It was Brahms. No, it wasn’t. It was Sibelius. No, it was Robert Schumann. It was not Mendelssohn — that much was evident, even to Patrick. And it was not, on second thought, Schumann. It was Brahms. Roger had had a thing for Brahms.
Roger was looking toward them now, peering up the hundred feet of windowless tunnel that separated him from Patrick and Gregory. Even at this distance, Patrick, gazing back down the dirty white corridor, could see where Gregory had come by his big damp eyes.
Patrick and the three-eyed rabbit stood watching Roger watch them. Now and then, people wearing backpacks or maneuvering wheeled suitcases came between them. The oncoming people pressed down on Patrick and the boy, and Gregory wrapped his arms around Patrick’s leg. What was interesting about this moment was the way in which Roger’s playing produced an occasion for what felt to Patrick like a bond between the men — it was music for male affinity, for courtship, for sharing — and, furthermore, between the men and the boy. Would Roger understand this? Gregory’s real parents, that early afternoon before the trip to visit the dying animals, were not Roger and Caroline, or even Patrick and Caroline, but Patrick and Roger.
“I guess we ought to say hello,” Patrick said to Gregory. “Come on, Bunny, let go of my leg.”
“Can’t!”
“Yes, you can. Knock it off.” He had to reach down and pull the boy off him. He anticipated tears, but in fact he was the one who felt like crying. This feeling came on suddenly. He said, “I’m going to pick you up. You’ll be safe and happy in the air! Are you ready to be happy?”
“Up!”
“Good boy. Let’s say hi to your daddy, and after that we’ll ride out to the zoo and see something tragic.”
Was he crazy? They’d never make their train this way. He knelt before the boy. Patrick held the journal in one hand. Now he reached behind Gregory, pressing the journal between his arm and Gregory’s back. His other hand went beneath Gregory’s arm. He got a grip on Gregory. He stood and brought the boy close to him, squeezing him with “Pond, with Mud.” He would have preferred to avoid carrying Gregory. Once up, the kid would be unwilling to go down. And lately he’d got heavy.
If only Caroline had been with them. On the other hand, though, maybe not. In truth, it occurred to him, he didn’t want Caroline there at all.
“Wait a minute, hold on, wait a minute,” he said to the Funny Bunny. There was something Patrick had to get down in the work-in-progress, before he forgot. It was about Caroline. He pictured her dressed for the office, with her scarf knotted over the buttoned top button of her starched white shirt, noosing her neck. Why had Patrick never before considered that knotted scarf in relation to the death of love? The scarf produced such obvious imagery. Obvious? Not too obvious.
What to do? How to get words down on paper? If he lowered the Bunny to the ground, there could be a tantrum and the day would be ruined. On the other hand, were he to try to open the book and take out the pen — well, forget it, it was out of the question. Could he persuade Gregory to climb up and ride on his shoulders, and in this way free his hands? But he wouldn’t have free hands, would he? He’d be holding Gregory’s knees, restraining Gregory from kicking him in the chest with the heels of his little rubber sneakers.
He carried Gregory down the tiled hall, against the rush of people entering from the street. He felt afraid. Why, all of a sudden, was he so full of fear? He knew the answer. It was simple. He wasn’t making his art. No, that wasn’t the complete answer. The complete answer was that he was not an artist. He was a person who let language dissolve into nothingness. Did that qualify as an insight?
Walking along the train-station tunnel, the boy cradled in his arms, he felt as if he were pushing through music — as if the music from the violin had become resistant, like a substance.
“Hello!” Patrick said too loudly to the violinist. “Brahms!” he exclaimed. Why was he talking like the boy? What an idiot he was. He’d become submissive. The only way he could make things worse would be to pull dollar bills from his pocket and toss them into the violin case.
With one arm, he held Gregory. He dug deeply into his pants pocket. Money and old tissues were wadded in a ball in Patrick’s pocket. He brought out a handful. There was no way for him to count the money. He held it up before his eyes. Twenties and fives.
“Gregory and I were on our way to the zoo! I took the day off. We thought we could maybe see a few wild animals before they have to quarantine them. That’s a joke. I guess it’s not funny.” And he said, “Right, Gregory? The zoo! Gregory, say hello to your father.” And with that he let a few bills flutter from his hand to the case on the ground. It was probably thirty or forty dollars.
Could anything have been meaner? Could he have been more cruel? Here was a demonstration of the power of a weak man over a weaker man. And there was more to come, when he shoved the money and the tissues back into his pocket and said, “Can I buy you a drink?” Patrick understood that he was not so much abusing the other man as punishing himself; they would drink together, the two men, and Patrick would buy, and he would get drunk enough to give himself credit for being a generous person. Later in the day, Roger might get up his nerve and punch him; but if he did he might injure his hand and be unable to play the violin for a while, and Patrick would be obliged to help him with a loan. There was no end to it.
“Drink?” the violinist said. Immediately he stopped playing and knelt to stow away his violin. He took care securing it in the case, but was speedy nonetheless. He needs a drink, Patrick thought. Patrick felt misgivings as he watched the violin-case lid come down over money that had recently been his. Roger snapped the case shut and stood up, and, a moment later, Gregory and his two fathers set out to waste the day sitting on stools in a dark train-station bar, a place off to the side, away from the sunlight, and populated with men who leaned down hard and unspeaking over their glasses.
There was no music in the bar. The place looked to Patrick as if it had been neglected by the architects who had recently completed the renovation of the train station. Had they forgotten about it? It had a linoleum floor and, in keeping with the historical standards for furnishings in these sorts of haunts, red vinyl booths, and walls painted a dark shade down low, toward the floor, and a lighter color up above. The ceiling was yellowing; certainly in another age, the seventies most likely, it had been white. All those burning cigarettes. All those people coughing themselves to death. Patrick imagined the dark bar full of coughers. There was something about the smell in the place, too. It smelled to Patrick like a hospital, or, faintly, like Roger, except saltier. This bar off to the side of the concourse was all that was left of the old train station; it reminded Patrick of the periods in modern literature when a decline in civilization is evident in the works of the poets. But when he thought about this he could not dream up any original lines that did not refer to cigarettes, or to the fact that lit cigarettes held in the air by drunks in dark rooms become little galaxies, spiraling.
Roger threw his violin case on the bar. This was a powerful move on his part. It showed that he had confidence in what he trusted (the hard case) to protect what he needed (the fragile violin) in order to maintain for himself some small place in which he could be a — what? A man in the world.