from me?” His heart beat quickly in anger, indignation. He did not want to be alarmed. He did not want to sound alarmed. He was sure that they must be hiding from him, listening. They were so deceitful! He saw that the door to the poet’s room was ajar, as it was never ajar. He fumbled to switch on an overhead light in the poet’s room, fortunately the lightbulb in the fixture hadn’t been removed by the zealous wife. He saw that the room was as upset as he’d last seen it the previous night. Rumpled bedclothes, an overturned chair. The stale air had been routed by a sharp autumnal chill from a part-opened window and a white curtain of some lacy gauze-like fabric was stirred in the breeze.

  Clumsily the husband yanked opened bureau drawers: empty? And the closet empty, of Emily’s long ghostly dresses?
The heavy trunk that had borne her to this household, gone?

  “It can’t be. Where…”

  The husband hurried downstairs. In the silent house, his footsteps were both thunderous and curiously muted.

  In the husband’s study, the RepliLuxe remote control wasn’t in the right-hand desk drawer where he kept it.

  “Where…”

  The husband saw, on the desk top, a single sheet of white paper and on it, in a formal, slanted hand, in purple ink that had the look of being faded, “antique”:

  Bright Knots of Apparitions

  Salute us, with their wings—

  In a rage the husband snatched up the paper to crumple in his fist and toss down onto the floor but instead stood gripping it, in the region of his heart.

  So lonely!

  GRANDPA CLEMENS & ANGELFISH, 1906

  Little girl? Aren’t you going to say hello to me?

  He collected them: “pets.” Girls between the ages of ten and sixteen. Not a day younger than ten and not a day older than fifteen. It was an era of private clubs and he was Admiral Sam Clemens of the Aquarium Club, its sole adult. Initiates of the exclusive Aquarium Club were known as Angelfish. Ah, to be an Angelfish in Admiral Clemens’ club, what a privilege! No homely girls need apply. No gawky-gangly-goose girls. No fidgety-sulky girls. No smirking girls. No fat girls. No clumsy girls. No pushy girls. No mopey girls. No shrill girls but girls with voices soft as goose-feather down and yet girls whose laughter was innocent and spontaneous and thrilling as if they were being tickled by an old grandpa’s fingers playing their narrow little rib cages like a xylophone. Girls who loved reading and to be read to. Girls whose favorite books were The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Girls who loved to play games: hearts, charades, Chinese checkers. Girls who delighted in being given billiards lessons—“By a master.” Girls who were thrilled to ride in open carriages in Central Park, or in the country; girls who were thrilled to “tramp” out of doors, to be pulled in sleds on snowy paths in winter. Girls who were the most perfect, poised little ladies, taken to high tea at the Plaza Hotel, or the Waldorf, or the St. Regis. Girls who were very quick—sharp—bright—but not overly bright; girls who might be teased, and might even tease in return, but would never turn mean, or ironic; girls who never rolled their eyes in disgust, or dismay; girls who were never, not ever sarcastic. Girls who had “spirit”—“spunk”—but were not headstrong. Girls who thought for themselves but were not willful. Girls who were pretty—often very pretty—but never vain. Girls who were sweet and innocent and trusting. Girls who were dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears. Girls who were the dearest “pets”—“gems”—“angelfish.” For of all tropical fish none is more graceful, more exquisitely colored, more magical than the angelfish. Girls who would adore Grandpa Clemens as their Admiral. Girls whose mothers, flattered by the famous author’s interest in their daughters, would adore Mr. Clemens themselves, without question. Girls whose fathers would not interfere, or were in fact absent. (Or dead.) Girls in schoolgirl uniforms, their hair in pigtails. Girls who dressed for special occasions in frilly white, lacy white, with white satin bows in their hair, to match Grandpa Clemens’ legendary white clothes. Girls whose photographs, with Grandpa Clemens, adorned the walls of his billiards room which was a very special room in his house. Girls who wore with pride the small enamel-and-gold angelfish pins Grandpa Clemens bestowed upon them, as initiates into the Aquarium Club. Girls who were grateful. Girls who wrote thank-you notes promptly signing Love. Girls who would hug good-bye but never cling. Girls whose kisses were swift and light as the peck of a darting hummingbird. Girls who would recall their Grandpa-Admiral tenderly Why, Mr. Clemens was the great love of my life because his love for me was wholly pure and innocent and not carnal and if there is a Heaven, Mr. Clemens is there.

  Girls who would not die young.

  Girls who would not cry.

  “Little girl? Aren’t you going to say hello to me?”

  It was April 1906. He was seventy years old. He was in a buoyant mood signing books after a sell-out “Evening with Mark Twain” at the Lotos Club. Upstairs in the opulent panelled library he’d had his well-heeled audience convulsed with laughter for these gents and powdered upholstered ladies came to be entertained by Mark Twain and not to be enlightened. Very well, then: he’d entertain them. And seated now at a throne-like carved mahogany chair and a desk in the opulent domed foyer he was signing copies of the reissued The Innocents Abroad. Hundreds of admirers and each eager to shake the author’s hand and receive one of his scrawled and illegible autographs to treasure. And among the admirers waiting to have a book or books signed was this shy girl of about thirteen with her momma, possibly her grandma, one of the upholstered females whose admiration for Mr. Clemens so wearied him for you did have to be courteous, couldn’t cut them off rudely in mid-sentence or yawn in their powdered faces. For this is the damned book-buying public and you had to be grateful of course. But exercising his power to behave capriciously as a snowy-haired patriarch of seventy he signaled the girl to come forward to the head of the line, yes and her momma or grandma too, and have their books inscribed and signed with the famous signature.

  “And what is your name, dear?”

  “Madelyn…”

  “‘Madelyn’ is a lovely name. And what is your last name, dear?”

  “Avery.”

  “Ah! ‘Madelyn Avery.’ D’you know, I thought that was you: ‘Madelyn Avery, than whom there is no one more savory.’” With a showy flourish, to disguise the emotion he felt, Mr. Clemens scribbled this bit of doggerel onto the title page of the girl’s copy of The Innocents Abroad, and signed it with Mark Twain’s signature scrawl that resembled a swirl of razor wire. Close up, the girl was prettier than he’d thought. Her face was delicately boned and heart-shaped and her skin was smooth and flushed with excitement; how like his own daughters when they’d been young, Suzy especially, his favorite who had died—oh, when had his darling Suzy died?—so many years ago, it left him stunned and confused that he’d outlived her, it was perverse for the elderly to outlive the young. And this boastful old-white-haired grandpa life! Madelyn wore her dark brown hair in schoolgirl plaits that fell over her shoulders and bangs that covered her forehead nearly to her eyebrows. Her jumper was burgundy velvet, her blouse had a white lace collar and cuffs; she wore white stockings with a crotcheted pattern, and shiny black patent leather shoes on her small feet. Her luscious little mouth was pursed in the effort not to give way to wild laughter. The way her beautiful eyes blinked, he guessed that she was slightly nearsighted; he felt such a pang of affection for her, he could only stare as he gripped the gold-and-ebony fountain pen an admirer had given him, in shaky fingers.

  Was this a dream? Had to be a dream. Seventy years old and not seventeen. And every girl he’d loved, rotted and gone. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.

  With exasperating indifference to his other, adult admirers waiting in the foyer to shake his hand and acquire his autograph, Mr. Clemens persisted in engaging the girl and her mother (in fact, the beaming upholstered woman was the girl’s mother) in playful conversation; quickly learning that they lived at Park Avenue and Eighty-eighth Street, which was not far away; that Mr. Avery was “in the fur trade”; that Madelyn attended the Riverside Girls’ Academy and took piano and flute lessons and hoped to be a “poet”; that she was just slightly older than she appeared, fifteen: but a young fifteen, for she loved ice-skating, and sledding, and kittens; and her favorite of Mr. Twain’s books was The Prince and the Pauper. Kindly Mr. Clemens said, “But you should have brought your copy along, my dear. I would have signed it for you.” Reluctantly Mr. Clemens let Madelyn and Mrs. Avery go, for he had more to say to sparkly-eyed Madelyn, and hoped that she had more to say to him; having slyly slipped into her copy of The Innocents Abroad one of his business cards engra
ved with Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his Fifth Avenue address, and scribbled with the raw appeal

  LONELY! SECRET PEN-PAL WANTED!

  There came stiff-backed Clara, Mr. Clemens’ spinster daughter who accompanied him on such occasions and had often to wait, with an air of scarcely concealed impatience, as the vain old man lingered in the dazzle of public acclaim like one besotted. Signing books, shaking hands, receiving compliments. Signing books, shaking hands, receiving compliments. In his tailored white serge suit, his hair a bushy cloud of snowy white and his bristly downturned mustache a darker white, Mr. Clemens exerted his usual kingly, imperial air, but sharp-eyed Clara saw that he was exhausted: performing the old Missouri buffoon “Mark Twain” was wearing him out at last. He’d never recovered from the death of his favorite daughter, Suzy, years ago; he’d never recovered from the death of his long-suffering wife, Livy, three years before; he’d never recovered from the blow to his pride, that he’d lost a small fortune in poor investments, and had not had a runaway best seller in decades, since The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It. As he was gracious, crinkly-eyed with merriment and unfailingly seductive in public, so he was sour, spiteful, childish and impossible in private. His health was failing: his “smoker’s heart,” his lungs, poisoned from fifty years of cheap foul cigars: Clara saw in her father’s eyes, that had once a greeny-blue glimmer, the look of forlorn desolation of one lost. During this evening’s performance he’d forgotten several times what he was saying, the broad Missouri drawl trailing off into awkward silence and his left eyelid quivering and drooping as in a lewd wink; and during this lengthy book signing, he’d several times dropped his showy fountain pen, that had to be picked up and given back to him by one of the Lotos Club minions. Clara cringed to think that his breath smelled sourly of whiskey: he’d slipped his silver flask into a coat pocket to bring with him, that he might duck into the gent’s room to sip from it, she knew as surely as if she’d seen with her own eyes. Now with a daughterly forced smile she leaned over her father holding court in his mahogany-carved throne to whisper in his ear: “Papa, what did you say to that girl?”