THE ENGLISH GARDENS
217
his
Spot of grass in the English Gardens and sent him off to sleep;
but by a blond girl in a sweater and skirt who stood a few yards
off and tenderly regarded him. Should she wake him? She didn't
have the heart. Her heart, her maternal feeling, in fact her ...
her being was too busy expressing itself, as quietly thrilled by
this sight of her Nicolas curled asleep under a blanket, in a park
like a scene from Poussin. She was just not able to break the spell.
(Would she have been able to had she known that the blanket
belonged to a young ballet dancer Nicolas had found his first
night in one of Walter's marked bars? Nicolas: "Look, Nicolas
doesn't go to bed with boys-no sex, see? So if all these beers
was to get me in bed, man, you just spent a lot of money." Ballet
dancer: Protests, tears, and "take what you want, Nicolas, I am
a dancer, you are a poet, it is all beautiful." To this meek con–
jugation Nicolas had replied, "O.K. I can use this blanket. And
when you get off this job tonight, well, you can gimme something
to eat." And, as a matter of fact, Nicolas had slept in the park
only part of one night, when he discovered that Munich's early
mornings even in summer are laden with dew. He had always
knovm how to find a bed, and on his own terms. He used the
blanket for late morning naps when hosts of the night had gone
off to jobs and proved reluctant to leave him in their small rooms
with their few possessions. Mary Jane Lerner knew none of this.)
Her Nicolas lay curled in the sun like a fawn, black hair falling
over his eyes. She was telling herself that this might just be her
reward at the end of a long meaningful search for truth. This was
surely a reunion in art, it was all that poetry promised.
That long night with Nicolas and marijuan3i in Venice had
opened her eyes. His advice, his voice saying his poems, the fact
that he had not so much as touched her--on the contrary, he had
put
his
head back and she had stroked
his
hair-this was all new.
Her eyes had opened, she had caught a glimpse of a new faith.
The next day he was gone.
Mary Jane might not be the most intelligent woman, but
she was one of the most determined. Even so, it took her several
