Dark Angel

  “1930?” I halted. “Does he … ever talk about Constance?”

  The wind gusted; Frank braced himself. He drew me closer to him and increased his pace.

  “God, it’s cold. Let’s hurry. It’s not far now. Constance? No, he doesn’t—never, so far as I recall.”

  I had the sense that this might not be entirely true, and that Frank was keeping something back from me. The next minute I forgot all that. Frank had come to a halt outside a shabby apartment building, between Amsterdam and Columbus.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you can meet him sometime if you want. I’ll arrange it—but never mind that. Can you face the stairs? There is an elevator, but it usually doesn’t work.”

  Do you remember that apartment—the one I revisited, when I was searching for Constance, the one that had a fire escape and washing hanging on a line, the one I looked up at, thinking They live there now, some other couple?

  It was that apartment. A bedroom, a living room, a tiny bathroom, and a kitchen. It was clean, empty, and had been painted white. From the window you could watch Manhattan by day or night.

  When we entered it, I could see that Frank, having brought us here at that fast pace, now seemed tense. A look had come over his face that I grew to recognize: a closed look. The formality of his manner and his speech at once increased.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes, Frank, I do.” I hesitated, mystified. “I like … the view. The view is wonderful.”

  “It’s very small. I know this.”

  “This room isn’t so small. And the kitchen—the kitchen is ingenious. It’s very neat.”

  “The elevator does work, sometimes. It worked last week.” This was said a little mournfully. Through the silence that followed came, loudly and unexpectedly, the note of a trumpet, silver and pure. I jumped.

  “That’s the apartment below.” Frank’s manner was now very guarded. “A man called Luigi lives there. He plays the trumpet. In a dance band. He has five children. He’s … very nice.”

  “I’m sure he is, Frank.” I turned back and, beginning to suspect the truth, put my arms around his waist. “Whose apartment is this?”

  “It’s mine. I leased it last week. When I begin working at the Institute, I’ll live here. I’ll walk to work. It’s rather a long walk—”

  “Frank. It’s nearly forty blocks.”

  “I thought that would be good for me.” His face had become a mask of obstinacy. “To walk. Then to come back here, and …”

  He was floundering—I could see that. With a lurch of sadness and of disappointment, I understood why he had brought me here. In the months that had passed, while he finished his work at Yale and I visited him there, or he came down to New York, he had never once mentioned, as Constance would have put it, the future. So, now, the future was explained. He would live here. Alone. I made my voice as bright, as careless as I could.

  “Oh—it will suit you very well, Frank. Look, there are bookshelves for your books, and when it is furnished, you—”

  “Furniture. I hadn’t thought about furniture.”

  “Well, you’ll need it, Frank. Even you. You can’t sleep on the floor. You need a table, a chair, and …”

  I could not go on. I was furious with myself. I knew that it had been wrong to hope, to tell myself that, once he left Yale, Frank would ask me … ask me what? To marry him, as Constance seemed to expect? To live with him? Simply to be with him? Something, anyway: I had never spelled it out to myself, but I had allowed that moment to be ahead of me, bright with hope.

  “Oh, I’m a fool. I’ve done this all wrong. Always, always I do this!” Frank turned me to look at him. “You’re crying.”

  “I am not. I … had something in my eye. It’s all right.”

  “I love you. Will you listen to me?” He paused, and again I could see that struggle in his face. “You see, I should have explained. About the money. About the lack of money. I … am not rich, Victoria.”

  “I know that. You think that matters to me?”

  “No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. I know you don’t add up the world this way. But the fact remains …” His face tightened. “When I came to this country, I had nothing. The clothes I stood up in—isn’t that what they say? Max and Rosa took me in. They paid for my upkeep, my schooling—for a very long and protracted education. Since Max died”—he paused—“Rosa is not as well off as she thinks she is, Victoria. Max didn’t leave a great deal. She can be extravagant, or has been in the past. She has the younger children still to finish schooling. So, you see, before I can think of myself, I must pay Rosa back.”

  “Pay her back?”

  “Darling, universities are not free. Research fellows are not that well paid. Some of the money I’ve repaid already, but there is more. Once I’m at the Institute it will be easier, if I live in a modest way, like this—like a scientist monk, just for a short while—”

  “Not too much like a monk, I hope.”

  “Perhaps not in every respect like a monk.” He smiled. “Eventually, when this has been done, then I’ll be in a position … I’ll be able to … we can … I hope that … I would want nothing more than—”

  He stopped. He broke into German, in which language he swore volubly and at length. Frank Gerhard was not a man given to swearing, in any language. I began to smile; my heart lifted, with the very greatest happiness. Frank, who had stopped swearing, regarded this smile with suspicion.

  “You find this funny? I can assure you it’s not funny to me.”

  “I find you funny, Frank. Why don’t you finish what you were going to say?”

  “I’m not in a position to do that. I was trying to explain, but I see now it was foolish to begin. I wanted you to know that one day—one day soon—I’ll be able to ask you something that I am not able to ask you now. Because if I were to ask you now, it would be—”

  “Be what, Frank?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Dishonorable.”

  There was a silence.

  “Frank. What year is this?”

  “It is 1958.”

  “And what country are we in?”

  “We are in America. Obviously.”

  “Then don’t you think, maybe, since we’re not in England or Germany, and it’s not—I’m not sure when, possibly 1930, possibly 1830—that you might be worrying unnecessarily? That you might be just a little out-of-date?”

  “I know I’m out-of-date. But I wish to be. It’s because I respect you. Also”—he hesitated—“I saw today … the way you’re used to living. A large apartment. Servants. Caviar for lunch—”

  “Frank, couldn’t I live here with you, in this apartment? I would like to, you know. I would like it very much—”

  “You would?” This seemed to astonish him. For a moment his face lightened.

  “Yes, I would. Surprising as it may seem, I think I could live very happily without lots of rooms and servants. I could certainly live without caviar. Frank, think”—I crossed to him—“you remember Winterscombe, how shabby it was? No money. Holes in the rugs.”

  “There was a butler.” This was said on an accusing note.

  “There was William, who was very old. A cook who gave notice once a week. And Jenna. That wasn’t so extraordinary, not in 1938.”

  “It was a large house.”

  “Frank, will you stop this? You are the most obstinate, obtuse, inflexible man I ever met. Why can’t I be here, if I love you, if I want to be? Or is it that you don’t want me here? Is that it?”

  “You know that’s not true,” he burst out. “I want you with me always. I want to live with you, think with you, talk with you, sleep with you, wake with you. When you’re not there—it’s like the song. I die a little. However.” He stopped short. “You cannot live here. It wouldn’t be right. When I’m in a position to support you, when I have the right, then—”

  “Frank. I work. I can support myself.”

  “Even so,?
?? he replied stiffly. “I must be in a position to … allow you to stop working. I am not so old-fashioned as you think. I can be modern, too, proud that you work. But”—he hesitated—“sometimes a woman cannot always work. If she is having a child. If she has children. I—”

  He broke off once more, and put his arms around me.

  “I’m making a mess of this,” he said simply. “I was afraid I would. But you see—it’s not for so very long, and I love you so very much. When I say this thing, when I can say it, with a good heart and a clear mind, I want it to be the first time I say it. It will be important. I want it to be … perfect, so we will always remember it, and”—he paused—“I will say the right thing then, I hope, in the right way. In English. I will make you the speech you deserve. I’ve been working on it, at night.”

  “You’ve been working on it? Oh, Frank.”

  “I’m on the third draft.” A glint of amusement had returned to his eyes.

  “The third?”

  “Natürlich. I expect five or six drafts. That may get it right.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “A little bit. Not all of it.”

  “You’re teasing me.”

  “Why not? You were teasing me, I think.”

  “You are a very strange man, and I love you very much. One thing, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “Does your very strange and rigid code permit me to visit you here? Will my reputation be safe then, if we’re very discreet? Do you think I might, just occasionally, be smuggled in and smuggled out?”

  “I’d die if you were not,” Frank said.

  “To 1959! A very special year,” Rosa said—and, being Rosa, then became flustered, kissed all of her family, kissed Frank, kissed me, talked a great deal, then stopped, then wept.

  She had looked toward Frank and me as she pronounced it a special year, and then—since Rosa never hinted lightly but preferred good weighty hints, solid as a brick—she drew me to one side and said, “Look at Frank.”

  Frank was, at that point, entertaining some of his nephews and nieces, for Rosa was by then a grandmother several times over, and this new generation of Gerhards had been allowed to stay up, to see in the New Year. In the middle of Rosa’s crowded room, they were in the process of erecting a tower of bricks—no, not simply a tower, a Taj Mahal of bricks. Frank was on his knees, assisting in this process. He was demonstrating some law of advanced physics while constructing a small bridge. He did this with tact, never placing the bricks himself, but allowing smaller hands to do so. From time to time he made modest but vital suggestions as to where a brick might go without destroying the entire edifice; from time to time he would make an obviously bad suggestion, and be pounced upon with scorn. Four-year-olds and five-year-olds explained to him patiently why the brick could not go there; Frank took this with great humility. Rosa said, “You see—how good he is at this!”

  She did not stop there, of course. She told me, in some detail, with obvious happiness, what a good father Frank would make.

  I knew she was right. I also thought, though, that Rosa did not entirely understand this adopted son of hers. Rosa, even since being widowed, shied away from the darker side of life. She did not like to look toward the shadows, and so the portrait of Frank she gave me was loving, but inexact.

  I may wrong her in this, but I think she did not see in Frank a darkness that was certainly there, and was deeply engrained in his character. He had suffered much as a child, and he had lost much; those losses, and the manner of them, he never forgot. They were there with him even when he was at his happiest: those Gespenster, his private ghosts. They influenced his moral code, which was stern and eschewed compromise; they also affected his willpower, and that (I was learning) had a tensile strength. Once he believed in something, he pursued it with tenacity.

  He was, in a sense, out of tune with the age in which he lived, and would have been even more so during the decade that followed, the 1960s. To Frank, changes in social customs or attitudes were meaningless; a moral loner, he had evolved his own code and his adherence to it was rigorous. I tell you this because it may help you to understand a factor in our relationship that was of central importance—and that was his attitude to Constance.

  Frank Gerhard had plain beliefs, held passionately. He believed in truthfulness, hard work, marriage, fidelity, children, and the importance of family life. Constance, therefore, represented everything that was anathema to him. This, he never said.

  By this time, when we attended Rosa’s New Year’s party, he had been in his small white New York apartment since the summer. I had been visiting him there—although sometimes, despite his old-fashioned concern for proprieties, those visits had been prolonged—for some six months. During that time (and this is important in view of what happened next) he never criticized my godmother once. He never praised her either—he did not find it easy to lie—but he never spoke a word against her. Constance would frequently suggest to me that he must. “Oh, he doesn’t like me,” she might cry, or “He disapproves of me, that man of yours. I know it! He does!” Whenever she did this, I could reassure her—but I did so, as time passed, with an increasing sense of unease.

  Frank did not like her—I sensed this for all his stubborn refusal to say it. Indeed, what he felt toward her, I feared, was much deeper than mere dislike. Sometimes, when we were together at Constance’s, I would surprise on his face an expression of implacable hostility. Several times I noticed that when I spoke to him of Constance, his face would take on that closed look, and I would suspect he knew more of her than he ever said. I had wondered, once or twice, if Montague Stern might have been his source of information, though from what Frank said of him, that seemed unlikely. I also noted that I still had not properly met Stern, who was apparently not well; several meetings had been proposed, then abandoned.

  On other occasions it would seem to me that Frank did not possess any special information about Constance, and that his reaction to her was a curiously primitive and instinctual one; he drew back from Constance as if there were in her something he could not bring himself to touch.

  That night, driving back from Rosa’s, in the warmth of the car, Frank was quiet. He seemed preoccupied. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. He drove fast but with precision, just this side of danger; we were—and this was unusual—well over the speed limit.

  We were due back at Fifth Avenue, at Constance’s New Year’s Eve party—which, she had announced gaily, would go on all night. It was already almost two o’clock. I was sleepy. I watched the rain on the windshield; the rhythms of the engine and the wipers lulled me. I had no wish to go on to this party, but Constance could be jealous of Rosa; it was important to be evenhanded. These past months Constance had been complaining of my absences.

  Frank did not like to give Constance ammunition for these complaints. If I had suggested we skip the party, he would have said no, you promised to go. We must be there.

  “Was it ever explained,” he said, out of a companionable silence, “why your parents quarreled with Constance, why she never went to Winterscombe again? Do you remember, when we were children you used to talk about that?”

  “Oh, yes.” I yawned and snuggled further in my seat. “The oldest reason of all. Nothing very dramatic. Money. My parents borrowed from Montague Stern. Maybe they didn’t repay quickly enough, or the rate of interest was very high—I don’t know exactly. But there was a quarrel. Constance says it wasn’t a very good idea to be in his debt.”

  “I can imagine that. Yes. Damn this rain.”

  Frank slowed, then accelerated again.

  “It seems odd, though, don’t you think, to quarrel so finally about something like that? After all, she had known your father since childhood. She grew up there. You’d have thought—”

  “Oh, I don’t know. People do quarrel about money. Money and love—those are the divisive forces. That’s what Constance says.”

  “You quote her a lot—do you know that
?” He glanced toward me.

  “Do I? Well, she can be quotable. You know that.”

  “I didn’t mean her words so much. Her ideas. You quote them.”

  “No, I don’t.” I sat up indignantly. “Constance is very different from me—”

  “I know that.”

  “I disagree with her about a thousand things. She does things I wish she wouldn’t do, things I hate—”

  “For instance?”

  “Oh, men, I suppose.” I hesitated. “Bobsy and Bick, for instance. I like them, and I wish she’d leave them alone. She says she will, and then she never does. And they’re equally hopeless. They quarrel with her, but they always go back. They depend on her—I’ve never understood that.”

  There was a silence. Frank appeared to hesitate.

  “They’re more than twenty years younger than she is,” he said at last. “Also, they are twins. Also, they are both her lovers. So—”

  “What did you say?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  “That’s not true! They are in love with her—I realized that, eventually. But they’re not her lovers. That’s a ridiculous idea. People gossip—I know that. But people always gossip about Constance. If she goes to the theater with a man, they gossip. Most of it is lies. I do live with her. I know.”

  “So they are not her lovers?” Frank frowned. “It is … what? A platonic friendship?”

  “No—not exactly. It’s a flirtation. I know that—I’m not blind. But Constance flirts with all men. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Does she not have lovers then?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  I looked away. “Yes. I know she does. From time to time. But not nearly so many as people say. She likes to make conquests, I think. It’s vanity as much as anything—and loneliness as well, sometimes. It doesn’t hurt anyone—”

  “Oh? The wives are not hurt? The children? Or does she confine her attentions to unmarried men?”

  I was astonished that he should speak in this way. It hurt me, and since I knew what he said was true, it made me angry.

  “Why do you say that? You never discuss Constance—ever—and then suddenly you say something like that. You shouldn’t judge her—you don’t have the right to do that. I owe everything to her, and I love her—”