The Fires of Spring (30 page)

David was sweating when he hung up the receiver. What had Kol discovered? Did he want to talk about Mary Meigs? David felt a resentment against the musician and against the world. “I don’t want to get mixed up in things!” he cried to himself as he hurried to the station. “Damn it all! I want to read this summer.”

At Kol’s apartment there was a note. “D.H. Come to the Academy. We’re recording.” So David hopped aboard a trolley and reported to the famous music hall. He slipped quietly into a back seat and listened as Stokowski prepared his men in Schubert’s Seventh, that bright and brassy thing of a hundred themes. And as he listened he stared nervously at the violins, where Klementi Kol sat very straight.

“How did you like it?” Kol asked when the recording was completed.

“He uses so many melodies!” David replied cautiously. “Any one of them could be made into a symphony.”

“The word is
prodigal
,” Kol explained. “Why don’t we go down to the gallery?”

“I’d like that,” David agreed. They walked the few steps down to the Johnson Collection, where in the quiet, cool rooms a few art lovers studied the gems which the rich and parsimonious lawyer had surreptitiously purchased over many years. Already David thought of these pictures as his friends: the laughing Cima, the cool Cuyps, the sleepy Hobbemas, and the wrenched and bleeding primitives.

But this day Klementi asked the guard to move two chairs into the small room where the Rembrandt studies were. There he sat with David and pointed to the earthy picture of the massive beeves, hung on hooks, half-butchered, with their
suet gleaming in the light. “
Prodigal
is the word,” Kol repeated.

“What do you mean?” David hazarded. He was looking at Kol, not at the Rembrandt.

“Lots of men,” Kol explained, “have so much talent they can waste ideas. Like the Schubert symphony. But there are others who have one talent, and they husband it very carefully. And often they’re better than the prodigal geniuses like Schubert. I’m thinking of Brahms, for example. And Watteau.” There was a long pause and David guessed that next Kol would speak of Mary Meigs. But instead the tall musician turned in his chair and looked at David, saying, “I met Immanuel Tschilczynski at a chamber-music session the other night. Could it be true what he said? That you plan to become a mathematician?”

David felt relieved, as if the attendants had come into that little room and lifted one of Rembrandt’s beeves from his chest. He laughed and said, “Yes. That’s right.”

He was unprepared for what happened next. Kol jumped up into the air like a strong, tribal dancer and cried, “But you have the talent! When I knew you at Paradise you could write! You had the vision, too, and I thought that maybe you would spend your life on something worthy. But to be a mathematician! What’s that, David?” He flailed his arms about and a wretched thought assailed the young student.

“Sometimes he is just like a girl!” David said under his breath.

Then the musician sat down and put his hands on David’s and said very quietly, “Leschetizky once told me that several of his finest students were like you. They knew they were going to be great pianists. But they fought against it. They struggled and cried out against their own destiny. Leschetizky told me that’s why they were wonderful when they finally surrendered. There was the fire of hell in them.”

Kol drew back and dropped his hands so that they almost dragged along the museum floor. “Anyone can be a mathematician,” he said. “But look at the Rembrandt! See with what wonderful invention he twists his paint to make it appear like suet. If you can possibly get even a foothold in art, you should never be a mathematician.” Then he lifted his right hand to point at the Rembrandt, and the hand was powerful, like a blacksmith’s, and David thought: “There’s nothing wrong with him! Why, he could play tackle with those mitts.”

Kol knew he had said enough, so now he clapped his
hands and said, “After the lecture, good news! Mary is arriving on the afternoon train from Clevelandl And we’re going to have dinner tonight!”

“I’ve got to get back to college,” David protested. “The observatory.”

“That can wait!” Kol insisted, and he led David to the dirty station where Mary was to arrive. The train was late, of course, and Kol said, “I’m glad. I forgot to tell you something, David. Mary has changed her name. For professional reasons.” He pressed the side of his nose and tried not to smile. “Now you should learn that whenever a girl changes her hat, or her hairdo, or her name, it’s very important. Won’t you please remember to call her Mona?”

“Mona!” David repeated. “That’s an interesting name.”

The train puffed in and David’s heart pounded like the thundering wheels. Finally Mona appeared, a rich coat thrown over her shoulders and a porter carrying five or six boxes. “Klim!” she cried, rushing up to the tall musician and kissing him. Across Kol’s shoulder she saw David and slowly drew her lips away from Klim’s cheek.

“Hello!” she said, extending her hand.

“Hello, Mona,” David replied. A slight twinkle flashed in her eyes and she pressed his hand. “See!” she cried to Kol. “He knows my name already!”

They ate, very formally, at a German restaurant and then went by taxi to Kol’s apartment. David was tremendously excited. Mona was much prettier than even his accurate mind remembered. He noticed that she was not wearing much make-up and that her pale cheeks were not rouged. At the apartment a message was waiting and Klim said, “Stokowski called. He’s furious about the recording. The brasses, rumbling like beer wagons! I’ll run along now. I won’t be long. You wait here.”

But he was gone a long time, and as the minutes passed David could do nothing but stare at the actress, and she sat still and tired in a large chair. Finally she asked, “What are you thinking, Dave?” And he replied, “I was comparing you with that portrait. You seem to get younger.” And she said, “I’m one of the lucky ones, Dave. I don’t put on weight. I’ve got good teeth. I’ll be young for a long time.” Then David sucked in his breath and said, “You talk of yourself the way farmers talk about horses.” And she laughed and said, “Most people are like horses, but they don’t admit it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I keep my looks a long time.”

They lapsed into silence and David finally said, “Klim’s gone a long time.” And Mona replied, “When he and Stokey get together they talk forever.” She dropped her head as she said this so that she looked at David out of only part of her eyes, and he had to restrain himself from leaping at her again. He said, “I’m ashamed of how I acted last time, Mona.” And she held out her hands and said, “Don’t be silly! Never be ashamed of anything! If you’ve made a fool of yourself, just don’t do it again. But being ashamed is only being a fool twice for the same reason.” He rose slowly, almost indifferently, and thought: “How do you start to kiss a girl who’s sitting in a chair?” He walked stiffly to the chair and bent awkwardly down. As he did so he realized he couldn’t possibly kiss the actress unless he knelt on the floor, but quietly she raised her lips, and he did not feel awkward any longer. “Let’s sit over here,” he said, pulling her gently to the davenport.

Together they looked at the door, thinking that Klim might appear at any moment. “Wouldn’t it be better …” David began. “Why don’t you lock the door?” Mona asked. David jumped to the task and laughed nervously as he returned to the davenport. Again he wondered: “What am I supposed to do now?” Tentatively, he sat close to her and kissed her on the cheek, then on the lips. Mona closed her eyes and leaned back against the cushions.

“It was a long trip from Cleveland,” she said. “What a smelly theatre!”

Even more tentatively David began to loosen the buttons at the throat of her dress. Instinctively, as if she were again a girl of fifteen on her first date, she pressed her hand against his to stop him. Then, as if she remembered who she was and what she needed, she rose calmly and undressed.

With his mouth open, David watched the expensive traveling clothes slip away from her perfect body. When she at last stood free and naked before him, he was breathless in wonder, but his mind—that impartial machine that must work and compare to live—said: “She’s so much whiter than Nora! Her breasts are smaller and harder, too. But it’s strange how much alike girls look when they’re undressed.” Then he himself, David, rushed back to his mind and cried, “What if Klim should come in?”

Angrily Mona clenched her fists and muttered, “Klim’s no part of this. If he comes back, that’s our risk. And his.” With a quick jump she landed on the davenport beside David
and allowed him to clutch her lips to his. But instinctively she knew that he was afraid of Klim, and his fear gave her added courage. Deftly she slipped away from him and danced from light to light, snapping switches and kicking her small pink-and-gray heels as she did so. She circled the room like the goddess of night, leaving behind a trail of lovers’ darkness. Then she crept beside David and whispered, “Don’t you understand? Whenever a grown man rants about his honor it means he’s no good in bed.”

She was a wild and violent woman, a human, twisting spring, tortured and yet deeply alive. Her breasts were firm like muscles and her neck was never relaxed. There was a passion in her love-making and a gurgling, triumphant conclusion. For a moment, she was set free of her tireless ambition and was merely an exhausted, breathless woman.

But it was only for a moment. Suddenly she cried, “Now for God’s sake get dressed, Dave. Turn on the lights and unlock the door. Oh, my God! If Klim had come home!” She fluffed up the pillows and made David turn around in a circle to be sure he looked all right. Then she said, “I know! Why don’t you leave right now? I’ll say you couldn’t wait. Had to get back to take your pictures.” She rushed him from the apartment and into the warm night air.

Hours later he sleepily set two photographs into the oscillograph and even his exhausted eyes could catch the fluttering star, the star among all the others that rose and fell in brilliance, throbbing millions of miles away, exploding in fiery wonder like a woman in love.

The light in which David saw himself next morning was not pleasant. He had betrayed a friend. In Klim’s own house he had seduced the musician’s mistress. But he knew the word
seduce
was meaningless when applied to Mona. She had merely used him as her automatic fool, and that fact, added to David’s memory of kind, friendly Klim, produced a vague nausea.

David said to himself: “No more of that!” Then he added a current college tag line: “That’s how guys get shot.” He immersed himself in his studies and for several days succeeded in expelling Mona from his thoughts.

But her banishment was soon revoked, for whether he willed it or not, he was forced to submit to his vision of her. She was completely unlike anyone he had previously imagined, for she was one of those women whom a few
fortunate men meet: she filled the hazy confines of the dream of love and made imaginings real. Let her once be glimpsed, running naked to extinguish the lights, and she was perpetually in the mind. Five days after David had denounced himself for having betrayed Klim, he was subconsciously plotting how he might again get into bed with her.

His connivings were subconscious because openly he reassured himself: “Like I said! No more of that dame. Not for me!” Then he added: “I’ll study like mad.” He began by reading a life of Castiglione, which led naturally to a consideration of Titian, which made a trip to the Johnson Collection—which had no Titian—a likely idea, and before two hours had elapsed he was standing before Cima’s laughing, lovely panel of the satyrs.

“Look at those rascals!” he laughed, not admitting that he envied their conscienceless revels. He cocked his head and studied the delicate brown shading of the picture, and one of the rubaiyat of Omar came to his mind from those rainy days at Paradise when he had memorized the indolent poem.

Goaded by the words, he prevailed upon the caretaker to let him use the phone. When he called Klim’s number, Mona answered and David asked breathlessly, “Is Klim there?”

“No,” she cautiously replied.

“I’ll be right up,” he whispered.

“Take a cab,” Mona said in a noncommittal voice.

Twelve minutes later he burst into Klim’s apartment and cried, “I’ve been dying to see you.”

“Hey!” she protested. “Take it easy!” She pushed him into a chair and started laughing. He joined in and for some minutes they made fun of each other, laughing ever more boisterously. Finally Mona cried, “You came busting in here like Tarzan.”

“That’s how I felt,” David admitted, and then they chuckled over David’s ever becoming an uncontrolled ape-man.

“Don’t you think it’s fun when people aren’t too serious?” Mona teased.

David grabbed at her and said, “You can’t talk me out of being serious over you. Don’t try!” He pulled her onto the couch beside him, and she pressed her clean, cool face against his.

“Klim’s always so dull,” she whispered, and that was when David learned how utterly delightful can be the revels of love, how winged and how joyous.

The experience affected him deeply. Instinctively he knew—because of his Bucks County upbringing—that it was reprehensible to enjoy with abandon any act of life; but to enjoy sleeping with a woman must be inescapably sinful, and it was irrelevant that an old Persian had advised tossing the ashcloths of repentance into the fires of spring. That might be all right for a Persian, but it simply didn’t apply to a Pennsylvania Quaker.

So, as most young men would have done, David stayed away from Mona for more than a week. Then suddenly he dropped all pretense and hurried shamelessly to the actress. “I’ll bet you’ve been having a great argument with yourself,” she teased.

David stood back to study this remarkable girl. She had not bothered to finish high school, but she knew more about how people behaved than David would ever know. “How do you happen to guess right so often?” he asked.