The Saddest Summer of Samuel S Read online

  Samuel S disappearing into a hole in the wall, under a faded old fashioned sign. Like a little walking world he was, with sewers, towns in the kidneys, forests in the lungs, lakes in the liver. Perhaps the time had come to sport the light grey shoes with the little airconditioning holes. Never underestimate human frailty. And women should take all the guff a man wants to give. The Countess slipping me her old age with a weekly retainer. And I am too coo coo to take it. But I have the price of a cup of coffee and kipferl.

  Sitting down in this dim cafe. Hands folded around a cup and saucer. His long sad nose smelling up the fumes of the black swirling coffee. Breaking his kipferl and chewing. To wait for August which begins tomorrow. All the tremors of homesickness. Hearing two girls at the next table asking in broken German, then lapsing into English as they pointed to his coffee and kipferl and said we want the same as he’s got. And Samuel S shot out with his Viennese to tell the confused waiter what they wanted. And this brown haired girl turned and said to him.

  “You must speak English.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Thanks for helping us.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Samuel S watched her tan, clean hands, the nails bitten down, and on her finger a gold ring set with blue turquoises round a pearl. A fresh fruity fragrance from a small tan body. With the other one so fat. In this gloom a whole world flooding back, of Harvard, the furnishings of his life, a cocktail shaker, pair of shoe trees and his waistcoat pocket watch as big as a moon. And now a tingling on the skin as he heard this American voice once more, and the rustling of a map over their coffee.

  “Excuse me, maybe you can help us, we’re sort of lost.”

  Samuel S turning slowly, in one gesture removing his hat and bowing his head. A nervous tremor in the little hill of flesh between his thumb and finger.

  “But certainly.”

  “We want to see the Habsburg Hearts.”

  “You go out this door, turn left. Turn right. Turn left again, right again and second left, the church which will be standing in front of you will contain the Habsburg Hearts.”

  “You’re American.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “What’s the matter.”

  “It can’t be, you’re not, are you.”

  “Not what.”

  “Samuel S.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “You are. Gee, I mean I’ve never seen a picture of you, but somehow I wouldn’t miss you anywhere. You’re wondering how I know. You know a friend of my uncle who’s a professor at NYU, he knows you. When we were planning our trip, he said you were one of the points of interest in Europe.”

  “Despair is the word.”

  “Gee, it’s true, that’s just, ha ha like what he said you might say. Gee Catherine, it is, it really is. I even have your address.”

  “I’ve been evicted.”

  “O gee sorry. By the way I’m Abigail and this is Catherine.”

  Samuel S in the next four days waged a war of nervous steamy fortitude. A baby tiger leaping out of bed, charging across the floor to the washbasin and smashing the cold water up against the choppers and peepers, to open the lids glued closed in sleep. With one great iconoclastic happening. For the first time in five years he missed a session at the Herr Doctor’s. Abigail had long hair, eyeballs white and clean, circled with lashes long dark and silky.

  The first day he brought them to the Habsburg Hearts. The third he told her that Catherine who was fat might enjoy bouncing some of it off with a horseback ride in the Prater. Abigail said he was insulting. And what kind of an American are you.

  “How many kinds are there.”

  “I don’t know, but you don’t seem like the kind of American I know.”

  “Why not.”

  “Well if you want to throw around insults, I know how to do that too. I mean thanks for showing us around but you know you’re kind of old, you know like you should be dead or something. Like those shoes you’re wearing. And the tie. I mean you’re not all that thin. And that collar doesn’t match your shirt, which is sort of an English affectation but is really just what a crummy English civil servant would wear.”

  “You know what an English civil servant wears.”

  “Yes it so happens, the kind who thinks his balls are bells to ring for tea.”

  And to escape this outspoken embattled situation Samuel S suggested tea, hoping he did not chime. But fat Catherine had to be shifted. Or dynamited. Loyalties flow deep between girlfriends until they want the same man. And then wham, there is no longer a bead of sweat. In which to sail friendship. And to hint and hope he whispered to Abigail.

  “I would like to do dirty things to you.”

  And got a look from her. Hostile without hope. Just as they were making their way quietly into the silent medieval square of the Heiligenkreuzerhof. And she stopped in front of the garden wall of the Prälatentrakt and she let him have both barrels.

  “We’re not so stupid as you might think. In fact you might have been around but I’m smarter than you think. We came to Europe to enlarge our area of human understanding. Only I’ll be honest, also to meet guys. I know I’m not good looking enough, so I have to talk to someone weird like you. Who could be my father. Or even my uncle whose friend recommended you. At least I’m not stupid enough to overlook that you’re a man. You see you made a mistake about me. I’m not a cock teaser. But you’re a desperate snob. You’ve been looking down your nose at everybody you’ve ever met. Or else kissing someone’s ass. You know what you are. A bully.”

  Samuel S took the next few seconds to look at the shuttered windows and up into the leaves of the tree overhead to feel a few rays of warm sunlight on his face and a sentence came into his head he never thought in five years would ever get there. The Austrians are graceful of spirit. And he was an animal which hadn’t got into the zoology books yet.

  The fourth day. Which came up blooming full of lime tree scent and the pebbly ground was shoe sticky under the trees. The landlady suggesting they have an overture which might lead to an opera. In bed. And Samuel S said is that so Agnes, is that so, well, well, you mean all the outer garments will be shed and that you will grab me and I will grab you and we will in short tangle. And Agnes’s face wrinkled with secrecy said, Herr S not so loud, so someone might hear.

  “Why not. Let the world know, anyway, I’m on my way to sing an aria.”

  And today in this glut time of females, Samuel S sauntered out to hop the tram with a letter. He whistled for there had also been another payment from Amsterdam. He clicked his heels together reaching their rendezvous to go up to the wooded slopes of the Kahlenberg to look down over Vienna. And here as he corrected some faults in her English she said.

  “I know what you’re thinking, you think I’m stupid.”

  “I’ve said nothing.”

  “Just the way you start to look away, as if you knew everything. Well I’ve read all the great books. And I think they all stink.”

  “Please continue.”

  “And I took a course on human relating. And I’ve got news for you. I thought that stunk too. Only I wouldn’t sneer at it like you might. And all these great cathedrals around France you think are so great. I think they stink too. I’d much rather look at an honest to goodness gasoline station and get my kicks than your phony stained glass.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Don’t be so damn superior, with that please continue stuff.”

  “This is serious. There is genuine beauty in those French cathedral towns. Or are you pulling my leg.”

  “I just wouldn’t be bothered pulling your leg.”

  “Well I’ll make a pronouncement. You’re just a rootin tootin good old American college girl, who’s going to grow up and be different from ma and pa. Age will teach you a lot, when things will turn out just as you thought they wouldn’t.”

  “So we know you’re grandpa wisdom. But you’ve never been ab
le to get off the college campus have you. What do you live on, handouts. You said so. And sneaking around in the libraries doing a big deal research. You’re one of those guys who needs that womb of education. Why don’t you go home. Back to the States. You know why you don’t because the competition would close you out. They would close you out so fast boy, you wouldn’t know what happened to you.”

  Samuel S could not stop the tears as they rolled like boulders out of each eye. Nor lift up a sleeve to wipe them from his cheeks. Her voice seemed far away, a dim thing like waves on a shore when you lie awake and the wind is still and the sea is near. Like her lips say warmly now.

  “Hey gee I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings like that. I’m only kidding.”

  Abigail’s freckled nose. Small brown eyes. Big mouth. Which opened in her face with toothful beauty. When she stood up you wanted to see the rest of her. Now she was sitting. And Samuel S was standing.

  “You’ve bested me.”

  “Hey gee.”

  “You’ve bested me, that’s alright, I asked for it. Well I’ll be going.”

  “Don’t go.”

  Samuel S flipped his cap back on his head. Waved a hand to the Herr Ober who sped wagging his black gargantuan belly to sweep up into his black folding wallet a bill Samuel S threw on the table, telling him to keep the change. The Ober, a dark cloud, smiling briefly, bowing and withdrawing. Sam S slowly pulled his sweater off the back of the chair and looked down at Abigail.

  “You don’t want me to go.”

  “No I don’t want you to go.”

  “No one has ever had the courage to say that to me before. But I’m going. So long.”

  His brown sweater dragged in the pebbles between the tables as Samuel S made his way away from this sunny terrace up steps to the road past the ancient church and into a hot little bus which loudly throbbed its way down the coiling highway to the shady and sleepy little town of Grinzing. In the shed across the road waited the tram back to Vienna. On the hard arse shaped bench Samuel S sat with hands clutching each knee, fighting away a rear hollow pain. How to last twenty four hours until he saw Herr Doctor at five tomorrow. Bully. Phony. Grown soft and fat on failure instead of success. Standing alone in the middle of a great big zero.

  At the tram terminus, a gleaming emporium underground, Samuel S started to cross the open space which reminded him so much of America. And dead centre of this marble floor mid the lunchtime bustling Viennese and the clanging and screeching arrival and departure of trams, he let go with one long piercing yell as the pain got him in the kidneys. His hands clutching his wallet and change purse. Holding tight to these, a miraculous path opening between the staring eyes as he made a reeling way to the gents. His pulse too fast to be counted. Splashing his face with water, mouth gobbling up air, Samuel S steadied in his panic, bending his knees, straightening his spine, wading out across the marble again and draping himself on the escalator. On the street he whispered his address and poured himself into a taxi. A porcupine he was, and all his quills were gone.

  Behind his four windows, curtains drawn, Samuel S ran the bath and took his temperature. Out of his amateur but vast medical knowledge diseases were converging fast. Hard to know which would kill him first. With a trembling hand he saw the red line at one hundred and two degrees and he dropped the thermometer and it broke across his shoe. If ever there was a time to hold on. To go over to the wall to the coat hook and hang by the hands. Two minutes ticking by. Three. This is the doorway. The black one. Always left open. Step through and never come back again. Just go down without stairs and as you begin to fall, chase back through your life, shouting out in the streets for the ones you knew longest of all. They had hair and hands you touched and sat around, just sat around, and you were a child and had there been a touch which said, now don’t you fret now don’t you mind little boy, little boy.

  A scream from the landing. Samuel S went rigid on his wrack, a pounding on his door. The desperate voice of Agnes Anxiety.

  “Herr S, Herr S what are you doing. You flood out the building, the water is running down the stairs.”

  “I’m dying. I’m dying.”

  “Shut the water off first.”

  Water flowed in a smooth cascade over the side of the tub. Samuel S standing bemused watching it make its way, a little river with a substantial current along the hall and out under his door. His personal little Danube. Soaking down the stairs, coursing out the front achway of the building. And as it crossed the pavement, it collected a little group of people who indulged themselves in this free schadenfreude, smiling and nearly patting each other on the back. Just as Samuel S came nipping out wielding a mop, followed by a shouting Agnes Anxiety wielding another at the baok of his head. The crowd laughed. He was cured. This moment, this day.

  Samuel S took this Wednesday matinee vaudeville to sleep with a fear of eviction chasing him up various narrow chimneys, his churning feet dislodging lumps of soot. To rise today, Thursday and struggle past all the minutes towards five o’clock. With five minutes to go, walking along the twisting narrow shady street, pulse beating, temperature unknown. Past the grey stone church so cold inside in summer. The rays of sunlight gleaming in a thin cool mist. Stepping through a portal, between giant oaken doors. Across the cobbled courtyard past a fountain and steam smoking out from an open laundry door. The dark gloomy archway with a statue of the Blessed Virgin. A candle burning in front of her kindly face and little red lips and blue shawl.

  Samuel S climbed up the forty six stone stairs, each hand touching each knee as he went. On the third landing a big door. He gave one loud rap, stepped inside this cool spaciousness and slipped his cap on a hook. With a turn of a glass knob and through another door sat Herr Doctor at his desk nodding. A newly sharpened pencil by one hand, the other resting on a yellow sheet of paper. Two large polished windows looking out over a shadowy green garden, white stone statues circled by boxwood hedges under the trees and two fat blue pigeons perched eating lilac leaves. And times a silent little girl would play there wearing white gloves.

  “Good afternoon, Herr S.”

  “Wow Doc. My cerebellum is ringing.”

  “Please sit down.”

  “I really got a tug on the medulla oblongata.”

  Samuel S landed himself backwards in the soft brown leather chair worn white with elbows, backs and bottoms of patients. The tick of a large gold desk watch on Herr Doctor’s desk which sounded loudly between the pauses of talk and raced ahead of one’s money’s worth. In the glass cabinet, seven language dictionaries, and one technical to which Samuel S often drove the Herr Doctor. On the wall diplomas from Heidelberg, Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge. Sad reminders in his own life of the dust, just dust, of his own degree. Taken one night in a sober fist and in front of a quietly smiling friend was soundly burned. A sniff of its smoke, Latin and parchment. You think it will change your brain and instead ties a tag there, seals a label over the eyes till you go stumbling towards a wall all around you, standing there unable to taste the flavour of a peach or squeal at orgasm time.

  “Yes, Herr S.”

  “Yesterday I got smashed. Really walked into the blades. I forgot my own rule, do not try to look big, making others feel small. I’ve met a girl. Just by accident. She knew about me. At least that I was the most colourful twisted personality in Europe. I thought that that gave me the upper hand. But she just flashed around and kicked me one right in the soul. I’m getting on Doc, I mean when am I going to get married and have kids, I don’t want to go around a dirty old man.”

  “A dirty old man, Herr S can be married with ten children.”

  “Ah Doc, you stepped into it, I’ve got you to express an opinion.”

  “Please continue Herr S.”

  Samuel S pursed his lips. And Herr Doctor unpursed his, reaching with long flat fingers for a little white cigar holder. His hand freezing on the plastic under the grip of Samuel S’s eyes. In this darkened room, shadows wagging on the wall from sum
mer light tilting on the leaves out the windows. The Herr Doctor was growing thinner. Sitting there sucking on the white cigar holder without the cigar. One could draw all sorts of conclusions. Bound to be one or two misunderstandings in everybody’s moments at the breast. One hopes Herr Doctor had a big ample mother. In five years I must have nearly driven him crazy. He tenses as I come in, ready to take the onslaught. Wears a calm mask as I sink in punch after punch. Some larded with pretty crazy notions, when I said Doc, the whole world should have loved me right from babyhood, instead of sneaking out from underneath the thick green group of trees to shove me around in the clearing. Then Herr Doctor slowly gets up. Walks behind me. I stop talking. He says keep talking please. I say what for. He says I’m just changing my seat. Then I know I’ve got him smiling. As he goes to sit and chuckle in the corner. Perhaps Herr Doctor will last afterall.

  “I actually cried Herr Doctor. Does that mean I cracked.”

  “No Herr patient.”

  “Well what should I do. I thought wait a minute. Not so fast with the rebuttal. Better beat it this time. She’s got my number. Then I thought. Well that’s good. If she has my number it means we can get to know each other. And I can go swinging through the trees in her jungle. But Doc it’s worrying me, I’m looking for them younger and younger. What’s the matter.”

  “Please continue.”

  “I mean to say Herr Doctor. You think getting my hands on this young bimbo that I’m trying to rub off some of her yeast mold to keep my own fermentation going. I mean what could she see in me. No money for one thing. Whoopsi doodle. Boy Doc am I off my noodle. How much longer is it before I’m cured. Before I can ask someone to marry me and have kids. I’ve even given up all my phony liberal feelings. I’m letting healthy prejudice sneak back into my life. Isn’t that good, Doc. You must be full of them. At least I’m going to get that pleasure in before I die. I’m even thinking of having masses said for me, if they were a little cheaper.”