My Father More or Less Read online

  Close up of a railway timetable. A hand circles 2:07 with a fountain pen. Wipe to a railway clock at two minutes after two. A slow pan reveals a railway station somewhere in Eastern Europe. There are four people waiting without apparent urgency for the train, an old couple, a middleaged woman who looks like a madam, and a studious-looking young man carrying a briefcase.

  We see the hand of the clock move to 2:08. We hear a train coming into the station, hear it before we see it. The train slows down as it approaches the station but then as it appears about to stop, picks up speed again. The old man knocks at the side with his walking stick, calling to it to stop. “What’s the meaning of this?” he says to the others. “I demand to know the meaning of this.” “Shhh,” his wife says. The train flashes by leaving a cloud of dust in the air. When the train is gone, we are made aware of a shadowy form on the tracks. The stationmaster comes out after a moment to have a look. In the wake of the train, we discover the body of a young woman lying on the tracks. The four people on the platform pretend not to sec what surely each has glimpsed at some point.

  We cut away to the dashboard clock of Henry Berger’s car. It reads 2:04, then 2:05. Henry Berger and Yanna are travelling at high speed along a winding road. A black limousine seems to be following them, though perhaps it is only going in the same direction.

  “Are we almost there?” the woman asks with a kind of private irony.

  “We are always almost there,” says Berger. “There’s the station up ahead, an idyllic setting isn’t it? Don’t get out of the car until I tell you it’s all right.”

  We cut to two stationworkers lifting the body, covered with a blanket, off the tracks. The stationmaster stands behind them waving a red flag. The railway station clock reads 2:07.

  We see Berger through the window of the station talking to the station-master. The studious young man, looking in the window, appears to be interested in their conversation.

  We see the limousine that had been behind them on the road pull into the station lot in the row just behind Berger’s car. Yanna rolls up the window, locks the door, watches the other car in her rear-view mirror. The oddly dressed woman from the station gets into the other car.

  Berger returns to the parking lot on the run, gets into his car. “We have to go to the next station,” he says. “The train was five minutes early and didn’t stop.”

  From an overview we see three cars in close proximity—Berger’s in the lead—speeding along a narrow road. The red sportscar shoots past Berger in a dangerous maneuver. As soon as it gets ahead, it slows up, forcing Berger and the black limousine behind him to decrease their pace.

  The limousine moves out alongside Berger’s car and we see into it for the first time. There are two heavyset men in front, both wearing dark glasses, and the heavily made-up woman from the station in the back. When the young woman removes her wig—we catch a glimpse of her as the limousine goes by—her appearance is significantly altered. The two cars speed ahead of Berger, concerned for the moment only with each other. At some point the second car moves abreast of the first, neither making an effort to pass or fall back. We perceive them from Berger’s vantage point, losing them momentarily each time the road turns. Yanna hunkers down in her seat, covers her eyes with her hands. The two cars bump one another, each trying to force the other off the road. At some point the driver of the sports car throws something through the window at the other car. There is an explosion, the limousine crashing into a telephone poll. The sports car speeds on. A man in woman’s clothing, his clothes in flames, pulls himself out of the wrecked car. He staggers a few moments, then collapses. Berger and Yanna stop a few yards behind the wreck, get out of their car. The transvestite dies before they can get to him/her. (We recognize the figure as Pietro D’Agostino.) They return to their car and sit at the side of the road, Berger’s arm around Yanna, who is shivering. She kisses him.

  Yanna: When I’m frightened I always want to make love.

  Berger starts up the car and they move on. Through the rear-view mirror we see the scattered fragments of the wreck, streams of flame illuminating the countryside.

  Terman returned to the kitchen and made two cups of Indian tea, using one tea bag for both cups, an uncharacterisic economy. He drank half a cup diluted with milk and poured the rest down the drain. Isabelle’s would be cold when she finished whatever she was doing and he called to her in a tentative voice, tea’s ready, not insisting on it, wanting above all to avoid a fight.

  When she came down in jeans and a cashmere sweater, her hair in curlers covered by a red scarf, he asked her if she wanted to go back to sleep. She said, thank you no. A formality had come between them, a delicate caution.

  One word, he felt, a wrong word or one readily misconstrued, might precipitate a fight. He was determined to prevent conflict if possible and was all smiles and kindness for a moment or two. “You’re not acting like yourself,” she told him.

  Something else was on his mind and though he had resolved not to mention it to Isabelle, obsession overrode constraint.

  “I’m thinking of sending Tom back to the states,” he announced.

  She got up to make herself a fresh pot of tea. “Are you?” she asked.

  He would be able to breathe again, he said, once his son was off his chest. Isabelle said nothing. He repeated his remark.

  “You’ve got twenty-four hours to get out of town, pardner,” she said, her eyes mysteriously wet.

  “You do that very well,” he said.

  Isabelle wore her impatient look. “You can’t make him leave if he doesn’t want to go, Terman, can you?”

  He put his hand on her hand, reaching awkwardly across the table. “He’ll go, I think.”

  “Why should he, for God’s sake. Why the hell should he? If you were in his place, would you go?” She suffered his touch, her will clenched against him.

  He withdrew his hand, said he didn’t understand her bitterness, that it was Tom he was talking about, not her.

  “Oh cut it out,” she screamed at him.

  Afterward, when they had agreed on the terms of a truce and Isabelle had gone up to their room for no clear reason, a dull pain moved into his chest, frightening him. He staggered up from the table, dislodging the cup of cold tea in front of him, and fled into the nearer of the two sitting rooms, a hand on his chest pressing back the invisible ache. He willed calm, sat with his eyes closed, setting up the itinerary of mundane tasks that would occupy him for the next three or four hours. Hot bath…brush teeth…shave…shop at Europa for beer…read last two chapters of Dom Casmura… take Isabelle to lunch….

  The pain receded or moved on, exorcised by the litany of his plans and he went upstairs to put up water for his bath. He was taking off his shirt when he heard a crash from somewhere in the house. He stuck his head out the door and called Isabelle’s name and got nothing but a squeak of wind against window in return. When he looked into the bedroom she raised her head and asked if something was the matter. “Do you want to make love?” he asked, not knowing what else to say. “When I wake up,” she said and he returned to the bathroom and closed himself in. The ache in his chest recalled itself like an echo.

  Terman looked crumpled in the mirror, more so without his clothes than with, catching his reflection out of the side of his eye as he stepped into the tub.

  The water in the bath was too hot on the surface and not warm enough once he was seated in it, an underlay of coldish water like a draft at the bottom. Had he locked the door? It worried him that he hadn’t, made aware of the vulnerabilty of his position. He stood up and sat down again, would take the risk.

  The idea of a bath was to give oneself to it unequivocally, to ripen in the hot water like noodles or potatoes. It had to be searing for that, almost too hot to bear. He slid forward so that only his head and the top of his knees weren’t submerged. He was thinking of the best way of breaking the news to Tom, rehearsing variant possibilities in his imagination, nothing right. Tom, I want you
to go home: I’m sending you home. His anger trampled his prose. You come all the way from America to visit and then you don’t even live with me, though invade my life, steal from my desk, leave threatening messages. I won’t stand for it any longer. Empty bluster. He had begun to sound like his own father. Perhaps he ought to take some of the responsibility on himself. I can’t even handle my own life, how can I handle yours?

  Someone was knocking on the door to the bathroom. “I’m in the bath,” he said. After a moment, assuming she hadn’t heard him, he raised his voice, said he hadn’t fallen asleep in the tub. She made no comment or none that he could hear. “I’ll be out in a few minutes,” he said.

  He felt no compelling urgency to leave the bath but it was time and he emerged dutifully, moving quickly to circumvent the shock of air, throwing a bath towel over his shoulders.

  He shaved and dressed, held brief consultation with his reflection in the steamy mirror (“I worry that you’ll do something desparate,” he said to his son) and came down the stairs like a visiting dignitary. Isabelle was asleep on the couch, dead asleep as she had been in the car, a french fashion magazine called Marie Clare clutched to her chin. Terman tried to remove the magazine without disturbing her sleep, but she held on with the ferocity of a child. He went away, then came back with his trench coat from the closet and covered her legs. After kissing the top of her head, he tried again to remove the magazine but Isabelle held fast.

  There was a week’s mail, mostly bills and circulars (what else was there ever?) stacked neatly in two piles on the dining room table. Leafing through, he remembered he had a letter from Magda in his jacket pocket that he had been carrying around for two days. It had been posted nine days ago from New York so was likely to be old news. His right hand trembling like something in a wind, he tore the letter open, wanting to get the distasteful out of the way so he could get on to something else.

  Typed on thin yellow paper, the letter was written in capitals like a ransom note.

  LUKAS…EXCUSE THE BROKEN TYPEWRITER. IT’S ALL I HAVE AT THE MOMENT. SINCE YOUR TELEGRAM ARRIVED I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO SLEEP THINKING ABOUT TOM. I WOULD HAVE PHONED BUT AS YOU KNOW YOUR NUMBER ISN’T LISTED AND YOU NEVER SAW FIT TO TRUST IT TO ME. MY FIRST IMPULSE WAS TO GET A FLIGHT AND COME OVER IMMEDIATELY, THOUGH IT WOULD MEAN TAKING OFF FROM MY JOB. THEN I THOUGHT NO, TOM’S IN YOUR CUSTODY FOR THE SUMMER AND YOU HAVE FULL RESPONSIBILITY. WHY SHOULD IT BE EASIER FOR HIS MOTHER TO HANDLE HIM THAN HIS FATHER? LET ME GET TO THE POINT OF THIS COMMUNICATION. TOM IS QUITE ERRATIC. OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TOLD ME THIS SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO RELY ON MY PERCEPTION ALONE. HE CAN BE VERY REASONABLE ONE MOMENT, VERY CHARMING, THEN GO OFF AND DO SOMETHING DISCOMBOBULATING THE NEXT. I’VE TRIED TO GET HIM TO SEE A THERAPIST BUT HE ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO GO. A FATHER’S INFLUENCE IN THAT DIRECTION MIGHT HAVE MADE SOME DIFFERENCE. THE POINT I’M MAKING IS THAT HE’S A STRANGE BOY AND UNLIKELY TO BECOME LESS STRANGE WITHOUT OUTSIDE HELP. HIS FREINDS, I’M AFRAID, TEND TO BE BAD INFLUENCES IN ALL THE OBVIOUS WAYS. I DON’T THINK YOU WOULD LIKE THEM ANY MORE THAN I DO, I REALLY DON’T. THEY’RE MOSTLY COLLEGE DROPOUTS WITHOUT REGULAR JOBS AND LEAD WHAT MIGHT BE DESCRIBED AS MARGINAL EXISTENCES. SOME DRUGS INVOLVED, I SHOULD IMAGINE. I’VE BEEN GOING AROUND IN CIRCLES NOT SAYING EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN. FRIENDS OF MINE HAVE INVITED ME TO STAY WITH THEM IN NEW HAMPSHIRE DURING MY VACATION IN AUGUST, A VACATION LONG OVERDUE AND DESPERATELY AWAITED. I’D LIKE TO KNOW THAT TOM IS ALL RIGHT BEFORE I TAKE OFF AND THAT YOU’LL KEEP HIM WITH YOU UNTIL I RETURN ON SEPTEMBER 3.1 HOPE YOU CAN PUT HIM IN CONTACT WITH SOME SYMPATHETIC PEOPLE HIS OWN AGE. THE COMBINATION OF BAD COMPANIONS AND NOT HAVING A FATHER IN THE HOUSE HAVE HAD A DELETERIOUS EFFECT ON TOM. THIS MAY BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO UNDO SOME OF THE DAMAGE. I’D APPRECIATE A PHONE CALL AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE TO LET ME KNOW HOW HE’S DOING.

  M

  Terman went up to his study, put an air letter in his Lettera 32 and typed off an answer in white heat, resisting the impulse to do the text in lower case.

  Dear Magda,

  I am writing to acknowledge your letter which didn’t reach me until…

  Terman addressed the airletter, assembled it and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He thought if he viewed his own behavior from the vantage of an outsider, he might well despise himself. His watch, which was going again, indicated that it was almost 9 o’clock, that the real day had begun.

  He unlocked the door of his hermetic space and stepped out into the hall, wary of the least shadow. The house was quiet, unnaturally silent. He restrained an impulse to shout, walked stealthily, lit his way in the muted morning light from room to room.

  Isabelle was asleep in the master bedroom, had changed location (had sleep-walked?) while he was writing the letter to Magda. The other rooms, including both bathrooms, were empty.

  He mounted the stairs to the third floor with the same stealth, though the creaky stair boards contrived to betray his step.

  Even before he reached the top of the steps he called his son’s name. He heard his own name in response but it came from below.

  “Terman?”

  In a moment there were footsteps on the stairs coming up, a delayed echo.

  “What time is it?” Isabelle asked him. “I feel as if I’ve been out of it for hours.”

  He opened each of the five rooms on the third floor, pushing the doors open with his foot and stepping back. He tried the closets (once started it was difficult to give up the quest), looked under the beds, uncovered nothing. “Could I talk to you, Terman?” Isabelle asked.

  In one of the rooms, the one with the full length wall mirrors, there was a chair by the window overlooking the street that he could have sworn had not been in that position before. It was the only obvious sign that someone might have been there.

  “In my dream,” Isabelle was saying, “you were having a fight with my mother and I was trying to meliorate. You kept insisting—we both thought you were bonkers—that though you were younger than she, you were actually her father.”

  “I was speaking metaphorically,” Terman said.

  “My mother kept repeating—it was something she used to say to me when I was a child—“You make me want to tear my hair, luv.”

  When they were downstairs he asked Isabelle if she had knocked on the bathroom door when he was in the bath.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course I didn’t.” She lit a filter-tipped cigar, stared unhappily into the smoke.

  He prowled the house, opening and reopening the same doors. Since when had she been smoking cigars, he wondered.

  “Once you start something,” she said, “you never give it up, do you?” She put an arm around his waist, though removed it almost immediately.

  “Don’t you give me a hard time too,” he said.

  “Who’s giving whom a hard time, I’d like to know.”

  If Tom were gone, he thought, everything else would fall into place. Isabelle left him to make a phone call from the kitchen with the door closed.

  He shouted Tom’s name so that it reverberated through the seemingly untenanted house.

  Isabelle returned as if he had conjured her from out of the walls. “If I were your son,” she said, “I’d probably hide from you too.” She winked at him to soften the remark.

  He was in no mood to be propitiated, was up to the worst she had to offer. “If I were me, I’d hide from me too,” he said. “You don’t think he’s still in the house, do you?”

  “I don’t see how he could be,” she said, “do you?”

  At first he couldn’t find his corduroy jacket, and was willing to blame his son for that loss too, but then it turned up on the back of a chair in the kitchen. “I’m going out to find Tom,” he said. “We can go out for lunch at a wine pub when I get back if you like.”

  Isabelle shrugged. “I find this all so unpleasant and painful, do you know? I tend to identify with Tom and wish to God you just let us be…I’m sorry, sweetheart.�
�� She came over and leaned her head on his cheek. “Why don’t you at least call first and see if he’s there?” She kissed his face.

  “Don’t comfort me,” he said.

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind,” she said. “Would you like to have a go?” She winked at him in parody of brazenness.

  It disturbed him when she wasn’t herself, made him feel he didn’t know her, that the person he knew no longer existed. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but found the words embarrassing to speak. “I can’t concentrate on anything,” he said.

  “I’ve never known you to turn it down before.”

  “Think of it as a postponement,” he said. “One can’t always do what one wants to do.”

  “I know all too well how that is,” she said, holding the outside door open for him. “Sorry I asked.”

  He almost expected the boy to spring out at him as he stepped into the air.

  “I have to go to work at two,” she called after him. “I forgot to tell you.”

  And then the oddest thing happened. Driving in the general area of his son’s rented room, he couldn’t find the street, was failed by his usually faultless sense of direction. He could neither find the right street nor remember its name. It was not even that the neighborhood was foreign to him, not that excuse, nor that there were no recognizable landmarks. He came on a rather grim playground he had once played tennis in and a church in the process of being torn down that he had passed on foot a number of times, but his son’s street, which ran parallel or perpendicular to it, eluded him. If only he could recall its unappealing name, he could stop someone and ask directions. Chepstow kept coming to mind, though that was the name of the proprietress, the street something else. He knew the number was 44, which was his age on his birthday before last. After a point, on something called Barlby—it was as if a syllable had been swallowed—he pulled over to the curb and stopped the car. He poked into the glove compartment to check out the ratty London street guide he kept there, though, like his memory, that too was gone.