Fall and Rise (2 page)

West 4th St. station, loitering train dawdling to a stop
or
tottering to a halt
or a mixture of those and I put the book into my coat pocket, stand at the door with the cook who's reading another newsweekly, other slipped into a briefcase on the floor where I quickly saw inside a clipboard, scissors, rolled-up pair of socks. “The Iffy Decade,” the article's headline says, which doesn't make me want to read more: too broad. We get off, I race upstairs, turn around, he's reading while limping and I see his right foot has a four- to six-inch platform to even his height. I jot down those introductory notes into a memo book, forget what I thought after “dawdling to a halt,” though remember it rhymed with “jot” but it was “stop,” and write the word down followed by a question mark. I go through the revolving exit gate. Token booth's boarded up, its exterior vandalized. Urine smells so bad in the passageway to the street staircase that I hold my breath. At the bottom of the steps a woman wrapped in towels and with a styrofoam cup with no coins in it by her feet says “Sir, I could use a dollar or two for a hot meal.” I'd stop to look for a dime if it weren't for the smell. I shake my head, start upstairs, shoelaces on one shoe flick against the steps. I lean the flowers and umbrella against the stair wall, tie the laces, drops land on my head but not much, long as I'm in this position other loosely tied shoe could be untied and tied tight too. “Sir,” from below, twisted face, shaking hand with the cup reaching up to me. Maybe some of it's an act. I feel in my pockets. I could say “Here, catch,” or walk down and drop it into the cup. All I turn up are two quarters and a subway token. “Sorry.” Her look says look some more. “I have to go—good luck,” and run up the rest of the steps. Rain's nearly stopped. Cook puts something into her hand and says “All I can spare,” and she says “My babies bless you.” I open the umbrella, look at the library steeple clock. Twenty to eleven or ten to seven? What'd the optometrist say that trying-on day last month? “You want to see long distances, your eyes aren't in your head anymore but on your nose.” I put them on. Five to nine, so still some time. I head for a bookstore around the block. Bank's time and temperature clock says 9:12 and 43 degrees. More like it. Cleaning store clock says quarter past. So it's so. Should've left sooner. Now I won't get to talk much with Diana. Sidewalk so narrow and crowded with people, parking meters, trash-cans and trash that I walk in the street most of the way and every other store selling shoes and western boots. New books in the window I might want to borrow from the library. Then one I at first can't believe I'm seeing. Same title, different cover, my name at the bottom, little dust already on it.
New Asiatic Women Poets
I collected and translated, or for the languages I didn't know, put into verse other people's interlinears, and which was published in hardcover last year but no one told me was coming out in paperback. The store's door is locked. Manager I've talked to before and who asked me to sign one of the two clothbounds the store bought—“Don't want to get stuck with more than one copy”—waves my hand away from the door handle and points to the clock I can't see from here. I point to the book he can't see at the window corner. He taps his watchband and says “Nine” and slashes his hand through the air. I hold the flowers out to him and say “Please” and he bows and smiles as he shakes his head and reaches under the cash register and must touch the switch that shuts off most of the store lights at once. I get down almost on my knees to see who the publisher is, but with the window lights off it's too dark. Monday I'll phone the hardcover editor of that anthology at half-past ten. She never gets in before that. Her assistant will answer and say she's not in yet and who's calling and I'll have to explain who I am again and why I'm calling and he'll ask for my phone number and spelling of my last name and say she'll get my message when she comes in. I'll call at eleven and she'll be away from her desk her assistant will say and maybe she didn't see the message he left and he'll make sure she gets it when she returns. I'll call at quarter to twelve and the assistant to the editor in the next office will say my editor and her assistant are away from their desks this moment and since both their coats are still there she's sure they haven't left for lunch and is there a message and name and phone number I'd like to leave? I'll call a few minutes after noon and she'll be out for lunch her assistant will say and she got my last message and in fact got all of them but she's been extremely busy today, but he will tell her I called once more. I'll call at two and she'll be in an editors' conference. At four she'll still be in the conference. At five Dolores will pick up the phone and say she was about to call me. Didn't the rights people contact me about the paperback sale? Didn't the paperback people send me a questionnaire? Didn't I even get her note about the sale? The mail these days. Worse than the subways. Check my contract with them, even if she's sure we both have a good idea what it stipulates, translators getting the worst shake of anybody in publishing other than their senior editors, and that's that I signed all my rights away to hardcover royalties or a paperback sale when I sold them the manuscript for one not-so-gainful flat fee. What about the movie rights to the book? I'll say and she'll say it's always enjoyable and a rare experience indeed to talk to an author with a sense of humor about his livelihood and with so little bitterness about the treatment of his book, but to be serious, with my next manuscript I should get an agent to handle the contractual details. I'll say all an agent's ever told me is I can probably sell poetry anthologies better than any agent, probably because my heart's really in it, they usually say, and that they don't like handling translated poetry of individual poets or any poetry for that matter when the poet isn't a novelist, because there just isn't enough money in it for them for all the time spent. Anyway, I'll say, who's calling about possible royalties or paperback fees? All I want are a few contributor copies to help fill up my barren bookshelves. She'll say I'm a lot more than just a contributor with that wise and important book and she thinks some comps can be squeezed out of the paper people and if they can't she'll send me one of her own. I'll say does she think each of the contributing poets can get one too? and she'll say with them she doesn't know, since the poets will be getting paid again for their poems in the paperback but have nothing in their contracts about complimentary books. But they do owe her a favor for a very successful cookbook she sent them first and they bought, so she'll look into it and get back to me soon. And then how much she's looking forward to my next anthology of contemporary poets from remote regions like Outer and Inner Mongolia and Pago Pago and Tierra del Fuego and our own and Greenland's and even Eastern Siberia's Eskimos, but without an agent she can't promise my contract will be any better with that book. As for the Japanese poet I keep raving about and whom she knows I'm plodding away and counting so hard on, no matter how great she and the Asiatic experts eventually say he is she only hopes her house will think he can sell well to universities and libraries, because they've just about given up trying to push a poet's poems on chains and ordinary bookstores. And we'll have lunch one of these days, she'll say, when she's not so bogged down with the spring list and already another dozen authors for next fall, and I head for Diana's building, rain still thin, wondering what paperback house took my book, which should do me some good in placing future manuscripts, someone recumbent in an empty refrigerator carton in the entrance of a closed sandal shop, around the corner, up her stoop, bell at the top, voice says “Yes?” and I say “Dan Krin” and there's a pause, static crack, “Excuse me, I'm not used to this elaborate set,” and I'm buzzed in. I keep the door open with my foot, shake out and close the umbrella, start unbuttoning my coat as I climb the first flight. Have to pee. Don't run or think about it. “Hello.” Diana, staring down the stairwell. “Hi,” I say, putting my glasses into the holder inside my pants pocket and she says “Oh, it's you. Ringer who rung you in said it was my niece Andy. She didn't come in with you?” “No.” “You're one of the first. Come on up. Of course come on up. And of course you're coming up. Still, you, of all people, Daniel, excluding Andy, I thought would come sooner. Shame on you both and I hope we get time to talk.” “Funny, but that's what I was thinking just before, though not about Andy,” as I round the landing and start up the next flight. “How you doing?” and she says “Unready, and you?” “Couldn't be better. But guess what I just saw in the Eighth Street Bookshop window?” and she doesn't say “What?” Maybe she didn't hear me. I'm now on her floor. Her door's open. People chatting inside. Coatrack with three coats and a hat. Pair of man's work-boots on the other tenant's doormat. “Same boots were there the last time I was here,” and she says “They're there permanently to scare off undesirable trespassers, and extra extra-large. He's petite.” “Strange.” Rubbers and rubber rainboots and umbrella by her door. She's staring at me. Man in her apartment saying “Say it again, Jane, and this time I swear by what's his name in heaven I'll laugh.” Still staring at me. Nodding approvingly. Wry smile arising. She's about to give me a compliment. I'm about to deflect and if possible squelch it. I look over my shoulder. “What are you looking at?” she says. “Nobody I guess. Thought maybe someone who you were, for what were those ‘my isn't it nice oh boy' nods and look for?” “You of course, if you have to ask.”

“Telephone, Dee,” a woman says from the door. Attractive, blackhaired, shiny black dress with several silver chains of various widths around her waist and neck. Bracelets, fingers full of rings.

“Is it an accent?”

“Pronouncedly Slavic.”

“Have him—no, I should take care of it.”

“You're busy. I speak the lingua messenger. Have him what?”

“Cibette, this is Dan—Tell him the address and directions here right up to the fourth floor and where we're situated in relation to the top step, and just to come, you hear—no excuses, but speak extra intelligibly and have him repeat everything back.” Cibette goes inside. “Some of the newer émigrés. So bright and talented. But the language is such a problem, they get lost or are spooked by our subways and have no money for cabs, besides getting cheated by them. I should have spoken to him. But you, that's who. Marble of surprises, you look practically impeccable. Or does that sound incredibly mean? It does suddenly to me.”

“No. You mean, well, that you've never seen me out of my bathing suit, bathrobe, assorted worn-down T-shirts and jeans. But wait'll I take off my coat. Almost the same old summer ho-hum clothes.”

“Now now, don't be so unduly. Whatever. Been hitting this nutritious green wine a Hungarian friend sent over and I think too much. But that you wore shoes instead of sneakers is a positive sign of nattier garments to come.”

“How fancy,” touching the aluminum coatrack. “Yours?”

“Rented, as is the fur coat you see on it, to make the best impression on my very impressive guests, though I'm not impressed. Your umbrella isn't that ratty to embarrass me, so leave it in the holder, though I can't guarantee it'll be there when you leave.”

“I'll take another then.”

“Don't you dare. Only the guests I don't know or who can afford it are allowed to be thieves.”

I stick the umbrella into the holder, hang up my coat while she's looking me over and nodding at my pants and shaking her head at my shirt, and hold out the flowers. “For you.”

“But I have no spare vases.”

“Hardly the gracious way of accepting.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sure they're beautiful, few and smell nice too. But the person who plans to present them should think beforehand of the harried hostess and myriad problems she's apt to have with her party and that all her vases and hands will probably be filled. But what are we indulging in all this small hallway talk for? Usually you just kiss and are quickly in the room for a drink and by now my time should be too occupied for even a lingering hello and I'm getting worried it's not. Ah, there's the bell. Give a kiss, then get in there and ring them in. First left in the kitchen, and before you get a drink. First press the button marked T. Ask who's there. Then release that button and listen while you press the L-button and then ring the R-button to let whoever it is in.”

“What should I L for?”

“Just if someone says it's Harry, David or Andrei. If he says he's a crazed razor-blade wielder who's going to slice up us all, don't ring him in. But go. Quick. Kiss. They're ringing again. And find anything but an empty applesauce jar for your beautiful flowers,” and she gives them to me and I kiss her cheek and go inside. Bell's ringing. I press the T-button and say “Hello?” and release it and listen and don't hear anything and bell rings and Diana yells “What are you doing, Dan?” and I press the button and say “Yes?” and release it and press the L-button and a man says “Velchetski and friend,” and I ring him in. I take my sweater off, put it on top of the coatrack and see Diana leaning over the banister. “Grisha, how are you?—up here,” and I suppose it's Grisha who says “I can't see you but can only imagine your loveliness face from below and I feel simply great. Send me the elevator.”

“For two short flights?”

“These are not short. Only my legs and breath are, which make the stairs long. But you have no elevator car, don't lie to me,” and something in Russian, “but I will still walk upstairs.”

“Dan,” Diana says, “you must meet this madman, but first plant those.” I didn't know I still held them. Maybe I put them down, picked them up when I came out here. I go into the kitchen. Bell rings. I press it, put the wrapped flowers in a tall glass of water, get a glass of green wine at the bar, go to the cheese table and slice a piece of brie and introduce myself. Phil and his wife Jane. Bell rings. “Translate,” I say. “I'll get it,” someone says near the kitchen. “Sculptors,” Phil says. “That so? What do you sculpt, or what with?” “Rubber,” Jane says. “Plastic,” Phil says, “but I really hate those questions, for my own idiosyncratic reasons, but understand why people ask them.” “Because they're interested I guess,” I say. “But you actually sculpt with those materials?” Bell rings. “Oh no,” Jane says. “Molding, twisting—you know.” “Something like that for me too, but it's too difficult—and again excuse my idiosyncrasies—for me to explain.” “Some art forms are tougher that way I suppose,” I say.