The Prince of West End Avenue (19 page)

"They might be more understanding than you think."

"You kidding me? Anyway, I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Dad'd insist on an abortion for sure, probably in Siberia."

So that avenue is blocked, at least for the time being. If all else fails, Blum can be forced to make some kind of financial settlement. But that is for later. In the meantime, Mandy is calm, almost blithe, already suffused (or do I imagine it?) with a maternal glow, content to leave her problem in the hands of her "Grampus," as she has taken to calling me, a man who has failed miserably, again and again, to bring order to his own life.

teeth shone between the fleshy lips. "If I were you, as a simple precaution, not to admit to more than I know, but I can guess your reason for concern, and that's why I'm prepared to advise you, since it can't hurt one way or the other, to think about, at least theoretically, the possibility of beginning to work, for a while anyway—you know, a word to the wise—with, in theatrical parlance, one of her understudies."

One of her understudies indeed! Lottie Grabscheidt has only one understudy: Hermione Perlmutter. It's too late to train anyone else.

After some huffing and puffing, Hamburger admitted that he had the Manhattan telephone number of Hermione's daughter. He brought his address book to my room and stood by me anxiously while I phoned.

"Ms. Morgenbesser's residence."

"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Perlmutter, please."

"One moment, sir."

"She's there," I mouthed to Hamburger, who looked faint.

A different voice: "My mother's resting right now, but I can give her a message. Who'll I say is calling?"

I told her.

There was a pause. "All right, I knew it was only a matter of time. Listen, I've already spoken to my lawyers. You creeps haven't got a case, so why don't you just piss off and give my mother some peace?"

"But Mrs. Morgenbesser—"

"Ms. Got that, asshole?"

"Ms. Morgenbesser—"

"You've got your autograph back, right? So why don't you just take a flying ruck?"

"But all that's forgotten. It never happened. A mistake on my part. We want your mother to come back to the Emma Lazarus."

A pause; then, quietly, "Oh."

"The Old Vic depends on her. We want her to play Gertrude."

"Oh."

"It's an understudy's dream."

"Perhaps I was a little hasty. You have to understand, she's very upset. I can't bear that."

"Naturally, naturally. You're her daughter, after all. Perfectly understandable."

"Look, I can't promise anything. I'll talk to her."

"That's all I ask." Hamburger was tugging at my sleeve and whispering in my ear. "And tell her Benno sends his best." Another tug: "His very best." Liao.

"Ciao." I hung up.

Hamburger looked sheepish. "If you can make such a sacrifice, Korner," he said, "I can swallow my pride. Your need is greater than mine."

So now we wait. The mood in the company is glum. As for me, I call upon my depleted reserves of stoicism. In all this, there is Purpose.

A TOUCHING SCENE in the lobby this morning. Hamburger and I were standing by the bulletin board; he was trying to dissuade me from canceling the production. The notice was in my hand.

"You mustn't do it, Korner."

"What do you want from me? Osric can go. The Assistant Gravedigger we can do without. But Hamlet without Gertrude is an impossibility."

We were whispering. The lobby's sedentary leaned toward us.

"But after all the work—the weeks, the months, your own high hopes?"

"You think I want to cancel? Perhaps we can manage some sort of program, recitations, excerpts from a few scenes. I Solisti can help out in the intervals."

"Wonderful. A regular Flo Ziegfeld. Maybe the Red Dwarf could juggle a few plates. You I wouldn't have put down for a quitter. In those lonely days, Korner, when I championed you for the directorship, little did I think it would mean the dissolution of the company."

"Not the company, the production. Besides, why should you care so much? You were never the keenest member. 'It's only a play, Otto': how many times have you said that to

me

"It's you I'm thinking of, and the others."

From the sedentary there was a sudden stillness, an almost palpable quietude, as if they were sitting on the brink of the extraordinary. We stopped our bickering and turned.

Through the open portal, accompanied by a younger woman of Wagnerian massiveness, a woman swathed in an ankle-length mink coat, came Hermione Perlmutter. She was back!

As soon as she saw us she stopped, confused, timorous, a little round figure in a jaunty naval officer's overcoat cut mod-ishly short and adorned with shiny brass buttons. Tilted back on her head, roundness upon roundness, was a flat flying saucer of a hat, rather like those worn by Italian priests, navy blue, from which a ribbon of the same hue depended. Eyes abased, she took a shy, a tiny, step forward.

The play of emotions on Hamburger's face was something to see. He, too, took a step forward. From his throat issued a small cry.

"Benno!"

"Hannah!"

Suddenly they were running to one another. He caught her in his arms, leaning forward over their stomachs. There in

the lobby they kissed and embraced. When such a mutual pair and such a twain can do't, they stand up peerless.

"Oh, Hannah!"

"Oh, Benno!"

The sedentary were all atwitter: "Worth the price of admission"; "Better than a movie"; "A person with a heart of stone would melt."

Hamburger shook hands with Lucille Morgenbesser and relieved her of her mother's overnight bag. The daughter is a formidable woman whose gums figure prominently when she smiles. Hamburger brought mother and daughter over and introduced Ms. Morgenbesser to me.

"Mr. Korner," said La Perlmutter, "I am quite overcome with embarrassment. What can I possibly say?"

"You can say you're ready to take on a starring role in Hamlet!"

Hamburger, almost bursting with happiness, gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. "But first, champagne! I'll ask one of the porters to go out."

For the benefit of the sedentary, I raised my voice. "When you offered to have my Rilke letter framed, Mrs. Perlmutter, I didn't expect such elegance. I must reimburse you."

She thought at first that I was mocking her. Her little hands flew up to cover her eyes. "Oh, oh."

"No, I insist."

She peeked at me between her fingers, was reassured, blushed, smiled. "Not at all, it's a present."

Lucille Morgenbesser glanced at her watch. "If you don't need me anymore, Mother, I'd better run."

"But what about the champagne?" said Hamburger.

"Another time."

"She's lecturing at the New School," said La Perlmutter proudly. " 'Sappho, Leviticus, and the Limits of Faith.' Run, darling, run."

I tore up the notice canceling the performance and put the pieces in my pocket.

The return of Hermione Perlmutter has given new life to the company, a shot of adrenaline that today carried us through rehearsals like seasoned actors. We were running through act 4, scene 5, 215 lines packed with dramatic tension and the most subtle interplay of individual emotions. From the opening line, Gertrude's "I will not speak with her," it was impossible not to sense the electricity in the air. La Perlmutter, in a quilted red dressing gown, might have been preparing for the role all her life. Freddy Blum abandoned his histrionics, his melodramatic posturings, and caught the very life of a king at bay, found out, inwardly squirming, but through sheer force of will putting up a facade of imperturbability. Even Milos Pasternak, the Messenger, who hitherto had delivered his dozen lines in monotone and in the disquieting accents of the Lower East Side circa 1910, conveyed convincing alarm—"Save yourself, my lord!"—as he fell upon one knee before the king, pointing to the wings as if the Furies, not merely Laertes, were about to issue from them.

But of Tosca Dawidowicz I lack words to praise. Her talent, dormant until this afternoon, burst into sudden blaze. Since the Prince does not appear in this scene, I was able to watch her performance from the third row center. And I confess that I was entranced, transported to that unhappy court at Elsinore, the Emma Lazarus forgotten.

Tosca Dawidowicz was Ophelia. One did not see an obese, embittered old woman in a gray sweatsuit, her face in profile like a heavy crescent moon, nor yet the large pink curlers marching like a plastic army in tight ranks across her head. One saw instead the poor demented girl, Hamlet's "most beautified Ophelia," bereft of her sanity by blows too powerful for her

gentle spirit to withstand: "There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. . . . There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." That look of tender bewilderment as she distributed the flowers, that hesitant gesture as if she half feared a blow in return, that exquisite shudder, as if for a second she had been granted respite from madness and insight into the bitter truth, these were moments to treasure. Not Sinsheimer, not Lipschitz, not I, no one but Tosca Dawidowicz could claim credit for this triumph. The spell was broken only when the scene came to an end. "My bladder's about to burst! Me first for the little girl's room." The whole company applauded her as she ran for the wings.

Yes, this was a moment to savor, and I am proud of our little troupe. Still, the excitement threatened to get out of hand, with Hamburger, whose drinking perhaps bears watching, even calling again for champagne. I was forced to remind them that much hard work still lay ahead, with little enough time left in which to complete it. "Just the same, ladies and gentlemen," I added, "I think we have here a winner!" Shouts of jubilation and raucous back-slappings.

THINKING OVER the scene later, and remembering mad Ophelia's wistful songs, I was put in mind of Mandy Dattner:

By Gis and by Saint Charity,

Alack and fie for shame,

Young men will do't if they come to't—

By Cock, they are to blame.

Precisely so: by "cock" they are to blame. And if Freddy Blum cannot qualify as a young man, Ralph Comyns can. I determined then and there to have a few exploratory words with the reluctant doctor.

I found him in his office, a bottle of Dr. Pepper in his hand and his feet upon the desk. He was leafing through a copy of Geriatrics Today.

"You guys give me a pain in the neck," he said genially, putting his feet down. "To what do I owe what, knowing you, you probably think I should regard as this honor?" He gestured at me with one ear of his stethoscope, a visible question mark, a concrete metaphor. "If you want me for the play, you'll have to see my agent."

I pretended to a slight sore throat.

He took a look. "Seems fine to me, you old goldbricker, pink as a baby's bottom. Beautiful tonsillectomy, they really knew their business in those days. Suck a lemon drop."

"How's Lottie Grabscheidt?"

"Coming along nicely. Tomorrow she can have visitors. You can toddle along there and bother her instead of me."

"But she'll be well enough to take part in the play?" In fact, given today's wonderful teamwork on stage, it occurred to me that we would be better off without her. La Perlmutter, excellent in herself, has proved a catalyst to excellence in others. (Of course, I wish La Grabscheidt no harm.)

"That I wouldn't count on," he said. "Patience is the operable word." He winked and narrowed his eyes. "No pun intended." He squinted at me. "You look a bit gray, now that I look at you. As long as you're here consuming my valuable time, I might as well give a listen." He adjusted his stethoscope. "Strip to the waist."

I began to undress. "You should take a look at Miss Dattner when you get a chance."

"Why, you old goat, whatever are you suggesting?"

" 'She has of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all her mirth.' The effervescence is gone. She sighs a lot and seems sometimes on the brink of tears. As a layman, I would diagnose a case of unhappiness in love, a broken heart. But a doctor

might think differently. It might be something truly organic, maybe a virus, a low-grade fever."

He looked thoughtful.

"She's a beautiful girl, a good family, too, pillars of the community, Shaker Heights. But she's all alone here in New York. I worry about her."

He seemed distracted.

"The stethoscope, Doctor."

"What? Oh, yes." He listened back and front while I coughed. He went through the familiar routine twice. "Take my advice and ease up some, get out more, walking's good for you. And make proper use of the siesta hour. I'm going to give you a Valium, but I want to see you again in three days. You can get dressed now." He helped me on with my undershirt.

"You're not married, Doctor?"

"You know I'm not."

"A doctor should always be married. It's an old truth still valid today. It prevents loose talk."

"Talk?" He looked at me sharply.

"Well, in the course of his work a doctor has to examine his female patients, some of them cursed with active imaginations. He has to probe all their hidden secrets; their very sacraria must yield to his careful scrutiny."

He laughed. "If my female patients are concerned about their sacraria, as you put it, they have more to fear from Freddy Blum than from me."

"One reads such odd things in the papers."

"Sacraria! Boy-o-boy!"

"The trouble is, the gossip is all in the other direction."

"What does that mean?"

I shrugged. "You're the doctor."

The blood drained from his face, and the hand on his stethoscope trembled. "They think I'm gay, is that it?"

"In a place like this, naturally tongues wag. For some it is their only exercise."

"They think I'm a homo, a queer!"

"Please, Doctor, calm yourself, the last thing I wanted was to upset you. Only, a word to the wise." I buttoned my jacket and left him standing there, rooted to the spot but shaken, I think it fair to say, out of his complacency.

Another seed is planted. May it find fertile soil.

our old acquaintance from Zurich days, had returned to Berlin at the beginning of 1917, where he took over the reins of an incipient Dada "government." The "Dada bomb," as Arp was later to call it, had already exploded by the time I arrived, penniless, my flirtation at the skirts of Swiss literary journalism ignominiously over, my tail between my legs, obedient to my father's summons and my mother's importunings.

With Dada in Berlin I, of course, had nothing whatever to do. In any case, the tone of Dada here had a stridency that cast the Dada of Zurich into a tame, almost cozy light. If in Zurich Dada had merely toyed childishly with politics, in Berlin it embraced politics with lascivious intent, it swallowed politics, it spewed politics. In Zurich Dada had scarcely shaken Order from its foundations; in Berlin the foundations of Order were gone. From all this I was by temperament and circumstances aloof.

After the jubilation attending the return of the prodigal, my father took me into his study for a "serious talk, a man-toman exchange of ideas." It was time, he said, for me to take the future into my own hands. The nation faced stern times ahead, times that would demand of its sons the uttermost of their courage, more perhaps than in the war itself. Today the battleground was outside our windows. "Discordant elements" strove to tear the beloved Fatherland asunder. They must not succeed. And they would not, if only young men like me, "true patriots," would roll up our sleeves and from the fallen masonry, the rubble, of the old order build the firm foundations of the new, learning from past mistakes but always cleaving to past achievements. In my case, this noble mission required me to enter the family firm. In fact, he said, that had always been his hope, that a new generation would prepare to take over the helm. My future career, it seemed, was decided.

Father embraced me. "Come, Otto," he said kindly, "let us seal your determination, our agreement, like gentlemen: a

handshake and a thimbleful of cognac." We shook hands. The decanter stood ready, glinting on the sideboard. He poured; we drank. The ladies waited for us anxiously in the drawing room. "It's settled," said my father. "He's joining me in the office on Monday morning." My mother and my aunt clapped their hands, delighted; Lola hung adoringly on my arm.

And so I entered the Korner Office Equipment and Stationery Company, moving steadily through the various departments until my father was confident I had a "firm grasp of affairs." In time I traveled abroad on the firm's business, mostly to England but also to Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the fragments of the old empire. Despite the treacherous economic currents of those times, Korner's prospered.

When I left for Switzerland in 1915, my cousin Meta had been a child, only ten years old, a little girl in pigtails and dirndl. When next I saw her, in 1922, what a transformation! She had blossomed into a beauty, tall, slender, with dark tresses, a creature to inspire the Pre-Raphaelites. The blush came easily to her cheeks, the smile to her lips. At once she became for me the image of maidenly purity, the obverse of Magda Damrosch, whom now I could remember only disheveled, sweating, in her kimono, Egon Selinger naked on her bed. I was ashamed of the comparison, which was, I thought, an insult to my cousin, but it came unbidden to my mind, the two young women side by side. It marked perhaps the beginning of my healing.

We met again during a family holiday in Berchtesgaden. Only my sister and her husband were missing; the newlyweds were in Venice. I had at first been reluctant to go. Having myself ignominiously sat out the war, I was ashamed to face Meta's brother Joachim, a wounded and decorated hero. He put me at my ease at once. "As you see, Otto, like you I am beginning to lose parts of myself." He had been in the mountain sunshine for a week or more by the time I arrived and was already deeply tanned. He wore the patch over his missing eye

with a certain dash, his badge of honor, and despite his wooden leg and cane he got about nimbly enough, masking his pain, the wince that occasionally transfigured his handsome face, as best he could. Of the bitterness that was in later years to overwhelm him there was as yet no sign.

The three of us—Meta, Joachim, and I—got along famously. It was a halcyon time. Joachim had a powerful open touring car, specially equipped for his needs, in which he drove us at reckless speed through the mountains, scattering dust and chickens in the hamlets, the dogs barking, the peasants shaking their fists, the wind whipping Meta's hair, our laughter carried away behind us by the wind. We swam in cool, clear lakes, picnicked on their margins, talked endlessly of books, of music, of the future of the world.

Sometimes in the evenings, the family gathered around, Meta would play the piano for us. She played well, a delightful frown of concentration on her face. My mother transferred her Schiller-reading evenings to Berchtesgaden. We all took turns with the well-loved passages, discussed the works. Once Meta embarrassed me by taking out a copy of Days of Darkness, Nights of Light and insisting on reading from it: "There are other poets, after all." My father snored gently through the recitation, a handkerchief over his face, but the applause at the end woke him up: "What? What?" Afterward Meta brought the book over to me, where I sat withdrawn in the shadows. She held it to her heart. "Inscribe it for me."

"What shall I write?"

She thought for a moment. " 'To my beautiful cousin Meta, Fondly, To to.' "

"What vanity! Here," I said, scribbling. " 'To my mischievous cousin Meta, With much love, Otto.' "

She bent and kissed me gently, a feather touch, on the cheek, snatched the book from my hands, and ran from the room. My mother and Meta's mother nodded at one another,

smiling. They knew what they knew, but for my part I believed my feelings merely cousinly.

Nevertheless, Meta and I were married on July 16, 1923. She was eighteen; I was twenty-seven.

Did I love her? I was proud of her beauty, of her purity, of her culture. I was comfortable with her. It was plain that she adored me, incomprehensibly but certainly. At times her ardor embarrassed me. But as for love—well, I suspect that in such matters the balance is seldom even.

KUNSTLER KNOWS everything!

This morning I had an appointment with Dr. Comyns. Nothing alarming, the usual thing: constipation, headaches, and so on. The pendulum has swung back all the way. Occasionally he prescribes something that works, it's worth a try; but "fundamentally," as Hamburger says, Comyns believes in stewed fruit. The waiting room outside the office is tiny, claustrophobic. Kunstler was there before me, reading a magazine, his legs stretched out, filling the space.

"Come in," he said, as if he had sent for me. "Sit down. The doctors backed up, a new girl, a fresh morsel for Blum." Already he has an insider's knowing breeziness of tone. "Beautiful day, not too cold."

"I haven't been out yet," I said.

"Perhaps when you're finished here. We could go for a walk in the park."

"Unfortunately, I have many things to do."

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the muffled murmur of Dr. Comyns's voice well launched upon a flood tide of tangled sentences.

"Have you been back?" he said.

There could be only one meaning. "Never."

"They have a program there, you know, to bring back

Berliners for a visit, the refugees from Hitler's time, all expenses paid."

"Very decent of them."

"I went last year. It was something."

I said nothing.

"I was lucky, I got out just under the wire, in April 1939." He sighed. "Those were terrible times, terrible. Sometimes I think it couldn't have happened, I must have dreamed it, a nightmare. I had a cousin, on my mother's side, Sonya, my only relative. She got out herself in 'thirty-eight, right after Kristallnacht. Sonya sent for me from Mexico City. By then she was living with a Mexican film producer, Iago Colon, perhaps you've heard of him? No? In any case, we didn't stay there long. She married a Texan from Amarillo, a salesman in automobile accessories. He had one fabulous asset: he was an American citizen. People were desperate in those days, I don't have to tell you. Just the same, he got a bargain, she stuck it out with him. Sonya was a real beauty, easygoing, a wonderful cook. She sang, too, a soprano, could have become a professional. So that's how I came to America.

"I've painted my pictures in every one of the states except Hawaii and Alaska, can you beat that? Of course, I didn't set out to make a record, but I traveled around a lot, mostly New Mexico and New York, the Taos-Greenwich Village axis, in the old heroic days. But also Colorado, Oregon, Louisiana. After I'd racked up about fourteen states, I thought what the heck, I'll try for the whole shebang. Some places—Nebraska, for example, or Georgia—I stayed maybe only a weekend. In New Mexico I owned a burro, two dogs, and a cat. Also I had a wife, but that's another story. Seen any of my work?"

"I think not. But I can't pretend to know anything of modern art."

He grinned. "But I bet you know what you like."

"I am not a Philistine, Mr. Kunstler."

"Poker not your game?"

"No."

"Pinochle?"

"An occasional hand of bridge."

"Everyone's got a story to tell, I guess."

To this, of course, I made no reply.

"There used to be a Korner Stationery Company on the Wilhelmine Platz, an old, old firm, from the nineteenth century at least, a giant of a place, 'By Appointment,' even. Any relation?"

"It was my family's. My father ran it until they took it away from him. I, too, worked there."

"So that's it! And do you by any chance remember a Klaus Kunstler, a chief clerk? He died in 1932."

"Of course."

"That was my father."

So here it was at last, the past, sitting sprawled before me. In Gerhardt Kunstler I could now see the lineaments of the father. But Old Kunstler had been an erect, a punctilious man, formal in bearing and utterance, my father's highly respected right-hand man, kindly but firm in business matters, his advice—and surely correctly—always outweighing my own. And now I remembered him earlier, too, when I was a child, and his miraculous waistcoat that always had a boiled sweet in it for me.

"Well, well, well," said Kunstler. "I know all about you. The grand doings of the Family Korner were the staple of dinner conversation in our more humble home. Your father had promised mine that there would be a place for me at Korner's. That's what my father wanted, our own family tradition of service. But I had other notions. Eight-thirty to six-thirty and nine to one on Saturdays was not my idea of how to live. 'Thank you, madam,' At your service, sir.'' :

"Your father was very kind to me."

"He didn't have much choice, I would say."