The Hothouse by the East River Read online

  ‘That car behind us, the Rolls Royce-’ Paul says to the driver, ‘we want it to get lost.’

  They drive through Central Park, then quickly double back. Paul does a deal with the taxi driver to wait for them outside Katerina’s flat.

  ‘I was asleep,’ she says. ‘Did you bring me good news, Pa?’

  ‘Your father just wanted to know if you were alive,’ Elsa says.

  ‘He could have called me in the morning. Where have you been? It’s late.’

  ‘We went to L’Etoile and we couldn’t get in, then we went to the Banana Skin. We started at Jimmy Ryan’s. We got to a golden. wedding somewhere, I forget. All over the place.’

  Paul says, ‘Do you need some money?’

  ‘You have to be joking,’ she says.

  He takes out his cheque book and, sitting on the arm of a chair, rests it on his knee while he writes out a cheque.

  “We still have places to go,’ he says. ‘Come on, Elsa.’

  ‘Not this late?’ Katerina says. She is looking at the cheque, then folds it up. She looks at Elsa. ‘Do I thank you or Pa?’ she says.

  ‘You thank him, I suppose,’ Elsa says. ‘I never had any money in my life. It’s all a myth.’

  ‘You should go home,’ Katerina says, dopily. ‘You know, you gave me a fright, waking me up. I almost called the cops. You should let me know before you come on a visit, there might be an inconvenience.’

  ‘I did tell your father that,’ Elsa says, looking at herself as she passes the glass in the hallway. ‘I told him it was rude.’

  ‘Melly,’ says Paul, ‘I knew you’d still be up. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I never go to bed at night,’ says Melly. ‘Have a drink. Help yourself.’

  ‘Elsa’s waiting.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the other room. Talking to your night watchman.’

  ‘Oh, well.’

  Melly is shrivelled with a great age. She is alert and heavily laden. with bracelets and necklaces. Her hair is brightly gilded, her fingers are long and crooked. She is Paul’s oldest friend in New York. Above the Adam fireplace is the Titian she bought from Paul’s family in Montenegro before the war. Her collection of paintings spreads from room to room throughout her Park Avenue duplex flat.

  ‘Melly, do you remember those trips I made to New York, when the war was on?’

  ‘Of course, I remember them.’

  It was Melly who got him the job at Columbia University and kept the apartment on the East River vacant for him.

  ‘Our apartment’s overheated, Melly.’

  ‘What can one do? It’s an old building. They’ll tear it down like everything else.’

  ‘Melly, are you real?’

  ‘Sure I’m real,’ she says, ‘and I’ve got the money to prove it.’

  ‘I get ideas,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe you’re hooked on something,’ she says. Her bracelets jingle. ‘Go get some cognac,’ she says. Her fingers reach for a pen on the table by the side of her chair. She takes up a writing block on which she has made a list. Paul fetches a tray of cognac and two glasses.

  ‘Doesn’t Elsa want a drink? Tell her to come on in.’

  ‘No, she said she’d rather wait. I think she’s anxious to get home.’

  “Well I’ll just tell you this,’ says Melly, ‘to show whether I’m alive or not. I’m planning a show of my paintings to raise funds for the Met. I want everyone to come. I sent a wire to Truman. I sent a cable to Solzhenitsyn. but he didn’t answer yet. If he comes I’ll serve vodka and caviar, I guess that’s what he’s habituated to. I called Peggy in Venice. I said, ‘Look, Peggy, we have to talk.’ She just had a robbery but then I read in the Times that she got them all back. I sent a wire to Bertolt Brecht but he didn’t answer yet. Here’s the list of the names who’ve answered. It’s quite a list.’

  ‘Melly, it’s time for your rub.’ It is Melly’s nurse at the door of the room holding a bottle of cologne.

  ‘I have to go for my rub-down,’ Melly says. ‘I don’t go to bed till morning but I have to have my rub at four.’

  Paul helps her out of the chair and the nurse comes to take her arm. She says, as she walks slowly across the room: ‘Do the two Rothschilds still go out at four in the morning to give tea from that wagon to these winos in the Bowery?’

  ‘I think they do,’ he says.

  ‘I saw a movie the other evening. I forget what it was called. What was it called, Lilian?’

  ‘The Sacred River,’ says the nurse.

  Melly says, ‘All their breasts showing.’

  ‘It was bottoms,’ says the nurse.

  ‘Well it looked like breasts,’ says Melly.

  ‘How are your feet?’ says Paul.

  ‘Not so bad.’

  They are walking home from Melly’s in the morning light. They turn east at 46th Street. The garbage trucks are out and the early workers are passing them on the pavements.

  Paul looks up and down the avenues at each corner. ‘Poppy and her crowd seem to have given us up,’ says Paul. ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘I’ll be glad to get home,’ Elsa says.

  They stand outside their apartment block, looking at the scaffolding. The upper stories are already gone and the lower part is a shell. A demolition truck waits for the new day’s shift to begin. The morning breeze from the East River is already spreading the dust.

  Elsa stands in. the morning light reading the billboard. It announces the new block of apartments to be built on the site of the old.

  ‘Now we can have some peace,’ says Elsa.

  Out of the traffic behind them a voice calls out, ‘Elsa, Paul — don’t keep us waiting any longer.’

  Poppy is leaning out of the window of the Rolls. The three men are asleep, Kiel beside the driver, Miles Bunting and Tylden in the back, their heads lolling on the puffy leather upholstery of the car.

  “We’ll take you back. Hurry,’ Poppy calls. ‘Come Elsa,’ Paul says, ‘we can go back with them. They’ve been very patient, really.’

  She turns to the car, he following her, watching as she moves how she trails her faithful and lithe cloud of unknowing across the pavement.