The Saddest Summer of Samuel S Read online

  “Well don’t think I’m going to stick around.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I won’t don’t worry.”

  “For you this is just a tourist itinerary. For me it’s a steam shovel full of sod flipped on my coffin.”

  Abigail crouching up on her hands and knees and her brown hair dropping forward on her cheeks. Hardened little nipples wagging on her chest. The brief feel of one against the eye could break all resolve.

  “Sam. Listen. I’ll be honest. It’s asking me to sign up with a loser when I’ve still got maybe three or four years to find a boy or guy who’s better off than I am or somebody who’s made out as good as my father. Besides, I like sleeping some more with different guys. I mean it’s no kidding. Maybe they all can’t use their ass holes like trombones but it’s funny and interesting with all the different tools you come across. Some curve into left field, some into right. Crazy the way no two tools are the same. The end is like different kinds of fruits, some like an apple, ones like pears, yours is like a cherry. Some cherry. No kidding. I mean guys don’t know. They think they’re debasing me. I got news for them. My interest is highly scientific biological. I could tell them things. Gee listen to me. A seminar again. Come on. Yours goes into center field. First one I ever saw did that. You can never tell the direction or the real size till it’s hard. Let’s not waste it like this. How about it. Huh. I’ll blow. Warm air, ha ha, in your ear.”

  “No one is saying you can’t make it stand up and sing.”

  “I’ve come all the way to Europe to get really laid, Sam.”

  “I came all the way to Europe to get really cured.”

  “Couldn’t I cure you.”

  “I’ve put three docs out of action already trying to cure me.”

  “Haven’t I got big but dainty breasts.”

  “And my present doc is ready to sail for Hungary any day down the Danube.”

  “To hell with you. I’m going to sleep. Good-night.”

  Samuel S turned on his arm and thought he could hear the plop of tears on the sheet. Reaching out to take a handful of her arse she pushed his hand away. To leave hour after hour tolling a sad bell in the distance. To screw her is to let her get away for ever. Her head on the pillow, her nose stuck between fingers, each jointed with its own shape and curve, all flexible like amber beads. Brown hair flowing down her back. Smooth skin beneath her eyes. Lips parted. Her breath smells of cooked cabbage. She doesn’t know that a woman’s shyness makes you do all sorts of amazing things. Even to screwing her.

  Samuel S fell asleep like the car passing, hearing it long before it arrives and long after it goes, whirring away on the lonely cobbled road. And dreaming of tip toeing across white fluffy clouds high over a rough blue sea, to come to a fence, a gigantic bean stalk woven in the steel mesh. Trying to climb up it and on top getting caught on a wire. Falling and the wire ripping back a thick strip of flesh from the thigh.

  Samuel S awake with a scream, tearing off the blankets, his hand shooting down his leg to grab in a thatch of hair and pull it away from the pain. A ring of bleeding teeth marks deep in the flesh.

  “What the hell are you doing.”

  “Biting you.”

  “You crazy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Blood all over my leg.”

  “Don’t worry you won’t die.”

  “Jesus Christ you’re not safe.”

  Samuel S gliding from the bed. Casting a glance behind at this werewolf and vampire, eyes glittering from a hood of bedcovers. The hurried movement one finds suddenly in the knees along with a slight trembling trying to stand still. Rivulet of blood right to the ankle bone. Herr Doctor will have to consult his occult encyclopedia for this. While I catch a case of hydrophobia and go bouncing into heaven with a convulsive seizure. With an insight flashing just above the pearly gates. Refuse to screw and a woman will chew off your leg.

  Four forty six A.M. Outside down on the coolly awaking street trucks rumbling by with vegetables for the Naschmarkt. The whirr, clang and flash of blue of the first tram switching tracks. This half hour till dawn. Sitting in a chair, Samuel S wrapped in a sheet. Looking across this yellow lit room. Switch the light off. Hear the heave of Abigail’s little body flinging herself on her side.

  “O.K. I bit you. Don’t you ever have the urge to bite. Maybe you’re too educated. Well I’m primitive. Maybe I just like the taste of blood. Besides you should have fucked me.”

  “I’m finished screwing for screwing’s sake.”

  “Bully for you. What did you take your clothes off for. You got a dirty mind.”

  “You’re right. I have.”

  “Well I really think so. O Christ. O God. O Jeroboam. O Sid. O Joe. All you good guilty college guys I’ve been turning my nose up at. I mean you think you’re going to get a dose of maturity. Boy. You talk about insights. You gave me one. I prefer a guy who can’t get it hard to a guy who won’t even use it. I’ve got a headache. I need an aspirin.”

  “I’ll get you one.”

  “Don’t bother. The pain’s fine.”

  Samuel S’s big pocket watch ticking loudly on the table. Grey light creeping down over the buildings. Trams grinding by. Vienna goes to work. Little satchels over shoulders. Stepping out of doorways, huddling down streets, collecting on the corners, waiting. A prayer for all the silent little children who commit suicide in Austria. A handclap for matronly Viennese women with their young boys. And a blast of B flat for me. With a bimbo. Who’s older than I’ll ever be.

  A creak of the horsehair. Abigail’s little face a white oval in her dark hair turning towards him. Her legs tucked up to make a ball in the bed.

  “Sam. What’s the matter with you. Could you tell me. I say all kinds of things but it’s like bouncing bricks off an iceberg. I don’t have any confidence at all. This is going to sound crazy but I like you. But do you really believe what you think. Because that’s the way a woman thinks. I mean Christ what do I think. At this stage six o’clock in the morning. Catherine back at the hotel who’ll be itching to know every detail. I guess you already assumed because I’ve been so outspoken that I’ll go talking about you to the outside world. That what you think.”

  “No.”

  “Ho hum. Tell me did you ever crap on an airplane.”

  “No.”

  “On a plane zooming about twenty thousand feet or something in the air and you think wow if it ever dropped you wouldn’t want to be somewhere down there underneath quietly listening to background music. I’m nuts. Holy God. How’s the wound. Blood’s showing right through the sheet. I feel awful. I didn’t know I bit that deep. Could I make a bandage or something. Didn’t brush my teeth since yesterday breakfast is that bad.”

  Abigail slowly climbing from the blankets. Putting an uncertain foot on the floor. Stepping towards Samuel S wrapped stoic in his sheet, his left hand holding the stained thin cotton fabric pressed against his thigh. Abigail gently lifting back the sheet from this whitish freckled leg.

  “Can I see. My teeth do that.”

  “Your teeth did that.”

  “God am I sorry. Please at least let me take care of it.”

  Abigail staring at the wound. Her hands rushing up to her face. Her narrow back bending to make a line of white bumps down her spine. A long groan, her face in pain. A shiver in Samuel S. Abigail slumped to her knees. Little person crumpled up so small.

  “Sam can you help me. I need help. The first thing that ever happened to me was with my dog. I did it with my dog. I got bitten. You ought to know, has that doomed me.”

  Icy fingers clutching at Samuel S, haunting filaments, the big jelly fish in the ocean of fears the world wraps round you when the gradient is down, and down. And you’ve got to get up and run. As fast as you can go. Out across the landing, down the steps, along the strasse. Grab two liters of sour milk to set the stomach right. Say goodbye to the landlady’s snails, goodbye to the Countess, goodbye goodbye to weirdery everywhere. Who’s the doct
or, who’s the patient. Where’s the willies. They’re here. Willies everywhere.

  Open wide

  Where the willies are

  Shut the gate

  After they

  Are gone

  If they turn

  To come back again

  Run run.

  “Sam aren’t you going to talk. You embarrassed or something. O God, excuse me for laughing, I bit other guys. It worries me but sometimes it was so funny I was convulsed. You look worried.”

  “I’m worried.”

  “Should I be worried.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t feel sick but I guess I am.”

  Footsteps passing on the landing. Shuffling across. Herr Professor from upstairs. Out to get his early morning blocks of ice. Who said as they met once in the hall that he was experimenting. With an ice that would never melt. Like the match that would always light. And did Herr S understand science, that he heard from the Hausfrau that he was educated at Harvard. And Herr Professor said the blocks of ordinary ice were only a control he used in the experiment. Did Herr S understand. Herr S understood. As the Professor would go, footsteps fainter and fainter up to the attic where he had skidded into senility but spoke impeccable Greek. And once or twice in that language they kicked around a few imponderables on the landing. Which had the Hausfrau who could get no inkling hissing for quiet out a crack in her door.

  “I wrote my father letters from college while I was in the nude and I told him that’s the way I was. In the nude. I don’t know I still feel absolutely normal. Do you. Sam.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why you wrapping up like that. Afraid I might bite it on you.”

  “Could be that I’m not feeling like being an entree after your hors d’oeuvres.”

  “You have the mind of a child, you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “You mean you’re content with that.”

  “I’m content.”

  “I think you’re a voyeur too.”

  “That could be.”

  “Being a child and voyeur doesn’t look good at your age. I don’t know why I’m wasting time lecturing you. Except if nothing else is resulting from this relationship we might just as well spread around the advice.”

  “The poison.”

  “Well sure. Hey what do you mean poison.”

  “That’s what you’re splashing at me.”

  “Let’s change the subject, holy cow. But I wish I knew what angle you look at life from.”

  Samuel S reaching under his thigh to brush away a drop of blood. The same reddened knuckle put to his nose to wipe away a bead of cooled sweat. Sitting, a sphinx, head patient, calcified lover. Confidant of inventors, rich blond countesses, and naked seminar conducting bimboes. Grown gargantuan with pride sadly proved with principles. Fanned into the world’s most august failure. To lead a parade of those abject across the Alps, through Munich past Paris and on a raft to set sail from Brest and land on the shore of New Jersey a little left of Staten Island and there dedicate and erect a hall of failure surrounded by catkins in the nearest swamp. A chapel where his friends could come from foreign cities to sit at his feet apologising for their worldly riches and success.

  “What are you thinking all silent Sam.”

  “I was thinking I was chairman of a billion dollar bank.”

  “What if I came in asking for a loan.”

  “I’d give it to you.”

  “You would. Gee how is this going to end Sam.”

  “It’s going to that’s all.”

  “I feel all switched around now. Don’t you have any advice to give me.”

  “What do you want to hear.”

  “Well if there’s something wrong. With me.”

  “What I say doesn’t matter.”

  Abigail rising to her feet. Two hands knotted in fists at her thighs. The soft dark brown curly hairs under her belly, a little pillow where one might lay one’s head.

  “You pompous prick. And don’t you ever dare tell anybody what I told you.”

  “You think it’s so worth telling.”

  “Just don’t ever tell anyone that’s all. I know the kind of crap these psychiatrists like to hear. They revel in it. They got dirty minds.”

  “You think so.”

  “I think so.”

  “A minute ago you were asking for help.”

  “That’s right. But you can’t give it. You take but you can’t give. I scare you, don’t I. Well if you want news, you’re beginning to scare me. I might be nuts but you’re a monster. You don’t know a thing about me. Not a thing. Get that straight. Have you got it straight.”

  “I’ve got it straight.”

  “Just so long as you have. And you think something’s gone on with my father.”

  “I’ve said nothing. I’ve got it straight, I don’t know a thing about you.”

  “That’s right. You don’t. Because my father and I love each other. O God Sam. O God. Please, have you got anything to drink. Please.”

  Samuel S in his sheet going to the bathroom. Stepping over four little ants reconnoitering around a crumb of bratwurst chewed sixteen less merry days ago while wallowing in the bath. They go pulling together to store up for winter. While I reach behind this pedestal of the washbasin, feeling as one’s hand goes down through the cast iron hole that a snake is going to strike.

  Abigail reaching out for the glass of whiskey, her hand touching his. Putting the tumbler to her lips and drinking in a gulp. Holding out the glass for more. Samuel S bending his wrist over the bottle and pouring. Her head thrown back. The whiskey gone. The morning light sparkling in her tears.

  Samuel S sitting one bellied, forty times busted. Abigail leaning across, two slender breasts waving, to push the empty glass on the table. Wide dark eyebrow raised, lips tightened, hand momentarily put to twist a strand of her hair round a finger. And thighs together, she moved off the bed. Picking her underwear out of her saddle bag. Shaking the flimsy black silk. Turning her head to Samuel S.

  “Don’t watch me dressing.”

  Nearby factory siren blowing. Seven o’clock when the strange half poisonous half perfumed smell seeped through his sealed windows. Boiler fires stoked, smokestacks awake. Abigail standing in her deer skin shoes at his corroded mirror pulling a comb through her hair. She takes up her bag, moves the strap across her shoulder and near a churning shaft of sunlit dust, stands in the doorway.

  “Goodbye. And I regret about the wound.”

  “You know how to take the tram.”

  “I know. Einmal zur Oper, bitte.”

  “Sehr gut.”

  “Wish there was a little more of this sunshine in this situation. I’ll send you a postcard. You know. O forget it. Goodbye.”

  In his kitchen Samuel S boiled up a cup of coffee. Elbows propped on the wooden chopping board near the stove. A dream of where he would be slicing garlic and onions and hammering tenderness into horsemeat. Like his principles all hammered into failure. Letting go what one wants too much to keep. Always too late to say stay. Would only make her heart snap shut in my face. In the old days there were friends to visit on a Saturday afternoon to keep warm from the world.

  Instead of dancing

  Lonely

  Wearing only

  The cobra skin belt

  And the camel hair

  Pulse warmers.

  Monday cool, clouds high, the light sunny. With a memory of snuggling against her solid little arse. Samuel S took a bath of warm waters ascending the chest and dipping in and out of the ear lobes. And after careful cleansing and drying of his wound, he set forth east for three miles along the course of the Wien River where it flowed unseen in its concrete bed and disappeared under the Naschmarkt. By the Opera through the crowded Kärntnerstrasse. He took a coffee and kipferl in the cafe where he met Abigail.

  At three o’clock he phoned the Countess. She said she was too exhausted and strained for a confrontation. Sam
uel S said he would phone precisely at this time again. Next year. And as the church bells tolled four he boarded the 71 tram where it circled around the philosopher named streets. From the tram window the flashing sight through the Belvedere Garten gate of the white paths and neat hedges round the flat green grass. He should have planted a seed in Abigail.

  Tuesday this ninth of August Samuel S entering Herr Doctor’s courtyard. A quiet rain falling which began yesterday afternoon as he wandered through the Zentral Friedhof. A solemn afternoon, always in sight of the distant dome of the crematorium. And walking the empty paths of the Jewish section, past the ruined church, bullet chipped walls, and shell craters on the smooth granite headstones. While it rained watching two women building a wall, mixing cement, laying bricks with sleeves rolled up on tan powerful arms, licking raindrops from their noses. A wife like that could move a mountain. And break your neck. And then on All Souls Day buy flowers from the crescent of stalls outside the massive gate to put them on your grave. To rest finally in this square mile of death, where the bushes were grown over the graves and the little wooden crosses rotted away to leave nothing at all. How does one ever learn to take off an enemy’s underwear and sell it back to him thread by thread.

  Samuel S tipping his cap passing the Herr Doctor’s Hausbesorger peering from her little window, a cat in her arms, rubbing her finger on its squat nose between its big yellow eyes. To the statue of the Blessed Virgin at the bottom of the stairs, he said gesundheit and flipped his cap again and heard a clicking disapproving tongue from a face peeking out the courtyard’s laundry door. Vienna was built of stone with eyes laid between.

  In front of Herr Doctor’s door to pause a moment. One big dream carried safely here trailing a sizzling fuse. An explosive insight. On the platform of the Nordbahnhof. As good a place for a dream as any. Give Herr Doctor, standing at his window looking into the back garden, the willies.

  “What’s up Doc. Why you standing. Usually you’re sitting at your desk. Someone spying on you from across the garden. Big purge of doctors who overcharge in Vienna, I hear.”

  “Do sit down Herr S.”

  “Sure Doc. I’ve really got some things for you today. Which have been zinging around the pons varoli since Saturday, and they’re crowding right up the ninth and fifth nerves. You must remember those, the ones you expose in the dogfish. Well. It’s happened. I just turned down my first real piece of ass with no strings attached. Just dangling there in front of me for one whole night. You listening Doc. And I’ve also got a big dream to tell you. Hey, you looked worried. You ought to smoke a cigar. I mean you can afford it out of fees.”