Childgrave Read online

  My mother has killed me,

  My father is eating me,

  My brothers and sisters sit under the table

  Picking my bones,

  And they bury them under the cold marble stones.

  It was a traditional rhyme, so apparently it was something that many children had liked. But I didn’t like it, and I wished I had never bought the book that we found it in.

  Joanne picked out a black candy. “This is Nanny Joy, and I’m eating her arms.”

  I decided it was time to end the game. “Anything goes,” I shouted and carried Joanne toward the Anything Goes Room. The room, which I designed, had plastic-covered walls and a tile floor with a drain in the center. It was equipped with paints, crayons, clay, plastic blocks and dolls, and a sink. It was waterproof, paintproof, and indestructible. Joanne had never been very fond of it, but I had spent many happy hours there, finger-painting on the walls and singing.

  As I carried Joanne out of the bedroom she whispered in my ear: “Can you get me another mommy?” She had never asked me anything like that before. If she had asked the question a week before, I would have felt like a character in a soap opera and would have changed the subject. I stopped and held her close. “Funny you should ask,” I said.

  The telephone company had no listing for a Sara Coleridge. My instincts were being confirmed. Sara was a person I could understand; she had the good sense and strength of character to live without a telephone. Of course, it was also possible that she was an uncompromising recluse. Whatever her reason for being unlisted, I was relieved, because if I had her number, I would have had to call her, and I had no idea what to say to her.

  I decided to call the musicians’ union next, and they were a little more informative. They listed Sara Coleridge, harpist, as living on West Seventieth Street, which was within walking distance of Lincoln Center. I had found Joanne a mommy; or almost found her one. What next? Would I write to her? Lurk in her lobby?

  I spent the rest of the morning thinking about the situation. I developed and rejected dozens of approaches. I decided that Sara Coleridge was probably the kind of young woman who, if a stranger who looked like me approached her on whatever pretext, would not be favorably impressed. I’m not bad-looking, but I’ve never had the sort of appearance that inspires confidence in strangers. It’s my hair, I think: curly and a strange shade of red.

  I needed advice. As usual, I decided to consult Harry Bordeaux. Not that Harry had ever gotten a girl, but he had spent a lot of time being an objective observer of other people’s attempts to get and be gotten. Since my problem didn’t exactly fit the category of business, I asked Harry to come to my place for dinner. He agreed, but only on the condition that I let him do the cooking.

  Harry and I differ profoundly in our attitudes toward food. My view is that eating is a waste of time; the biggest waste of time. A universal joke. Here we all are, many of us planting, livestocking, fishing, harvesting, processing, grocering; and all of us dining, snacking, banqueting, brunching, picnicking—not just every day, but two or three times every day. And let’s not overlook the tedious suspense of cooking or the most boring of all activities: dishwashing. A joke. I could see having a nice dinner once in a while on special occasions, but mostly I say it’s spinach. The word I detest among all words is “gourmet.”

  Harry, like a lot of people who are not much interested in sex, is seriously interested in food. And being in his peak earning years, he’s a gourmet. Since Nanny Joy’s views on food are similar to mine, our menus are pretty much decided by Joanne’s capricious appetite. And Harry, rather than risk being subjected to canned lima beans and potato chips, stops off at purveyors of bizarre foodstuffs before joining us for dinner.

  That night he enthusiastically and efficiently produced snails, creamed sweetbreads with broccoli, and apricot tarts. Nanny Joy and Joanne joined us. Joanne, of course, refused to eat the snails and left the table while we disposed of the rubbery little creatures. I sympathized with her and was reminded that people will eat anything—including one another. We’re not just omnivores; we’re psycho-vores.

  When the main course was served, Joanne gave it another try, but when she discovered that sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread, she lost interest again and began to play with her snail shells. The apricot tart pleased her, however, and she went off to bed reasonably happy. After my contribution to the meal—some not too effective dishwashing—I joined Harry and Nanny Joy to explain my problem. Nan and Harry get along well together. Harry liked Nan because she had been to rent parties and for a number of other reasons, but mostly he was in awe of her because she had aged well. Harry was still hoping, despite evidence to the contrary, that his golden years were going to be his most attractive years.

  When I joined them, Harry was saying: “Physically, I wrote off my first forty years. I knew from infancy that I had some unimposing decades to get through. From the time I was twelve, my body was like a pear with four pieces of string attached. I’m beginning the transition now. I plan to be gaunt but natty; white hair, thicker than it is now; a few amusing creases.” Harry looked over at me as I sat downs “What does your photographer’s eye think, Jonathan? Am I gaining a certain distinction of figure?”

  “Not yet, Harry. I’m afraid you’ve got a few more years of boyishness ahead.”

  Harry flared his nostrils at me and then turned to Nanny Joy. “I want you to tell me your secret, Nan. Why do you look so good?”

  “I did my living early,” Nan said. “By the time I was sixteen, my body felt sixty, so now that I am sixty, my body hasn’t all that much reason to change . . . and then are a lot of good things I don’t bother much with now. I don’t eat a hell of a lot of snails.”

  Nan was telling Harry more than he wanted to know, and I thought I’d spare them both a little embarrassment. “Why don’t you ask me the secret of my unchanging youthfulness, Harry?”

  “Because I don’t have to ask you. You’re obviously in love, and lovers always confuse feelings with appearances.”

  I thought for a moment of denying that I was in love, just to watch Harry’s self-congratulatory smile disappear. But I suppose he deserved his little triumph. “What makes you think I’m in love?” I asked.

  “Nothing else could explain your behavior at the opera the other night. I just hope it isn’t the contralto who undid you.”

  I turned to Nanny Joy for reassurance. “Do you think I’m in love?”

  “I know you’re in love, Mr. B. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me if you could borrow some Billie Holiday records.”

  “Okay. I have an announcement to make. I’m in love.”

  Harry and Nan looked at me expectantly. Harry said, “Yes. You’re in love . . . but?”

  “But I need some advice about how to let the young lady know what everyone else seems to know.” I explained the situation while my audience tried to hide their condescending smiles behind glasses of cognac.

  After I had explained my dilemma, both Nan and Harry rose to the occasion and made suggestions. I wasn’t quite sure how serious either suggestion was.

  Nan looked solemn enough. “I think you ought to send Joanne to the lady’s house. Have her say, ‘My daddy’s in love with you, but I think the two of us ought to get to know each other first, because if we don’t get along, there’s going to be P-O-B-T.’”

  P-O-B-T was Nan’s abbreviation for Plenty of Big Trouble—a concept that Joanne was especially familiar with.

  “Nan’s probably right,” Harry said. “You have to think of more than just you and Ms. Coleridge.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, “but it works the other way, too. If things don’t work out between me and Sara, there won’t be any need to involve Joanne.”

  “Your daughter’s already involved,” Nanny Joy said. “She told me this morning that you’re go
ing to get her a new mommy, and she wishes you’d let her do the choosing. She thinks she would probably choose Peter Rabbit.”

  I wondered why no one was smiling. “There, you see,” I said. It occurred to me that nobody really wanted me to fall in love. I’ve never heard of someone giving a falling-in-love party. But in my case, I guess it was premature anyway. You can’t give a falling-in-love party for one person. Although maybe that’s what I had arranged for myself.

  “Well, if you think Ms. Coleridge wouldn’t measure up to Peter Rabbit,” Harry said, “I’ve got another suggestion. I’ll call her agent and say you’re doing a series of portraits of musicians and that you’d like to include Sara in the series.”

  Harry’s idea appealed to me in general, but the details would have to be worked out. “How do you know she has an agent?” I asked.

  “Everyone has an agent,” Harry said. “Especially harpists. They’re ethereal people.” Harry was warming to his task. With a few exceptions, Harry didn’t have friends or acquaintances. Instead, he had “contacts,” and he was proud of the number and variety of those contacts. One of the important occasions of his life was the day he found he could no longer fit new cards into the wheel index on his desk and had to order the next larger size.

  Nanny Joy, whose experiences with interested men had probably tended to be direct, looked skeptical about our plans. “What if the lady doesn’t want to have her picture taken?”

  “That’s the least of our problems,” Harry said. “Everyone wants to be photographed. I’m certain there’s been an increase in the number of bank robberies since they began installing those movie cameras. The first time I saw one of those lenses staring down at me, I immediately straightened my ascot and began composing a stickup note.”

  I think Harry was almost right. And even the few people who don’t want to be photographed have a difficult time refusing a photographer’s request. It’s like turning down an offer of immortality. One of the earth’s truly exclusive groups is the one made up of people who have never been photographed.

  In any case, it seemed like a safe bet that Sara Coleridge would agree to whatever arrangements Harry wanted to make. I gave him her address, the party ended, and I settled back to wait for news from Harry.

  The wait was short, but the news was troublesome. When Harry called me the next afternoon, he was as close to losing his composure as I had ever heard him.

  “Am I your friend?” he asked.

  “My friend and mentor,” I assured him.

  “Good. That’s good. I want to do some mentoring. Forget about Sara Coleridge. I know another young lady . . . a tympanist. She even has a telephone.”

  “I don’t like lady drummers, Harry. What happened?”

  “I was put on hold, that’s what happened.”

  For a person like me, being put on hold is a commonplace event, a part of the give-and-take of telephone life. But for a person like Harry, the push of the hold button is like the sting of a glove against his cheek. I wondered whether he wanted me to act as his second. “Did Sara do that to you?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. It was her piranha of an agent—a Ms. Lee Ferris—who not only sullies a noble profession, but who says Sara Coleridge is not available to practitioners of a third-rate art. Ms. Ferris knows your work, by the way. She said, ‘Oh, yes. He’s the one who does the oversized passport photos.’ ”

  “She said all that without provocation?”

  “Jonathan . . . you malign me. You know I’ve spent my life learning not to provoke people. What you forget is that, unlike you, most people are suspicious of other people’s enthusiasms.”

  I thanked him for his help and hung up. I lapsed into a state of patient discouragement, and I thought of what Harry had said about my willingness to share other people’s enthusiasms. He was right. I like things secondhand; things filtered through other people’s personalities. For example, although I have never read a novel by Dickens, I probably know his works as well as some experts do, simply because I once had a friend who was a Dickens enthusiast. I willingly spent hours listening to my friend’s retellings and interpretations. I learned plots. I could speculate about the significance of characters with monosyllabic surnames: Scrooge, Drood, Heep. But when I tried to read The Pickwick Papers, I found it vastly complicated. I soon found myself taking my pulse, which is what I do in response to overwhelming boredom. What I enjoyed, I decided, was not Dickens but my friend’s enthusiasm for Dickens.

  Perhaps the reason I was being hesitant about approaching Sara Coleridge was that she was the object of my own, rather than someone else’s, enthusiasm; she was an unaccustomed responsibility. And although I understand the need for responsibility, I think it is definitely an area in which moderation is called for. An unrestrained sense of responsibility can too easily lead to sanctity or indigestion.

  For the next few days I devoted myself to making a living. Harry completed arrangements for a sitting with the soprano Arianella Stradellini, and he warned me that she would bring not only her curse but a few props as well. She arrived promptly for her appointment, accompanied by two muscular young men who carried a chaise longue and by an unmuscular old man who carried a large black book, a large candelabrum, and a small handbell. The young men left after positioning the chaise and the candelabrum in front of the camera. The signorina, after lighting the candles, unwrapped and discarded her silk wraparound dress. Then, wearing only high-heeled shoes, she subsided immodestly onto the chaise. The old man opened his book and began to read aloud in Latin, pausing occasionally to tinkle the handbell. The soprano looked at me sternly and said, “Please to begin.”

  I remember having thought that I should be amused, outraged, or titillated by the situation, but something about the signorina’s manner kept me serious and businesslike. Leaving the matter of poses up to my subject, I worked quickly, taking a dozen pictures. She had me add a thirteenth for luck, and then she promptly rewrapped herself in her dress. She walked slowly round the studio, moving her hands over her breasts, ribs, and belly. Eventually she smiled and said, “Bene. You have done most well. The evil is vanished from me now.” She extended her right arm and sang a startlingly high pianissimo tone. “Yes,” she said. “It is good. Burn them.”

  “Burn what?”

  “The photographs. All of them.”

  “You don’t want to see them?”

  “No one must see them, caro mio. The evil is in them now; it must not be let to escape.” Her arm was still raised. She walked toward me and took my right hand in hers. She looked at my palm. “I have a favor for you. I shall give you a message.” She ran a long scarlet fingernail across my palm, sending a series of intriguing ripples along various paths of my nervous system. Most of the paths seemed loinward bound. At about the time I began to wonder whether message-seeking had become dalliance, the signorina asked, “You are seeking someone?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me undramatically but seriously. “It is better you do not seek,” she said. She kissed the palm of my hand. “Burn the photographs and do not seek. I am trusting you.” She turned to the old man and said something in Italian. He gathered up his book and bell, and he went to her side. She smiled at me again and gestured at the candelabrum and the chaise. “These are yours,” she said. She and the man went to the door. As I let them out, she said, “Addio. Do not seek.”

  I closed the door, went back to the studio, and began to disobey her various instructions. First I carried the morning’s exposures into the darkroom and prepared to develop them. As I worked I wondered whether I attracted more than my share of bizarre people. Maybe not. Stradellini wasn’t noted for being bizarre; she was a respected singer who made people weep and cheer. Yet she believed people could cast spells and that I could uncast them. She could read palms.

  What should I think of all that? I suppose I rea
lly didn’t make much distinction between the natural and the supernatural. My falling in love with Sara Coleridge was no more easily understood than Stradellini’s bewitchment or Harry’s devotion to snails and garlic. It was helpful to be able to explain certain kinds of magic, such as the interactions of photochemicals and light. But the interactions of human beings with the personalities and objects around them might just as well go unexplained.

  As I immersed the first sheet of exposed paper in the developing fluid I began to feel an emotion that was different from the usual suspense of wondering what kind of image was about to be revealed. It took me a few moments to realize that what I felt was guilt; the anticipation of seeing what I had been forbidden to see. I remembered the Orpheus legend and wondered whether I should follow Stradellini’s instructions and burn the pictures without developing them. But she hadn’t said I should not develop them; just that I should burn them. I could burn them after looking at them.

  I hurried the development, not taking my usual care to control the tonal range of the prints. As the first image appeared my emotions became stronger but less complicated; they changed to simple sexual excitement. When I had been photographing the soprano, I had been too distracted by the strangeness of the situation to notice what an oddly attractive body she had. For even though she could honestly be called fat, her flesh was smooth and firm; no washboard ridges or aspic jiggles. And though her dimensions were operatic, they were reasonably proportioned. A thick but undeniable waist intervened between the buoyant excess of her breasts and the ballast of her hips. But most important, she projected a sense of mobility that kept her from qualifying for obesity. It seems to me it is not fatness as such that makes obese people unattractive, but their clumsiness . . . the promise of confusing, feeble actions.