30 Pieces of a Novel (73 page)

a few hours.” Or said to them both, “Let's the three of us sit outside and catch up on what we've been doing.” For an hour. That would have softened it a lot for Gould, even made the whole thing totally understandable: hour for him, two to three for her, what could be more reasonable? “Was that so bad?” Robert could have said to her after. “Was that really so bad? He's a good kid. And let's face it, he adores me and always has.” He thinks he cried when Robert left the mess hall with Gloria. Or just felt like crying, with that tight feeling in the throat and sore eye rims and so on. “What're you crying for?” he thinks one of the boys said when he got back to the table. Or: “Are you about to cry about something? You look it. Your brother say something lousy to you?” “None of your business,” he thinks he said. That fall Robert started NYU, or maybe it was the next fall. That's right: Robert was three years older than Gould but only two years ahead of him in school. That was because Gould skipped a year in the fifth grade. Robert could have skipped also—skipped every other year, he was so smart—but the Board of Education that year was only skipping students in the fourth and fifth grades to relieve the overcrowding in the school system. Something like that. Gould knows it wasn't because he was that smart: about a third of the entire grade skipped with him. And his timing of the camp incident's a little off. He had to be thirteen when it happened, since at fourteen he became a camper-waiter there himself. So again Robert must have got the job by claiming to be a lot older than he was. When Robert was a college freshman he started working on the school newspaper and quickly decided he wanted to be a journalist. A number of years later he said to Gould, “Don't give yourself airs. No real newsman calls himself a journalist. You're a reporter or newsman or news editor or whatever it is you do.” When Gould learned of Robert's future job plans he thought maybe that'd be a good thing for him to become too. He went out for his high school newspaper but all he could get was the assistant business manager position, so he quit in a few weeks. He remembers one of Robert's articles, which won some kind of college national journalism award. It was on underground streams in Greenwich Village, all of them having names like Mill Stream and Beaver Creek and Indian Run. So what's that got to do about anything? Well, it's when he thinks Robert first got interested in writing fiction. The article said that sometimes the streams break through basement walls and the owners or supers of these buildings, while they're cleaning up, have found that Indian artifacts have been washed in with the water: clay shards, beads, arrowheads, once even a small decorated leather sack with tiny bones in it and another time a necklace made out of some animal's teeth and jawbone. He asked Robert—“I'm sorry if I sound suspicious, but I think not to mention it would be even worse”—if that part of the article had been made up to make it more interesting, since otherwise it would have been a rather bland piece, and Robert said, “What a charge! You dumb enough to think I'd jeopardize my future journalism career by doing something so unethical? I did hours of research on it and conducted more than thirty interviews, practically went door-to-door in one mews,” and Gould said, “You don't give any names or addresses of people who claim to have found these things,” and Robert said, “They all asked me to withhold them because they didn't want amateur Indianologists traipsing through their basements and subcellars looking for this junk.” “Do you have notes, then?” and Robert said, “Not to show you. To someone who trusts me implicitly, yes.” “And you'd think you would have had a few photographs of these artifacts in the article instead of just maps where the streams were and old etchings of Indians of that era,” and Robert said, “Talk to the editor. As for me, I didn't take a camera with me, not that I know much about shooting objects like that. I also doubt any of these people would have let me take photographs. They were wary of even speaking to me; besides that, most of the stuff had been given or sold or they were planning to sell it to the American Indian Museum and places like that, and I hear these museums charge you to photograph their collections.” “Oh, gee, how convenient all of that is, though for some odd reason I'm not quite believing it,” and Robert said, “Who asked you to? And what got into you to suddenly drill me like this? From now on don't read my work and keep your two cents to yourself.” “Will do, sir, will do,” and saluted him. That was probably their worst argument ever—or one of, since how would he know which one was the worst unless they had once had it out with their fists, which they never did?—and because of it the only time they intentionally didn't speak to each other for a couple of days, or one of the two to three times they didn't. Considering how some brothers that close in age have fought and cursed each other furiously, that wasn't so bad. How did they finally start talking again that time? One of them, he forgets which, said, “Hey, let's bury the hatchet”—said, of course, something like this—and the other said, “And as the old joke goes, and so appropriate for our argument, not in the other's head, right?” and they both laughed, and one of them said, “Good, done, brotherly brothers again,” and they shook hands, he doesn't recall whose stuck out first. By then Robert had plenty of close friends and a number of girls he was seeing and hardly palled around with him anymore, and Gould had a few good friends too. But they ate at home most nights so saw each other at the dinner table and slept in side-by-side beds till Robert quit school and got a news job out of town. Robert snored all his life and almost every night. (So does Gould's wife, but periodically, and the same kind, phlegmy or full of snot, but she stops when he nudges or asks her to and pulls the covers from over her head, and usually doesn't resume snoring that night.) When Gould got tall enough to extend his foot from his bed to Robert's he used to poke him with his toes. “What?” and Gould would say, “Your snoring's keeping me up.” “Don't kick me from now on, okay?” “I only tapped you with my big toe; I thought it'd stop your snoring without waking you.” “Just keep your feet off and especially don't jab my kidneys; you don't want to be blamed for my losing one.” Then Robert would go back to sleep and soon start snoring again. Gould would poke him with his toes a little lighter, and Robert would say, “What?” and the whole thing would start over, with Robert often saying drowsily, “Maybe I'm dreaming or something but didn't I just tell you to keep your fat feet to yourself?” and Gould would eventually fall asleep between snorings. Robert also smoked in bed, the smell keeping Gould up. “Could you please not smoke?” and Robert would say, “I like to when I read. One of life's greatest pleasures, those two together, and if you could add a cup of coffee, even better, so don't deny me it.” “Maybe you could stop reading and turn out the light and not smoke in the dark and I could get
some sleep
.” “I'm not ready yet.” “Then please, just put out the cigarette? You know I'm allergic to it. You've seen how I wave the smoke away even when Mom and Dad smoke, and how I've gotten carsick in the car when someone smokes in it.” “You're not allergic; and you only fake getting sick because you don't like it. But you can't stop people from doing everything you don't like, particularly when it's as normal a human activity as smoking.” “I
am
allergic; I do get sick. I can't breathe, or not very well with it. Isn't it elementary to you that the smoke reduces the oxygen in the room, just like the smoke from a fire does? Why do you think people get asphyxiated in one?” “It's the fire that takes away the oxygen, not the smoke. But for you, my brother, I'll open the window a few more inches while I smoke,” and Gould would say, “It'll be too cold and I'll have to get up for another blanket and I'm too tired to. Please, Robert, be a sport,” and Robert would say, “I'm sorry, but if you don't like my smoking or a cold room, sleep on the living room couch.” “That couch is a sofa and too small to sleep on.” “Then start putting up with my smoking. I smoke, therefore I smoke.” “What's that supposed to mean? If you think it's philosophy or a joke from it, you're wrong.” “It means I'm the elder brother and I have more prerogatives here than you, like smoking in the room that before you were wheeled into it in your crib was singly mine.” “Oh, that's just such utter you-know-what shit. Smoke, go on, smoke your smoking head off. But before you turn off the light and go to sleep will you please get rid of the butts in the ashtray on our mutual night table? In fact, put the ashtray someplace else, like out of the room, and the butts into the toilet, if you don't mind. I can't stand the foul odor of either of those.” “If I think of it and don't mind getting up, I will. But not out of the room, just to the dresser over there and the butts into the trash basket.” “What a nice brother”—turning over and moving his face as close to the wall as he could and burrowing his nose into the pillow. “You said it,” Robert would say. “The best; not one grown on trees. So for you, tonight, I will or I only might put this cigarette out now and chuck the butts and move the ashtray over there and maybe even wipe it clean and get rid of the cleaning rag before I shut out the light, though don't think I'm starting a precedent. It's only because I recently read not to smoke for a minimum of ten minutes before I doze off or else I could have horrific dreams and even do minor damage to my precious testes.” “I never heard of that, but it's probably true.” Robert did most of his recreational reading in bed. Gould often read in his bed at the same time and was interrupted by Robert a lot—“Listen to this part”—and Gould would say, “I'm reading.” “So stop, because this, if anything I've read, is pure literature,” and Gould would say, “Maximum of thirty seconds, please; I'm really engrossed in my book.” Robert would count the lines or take a guess and say, “Minute and a half, and that's at full throttle, so not faithful to the rhythm and words,” and he'd read: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev, Leskov, Chekhov, Herzen, Babel. He'd read nothing but the Russians and Thomas Mann since he was fourteen. He'd say, “You have to read this book, no two ways about it. When I'm done with it, which I will be in an hour, and if you're not asleep, I want you to put yours aside and take up mine. Believe me, you won't regret it.” Very often the book Gould was reading was one Robert had passed along and the one he had put down to start this one was a book Robert had also convinced him to give up another one of Robert's for. “It'll be overdue at the library before you finish it, but don't worry; I'll pay the fine. Just so you don't dash through it and ruin what could be one of the sublime reading experiences of your life. Because if you're like me—and in many ways you are, but not like you copycat—you only read a book once and know it instinctively from then on.” What's he saying here? That if it hadn't been for Robert, regarding literature and art—well, what he said. “I don't understand this part,” Gould would often say from his bed, and Robert would rest his head back on his pillow, close his eyes, the book he'd been reading laid face down on his chest, and say “Read,” and Gould would read, invariably a book Robert had urged on him, and Robert would say, “That means …” He knew or made sense as if he knew, every time. He was a sharper reader and also able to articulate what he thought much better than Gould. Well, he was older. But he was always like this, always, in reading and listening, so that's the way he was. Even today Gould calls Robert periodically to say, “There's a passage in this book you sent me” or “told me to get,” or they can be talking on the phone about other things and Gould will bring it up. Robert said, one of these times, “We've been talking so long, I forget who called whom,” and when Gould said, “I called you,” he said, “Then read it to me, languidly as you want and I don't care how long the passage is—I'm only kidding, because if there's anything you know I'm not, it's a cheapskate, especially with you.” Were all these books worth reading? How could they be? Then most? That word again, which was originally Robert's: invariably, but he rarely told him the ones he couldn't plow through or just didn't like. Why not? Because he liked them to talk about things that interested them rather than didn't. Not true. He didn't want Robert thinking him a simpleton or someone of little taste, and Robert had a way of knocking down his arguments that made him feel like a kid. So what would he say if Robert asked what he thought of that book? “It was good, perhaps not as good as some of the others you gave me, but definitely worth my time.” Robert saw through it and didn't persist, probably because he knew Gould didn't want to get into an argument over it, and in fact he usually said, “I've just finished another one you might like better. Game for it or had your fill?” and he'd say, “Sure, right now I've nothing to read, since I just finished the one you gave me.” He ever give or suggest to Robert a book he's read and liked? For reasons just mentioned, few, usually contemporary American ones he was somewhat enthusiastic about, and for almost all of them Robert said things like “Instantly forgettable, practically unreadable, a potboiler masquerading as a boiling pot, MFM (made for movies), or NN again (nothing new). Could be I've become too demanding, always wanting a book to do something to me that's never been done. It's what I like to do with my own junk, though it doesn't seem to have done it to you, while this one has, to a degree. As another writer said, possibly the cleverest and most intelligent and stylish thing he ever wrote but which still wasn't much, ‘If it doesn't clutch you by the larynx and leave you speechless and with contusions on your neck'—I forget the rest,” and Gould once said, “That's hardly the trenchant criticism I've come to expect from you, even if I never give it about the books you have me read,” and Robert said, “All right: it was crap, exactly like the last one you foisted on me, so why waste time talking about it when there are better things to do, like reading books worth discussing?” So what's he saying here? That he probably became too picky and critical of most writing because of Robert all these years? Yes, why not, yes, for want of a more satisfying conclusion. (Oh, he hates the way he said that but doesn't want to stop to reword it.) There was a woman friend of Robert's whom Gould met on the street. She stopped in front of him, put her arms out, blocking him from getting around her, and smiled and said, “Robert, what's come over you?” and he said, “Oh, I see. I'm Gould, Robert's brother, if you're referring to Robert Bookbinder,” and she said, “That's right, I met you with him once at a party. How are things, and how's Robert?” He didn't remember ever meeting her and said, “I'm fine, Robert's probably doing even better than that, as he's on a news assignment overseas in his favorite city.” “The resemblance is remarkable. Same kind of hair, thin, but the way it waves. Unblemished skin, dark troubled intellectual eyes, wide-awake face, belligerent mannerisms about to erupt but always contained,” and he said, “That's neither of us. We're just a coupla pinheads, except mine's got a few more scars on the scalp and he's better looking and a bit brighter, politer, and taller by about three feet.” She said, “Not on your life. Stand with your back to me,” and he did, their buttocks touching, and she skimmed her hand off the top of her head to his, and said, “You're the same height as he, or shorter by half an inch. So, long as I can't get Robert to have coffee with—now there's a conversationalist; I invariably walk away jittery with excitement and ready to tear down all sorts of metaphorical walls—how about you?” “Before I answer, was he the first person to say the word ‘invariably' to you? He was to me,” and she said, “Don't be silly. My mother said I learned to talk early and it was the first word I used.” Coffee at a nearby café. “We've been here before, you know, and same waitress,” and he said, “You must mean my brother,” and she said, “Of course. We were here numerous times. We called it our serious-talk place. But funny you and I should meet, after more than a year, practically in front of it,” and he said, “I live a block away, and again, you must have me confused with Robert.” She kept referring to him as Robert too. “I read the book you gave me, Robert, and loved it,” and he said, “Which one was that?” “Tell me about your recent work, Robert,” and he said, “Gould, not a common given name, so how can you constantly forget it?” and she said, “Easy. Don't get upset. That, so far, is the only thing that distinguishes you from him. But when I see you I see Robert. You're like identical twins, and when you sit that half-inch difference disappears. And your voices, weak