Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [117]
—We had a run-in, I explained.
—Oh?
—Let’s just say I finally figured out he wasn’t everything he presented himself to be.
—Are you?
—Close enough.
—A rare specimen.
—At least I don’t go around implying I went straight from the cradle to the Ivy League.
Hank dropped his cigarette and scuffed it out with a sneer.
—You’ve got it all wrong, spider. The scandal here isn’t that Teddy plays it off like an Ivy Leaguer. The scandal is that that sort of bullshit makes a difference in the first place. Never mind that he speaks five languages and could find his way safely home from Cairo or the Congo. What he’s got they can’t teach in schools. They can squash it, maybe; but they sure can’t teach it.
—And what’s that?
—Wonder.
—Wonder!
—That’s right. Anyone can buy a car or a night on the town. Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement. I don’t mean gawking at the Chrysler Building. I’m talking about the wing of a dragonfly. The tale of the shoeshine. Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart.
—So, he’s got the innocence of a kid, I said. Is that it?
He grabbed me by the forearm as if I wasn’t getting the point. I could feel the imprint of his fingers on my skin.
—When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: and when I became a man—
He let my arm drop.
—. . . More’s the pity.
He looked away. For the second time, he reached behind his ear for the cigarette that he’d already smoked.
—So what happened? I asked.
Hank looked at me in his discerning way—always weighing whether he should deign to answer a question.
—What happened? I’ll tell you what happened: My old man lost everything we ever had, bit by bit. When Teddy was born, the four of us lived in a house with fourteen rooms. Every year we lost a room—and moved a few blocks closer to the docks. By the time I was fifteen, we were in a boardinghouse that leaned over the water.
He held his hand out at a forty-five-degree angle so I could picture it.
—My mother had her heart set on Teddy going to this prep school our great-grandfather went to—before the Boston Tea Party. So she squirreled away some cash and combed his curls and plied his way in. Then, in the middle of Teddy’s first year, when she went to the cancer ward, my old man found the stash and that was that.
Hank shook his head. One got the sense that with Hank Grey there was no confusion as to whether one should shake or nod.
—It’s like Teddy’s been trying to get back in that fucking prep school ever since.
A tall Negro couple was coming down the street. Hank put his hands in his pockets and gestured with his chin toward the man.
—Hey, buddy. You got a smoke?
He said it in his abrupt, unfriendly way. The Negro didn’t seem put out. He gave Hank the cigarette and even lit the match, holding his big black hand around the flame. Hank watched the couple walk away with reverence, as if he had newfound hope for the human race. When he turned back to me, he was sweating like he had malaria.
—It’s Katey, right? Listen. Do you have any dough?
—I don’t know.
I felt in Dicky’s blazer pockets and found a money clip with several hundred dollars. I considered giving Hank the whole thing. I gave him two tens instead. As I took the money out of the clip, he unconsciously licked his lips, as if he could already taste what the money would become. When I handed him the bills, he squeezed them in his fist like he was draining a sponge.
—Are you going back inside? I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t.
By way of explanation, he gestured toward the East Side. The gesture had an air of finality, like he knew we wouldn’t be seeing each other again.
—Five languages? I said before he left.
—Yeah. Five languages. And he can lie to himself in every one of them.
Dicky, the crew, and I stayed well into the night and were rewarded accordingly. Just past the witching hour, musicians began arriving with instruments