Marjorie Morningstar

  They kept applauding and cheering. They would not be satisfied with bows. Even when the bull took off its head and Puddles tried to beg off with a grateful speech, wiping his purple face, they would not listen. The bull had to go back to the middle of the ring, and Samson-Aaron had to come on again stropping the meat cleaver; and they repeated the entire act. This time at the end Samson-Aaron did not dance, but sat on the ground, crossed his arms and kicked his legs as though he were dancing, and then staggered off with his arm around the bull’s neck, pantomiming exhaustion. The audience laughed at this variation, but Mrs. Morgenstern all at once grew serious and stood. “What’s the matter with him? Why’s he doing that?”

  “Don’t be silly, Mom,” Marjorie said, “it’s his idea of clowning, that’s all.” But the mother was already working her way out of the seats.

  They found the Uncle behind the social hall, sitting on a folding chair, surrounded by the cast of the bullfight. Marjorie was terrified for a moment when she saw the cluster of people around the fat lavender-clad figure, but relief warmed her when she heard them laughing.

  “Hello, Modgerie!” he boomed. His face was pale and the tights were streaked black with sweat, but his eyes gleamed with triumph and fun. “Vell, you and me, ve go on the stage and make lots of money, ha? The Uncle is a regular Chollie Choplin! If I only find it out a few years earlier I vould be a millionaire, not a dishvasher, ha? Whoosh! Such a vorkout. Good for me, I lose tventy pounds.”

  The father said, “You feel all right, Uncle?”

  “Vy not? A little exercise hurts a man?”

  Puddles, standing in the bull skin with the head under his arm, said, “What’s everybody worried about him for? What about me? I nearly died inside this damn head.”

  “You!” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “You’re a young man.” She tried to get Samson-Aaron to go back to the kitchen workers’ barracks at once, but he insisted on accompanying the Morgensterns to their car to see them off. “Vot, I vouldn’t come and say goodbye? I’m crippled or something?”

  As they crossed the crowded lawn, from which the ring of chairs was being removed, some guests cheered and applauded the Uncle, and he had to take off his matador’s hat repeatedly. “A dishvasher should be so popular, ha?” he said. “Milton should see it.” The old man’s face beamed and perspired under the absurd purple pompons. The usual high color had flowed back into his puffy cheeks, and he hummed an old Yiddish song as he walked springily along.

  The parents’ luggage was already piled in the car in the cinder-strewn parking space behind the camp office. “Well, I guess it’s goodbye,” the mother said. She tossed the father’s sombrero into the back seat.

  Mr. Morgenstern embraced Marjorie in a quick nervous hug, not looking at her. “Take good care of my daughter,” he said. He slapped Samson-Aaron on the back and got into the driver’s seat.

  The mother peered at Marjorie, wrinkling up her eyes. “So? Any decision?”

  “Mom, I really—I appreciate it, believe me, I do. You may be right. When will you be home, Wednesday? I’ll call you.”

  “Don’t wait till Wednesday. If you make up your mind tonight, tomorrow, whenever it is, call me at Seth’s camp. I’ll call Papa’s office and they’ll make everything ready for you.” She gave her the camp telephone number. “Marjorie, do it.”

  “Maybe I will. I really may, Mom.”

  “Good.” Mrs. Morgenstern turned to the Uncle. Her face clouded. “So, Samson-Aaron? You want to listen to me? Enough foolishness. Quit this job. Come home. We’ll find you something better.”

  “Vy? I make a dollar, it’s nice, I fish, I see Modgerie—”

  “You’re an old man. Why must you keep up the foolish tricks? Look at you, sweating like a horse, dancing like a crazy man. Look at your hands, all chewed up from broken dishes.” The Uncle guiltily put his red-notched hands behind him. “What’s going to be the end, Uncle? Are you going to be Samson-Aaron for always?”

  The Uncle smiled. “Who else should I be if not Samson-Aaron? Goodbye, Rose, you’re good, you’re like a sister.”

  The mother expelled a long sigh, puffing out her cheeks. She looked from the girl to the old man. “I keep trying to fix everything. Why? It’s God’s world.” She kissed them both. “Take care of yourselves. And… and grow up, both of you.” With a little laugh and a shrug of her shoulders, she got into the car. It drove off with a rattle of cinders. Looking after it, Marjorie felt the scarred damp hand of the Uncle softly clasp hers.

  She leaned on the Uncle’s shoulder and kissed his bristly cheek. “Let’s both go and lie down. I’m dead. You don’t have to wash dishes tonight, do you?”

  “Me? I sit at the table vit Mr. Airman for dinner. Big shot.”

  “Good. See you later. You go and rest now, the way Mom said.”

  “Vot you think,” the Uncle said, “I play a game tennis?” They went separate ways. She could see him for a while laboring up the hill toward the kitchen barracks, a monstrous waddling figure in lavender tights and a purple matador’s hat.

  Marjorie made for her bungalow, almost staggering under a sudden wave of fatigue, and fell in a disorderly heap on a bed.

  Chapter 19. THE SOUTH WIND WALTZ

  A kiss awakened her—a kiss strongly flavored with rum. It was still daylight. Wally Wronken was stooped over her, swaying. He wore a yellow polo shirt and gray flannel trousers; there was no fiesta touch about him except the drink in his hand. “Ah, the princess wakes,” he said.

  “Say, where do you get your nerve?” She made instinctive sleepy gestures at her bodice and skirt. “You get out of here. You’re not allowed on these grounds. And what do you mean, kissing me when I’m asleep? I ought to sock you.”

  “Why, it’s the classic way of arousing the sleeping beauty,” said Wally. “I’ve broken the hundred-year spell, princess. The clocks are ticking again in the castle. The cooks and the grooms are gaping and stretching. The king has resumed counting his tarnished money, and the spider is finishing the web that has hung incomplete and dusty for a century—”

  “You’re drunk,” Marjorie said, yawning. “And it isn’t even dark. You’re disgusting.”

  “Yes, I know, princess. I am disgusting. But I was not always thus.” He spoke with a slow, slightly thick precision, making elegant gestures with the drink, spilling it a little. “Now that I have broken your spell, will you break mine? A wicked witch, princess, has put me into this form of a loathsome bespectacled toad. One kiss from your virgin lips, and before your eyes I shall spring erect, a tall handsome golden-haired social director in a black sweater. We shall marry and live happily ever after, on kisses, hamburgers, and Automat coffee.”

  “Don’t be so funny.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, Lord, six-thirty already.”

  “You’re wanted in the social hall,” said Wally, “by the great I Am.”

  “Noel?”

  “Christmas himself. Tell me, would you like me any better if I called myself Ash Wednesday Wronken?”

  “Get out of here. I’ll be down there in a minute. What does he want?”

  “Your fair white body. As who does not?”

  “Good Lord, how many have you had?”

  He drained the glass, tossed it aside, walked stiffly to the door, and turned. “No lilacs.” He pointed overhead. “Look. No lilacs.”

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t remember,” he said to the ceiling. “And the words are graven on my heart. ‘You’ll get another kiss,’ you said, ‘when we find such lilacs again.’—I got it, kiddo. No lilacs. Fooled you.”

  “Well, I hope the thrill lasts,” Marjorie said. “Lilacs or no lilacs, I’m not going to have much more to do with you, if you don’t stop behaving like an infant.”

  “She does not know the secret in the poet’s heart. Exit Marchbanks,” said Wally. He stepped out of the door and fell head first down the stairs of the bungalow, with tremendous thumping and banging. When Marjorie came to the door in alarm, he was on his hands
and knees, brushing dead leaves and dirt off himself. “No harm done. Mere nothing. Tell me, by the way, how did your folks like Noel?”

  “Get up and get out of here, you loon, before I report you as a Peeping Tom.”

  He got to his feet, blinking and peering around. His face looked oddly bare and defenseless. “If the indictment is to stand I need my glasses. I can’t peep at my own hand without them.”

  “They’re right behind your heel. Don’t step on them.”

  He put them on and squinted at her. “Ah. That’s better. Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

  “Go away.” She went inside and quickly showered. Though she had slept two hours, she felt unrefreshed and heavy. This day was the longest, or at least the slowest-moving, of her life. A week seemed to have passed since her talk with her father in the rowboat. She put on a green cotton print dress and ran down the path toward the social hall.

  “Let us maintain our dignity, please, Miss Morningstar,” she heard Wally say as she came out on the lawn. “Does Katharine Cornell scamper? Did Bernhardt?”

  “You again?”

  He came and walked beside her. “Really, what did your folks say? Did they like our man of a thousand perfections?”

  “They liked him a lot better than they’d like you in your present state, I’ll tell you that. You should be ashamed. A kid like you, getting drunk in the middle of the day.”

  “I have several answers to that. Six-thirty is not the middle of the day, but the last of its declining slope. I am not drunk, I am fuddled, in the best tradition of an English gentleman. I am not a kid, but a marvelously talented young writer. As such I demand your respect, and I strongly advise you to consider whether your choice of—”

  “That’s something I’m going to talk to you about, Wally, when you’re a little more sober. Your writing. You need a straightening-out, my boy.”

  “Oh, indeed?” He pointed to a booth. “Excuse me while I pick up a drink. Won’t be a moment. You too?”

  “No, thanks. You’re excused for the evening. Go ahead, make a hog of yourself. Only stay away from me.”

  “Not a hog. A frog. Frog prince. Please don’t desert me. There isn’t another virgin within a thousand miles.”

  Marjorie made a face at him and walked off to the social hall. Noel was at the piano, still in his yellow charro outfit, teaching a Mexican song to performers clustered around him. The silver-ornamented sombrero lay on the piano top. He looked extremely singular, with a dark brown complexion and thick wavy blond hair. “Hi, Marge, enjoying the fiesta?”

  “It’s wonderful. Except I’m half dead.”

  “It has gone pretty well, hasn’t it?” He left the piano. His eyes and his teeth, set off with peculiar brilliance by the brown grease paint, flashed in a virile grin. “No other camp has anything like it. It’s just a lot of trivial foolishness, of course, but it is gay.”

  “Very gay.”

  “Did your folks enjoy it?”

  “Yes. They’ve gone. They had a marvelous time.”

  “I hope so. They’re very likable, really. Your mother and I got quite friendly this morning.”

  “So she said.”

  “Your chores are all done, aren’t they? There’s no more dancing scheduled.”

  “That’s right. Unless there’s something you want me to do.”

  “No, no, I was just wondering—why don’t you eat at my table at the torchlight supper? With me and your uncle? I have a feeling that I haven’t seen you for a year.”

  “Oh?” She laughed with relief. “Is that why you sent for me? I’ve been having somewhat the same feeling. I’d love to, Noel, thanks. I’ll go and dress up.”

  “Wait, there’s one more thing.”

  Wally was at Marjorie’s elbow, thrusting a drink at her. “Here, Morningstar. Drink, for once dead you never shall return.”

  Marjorie reluctantly took the drink and said to Noel, “This fool, look at him. He came and woke me up with a big wet rum-soaked kiss.”

  Noel laughed, glancing at Wally with friendly curiosity. “Well, what’s happening to you, Young Sobersides? South Wind’s finally gotten to you, hey?”

  “I have gone native,” Wally said. “And when I fall, I fall like Lucifer. It will interest you to know that I am seriously looking over the pig situation.”

  “Get away from me,” Marjorie said, “I’ll never talk to you again.”

  “Nonsense,” Noel said amiably. “He’s such a starry-eyed snob, if he does take up with a pig he’ll spend the evening reading T. S. Eliot to her.”

  “That shows how much you know. I shall reveal my plan of action to you,” Wally said. “At precisely midnight I shall, after making a suitable announcement over the loudspeakers and turning on the floodlights, ravish said pig in the middle of the lawn. Away with this Victorian skulking, I say. Sex is beautiful.”

  “You’re in bad shape,” Noel said. “Look, Marge, the other thing is, the fiesta pretty well bogs down at night, usually. Half the people have gone home, the novelty of the costumes is played out—even the fireworks don’t help much. We’ve had a lot of requests for a repeat of the bullfight at supper, just the part with the bull and your uncle. He was a terrific hit, and—”

  “Gosh, Noel, I honestly think he’s done enough for one day, don’t you?”

  “Well, that’s why I wanted to ask you.”

  “Why? Is it so important?” She was disturbed at the sudden fall in his buoyant manner. “I mean—well, the thing is just about over anyway, Noel, and—I know he’s looking forward to eating at your table, it’s such a great honor in his eyes—”

  “Why, he’d still do that, Marjorie. It’s just that he was so perfect—Greech wouldn’t pay him anything more, I know. Blood from a turnip and all that. But I’d pay him another fifty out of my own pocket.”

  “Look, Noel, why don’t you ask him?” It was exceedingly distasteful to talk about money with Noel, and to hear him confirm that the Uncle had been paid.

  “Well, I will, if you don’t mind.”

  “But he’ll eat with us? It would be awful if he had to give that up.”

  “Of course he will. Before the show starts.”

  “And then perform those didos on a full stomach,” Wally interposed. “Fun.”

  “Wally, just shut up, won’t you?” Noel said in a startling tone of ragged irritation. Then he smiled, slapped Wally’s back, and said with his usual pleasant warmth, “Sorry. Temperament. Nerves. Overwork.” He turned and shouted to the singers, who were arguing at the piano, “Back in five minutes, kids!” He put his arm around Marjorie’s neck in a brief hug. “Look very beautiful tonight.” He hurried out.

  Marjorie glanced at Wally, then took a deep gulp of the drink. “Say, this tastes marvelous. There’s pineapple in it.”

  “Come,” Wally said, taking her elbow.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll give me that talking-to.”

  “Oh no. When you know what I’m saying, I will.”

  “Believe me, Morningstar, every word you ever say sinks into me.”

  Marjorie took another deep drink, nearly emptying the glass. “Why, it isn’t strong at all, it’s like a fruit drink. However did you get in such shape?”

  “Like another one?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come along.”

  The gray rock behind the social hall was called Lover’s Point. They sat with drinks in the cool breeze, under a pale green clear sky; the sun, dipping huge and orange to the trees, threw a long rippling orange path on the lake. Wally turned his glittering glasses toward her. “Go ahead. Drop the guillotine.”

  “What?”

  “The talking-to.”

  “Forget it. Let’s just enjoy the sunset.” She sipped the drink.

  “No, please. Lay it on. It will probably be good for me.”

  “Well, all right, Wally.” The drink was beginning to warm her. “Somebody’s got to tell you. I like you, you know that, and I say this only because I like
you, and want you to have a great future. You’re—well, you’re prostituting your talent.”

  “Oh? Exactly how?” he said, blinking.

  “You know very well how. By writing a lot of dirty jokes and double-meaning rhymes to get cheap laughs.”

  He stared. “But, Marge—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. South Wind shows don’t matter. The audience is vulgar and stupid, you’ve got to pander to them, and so forth. Well, that’s just where you’re wrong. If you start by pandering here, you’ll do it the rest of your life, and you’ll end up a hack. Now is the time to start having principles about your work. And—well, that’s all I wanted to say, really.” His face was still turned expectantly to her. There was a short silence. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?” she said lightly, feeling the weight of the quiet. “But it’s true, and I hope you’ll take it to heart. You have talent, and you should use it properly.” She drank. “Lord, look at that sun. It’s flattening like a pumpkin.”

  “Marge, I appreciate what you say, I truly do.” His tone was low and unexpectedly sober. “You may well be right.”

  “Good for you, Wally. I’m glad I spoke up. Laughs aren’t everything, that’s all. You should study Noel’s writing. There are such things as charm, taste—”

  “Oh my God.” He stood, and said slowly, “Let’s get this on the record now. You just said I should study Noel’s writing. Correct?”

  “I certainly did, and if you—”

  “All right. Thank you.” He finished his drink. Suddenly he threw his glass at the nearest tree. It struck and shattered, and the pieces made little orange sparkles as they tinkled to the ground. “Marjorie, you’ve asked for this. Now you listen to me.” He stalked up to her and stood before her, stoop-shouldered and weaving. He was on a lower shelf of the rock, his eyes level with hers. He poked a finger out at her and spoke with precise slowness. “For the past three weeks you have been making such a colossal overbearing goddamned fool of yourself around Noel that you haven’t a friend left at South Wind except me. There’s nobody, I tell you, nobody on the staff who doesn’t regard you as a prime jackass, nobody who doesn’t laugh themselves sick over your antics. You couldn’t have tortured this out of me, Margie, but when you have the gall to tell me I ought to study what Noel writes—”