27 August, 1924 2 страница

'Great, great. ' He was already a little distant, and I thought he was thinking again of the grievances given him by his twenty-year-old geniuses. 'I saw Tom Flanagan on the street the other day, ' he said. 'He looked really strange. He looked about forty years old. That guy's nuts. It doesn't make any sense, what he's doing. He's working some toilet over in Brooklyn called the Red Hat Lounge. Magic is going to come back when Glenn Miller climbs out of the Channel. When Miss America has. . . '

'Bad teeth? '

'A mastectomy, ' Sherman said.

On Saturday night there was as much of a lull in the after-dinner conversation as Sherman ever permitted in the days before he moved to Los Angeles. The famous folksinger seated to my left had wiped food from his beard and described a million-dollar drug deal just concluded by two other famous folk singers; the woman with Bob, a blond with the English country-house good looks to which he was always attracted, had opened a bottle of cognac; Sherman was leaning on one elbow, picking bits of bacon out of what was left of the salad.

'My friend across the table wants to hear a story, ' he said.

'Great, ' said the folksinger.

'He wants to be reminded of the famous Lake the Snake, and how he welcomed me to his school. On our first day we had to fill in registration forms, and when it asked for my favorite subject, I put down 'Finance. '' The girl and the singer laughed: Sherman had always been good at telling stories. 'Lake the Snake was the headmaster, and when a fat little shit named Whipple who taught history showed him my form, he kept me back in his office after he made his welcome-to-the-school speech. Another little kid was kept behind with me, and he sent him out into the hall. I was practically shitting my pants. Lake the Snake looked like an Ivy League undertaker. Or a high-class hired killer. He was sitting at his desk just smiling at me. It was the kind of smile you'd give somebody just before you cut his balls off.

''Well, ' he said. 'I see you are a comedian, Sherman. I don't really think that will do. No, it won't do at all. But I'll give you a chance. Make me laugh. Say something funny. ' He braced his hands behind his head. I couldn't think of a single word. 'What a pathetic little boy you are, Mr. Sherman, ' he said. 'What is the motto of this school? No answer? Alis volai propriis. He flies by his own wings. I presume that now and again he touches ground too. But he does fly, the kind of boy we want here. He doesn't look for cheap laughs and gutter satisfactions. Since you are too much of a coward to speak up, I'll tell you something. It's a story about a boy. Listen carefully.

''Once, a long time ago, this certain boy, who was, let me see, fourteen years old, left his warm cozy little house and went out into the wide world. He thought he was a funny little boy, but in reality he was a simpleton and a coward, and sooner or later he was bound to meet a bad end. He went through a city, and he made little comments that made people laugh. He thought they were laughing at his little comments, but in fact they were laughing at his presumption.

''It so happened that the king of that country was proceeding through the city, and the boy saw his golden carriage. This was a splendid affair, made by the king's craftsmen, and it was of solid gold, drawn by six magnificent black chargers. When the carriage passed the boy, he turned to the good citizen beside him and said, 'Who's the old fool in the fancy wagon? He must weigh as much as all six horses. I bet he got rich by stealing from people like you and me, brother. ' You see, he was interested in finance. He expected his neighbor to laugh, but the neighbor was horrified — all citizens in that country loved and feared their king.

' 'The king had heard the boy's remark. He stopped the carriage and immediately bade one of his men to dismount and take the boy by force back to his palace. The men dismounted and grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him yelling through the streets all the way to the palace.

' 'The servant pulled the boy through the halls of the palace until they reached the throne room. The king sat on his throne glaring at the boy as the servant pulled him forward. Two savage dogs with chains on their necks snapped and snarled at the boy, but kept guard by the sides of the throne. The boy nearly fainted in terror. The dogs, he saw, were not only savage, but starved down nearly to madness.

'''So, little comedian, ' the king said. 'You will make me laugh or you will die. ' The witless boy could only tremble. 'One more chance, ' said the king. 'Make me laugh. ' Again, the boy could not speak. 'Go free, Skuller, ' snapped the king. The dog on the right flew forward toward the boy. In a second he held the boy's right hand between his teeth. The king told the boy to make a joke now. The boy turned white. 'Go free, Ghost, ' the king said, and the dog on the left flew forward and bit down on the boy's left hand.

'' 'You see where tasteless remarks get you, ' said the king. 'Begin to eat, my dogs. '

' 'Begin to eat, my dogs, '' Sherman repeated, shaking his head. 'I practically fell on the floor and puked. Lake the Snake just kept looking at me. 'Get out of here, ' he said. 'Don't ever come back here again for a stupid reason. like this. ' I sort of wobbled toward the door. Then I heard something growling, and I looked back and a great goddamned Doberman was getting to its feet beside his chair. 'Get out! ' Lake the Snake shouted at me, and I ran out of that office like fiends were after me. '

'Holy shit, ' mumbled the folksinger. Shennan's girlfriend was staring at him limpidly, waiting for the punch line, and I knew he had told this story, which by now I remembered perfectly, many times before.

Sherman was grinning at me. 'I see it's all come back to you. When I was nearly at the door, that sadist behind the desk said 'Alis volat propriis, Mr. Sherman. ' I saw a sign on the wall next to his door, where you'd see it every time you left his office. It said, 'Don't wait to be a great man. Be a great boy. ''

'Be a fuckin' son-of-a-bitch bastard, ' the folksinger said, and then looked up confused because Sherman and I were both laughing. The country-house blond was laughing too: Sherman could always make women laugh. I had learned a long time before that this ability was a large part of his undoubted sexual success.

Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale had picked up their freshman beanies like the rest of us from the carton just inside the library doors, and at the end of Registration Day they stood for a moment together at the entrance to the school, trying them on. 'I think they're one-size-fits-none, ' Tom said. Both boys' beanies were a quarter-size too large and swam on their heads. 'Don't worry, we can swap them tomorrow, ' Tom said. 'There were a lot left over in that box. Do you know how to wear these, by the way? This little bill is supposed to be two fingers above the bridge of your nose. ' Using the first two fingers of his right hand to demonstrate, he adjusted the cap with his right. Nightingale imitated him, and brought the brim down to the level of his topmost finger.

'Well, it's only for the first semester, ' Tom said. But then, at the beginning, they shared a secret pleasure in wearing the absurd caps: Tom because it meant that he was in the Upper School — the entrance to adulthood. If Tom thought of the Upper School as the realm of beings who were almost men — the seniors did look alarmingly like real adults — for Del it was something simpler and more comprehensive. He thought of it, without being quite aware of the thought, as a place which might become home. Tom at least was at home in it.

At that moment, he wanted Tom Flanagan to befriend him more than anything else in the world.

Of course I am ascribing to the fourteen-year-old Del Nightingale emotions which I cannot be sure he possessed. Yet he must have been very lonely in these first weeks at Carson; and I have Tom's later statement to me that 'Del Nightingale needed a friend more than anyone else I'd ever met. I didn't even know, this is how innocent I was, that anyone could need a friend as badly as that. And you know how schools are: if you want something, security or affection, very badly, it means that you're not going to get it. I didn't see why that should always be true. ' The statement shows that Tom was more sensitive than his appearance ever indicated. With his gingery hair, his short wiry athletic body, his good clothes a little scuffed and rumpled, he looked chiefly as though he wished he held a baseball in his hand. But another thing you thought you saw when you looked at Tom Flanagan was an essential steadiness: you thought you saw that he was incapable of affectation, because he would never see the need for it.

I think Del Nightingale looked at him bringing the school beanie down to the level of two fingers balanced on his nose, and adopted him on the spot.

'That trick you were showing me isn't in my book, ' Tom said. 'Sometime I'd like to see how it goes. '

'I brought a lot of card books with me, ' Del said. He dared not say anymore.

'Let's go have a look at them. I can call my mother from your place. She was going to pick me up after registration, but we didn't know when it would be over. How do we get to your house? Do you have a ride? '

'It's close enough to walk, ' Del said. 'It's not really my house. My godparents are just renting it. '

Tom shrugged, and they went down the front steps, crossed Santa Rosa Boulevard, and began to walk up sunlit Peace Lane. Carson was in a suburb old enough to have imposing elms and oaks lining the sidewalks. The houses they passed were the sort of houses Tom had seen all his life, most of them long and of two stories, either of white stone or white board. One or two houses on every block were bordered by screened-in porches. Concrete slabs gray with age and' crossed by a jigsaw puzzle of cracks made up the slightly irregular sidewalk. Tough, coarse grass thrust up between the slabs of pavement. For Del, who had been raised in cities and in boarding schools thousands of miles away, all of this was so unreal as to be dreamlike. For a moment he was not certain where he was or where he was going.

'Don't worry about Ridpath, ' Tom said beside him. 'He's always hollering. He's a pretty good coach. But I'll tell you who's in trouble already. '

'Who? ' Del asked, beginning to quake already. He knew that Tom meant him.

'That Brick. He'll never last. I bet he doesn't get through this year. '

'Why do you say that? '

'I don't know exactly. He looks kind of hopeless, doesn't he? Kind of dumb. And Ridpath is already shitting hot nickels over his hair. If his father was on the board, or something like that — or if his family had always gone here. . . you know. ' Flanagan was walking with what Del would later see as the characteristic Carson gait, which slightly rolled the shoulders from side to side and wagged neckties like metronomes. This was, as Del immediately recognized, finally 'preppy. ' Amidst all the Western strangeness, the strolling, necktie-swinging gait was familiar enough to be comfortable.

'I guess I do know, ' he said.

'Oh, sure. Wait till you see Harrison — he's a junior. Harrison has hair just like Brick's, but his father is a big shot. Last year his father donated fifteen thousand dollars to the school for new lab equipment. Where is this house, anyhow? '

Del had been dreaming along under the ninety-degree sun, selfconsciousness about the beanie melting together with his sense of unreality and his pleasure in Tom's company to make him forget that they had a destination. 'Oh. Next street. '

They reached the corner and turned into the street. It seemed impossible to Del that he actually lived there. He would not have been wholly surprised to see Ricky and David Nelson playing catch on one of the lawns. 'Mr. Broome wanted to talk to you, ' Tom said. 'Um-hum. '

'I suppose your father is an ambassador or something like that. '

'My father is dead. So is my mother. '

Tom quickly said, 'Geez, I'm sorry, ' and changed the subject. His own father had recently begun a mysterious siege of X rays and over-night stays in St. Mary's Hospital. Hartley Flanagan was a corporation lawyer who could chin himself a dozen times and had been a varsity fullback at Stanford. He smoked three packs a day. 'Mr. Ridpath isn't too bad, he's just not very subtle' — both boys grinned — 'but you ought to watch out for his son. Steve Ridpath. I remember him from the Junior School. '

'He's worse than his father? '

'Well, he was a lot worse then. Maybe he's nicer now. ' Tom's mouth twitched in a pained, adult manner, and Del saw that his new friend doubted his last remark. 'He beat the crap out of me once because he didn't like my face. He was in the eighth grade. I was in the fifth grade. A teacher saw him do it, and he still didn't get expelled. I just sort of made sure I never got near him after that. '

'This is the house, ' Del said, still unable to refer to it as his. 'What does this guy look like? '

Tom took off his beanie and folded it into a hip pocket. 'Steve Ridpath? His nickname is Skeleton. But don't ever say it in front of him. In fact, if you can help it, don't ever say anything to him. Are we going to go in, or what? '

The door opened and a uniformed black man said, 'Saw you and your friend coming, Del. '

Inside

'Skeleton. . . ' Del said, shaking his head, but Tom Flanagan was looking at the tall bald black man who had let them in. He was too surprised not to stare. A few families in this affluent suburb had live-in maids, but he had never seen a butler before. The first impression that the man wore a uniform gradually dissipated as Tom realized that the butler was dressed in a dark gray suit with a white shirt and a silk tie the same charcoal shade as the suit. He was smiling down at Tom, clearly enjoying the boy's startled inspection. His broad face looked young, but the short wiry hair above his ears was silver. 'I see young Del is going to get on well at that school if he made such an alert friend already. '

Tom blushed.

'This is Bud Copeland, ' Del said. 'He works for my godparents. Bud, this is Tom Flanagan. He's in my class. Are they in? '

'Mr. and Mrs. Hillman are out looking at a house, ' the butler said. 'If you tell me where you'll be, I'll bring you whatever you want. Coke? Iced tea? '

'Thanks, ' Del said. Tom was still wondering if he ought to shake hands with the butler, and while Del said 'Coke, ' realized that the moment for it had passed. But by then his hand was out, and he said, 'Coke please, Mr. Copeland. I'm pleased to meet you. '

The butler shook his hand, smiling even more widely. 'My pleasure too, Tom. Two Cokes. '

'We'll be in my room, Bud, ' Del said, and began to lead Tom deeper into the house. Cartons and boxes crowded what was obviously the living room. As they passed the dining room, Tom saw that it was nearly filled with a huge rectangular mahogany table.

'If you just moved in, why are they out looking at houses? ' he asked.

'They're looking for a bigger place to buy. They want more land around them, maybe a pool. . . . They say this neighborhood is too suburban for them, so they're going to move somewhere even more suburban. ' They were going upstairs; lighter squares on the wallpaper showed where pictures had hung. 'I don't even think they want to unpack. They hate this house. '

'It's okay. '

'You should see what they had in Boston. I used to live with them most of the time. In the summers. . . ' He looked over his shoulder at Tom and gave him an expression so guarded that Tom could not tell if it signified suspicion, fear of being questioned, or the desire to be questioned.

'In the summers? ' , 'I went somewhere else. But their place in Boston was really huge. Bud worked for them there too. He was always really nice to me. Ah, here's my room. ' Del had been walking down a corridor, his black-haired head proceeding along at about the level of Tom's eyes with more assurance than his behavior at the school had indicated that he had in him, and now he paused outside a door and turned around. This time Tom had no trouble reading the expression on his face. He was glowing with anticipation. 'If I was really corny, I'd say something like, 'Welcome to my universe. ' Come on in. '

Tom Flanagan walked rather nervously into what at first appeared to be a totally black room. A dim light went on behind him. 'I guess you can see what I mean, ' came Del's high-pitched voice. He sounded a shade less confident.

Ridpath at Home

Chester Ridpath parked his black Studebaker in his driveway and reached across the seat to lift his briefcase. Like the upholstery of his car, it had been several times repaired with black masking tape, and graying old ends of the tape played out beneath the gummy top layers. The handle adhered to his fingers. He wrestled the heavy satchel onto his lap-it was crammed with mimeographed football plays, starting lineups which went back nearly to the year when he had purchased the car, textbooks, lesson plans, and memos from the headmaster. Laker Broome spoke chiefly through memos. He liked to rule from a distance, even at faculty meetings, where he sat at a separate table from the staff: most of his administrative and disciplinary decisions were filtered down through Billy Thorpe, who had been assistant head as well as Latin master under three different headmasters. Sometimes Chester Ridpath imagined that Billy Thorpe was the only man in the. world who he really respected. Billy could not ever conceivably have had a son like Steve.

He exhaled, wiped sweat from his forehead back into his hair, temporarily flattening half a dozen fussy curls, and left the car. The sun burned through his clothes. The briefcase seemed to be filled with stones.

Ridpath found his bundle of keys in his deep pocket, shook them until his house key surfaced, and let himself into his house. Raucous music-music for beasts-battered the air. He supposed many parents came home to this din, but was it so loud in other houses? Steve had carried his phonograph home from the store, twisted the volume control all the way to the right, and left it there. Once in his room, he walled himself up inside this savagery. Ridpath could not communicate through a barrier so repellent to him; he suspected, in fact he knew, that Steve was uninterested in anything he might wish to communicate anyhow.

'Home, ' he shouted, and banged the door shut — if Steve couldn't hear the shout, at least he would feel the vibration.

The house had been in disarray so long that Ridpath no longer noticed the pile of soiled shirts and sweaters on the stairs, the dark smudges of grease on the carpet. He and Margaret had bought the living-room carpet, a florid Wilton, on a layaway plan just after they had mortgaged his salary for twenty years to buy the house. During the fifteen years since his wife had left him, Ridpath had taken an unconscious pleasure in the gradual darkening and wearing away of the nap. There were places — before his chair, in front of the slat-backed couch — where the awful flower-spray pattern was nearly invisible.

Overlaying the piles of dirty clothing were the magazine clippings and pages of comic books which Steve used to make his 'things. ' They had no other name. Steve's 'things' were varnished to his bedroom walls. Korea had supplied a surplus of the images Steve preferred in his 'things, ' and by now the room was a palimpsest of screaming infants, wrecked jeeps, bloated dead in kapok jackets. Tanks rolled over muddy hills toward classrooms of dutiful Russian children (courtesy of Life). Mossy monsters from horror comics embraced starlets with death's-heads. Ridpath never entered his son's room anymore.

He dropped the briefcase beside his chair and sat heavily, wrenching his tie over his head without bothering to undo the knot. After he had dropped his jacket on the floor beside it, he reached for the telephone set on an otherwise empty shelf. Ridpath shouted, 'Turn it down, goddammit, ' and waited a second. Then he shouted again, louder. 'For God's sake, turn it down! ' The music diminished by an almost undetectable portion. He dialed the Thorpe number.

'Billy? Chester. Just got home. Thought maybe you should get the poop on the new boys. Look pretty good on the whole, but there are a few items I thought you'd want to know about. Sort of coordinate ourselves here. Okay? First off, we got one good, one real good football prospect, the Hogan kid. He might take a little watching in the classroom. . . No, nothing definite, just the impression I had. I don't want to prejudice you against the kid, Billy. Just keep him on a tight rein. He could be a real leader. Now for the bad news. We got one real lulu in the new intake. A kid named Brick, Dave Brick. Hair like a goddamned Zulu, more grease on it than I got in my car. You know what kind of attitude that means. I think we want to crack down on this kind of thing right away, or one bad apple like that could spoil the whole school. Plus that, there's a wiseacre named Sherman. The kid already lipped off, fooled around with his registration form. . . You getting these names? '

He wiped his face again and grimaced toward the stairs, How could a boy listen to that stuff all day long? 'One more. You remember our transfer from Andover, the orphan kid with the trust fund? Nightingale. He might of been a big mistake. I mean, Billy, maybe Andover was glad to get rid of him, that's what I mean. First of all, he looks wrong — like a little Greek. This Nightingale kid looks sneaky. . . . Well, hell, Billy, I can't help the way I see things, can I? And I was right, too. I caught him with a pack of cards — yeah, he had the cards out. In the library. Can you beat that? Said he was showing Flanagan a card trick. . . . Yeah, a card trick. Man. I confiscated the cards PDQ. I think the kid's some kind of future beatnik or something. . . . Well, I know you can't always tell that kind of thing, Billy. . . . Well, he did have those cards in his fist, big as you please, gave me a little tussle, too. . . . Well, I'd put him in the special file along with Brick, that's what I'm saying, Billy. . . . '

He listened to the telephone a moment, his face contracting into a tight, unwilling grimace. 'Sure, Steve'll be okay this year. You'll see a big change in him, now that he's a senior. They grow up pretty fast at that age. '

He hung up gratefully. 'Grow up' — was that what Steve had done? He did not want to talk to Billy Thorpe, who had two good-looking successful boys, about Steve. The less Thorpe thought about Steve Ridpath, the better.

Skeleton. God.

Ridpath shoved himself to his feet, knocking over the easeful of football plays, took a few aimless steps toward the stairs, then turned around and picked up the case, deciding to go down to his desk in the basement. He had to do some more thinking about the JV team before their first practice. When he walked out of the living room, he glanced into the kitchen and unexpectedly saw the gaunt, looming form of his son leaning over the sink. Steve was pressing his nose and lips against the window, smearing the glass. So he had somehow flickered down the stairs.

Universe

'I've only been here three days, ' Del was saying, now positively sounding nervous, 'but I didn't want to just live out of suitcases, the way they're doing. I wanted to get my stuff set up. ' There came a sound of scuffing feet. 'Well, what do you think? '

'Wow, ' Tom said, not quite sure what he thought, except that wonder played a large part in it. In the dim light, he could not even see all of Del's things. On the wall behind the bed hung a huge star chart. The opposite wall was a frieze of faces — framed photographs. He recognized John Scarne from the photo on a book he owned, and Houdini, but the others were strangers to him. They were men with serious, considering, summing-up kinds of faces in which their theatricality appeared as an afterthought. Magicians. A skull grinned from a shelf at waist level beneath the photographs, and Del hopped around him to light a little candle within it. Then Tom saw all the books held upright by the skull. The middle of the room and the desk were crowded with the paraphernalia of magic tricks. He saw a glass ball on a length of velvet, a miniature guillotine, a top hat, various cabinets filigreed and lacquered with Chinese designs, a black silver-topped cane. Before the long windows, entirely covering them, a big green tank sent up streams of bubbles through a skittering population of fish. 'I don't believe it, ' Tom breathed. 'I don't know where to start. Is all this stuff really yours? '

'Well, I didn't get it all at once, ' Del said. 'Some of this stuff has been around for years — since I was about ten. That's when I got involved. Now I'm really involved. I think it's what I want to be. '

'A magician? ' Tom asked, surprised.

'Yeah. Do you too? '

'I never thought about that. But I'll tell you one thing I just thought right now. '

Del lifted his head like a frightened doe.

'I think school is going to be a lot more interesting this year. '

Del beamed at him.

Bud Copeland brought them Cokes in tall frosted glasses with a lemon slice bumping the ice cubes, and for an hour the two boys prowled through Del's collection. In his eager, piping voice, the smaller boy explained to Tom the inner workings of tricks which had puzzled him for as long as he had been interested in magic. 'All these illusions are the flashy stuff, and no one will ever see how they work, but I really prefer close-up magic, ' Del said. 'If you can do close-up card work, you can do anything. That's what my Uncle Cole says. ' Del held up a finger, still in the dramatic persona he had put on with his top hat at the beginning of the tour. 'No. Not quite. He said you could do almost everything. He can do things you wouldn't believe, and he won't explain them to me. He says certain things are art, not just illusion, and because they're art they're real magic. And you can't explain them. ' Del brought his finger down, having caught himself in a public mood at a private moment. 'Well, that's what he says, anyway. It's like he's full of secrets and information no one else knows about. He's kind of funny, and sometimes he can scare the crap out of you, but he's the best there is. Or I think so, anyway. ' His face was that of a dark little dervish.

'Is he a magician? '

'The best. But he doesn't work like the others — in clubs and theaters and that. '

'Then where does he work? '

'At home. He does private shows. Well, they're not really shows. They're mainly for himself. It's hard to explain. Maybe someday you could meet him. Then you'd see. ' Del sat on his bed, looking to Tom as if he were almost sorry he had said so much. Pride in his uncle seemed to be battling with other forces.

Then Tom had it. The insight which had given him knowledge of the other boy's loneliness now sent him a fact so positive that it demanded to be spoken. 'He doesn't want you to talk about him. About what he does. '

Del nodded slowly. 'Yeah. Because of Tim and Valerie. '

'Your godparents? '

'Yeah. They don't understand him. They couldn't. And to tell you the truth, he really is sort of half-crazy. ' Del leaned back on stiffened arms and said, 'Let's see what you can do. Do you have any cards, or should we use mine? '

Years later, Tom Flanagan described to me how Del had then quietly, modestly, almost graciously humiliated him. 'I thought I was pretty good with cards when I was fourteen. After my father got sick, I sort of more or less threw myself into the work. I wanted to get my mind off what was happening. I had my card books damn near memorized after a month. ' We were in the Red Hat Lounge, where Sherman had told me Tom was working — it was not the 'toilet' Sherman had called it, but it was only a step above that. 'I knew that Del was very accomplished after he had shown me all of the stuff in his room. He had the basis of a professional kit, and he knew it. But I thought I could hold my own in card tricks — the close-up work he especially liked. I found out I couldn't get a thing by him. He knew what I was going to do before I did it, and he could do it better. He didn't like any of the obvious stuff, either — misdirection and forcing. Del had a fantastic memory and great observation, and those faculties have more to do with great card work than you'd believe. He wiped me off the board. . . he blew me away. He must have been the slickest thing. I'd ever seen. ' Tom laughed. 'Of course he was the slickest thing I'd ever seen. I hadn't seen much before I met Del. '