The Bear Called State O’Maine 3 страница

“Just so it’z no

Jew,”

the German said. He coughed. Freud was in the small room, though none of them had seen him; he was having trouble threading a needle.

“It’z no Jew, I’m sure.” The tawny princess laughed. “They

haf

no Jews in Maine!” When she saw Freud, she didn’t look so sure.

“

Guten Abend, meine Dame und Herr

,” Freud said. “

Was ist los

?”

My father said that Freud, in the black tuxedo, was a figure so runted and distorted by his boil scars that he immediately looked as if he had stolen his clothes; the clothes appeared to have been stolen from at

least

two different people. Even his most visible instrument was black—a black spool of thread, which Freud grasped in the grey-rubber kitchen gloves the dishwashers wore. The best needle to be found in the laundry room of the Arbuthnot looked too large in Freud’s small hand, as if he’d grabbed the needle used to sew the sails for the racing boats. Perhaps he

had

.

“Herr

Doktor

?” the German asked, his face whitening. His wound appeared to stop bleeding, instantly.

“Herr Doktor Professor Freud,” Freud said, moving in close and leering at the wound.

“Freud?” the woman said.

“

Ja

,” Freud said.

When he poured the first shot glass of whiskey into the German’s cut, the whiskey washed into the German’s eyes.

“Ooops!” said Freud.

“I’m blind! I’m blind!” the German sang.

“

Nein

, you’re

nicht

so blind,” Freud said. “But you should have shut your eyes.” He splashed another glass in the wound; then he went to work.

In the morning the manager asked Freud not to perform with State o’Maine until after the Germans left—they were leaving as soon as ample provisions could be loaded aboard their large vessel. Freud refused to remain attired as a doctor; he insisted on tinkering with the ’37 Indian in his mechanic’s costume, so it was in such attire that the German found him, seaward of the tennis courts, not exactly hidden from the main hotel grounds and the lawns of play, but discreetly off to himself. The huge, bandaged face of the German was badly swollen and he approached Freud warily, as if the little motorcycle mechanic might be the alarming twin brother of the “Herr Doktor Professor” of the night before.

“

Nein

, it’z

him

,” said the tanned woman, trailing on the German’s arm.

“What’s the Jew doctor fixing this morning?” the German asked Freud.

“My hobby,” Freud said, not looking up. My father, who was handing Freud his motorcycle tools—like an assistant to a surgeon—took a firmer grip on the three-quarters-inch wrench.

The German couple did not see the bear. State o’Maine was scratching himself against the fence of the tennis court—making deep, thrusting scratches with his back against the metal mesh, groaning to himself and rocking to a rhythm akin to masturbation. My mother, to make him more comfortable, had removed his muzzle.

“I never heard of such a motorcycle as

dis

,” the German told Freud, critically. “It’z

junk

, I tink,

ja

? What’s an Indian? I never heard of it.”

“You should try riding it yourself,” Freud said. “Want to?”

The German woman seemed unsure of the idea—and quite sure that she didn’t want to—but the idea clearly appealed to the German. He stood close to the motorcycle and touched its gas tank and ran his fingers over its clutch cable and fondled the knob to the gearshift. He seized the throttle at the handlebars and gave it a sharp twist. He felt the soft rubber tube—like an exposed vital organ among so much metal—where the gas ran from the tank into the carburetor. He opened the valve to the carburetor, without asking Freud’s permission; he tickled the valve and wet his fingers with gasoline, then wiped his fingers on the seat.

“You don’t mind,

HerrDoktor?”

the German asked Freud.

“No, go on,” Freud said. “Take it for a spin.”

And that was the summer of ’39: my father saw how it would end, but he could not move to interfere. “I couldn’t have stopped it,” Father always said. “It was

coming

, like the war.”

Mother, at the tennis court fence, saw the German mount the motorcycle; she thought she’d better put State o’Maine’s muzzle back on. But the bear was impatient with her; he shook his head and scratched himself harder.

“Just a standard kick starter,

ja

?” the German asked.

“Just kick it over and she’ll start right up,” Freud said. Something about the way he and Father stepped away from the motorcycle made the young German woman join them; she stepped back, too.

“Here goes!” the German said, and kicked the starter down.

With the first catch of the engine, before the first rev, the bear called State o’Maine stood erect against the tennis court fence, the coarse fur on his dense chest stiffening; he stared across centre court at the 1937 Indian that was trying to go somewhere without him. When the German chunked the machine into gear and began, rather timidly, to advance across the grass to a nearby gravel path, State o’Maine dropped to all fours and charged. He was in full stride when he crossed centre court and broke up the doubles game—racquets falling, balls rolling loose. The player who was playing net chose to hug the net instead; he shut his eyes as the bear tore by him.

“Earl!” cried State o’Maine, but the German on the throaty ’37 Indian couldn’t hear anything.

The German woman heard, however, and turned—with Father and Freud—to see the bear. “

Gott!

Vut vilderness!” she cried, and fainted sideways against my father, who wrestled her gently to the lawn.

When the German saw that a bear was after him, he had not yet got his bearings; he was unsure which way the main road was. If he’d found the main road, of course, he could have outdistanced the bear, but confined to the narrow paths and walkways, of the hotel grounds, and the soft fields for sports, he lacked the necessary speed.

“Earl!” growled the bear. The German swerved across the croquet lawn and headed for the picnic tents where they were setting up for lunch. The bear was on the motorcycle in less than twenty-five yards, clumsily trying to mount behind the German—as if State o’Maine had finally learned Freud’s driving lesson, and was about to insist that the act be performed properly.

The German would not allow Freud to stitch him up this time and even Freud confessed that it was too big a job for him. “What a mess,” Freud wondered aloud to my father. “Such a lot of stitches—not for me. I couldn’t stand to hear him bawl all the time it would take.”

So the German was transported, by the Coast Guard, to the hospital at Bath. State o’Maine was concealed in the laundry room so that the bear’s mythical status as “a wild animal” could be confirmed.

“Out of the

voods

, it came,” said the revived German woman. “It must haf been

incensed

by der noise from der motorcycle.”

“A she-bear with young cubs,” Freud explained. “

Sehr

treacherous at this time of year.”

But the management of the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea would not allow the matter to be dismissed so easily; Freud knew that.

“I’m leaving before I have to talk with

him

again,” Freud told Father and Mother. They knew that Freud meant the owner of the Arbuthnot, the man in the white dinner jacket who occasionally showed up for the last dance. “I can just hear him, the big shot: ‘Now, Freud, you knew the risk—we discussed it. When

I

agreed to have the animal here,

we

agreed he would be your responsiblity.’ And if he tells me I’m a lucky Jew—to be in his fucking America in the first place—I will let State o’Maine

eat

him!” Freud said. “Him and his fancy cigarettes, I don’t need. This isn’t my kind of hotel, anyway.”

The bear, nervous at being confined in the laundry room and worried to see Freud packing his clothes as fast as they came out of the wash—still wet—began to growl to himself. “Earl!” he whispered.

“Oh, shut up!” Freud yelled. “You’re not my kind of bear, either.”

“It was my fault,” my mother said. “I shouldn’t have taken his muzzle off.”

Those were just love bites,” Freud said. “It was the brute’s claws that really carved that fucker up!”

“If he hadn’t tried to pull State o’Maine’s fur,” Father said, “I don’t think it would have gotten so bad.”

“Of course it wouldn’t have!” Freud said. “Who likes to have hair pulled?”

“Earl!” complained State o’Maine.

“That should be your name: ‘Earl!’” Freud told the bear. “You’re so stupid, that’s all you ever say.”

“But what will you do?” Father asked Freud. “Where can you go?”

“Back to Europe,” Freud said. “They got smart bears there.”

“They have Nazis there,” Father said.

“Give me a smart bear and fuck the Nazis,” Freud said.

“I’ll take care of State o’Maine,” Father said.

“You can do better than that,” Freud said. “You can

buy

him. Two hundred dollars, and what you got for clothes.

These

are all wet!” he shouted, throwing his clothes.

“Earl!” said the bear, distressed.

“Watch your language, Earl,” Freud told him.

“Two hundred dollars?” Mother asked.

That’s all they’ve paid me, so far,” Father said.

“I know what they pay you,” Freud said. “That’s why it’s only two hundred dollars. Of course, it’s for the motorcycle, too. You’ve seen why you need to keep the Indian,

ja

? State o’Maine don’t get in cars; they make him throw up. And some woodsman chained him in a pickup once—I saw that. The dumb bear tore the tailgate off and beat in the rear window and mauled the guy in the cab. So don’t you be dumb. Buy the Indian.”

Two hundred dollars,” Father repeated.

“Now for your clothes,” Freud said. He left his own wet things on the laundry room floor. The bear tried to follow them to my father’s room, but Freud told my mother to take State o’Maine outside and chain him to the motorcycle.

“He knows you’re leaving and he’s nervous, poor thing,” Mother said.

“He just misses the motorcycle,” Freud said, but he let the bear come upstairs—although the Arbuthnot had asked him not to allow this.

“What do I care now what they allow?” Freud said, trying on my father’s clothes. My mother watched up and down the hall, bears

and

women were not allowed in the men’s dorm.

“My clothes are all too

big

for you,” my father told Freud when Freud had dressed himself.

“I’m still growing,” said Freud, who must have been at least forty then. “If I’d had the right clothes, I’d be bigger now.” He wore three of my father’s suit pants, one pair right over the other; he wore two suit jackets, the pockets stuffed with underwear and socks, and he carried a third jacket over his shoulder. “Why trouble with suitcases?” he asked.

“But how will you

get

to Europe?” Mother whispered into the room.

“By crossing the Atlantic Ocean,” Freud said. “Come in here,” he said to Mother; he took my mother’s and father’s hands and joined them together. “You’re only teen-agers,” he told them, “so listen to me: you are in love. We start from this assumption,

ja

?” And although my mother and father had never admitted any such thing to each other, they both nodded while Freud held their hands. “Okay,” Freud said. “Now, three things from this follow. You promise me you will agree to these three things?”

“I promise,” said my father.

“So do I,” Mother said.

“Okay,” said Freud. “Here’s number one: you get married, right away, before some clods and whores change your minds. Got it? You get married, even though it will cost you.”

“Yes,” my parents agreed.

“Here’s number two,” Freud said, looking only at my father. “You

go

to Harvard—you promise me—even though it will cost you.”

“But I’ll already be married,” my father said.

“I said it will cost you, didn’t I?” Freud said. “You promise me: you’ll go to Harvard. You take

every

opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day the opportunities stop, you know?”

“I want you to go to Harvard, anyway,” Mother told Father.

“Even though it will cost me,” Father said, but he agreed to go.

“We’re up to number three,” Freud said. “You ready?” And he turned to my mother; he dropped my father’s hand, he even shoved it away from his so that he was holding Mother’s hand all alone. “Forgive him,” Freud told her, “even though it will cost you.”

“Forgive me for what?” Father said.

“Just forgive him,” Freud said, looking only at my mother. She shrugged.

“And

you

!” Freud said to the bear, who was sniffing around under Father’s bed. Freud startled State o’Maine, who’d found a tennis ball under the bed and put it in his mouth.

“Urp!” the bear said. Out came the tennis ball.

“ You,” Freud said to the bear. “May you one day be grateful that you were rescued from the disgusting world of

nature

!”

That was all. It was a wedding and a benediction, my mother always said. It was a good old-fashioned Jewish service, my father always said; Jews were a mystery to him—of the order of China, India, and Africa, and all the exotic places he’d never been.

Father chained the bear to the motorcycle. When he and Mother kissed Freud good-bye, the bear tried to butt his head between them.

“Watch out!” Freud cried, and they scattered apart. “He thought we were eating something,” Freud told Mother and Father. “Watch out how you kiss around him; he don’t understand kissing. He thinks it’s

eating

.”

“Earl!” the bear said.

“And please, for me,” Freud said, “call him Earl—that’s all he ever says, and State o’Maine is such a dumb name.”

“Earl?” my mother said.

“Earl!”

the bear said.

“Okay,” Father said. “

Earl

it is.”

“Good-bye, Earl,” Freud said. “

Auf Wiedersehen!”

They watched Freud for a long time, waiting on the Bay Point dock for a boat going to Boothbay, and when a lobsterman finally took him—although my parents knew that in Boothbay Freud would be boarding a larger ship—they thought how it

looked

as if the lobster boat were taking Freud to Europe, all the way across the dark ocean. They watched the boat chug and bob until it seemed smaller than a tern or even a sandpiper on the sea; but then it was out of hearing.

“Did you do it for the first time that night?” Franny always asked.

“Franny!” Mother said.

“Well, you said

you felt

married,” Franny said.

“Never mind when we did it,” Father said.

“But you did, right?” Franny said.

“Never mind that,” Frank said.

“It doesn’t matter

when

,” Lilly said, in her weird way.

And that was true—it didn’t really matter

when

. When they left the summer of 1939 and the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea, my mother and father were in love—and in

their

minds, married. After all, they had promised Freud. They had his 1937 Indian and his bear, now named Earl, and when they arrived home in Dairy, New Hampshire, they drove first to the Bates family house.

“Mary’s home!” my mother’s mother called.

“What’s that

machine

she’s on?” said old Latin Emeritus. “Who’s that with her?”

“It’s a motorcycle and that’s Win Berry!” my mother’s mother said.

“No, no!” said Latin Emeritus. “Who’s the

other

one?” The old man stared at the bundled figure in the sidecar.

“It must be Coach Bob,” said my mother’s mother.

That moron!” Latin Emeritus said. “What in hell is he wearing in this weather? Don’t they know how to dress in Iowa?”

“I’m going to marry Win Berry!” my mother rushed up and told her parents. “That’s his motorcycle. He’s going to Harvard. And this... is Earl.”

Coach Bob was more understanding. He liked Earl.

“I’d love to know what he could bench-press,” the former Big Ten lineman said. “But can’t we cut his nails?”

It was silly to have another wedding; my father thought that Freud’s service would suffice. But my mother’s family insisted that they be married by the Congregational minister who had taken Mother to her graduation dance, and so they were.

It was a small, informal wedding, where Coach Bob played the best man and Latin Emeritus gave his daughter away, with only an occasional mumbling of an odd Latin phrase; my mother’s mother wept, full of the knowledge that Win Berry was

not

the Harvard man destined to whisk Mary Bates back to Boston—at least, not right away. Earl sat out the whole service in the sidecar of the” 37 Indian, where he was pacified with crackers and herring.

My mother and father had a brief honeymoon by themselves.

“

Then

you surely must have done it!” Franny always cried. But they probably didn’t; they didn’t stay anywhere overnight. They took an early train to Boston and wandered around Cambridge, imagining themselves living there, one day, and Father attending Harvard; they took the milk train back to New Hampshire, arriving at dawn the next day. Their first nuptial bed would have been the single bed in my mother’s girlhood room in the house of Latin Emeritus—which was where my mother would still reside, while Father sought his fortune for Harvard.

Coach Bob was sorry to see Earl leave. Bob was sure the bear could be taught to play defensive end, but my father told Iowa Bob that the bear was going to be his family’s meal ticket and his tuition. So one evening (after the Nazis took Poland), with the earliest nip of fall in the air, my mother kissed my father good-bye on the athletic fields of the Dairy School, which rolled right up to Iowa Bob’s back door.

“Look after your parents,” my father told Mother, “and I’ll be back to look after you.”

“Yuck!” Franny always groaned for some reason, this part bothered her. She never believed it. Lilly, too, shivered and turned up her nose.

“Shut up and listen to the story,” Frank always said.

At least I’m not opinionated to the degree of my brothers and sisters. I could simply see how Mother and Father must have kissed:

carefully—

Coach Bob amusing the bear with some game, so that Earl would not think my mother and father were eating something that they weren’t sharing with him. Kissing would always be hazardous around Earl.

My mother told us that she knew my father would be faithful to her because the bear would maul him if he kissed anybody.

“And

were

you faithful?” Franny asked Father, in her terrible way.

“Why, of course,” Father said.

“I’ll bet,” Franny said. Lilly always looked worried—Frank looked away.

That was the fall of 1939. Although she didn’t know it, my mother was already pregnant—with Frank. My father would motorcycle down the East Coast, his exploration of resort hotels—the big-band sounds, the bingo crowds, and the casinos—taking him farther and farther south as the seasons changed. He was in Texas in the spring of 1940 when Frank was born; Father and Earl were at that time touring with an outfit called the Lone Star Brass Band. Bears were popular in Texas—although some drunk in Fort Worth had tried to steal the 1937 Indian, unaware that Earl slept chained to it. Texas law charged Father for the man’s hospitalization, and it cost Father some more of his earnings to drive all the way East to welcome his first child into the world.

My mother was still in the hospital when Father returned to Dairy. They called Frank “Frank” because my father said that was what they would always be to each other and to the family: “frank.”

“Yuck!” Franny used to say. But Frank was quite proud of the origins of his name.

Father stayed with my mother in Dairy only long enough to get her pregnant again. Then he and Earl hit Virginia Beach and the Carolinas. They were banned from Falmouth, Cape Cod, on the Fourth of July, and back home with Mother in Dairy—to recover—soon after their disaster. The 1937 Indian had thrown a bearing in the Falmouth Independence Day Parade, and Earl had run amok when a fireman from Buzzards Bay tried to help Father with the ailing motorcycle. The fireman was unfortunately accompanied by two Dalmatian dogs, a breed not known for intelligence; doing nothing to disprove their reputation, the Dalmatians attacked Earl in the sidecar. Earl beheaded one of them quite cleanly, then chased the other one into the marching unit of the Osterville Men’s Softball Team, where the foolish dog attempted to conceal himself. The parade was thus scattered, the grieving fireman from Buzzards Bay refused my father any more help with the Indian, and the sheriff of Falmouth escorted Father and Earl to the city limits. Since Earl refused to ride in cars, this had been a most tedious escort, Earl sitting in the sidecar of the motorcycle, which had to be towed. They were five days finding parts to rebuild the engine.

Worse, Earl had developed a taste for dogs. Coach Bob tried to train him out of this maiming habit by teaching him other sports: retrieving balls, perfecting the forward roll—even sit-ups—but Earl was already old, and not blessed with the belief in vigorous exercise that possessed Iowa Bob. Slaughtering dogs didn’t even require much running, Earl discovered; if he was sly—and Earl was sly—the dogs would come right up to him. “And then it’s all over,” Coach Bob observed. “What a hell of a linebacker he could have been!”

So Father kept Earl chained, most of the time, and tried to make him wear his muzzle. Mother said that Earl was depressed—she found the old bear increasingly sad—but my father said that Earl wasn’t depressed in the slightest. “He’s just thinking about dogs.” Father said. “And he’s perfectly happy to be attached to the motorcycle.”

That summer of ’40 Father lived at the Bates house in Dairy and worked the Hampton Beach crowd at night. He managed to teach Earl a new routine. It was called “Applying for a Job,” and it saved wear and tear on the old Indian.

Earl and Father performed in the outdoor bandstand at Hampton Beach. When the lights came on, Earl would be seated in a chair, wearing a man’s suit; the suit, radically altered, had once belonged to Coach Bob. After the laughter died down, my father entered the bandstand with a piece of paper in one hand.

“Your name?” Father would ask.

“Earl!” Earl said.

“Yes, Earl, I see,” Father said. “And you want a job, Earl?”

“Earl!” said Earl.

“Yes, I

know

it’s Earl, but you want a

job,

right?” Father said. “Except it says here that you can’t type, you can’t even read—it says—and you have a drinking problem.”

“Earl,” Earl agreed.

The crowd occasionally threw fruit, but Father had fed Earl well; this was not the same kind of crowd that Father remembered from the Arbuthnot.

“Well, if all you can say is your own name,” Father said, “I would venture to say that either you’ve been drinking this very night or you’re too stupid to even know how to take off your own clothes.”

Earl said nothing.

“Well?” Father asked. “Let’s see if you can do it. Take off your own clothes. Go on!” And here Father would pull the chair out from under Earl, who would do one of the forward rolls Coach Bob had taught him.

“So you can do a somersault,” Father said. “Big deal. The clothes, Earl. Let’s see the clothes come off.”

For some reason it is silly for a crowd of humans to watch a bear undress: my mother hated this routine—she said it was unfair to Earl to expose him to such a rowdy, uncouth bunch. When Earl undressed, Father usually had to help him with his tie—without help, Earl would get frustrated and

rip

it off his neck.

“You sure are hard on ties, Earl,” Father would say then. The audience at Hampton Beach loved it.

When Earl was undressed, Father would say, “Well, come on—don’t stop now. Off with the bear suit.”

“Earl?” Earl would say.

“Off with the bear suit,” Father would say, and he’d pull Earl’s fur—just a little.

“Earl!” Earl would roar, and the audience would scream in alarm.

“My God, you’re a

real

bear!” Father would cry.

“Earl!” Earl would bellow, and chase Father around and around the chair—half the audience fleeing into the night, some of them stumbling through the soft beach sand and down to the water; some of them threw more fruit, and paper cups with warm beer.

A more gentle act, for Earl, was performed once a week in the Hampton Beach casino. Mother had refined Earl’s dancing style, and she would kick off the big band’s opening number by taking a turn with Earl around the empty floor, the couples crowded close and wondering at them—the short, bent, broad bear in Iowa Bob’s suit, surprisingly graceful on his hind paws, shuffling after my mother, who led.

Those evenings Coach Bob would baby-sit with Frank. Mother and Father and Earl would drive home along the coast road, stopping to watch the surf at Rye, where the homes of the rich were; the surf at Rye was called “the breakers.” The New Hampshire coast was both more civilized and more seedy than Maine, but the phosphore-.scence off the breakers at Rye must have reminded my parents of evenings at the Arbuthnot. They said they always paused there, before driving home to Dairy.

One night Earl did not want to leave the breakers at Rye.

“He thinks I’m taking him fishing,” Father said. “Look. Earl, I’ve got no gear—no bait, no spooners, no

pole

—dummy,” Father said to the bear, holding out his empty hands. Earl looked bewildered; they realized the bear was nearly blind. They talked Earl out of fishing and took him home.

“How did he get so old?” my mother asked my father.

“He’s started peeing in the sidecar,” Father said.

My mother was quite pregnant, this time with Franny, when Father left for the winter season in the fall of 1940. He had decided on Florida, and Mother first heard from him in Clearwater, and then from Tarpon Springs. Earl had acquired an odd skin disease—an ear infection, some fungus peculiar to bears—and business was slow.

That was shortly before Franny was born, late in the winter of 1941. Father was not home for this birth, and Franny never forgave him for it.

“I suspect he knew I would be a girl,” Franny was fond of saying.

It was the summer of ’41 before Father was back in Dairy again; he promptly impregnated my mother with me.

He promised he would not have to leave her again; he had enough money from a successful circus stint in Miami to start Harvard in the fall. They could have a relaxed summer, playing Hampton Beach only when they felt like it. He would commute on the train to Boston for his classes, unless a cheap place in Cambridge turned up.

Earl was getting older by the minute. A pale blue salve, the texture of the film on a jellyfish, had to be put in his eyes every day; Earl rubbed it off on the furniture. My mother noticed alarming absences of hair from much of his body, which seemed shrunken and looser. “He’s lost his muscle tone,” Coach Bob worried. “He ought to be lifting weights, or running.”

“Just try to get away from him on the Indian,” my father told his father. “He’ll run.” But when Coach Bob tried it, he got away with it. Earl didn’t run; he didn’t care.

“With Earl,” Father said, “familiarity does breed a little contempt.” He had worked with Earl long and hard enough to understand Freud’s exasperation with the bear.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04