“Did you? God, I’m sorry about it,” I said.
“I fought her too much,” said Lily. “Like that time I brought you home. But she was a fighter, and I am one, too. You were right about my fiancé. He did go to Groton.”
“Ha, ha, I hit it, didn’t I?”
“He’s a nice man. He’s not what you think. He’s very decent and he supports his parents. But when I ask myself whether I could live without him, I guess the answer is yes. But I am learning to get along alone. There’s always the universe. A woman doesn’t have to marry, and there are perfectly good reasons why people should be lonely.”
You know, compassion is useless, too, sometimes I feel. It just lasts long enough to get you in dutch. My heart ached for Lily, and then she tried to con me.
“All right, kid, what are you going to do now?”
“I sold the house in Danbury. I’m living in an apartment. But there was one thing I wanted you to have, and I sent it to you.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“It’s a rug,” she said. “Hasn’t it come yet?”
“Hell, what do I want with your Christly rug! Was it from your room?”
“No.”
“You’re a liar. It’s the rug from your bedroom.”
She denied it, and when it arrived at the farm I accepted it from the delivery man; I felt I should. It was creepy-looking and faded, a Baghdad mustard color, the threads surrendering to time and sprigs of blue all over it. It was so ugly I had to laugh. This crummy rug! It tickled me. So I put it on the floor of my violin studio, which was down in the basement. I had poured the concrete there myself but not thick enough, for the damp comes through. Anyway, I thought this rug might improve the acoustics.
All right, then, I’d come into the city for my lessons with that fat Hungarian Haponyi, and I’d see Lily too. We courted for about eighteen months, and then we got married, and then the children were born. As for the violin, I was no Heifetz but I kept at it. Presently the daily voice, I want, I want, arose again. Family life with Lily was not all that might have been predicted by an optimist; but I’m sure that she got more than she had bargained for, too. One of the first decisions she made after looking over the whole place as lady of the house was to get her portrait painted and hung with the rest of the family. This portrait business was very important to her and it went on until about six months before I took off for Africa.
So let’s look at a typical morning of my married life with Lily. Not inside the house but outside, for inside it is filthy. Let’s say it’s one of those velvety days of early autumn when the sun is shining on pines and the air has a spice of cold and stings your lungs with pleasure. I see a large pine tree on my property, and in the green darkness underneath, which somehow the pigs never got into, red tuberous begonias grow, and a broken stone inscription put in by my mother says, “Goe happy rose …” That’s all it says. There must be more fragments beneath the needles. The sun is like a great roller and flattens the grass. Beneath this grass the earth may be filled with carcasses, yet that detracts nothing from a day like this, for they have become humus and the grass is thriving. When the air moves the brilliant flowers move too in the dark green beneath the trees. They brush against my open spirit because I am in the midst of this in the red velvet dressing gown from the Rue de Rivoli bought on the day that Frances spoke the word divorce. I am there and am looking for trouble. The crimson begonias, and the dark green and the radiant green and the spice that pierces and the sweet gold and the dead transformed, the brushing of the flowers on my undersurface are just misery to me. They make me crazy with misery. To somebody these things may have been given, but that somebody is not me in the red velvet robe. So what am I doing here?
Then Lily comes up with the two kids, our twins, twenty-six months old, tender, in their short pants and neat green jerseys, the dark hair brushed down on their foreheads. And here comes Lily with that pure face of hers going to sit for the portrait. And I am standing on one foot in the red velvet robe, heavy, wearing dirty farm boots, those Wellingtons which I favor when at home because they are so easy to put on and take off.
She starts to get into the station wagon and I say, “Use the convertible. I am going to Danbury later to look for some stuff, and I need this.” My face is black and angry. My gums are aching. The joint is in disorder, but she is going and the kids will be playing indoors at the studio while she sits for the portrait. So she puts them in the back seat of the convertible and drives away.
Then I go down to the basement studio and take the fiddle and start warming up on my Sevcik exercises. Ottokar Sevcik invented a technique for the quick and accurate change of position on the violin. The student learns by dragging or sliding his fingers along the strings from first position to third and from third to fifth and from fifth to second, on and on, until the ear and fingers are trained and find the notes with precision. You don’t even start with scales, but with phrases, and go up and down the strings, crawling. It is frightfuclass="underline" but Haponyi says it is the only way, this fat Hungarian. He knows about fifty words of English, the main one being “dear.” He says, “Dear, take de bow like dis vun, not like dis vun, so. Und so, so, so. Not to kill vid de bow. Make nice. Do not stick. Yo, yo, yo. Seret lek! Nice.”
And after all, I am a commando, you know. And with these hands I’ve pushed around the pigs; I’ve thrown down boars and pinned them and gelded them. So now these same fingers are courting the music of the violin and gripping its neck and toiling up and down on the Sevcik. The noise is like smashing egg crates. Nevertheless, I thought, if I discipline myself eventually the voice of angels may come out. But anyway I didn’t hope to perfect myself as an artist. My main purpose was to reach my father by playing on his violin.
Down in the basement of the house, I worked very hard as I do at everything. I had felt I was pursuing my father’s spirit, whispering, “Oh, Father, Pa. Do you recognize the sounds? This is me, Gene, on your violin, trying to reach you.” For it so happens that I have never been able to convince myself the dead are utterly dead. I admire rational people and envy their clear heads, but what’s the use of kidding? I played in the basement to my father and my mother, and when I learned a few pieces I would whisper, “Ma, this is ‘Humoresque’ for you.” Or, “Pa, listen—‘Meditation’ from Thaïs.” I played with dedication, with feeling, with longing, love — played to the point of emotional collapse. Also down there in my studio I sang as I played, “Rispondi! Anima bella” (Mozart). “He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Handel). Clutching the neck of the little instrument as if there were strangulation in my heart, I got cramps in my neck and shoulders.
Over the years I had fixed up the little basement for myself, paneled it with chestnut and put in a dehumidifier. There I keep my little safe and my files and war souvenirs; and there also I have a pistol range. Under foot was now Lily’s rug. At her insistence I had got rid of most of the pigs. But she herself was not very cleanly, and for one reason or another we couldn’t get anyone from the neighborhood to do the cleaning. Yes, she swept up once in a while, but toward the door and not out of it, so there were mounds of dust in the doorway. Then she went to sit for her portrait, running away from the house altogether while I was playing Sevcik and pieces of opera and oratorio, keeping time with the voice within.
IV
Is it any wonder I had to go to Africa? But I have told you there always comes a day of tears and madness.
I had fights, I had trouble with the troopers, I made suicide threats, and then last Xmas my daughter Ricey came home from boarding school. She has some of the family difficulty. To be blunt, I do not want to lose this child in outer space, and I said to Lily, “Keep an eye on her, will you?”