The Magician's Girl (10 page)

‘He's a wonderful teacher,' Maud said. Luther said, ‘I suppose so. But that night at his reading I thought he didn't seem to like reading much. Or maybe it was the audience he didn't like.' Maud stared at him as though he were a boor incapable of appreciating Mile's genius. ‘He's different in class.' ‘Nicer?' ‘No, not nicer. He's never
nice
in the way you mean, not that I have ever heard. Not to anyone. But he's so amazingly acute and intelligent. With all that hatred in him for the second-rate and the pretentious, he makes you do your damndest. Better than you thought you ever could.'

Maud's face reddened. She told Luther about bringing a new poem to Mile's seminar last week. ‘It was one I hesitated a long time about, because it's personal. It describes my feelings at the sight of a beautiful Greek boy's marble head, with lovely, writhing white curls and huge sightless white marble eyes. I thought of you when I wrote it,' she said and turned her red face away. Two weeks later, when they were having beers together at the Gold Rail, she read the poem to Luther. ‘Do you recognize yourself?' Embarrassed, he laughed. Then, because he was touched by the excess of warmth in her words, he leaned across the table and kissed her cheek. ‘That was very good. A beautiful poem. Thank you.' Maud was stunned by his gesture. She wanted to return it but could not figure how, what move to make to reach his beautiful cheek. Instead she said, ‘Do you want to come to class to hear Mile tear it apart?'

On Friday, Otto Mile spent fifteen minutes hacking away, almost successfully disguising his admiration for Maud's skill. From his visitor's seat away from the table at which eight students sat, Luther watched Maud as the poet went on flaying the word structures, the feeble imagery here, the lack of central, guiding metaphor there, the weak closure. Maud sat, stone-still, taking notes and nodding. When Mile moved on to another student's work, Maud stared at her poem. Suddenly she reached forward, as if a light had been turned on somewhere behind her forehead. She crossed out a line and wrote, in her small, clear script, another over it.

In the weeks that followed, Luther usually waited at the door for the class to be over. He had no desire to sit through another painful dissection. Maud was always glum when she came out, chastened but still excited. She accepted Mile's critical lashings with outward composure, waiting for the occasional ‘not bad' or, more often, ‘not too terrible.' Even the customary negative forms of his responses gratified her. Once in a great while a poem of hers survived the balled-up-into-the-wastebasket fate. When this happened, Mile, anticipating the end of the period by ten minutes (‘My hour consists of fifty minutes,' he had told his students the first day) would place the less-than-offensive uncrumpled poem on the table, bow to it ceremoniously, wave to the students and depart. It was clear to everyone that this backhanded act was Mile's reluctant way of expressing a favorable opinion of the work. Maud could never look at anyone as she rescued her page and put it into her notebook. She would leave the room right after Mile. On one such occasion she went past Luther without stopping. Her heart was too full, she told him later, for a word from anyone, even him. She went to her room and sat on her bed, savoring in private her small creative triumph.

Later in the semester Luther asked her if she wanted to go to the movies with him the next afternoon. She was surprised. ‘The Thalia is playing Hedy Lamarr in
Ecstasy
,' Maud said. ‘I've never seen her. I'd like to go.' Luther blushed and said he was in love with Hedy Lamarr. ‘I've decided she is the most beautiful woman in the world. I've seen her twice in this picture already.' Maud shrugged, as though being in love, let alone in love with a movie star, were ridiculous.

They had lunch in their separate dining rooms and met afterward on the downtown corner of 116th Street. During the walk to the movie theater Luther was quiet. Maud said, ‘Are you preparing to enter the presence of your beloved, like a medieval knight purifying himself for battle?' Luther walked faster, as if jokingly to demonstrate his eagerness to arrive at Ninety-fifth Street. Then he saw that it was hard for Maud to keep up. She had on the long gypsy skirt she habitually wore when she was going out. It disguised her thick, columnar legs. In it she felt both feminine and hidden. This evening she apologized for holding him up in his romantic dash to the Thalia. ‘I put it on because it is almost evening and I thought it would be suitable.'

Maud wore a white puffy frilled blouse in the largest size carried in the women's section of Klein's. She wanted to look festive and ‘dressy,' her mother's word for whatever was not useful and uniform. In her voluminous blouse, Maud felt her large self obscured. At a curb, when they stepped down at the same time and brushed against each other, Luther's arm touched her, and he learned that she indeed filled the blouse. Within it he sensed an enormous flood of breasts, to which, he realized, he felt oddly attracted.

In the lobby they waited for the feature to begin. The air was stale and warm. When they entered the theater they felt as if they were driving into black water. They clutched each other, like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, stumbling along until their eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the dark. They happened upon two empty seats on the side. Luther liked the feel of her dependent hand on his arm. ‘In the dark there is no shape, nothing but warm flesh,' he thought. Settled down close together, behind the section cordoned off for children where the white-dressed matron sat on the aisle watching over the comings and goings of her charges, they both felt a vague content. To feel, not always to see, was a source of happiness.

For the next two hours Luther was oblivious to everything but the wondrous beauty of the woman in the movie. Hedy Lamarr floated nude in a pond, her white body enhanced by veils of hazy water clinging to it. Luther leaned forward in his seat during this scene, like the other men in the theater, as though to get closer, to be able to see her better. Then, ashamed, he sat back and reached for Maud's hand. He never took his eyes from the screen. Holding her willing hand, he watched the screen fill with the pure line of Lamarr's profile. Lamarr smiles: the even ridges at the side of her mouth look like fine lines etched on copper. Unsmilingly now, her skin returns to its unmarked, poreless perfection. Once Luther looked aside at Maud. There was no way of telling what she was thinking. He saw only her thick glasses resting heavily on the broad bridge of her nose. Was she awed at the sight of such incredible beauty, was she appalled at the comparison to her own impoverished endowments? He could not tell.

Maud thought, ‘I'll never introduce him to Minna.'

Neither of them paid attention to the story. Luther knew how silly it was, and Maud was engrossed in understanding the elements of absolute feminine beauty. Years later they would, separately, remember every turn of that elegant head, every floating motion of her body in the pool, but they would have no idea of what the movie was about. When it was over they did not wait for Selected Short Subjects or Pathé News. They walked up to the Gold Rail, ordered two beers, and talked about the foolish movie, the exquisite Hedy, and photography. Luther said, ‘In my aesthetics course, a fellow who likes to think he is terribly modern talks about “the cinema.” He says it is a pretense at art, that “movies are vehicles, carriages, in which stars ride, not things in themselves.”' Maud said, ‘That's what I dislike about movies and about photography too. They both pretend to be an art. In photographs, people, families, “sights,” relatives, are so often the subjects, poised in front of vacation places and houses. Or stars say absurd things to their leading men in front of St. Peter's in Rome, like Uncle Abe in front of his new car or Cousin Lou in her communion dress in front of St. Joseph's Church in Cohoes or some such place. All of them perpetuating the unmemorable. The camera, moving or not, is too particular. It repeats the cliché with changing personnel. Art is not like that. It's general, ambiguous, suggestive, and then, if you're lucky, universal.'

Luther had no answers. He was always lost in a theoretical discussion and secretly could not see why Hedy Lamarr's ineffable presence up there needed any abstract bolstering. They went back to their dormitories. Luther's head was still filled with the movie goddess he lusted after. Yet he felt some pleasure thinking about the time he had spent beside the smart, ugly girl. Maud had said, ‘I'm going to work on an idea I have for a poem.' ‘About Lamarr?' ‘Jesus, no. I can't say what it's about. I'll use up the idea telling you about it.'

The poem was finished in time for Mile's final seminar meeting for the year. Maud put a carbon copy of it in Luther's mailbox. On the bottom she wrote, ‘Thank you for a fertile evening.' The poem was called ‘The Face Within.' Maud told Luther that Otto Mile had read it aloud, not once but twice, to the eight sturdy souls who had survived his sarcasm for a year. Only at the end did she have the courage to look at the poet as he read her poem. She hated to be in the room; she knew how red and blotched her skin must be. After class she discovered she had pulled the skin from around her thumbnail so violently that blood appeared at the cuticle. Mile had said, looking at her, she thought, but was not sure, perhaps with his grudging smile, ‘Well, you know, that's not too bad at all. I rather don't mind the idea of assuming that true beauty may always lie in the shallow layer under surface ugliness, the disguise, as you say, that beauty sometimes assumes to protect its fragility. Yes. I assume that's what you're suggesting here, Miss Noon?'

‘Something like that,' Maud mumbled.

‘I don't object to “found alive in the porous dark” and “breathing within the secret skein.”'

Maud thought she would collapse in embarrassment if he did not stop quoting her words to the class. It was even possible she might fall dead on the wooden table before her, the first Barnard junior to expire in a poetry class. Looking down at her fat feet in their stretched sandals she imagined it all, and later reported it to Luther: headlines in the
Daily News
, the confusion in the autopsy room at Saint Luke's Hospital, where her body would be sent for examination to determine the cause of death. The
Columbia Spectator
would publish the results: Barnard Girl Dead from Classroom Exposure.

The day before they were to leave the dorm for summer vacation, the three friends decided to celebrate the end of exams with a dinner party. ‘It's a good time for it,' Liz said, ‘before we have to clean up these filthy digs.' They put together a purse of change, and Minna was sent to do the shopping. Maud volunteered to cook on the illegal hot plate, but it turned out not to be necessary. Minna came back with chop suey in three cardboard containers from the Chinese Palace on Broadway and a cake from Horn and Hardart. Liz lit candles in two fat Chianti bottles. They put their bed pillows on the floor and sat there, eating slowly, a pace dictated by their unfamiliarity with the chopsticks that came with the food. Very hungry, they ate at first in silence, looking toward each other now and then, suggesting with meaningful glances their appreciation of the food and the company.

Maud looked at Minna, thinking how elegant were her classic features and perfect skin, how gracefully she sat, her shapely legs folded without strain in front of her, her long, sleek hair pulled back and tied with a silk scarf. Minna looked over at Liz, whose fingers were stained with some chemical she'd been using. Her hair was cut unevenly and short; she confessed she'd just given herself her summer cut. Liz watched Maud try to get her legs and large feet into a comfortable position. She herself was able to cross hers into the lotus position with ease.

Maud ate most of the chop suey. Minna picked at the crisp noodles, Liz hogged the rice, after urging it upon the others. ‘Enough for everyone,' she said. ‘Who says?' said Maud. ‘If I'd had twice the money I'd have bought twice as much,' said Minna, affecting an aggrieved tone. ‘Girls, girls,' said Liz. She cut the square orange cake into four large pieces and plopped them down on the paper plates, which were stained with mustard and soy sauce. No one seemed to mind. Minna sipped her tea and ignored the cake. Maud ate hers quickly and then inquired politely of Minna's intentions. ‘You will get fat, dear,' Minna said, handing her the cake. ‘I
am
fat,' said Maud, consuming the piece in three large bites. Liz ate half of hers and decided to save the rest for after the mammoth clean-up chore.

Full of food, they went on sitting, but now uncomfortably, on the floor, watching the candles sputter and melt down the sides of the wine bottles. They were enjoying the occasion. It was unusual for all three of them to be together. Maud stretched her legs out before her, barely missing a bottle. Already they were moving out and away from one another, from the messy, comfortable rooms. ‘The thing about going home,' Maud said, ‘is that there are enough chairs there to sit on.' ‘That
is
a consideration,' said Minna. She was leaving early the next morning for a month in New Bedford, where her aunt and uncle had a summer house. She would ride horseback with her cousin, swim in the pond, read and laze in the porch swing.

Maud's spirits fell. It always happened at the thought of the long bus ride back to New Baltimore, and the end of the classes she loved. ‘The house up there is too big for my mother and me. My brother and father seem still to be in it, but they don't take up any space. And I can't think of much to say to my mother. I suppose I'm lucky that I have to get a job in Ravena, so it won't be too bad.' Liz said, ‘It is strange, isn't it, how it feels going home, even if I've only been ninety blocks away from the place. You feel you don't fit in the space anymore. Either it's too small, and you feel as if you'd swelled up like a sponge, or it's too big, as you say, and you can't get comfortable anywhere.' Minna said, ‘You've outgrown it all, like a hermit crab with its shell, or something. People there resent that, no matter how much you try to hide it.' Liz said, ‘Not a hermit crab. You're thinking of the chambered nautilus. It's an organism that grows out of one room in its shell and moves on to a larger one.' ‘So,' said Maud. ‘How do you know that?' ‘From a poem, by Whittier or Emerson or Lowell, or one of those fellows.' Maud said, ‘It's true. You grow up, and away. People in New Baltimore think I talk oddly now,
affected
, the man I worked for last summer said.'