Styx & Stone (22 page)

When Chalmers got up to sign for our lunches, a busboy began clearing the table. Reaching around my shoulder to pick up my glass, he dipped his head slightly and whispered in my ear.

“Are you the daughter of that Professor Stone?” he asked. “The one who was attacked in his home?”

I pulled away to see him. No more than seventeen or eighteen, dressed in a baggy white shirt and pants, he continued clearing, as if I hadn’t moved.

“Yes, I am,” I said.

“Ditch the prof after lunch and meet me out back on the loading dock,” he mumbled. “I got to tell you what happened here last Friday.”

I stared at him. He scooped Chalmers’s salad dish into his cart, still pretending I wasn’t there.

“I can’t talk to you here,” he mumbled, his lips barely moving. “Meet me out back in ten minutes.”

The kid finished clearing our dishes and pushed on to another table. I watched him make his way through the dining room, then Chalmers returned.

“Are you coming back to the department?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ve got to meet someone at the library.”

Chalmers’s eyes frosted over. “Mr. Sanger? Miss Jaspers, perhaps?”

I shook my head. “An old classmate,” I said.

“Be careful of those two,” he admonished. “They’re schemers, working toward their own ends. One or both may have leaked the story about your father’s manuscript.”

While we’d been inside the Faculty Club, the day had turned gray and wet. The beautiful sunshine that had illuminated my model that morning was gone, replaced by a misty rain, not frozen, but raw enough to turn your bones blue. The loading dock at the back of the Faculty Club dining hall was empty. I leaned against a cement post at the base of the dock.

“I saw your old man last Friday.”

The busboy.

I pushed off the post and turned to see him in the doorway of the loading dock, shivering in shirtsleeves as he pulled a Salem from his breast pocket.

“He came in with one guy, then he noticed another man. That’s when the trouble started.”

I knew Bruchner had been there, but I wondered who the third man could have been. “Tell me what happened.”

“It was a bad scene,” said the kid, huddling over his match to protect the flame. Then he lifted his head, cigarette fuming in the drizzle. “I thought he was gonna have a stroke.”

I took a step closer, just a few feet below the kid, and rested an elbow on the dock. He didn’t look at me as he smoked.

“I didn’t think an old guy could cuss like that.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Your old man,” said the kid, looking at me now. “And he was like Sugar Ray, swinging at that other guy. Took three of us to hold him off. Scratched my arm, right there,” he said, holding out the underside of his forearm for proof.

“Who did he go after?” I asked, wondering if I should apologize for his wound. “The man he was eating with?”

“No, your old man came in with the younger guy. They were eating and talking, nothing special. Then the other guy—the older one—showed up by himself. He sat down on the other side of the cafeteria, and your dad started fuming.”

That was strange. I thought my father had eaten lunch with Bruchner, but this sounded quite different. Bruchner’s story didn’t match the busboy’s.

“Why was he fuming?” I asked.

“Hell if I know. He just kept staring daggers at him from across the room. I was working his table, so I was keeping an eye on him. Jerry, the waiter I work for, makes me watch the tables like a hawk, like we’ll get more tips if we do. But that ain’t happening. No offense, but these profs are cheap motherfuckers.”

The kid laughed, took a puff on his Salem, and blew the smoke high in the air. “I was filling up his water glass while he was talking to the younger guy about it, but they were speaking Italian. You Italian?”

I shook my head. “What happened next?”

“Your old man got up and started charging across the room. The other guy tried to stop him, and asked me to help. So we set off after him, caught him just as he got to the table. He jostled it a little, and the guy eating alone got a lapful of hot soup.” He laughed. “Your old man was pointing at him, saying, ‘Show me your tattoo, show it to me if you’ve got the guts.’ I thought it was strange. Then he started to yell something in a foreign language, but not Italian. I don’t know no Italian, but there’s a couple of guys in the kitchen from Italy. They’re always jabbering in Italian, and your old man didn’t sound like that. One of the guys said it was German or something. Your old man speak German, too?”

I nodded. “Did he show him the tattoo?”

“Yeah. Pulled his sleeve up and showed him a bunch of numbers on his left wrist. That’s when your dad jumped at him, reaching for his throat, and snagged the guy’s shirt at the collar, right here,” he said, pointing to his left collarbone. “Tore the shirt right open. The guy near fell out of his chair, trying to get away. ‘The other one!’ your father was yelling, ‘I want to see the other one!’ Then he hollered some more in German.”

“I don’t suppose my father got to see the other tattoo,” I said.

“Naw,” he drew on his cigarette. “But I did. I wasn’t the only one your dad scratched. The other guy got it too, right across his upper chest. So Jerry sent me into the kitchen with him to fix him up. When I was wiping alcohol on him, I noticed the tattoo on the left side of his chest, up near the shoulder.”

“What was it?” I asked, leaning farther forward.

“Looked like a couple of sticks. Kind of dark and complicated. Lots of heavy ink lines. Pretty ugly, I thought. Nothing I’d like to have on my chest.”

“Just two sticks?”

“That’s right. Sticks, maybe with a couple of vines twisting around them, like on the back of a dime. Except his sticks were leaning a little to the side, not straight up and down. About yea big,” he said, showing me about two inches with his fingers.

“What about my father? Did he leave right away?”

“The guy he came with hustled him out while I was in the kitchen. Man, I never seen white boys mix it up like that, not at the Faculty Club, anyway.”

“Who else saw what happened?”

“Everybody in the place,” said the kid. “We don’t get big crowds on Friday afternoons, but there was probably ten profs in there.”

“Do you know who the other two men were?”

“Naw. I only remembered your old man’s name, Stone, ’cause I see him around here from time to time.”

“How did it end?”

“The guy with the tattoo left, said he didn’t want to cause no trouble for nobody.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me this inside?”

He chuckled. “Niggers ain’t supposed to talk to the diners,” he said, then flicked his cigarette high in the air. It fell several yards beyond the edge of the loading dock. He opened the door behind him and disappeared inside.

Gualtieri Bruchner was the enigma of Columbia’s Italian Department. He had arrived in New York only six months before and was no social animal. Miss Little told me he had left for the day, so I questioned anyone who would stand still about him.

“Quiet,” said Miss Little. “Keeps to himself.”

“A misanthrope,” pronounced Chalmers. “On the rare occasions when he shows up at a function, he’s always the first to leave. Doesn’t talk to anybody, except about the driest scholarly topics.”

Ironic that Victor Chalmers was accusing anyone of boring behavior. This was the man who delivered a five-minute monologue in Latin on the occasion of his daughter Ruth’s Confirmation. Dad had related the incident to my brother and me that evening at the dinner table.

“The strutting ass stood up, cretin’s grin smeared over his face, and explained that he was going to toast the grand occasion with a parable of his own invention. Then he started in with
Olim puella erat
(There once was a girl), or some such nonsense. It was embarrassing, I tell you. Only the priest and I understood what he was saying! And he droned on for five minutes, laughing at his own wit.”

“Is Dad exaggerating again?” Elijah asked Mother.

Ever kinder than my father, Mom searched for the delicate answer to Elijah’s question. But in the end, she gave a quick shake of her head and said, “No, your father’s account is accurate.”

“Poor little Ruth,” said Dad. “She was more embarrassed than anyone. None of the other parents felt compelled to humiliate their children.” He shook his head in disgust and turned his attention back to his dinner.

And I turned mine back to Gualtieri Bruchner.

Bernie Sanger said: “He’s creepy. Reminds me of Dracula. Like he never goes outside in the daylight.”

Roger Purdy, after some coaxing, contributed: “Professor Bruchner is a fine scholar, though not much of a conversationalist.”

I phoned Franco Saettano to get his opinion. He had none, claiming he’d only spoken to Bruchner a few times, and that his memory was not so sharp that he could recall the slightest impression the visiting professor had made on him.

I opened my father’s office with the brass key Miss Little had provided me. After browsing through some drawers and files, I pulled out my Leica. Inside, the exposed film of the sleeping Gigi was still there, beckoning me silently. I rewound the roll, placed it carefully in a metal canister, and slipped it into my coat pocket. I loaded a new roll and opened the portfolio of my father’s drawings. I was bent on preserving the collection, if only on celluloid.

Sean McDunnough was sitting on an aluminum chair next to my father’s bed, reading the
Racing Form.
His pose was oddly graceful: the huge man with chicken legs, crossed daintily at the knee.

“How is he?” I asked.

McDunnough shrugged. “The doctor was here about an hour ago. Said he was no worse.”

“Any visitors?”

He shook his head. “I’ll be back at ten,” he said, folding the
Racing Form
and clamping it against his side beneath his bearish right arm.

I settled into the chair to sit vigil. It was four thirty, and I had forgotten to buy a paper. No crossword.

Hours spent bedside in a hospital rarely figure among the happiest of your life. If the patient is unconscious, time can drag your spirit to the basement, bouncing you down each step on the way. All you can do is watch. Nothing to say, no way to help; your sense of usefulness runs out like dirty bathwater swirling down a drain. My father looked hollow. He looked dead. The only signs of life were artificially generated, compliments of Saint Vincent’s Hospital: the pumping of the ventilator and the tiny beeps of a heart monitor wired to his chest.

I fell asleep and dreamt of a siren, who beguiled me with her song from across a wide, stormy river. Remotely indifferent to the dangers, I pushed my skiff toward the sweet sound of her singing, ever closer to the rocky shore and crashing waves. The siren lay languid on the highest of the half-submerged rocks, her breast heaving with each beckoning note. Her skin glistened in the spray and moonlight as if the river had licked her from head to toe. I steered closer, squinting through the mist to see the emerald-gold sheen in her hair, until a streak of lightning blazed across the sky, illuminating the hideous gnarl of her lip and hump on her back. Her hair was the green of eel retchings, and her stench was so potent it cut upwind. I dunked my oar in the river, straining against the surge of the tide, to pull back from the onrushing rocks. But it was too late. My fragile vessel rode the river’s swell and crashed against a crag. The skiff splintered, and I pitched over the bow into the black water. My thrashing summoned no one, and the cold river closed over my head. I cursed her for her perfidy just as a nudge on my shoulder roused me.