The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (41 page)

“Yes,” Carl said. “After God, it’s the one big mystery.”

“Maybe before God,” Alec said, his dislike of the man reviving, and he walked past him to the door. “I’ll be downstairs for a while waiting for Anny.”

Max nudged Rose and she looked up at him, then at her brother-in-law. “Bring her up,” she said and then looked away.

Jay walked down the corridor with him. “I have to breathe through my mouth,” he said. “I can’t stand the hospital smell.” They walked slowly. “
You
know,” Jay told Alec, “
you
know how much she did for me.”

Alec threw up his hands. “God, what a night! If I—if you—then we would have—
you
know—Sure I know. One word—
everything
. You were dead before—you’re alive now. You were a jerk pounding the piano for dancers—you’re a pianist now who just gave a recital. Max would have backed you. Maybe he still will.
Everything
was what she gave you.”

Two nurses in stiff white uniforms were passing by. One of them was speaking of a friend who was pregnant and whose husband was overjoyed by the development. Jay was silent until they had passed by, then he said, “Then I don’t have to say it. I haven’t cried yet, but I usually do. I’m not like you. You rant and rave and make speeches when you’re miserable. Maybe some day she’ll get better.”

“You going to hang around the rest of your life and wait?”

“No,” Jay said. “She gave me too much to do.”

“Look, Jay—” Alec made a downward gesture with his hand as if emphasizing a point that had been opposed—“it wasn’t for Elly, this love business. She couldn’t sustain it. She came to me that evening all torn apart—the giving was too much for her. I assumed she’d slept with you then, and if there was any such thing, I think she was really in love with you. I’m not saying that’s what broke her finally. You can’t feel responsible. I suppose she’s been a sick girl for a long time, but I think somebody like that can have a flash—oh, a moment or a few days or I don’t know how long—of loving, deeper and better in the going out to someone else than any of
us
can. But, of course, she couldn’t sustain it. The rest of us settle for less and hold it up pretty well. But isn’t it strange, Jay, and isn’t it wonderful that a kid like that—that fantastic, wide-eyed, long-haired beauty of hers was no accident—with her reaching for everything at once, can help those of us who settle for what we can get, kidding ourselves that our bread is cake and our water is wine? It’s too bad you had to be the one—although not really—but love isn’t for us and certainly wasn’t for Elly. I stink and you stink and everybody we know stinks. We think we’ve grabbed love and then we use it like we use anything we could buy in a store. Love is for … maybe for somebody who knows who they are and what they want, as clearly as that glass wall she crashed through used to shine sometimes on a very bright day. It’s for somebody who knows what it is to be human. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t know anybody with that much strength. You’re right: I don’t cry. I rant and rave…. Don’t go back to the house tonight. We’ll all stay in a hotel in town.”

Jay touched him on the shoulder and said, “Okay. I’ll go back now. I want to see her if I can.”

Jay walked back, listening to the click of Alec’s footsteps, and when he turned into another corridor it came, like something slapping him in the throat, bringing the crying spasms so powerfully that he had to stuff a fist into his mouth to keep from crying out, and there was an ache far inside him that made him sick with dizziness, and all he could think of was her wet little tongue parting his lips and how he had been taken by her as a captive is taken by the enemy with no possibility of escape. He slowed his walk and tried to control his breathing until, when he reached the waiting room, his face was composed enough to meet the demands of the night and the next day and the day after that and of all the days there would be.

Alec stood on the stone steps and lighted a cigarette, cupping the match too carefully, for there was little left of the wind that had raged earlier. Now the air hinted frost, possibly snow. It had been a long time since Alec had seen snow. He was thinking of how Max and Rose had looked just before he’d left the room, Max perched on the arm of her chair. More like man and wife than he’d ever seen them before. It was horrible to think that something like this might bring them closer together, but there it was. Thank the Lord for small blessings, he thought grimly. Perhaps he was waiting for nothing. Annette might arrive in the morning. Well, he liked the air anyway. He was hungry, he realized, with a biting hunger that made him a bit nauseated. That sandwich hadn’t filled the hole. The fast had served its purpose, though only for one lousy day. As it turned out he had simply fasted on Yom Kippur like any Jew. And now the Day of Atonement was over, and, having almost by mistake fasted on the correct day, he was waiting for his reward: to see Annette.

Alec put on his coat and sat down on the cold steps. He had to be on the coast by the first of the month for that job. Perhaps they would have taken Elly home by then. Alec sat watching the occasional cars that sped by, rehearsing the first words he would say, when a car stopped at the curb and Annette stepped out and walked up to where he sat waiting.

They stood around the bed, each of them trying to see something in what was visible of the stiff, bandaged face. She stirred almost imperceptibly and they all tensed, Dr. Klein leaning forward a little.

Oh, this is the country of clarity! Oh, yes, everything here is seen through glass and everything is drenched in this fantastic, cold light. Look! There are no shadows. It is all so clear that there are no shadows and it looks as cold as ice. And the pulsing still goes on. It is all so dry. Why must it be so dry? This is the landscape of clarity.

Through the glass there were objects, figures, all bright and clear in the terrifying brightness. But they were unreal—poised, unmoving, unchangeable, scattered here and there for no reason like stage props, but casting no shadows, frozen in the great, cold light.

Where was the girl who had laughed so gaily at the summer’s unexpected jokes, like the sudden rain? Here there was no summer, no rain. She had been punished … but how foolish! The girl who had stared out at her from the glass had done nothing so terrible as to be imprisoned under this awful, cold light, this crystal clarity of existence. The girl in the glass sat in the cab and said, “Thank you for a lovely evening, whatever-your-name-is, and here, the joke’s on you,” and she tossed to the astonished boy his wallet and his freedom. I’m sorry, here’s your money … I’m sorry, Alec, here’s your money. There was no sky to hold this dazzling, cold light that bathed everything in sight in its illumination. Somewhere, she knew, there were skies framed in glass, caught forever in the prison of the glass.

She moved her head, trying to escape from the dry, dry brilliance, trying to escape from the dry, dry, crystal-clear unreality, and she felt everything shake.

There is a home away from home where the thickness of the pine trees conceals you from sight and from seeing too clearly, and there in the moist darkness you can know what is real (anything is real that is wet with life, unsatisfied).

The pulsing had stopped and there came for the first time a clear, cold, welcome pain.

“Hey! Wake up, wake up!” Lang said. “We’re here. How you’ve slept!”

Annette stirred drowsily and unfolded her arms. “Hello,” she murmured. “Are we here? I must have been so tired.”

“Don’t bother closing the window,” Lang said as he got out of the car and stretched. He was excited. “You know,” he said, “my heart’s pounding like a child’s on Christmas morning. It seems awfully quiet. Perhaps they’re all in the kitchen. The lights are on.”

Annette shivered. “It’s cold. Let’s go in.”

The front door was open and they stood in the doorway of the living room, looking about them, for two full minutes and neither said a word. They saw first the disorder—a general impression. Then Annette saw the shattered wall behind the piano, the trailing stains on the floor, and she threw a hand to her mouth and cried, “What’s happened? Has someone been killed? Alec!” she called. “Alec!”

“Be quiet,” Lang said. “There’s been an accident. I don’t think anyone’s here.”

Just to make sure, though, they prowled through every room in the house and found no one and nothing upset in any of the other rooms, except that in the kitchen there were the remains of a camera scattered about the floor. In one bedroom they found a pile of books on the floor and a closet door open, exposing an apparently unfinished painting smeared into a mess.

“What is it?” Annette said, as they went from room to room and finally back to the shambles of the living room. Lang did not reply but walked instead to the gaping hole in the east wall. He observed the stains and, following the trail to the couch, saw Annette touching, an expression of disbelief on her face, the wetness which had soaked through and through the material.

“Somebody was hurt badly. Maybe Alec. The telegram—”

“This happened a little while ago—a few hours. You got the telegram—?”

“At noon.”

“So don’t be foolish. It looks as if there was a lecture or a concert. The chairs are lined up for one.”

“Jay Gordon! He’s a pianist. It must have been him. The concert, I mean.”

And both at once they saw the scrawled red message on the wall behind the couch. It seemed to Lang that he had known what had happened as soon as they entered the empty house. Perhaps it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been on my way here, he thought, not believing it, but just to have something to think about while Annette gazed at him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Isn’t it fantastic?” he said. “You sound as if she were my daughter. I don’t want to think of what it was that got her through that glass. How could it have happened?”

Annette said nothing. They stood there, motionless amid the evening’s debris, a breeze troubling the heavy draperies drawn to one side of the wall they faced. Finally Annette spoke. “They must have all gone to the hospital.”

“I wonder,” Lang said absently, “if the photographer got his picture before this happened.”

“We’d better go too,” Annette said in a voice filled with urgency.

“I don’t really want to see her, right now. I hate to think of what she looks like after going through that.”

“Stop talking like that! Let’s go.”

“I should never have come. It was crazy of me.”

“Please, Mr. Lang, let’s go to the hospital now.”

“No, no. You take the car and go. I’ll stay here a while.” He looked around him. “Best work I ever did, this house.”

“How will you get to town if I take the car?”

“I’ll phone for a cab, my dear. You go and see your Alec.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for being so nice tonight. I’m sorry that you ever came here,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry, please. If I had
never
come here,
this
wouldn’t be here.”

But she was out of the door by the time he’d finished the sentence. He listened carefully until he could no longer hear the motor or the scrunch of the tires. Then he walked to the jagged wound in the side of the house. Gently he touched the rough edges of the gash. He wanted to think, or rather knew that he should think, of what these sharp points had done to Elly Kaufman, but he could not. His mind stumbled on it and fell past it as if the idea were slippery. His right hand opened and closed spasmodically. He pulled away from the wall suddenly. It was as if he, John Lang, had laid the foundation for whatever had happened to the beautiful young girl he had flown halfway across the country to see—and to say … to say to her (he faced the words reluctantly)
Save me
—and found her hurt, perhaps killed in this strange way.

He scooped up his overcoat and Homburg from the hall table where he had dropped them. Why had he come back here? It was like returning to see a child you had left years before, to find the child strange, hostile and ruined. He moved outside, almost running. Forgetting entirely about calling a cab, he walked past the fragrant hanging gardens. He slung the coat over his shoulder and ran halfway down the hill, and turned to look at the house. He could see clearly the horrid gash in the wall. Dropping his hat, he ran all the way to the foot of the hill and, gasping for breath, almost falling as he turned, he looked again. Still, though somewhat smaller, the jagged flaw could be seen. He turned and, ignoring the pain in his side, walked swiftly, fighting his desire to turn until finally he felt it safe to look, and he saw the house, almost a shadow now, but as he had seen it first in his mind’s eye, alive and whole. If there was any defect in its structure, it could not be seen now, and it was new again, cleansed of the loveliness of that long, ashen hair and those long legs at his side (
the heart is made of glass,
she had said).

The only thing left, as he twisted round and began walking slowly now, was her wide, open-eyed stare which had seemed to look right into one and seemed to say: What is it you want for yourself? You can tell me. Nothing is too foolish and nothing impossible of attainment. And so Lang turned once again in desperation, a sudden rage filling his throat, and looked and looked, and his eyes burned, until finally even that hazel-eyed lie was lost in the black asymmetry of the house on the hill.

Then he walked in the dull, cloud-obscured moonlight, becoming now a silhouette like the house, now a shadow like the house, and finally only the figure of a man late for an appointment and unaware of the exact nature of his destination, walking toward a town in which he was sure he would find some kindly people to point the way.

Daniel Stern (1928–2007) was an American novelist and scholar. Raised in
New York City
, he was an accomplished cellist and promising composer before he began his writing career. After graduating from the High School of Music and Art in New York, he earned positions with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Symphony and played with renowned jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also served as the vice president of major media companies including Warner Bros. and CBS. In addition to publishing nine novels and three collections of short fiction, Stern also served as the editor of
Hampton Shorts
. As an author, Stern is celebrated for his explorations of post–World War II Jewish-American life; his novels’ formal experimentation; and, in the short-story genre, his innovation of the “twice-told tale.”