SE I ZE T HE DAY
421
"Me? Not me," said Wilhelm. "I'm looking for a fellow."
Bitterly angry, he said to himself that Tamkin would pay h im
the two hundred dollars at least, his share of the original deposit. And
before he takes the train to Maine, too. Before he spends a penny on
vacation-that liar! We went into this as equal partners.
VII
I was the man beneath, Tamkin was on my back, and I
thought I was on his. He made me carry him, too, besides Margaret.
Like this they ride on me with hoofs and claws. Tear me to pieces,
stamp on me and break my bones.
Once more the hoary old fiddler pointed his bow at Wilhelm as
he hurried by. Wilhelm rejected his begging and denied the omen. H e
dodged heavily through traffic and with his quick small steps ran up
the lower stairway of the Gloriana Hotel with its dark-tinted mirrors,
kind to people's defects. From the lobby, he phoned Tamkin's room,
and when no one answered he took the elevator up. A rouged woman
in
her fifties, with a mink stole, led three tiny dogs on a leash, high-strung
creatures with prominent black eyes like dwarf deer and legs like twigs.
This was the eccentric Estonian lady who had been moved with her
pets to the twelfth floor.
She identified Wilhelm. "You are Dr. Adler's son," she said.
Formally, he nodded.
"I am a dear friend of your father."
He stood in the corner and would not meet her glance and she
thought he was snubbing her and made a mental note to speak of it
to the doctor.
The linen wagon stood at Tamkin's door, and the chambermaid's
key with its big brass tongue was in the lock.
"Has Dr. Tamkin been here?" he asked her.
"No, I haven't seen him."
Wilhelm came
in,
however, to look around. He examined the
photos on the desk, trying to connect the faces with the strange people
in Tamkin's stories. Big, heavy volumes were stacked under the double–
pronged TV aerial.
Science and Sanity,
he read, and there were several
books on poetry. The
Wall Street Journal
hung in separate sheets from
the bcd-table under the weight of the silver water jug. A bathrobe with
lightning streaks of red and white was laid across the foot of the bed
with a pair of expensive batik pajamas.
It
was a box of a room, but
from the windows you saw the river as far uptown as the Bridge, as far
downtown as Hoboken. What lay between was deep, azure, dirty, com–
plex, crystal, rusty, with the red bones of new apartments rising on the
bluffs of New Jersey, and huge liners in their berths, the tugs with
matted beards of cordage. Even the brackish river smell rose this high,
like the smell of mop water. From every side he heard pianos, and the
voices of men and women singing scales and opera, all mixed, and the
sounds of pigeons on the ledges.
