The Saddest Summer of Samuel S Read online

  THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S

  “Glorious … a milestone in Donleavy’s writing career.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  “A haunting story … touching and outrageous.”

  —Boston Globe

  Contents

  Title Page

  THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S

  About the Author

  BOOKS BY J. P. DONLEAVY

  Copyright

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  J. P. DONLEAVY

  THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S

  He lived in a grey shadowy street in Vienna two flights up behind four dirt stained never opened windows. He rose slowly mornings paddling off balance on bare feet to the dark stale air of his bathroom across the hall. Sometimes pausing to watch the little line of red ants disappearing down into the wall. He had arrived at an age when the flesh begins to go its own way and the spirit struggles to hold it back.

  He took good care of his heart by eating the boiled meats and never let religion rob him of his appetite or sense of humour. Life was still before him in this strange outpost of a city where the sounds of the rest of the world drifted and one had to tap one’s skull to let them in. Five years ago he had a plan to straighten himself out and now these many thousands of dollars later he still went, clocking in twice a week to this small rotund doctor who sat askance in the shadows quietly listening and sometimes chuckling. And at long last he had an insight. That one grows older faster staying in the same place.

  Samuel S had devised a rhythm of life and a trickle of income, setting up little projects which could last him, if not the rest of his life at least six weeks at a stretch. He became a specialist in American hospitality, collecting three female clients of Vienna’s old world who felt a whimsical need to keep up with the new. After their second little get together with hominy cakes and a reenactment of a Harvard president’s tea, he abruptly wore out his welcome and temporary profession by crossing his legs with the top most knee under a tray of Dresden. There were embarrassing stains on two of his clients’ dresses. The third client further busting up his party and her own friendships by doubling up with laughter and falling on the floor where she rolled. This latter client, a widowed countess, went on to lesson three, the lighting of a match on the sole of one’s boot. She thought this great stuff and Samuel S suspected she was out for laughs and like his analyst was tuning an ear, albeit elegant, to his remarks and chuckling just enough so that he could not plant a kiss there as well.

  The Countess, light haired and willowy with wiry muscle, maintained that it was monstrous that a man of Samuel S’s sensibility, wit and knowledge, should go to waste on the world. And upon these occasions Samuel S would say, “Ah but Countess, you appreciate me and that is enough.”

  “Ah that is so Herr S and I am flattered that you should feel so.”

  And so Samuel S skied down the spiritual slopes towards the buds of May and this continental summer. With an odd dipping of a ski pole in a deep depression. But attending the Opera, nights of Mozart and Verdi, the Countess taking his arm as they slowly made their way up to the foyer where under the gleaming chandeliers she told him who was not quite who but who they thought they were. Twice it got tense as they returned to her apartments and she said there is seven years between us Herr S because I do not lie about my age, but perhaps I should lie because I could. And then she left him standing there on this sombre sandalwood scented landing with the door slowly closing in his face. And the second time she had said “Come in, come in.” She played Fauré’s Requiem on her gramophone and poured him a viertel of champagne in a tumbler and Samuel S thought, this is it, I’ve broken through the culture and will soon have her in the bedroom. But she said in a loud clear voice, “What on earth is the matter with us, Herr S we are living in some kind of phony dreamworld, who cares if we go to the opera, who cares if we are superiors in this village which used to be a city.” And she smiled, warm and wan. “Ah Herr S it would be so nice if we could waste time on the bank of some river back in my young days while thinking there was a lifetime to be lived.”

  Samuel S reserved this disconcerting thought to pass on to the Herr Doctor and he put a straight question to him. “Herr Doctor do you think this Countess is giving me the runaround. I mean to say she must need it.” Herr Doctor with a gentle finger scratched a little area under his eye and said what he always said, “Please continue.” These were cold words during an even colder winter in Austria when the rooftops wore white for weeks and chimneys melted snow by day and at night left a streak of ice which gleamed in the sun at dawn. Then slowly, with much warning, his money ran out. And Samuel S went silently under. Skis, poles and all. Deep down. Just as the sappy tips of buds were sneaking out on the trees the centre of April.

  He went foolishly from one acquaintance to another for palmfuls of coins. Until a chill crept up the backs of his legs and he dragged his heels through the streets. And late one afternoon the end of May and in the middle of a tiny deserted square, three ghosts stood in the entrances of the three alleys ahead, one said I am poverty and bring lonely sickness, another said nothing but broke mystical wind and the last, a Radcliffe girl said, although she only wore red and blue striped ankle socks she had graduated. Samuel S stopped, shivered and made for the nearest post office where he bought a telegram and cried out desperately to rich friends in Amsterdam to send money, a bulk sum, to hold him afloat because he was sinking, sinking.

  And Samuel S sank. The money arrived. But not before his rent was in arrears and the police came and took his passport away. The day he slapped down the bills in front of the twitching landlord’s nose and retrieved his passport, he was evicted. He stood on the street waiting for a taxi as the landlord, making the sign of the cross, padlocked the door behind him. At the Südbahnhof he checked his possessions ready for trains south to Venice, Trieste or Istanbul and phoned the Countess. And she said don’t go, call me back in ten minutes, I have an impecunious friend, a widow like myself who has three spare rooms.

  In twenty minutes he had a new landlady. He presented himself from the station. To this widow, aristocratic, nosey and no longer living in the best part of town. He bowed, she smiled. She had hair, she had breasts and legs as well. They settled down nicely as landlady and tenant. While there was a brief equestrian spell taking the Countess riding in the Prater, where once she pulled her horse up under a tree, her blonde hair flying and said, “Herr S there is one thing about you which is impressive, you never let your demeanor brag.”

  For three weeks two days he had a breather and slowly hauled himself out of the abyss. Passing daily across the tiles of his landing, a yellow towel wrapped at his throat, boots gleaming, spurs jangling, snapping a willow branch against his thigh. In the Prater they cantered under the branches. Inhaling the deep green fuming from the trees. Then wham. The Countess drew up her horse again under her same favourite tree and there in the midweek of his awaking chipperness let him have a bolo to the plexus.

  “Herr S you ride brilliantly. But I think enough is enough, don’t you.”

  Samuel S saved the look on his face all the way back to his chambers. Plopped down in his dusty chair legs akimbo. He was cruel to his horse, slamming the bit back into its jaws. The Countess was trying to shoot him down, as women did when he outcooked, outrode, outspoke them and they would not lay. Now put his riding gear into mothballs, along with his course on American hospitality, phonetics, great paintings, semantics and his will to go on fighting. Until he heard the slippered shufflings. The landlady with her ear to the door. And he quietly levered himself up out of his seat and put his ear there as well and then his eye to the keyhole. Eye to eye, one thing did not quite lead to
another, but enough so that some weeks later at ten thirty of a morning she might knock.

  “Herr S.”

  “Was ist.”

  “Herr S, excuse me this morning.”

  “I excused you yesterday morning.”

  “Again excuse me this morning.”

  These exchanges were a preamble to their little get togethers which ended up in a fierce race around his dining room table. She was in good condition and impossible to catch. Finally as she stood there huffing and puffing, while he was near apoplectic, she would agree to a compromise.

  “Herr Sam I will stand here on this side of the table if you stand there on that side of the table.”

  Sam S stood on his side of the table. Her eyes narrowed when she smiled. With two front teeth replaced. She stood naked from the waist up as he stood naked from the waist down, conducting among other things a foolish conversation across the dregs of his breakfast. The tram outside below shuddering the double paned windows as the steel wheels ground over the gravel thrown on the tracks. This was the routine which had developed and been cultivated until he found a name to say to her across the table.

  “Agnes Anxiety.”

  “Herr Sam don’t call me that.”

  “Why can’t we have a normal sexual relationship.”

  “You frighten me, Herr S.”

  “Wow. I frighten you. Do you know Agnes you frighten me. But if this is what God is giving me for my recreation, I’m not religious enough to ask for a change.”

  The landlady always took time to chew over his remarks, her lips grinning as she tried to peer into the dark cave of this half man, half beast, two thirds gentleman who did not add up, standing ample bellied on the other side of the mahogany. And her voice would have a soft friendliness as she needled into his life.

  “Herr Sam your brain thinks too much.”

  “And it’s thinking right now why you don’t get into bed with me. At our age this is disaster.”

  “Herr Sam what do you do in the rooms these times when you do not leave for three days.”

  “I think.”

  “What do you think.”

  “What do you think.”

  “I think you was crazy.”

  “Please continue, Agnes Anxiety.”

  “Why do you live in Vienna.”

  “So that when the time comes for suicide I will have no qualms leaving the Viennese to clean up the remains.”

  “Shame.”

  “But to their eternal credit, the Viennese are not Swiss.”

  “Although I am not in the habit of saying gesundheit, I say gesundheit Herr S, it is true at least we are not Swiss.”

  These encounters took the mind off one’s pains in the personal plumbing. And the odd mysterious throbbings in the groin which made one sail into dreamland at night just as hopeless as when sailing around the table trying to manage a grip of Agnes’s backside, which in its amplitude lagged behind on the sharp turns. Then the despairing minutes sitting empty handed after she sneaked back into her own flat, as one big bright desert lay out across the folded freckled hands. A voice whispering from the horizon. Hello there, you, when will you ever be cured, be cured, be cured. Then to the window to listen to the booming sad toll of St. Stephen’s Cathedral bell and to see if the sun had come up once more. And want more than ever to sail into old age on an ocean liner full of bullion.

  Samuel S wore his jacket on all occasions. Kept his tie knotted in position at his detached white collar atop a pin striped shirt. He sealed off the windows of his room to hold out the dirt and screeching trams down in the street. Playing it cool waltzing down the pavement like an iceberg, all loneliness under the waves. His mother nor the world cared. And when he played with a friend as a child, the friend said if I told my mother I didn’t believe in God she would drop dead and Samuel S ran home, his mother was ironing in the kitchen and he said “Hey Ma, I don’t believe in God,” and she said “Is that so, pass me that sprinkling bottle.” His first insight. Folk were just too busy for beliefs.

  Ten o’clock this Sunday morning the last day of July, a starling shrieking in a panic outside the window, a cat stalking along a branch of lime tree in a light sprinkling of rain. Samuel S sat hands over ears, eyes glued and mind rooted in a problem of spherical geometry, a little exercise to start the mental machinery and steer it away from the soul. And the telephone dimly rang under the pile of dirty laundry. It was all like climbing up to a mountain top. Tugging out the black instrument, and hear the voice of the Countess, who said she had been thinking. Would he come for morning coffee.

  Samuel S set off jauntily across Vienna by tram, by foot, through the portals of palaces, down the paths of parks and between the pillars of this grey stone edifice, heels clicking across the black white squares of the marble vestibule. A quick view of himself in the mirror. Popping a last schilling admission to the elevator. A mild little penalty for a mild little luxury. Closing the antique doors, rising up three floors to her landing. The great carved mantel over the door. A country serving girl smiling him into the drawing room. He brushed the Countess’s hand lightly with his lips, just like the book said and like he felt it should be done as well. The Countess crossed her legs. That fascinating part of them just thickening behind the knees. And Samuel S stood, does one say what’s this all about. Or like, as a child, at a friend’s house when they sat down with the family and had soup and he wiped his mouth to get up and they asked “Hey where are you going,” and Samuel S looked around and said “Home, why. Is there more.”

  “You wonder why you are here, Herr S.”

  “No.”

  “At this ungodly hour, you must.”

  “Yes, I’m lying, I wonder.”

  “I like you.”

  “Whoops.”

  “Why do you say whoops.”

  “Well Countess, I mean to say, in this world that’s a pretty windy question. People say one thing and they mean another, I mean to say, remarks like that make me nervous anyway.”

  “I’ll come to the point. I would like to settle an income upon you. For life.”

  “Wham bam, thank you mam.”

  “That is not quite the expression I expected.”

  “Well Christ.”

  “Is that all you’ve got to say.”

  “I know from previous experience in my life Countess that whatever I say will be the wrong thing. Especially if someone has said something I want to hear.”

  “There are conditions.”

  “Whooo hooo.”

  “This is no joke Herr S.”

  “It will be.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “You’re buying me. So that every once in a while when you’re feeling down you can give me a kick in the teeth.”

  “I can see Herr S you like to take chunks out of the hand that feeds you. Perhaps you intend to avoid starving that way.”

  “Have it your way Countess, but I would be foolish not to recognise that the joy at another’s misfortune is one of the biggest doses of goodness that people gorge themselves on in this town.”

  “You regard my offer as misfortune.”

  “No, just the conditions which are going to make me reject it.”

  “I see. How do you know until you know what they are.”

  “I know human nature. There are some people who’ve got a kite to fly in every different wind. I’ve got one kite and can only fly in certain winds. So I mean to say, please do not play tennis with my heart, or which is worse my wallet, which happens to be about empty.”

  “You are a most ungrateful person.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And a weakie.”

  “That may be true. But I will not be bought. But I’ll have another cup of coffe. By the way, what are the conditions.”

  Samuel S tried to remember how he got back down on the street, where he was zooming along the cobbles of the alley the Ballgasse. Somehow it was like smoking a cigarette during the great Cambrian ice age. With the
feet propped up on the north pole, and blowing smoke rings around the moon. The soul bruises like the body. During this long trail of failure. Right from boyhood school days, watching the profile of the girl he loved. As she sat diagonally across the class. And afternoons following her home from school, discovering her address, and what her father did, the amount he paid for his electricity, and finding the sum a thing of mysterious beauty. Then nearly getting caught on the pebbles of their driveway spying what they ate through their window. And looking up the license plates of her relatives, as they came to visit, who they were and what they did for a living, tracing one uncle during one Saturday, taking a bus to his town forty miles away to watch him watering his lawn. Then to say hello to this girl after a year of learning everything about her and she looked right through me as a piece of polished glass.

  Samuel S stopping at a little kiosk in the wall, peering in at the deep amphibious eyes of a female face.

  “Zwanzig Lucky Strike bitte.”

  Tendering a twenty schilling note. Holding out a hand for the cigarettes and a handful of groschen. Flashing the eyes across the brass coloured coins. Seventy five groschen short. Looking back into the hole.

  “You have cheated me. But if it makes you feel happier.”

  Samuel S, with a shrug of his shoulders, said Guten Tag and with head down rambled on his way through the grey twisted medieval streets. Very nervous decision to turn down an income for life. Stretch the ethical rope some more and when I finally take the drop the noose will behead me. Got ready this morning, holding out the hands with the parted fingers and they had a glacial stillness. Matched the socks with the tie, saddle soaped the shoes, and stepped out with a military excellence and right into the floodlit nightmare. An abstract algebraic equation, C for carnality, F constant income, multiplied by a series of related variables, L laughter, T terror all to equal S for screwed.

  Samuel S crossed Singerstrasse, around a corner and into a cool shadowy alley. Sometimes you can be alive just by leaving an image of yourself on an acquaintance’s mind. To the Countess, a greedy ungrateful boor. Lurking in Vienna, the great crossroads of bloods. All well mixed. None of it Irish. Could just nip in and take a look at the Habsburg Hearts. And without missing a beat of my own, straighten the shoulders again, move on. Before I break down and weep. For the buckwheat cakes smothered in maple syrup, bacon and butter. For the autumn morning, the cloudless blue sky, the curled up chestnut leaves on the lawns holding a silent scented air so many years ago.