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Lovingly, Humboldt”

twenty-nine

So now I know why we missed the Scala,” said Renata. “We had tickets for tonight. All that glow—that gorgeous performance of The Barber of Seville—a chance to be part of the greatest musical audience in Europe! And we sacrificed it. And for what? To go to Coney Island. Coming back with what? A goofy outline. I could laugh about it,” she said. In fact she was laughing. She was in a good humor and had seldom been more beautiful, the dark hair drawn back and secured at the top, giving a sense—well, a sense of rescue, silken and miraculous. The dark hues with the red suited Renata best. “You don’t mind missing out on the Scala. In spite of all your credentials you don’t really care much for culture. Deep down, you’re from Chicago after all.”

“Let me make it up to you. What’s at the Met tonight?”

“No, it’s Wagner, and that “Liebestod” drags me. Actually, as everybody is talking about it, let’s see if we can get in to see Deep Throat. All right, I can see you getting ready to make a remark about sex films. Don’t do it. I’ll tell you what your attitude is—When it’s done it’s fun, but when it’s seen it’s unclean. And remember that your wisecracks show no respect for me. First I do things for you, and then I become a woman of a certain class.”

Still, she was in good heart, chatty and highly affectionate. We were lunching at the Oak Room, far from the beans and wieners of the nursing home. We should have given those two old geezers a treat and taken them out. At lunch Menasha might have told me much about my mother. She died when I was an adolescent and I longed to hear her described by a mature man, if such Menasha was. She had come to be a sacred person. Julius always insisted that he couldn’t remember her at all. He had his doubts about my memory altogether. Why such keenness (approaching hysteria) for the past? Clinically speaking, I guess the problem was hysteria. Philosophically, I came out better. Plato links recollection with love. But I couldn’t ask Renata to creep along with two old boys to some seafood joint on the boardwalk and spend a whole afternoon helping them to read the menu and to deal with clams, wiping butter from their pants, looking away when they popped out their detachable bridges, just so I could discuss my mother. To her it was odd that an elderly fellow like me should be so eager to hear reminiscences of his mother. Contrast with these very old guys might make me look a bit younger, still it was also possible that she would lump us all together in her irritation. Thus Menasha and Waldemar were deprived of a treat.

In the Oak Room she ordered Beluga caviar. She said it was her reward for taking the subway. “And after that,” she told the waiter, “lobster salad. For dessert, the profiterole. Mr. Citrine will have the omelette fines-herbes. I’ll let him order the wine.” And so I did, having been told what she wanted. I commanded a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. When the waiter left, Renata said, “I notice that your eye goes from right to left as you read the menu. There is no reason for the poor-boy bit. You can always make money, piles of it. Especially if you team up with me, I promise we’ll be Lord and Lady Citrine. I know the visit to Coney Island has made you downhearted. So I’ll give you a blessing to count. Look around this dining room and look at the women—see what kind of dogs important brokers, corporation executives, and big-time lawyers get stuck with. Then compare.”

“You are certainly right. My heart bleeds for all parties.”

The wine waiter came and made the usual phony passes, showed the label, and ducked down with his corkscrew. He then poured some wine for me to taste, and harassed me with perfunctory courtesies that had to be acknowledged.

“Still, coming to New York was right, I now agree,” she said. “Your mission here is accomplished, and that’s all to the good because it’s about time your life was set on a real basis and you cleared away a few tons