The Magician's Girl (23 page)

Lowell fell into the habit of coming to see Minna late every evening after he finished work in the Universal Joint. Sometimes she was not in when he rang her bell. He would go back down to the lobby, sit on the floor with his back to the windows and watch the elevators until she came home. She fell into the habit of looking around the lobby when she returned from a meeting, a lecture, a dinner party. They looked at each other, she nodded to him, he scrambled to his feet, dumped the
Des Moines Register
he usually read into the trash can and followed her upstairs in the next elevator. She left the door ajar. He waited and then walked slowly down the hall toward her room. She had never advised him of this caution, but he sensed she was not comfortable being seen with him. She refused to meet him for lunch at Pete's, where he usually had a sandwich and a beer with his roommates, or to allow him to accompany her, on his night off, to a student seminar on Iowa history he had said he would be interested in hearing. He well knew why he did not share her discretion. He was proud of her friendship, pleased she paid attention to him. He wanted to be able to display his connection to her in public.

Her secretiveness remained in force on the night of the seminar. She said no to his repeated requests to go with her. He was waiting in his usual place; they had their usual drinks at the window, safe because it looked out at the anonymous river. She told him about a paper she had heard that evening, about the end of the world and a group of Gypsies in Iowa in 1910.

‘It was late spring, in a cool May, I think, of that year, the time of the expected appearance of Halley's Comet. On the outskirts of Fort Dodge on a high hill, hundreds of Gypsies were gathered. For months word had spread from one Gypsy family to the next, even beyond the midwestern states, with instructions that they should travel to that hill in Iowa because on that day the world would come to an end. It would be brought about by the passage of the earth through the gases of the comet. The families arrived in their wagons, which were bare. They had rid themselves of almost all their possessions and had stopped eating the day before. The wagons, brightly colored the way Gypsies decorate them, were pulled into circles, in the middle of which they lit fires for warmth. The horses were tied to the rear wheels of wagons, small children slept in the wagons, and the older ones huddled with the adults, cold, fearful, silent, hungry. All night they waited. The comet appeared, a streak of yellow light in the black sky, and then disappeared. Still they waited. By noon they were famished. They realized that nothing was going to happen to the earth, or to them. They relit the campfires, got out the few battered pots that remained to them and cooked a late, silent, sparse lunch. Then they harnessed their horses, and saying nothing to one another about their grim expectations, they drove off in every direction.'

‘Jeepers, what an eerie story. Did the Gypsies ever ask who started the scare?' ‘I don't know. The writer of the paper was interested in the phenomenon of belief in the end of the world, so he had a number of other examples. Only this one occurred in Iowa.' Minna smiled at Lowell and said, ‘It was an interesting paper.' something about himself, which he rarely could bring himself to do, Lowell said, ‘I suppose I always think something important to me, something I do, is catastrophic, that it means the end of the world, in a way. But as time goes by, I guess you discover it rarely is.' He said nothing for a long time. Then he said, ‘I want more than anything to make love to you. Would you … consider it?'

At two in the morning, after Lowell had left, Minna lay still and nude under the blankets. She was afraid to move, afraid to dissipate the warm flush of pleasure that remained behind her closed eyes, in her thighs, in the flesh at the back of her arms and legs. The weight of Lowell's wiry, eager boy's body on her newly young breasts was still there; her stomach was flattened by his ethereal presence, by her sudden conviction while they were making love that they were contemporaries. She was still in the dark, having turned out the light when Lowell got into bed with her so he would not be aware of her blanched triangle of scant pubic hair and the signs of age at her neck, the loosened flesh in her hips and breasts. In the darkness, in the blank isolation of the wide bed, his hands taking the place of sight, he had sprung to life at once. Enlivened by the pressure of his young presence, she greeted his entry with moisture long absent from the unused region of her sex. His clear delight at the prospect, his wild and boyish expectations aroused, she imagined, by her lush, warm flesh in his hands brought their first encounter off quickly, too quickly for Minna's slower responses. But it did not matter: he was back, again and again, his practiced, careful preparations on her body, giving her time, waiting, using her with gentle hands and a loving mouth. Minna's eyes were full of tears at his wondrous concern: a boy who cared that much for what she felt. At the end, after their third encounter, she was ready for her part, her contribution to their pleasure. Their union was simultaneous and wondrous, an explosion that shook her body like a great wind and left it shaking with the aftershocks of joy.

Exhausted, they lay together, his head in the crook of her arm, his hand on her breast. ‘That was lovely. Fine. You are lovely. You were fine. I feel great.' There was a long silence. Minna savored his presence and the magnificent jolt into the past she had just experienced. Lowell stared into the dark and thought of his luck. Then he said, to cover the oppressive silence, ‘Tell me about some of the other papers you heard.' ‘Are you serious?' ‘I'm serious. If I can't go with you, I'd like to hear what went on.' ‘Well, someone gave a paper on the Cardiff Giant, who now resides in Iowa. Have you ever heard about him?' ‘Never.' ‘Well, he was said to have been discovered on a farm in upstate New York, in the town of Cardiff, in 1869. It was an enormous stone figure of a man and was said by the first witnesses to be a petrified man from biblical times. He was ten feet long and weighed over three thousand pounds. Some smart promoters took the figure to Syracuse, to Albany, and to Boston and charged thousands of people one dollar apiece to view it. Over the figure they strung a banner that read, “
GENESIS 6:4. THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH IN THOSE DAYS
.” After the promoters had made a fortune, a nosy scientist discovered that the giant was made of pure Iowa gypsum, and then it was revealed that the promoters had secretly buried him on that farm. But a faithful believer in the giant, convinced it was not a hoax, brought him back here and stored him in a warehouse. In 1934, someone got it out and exhibited it at a state fair.' ‘I wish I'd been around to see it. Where is he now?' ‘Somewhere around here, lying in state as a permanent exhibit in some private museum in Iowa, I forget where. So you can still see him, if you want.' Lowell turned on his side and put his head on her breast. She played with his hair, arranging it behind his ear. He said, ‘You're full of good stories.' ‘I'm a historian. That's what history is, in the main.' ‘I thought it was a collection of verifiable facts, with some interpretation thrown in.' ‘So far as fact can be rescued from a past that is overlaid with human fiction and forgetfulness, it is fact. In that way frauds, bizarre events and curiosities are interesting. They start as accepted fact and usually turn out to be invention and hoax that somehow have seeped into the official record. Some of them survive as fact, some of them are revealed to be fraud, like the Cardiff Giant. Pure but lovely fake, in the cause of theological evidence.' Lowell was silent. Minna thought he was thinking about the unreliability of history. But he said, ‘Could we do it again?' ‘Not tonight, my fine fellow. I'm tired. You'd better get dressed and move your jalopy from the front of the building.' ‘I hate to go. I like it here, in this bed, lying with you.' ‘I love having you here, but there is the maid who arrives early and … and … the disparity. What would be said of me?' ‘And of me.' ‘No, you're safe enough. But I would be—some monstrosity, when they talked about us.' Lowell laughed. In the near-dark Minna was moved by the charm of his face when he smiled. When his smile expanded into his light, lovely laugh, she wanted to say something wantonly endearing to him. But she held back, reminding herself that this was an impossible, ludicrous, incongruous love. She moved into a safer mode of discourse. ‘Mark Twain once said, “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” My friend Liz Becker used to quote this to me.' ‘The photographer? You know her?' ‘Yes, we were roommates in college. Do you know her work?' ‘I saw an exhibit in Des Moines of her pictures, showing retarded kids dancing in a field, fat idiot twins with jug ears, and Korean veterans with no arms and legs. Hard stuff to look at for very long.' ‘Yes, I suppose so, but there's a pride in those people, a sense of the way they value themselves.' ‘I suppose so.' ‘Get up, Lowell, my love. ‘I am. I am getting up.'

He turned on the bed light. Minna watched him dress, loving every jerky, boylike movement, every swift turn of his head. He bent over to kiss her. She wrapped her arm around his head to pull him down and kissed him hard. ‘Tomorrow?' she asked when she could breathe again. He said, ‘There's a good revival at the Bijou,
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon
. Liza Minnelli is in it. Want to see it—with me?' Minna laughed. ‘What a curious title. No, I think not. But you go, and come by later and tell me about it. What is tomorrow, Friday?' ‘Yes, all day,' he said, and smiled. ‘Fine,' she said. As he lifted the chain latch, she suddenly, stupidly, was moved to ask, ‘Lowell, tell me, have you ever heard of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby?' ‘No, what was that about?' ‘How about Gertrude Ederle? Do you know who she is?' ‘Nope. Who is she? What is this? Twenty Questions or something?' ‘No, I just wondered. I'm still thinking about history. Pretty ancient history by now. The olden times.' He said, ‘Good night,' and she said, ‘Good night. Tomorrow,' and turned out the light.

Alone, again in the dark, Minna stretched, pulled the blankets to her chin and lay still on her back, her arms folded beneath her head. ‘How old am I now? Seventeen, I believe. I have retreated to that age, psychically, physically. I am full of young desire, wet between my legs. Filled with pleasure at my body—and his. It's all real, I am an old fool, but I believe it is all real. I am the Cardiff Giant of Iowa history, an ancient gypsum figure passing myself off as Aphrodite, a pure, happy hoax. God help me.'

Lowell sat in Pete's having lunch with his roommate, Ivan Horn. Lowell started to talk, and went on and on. Horn asked him, ‘When are you going to shut up and let me say something?' But Lowell was deaf to anything but his own lyricism. ‘She's golden. Her hair, the little hairs on her arms are yellow and delicate. I've never seen a grown woman so, so elegant and yet so warm and well, lush, I suppose that's the word. Back east she's a full professor with tenure and all that, but with me she's not like that. She's … she's … I don't know, loving and gentle and her lust is as sweet and great as mine. Sometimes I think even greater.' ‘How old
is
she?' ‘I have no idea. I never asked her. I don't want to know, I guess. Much older than I am, I suppose. She had a son who fought in Vietnam. He died after that, I don't know how old he was. But what difference does it make? She's great, she likes making love, she's got soft hands. When I'm there, it's like I'm with a girl, a beautiful girl. She's good to me.'

Ivan tried to ask more identifying questions, but Lowell would only answer with elaborate myths of womanly beauty and fanciful accounts about his new discovery of the mysteries of love. He talked on, telling Ivan of his adoration. He detailed some of what they did together, what she offered him and what he gave her in return. He described a dialogue of love and service, passion and retribution. On and on he went until Ivan became bored by Lowell's wild, romantic narrative. ‘Where does all this take place? Who is she? What's her name? How old is she, really? What's wrong with telling me?' Lowell said, ‘No. It's a secret, she's very private. I don't believe my luck and I don't want to spoil it.' ‘I don't believe you,' said Ivan, thinking he might anger Lowell into revealing something. ‘It's all made up. Why would a beautiful woman professor want
you
?' ‘I don't know. I don't understand that any more than you do.' ‘It's all bunk. You're full of bull. You're having fantasies, daydreams. You're sick, fella.' Lowell smiled at Ivan, and picked up his check and his books. ‘You're probably right. I don't believe it myself. But that's the way it is.'

November 28, 1978. ‘Dear Minna: I was very glad to have your letter. I have been thinking of you out there in Iowa and yes, you are right. I have a vision of fields full of brown cornstalks, snow-encrusted pigs and a horizon that stretches everlastingly in every direction. I have now readjusted my interior lenses, even my preconceived negatives. I now picture you, still in your elegant clothes (do you still have
furs
?) and mink-topped boots hiking up a snowy Iowa City incline to meet your students at the summit.

‘You write of your new “unsuitable and unnatural youth.” Well, it may seem so to you, not to me. It is a commonplace of everyone's experience, I am sure, that one's friends always remain the age and shape they were in the time you were most together. Perhaps it is because we have not seen much of each other since that last year at college, that it comes as no surprise at all to me to hear that you are still young. I never thought of you as aging at all.

‘Maud, of course, is frozen in time for me. Even if she had lived, my recording eye remembers her in only one way, in her bed with the pongee spread pulled up over her big self on that afternoon after Luther had left her room and we had just come back from photographing—who? I don't remember who. Even the sight of her coffin in that church in Ravena cannot erase that memory, set in some kind of eternal aspic. Why is it that in all the time we lived together, I never photographed her (or you, for that matter)? Every time a biographer or writer comes by, I regret the omission publicly, but privately I rejoice, because that memory would have been wiped out by the photograph. I want one view of her: covered up on that narrow Barnard bed, for once without those distorting glasses, and a new, knowing little smile on her face.