The Professor of Desire (10 page)

At seventy, delicate, small-boned Garland still does have a youthful sort of charm, and a way about him at once worldly and boyish. His forehead is so fragile-looking it seems it could be cracked with the tap of a spoon, and his cheeks are the small, round, glazed cheeks of an alabaster Cupid. Above the open shirt a pale silk scarf is tied around his neck, almost completely hiding from view the throat whose creases are the only sign of his age. In that strangely youthful face all there is to speak of sorrow are the eyes, soft, brown, and awash with feeling even while his crisp accent refuses to betray the faintest hint of grief.

“Poor Derek was killed, you know.” Helen did not know. She puts her hand to her mouth. “But
how?
Derek,” she says, turning to me, “was an associate in Donald's firm. A very silly man sometimes, very muddled and so on, but such a good heart, really—” My dead expression sends her quickly back to Garland. “Yes,” he says, “he was a very kind person, and I was devoted to him. Oh, he could talk and go on, but then you just had to tell him, ‘Derek, that's enough now,' and he'd shut up. Well, two Chinese boys thought that he hadn't given them enough money, so they kicked him down a flight of stairs. Broke Derek's neck.” “How terrible. How awful. Poor, poor man. And what,” asks Helen, “has happened to all his animals?” “The birds are gone. Some sort of virus wiped them out the week after he was killed. The rest Madge adopted. Madge adopted them and Patricia looks after them. Otherwise, those two won't have anything to do with each other.” “Again?” “Oh yes. She can be a good bitch, that Madge, when she wants to be. Chips did her house over for her a year ago. She nearly drove the poor boy crazy with her upstairs bath.” Helen tries yet again to bring me into the company of the living: she explains that Madge and Patricia, who own houses down along the bay from Donald, were stars of the British cinema in the forties. Donald rattles off the names of the movies they made. I nod and nod, just like an agreeable person, but the smile I make a stab at presenting him does not begin to come off. The look Helen has for me does, however, quite effectively. “And how does Madge look?” Helen asks him. “Well, when she makes up, she still looks wonderful. She ought never to wear a bikini, of course.” I say, “Why?” but no one seems to hear me. The evening ends with Garland, by now a little drunk, holding Helen's hand and telling me about a famous masquerade party held in a jungle clearing on a small island in the Gulf of Siam owned by a Thai friend of his, half a mile out to sea from the southern finger of Thailand. Chips, who designed Helen's costume, had put her all in white, like Prince Ivan in
The Firebird.
“She was ravishing. A silk Cossack shirt and full silk trousers gathered into soft silver kid boots, and a silver turban with a diamond clasp. And around her waist a jeweled belt of emeralds.” Emeralds? Bought by whom? Obviously by Karenin. Where's the belt now, I wonder? What do you have to return and what do you get to keep? You certainly get to keep the memories, that's for sure. “A little Thai princess burst into tears at the very sight of her. Poor little thing. She'd come wearing everything but the kitchen stove and expected people to swoon. But the one who looked like royalty that night was this dear girl. Oh, it was quite a to-do. Hasn't Helen ever shown you the photographs? Don't you have photographs, dear?” “No,” she says, “not any more.” “Oh, I wish I'd brought mine. But I never thought I'd see you—I didn't even know who I was when I left home. And remember the little boys?” he says, after a long sip from his brandy glass. “Chips, of course, got all the little native boys stripped down, with just a little coconut shell around their how-dee-dos, and Christmas tinsel streaming down around their necks. What a sight they were when the wind blew! Well, the boat landed, and there were these little chaps to greet the guests and to lead us up a torch-lined path to the clearing where we had the banquet. Oh, my goodness, yes—Madge came in the dress that Derek wore for his fortieth birthday party. Never would spend money, if she could help it. Always angry about something, but mostly it's the money everyone's stealing from her. She said, ‘You can't just go to one of these things, you have to have something wonderful to wear.' So I said to her, only as a joke, mind you, ‘Why don't you come in Derek's dress? It's white chiffon covered with Diamonte and with a long train. And cut very low in the back. You'll look lovely in it, darling.' And Madge said, ‘How could it be cut low in the back, Donald? How in the world could Derek have worn it? What about the hair on his back, and all that disgusting rubbish?' And I said, ‘Oh, darling, he only shaves once every three years.' You see,” Garland says to me, “Derek was rather the old Guards officer type—slim, elegant, very pink-complexioned, altogether the most extraordinarily hairless person. Oh, there's a photograph of Helen you must see, David. I must send it to you. It's Helen being led from the boat by these enchanting little native boys streaming Christmas tinsel. With her long legs and all that silk clinging to her, oh, she was absolute perfection. And her face—her face in that photograph is classic. I must send it to you; you must have it. She was the most ravishing thing. Patricia said about Helen, the first moment she laid eyes on her—that was at lunch at my house, and the darling girl still had the most ordinary little clothes—but Patricia said then she had star quality, that without a doubt she could be a film star. And she could have been. She still has it. She always will.” “I know,” replies the schoolmaster, silently swishing his cane.

After he leaves, Helen says, “Well, there's no need to ask what you thought of him, is there?” “It's as you said: he adores you.” “Really, just what has empowered you to sit in judgment of other people's passions? Haven't you heard? It's a wide, wide world; room for everybody to do whatever he likes. Even you once did what you liked, David. Or so the legend goes.” “I sit in judgment of nothing. What I sit in judgment of, you wouldn't believe.” “Ah, yourself. Hardest on yourself. Momentarily I forgot.” “I sat, Helen, and I listened and I don't remember saying anything about the passions or preferences or private parts of anybody from here to Nepal.” “Donald Garland is probably the kindest man alive.” “Fine with me.” “He was always there when I needed someone. There were weeks when I went to live in his house. He protected me from some terrible people.”
Why didn't you just protect yourself by staying away from them?
“Good,” I say; “you were lucky and that was great.” “He likes to gossip and to tell tales, and of course he got a little maudlin tonight—look what he's just been through. But he happens to know what people are, just how much and just how little—and he is devoted to his friends, even the fools. The loyalty of those kind of men is quite wonderful, and not to be disparaged by anyone. And don't you be misled. When he is feeling himself he can be like iron. He can be unmovable, and marvelous.” “I am sure he was a wonderful friend to you.” “He still is!” “Look, what are you trying to tell me? I don't always get the gist of things these days. Rumor has it my students are going to give
me
the final exam, to see if they've been able to get anything through my skull. What are we talking about now?” “About the fact that I am still a person of consequence to quite a few people, even if to you and the learned professors and their peppy, dowdy little wives I am beneath contempt. It's true I'm not clever enough to bake banana bread and carrot bread and raise my own bean sprouts and ‘audit' seminars and ‘head up' committees to outlaw war for all time, but people still look at me, David, wherever I go. I could have married the kind of men who
run
the world! I wouldn't have had to look far, either. I hate to have to say such a vulgar, trashy thing about myself, but it's what you're reduced to saying to someone who finds you repulsive.” “I don't find you repulsive. I'm still awestruck that you chose me over the president of ITT. How can someone unable even to finish a little pamphlet on Anton Chekhov feel anything but gratitude to be living with the runner-up for Queen of Tibet? I'm honored to have been chosen to be your hair shirt.” “It's debatable who is the hair shirt around here. I am repugnant to you, Donald is repugnant to you—” “Helen, I neither liked the man nor disliked the man. I did my level fucking best. Look, my best friend as long ago as college was practically the only queer
there.
I had a queer for a friend in 1950—before they even existed! I didn't know what one was, but I had one. I don't care
who
wears
whose
dress—oh, fuck it, forget it, I quit.”

Then on a Saturday morning late in the spring, just as I have sat down at my desk to begin marking exams, I hear the front door of our apartment open and shut—and finally the dissolution of this hopeless misalliance has begun. Helen is gone. Several days pass—hideous days, involving two visits to the San Francisco morgue, one with Helen's demure, bewildered mother, who insists on flying up from Pasadena and bravely coming along with me to look at the broken body of a drowned “Caucasian” woman, age thirty to thirty-five—before I learn her whereabouts.

The first telephone call—informing me that my mate is in a Hong Kong jail—is from the State Department. The second call is from Garland, who adds certain lurid and clarifying details: she had gone from the Hong Kong airport directly by taxi to the well-known ex-lover's mansion in Kowloon. He is the English Onassis, I am told, son and heir of the founder of the MacDonald-Metcalf Line, and king of the cargo routes from the Cape of Good Hope to Manila Bay. At Jimmy Metcalf's home, she had not even been allowed past the servant posted at the door, not after her name had been announced to Metcalf's wife. And when, some hours later, she left her hotel to tell the police of the plan made some years earlier by the president of MacDonald-Metcalf to have this wife run down by a car, the officer on duty at the police station made a telephone call and subsequently a packet of cocaine was found in her purse.

“What happens now?” I ask him. “My God, Donald, now what?”

“I get her out,” says Garland.

“Can that be done?”

“It can.”

“How?”

“How would you think?”

Money? Blackmail? Girls? Boys? I don't know, I don't care, I won't ask again.
Whatever works, do it.

“The question is,” says Garland, “what happens when Helen is free? I can, of course, make her quite comfortable right here. I can provide her with all she needs to pull herself together again, and to go on. I want to know what you think is for the best. She cannot afford to be caught in between again.”

“In between what? Donald, this is all a little confusing. I have no idea what's best, frankly. Tell me, please, why didn't she go to you when she got there?”

“Because she got it in her head to see Jimmy. She knew that if she'd come first to me I would never have let her go anywhere near him. I know the man, better than she does.”

“And you knew she was coming?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The night you were here for dinner.”

“No, no, my dear boy. Only a week ago. But she was to have cabled. I would have been at the airport to meet her. But she did it Helen's way.”

“She shouldn't have,” I say dumbly.

“The question is, does she come back to you or stay with me? I'd like you to tell me which you think is best.”

“You're sure she's getting out of jail, you're sure the charges will be dropped—”

“I wouldn't have phoned to say what I'm saying otherwise.”

“What happens then … well, it's up to Helen, isn't it? That is, I'd have to talk to her.”

“But you can't. I'm lucky I could. We're lucky she isn't in irons already and halfway to Malaysia. Our police chief is not the most charitable of men, except on his own behalf. And your rival is not Albert Schweitzer.”

“That is apparent.”

“She used to tell me, ‘It's so difficult to go shopping with Jimmy. If I see something I like, he buys me twelve.' She used to say to him, ‘But, Jimmy, I can only wear one at a time.' But Jimmy never understood, Mr. Kepesh. He does everything by twelves.”

“Okay, I believe that.”

“I don't want anything further to go wrong for Helen—ever,” says Garland. “I want to know exactly where Helen stands, and I want to know now. She has been through years of hell. She was a marvelous, dazzling creature, and life has treated her hideously. I won't allow either one of you to torture her again.”

But I can't tell him where she stands—I don't know where
I
stand. First, I say, I must reach Helen's family and calm their fears. He will hear from me.

Will he? Why?

As though I have just reported that her daughter has been detained by a club meeting after school, Helen's mother says, politely, “And when will she be home?”

“I don't know.”

But this does not appear to faze the adventuress's mother. “I do hope you'll keep me informed,” she says, brightly.

“I will.”

“Well, thank you for calling, David.”

What else can the mother of an adventuress do but thank people for calling and keeping her informed?

And what does the husband of an adventuress do while his wife is in jail in the Far East? Well, at dinnertime I prepare an omelette, make it very carefully, at just the right heat, and serve it to myself with a little chopped parsley, a glass of wine, and a slice of buttered toast. Then I take a long hot shower. He doesn't want me to torture her; all right, I won't torture her—but best of all, I won't torture myself. After the shower I decide to get into my pajamas and to do my night's reading in bed, all by myself. No girls, not yet. That will come in its own sweet time. Everything will. Can it be? I am back where I was six years ago, the night before I ditched my sensible date and took Hong Kong Helen home from that party. Except that now I have my job, I have my book to complete, and I seem to have this comfortable apartment, so charmingly and tastefully decorated, all to myself. What is Mauriac's phrase? “To revel in the pleasures of the unshared bed.”