• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 6149 0

said Jung, belong to earlier periods of history. Among our contemporaries there are Babylonians and Carthaginians or types from the Middle Ages. To me Szathmar was an eighteenth-century cavalryman, a follower of Pandour von Trenck, the cousin of my lucky Trenck. His padded swarthy cheeks, his Roman nose, his mutton-chop whiskers, his fat chest wide hips neat feet and virile cleft chin attracted women. Whom women will embrace is one of the unfathomable mysteries. But of course the race has to keep going. Anyway, here was Szathmar waiting to receive me. In his chair his posture suggested clumsy but unshakable sexual horsemanship atop pretty ladies. His arms were crossed, like the arms of Rodin’s Balzac. Unfortunately he still looked a bit ill. Almost everyone downtown seemed to me a touch sick these days.

“Alec, who is this Renata Koffritz? Brief me.” Szathmar took a warm interest in his clients, especially the attractive women. They got sympathy from him, psychiatric guidance practical advice and even touches of art and philosophy. And he briefed me: only child; kooky mother; no father in sight; ran away to Mexico with her high-school art teacher; fetched back; ran away later to Berkeley; found in one of those California touch-therapy groups; married off to Koffritz, a salesman whose line was crypts and tombs—

“Hold it. Have you seen him? A tall fellow? Brown beard? Why, he’s the man who gave old Myron Swiebel a sales pitch in the Russian Bath on Division Streetl”

Szathmar was not impressed by the coincidence. He said, “She’s just about the finest piece I ever got a divorce for. She’s got a little boy who’s quite sweet. I thought of you. You can see action with this woman.”

“Have you already seen some?”

“What, her lawyer?”

“Don’t give me the ethical bit. If you haven’t made a pass it’s because she hasn’t paid the retainer.”

“I know your view of my profession. To you all business is fraud.”

“Since Denise went on the warpath I’ve seen plenty of business. You fixed me up with Forrest Tomchek, one of the biggest names in this branch of law. It was like laying a speck of confetti in front of a jumbo vacuum cleaner.”

Gigantically glowering, Szathmar said, “Poo!” He spat air to the side, symbolically. “You stupid prick, I had to beg Tomchek to take the case. He did me a favor as a colleague. A man like that! Why he wouldn’t put you in his fish tank for an ornament. Board chairmen and bank presidents beg for his time, you twerp. Tomchek! Tomchek belongs to a family of legal statesmen. And an ace fighter-pilot in the Pacific.”

“He’s a crook all the same and he’s incompetent besides. Denise is a thousand times smarter. She studied the documents and caught him in a minute. He didn’t even make a routine check of titles to see who legally owned what. Don’t give me the dignity of the bar, friend! But let’s not hassle. Tell me about this girl.”

He rose from his office chair. I’ve been in the White House, I’ve sat in the President’s chair in the Oval Room, and Szath-mar’s, I swear, is finer leather. Framed pictures of his father and his grandfather on the wall reminded me of old days on the West Side. My feeling toward Szathmar was after all family feeling.

“I picked her for you as soon as she came through that door. I keep you in mind, Charlie. Your life hasn’t been happy.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“Unhappy,” he insisted. “Wasted talent and advantages, obstinate as hell, perverse proud and pissing everything away. All those connections of yours in New York Washington Paris London and Rome, all your achievements, your knack with words, your luck—because you’ve been lucky. What I could have done with that! And you had to marry that yenta West Side broad from a family of ward politicians and punchboard gamblers of candy-store kikes and sewer inspectors. That pretentious Vassar girl! Because she talked like a syllabus, and you were dying for understanding and conversation and she had culture. And I who love you, who always loved you, you stupid son of a bitch, I who have had this big glow for you since we were ten years old, and lie