Wild Nights! Page 7

  She could not bear it, Mr. Clemens’ weakness. The most scandalous of Mr. Clemens’ numerous weaknesses.

  Mr. Clemens shrugged her off. He was his lofty public self, indifferent to any criticism. The crowd adored him, “Mark Twain” was so very funny, a mere wriggling of his grizzled eyebrows, a twitch of his mustache beneath his bulbous, capillary-red nose, the stiff-backed daughter Clara was no match and dared not provoke him, his good humor could turn mean in an instant, crushing her. And so for the better part of an hour Mr. Clemens remained in the Lotos Club foyer warmly shaking hands with admirers, receiving the most fulsome compliments as a starving dog laps gruel, signing for any and all who requested it the famous “Mark Twain” scrawl that, with the passage of time, and the lateness of the hour, grew ever more grandiloquent and illegible.

  Machines propagating machines! As Samuel Langhorne Clemens is a piece of machinery, so Mark Twain is machinery created by machinery. The most delicious irony and yet: who is the ironist? Who is it, who sports with and laughs at humankind? In his notebook, in his lunging scrawl, the page sprinkled with cigar ash.

  Yet, waking in the night, taking up his pen, hurriedly lighting a cigar, amid the tangle of damp and tormented bedclothes he tried to capture the remnant of a dream and its aftermath The most exquisitely colored angelfish, pale aqua-blue threaded with gold, delicate fins, enormous eyes, swimming innocently into my fine-meshed net, ah! the dreamer cannot sleep so roused with hard-beating heart declaring I am still alive—am I?—still alive—I am! As the air of his bedchamber turned blue with smoke like the Caribbean undersea off the coast of Bermuda.

  With the next morning’s post, in a small, square, cream-colored envelope addressed in an unmistakable schoolgirl hand, it arrived! In secret, where neither the harpy-daughter nor his housekeeper could observe, most deliciously Mr. Clemens tore the envelope open.

  1088 Park Avenue

  April 17, 1906

  Dear Mr. Clemens,

  May I be your Secret Pen-Pal? I am very lonely, too.

  But I am the happiest little girl in all of New York City today, Mr. Clemens. Thanking you SO VERY MUCH for your kindness in inscribing my tresured copy of The Innocents Abroad which I will show to everyone at school for I am so proud. Thank you for seeing in my face how I wished to speak with you. I hope that you will be my Secret Pen-Pal and no one will know that I am the little girl who thinks of Mr. Clemens every hour of the day and even in the night in my most secret dreams.

  Your New Friend,

  Madelyn Avery

  And hurriedly, he replied.

  21 Fifth Avenue

  April 18, 1906

  Dear Madelyn,

  Aren’t you the sweetest little girl, to write to me, as I had been hoping you would. You have no idea how d—d tedious it is to be surrounded by Grown-Ups all day long & to look into the d—d mirror & see a Grown-Up looking out at you!

  Now I have my Secret Pen-Pal, I will not be lonely.

  Accordingly, I am including here these two excellent box tickets to next Sunday’s matinee of Swan Lake at Carnegie Hall, in the hope that you—and your dear mother, of course—will join your Pen-Pal Mr. Clemens for the performance. You will recognize “Grandpa” Clemens by his peg leg, glass eye, & walrus mustache.) After the matinee, we will have “high tea” at the Plaza Hotel, where the liveried help have learned to indulge Mr. Clemens & will treat us just fine. What do you say, dear Madelyn?

  Angel-dearest, I am the happiest old grandpa in all of New York City to hear that such a sweet young lady is thinking of me “every hour of the day and even in the night in my dreams”—I will place your dear letter beneath my pillow, in fact.

  This from your oldest & latest conquest—

  “Grandpa” Clemens

  And again, as if by magic, the cream-colored little envelope addressed in a prim-pretty schoolgirl hand.

  1088 Park Avenue

  April 19, 1906

  Dear Mr. Clemens,

  Thank you for your kind and generous invitation, Momma and I are honored to say YES. We are both so very delighted, dear Mr. Clemens. Thanking you for the kindness that has stolen away my heart, I am your most devoted Pen-Pal. I am the little girl you saw amid your audience and knew, that I would love you.

  Your “Granddaughter” Madelyn

  In the heady aftermath of Swan Lake, and the Plaza Hotel,

  1088 Park Avenue

  April 25, 1906

  Dear, dearest Mr. Clemens,

  Since Sunday I have scarcely slept a wink! Such beautiful music—and such dancers! THANK YOU dear Mr. Clemens, I will kiss this letter as I would kiss your cheek if you were here. (Oh but your mustache would tickle!) What a delightful surprise it was, when the waiters came to our table at the Plaza with the ice cream cake and “sizzle” candle and sang “Happy Birthday, Madelyn”—the most wonderful surprise of my life. As you said, dear Mr. Clemens, it is never too late to celebrate a birthday, and you had missed mine—all fourteen of them! (But I am not fourteen, in fact I am fifteen. My sixteenth birthday is scarcely two months away: June 30.)

  Thanking you again, dear Mr. Clemens; hoping with all my heart to see you soon, I am

  Your Devoted “Granddaughter” Maddy

  Ah! With trembling fingers Mr. Clemens took up his pen, forced himself to write as legibly as he could even as hot cigar ash sprinkled the stationery upon which he wrote, and the untidy, somewhat smelly bedclothes amid which he wrote propped up against the headboard of the grand old Venetian carved-oak canopy bed.

  21 Fifth Avenue

  April 26, 1906

  Dearest Angel-Maddy,

  What a proud Grandpa here, to receive your sweet letter covered in kisses! (Indeed, I could discern each kiss quite distinctly, where the ink is wavery and blotted.)

  Grandpa is very pleased, too, that our little excursion of last Sunday was so successful; & so we must embark upon another again, dear Maddy, soon. It would be VERY SPECIAL if the SECRET PEN-PAL might meet IN SECRET in Central Park, for instance; but this is not possible, I believe, at least not immediately.

  Instead, Mr. Clemens invites you and Mrs. Avery to a benefit evening at the Emporium Theatre where your Pen-Pal will impersonate that notorious Missouri sage “Mark Twain” on May 11, 7 P.M. Tickets are already scarce. (As “hen’s teeth”—we may be sure.) A few ladies are admitted to these Emporium evenings—very few—but box seats would be reserved for you and your mother, as guests of the aforesaid Mr. Twain.

  Let me know, dear, if this date is possible for you and your mother. Anxiously awaiting your reply, I send kisses in such profusion, there will be none left for anyone else,

  Your Loving Grandpa Clemens

  Swiftly there came the cream-colored, lightly scented envelope in return:

  1088 Park Avenue

  April 27, 1906

  Dearest “Grandpa” Clemens,

  I cannot think how I deserve such kindness! Dear Mr. Clemens, both Momma and I are delighted to say YES to this wonderful invitation. Both of us revere the “notorious” Missouri sage. He is the only gentleman as remarkable as you, dear Mr. Clemens!

  If there are blots on this page, it is because tears are fallen from my eyes; I hope my handwriting is not shamful! On this letter, and on the envelope that contains it, I bestow SECRET KISSES for my SECRET who has so entered my heart.

  Your Devoted “Granddaughter” Maddy

  And, in the aftermath of the sold-out, standing-room-only, giddy triumph of Mr. Mark Twain at the Emporium Theatre,

  1088 Park Avenue

  May 12, 1906

  Dear “Grandpa” Clemens,

  For both Momma and me, I am writing to THANK YOU so very much for our unforgettable evening with Mr. Twain. My hands are still smarting for having CLAPPED SO HARD, and my throat is quite hoarse, for having LAUGHED SO HARD amid Mr. Twain’s audience of admirers. Momma says, this is a memory I will cherish through my life, and I know that this is so. I was awake and restless through the night, dearest “Grandpa,”
regretting that, at the theater, I could not see you after Mr. Twain’s many curtain calls, to THANK YOU in person; and to KISS YOUR CHEEK in gratitude for I am the little girl who loves you.

  Maddy

  P.S. Now it is Spring, I am allowed to go out alone to the Park each day after school. There I have found the most secret place, on a little hill above a small pond, where there is a stone bench. To get to this secret place, you have only to follow the footpath behind the most beautiful pink tulip trees visible from the Avenue, at about 86th St. It is so very special, dear Mr. Clemens, I would share it with no one but “Grandpa.”

  We are all insane, each in our own way but he could not recall which of them, Clemens or Twain, had made this pithy observation.

  “Papa, is it that girl? The girl you’d met at the Lotos Club? You must not, Papa. You know how, last time—your intentions were misunderstood—Papa!”

  Mr. Clemens ignored his harpy-daughter. Would not dignify her rude inquiries with a reply. His elegant cedar cane was in his hand, he was on his way out of the house, he dared not linger in her presence for fear of losing his temper (ah, Mr. Clemens’ temper was one to be readily “lost”!) and striking her with the cane.

  “Papa! Please. I’ve seen the letters she’s been writing to you—the envelopes, I mean. Papa no.”

  With an imperial toss of his head, the floating-white hair, Mr. Clemens careened past his daughter and outside, into the glittering May sunshine, headed north on Fifth Avenue. His heart thudded in the flush of victory, all of his senses were sharp and alive! How relieved he was, to have escaped the mausoleum-mansion he’d leased for $8,000 a year, a showcase of a kind for Samuel Clemens’ wealth, dignity, reputation, he had come terribly to hate. His dear wife Livy had not died in that house, nor had dear, beloved Suzy died there, yet the granite mansion was so dark, dour, joyless, it seemed to him that they had; and that, in one of his fits of nighttime coughing, he would die there himself.

  Now Mr. Clemens had no wife—and no wish for a wife—his daughter Clara had assumed that role. Clara could not bear it that, at an age beyond thirty, she was yet unmarried; in an era in which a well-born virginal female beyond twenty was beginning to be “old.” She had come to resent, if not to actively dislike, the Missouri sage “Mark Twain” to whom she owed her financial security, yet she was keenly aware of others’ interest in “Mark Twain” and fiercely protective of him. In her angry eyes was the plea Papa why aren’t I enough for you.

  That most melancholy of questions, asked of us, as we ask it of others! And what possible reply?

  Some years before, while Livy was still alive, poor Clara in a sudden fit of frustration, misery, the rawest and most shocking of female emotion, had lost all composure and restraint, began sobbing, screaming, overturned furniture, tore at her hair, at her face, to Mr. Clemens’ astonishment crying how she hated Papa, yes and she hated Momma, she hated her life, hated herself. Though the stormy fit had passed, Mr. Clemens had never entirely forgiven Clara; did not trust her; and did not, in the secrecy of his heart, much like her.

  Ah, how very different: little Madelyn Avery.

  The little girl who loves you.

  God damn that morning Mr. Clemens had worked. No one comprehends how a writer, even an acclaimed and best-selling writer, must work. Seated at his writing desk, a frayed and badly stained cushion beneath his old-man buttocks that had lost flesh in recent years, squinting through damned ill-fitting bifocals that slipped down his nose despite his nose being somewhat swollen, goiterous with broken capillaries, ah! Mr. Clemens had gripped his pen in his arthritic fingers, covering sheets of aptly named foolscap in his scrawl of a hand, composing his dark satire set in Austria, in the sixteenth century, in which Satan was to be a character; more eloquent than Milton’s Lucifer, and far more canny. Except, Mr. Clemens was repeatedly expelled from his narrative for he knew nothing of the sixteenth century, in Austria or anywhere, he knew nothing of the physical setting of his tale, as he knew nothing of Satan. (If you refuse to believe in God, can you plausibly believe in Satan?) His curse was to compulsively reread what he’d written, a succession of empty, pompous words, a mockery of the passion in his heart, and so in dismay and disgust he crumpled pages, that had to be afterward smoothed out and recopied; for he could not bear to involve a stenographer in this mawkish literary activity just yet. He supposed that, finally, he would publish the tale as one by “Mark Twain,” yet he believed that it was of a quality beyond “Mark Twain”; and, as usual, readers would be confused. What was most upsetting to him was that, now he’d become a wise old man, a patriarch-prophet like Jeremiah, he had so much more of urgency to say than when he’d been a younger man, when words had streamed from “Mark Twain” with the jaunty ease of a horse pissing; when words came with some fluency now, they were likely to be flat, dull, banal; and when words came with difficulty, they were not much better. A man’s sexual capacity ebbs at age fifty. All the rest, that remains, limps on for a little while longer.

  Yet: when Mr. Clemens wrote to little Madelyn Avery, he wrote with ease, and great pleasure. Smiling as he wrote! Happiest old grandpa in all of New York City.

  He had no grandchildren of his own. Doubted he ever would! His dearest daughter had died. The daughters who remained were not very dear to him. Old raging King Lear, the only good daughter dead in his arms.

  In a pocket of his white coat, an exquisite little surprise for little Maddy.

  How good Mr. Clemens felt! That old stubborn fist of a heart rousing him from bed at an earlier hour than usual that morning, hard-beating I am still alive—am I?—still alive—I am! In his legendary dazzling-white suit, in his white vest, white cotton shirt, white cravat, white calfskin shoes, all of his attire custom-made; with his still reasonably thick snowy-white hair (primped by a barber each morning in Mr. Clemens’ bed-chamber, a custom of decades) stirring majestically in the breeze: a familiar Manhattan sight, drawing admiring eyes and smiles from strangers. If only his damned gout didn’t make using a cane necessary! For certainly Mr. Clemens was not old, retaining his youthful figure, to a degree. Yet by Tenth Street he’d begun to be winded, and was leaning heavily on his cane; a powerful craving came over him, to light up one of his stogies, Mr. Clemens’ cheap foul-smelling cigars that were elixir to him.

  Suffocating females, you learn to ignore. Mr. Clemens’ strategy was to refrain from looking at them any more than was absolutely necessary as his own father, long ago, in the wisdom of fatherly indifference, had rarely looked at him, the flamey-haired son, sickly as a small child, perhaps perceived as doomed, negligible. So the adult Sam would ignore the clinging yet shrill woman his daughter had grown into, an adult daughter now and nothing in the slightest charming about her any longer, in fact there was something distinctly repellent about Clara, he could not bear contemplating.

  Papa you must not. Papa you are killing Mother. You claim to love Mother and yet—you are killing her!

  But a man must smoke! It is a principle of Nature, more basic to the species than the species’ alleged Maker, a man must smoke or how is life to be borne?

  “Excuse me, sir? Are you—Mark Twain?”

  Smiles of startled pleasure. Childlike excitement, awe. How extraordinary it is, to see, in another’s face, such quick-kindled feeling! When one is quite dead oneself, a dead person speaking from the grave, to see how, in another’s eyes, one is yet alive! Of course it was no trouble for the dazzling-white-clad Mr. Clemens to pause on the sidewalk, to receive the fulsome compliments of strangers, to shake hands, even to oblige with an autograph or two, if the admiring stranger has paper and pen. (In fact, Mr. Clemens never goes out without several pens in his lapel pocket.) Clara would laugh cruelly Papa you are a vain old man, you make yourself ridiculous but fortunately Clara was not here to observe.

  “—so kind of you, Mr. Twain! Thank you.”

  Strolling on, making an effort not to lean too conspicuously on his cane, Mr. Clemens could all but hear the murmured exclamations in his
wake Such a generous man Mark Twain! So good-hearted so kindly! Such a gentleman balm to his nettled soul after the shrill staccato of his daughter’s words.

  By Twelfth Street quite winded and limping from the damned gout-knee, Mr. Clemens irritably signaled for a hackney cab.

  At once the handsome sorrel’s hooves clattered on the cobblestone avenue. At once, the risky journey began.

  Seated in the breezy open rear of the cab, Mr. Clemens tossed away the sodden stump of his cigar, which had become disgusting to him, and unwrapped and lighted up another. From his well-to-do friends he’d acquired a taste for expensive Havana cigars, but indulged himself in such luxuries only in company. When he was alone, the cheapest cigars sufficed. The pungent smoke made his heart kick oddly and yet, if he refrained from smoking for more than an hour, the damned heart kicked yet more oddly.

  How your intentions were misunderstood. Last time.

  Papa no!

  The hackney cab jolted, Mr. Clemens’ jaws clenched. He was thinking not of little Maddy waiting for him in her “secret place” but, so strangely, of himself as a child: the lost child-Sam, whose father had not loved him. Flamey-red-haired, sickly, a bright restless child, his mother had adored him but not his gaunt-faced father, a circuit court justice in dismal, rural Missouri, a failed and embittered lawyer who had not once—not once!—smiled upon Sam. (It was true, John Clemens had not much smiled upon any of his children.) So strange to be recalling, at age seventy, with amusement, as with the old hurt, and rage, how his father’s eyes narrowed and his face stiffened when little Sam blundered too near him, as if John Clemens found himself in the presence of a mysterious bad odor. Yet I loved the cold-hearted bastard. Why didn’t the cold-hearted bastard love me!