The Long-Winded Lady Page 15

  JULY 23, 1960

  Bad Tiny

  I HAVE just seen the worst-mannered dog in New York City, and possibly in the world. Her name is Tiny, and her mistress is blind, and from now on, whenever I see one of those gentle Seeing Eye dogs that sit and lie for hours on end on the hot midsummer sidewalks up and down Fifth Avenue and on the side streets off the avenue, attending while their blind masters collect money for one purpose or another, I will think of Tiny and wish that she would take a moment to contemplate her colleagues and maybe learn a little about the source from which they draw the fortitude that saves their dignity in the face of acute discomfort and acute boredom.

  I saw Tiny in the waiting room of the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital for Animals, which is quite far downtown. I had to take a little cat there for treatment, and while I was waiting my turn to see the doctor, Tiny and her blind mistress came plunging into the room, accompanied by an old lady whose only function, as far as I could make out, was to repeat Tiny’s name over and over again, in tones of reproach, admiration, and awe, so that we would all know who it was that we were looking at. Tiny’s mistress, who was holding on to the harness with both hands, was very old indeed, and her temper was almost as bad as her dog’s. Every time the companion tried to touch her elbow to guide her out of the laps of the people waiting on the benches, the old blind lady gave the companion a violent push, and it was at these moments that the companion would wail, “Tiny, Tiny,” and it is possible that she was not speaking to the dog we were all being forced to look at but was recalling some nicer, smaller, thinner, more polite dog, who had perhaps been the current Tiny’s predecessor in the fierce affections of the old blind lady. It was not hard to see that according to her mistress, the dog we were all pulling our legs and animals out of the way of could do no wrong. Tiny had “favorite” written all over her, and she looked as though she lived on chocolate creams. She was big and fat and curly, with a pointed nose and mean little eyes, and her bark was shocking. In the waiting room at Speyer, they have long benches where people sit, and when the benches are filled up, the latecomers stand. The benches were filled up that day, but several people got up to make room for this noisy trio, headed by Tiny, who continued to strain frantically at her harness even after the old ladies were seated. Tiny wanted to get out of the place. Apparently — the blind old lady began to talk after she had sat down — Tiny often visits the Speyer Hospital. She goes there to be weighed. They have her on a diet, and I suppose she associates these visits with fewer treats and smaller portions of food. All the other animals were scandalized by her bad manners. The other dogs — poodles and a collie and a beautiful Afghan — all kept looking down in embarrassment and looking away, and one small furry young dog just stared at her in astonishment. The cats, in their baskets, were as silent as they were invisible, but their contempt was in the air. One of the men who had surrendered his place on the bench was carrying a tiny monkey wrapped in a shawl, and the monkey seemed to be deliberately averting his damp, wistful eyes from the sight of the hysterical Tiny. The monkey was distressed to see a creature so full of ill will and bad temper. Everyone was distressed and silent to see a grown dog in a tantrum, and the room was terribly hot and crowded. Tiny and the two old ladies were ushered into the doctor’s office as quickly as possible, and we were all glad to see them go. Soon we heard Tiny’s voice again, making new dreadful sounds, which probably indicated she was being weighed.

  Shortly afterward I took my little cat in to another of the offices, and I had to leave her there for treatment, so I walked out of the office alone. Outside the door of the waiting room at Speyer there is a forbidding-looking flight of stone steps — quite steep, wide steps — that leads down to the street doors. Side rails are there for people who might be afraid of slipping or tripping and falling all the way down to the bottom. As I left the waiting room, Tiny and her convoy hurtled out behind me, the companion crying, “Tiny, Tiny,” and the old blind lady keeping her lips pressed tightly together, as seemed to be her habit when under way. Tiny made a murderous dash for the top of the steps and got her old mistress right to the edge, where she stood holding on to the harness with one hand and with the other hand feeling around for something that would guide her down the steps. But Tiny was pulling her away from the rail. The old lady was going to lose her balance, and then she would fall, and she would certainly be battered to death as Tiny dragged her down to the street. I grabbed a side rail with one hand, and with the other hand I grabbed the old lady’s arm, hoping very much that I would not be dragged to destruction along with her. Little did I know, fool that I was. That old lady was as strong as an ox, and the next thing that happened, without even turning her beautiful snowy head in my direction she sent me spinning over to the rail with such force that if it had been a knife I would have been cut in half or, rather, into a third and two thirds, for I am a short person.

  There is little left to tell. I skidded down the steps, holding on to the rail, and hurried out onto the street just in time to avoid being trampled under by that trio. I was lucky enough to find a taxi at once, and as I sailed away uptown, collecting myself, I caught a final glimpse of the three of them, trotting happily along, Tiny carrying her head up and wearing an air of genuine virtue and the two old ladies chatting amiably. Going home to tea and cake, I suppose. I could not help wondering, they made such an angelically serene picture walking together on a summer afternoon: What if they had knocked me down and left me crushed at the foot of those steps; who would have had the heart to tell them what they had done? Would anyone have wanted to run after them and capture them and accuse them? I cannot believe it. Nobody would have wanted to spoil their contentment with themselves and with each other. Nobody would be so cruel, and things are not always what they seem.

  JULY 29, 1961

  An Irritating Stranger

  TODAY is Sunday, and an hour ago, in the hot August sun, I was standing by the fountain across from the Plaza Hotel feeding an expensive Plaza Hotel brioche to some pigeons, who were lethargic but were determined to have their rights, and to two thin sparrows, who knew they had no rights but were determined to get something to eat. I was on the side of the sparrows, but I did not want to antagonize the pigeons. I like pigeons. I cannot imagine where they get their pampered air, but they have it and I like them for having it. I stood there placating the pigeons and favoring the sparrows. I was throwing the crumbs cleverly and with real strategy when I heard a girl say, “I can see that New York might be a nice place to visit, and I suppose if you live here it’s different.” I listened, but she said no more. Her voice was cheerful and definite. I turned to look at her, and found that she was walking away toward the park, but I could see that she was the same red-haired girl I had been watching earlier from the Edwardian Room of the Plaza Hotel while I was having breakfast. The table I had been given was placed so that although I was not sitting by a window, I had a view out through a window on the Fifth Avenue side and through two windows on the Fifty-ninth Street side. Through the first window I saw the fountain and, beyond the fountain, the big buildings of Fifth Avenue, and through the other windows I saw Fifty-ninth Street, with the green park beyond. People appeared in one window and reappeared in another, moving slowly through the heat. It was all burning-dry summer, except for the shine of water from the fountain. When I first saw the red-haired girl, she was standing just where I later stood while I fed the birds, and she was taking a photograph of three men, who were lined up in front of her with their arms hanging at their sides, looking rather foolish and very obedient. I noticed her first when a sudden breeze lifted her hair, so that for a second or two it flared straight up in the air, showing its color, which was brilliant. Now I stood looking after her. I was fumbling with what she had said. There was only one man with her, and I wondered what had happened to the two others. Her remark, in all its vacancy, had begun to mope around in my mind, and it said nothing, and the more I looked at it the more it said nothing, and it wouldn’t go away. It w
as a suffocating remark — the kind that makes you want to cry. One time, I knew somebody who always greeted me by saying, “Well, there you are! You know, I’ve been worried about you.” I did not know that person very long. The red-haired girl crossed Fifty-ninth Street and went into the park, and I saw her no more.

  That is a handsome and spacious intersection where Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street and the Plaza Hotel meet, but on ordinary days it is busy and noisy and full of strain. This morning, in the empty summertime, the streets and the park and the substantial Fifth Avenue buildings all stretched themselves out to their full length and full height and full bulk, and the Plaza sat there looking rich, and the whole scene was free and amiable and impromptu. The few people who were about wore light-colored summer clothes, and they sauntered and strolled and paused to look around like the extras in an operetta just before the principals walk on and take the center of the stage. At that moment, from where I stood feeding the birds, the center of the stage was taken by the line of patient horses, one of them a lovely piebald, who stood harnessed to their canopied carriages, waiting with their masters for the customers. It was a nice Sunday morning in New York. That red-haired girl had a carefree walk. If she was miserable, why did she not droop and go somewhere else and shut up?

  Beyond the horses, over there where the girl and her companion had disappeared, I had seen four women in loose flowered dresses pass by earlier, as I sat in the restaurant. They walked steadily along, and they seemed eager to get where they were going, and oblivious of the street and the park and of everything except whatever occasion was ahead of them, but they were not hurrying. They had allowed plenty of time. They appeared in one window, walking along by the low park wall, and then they disappeared and appeared again in the next window, still making good time. The windows in the Plaza are immense and impressively overdressed in miles and miles of heavy tasseled hangings and in pounds of shirred beige blinds. It is a good, big, solidly theatrical room, and this morning it was about half full of strangers having a late, leisurely Sunday-morning breakfast. The atmosphere was very sedate. Nobody waved at anybody across the room. None of the people coming in stopped at a table to say hello. There were no nods or smiles of recognition. The room was all transients who were there for breakfast, and that was that. The Sunday Times was divided up at every table where two or more people sat together, and where one person sat alone the Times was piled neatly on a chair while the chosen section was being read. The woman at the table next to me was devoting herself seriously to the Review of the Week section. My view of Fifty-ninth Street was crosswise, over her shoulder. She was wearing a tailored black silk suit. Her hair was drawn back in a small bun, and in the bun she had anchored a number of silver pins, and from every pin a heavily chased silver bead hung free and wobbled. A silver fish, three inches long, dangled from each of her ears. I looked past her at the four walking women outside. Three of them were quite tall and upright, but the fourth, who walked on the edge of the sidewalk, along by the curb, was very small and bent, and she did not walk, she toddled. The three others were bareheaded, but she had a cotton scarf tied over her hair and under her chin, and she held on to the arm of the woman next to her and followed trustfully along, with her head down, keeping all her attention to herself, as though she were concentrating on the labor of walking and of listening to what the younger women were saying. The younger women might have been grandmothers, and she was old enough to be a great-great-grandmother. Her dress covered her ankles. They all looked happy, and the very old woman looked as though she knew she was in good hands. She looked content. She was going somewhere. She was having an outing. Not one of them even bothered to turn her head as they passed by the park and the park entrance. They only looked up and down Fifth Avenue, because of the traffic there, and when they reached the sidewalk that started them toward the east side of the city they all marched forward along Fifty-ninth as though they would be willing to walk as far as the river if what they wanted was to be found there.

  The silver fish in my neighbor’s ears were no longer idle. They were dancing around, up and down, swinging here and there. There was a reason for their activity. Their owner was eating her breakfast melon. She was taking enormous spoonfuls out of the melon, a big, wide wedge of honeydew, and she was still reading hard. She had folded the paper in a businesslike way, so that only the columns that concerned her showed, and she held it upright in her strong left hand. Suddenly she put her spoon down and looked intently at the melon, and then she put the Times down and began to search with her head for a waiter. She turned so that I saw her face. She looked wild-eyed but in control, as though the train were about to leave and the porter had not yet arrived with her luggage. The room was full of waiters, and one came immediately. He listened to what she had to say, and while he was listening the headwaiter came and listened too. The waiter looked worried, but the headwaiter only smiled understandingly. Apparently the melon she had been given was very poor. She must have been too interested in her reading to notice how awful it was, because she had eaten a great deal of it. She said many things, and when she stopped talking the waiter took the melon away and brought another big wedge and placed it before her. This time the headwaiter stood by and watched attentively while she took the first spoonful, and while she was tasting it, before she had swallowed it, she looked at him, smiling and nodding, and then she raised her right hand high in the air and made a circle with her thumb and forefinger, saluting the melon and the headwaiter and, I suppose, herself and the Plaza Hotel. Was she splendidly unselfconscious, or was she ridiculous? I didn’t know. I was tired of her.

  My waiter brought my change, and I took the leftover brioche and got up and left and went to stand beside the fountain to feed the pigeons and, as it turned out, two sparrows, and, as it turned out, to hear that red-haired girl drop her empty remark. That was about an hour ago. She is probably still strolling around Central Park, carrying her camera and saying things. I wonder who is listening to her now. I am glad I am not.

  SEPTEMBER 1, 1962

  The Cheating of Philippe

  I AM one of those morning-newspaper readers who turn first to the obituary page. If I see that someone I know — someone I have heard of, even — is dead, I am astonished, and usually sorry. If I see no name that is familiar to me, I am relieved, or even glad, and I suppose it is in order to atone for this increased sense of life, which comes to me as a free gift from the daily lists of the unknown dead, that I always give my complete attention to reading through the accounts of their lives, and always look at their photographs, and I can hardly bear it if they are smiling. It may be curiosity that drives me to the obituary pages, but the impulse behind that curiosity — if it is curiosity — is far more interesting and mysterious than the curiosity itself, and I might talk for a long time before I could reach the truth of it, and I might never reach the truth of it, and at the moment I have to continue, because I am all taken up with the story of a stranger, a restaurant keeper, who died this past summer and whose obituary I do not remember seeing in the pages of the morning newspaper. His name was Philippe. The restaurant that was his domain is in a lovely block in the East Sixties, and it has one of those comfortable, promising names, like La Belle Poire or Le Chat Extraordinaire, that remind you of seventeen or thirty-seven other good French restaurants in the city and make you think that it is time to revisit your favorite among them. I never saw Philippe, and I had never heard of his restaurant until one fine evening in the middle of August, when I was wandering around after looking at apartments and suddenly became aware that in this particularly cozy block of small art galleries and antique shops and dress shops there was a small French restaurant, and that it was open — then, at that time of year, when almost all the restaurants that you want to go to are closed for a long vacation. I had already passed it while I was looking at it, and I turned back and took a good look. It seemed to be a very small restaurant, and it looked very welcoming. I went in. It was a few minutes past six,
and they had only just opened the place for the evening. The room was cool and dim after the warmth and brightness outside, and the tables were all dressed up and festive, and there were flowers here and there and a shine of color from the bottles over the bar at the back, but it was empty — no customers. There were five or six waiters standing talking, and when I came in they looked at me with surprise and expectancy, as though they were certain I must be, or could only be, the herald of a great rush of customers. There was a time when I used to feel uneasy about taking up a table all to myself in a restaurant, but I have improved since then, and so I quickly informed the waiters that I was only what I appeared to be, one person, and then I refused the table they offered me, and sat down at another one, just as good. Two waiters, who may or may not have been aware of my small triumph, hurried over, and one of them handed me an enormous menu and the other poured a great deal of water into my water goblet. I began to read the menu, and in a minute or two a small man in black, the host, hurried in from the kitchen or wherever he had been and asked me politely if I would like a drink. I said yes, and what. Then I ordered dinner. Then I took out the book that I generally carry with me in my handbag, because it diverts me when there is nothing to listen to and camouflages my eavesdropping when there is something to listen to, and I began to read. A good while passed — I had nearly finished dinner — and then another customer came in, a man by himself. This time the host was on the spot, and he greeted the new man with a smile and with words of recognition and joy and showed him to a table that was close to mine. The man looked very much at home, and he nodded across the room to all the waiters and glanced about the place as though he knew it well. Then he leaned forward to look back down the room and past the bar toward the kitchen.