The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel (25 page)

Today was the sixteenth.

Eve said Donald’s name, but he seemed to be on hiatus, as he had been for the last few days. She reached for the phone and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Matthias Klieg, please.”

“Who is calling?” Eve gave her name. “Ah, Miss Weldon. This is Maxine. What can I do for you?” Eve explained about the LaForge show. “I am sure Mr. Klieg would be interested. He has a lunch that should be over in about two hours. Shall I have him meet you at the gallery?”

Eve wondered if anyone held that much sway over Klieg. “Are you sure he’ll want to come?”

“I believe so. He has been meaning to call you, I think,
but …” It seemed Maxine thought better of whatever she was going to say. “Anyway, it is good that you have called.”

   • • •

The wind and rain had increased through the afternoon and the gallery was nearly empty. Eve and Klieg strolled around the large white space.

“I remember this one,” said Klieg, pointing at an intricate copper piece. Three layers of lacy trees and tiny deer extended from a wire attached to the wall. “Rene was inspired by the Bois de Boulogne.”

“Is there any of his early work here?” asked Eve, looking around. “Everything looks so assured, so precise.”

“Ah,” said Klieg, continuing to walk again. “Unlike most of us, René had no awkward phase. His first pieces are hardly distinguishable from his last.”

Eve hesitated to bring up a delicate topic, but she wanted to go back to things they’d discussed at the opera. “So he never had a bad review?”

“You mean like I did?” Klieg looked sideways at her.

“Like you did.”

“No, I’m afraid he could not quite understand what that was like.”

“What was it like?”

Klieg’s eyes widened and he tilted back on his heels for a moment. “Well. I bore the scars for quite some time. I felt I couldn’t trust my own judgment. And that is one of the worst feelings one can experience.”

“Boy, are you right,” mumbled Eve, taking in an abstract piece that looked like a ball of yarn or maybe the universe. They strolled separately for a few minutes before Eve worked her way back over to Klieg. “You told me you had to return to Germany to earn money for a new collection,” she said. “That must have been difficult.”

“Yes. Going home so soon after striking out on one’s own is
no picnic, as you say here. But it was not as terrible as it might have been,” said Klieg, pondering a steel orb with pinpricks all over it. “Louisa came with me.”

“Louisa?”

“She was a cashier at the Deux Magots. Graceful as a ballerina and so kind to us starving artists. I can’t tell you how much charcuterie and cheese she took from the kitchen for us, smuggled in napkins and stuffed into our satchels.”

“This is when you were hanging around with René, Lars Andersen, and the others?”

“Yes.”

“And … Donald.”

Klieg leaned in close to admire the soldering on a complicated piece of blocks and pulleys but said nothing. Maybe he hadn’t heard her.

Eve tried again. “How close were the two of you?”

Klieg looked at the ceiling. “He was quite, how shall I put it, ornery? He made a dramatic point of disparaging the everyday: the search for an affordable garret, the bills, the boring part-time jobs all artists must suffer. He would never let us wallow in those things; he insisted we talk about only the extraordinary.”

“I guess that’s what he was attempting to do in his work?”

“I suppose, in his maladroit way, yes.”

“But why did everything have to be so opaque? I don’t want to upset you,” said Eve, remembering the way their opera evening ended. “But I can’t help but wonder. Why didn’t he write from the heart more, reveal something of himself the way the great artists do?”

“He did, in his early work.”

“He did?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

Klieg was silent for a few moments before he spoke. “He changed gears.”

“Why? When?”

“It must have been about 1964 or so. He decided that words were inadequate to convey emotion.” When Eve looked perplexed, he continued. “This is typical of a young artist—to throw out everything because he’s discovered a new, more fruitful path.” Klieg stepped back from the sculpture and took in the whole.

What had happened to Donald in 1964? Eve wanted to ask, but feared Klieg would shut down again. She opted for safer ground. “Tell me more about you and Louisa.”

“We married. When I could afford to, I moved us back to Paris. And eventually, we came here.”

“Why?” asked Eve.

“Louisa wanted to. She found being back in Paris … difficult. And of course, there is a certain kind of person who just won’t be happy unless she lives in New York at least once in her life.”

“Yes.” Eve smiled.

“I suppose I was like that as well. It was irresistible to see if I could ‘make it’ here. I did find success, of course, and worked a great deal. That was part of it. And we did so enjoy ourselves. The opera became a habit of ours. It was her seat you took some weeks ago, our season tickets. We took walks in Central Park, ate dinner at Café Carlyle every Sunday, went for drives in the Hudson Valley. We kept up most of our routines until just before she died.…”

Eve’s ears pricked up when he said “Café Carlyle.” But before she could ask him about it or the million other questions that sprang to mind, Klieg surprised her by resting a hand lightly on her shoulder.

“Many in the press have asked me about my personal life, but I have always declined to talk about it. I don’t know why, but you …” Eve nodded. She had heard this many times from her interview subjects. “Maxine worries about me, thinking I am too closed off. She was most pleased about your invitation today.”

“I’m glad you were able to come,” said Eve. “Shall we have a drink?” he asked. “Someplace nearby, perhaps.”

They collected their coats and umbrellas. Before they headed out into the storm, Klieg looked at the rain pelting the windows and the trees turned inside out by the wind. “Let me tell you, Miss Eve, the past is a guest who visits whenever he pleases. For a long time, I managed to keep the door locked. But no more, it seems.”

   • • •

Eve awoke to find the apartment stone cold. It felt like the heat was on the fritz. She decided to try the fireplace, though Mrs. Swan had once told her that most of them didn’t work. This had disappointed Eve, who’d cultivated a romantic image of herself tucked up in her Village apartment on a winter’s night, fire blazing, shadows swaying on the wall.

Amazingly, the deli carried logs—these institutions had turned out to be marvelous places—and Eve loaded them along with balls of newspaper onto the grate and lit a match. The orange flame crisped the paper and set its teeth into the wood. A moment later, enormous clouds of black smoke came billowing into the room.

“Oh my God!” Coughing, her throat burning, Eve picked up Highball, shoved her into the hall, and slammed the door. Then she opened every window and ran to the kitchen, where she grabbed her biggest pot from the shelf over the stove. She began to fill it with water. “Come on, come on,” she urged the lazy spigot.

“What’s the hassle, baby?” asked Donald, appearing for the first time in days.

“The fireplace. It’s”—she broke off, throwing some water into her mouth—“not working. I’ve got to call 911—”

“Now, now. Hold on. When did you light it?”

“I don’t know. About three minutes ago?” She broke out into another coughing fit.

“Give it a couple more. It’s cranky. It needs to burn off the gunk inside the chimney, then it works just fine.”

Eve, nearly gagging, ventured back into the living room. Another puff of smoke burst from the fireplace and then, suddenly, the blackness began to abate. She used pillows to shoo the remaining smoke out the windows, and the room slowly began to clear. When the air was breathable again, she let in the confused Highball, who sniffed the air warily.

“You were right,” said Eve, holding her hands up to the dancing fire. “It’s okay now.”

“That brings back such memories. This funny little apartment with all its idiosyncrasies. How I miss it. Does the closet in the hallway still smell like teriyaki?”

“Yes,” said Eve, laughing.

After she changed, she made herself some tea and found their current yellow pad. “As a thank-you, how about we get back to ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’?”

“It’s gratifying to see you so eager,” Donald said as Eve sat down on her bed. “But I worry you’re not in the right frame of mind. After all the unpleasantness at work, are you sure you wouldn’t rather just relax?”

“You’re sweet,” she said. “But I could use the diversion.”

“Ah. Well then, onward. But if you’ll permit me to say just one thing about it. I want you to know I support what you did.”

“Lighting the fire?”

“No. At work. Taking the big story for yourself.”

Eve had almost forgotten she’d been thinking of Donald when she did it. Even now, his support still gave her a small measure of comfort. “Thanks.”

“My generation had a rather different relationship to the Establishment than yours, you know. We saw how the individual could be crushed by the machine. In my circle, we did not hesitate
to resort to drastic measures when the situation called for it. We felt our power and we used it.”

“Writers really mattered back then, didn’t they?”

“They were covered in the papers like Hollywood stars.”

“It seems like they weren’t afraid of anything.” Eve thought of the beaten-down
Smell the Coffee
writers.

“Probably because we had real community back then. Manhattan was smaller. So was the Village. We stuck together, took care of each other. And restaurants and bars took care of us, too. They gave us food and drink when we were hard up. They took pride in having a stake in the career of up-and-coming young talent.”

“Nobody remembers those times anymore,” said Eve, thinking of the plaques. Every time she’d mentioned them to someone, they’d shrugged. Alex had never noticed them. Nor had Vadis. Or even the
Smell
writers. “It’s fifty years ago now. Soon it’ll be lost for good. Unless …”

“Yes?”

Now was the time. She hadn’t planned for it, but there might never be another moment that would feel this natural. She cleared her throat and employed the lightest possible tone. “Have you ever thought about writing a memoir?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m an artist. My fiction is my statement.”

“Well, plenty of artists have written memoirs. And think about it, you’ve lived such an interesting life. Everyone you knew in New York. Plus Paris! Your days with Lars and René and—”

“How do you know about
them
?”

“The library,” she lied, hoping to steamroller right over this revelation to prevent him from questioning this further. “You could tell stories about all of it. The Beats. The Postwar Four. How the movements were related. Funny anecdotes about everyone.”

“I don’t—”

“And how about this? We put your stories in the
body
of the memoir. You discuss your artistic process and then illustrate the fruits of it, all in one book. Let the reader go behind the scenes with the artist.”

“Listen here—”

“This could be a whole new way to go, something more for the times as they are now. You’ve been gone a long time; things have changed. Drop the veil. Let the reader in.”

There was a pause. Eve rubbed the sides of her upper arms. She rarely gave directives, rarely spoke in such short, punchy sentences. It felt good.

“I’m not interested in a memoir. I want to continue with my stories. Now, will you or will you not help me?”

Highball, who’d been watching her intently from the foot of the bed, high-stepped her way over the gathered ridges of the coverlet. She yawned, stretched, and sat, her pointed snout an inch from Eve’s own nose. The dog’s breath was warm against her cheek, her wagging tail like a feather duster, tickling the sides of her thighs.

“Of course I’ll help you.” Eve sighed, trying to take his decision with good grace, already planning to bring the subject up again soon. She picked up her pen and they returned to the story, at the key moment when Paper and Scissors finally meet.

“Everyone is waiting for the fight, for the collision,” began Donald. “Paper and Scissors size each other up and … smile broadly. They get along like a house on fire. The dinner guests are disappointed; there is nothing to see! Paper recognizes in Scissors a kindred soul, a metaphysical twin. By all rights they should be mortal enemies and this is what makes it even more delicious.”

This story seemed to come closer to saying something than the previous ones, as though the metaphors might actually be about something real, but it still didn’t make much sense. “I realize Paper and Scissors are supposed to represent something,” she
said when Donald paused for a moment. “But can we make it clearer what that is? I think that would help.”

“How many times have I told you? I am not here to spoonfeed the reader. If he can’t keep up, that’s his tough luck.” He continued with his dictation.

Eve shook her head but took down his words, just as she had so many times before. This time, though, she felt something stirring within her. She’d always been curious about whether his work was worth publishing, but she hadn’t cared on an emotional level. Now she began to, just a little. Not so much that his stories would be published, but that
he
would be. Which made it all the more frustrating that the work was so, well, bad.

N
ovember arrived and the chill sank its claws into the city. The sky hung low like a sheet of iron, and the last of the colored leaves that had carpeted the streets suffered the indignity of being swept into large garbage bags that now lined the sidewalks like shiny black fists. Eve bought a pretty winter coat, at Full Circle of course, a high-collared bouclé affair with jeweled buttons.

As she paid for the coat, Gwendolyn invited her over for dinner the following Saturday night. She lived at the corner of Christopher and Greenwich in a rent-controlled apartment she’d inherited from her grandmother. It was on the ninth floor, with a beautiful view of the Jefferson Market Library and, beyond, the Empire State Building. Unlike Eve’s radiators, Gwendolyn’s hissed their productivity loudly, and her windows were thrown open wide like arms around the city. Eve leaned out and breathed in the crisp air, before tucking into a deep bowl of pasta and a hearty Shiraz. They spent the evening playing go fish, and afterward, Eve quizzed Gwendolyn for an entrepreneurship exam at the New School.