What Happens at Night Page 19

SIX

  The sound of water filling the bathtub awoke the man. He sat up in bed and looked at the bathroom door, which was closed. Was his wife inside? Could they now go and get their child and leave this place and go home? For the first time since he had left it, he thought of New York City: it might be snowing there but the snow would turn to rain as soon as the sun rose. The clouds would part and the sun would emerge and the clean wet sidewalks would shine. There would be ten hours of daylight and your face would not freeze the moment you stepped outside. And soon it would be spring and robins would be pecking the tender green lawn in Madison Square Park. And he would be walking through the park with the baby in a stroller, in the soft warm spring sunlight, pointing to and naming the birds, the budding flowers, the leafing trees . . .

  The taps were turned off with an angry squeal. He got out of bed and knocked softly on the closed bathroom door.

  Oh, are you awake? a voice asked. It’s me.

  He tried to make the voice sound like his wife’s but he could not. It was too strong and bright, and he knew it was the voice of Livia Pinheiro-Rima.

  Livia?

  Yes, it’s me. It’s shocking, I know, commandeering your bathtub. You see, I’ve only got a horrible little sit tub in my room; it’s like bathing in a teacup and getting in and out of the damn thing requires the flexibility of a contortionist. So when I saw your lovely large tub—really, it’s almost the size of a swimming pool—I couldn’t resist. Do you mind awfully? If you do I’ll get out.

  No, no. Of course not.

  Do you need to use the toilet? If you do, come on in. We can both shut our eyes.

  No, I’m fine, said the man, although he did need to use the toilet. But what are you doing here?

  I thought I just explained that.

  No, I mean here in my room.

  Oh! Well, I came up to check on you. It’s almost noon, you know.

  Is it? My God, I have got to go and see my wife.

  What about the baby? Simon. Aren’t we going to collect him together?

  Yes, said the man. But first I need to see my wife.

  Yes, yes, I suppose you must. So go, and I’ll enjoy a nice long bath, and when you’ve returned we’ll go and adopt Simon. This bath is delicious. The basic human need for ablution is primal. We all used to be fish you know, I mean not you and me personally, but our ancestors, if you go back far enough, which isn’t very far, there we are, or were, swimming in the briny depths, and now we all long to submerge ourselves, like a pickle, like a coin in a fountain, like a stone tossed into the sea. I’m going to stop talking now and immerse myself.

  Darlene opened the door and told the man to wait in the room with the fire. She would tell Brother Emmanuel he was here. The man had barely sat down when Brother Emmanuel entered the room, with an uncharacteristic haste. In fact he was panting, as if he had run from a great distance.

  The man stood up. Good morning, he said.

  Oh, my friend, Brother Emmanuel said. Sit down.

  The man sat and Brother Emmanuel knelt before him and told him that his wife’s soul was free.

  What do you mean? the man asked. Is she dead?

  Yes, said Brother Emmanuel. If you think in those terms.

  I do, said the man. How? he asked. What happened?

  Brother Emmanuel told him how, early in the morning, they had found her missing and had followed her footsteps through the snow. They had carried her inside and tried to revive her but could not. She was dead. Her soul had left her body.

  The man asked if he could be alone.

  Of course you may be alone, said Brother Emmanuel. For as long as you need. But I must tell you one more thing, and then I will leave you alone. I want to say this now so you have it all at once. Your wife told me that she wanted her body to stay here. She did not want it taken away. She wanted to be cremated, and she wanted her ashes to remain here. She wanted them placed in the bowl of narcissi so they might nurture new life.

  I don’t care about her body, the man said. Or the narcissi. Please leave me alone.

  Yes, said Brother Emmanuel. I am sorry if I have failed you. I was trying to help your wife. I was trying to ease her path.

  Yes, said the man. Fuck you.

  The man sat on the sofa for a long time after Brother Emmanuel left. He could not comprehend what he had been told and after a while he stopped trying, stopped thinking anything at all, just sat and let the stillness gather around him. And then he heard a voice and looked up to see that Artemis was watching him from within his cage. He repeated the same word several times, but it was in a language the man did not understand.

  That afternoon the man and Livia Pinheiro-Rima left the hotel together and took a taxi to the orphanage. The man wore a three-piece suit beneath his parka and carried the little suitcase they had prepared for the baby. Both he and his wife had packed special clothes to wear on the day that they finally received the baby. His wife had bought a simple yet elegant moss-green woolen dress from Brooks Brothers and had had it altered to fit her dwindling body. The man thought of the dress, hanging in its protective plastic sheath, in the closet of their hotel room. It was the only thing that she had hung in the closet; the rest of her clothes were jumbled in her suitcase or thrown over a chair.

  His suit was too big for him and in truth made him look a little ridiculous, like a child wearing grown-up clothes. It had belonged to his grandfather, his father’s father, who had died when the man was three in a hunting accident that the man’s father later told him was certainly a suicide. Fortunately he had shot himself with a rifle in a forest, making possible the fictitious hunting trip.

  The man had no memory of his grandfather, but he did have a photograph of his grandfather holding him upon his lap, and in this photo his grandfather wore the suit the man was now wearing. It was taken at Christmastime, in Lüchow’s restaurant in New York City, a few days before his grandfather shot himself. An elderly waiter in a white jacket stood just behind his grandfather, looking into the camera as if he were meant to be included in the photograph, but of course he was only passing by the table.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima sat against the door and gazed out the window. She was wearing her Russian black bear coat and the kind of perfectly round dark glasses people in movies who are blind wear. She acted as though she were alone in the taxi. But then she suddenly turned toward him and said, For some reason I’m terribly nervous. Would you mind if I smoke?

  It’s fine, said the man.

  Not really, she said, but I’ll go ahead. Would you like one?

  No, said the man.

  She held a velvet bag upon her lap that had two gold bars across the top, which latched together with a little hands-holding clasp. Livia Pinheiro-Rima unsnapped the clasp and withdrew her cigarette case. She pressed a button and it sprung itself open. She fetched a lighter from her bag and lit her cigarette. She closed her eyes and took a few long, deep drags.

  For a moment the man watched her smoke.

  You have beautiful hands, he said.

  Why, thank you, she said. They’re rather large. And one, alas, is larger than the other. Look at this. She gave him her cigarette and held her hands before her, palm pressed to palm, finger to finger, as if she were praying. You see, she said, they don’t match. Most people are symmetrical, but I’m not. It’s why I couldn’t act in films. The camera is so unforgiving; I look like some freakish Picasso damsel on film.

  She reclaimed her cigarette and continued smoking. Do you know, when I went to acting school, way back in the dark ages, they taught you how to smoke onstage? We had an entire class on smoking and eating onstage. Drinking too. It was called Acting and Imbibing. For instance, you always keep your hand in profile when you smoke, so the audience can see the cigarette, so if you’re facing downstage you’ve got to smoke out of the corner of your mouth. If you have beautiful hands you use the cigarette to display them. There’s nothing better for a hand than a cigarette. And you never exhale downward; always send the smoke up, abo
ve the heads of your fellow actors. Of course, that is, if you have fellow actors. The only nice thing about being alone onstage is that you can send the smoke anywhere you want. Yet I always send it up, out of habit, I suppose.

  She paused for a moment and tapped some ash off her cigarette into the pocket of her bearskin coat.

  Don’t look at me, she said. Look out the window.

  Why? asked the man.

  Because I can’t say this next bit if you’re looking at me.

  The man turned away and looked out the window. The fields stretched all the way to the horizon, where they blurred into the gray sky.

  He heard Livia Pinheiro-Rima say: Acting with someone is very intimate, you know. It isn’t so very different from sleeping with someone. In a way it’s more intimate, because it’s easy to fake intimacy in bed, but if you act well, if you do it right, you’re raw, you’re completely vulnerable, it’s like you’re porous, your body ceases to have boundaries. Your mind too, and your heart. She paused for a moment and then said, I’ve felt that with you, some of these moments.

  She paused, but he said nothing, so she continued: When I was young, she said, when I was just beginning—my circus days, I suppose—and even after that, when I was a not very young, for most of my life, in fact, I have wanted to make love with just about everyone I met. I mean, not everyone of course, but with so very many. Men and women. In some way it seemed a crime to me to be alive, to be on this earth, and not make love to everyone. It wasn’t nymphomania. No. It was that I could see too clearly, too devastatingly, the thing, things, about people that were hurt and therefore loveable, the beautiful sacred space in them that needed touching. And once you’ve seen that in someone, it’s difficult not to love him. Or her. At least it was for me.

  She paused for a moment, but still he said nothing, and so she continued: You see, I’m afraid of going dead inside. Of course I can’t make love with you, I know that, I mean intellectually I do, but there’s something wrong with me. This should count. This should be valid enough.

  What? the man asked.

  This, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Just sitting here together in this car. It should matter. It should count.

  And it doesn’t? asked the man.

  Perhaps it does. That’s the joke of my life: that it all does matter, all these quiet moments, this moment, but we just want to get fucked and applauded, so we think that’s what matters, what counts, and in the end we realize it’s just the opposite.

  She was silent for a moment and the man was about to turn away from the window when he heard her speak again.

  It’s important for me that you know that, she said. That you know how I feel about you.

  He turned then and looked at her. She sat very erect, facing forward, staring through the front windshield. The man saw for the first time her frailty. It seemed to him that it was only her clothes, the girth and weight of her monstrous fur coat, that contained and protected her.

  He reached out and touched the arm of her coat, and then leaned forward and kissed her on her cheek. Thank you for doing this, he said. Thank you for coming with me to get the baby.

  They entered the lobby of the orphanage to find that it was empty and unattended. We must push this button to summon someone, the man said. Otherwise we may languish here forever.

  Then by all means push it, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Push it with all your might!

  The man pushed the button and they heard its shrill clang momentarily alarm the entire building.

  Well done, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. I’m sure we will be attended to momentarily. Meanwhile, I will sit upon this monstrosity and reacclimate myself. One is perpetually shedding or donning garments in this country. It’s fatiguing.

  The man had removed his parka immediately upon entering the anteroom and laid it upon one of the pews that flanked the entryway, for he felt it seriously compromised the effect of his grandfather’s suit. If he had brought a topcoat, he might have left it on, for it was cold in the anteroom, but he had not—he had only brought the parka, in which he always felt slightly ridiculous, as if he were acting as a penguin in some elementary school winter pageant.

  Now, listen, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Relax. Just be yourself. Pretend you adopt a baby every day of the week. Can you do that?

  I’ll try, said the man.

  You’ve got to do more than try. If they sense you’re nervous they’ll throw the baby out with the bathwater.

  The man said nothing.

  I was making a joke, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. The baby with the bathwater. It didn’t amuse you?

  No, said the man.

  I was trying to get you relaxed. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing. Just look at me and I’ll take over. You’ve got to relax. I’ll tell you what to do—it’s an old theater trick: jump up and down and flap your arms. Do it. It works wonderfully.

  I don’t think that’s a good idea, said the man.

  I tell you, if they sense you’re nervous they’ll smell a rat. They’ll smell a rat abandoning a sinking ship.

  The man laughed. That one was good, he said.

  Jump, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Flap!

  The man began to jump up and down and flap his arms. It felt very good. He closed his eyes. And then he felt a hand pressing down upon his shoulder, stilling him. He stopped jumping and opened his eyes. Livia Pinheiro-Rima stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder, pressing him down with a force that was peculiarly strong and adamant. And beside her stood a man. He sported a pince-nez and wore a white lab coat over a three-piece suit that was remarkably like the man’s own suit, and for a moment the man thought it was his suit, or his grandfather’s suit, and he did not know how it had gotten off him and onto this other man. But then he realized he was still wearing his suit. And the other man’s suit was better tailored and fit him very neatly.

  It’s all my fault, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. I told him to jump. She kept her hand pressed upon the man’s shoulder as if he might start jumping again if she took it away.

  He was terribly nervous about everything, she said to the man in the white coat. I’m sure that by now you are well acquainted with the hysteria of adoptive parents. They must process in a few minutes the most fundamental change known to man. Natural parents have nine months to process the transfiguration of their lives, but the adoptive parent has but minutes. He was beside himself, and so I told him to jump, because nothing restores equanimity like jumping. It is a well-known physiological fact. Those brave beautiful soldiers who stormed the shores of Normandy—they were ordered to jump as they crossed the channel.

  Yes, of course, said the man in the white coat. I am Doctor Oswalt Ludjekins. I am the director of St. Barnabas. Allow me to welcome you.

  He held out his hand and both Livia Pinheiro-Rima and the man shook it. You are both most welcome here. But tell me, please, Miss Pinheiro-Rima, what brings you to St. Barnabas?

  Oh, do you know me?

  Of course I do! I am, perhaps, your greatest devotee. Unless there is an emergency here at St. Barnabas, Friday evenings will invariably find me in the lobby of the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel drinking whiskey, smoking a cigar, and listening to you sing.

  Oh, so you’re the gentleman with the cigar!

  I’m afraid I am. Does the smoke bother you?

  Oh, no. It comes with the territory, as they say.

  I’m relieved because I would hate to think I am in any way compromising your artistry.

  Well, I shall blame all future gaffes on you.

  Please do, said Doctor Ludjekins. Yet none of this explains why I have the great pleasure of welcoming you to St. Barnabas. I believe that this gentleman and his wife are adopting one of our foundlings, but you, my dear Miss Pinheiro-Rima, what brings you to St. Barnabas? Are you also in want of an orphan?

  Is there not, my dear Doctor Ludjekins, someplace where we might speak more comfortably? I’m afraid that anterooms like this, being neither here nor there, set my nerves on edge. An
d I fear I am standing in a draught.

  But of course, said Doctor Ludjekins. I’m afraid the excitement of meeting you, Miss Pinheiro-Rima, has caused me to lose my manners. Shall we make a bee’s line for my office?

  Perhaps, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima, we may venture upstairs. I know my son is very eager to see his son.

  Doctor Ludjekins turned to the man. Your son?

  Yes, said the man. Today is the day he becomes mine. We have been here for six days now.

  But where is your wife? asked the doctor.

  His wife has had a most unfortunate accident, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Last night she slipped on some ice and injured her ankle. We fear it is broken. She wanted so badly to come with us, of course, but the doctor forbade it.

  Ah, the ice is treacherous at this time of year! It is a miracle we are not all hobbling about on sticks! But I am sure she will be perfectly well again quite soon. Tomorrow, perhaps. And then you can come and gather your new child together.

  Ah, but they are leaving here tomorrow, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. And bringing their child out of this cursed darkness and off to the land of milk and honey.

  But we cannot give a little baby to only a man. A baby must have mother and father.

  And so shall this baby have, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. He will meet his mother as soon as we return to the hotel. She is waiting there with open arms. Open arms and a broken foot! She opened her arms wide by way of illustration, but Doctor Ludjekins seemed to think she was about to embrace (or attack) him, for he raised his hand and took a step backward.

  That is all well and good, he said. But we can only transact a baby to two parents.

  I understand, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. But surely you can make an exception in this case? It would be a shame for the little dear to lose his chance at a happy home on account of a broken foot.

  Where babies are concerned I am afraid there can be no exceptions, said Doctor Ludjekins. My hands are tied.

  Oh goodness, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Tied hands and broken feet! This is a muddle, isn’t it?

  You must change your plans of departure, Doctor Ludjekins said to the man. And your woman must regain her feet. And then all shall be happy.