Body & Soul (8 page)

"Mr. Eisler, is that all you're taking?" she asked.

"It is more than I arrived with."

"So this is it."

"I have no choice."

They drove across town in silence. When she got to the pier a cop waved her through the gates to the embarkation area. She pulled up behind another cab.

The boat was enormous, a gray wall with portholes looming high over everything. Claude pressed his face against the window and looked up to see the banked railings, the bridge, the huge smokestacks, the boom crane pulling up great rope nets filled with cargo. The pier was crowded with stevedores, sailors, cops, ship's officers, workers manhandling crates, forklifts scooting, people shouting orders or waving up to others already on board. A sense of excitement, of purpose. Here was the idea of destination compressed into a single huge, busy image as passengers flowed up the long steep gangways onto the ship, the SS
Batory.
Claude stared up at the bright superstructure shining in the sun, seagulls wheeling, and felt a longing so deep it was like a sickness, the same feeling he'd had clinging to the lamppost on V-E Day years ago.

"Take this." Eisler leaned forward to hand her a hundred dollar bill.

"I can't," she said.

He shook the money impatiently. "Take it, take it."

She did.

"Now listen to me, woman. If you are wise, you will break off all connection with your group. Completely. Do not go to any more meetings. Do not respond if anyone attempts to communicate with you. Forget that you had anything to do with any of them. Wipe it out."

If he had struck her, he could not have shocked her more. She stared, her mouth open.

"They are amateurs. Dreamers. They can't protect themselves, and they can't protect you. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, but—"

"It is a house of cards. It will collapse."

Claude was astonished to see tears in her eyes. "But they're my friends."

"They are false friends. They have no discipline, and they will, how do you say it, they will roll over." He got out of the cab. "Goodbye, comrade, and thank you for your help." He walked to the nearest gangway without looking back and boarded the ship.

Claude was mystified, but as he stared at the back of his mother's head he sensed it was not the time to ask questions.

They sat silently for a long time, looking up at the great ship, until she finally started the engine, pulled at the wheel, and drove away.

"The maestro would like to see you put on some weight," Franz said. "A little more strength in the upper body, hmmmm?"

Claude pointed to one of the photographs. "Is that him?"

"Taken many years ago."

"He's big."

"Push-ups are good for a pianist. Do you know how to do pushups?"

Claude shook his head. Franz lowered himself to the Persian rug and demonstrated. "Nothing should touch but your toes, your hands, and your nose. Ach. I can't do it anymore. But keep straight, keep your tush in the air. Now you try it."

Claude managed to do three. They lay together on the floor, side by side, breathing hard.

"He suggests that you do them after practice. It will come quickly because you are young. You'll be surprised."

"I'll try." It was odd lying next to him. Claude sneaked a close-up look at the Adam's apple, which bobbed as Franz swallowed and caught his breath. The old man got up slowly, first to his knees and then, bracing himself on the piano bench, to his feet. He ran his fingers through the long white hair on the sides of his head.

"He also suggests that you eat here after practice. At six-thirty in the dining room. Will that be agreeable?"

Claude got up. "Yes. Thank you."

"Good. Come in back now and we'll talk to Helga."

They moved across the room, through the big doors, the foyer, the dining room, and the swinging door into the kitchen. Smells of cinnamon, coffee, and lemon. Helga wore an apron and a small white cap on her graying head.

"So," she said, shaking hands. "We make you fat,
ja?
"

Claude looked at the floor and she touched his head lightly and quickly. He felt uncomfortable talking about his body because he hated his body. He resented the earaches, recurrent in his left ear—the sharp pain, the cracking sounds, the crusty yellow stuff he would dig out with his finger. He resented the chilblains he got in cold weather, the way his scalp itched in warm weather, the scabs he got on his knees and elbows. Something was always wrong. Recently he had discovered, quite by accident, that his foreskin had adhered to one side of the head of his penis, and every night, grimacing with pain, he would pull it back, every night a bit more, ignoring the spots of blood, hoping it would eventually break free. He was thin and weak, and in his heart of hearts he did not believe anything could be done about it. But he would go along with push-ups, he would go along with eating, and pretend whatever they wanted him to pretend. He was ashamed, but he recognized their good intentions, and that made it a bit easier. They
would not use his shame against him, the way his mother sometimes did.

"What do you like to eat?" Helga asked.

The question stopped him. He'd never really thought about it. Most things came from cans. Is that what she meant? "I guess ... I don't know. Everything, I guess."

"Everything. That is good."

"I like hot dogs," he said. "I like Prexy's."

She turned to Franz. "What is this Prexy's?"

"Hamburgers," Franz said.

"I like milk."

"
Ja.
Milk is good." She rubbed her hands and smiled at Franz. "I make something special for Friday."

And so it began. At the end of the next practice session Claude tugged the bell pull and Franz came in to watch him do his push-ups. After washing his hands, the boy followed him into the dining room. A full service had been set up at the head of the table. Claude paused, intimidated by the elaborate setup, the gleaming plates and silver.

"Sit," Franz said.

"What is all this, how do I, which—"

"Relax, please. He wants you to learn this. There are different courses. It's very simple. Take the napkin from the ring and spread it over your lap. That's right. Now I will serve the soup."

Franz ladled out a pale green liquid. Claude sat perfectly still, watching the deft moves of the old man at his shoulder. The soup smelled good.

"Cream of asparagus. Use the outside spoon. And here is bread and butter. This is the butter knife. It stays on this little plate. Go ahead now." Franz surprised him by going off into the kitchen through the swinging door. After a moment Claude heard the soft murmur of their voices. The clink of plates, a chair scraping.

He picked up the indicated spoon and took a sip of the soup. Claude had never tasted asparagus, never eaten a soup made from scratch, and was entirely unprepared for the warm, slow-motion explosions of pleasure that now filled his head. (Asparagus soup was to become a lifelong favorite, although he would never find the equal to Helga's inspired ambrosial mixture of stock, tips, herbs, and cream. Nor would he know he was the beneficiary of her training in the lost royal kitchens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.) He ate as if in a dream.

Franz appeared, to remove the shallow bowl and replace it with a plate bearing Wiener schnitzel adorned with a thin slice of lemon, potato dumplings in butter, and a glistening mélange of string beans and sliced red peppers. "At a formal dinner," he explained, "each of these might be brought around the table, and of course you would not begin to eat until the host or hostess began."

"Okay."

Franz returned and Claude picked up his knife and fork. The dream continued—he barely heard the soft laughter from the kitchen, the chiming of the grandfather clock in the foyer, or the creak of the upholstered chair on which he sat. He was immersed in swirls of texture, color, and taste. He ate slowly, sometimes closing his eyes.

Franz regarded the empty plate. Even the lemon slice was gone. "Dessert," he said, removing the plate and setting down a bowl of bananas and cream dusted with brown sugar. "Two desserts." A saucer of apple strudel, still warm from the oven. "She is a good cook, Helga. Don't you think?"

He was speechless. He could only nod.

His mother, who had more or less stopped drinking during the time of the night driving, began again, mixing beer and whiskey with abandon. She talked to herself, roaming from her room to the front room muttering imprecations, asking questions, sometimes waving her arms. Claude stayed out of the way, sensing a dangerous mixture of confusion and anger.

He was secretly grateful when he came home to find her passed out in the armchair, snoring lightly, her head tilted, surrounded by a surprising number of newspapers. He carefully lifted one from her lap and was astounded to see a photograph of the round-faced man with steel-rimmed glasses.

EISLER REPORTED STOWAWAY; SEIZURE IN BRITAIN ASKED

A man who has identified himself as Gerhardt Eisler, native of Germany, is fleeing from the United States aboard the Gdynia-American liner Batory, it became known yesterday. The fugitive is believed to be the former Comintern agent named by the House Un-American Activities Committee as America's No. 1 Communist, jumping $23,500 bail to escape serving a year in jail and other penalties.

The fugitive is bound for Gdynia, but the ship, which sailed last Saturday, will put into Southampton Saturday. To make sure that Polish Communists aboard the ship do not balk a return, the State Dept., at the request of the Dept. of Justice, notified Scotland Yard of the incident and asked that top investigators meet the ship on her arrival in the English port. Scotland Yard was asked to hold the suspect.

If Eisler, the convicted Communist agent, has fled the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court, his bail would be forfeited even though the English authorities returned him, it was said at the Federal Building.

The forfeiture of the $23,500 bail would be a blow to the Civil Rights Congress and the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. For a good part of the funds to assure that Eisler would remain within the jurisdiction of the courts was put up by Communist workers and sympathizers, who made sacrifices to do so. The two agencies have fought one of his cases up to the Supreme Court.

Claude glanced up to find his mother watching him.

"He went first class," she said, reaching for the Pabst Blue Ribbon. "I don't feel bad about taking his money."

"What did he do? Was he a spy?"

She shrugged. "Who knows." She leaned forward and angrily pointed at the paper. "They say he filled out forms wrong. They say he didn't report eighteen hundred dollars on his income tax, so he owes them eleven hundred ninety-one dollars. What kind of bullshit is that?"

"A spy for the Nazis?"

"He's a Communist, for God's sake. The Communists fought the Nazis. They fought them harder than anyone else."

Claude sensed that he was not going to understand, and that if his mother understood, she wasn't going to tell him. He read the newspapers thoroughly, learning that Eisler was married and had left his wife behind, that he had a sister who had denounced him. But Claude could not find anything in clear language describing what the man had done. This was a disappointment, since it would have been thrilling were he a bank robber, or better yet a murderer—someone like the villains in radio programs. The Green Hornet or Jack Armstrong. But even if the evil in question remained tantalizingly vague, Claude followed the reports in a state of tremendous excitement. This was something real,
something that he was connected to, something that all those people who kept going back and forth outside the fan-shaped window knew nothing about. He could loiter by the newsstand on Lexington Avenue and feel, however temporarily, the importance of his own existence.

He was thrilled to see a photograph of the British authorities carrying Eisler from the
Batory,
holding him by his arms and legs. He followed the descriptions of the subsequent legal proceedings as well as he could, and felt a certain ambivalence at the front-page headlines that announced that the British were not going to send him back to the United States. Claude was happy for Eisler, who had, after all, treated him kindly and given him licorice, but sad too, because the story was over, and Claude could no longer enjoy his secret sense of superiority at the newsstand.

The maestro died in the late spring. One morning, according to Franz, he did not wake up. Claude had done well with scales, with Bach above all, and also with Chopin, Schubert, Mozart, Bartók, and Gershwin. The push-ups seemed very gradually to add strength to his upper body. Franz had said that when Claude reached puberty progress would be faster. Weisfeld had given him two small black rubber balls to squeeze to help build his hands, and said, when Claude complained that his reach was small, that time would take care of it. In the meantime Weisfeld showed him how to roll large intervals. The effect was different from unisons, but it at least allowed him to play through the music without losing notes.

He had eaten well, and although he was still slight he had more than kept up with a spurt of upward growth. Paprika beef stew with noodles. Chicken with tarragon cream sauce. Ham with beans and hot potato salad. Leg of lamb. Lentils with sausages. Chocolate cake. Creme fraiche. Ice cream with hot fudge. Strudel. Eclairs. Franz had extended Claude's education from table manners to the rudiments of social intercourse. "Avoid the extremes," he had said in an expansive mood one day. "Neither the Germanic stiffness, the Swedish formality, nor the regrettable American tendency toward overfamiliarity. The model is the mid-European gentleman—courteous, attentive to the needs of others, and yet entirely relaxed, entirely flexible. Don't be so good that you embarrass people." Claude hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, but filed it away. He had come to admire Franz, not just because of the bond of affection he sensed between him and
Weisfeld, but because of an innate gentleness, a quiet dignity despite the absurd Adam's apple.