City of Night (12 page)

           The malenurse had a checkbook in his hand, he glanced at his watch, began to write. I looked at the check suspiciously. The nurse flashed a look of huge contempt at me. “Dont worry,” he snapped, “it’s all right.”

           The man in bed turned his bulging eyes toward me and smiled, the flesh spreading as if he were getting larger by the moment, as if the balloon shape was being inflated. “Child—dont stand me up—I couldnt take it. Tomorrow—tomorrow—And remember—” He waved his fat hand in an airy benediction, his face rolling to one side like a stone, the tape-measure dropping toward the floor. He reached for it quickly, wound it securely about his hand.... “And remember,” he finished, “remember: God Is Love....”

        
3

           I had been home only a few minutes that night when I received a telegram:

           ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY THAT YOU COMMUNICATE WITH ME TOMORROW. I KNOW YOU WILL NOT DENY ME THIS HELP ASKED OF YOU IN ALL HUMILITY. I BANK UPON YOUR GOOD WILL AND THE SENSE OF SUPPORT THIS CONTACT NOW WILL MEAN TO ME. COME AS EARLY AS YOU CAN. REMEMBER G IS L.

           “Who is it from, sweetie?” said Gene de Lancey, following me into the room. (“I cant sleep,” she had explained in the hallway. “I just gotta have one little cigarette with you, lambie.”) She peered at the telegram.

           “It’s from someone I just met,” I told her. I knew it would be a very long time now before I got to sleep.

           “Everyone’s so Lonesome,” Gene de Lancey sighed.

           Early the next morning I went for my second “interview” with the Professor.

           The malenurse opened the door. “The Professor is asleep right now,” he said, eyeing me coldly. “He had a very bad night.... Youll have to wait out here,” he said. I was about to sit down when I heard the Professor’s voice from the half-opened door leading to his room. “Larry? Larry, who is there?” The malenurse eyes me with hatred, goes to the room. He returned: “Hes awake now; go in.”

           I had expected, because of the urgency of the telegram, to find the Professor in a state of desperation. He wasnt: He lay smiling on the bed. “Ah, child, child, you did come.... No, I wasnt asleep—I had just adjusted my hearing aid—I dont want to miss out on any of its fitful morning gossip!... I am Delighted you came. Not that I didnt expect you to show up. I can tell sincerity just as I can guess weights, ages, heights—you see, I have not lived these sixty-odd years without learning something—and I must pass on to you some of the things I have learned of this ambiguous existence we call life. Now bring your chair and sit near me.” He reaches for a pastel cigarette—feels with the other hand about his back, touching frantically. “Larry!” he calls desperately. “Larry!” And when the malenurse appeared, the Professor pleaded breathlessly: “Where is my tape-measure?”

           I saw it lying on the floor, beside the bed. I picked it up and started to hand it to him. Before the Professor could take it, the malenurse snatched it from me and gave it to him himself.

           “Ah, thank you, child,” the Professor says, to me, ignoring the malenurse, “you have saved—...My Life—and I will explain how—soon—during one of our future interviews—...You may go now, Larry, I have to interview this young—angel!” Now he drapes the tape-measure familiarly about himself, and I notice the chubby fingers searching out a certain place on it. His eyes are nailed to it momentarily—he moves the red marker. “Ah!” He held his fingers on the mark, as if he were praying a rosary....

           “Now during this interview,” he announces, glancing at his jeweled watch, “we will hear all about you.” Again, as if reciting a litany, he repeated the statistics he had determined yesterday—lovingly. “And there remains one important thing to determine: What kind of angel are you? That is the question. The anticipation of finding out is the thing, dear child.... The French actress, Odette, said to me once: ‘Professor, you play at life as if it were a mystery novel, and you the detective.’ And I answered, ‘If so, my dear, you have provided the all-important clue.’... I am a student of life, my child, and my subjects are the angels who fly into my life.... ‘
Notre vie est un voyage, dans l’hiver et dans la nuit; nous cherchons notre passage dans le ciel, où rien ne luit
,’” he recites, glancing toward Heaven. “A
chanson suisse:
‘A dark voyage, through winter and night—seeking heavenward, where nothing shines.’ ...But let me contradict that: For me something does indeed shine: the wings of the angels—briefly, but clearly. Angels are all I see when I glance heavenward, and that is Enough. And I never know how I shall meet those angels—it was not always as it is now—when Larry chooses them for me. You see, I am bedridden.... Sometimes he brings me demiangels; they last only one interview. But sometimes there are jewels in the streets.... There was a lovely child, in Paris, a youngman who followed me out of the W.C.—and we played a game, all through St-Germain-des-Prés. I would stop, he would stop. He was almost barefoot, his shoes were badly ripped. Each time I stopped, he would look at his shoes, wistfully, glance at me, smile—oh, charming, charming. And when I stopped at a café and sat down, he stood near me, and then a waiter told him to move on: oh, the insolent arbitrariness! And I protested, ‘But that child is with me.’ And I invited him to sit with me. An earthangel. A streetangel. I bought him pairs of shoes! And Paris, that magnificent city of statues, glowed for me as if lighted by heaven itself. Alas, he was a robbing angel,” he sighed, feeling absently for his wristwatch. “But what I had gotten from him! Ah!” He turned heavenward. “My friend, the playwright—” He mentioned a French writer. “—was fond of saying, ‘We take when we must take, and we give when we must give.’ Oh, he was chic!... Now about you. What is the appeal that the streets hold for you? What do you look for? And, mainly, what do you find? The streets: where one can find a glorious child without shoes—or someone to buy them for him. In the streets where I found, in Paris, another vivid angel: with his father and mother. He was perhaps sixteen; he wore a tiny cross around his neck, and it fell on his chest, the shirt open almost to his lovely navel. And the mother and father saw me and said good day. They invited me to their drab home—too drab to house such an angel as their child—and so, understanding that, they let me have him: He lived with me—for a space of time, a glorious space of time. And for that glorious time, in gratitude, I saw that the father and mother had glorious wine on their table—daily.... The mother looked like a witch, Oh, yes! I believe in witches! There is much in the occult, you know. How is it possible for our time to believe in the fairytale of God and not in the other dark powers? Which is more difficult to believe? I have seen witches, I have seen them work, but I have not seen God.... I knew a woman in California who practiced witchcraft: Her power was Awesome. (She had a medium, a youngman... another affair!)... And when she discovered—brutally—that people came to her as one goes to see a clever fraud—not really believing in her Powers—when she discovered that, she
willed
herself to death. Yes—she announced she would die, and she did: trying futilely to prove by dying what she realized suddenly she had not proved by living: that she believed what she said.... People—people—” he started almost painfully: “people—die—when they see life—at last—without—Illusions—For some, it takes many, many years; for others, much less. And so each of us commits suicide: when we
will
our own deaths: That is the only Death....” He paused, studying the tape-measure. “But enough about the dark powers of the heart—yes, deceitful above all things!... On to more pleasant things!... A friend of mine—a director—said: ‘You are a talent scout, Professor.’ And indeed, I always search out Talent, dear, dear, child—angel—uncategorized angel. (Am I being unfaithful to you, Robbie? Robbie! Guard me, watch over me!)... After I met Robbie, at that party, I learned he was a call boy. In other days he would have been referred to as a court favorite. But our unbudging standards of morality impose certain ugly names: The only immorality is ‘morality’—which has restricted us, shoved into the dark the most beautiful things that should glow in the light, not be stifled by darkwords, darklights, darkwhispers. Why is what I do Immoral, when it hurts no one?—no one! an expression of:... Love.... Yet this unreasoning world ignores the true obscenities of our time: poverty, repression, the blindness to beauty and sensitivity—
vide
, the sneaky machinations of our own storm troopers—the vice squad!” He exhaled loudly after the impassioned asseveration; went on: “Another youngman, Smitty, a charming young angel himself, had brought Robbie along to that party. That night, I went to the restroom, as one does in the course of an evening—and happily, miraculously, who followed me in? It was Robbie.... That was during another one of my periods in New York. Things were not going too well—uh—financially. (I must explain: Im much better off now—much better—and whatever funds I have will be expended to finish my research into: The Lives of The Angels!... But, then, that time in New York, it was sadly different). I was completing, on my own, a study on—of all things—the angels as they appear in literature: Blake, Milton, Dante.... And when I saw Robbie, I recognized The Archangel.... And what is there about angels that has so fascinated me? The fact, perhaps, that like birds they have wings: That, to paraphrase Pope: angels rush in where fools fear to tread.... They are the true rebels.... And am I exaggerating this world of winged fleeing creatures? Remember it was such a creature who brought about The Fall: But God, Who had given them wings, was a jealous God.... He denied them the existence He had created for them: The Flight Out of spite, He created Adam and Eve—and voyeur-like, in His aged impotence, He watched them.... And it was that rebellious angel, now Satan, who won them over to his way—a rebellious life—who made them taste of the Tree of Truth, which God, in His petty omniscience, would deprive them of.... In each of my angels I find something different—but they all have one thing in common: they all have wings. It is their nature to fly away, leaving an emptiness—but a glowing emptiness!—in my heart.... At the house of Doña Mercedes, in Mexico (she was a grand Spanish woman, with a bosom which expanded yearly, to house, I told her, her gigantic Heart)—at her house, where I stayed briefly, there was a charming houseboy. Very beautiful: and the blades of his back were like sprouting wings when he crouched. Doña Mercedes said: ‘He looks more like a featherless bird to me.’ Of course she could not see with my Clarity. This was one of the fallen breed, who rebelled, but was caught, put in servitude.... My Robbie had established his own heaven in the admiring eyes of others. He was at the time one of Smitty’s boys—that is, Smitty was Robbie’s ‘Madam’—or, should I call him, his ‘Monsieur’?—is there no word?... And that night, when he walked into the restroom after me, Robbie groped me!—yes!
he
groped
me!
Dear child, I said naively to him, What Are You Doing? I would have suspected he was following Smitty’s instructions had he not groped me so—so
Sincerely!
... Smitty, you might say, had risen from the ranks: from gas station attendant, in Los Angeles; thats where he began—right in the station restroom. Then he became a bartender, a famous call boy; acquired some other boys—five or six—which he sent out on assignments. Robbie was one of them.... I met Smitty when a friend gave him to me, for a night, for a long-ago birthday. Smitty could have been my guardian angel, if sex had been the only consideration. But he belonged to everyone at the same time.... I asked my host: How much do these boys get? He told me—$15.00. And that night I was with Robbie, sitting there for a long while, unable to do anything, dreamily prolonging, I suppose, the anticipation of what $15.00 would get me: a taste of Heaven—promised—for that small sum. Less than I paid in Munich for that beer mug you see there: That beer mug is me, it has no beauty, no wings—it is ugly, it can break. The shattered pieces will be remembered.... And Robbie made the first move—that enchanted night in bed.... We were together two brief hours (much longer, he assured me, than he had ever spent with his other clients)—$7.50 an hour: and that is how I have arrived at that figure: You see, I told you, I am Loyal!... I remember the American heiress stranded by her young lover at the train station in Frankfurt. And all she could say was: ‘God damn!’ A more fitting eulogy would have been: The angel has flown; on golden wings he is gone. And she should have remembered that wings that can take away can also bring—and so I said to her, as she looked one last frantic time about the station, ‘Look around, this is a world of angels.’...”

           Now the malenurse entered with a tray. “Youve fixed a tray for my guest, of course?” the Professor asked him.

           “I didnt know he’d be here,” said the malenurse. He left, returned with a tray for me.

           “Larry is not an angel,” the Professor said again. “There is even, wouldnt you say? something Uncomfortable about him. I distrust him sometimes. Do you suppose—” he asked, lowering his voice, “—that Larry is a misplaced agent for the FBI—in the
wrong
cell?” He laughed, pleased with himself. “Perhaps,” he whispered in posed secrecy, “he is writing a book about me—but then, it wouldnt be the first time I have been between covers!” He proceeded to eat, talking between mouthfuls. When he had finished, he placed the tray on the table. “We have talked enough,” he said. “Come over here, uncategorized angel. Stand next to me now. We have looked into the Soul long enough for today—now: Now let us look in the other, equally sacred, direction....”

           Later as I walked out the door of his bedroom, I heard him call after me: “God Is Love....”

           In the outside room, the malenurse sat reading a thick book. He rose, walking swiftly toward me as if I would escape. He thrust the book at me: “The Professor wrote this!” he said. “Hes written many great things!” I reached for the book; but before I could even read the title, he withdrew it from me, not allowing me to touch it. “Heres the check,” he said.