Erica was staring at René, who, with his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets and his eyes squinting against the smoke rising from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was listening to the talkative Mrs. Oppenheim with a polite expression, but not much interest. She was actually thinking of Marc, however, for there was something not only preoccupied but remote about him, as though he had spent half his life learning how to withdraw into himself and observe the world from a safe distance. He had an unusually fine body and a physical grace which reminded her of her sister Miriam; he was obviously sensitive and very intelligent, and she realized instinctively that his disconcerting remoteness and preoccupation were both a kind of defense. Defense against what?
Another thing that was interesting about him was the structure of his face. High cheekbones usually went with a light skin, but Marc Reiser was rather dark; his eyes were the same greenish mixture as her own but set quite differently, and although he did not look particularly Jewish nor particularly foreign, at the same time, it would have been a shock to discover that his name was Brown, or Thomas.
"Where do you come from?" she asked suddenly.
"From Manchester. It’s in northern Ontario".
Erica had spent a night in Manchester once, it was on the transcontinental line, but all she could remember was the sweetish smell of rotting lumber down by the docks, the brilliant blue of the lake with the sun cutting across the outer islands from the west, and the magnificent sculptured forms of the Algoma mountains, lying across a stretch of fields and bush behind the town. Of Manchester itself, she had only a hazy recollection of an interminably long main street which looked like all the other main streets of North America-the inevitable collection of groceterias, hardware and drug stores, gas stations, vacant lots, show windows containing approximately ten times too many unrelated objects, soda fountains, airless beer parlors and three-story office buildings.
She made an entirely unsuccessful effort to visualize the obviously civilized individual beside her, against a background of hardware stores, beer parlors and vacant lots, and finally asked, "How on earth did you get there?"
"I was born in Manchester". He seemed rather proud of it.
"Where were your parents born?"
Marc grinned. He said, "You remind me of the man named Cohen who changed his name to O’Brien and then wanted to change it to Smith, and when the judge asked him why, he said, ’Because people are always wanting to know what my name was before’." He paused and then told her, "My parents were born in Austria".
"Oh, that explains it", said Erica.
"Explains what?"
"When I first saw you I thought you were Austrian. Why did your parents choose Manchester, of all places?"
"Partly because they didn’t want to live in a city, and partly because the Reisers had always been mixed up with lumber in some form or other and my father heard there was a planing mill for sale there. I like it", he said, looking down at her. "I’d far rather spend the rest of my life in Manchester than in Montreal".
"Why?"
"Because in a small town you have a chance to do something. You can be…" He broke off, searching for the right word, and went on, "You can be effective. I suppose that’s the only criterion of ’success’ which isn’t somehow associated with the idea of making a lot of money".
"Aren’t you interested in making a lot of money?" asked Erica, regarding him curiously.
"Not particularly. I wouldn’t know what to do with it". He paused, looking off down the room, and remarked, "I’d like to make enough out of law to be able to have a farm someday, though".
"Why?" asked Erica again.
"Because I like horses. I’ve always done a lot of riding, and I like living in the country-not out in the middle of nowhere, of course, but near enough to a town so that I could go in to the office every day. You ask an awful lot of questions".
He didn’t appear to mind her questions and she said, "It’s the only way to get anything out of you. Besides, if you know what a person wants most, you usually have a pretty good idea what he’s like".
"What do you want most?"
"Just what every other woman wants", said Erica. "I’m afraid I’m not very original. What else do you dream about besides horses?"
"That sounds rather Freudian", said Marc, grinning, and then answered, "Nothing much. I’d like to be able to buy all the books I want and…" He paused for thought and added, "Oh, yes. I want a custom-built radio-phonograph with two loud-speakers and a room full of good records".
"Do you like music too?" asked Erica.
"What do you mean, ’too’?"
"Never mind", said Erica. "I was just wondering where you’d been all these years. What kind of music do you like?"
"Almost everything". He said quickly, "I don’t know anything about it; almost every time I go to a concert or turn on the radio I hear something that I haven’t heard before. I’m still at the beginning stage".
She told him about her father’s custom-built radio-phonograph and his record library and said, "You must come with René some evening and we’ll play whatever you like. Charles has almost everything from Corelli to Shostakovich".
Afterwards she was to remember the way his face lit up, and the way he said, "I’d like to awfully, if your father wouldn’t mind".
And the utter confidence with which she had answered, "Charles wouldn’t mind at all, once he’d recovered from the shock of meeting someone who was really interested. He doesn’t get much encouragement from most of the people we know. Music is all right in its place, of course, but its place is the concert hall, once or twice a month, and Charles has no sense of proportion. He even interrupts bridge games and rushes home from the golf course in order to hear the first North American broadcast of some symphony written by some crazy modern composer, which nobody in their senses would call ’music’ in any case. I think a lot of our friends feel that it isn’t quite normal or in very good taste, for a man otherwise as sound in his opinions as C. S. Drake to know so damn much about music and take it so seriously".
She said with amusement, "My father is incapable of being even moderately polite about a bad performance, regardless of how successful it was from a social standpoint".
"What sort of music does he like?"
"Almost everything, except that, in general, he’s anti-romantic. He has a passion for Bach and the very early composers and for some of the moderns, particularly Mahler".
"Do you always call him ’Charles’?" asked Marc.
"Yes. We have a very odd relationship, I guess. We even lunch together downtown once or twice a week, as if we didn’t see enough of each other the rest of the time!"
"How does your mother feel about music?"
"Mother?" said Erica. "Oh, she has far more sense of proportion".
People were beginning to go. Erica got up and crossed the room to say good-by to someone, and then came back and sat down on the window-seat beside Marc again, hoping that no one else would notice her. Their guests were almost all friends of her mother’s, with the exception of a few who had been friends of Erica’s but who belonged to the period which had come to an end after she went to work on the Post and in whom Erica had gradually lost interest. Unlike her mother, who refused to believe it, she knew that the loss of interest was mutual; it was as disconcerting for them to discover that in any discussion involving politics or economics, Erica was likely to be on the side of Labor, as it was for her to realize that they were not. She had tried to explain it to her mother but it was no use. Margaret Drake had invited some of Erica’s former friends today because she still felt that Erica was being "left out of things" and remained convinced that the mutual lack of interest was partly the product of Erica’s imagination, partly due to a temporary upset in her daughter’s sense of values, and partly due to the fact that Erica simply would not make any real effort to see them.