The Waterworks Read online

  "Emily Tisdale," I said.

  "Yes, good for you, McIlvaine, that is indeed Miss Tisdale." I explained to Donne this was the young woman whom everyone, including herself, had presumed to be engaged to Martin Pemberton. Behind me I heard the artist' s robust laugh.

  Now I knew it was not in itself remarkable that someone who would know Martin would know Emily, but I was struck here as if by an extraordinary coincidence. Perhaps it was an effect of the art - it was of such intimacy, this portrait - but I felt that I had stumbled upon the inner workings of this generation who were all so different from my own, each in his own character, to be sure, but with this common quality of creating gaps in my understanding of what was happening to them, of what fate they were seeking for themselves as if I had lost some of my hearing and could not always get the sense of their words, though the tones were clear enough.

  The artist had come up behind us. He had set out some chipped and dirty tumblers and a bottle of brandy. It was not yet noon. There was a slight whistle to his respiration. He was really stout, Harry, with large pudgy hands, and he reeked of tobacco and his unwashed smock. "It' s good, isn' t it?" he said. "Notice I didn' t pose her leaning forward with chin up, ankles crossed, and hands in her lap, which another painter would have done. Emily' s grace is her own, it is not trained. I let her seat herself in the chair and that' s the pose she took, the feet flat on the floor before her, with her skirt draping the thighs, you see, and her arms at rest on the arms of the chair and looking straight at you with those clear brown Siberian eyes."

  "Why Siberian?" said Donne.

  "The cheekbones are high, and see here? the way they seem to lift the eyes at the outer corners? Don' t tell old man Tisdale, but somewhere in his line of pious Protestants was a wild woman of the steppes. Yet I' m constrained from acting upon it by the simple minded friendship that some women assume and install between you like a chastity belt."

  Harry was a boor. It has been my experience that artists are invariably boors. That is the paradox a mysterious God lets them paint what they will never understand. Like all those Florentines and Genoans and Venetians who were scoundrels and sybarites, but whom this God trusted to give us the angels and saints and Jesus Christ himself through their dumb hands.

  "And not constrained by your friendship with Martin Pemberton?"

  Donne said as we continued to look at the painting. "Oh, that too, of course. If you insist. I mean I have acted toward him as a friend, though by now I would rather not be his friend. And I am Emily' s friend, though I would rather be more than her friend. And she is Martin' s lost friend yes, I think that more accurately describes it."

  "Why is she lost?" said Donne.

  "Because she stubbornly insists on it," Harry said, triumphant, as if he had just given the answer to a riddle. He offered us chairs and poured us each a drink, though we had not asked for one.

  I had told Donne what I thought he should know about Harry Wheelwright. That the best of him would be on the wall. That he was totally untrustworthy, that he lied for sport, that we would not get the truth from him even if he knew what it was. Donne sat in the same upholstered old chair Emily had posed in. His knees rose up before him and he placed his elbows on the chair arms and pressed the fingertips of his hands together and asked a question or two, in a tone of voice that didn' t exactly demand an answer but was irresistibly confident that he would receive one. I' m not sure that was all there was to it, but he got Harry talking.

  "I don' t know where in God' s name Pemberton may be, or what he is up to, nor do I want to. You can believe me -I have no more curiosity in this matter," Harry said. "I' m through with that damned family."

  "Well, he hasn' t been to his job in some weeks. He' s arrears in his rent. What do you think can have happened?"

  "Nothing worth worrying about. Not to Martin Pemberton. You know when harm has come to someone that there was a susceptibility there. But that can' t be so with my imperial friend. It is not in his nature to be deprived of his full measure of what life, even the life of ideas, has to offer."

  "You last saw him-when, did you say?"

  "Here, Martin came up here. When Emily was sitting, in fact. Came barging right in. It was June but he was still wearing his damned coat over his shoulders and pacing back and forth with that locked knee gait of his. It broke her concentration. Her eyes followed him, her head moved. Women love Martin, why I can' t imagine. After he got himself disowned I used to take him home for dinner. We roomed together at Columbia, you know. He was exactly the same then. I think he was born striding about, pale and thinking metaphysical thoughts. Contemptuous of his fellow students, hating his professors in every way superbly, brilliantly, insufferable."

  "You were good friends?"

  "Well, I found him amusing. But, you know, I never cared to see him without a shirt, with that white and concave chest of his that I thought an ideal vessel for consumption. But when I brought him home, my mother and two sisters were delighted with him. They fed him and listened to his ideas. They adored him. Perhaps because he is far too serious to ingratiate himself with women or solicit their good opinion. Yes, that must be it. Women trust a man who seems not to notice them as women."

  But why had Martin interrupted the sitting?

  "I don' t know - to interrupt it, I suppose. To inflict his mood on us. He upset her. They argued."

  "About what?"

  "Who knows? Even if you' re sitting right there listening, you can never tell what lovers are arguing about. They don' t know themselves. But the subject appeared to be fidelity. Not infidelity, mind you. Martin was attacking Emily for her faithfulness.' You see?' he shouts as she sits in my chair there, weeping.' Every time we meet I try your patience and abuse your nature. It doesn' t seem to matter. You wait for the next time! Don' t you understand what hell you face? If I give myself to you in my present state, with nothing answered, nothing understood? You will ache with longing for your unhappiness of waiting, you will long to be back in that damned garden of our childhood with its stupid child fantasies of life.' And so on, endlessly, like that."

  "So Emily knew of Martin' s, visions?"

  "Oh, yes. He generously shared them with everyone."

  "What did he mean,' ... with nothing answered, with nothing understood' ? Did he use those exact words?" Donne had almost whispered this last question, and with a concern that somehow had the effect of illuminating Harry' s youth. I realized again how young they all were. It is harder to see someone' s youthfulness who is so portly, and double chinned, but Harry was not yet thirty. He sighed. He poured himself another inch of brandy and held the bottle aloft. "This is very civilized - you sure you won' t have another?" And then he looked at each of us in turn. "This doesn' t all have to be unpleasant, does it? I think Martin meant he had seen Augustus Pemberton and then missed seeing him."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I can' t say anything more. He made me swear to it." Harry settled his bulk onto a wooden chair. We were silent while he composed himself to break his oath. He stared at the floor and a low moan escaped from him. He said: "When I write my memoirs I myself will be the subject of them. I do not intend to go down as a mere chronicler of the Pemberton family. I absolutely will not. My paintings will hang in museums. My own fate is another story, not this one. Not this one."

  Thirteen

  SO NOW we come to it. I knew we would come to it. I knew we would.

  Well then, we were sitting one night in a saloon on East Houston Street where the ladies who come in without escorts are not necessarily professional but merely restless, or foolish- yes, Harry Hill' s, that saloon of impeccable manners. A violin and a harmonium played for the dancing. This was this past June, toward the end of the month, because I remember the papers had proclaimed the summer solstice. Papers make much of what nobody thinks twice about, you have to admit that, Mr McIlvaine, Martin on this particular night conceived the notion of going up to the Woodlawn Cemetery and seeing his father. He wanted me to go
along, then and there, to go to the cemetery and open the coffin and look upon the glories within. It was past midnight, I was quite drunk, and I remember thinking it was not an idea that particularly interested me, digging up Augustus Pemberton. I had met him once or twice in his life and would not on my own have thought to renew the acquaintance. But Martin said he wanted to make sure the old man was all right. There was a stout woman at our table and she was laughing uproariously. I pointed out to her that Augustus Pemberton, being dead, was surely all right, that in fact his state of being might be described as a kind of perfection. Before I understood what was happening, Martin had grabbed my arm and we were climbing into a hack and galloping up to the Central Railroad Terminal, where we managed to catch the last train of the night - or was it the first train of the morning? But we had an entire car to ourselves, and we rode to the village of Woodlawn. It is there the old man is buried, at the cemetery in Woodlawn. You know it, all the wealth and money likes to be buried there, it is a fine and fashionable graveyard.

  We got off at this dark station and didn' t have any idea of how to get to the place or what we would do once there. I was cold. I was shivering. There is no question about that, I don' t see why the weather has to kowtow to your calendar. We had nothing left to drink. I urged Martin to reconsider. The waiting room was unattended but a coal stove was still warm from the night before and I thought we could sit beside it and wait for the train going back to the city. I knew it had to come eventually. Or perhaps I argued that we should wait for daylight to desecrate his father' s grave so that at least we would be able to see what we were doing.

  I understood why he was possessed by this peculiar idea, he had told me of these odd sightings all spring, and I knew it was nonsense but could not make up my mind whether it would be better for him to actually see his papa' s corpse or not to, so I was irresolute. Martin was as drunk as I, but it was a drunkenness of hard, concerted intention, as if drink had not dulled his wits but brought them to a sharper focus. The fact is that when my dear Martin sets his mind on something you cannot argue with him. He has a powerful presence and a way of considering you that, even as he needs you and your help, makes you feel foolish or inconsequential in one way or another, as someone lacking resolve or moral vision or even simple courage. So we had this drunken dispute and I, who had secretly to concede myself to be without any one of these qualities - I of course gave in and was persuaded, and dragged my sodden and surly self after him as he went looking for the family mausoleum.

  I remember it was a walk uphill that left me short of breath the village street was an unpaved lane with a few houses and a general store and a clapboard church. There was light from a half moon. We passed an alley where there was a livery stable and we heard the snort and shudder of a horse, at which point Martin described his sightings once again, as if I hadn' t already heard about them, and asked me why he always saw the white omnibus when the weather was bad. I couldn' t begin to think of an answer. Only when we were beyond the village and going along a high retaining wall did the full meaning dawn on me, finally, that my friend had every intention of exhuming his father. Good God! These are modern times! Our city is lit in gaslight, we have transcontinental railroads, I can send a message by cable under the ocean, We don' t dig up bodies anymore!

  I think I was sobering rapidly, which one experiences as the appreciation of consequences. We went in by the main gate, and eventually Martin found in the hills of the Woodlawn necropolis a modest marker, considering, a single marble angel on a tall thin pedestal, and a footstone telling the name and dates and protesting the goodness of the departed in that trite way people go about speaking to posterity. I had expected something equal to the man, a monumental vault, fenced about to separate Augustus from the surrounding folk and richly carved to advertise his life' s splendor. Martin too was taken aback by the modesty of things, so much so that he thought this might be a different Augustus Pemberton and looked about for the actual one. But we knelt again in the moonlight before the stone and Martin said these were his father' s dates and that it would be too terrible a joke if there had been two Augustus Palmerton' s living in the world at the same time. And so we knelt there in drunken puzzlement, not being able to understand why modesty and economy would be the choice in death of such a man.

  And somehow or other, as I sat there with my teeth chattering, I could now see the shadowiest outlines of the surrounding trees, and then as I peered through the dark, of the hillsides and the stones upon them, and then I understood it was not darkness I was looking into but the milkiest mists of the minutes before dawn. Everything was wet, the air painted the skin of my face with its wet mist, and as I stood and brushed the wet dirt that clung to my trousers, I saw Martin coming down the lane out of this dripping gray light with two fellows behind him, one with a shovel on his shoulder, the other with a pick. Apparently I had fallen asleep against a stone, He had gone searching and found these habitu�of the graveyard, as if they were known always to be on call to disinter loved ones for anyone who requested it. To this moment I do not know where he found them or what he told them. But I know I paid for them since I was the one with money that night.

  So they removed their jackets but not their caps, and spit upon their hands and rubbed them and went to work. Martin and I stood side by side, a bit uphill on a knoll, and watched them, the pick first loosening the sod, then the shoveller piling it off to the side, and so, picking and shoveling, and making a gradual sort of descent into the hole they dug around themselves. I noticed as they worked that the sky was getting lighter and whiter, and the mist was lightening into a visible fog, for which I thanked God, for I was of course anxious that we not be discovered, prisons being what they are these days. I tried in my mind to rationalize this awful thing we were doing. I tried to believe this act was not entirely bizarre, and given Martin' s lifelong struggle as Augustus' s son, that it made a kind of peculiar sense, as if by seeing the old man' s remains Martin would be relieved of his sick, visions, and find some peace for himself, if that was ever possible.

  And then there was a different sound, of the shovel hitting the box, and I felt Martin' s hand, like a claw, in my shoulder. Now that the moment was here, he could not move. I enjoyed that. You know, I have no fear of looking at dead things. I have drawn dead things all my life - dead insects, dead fish, dead dogs. Cadavers in anatomy class. I told him to wait where he was and I went down to the rim of the pit. The men had constructed earthen ledges on which they could crouch, and from these ledges they scraped the top of the coffin clean, and with great effort they were able to pry up the lid with a small sledgehammer and an iron wedge they had known enough to bring with them. I wondered if there was a craftsmen' s guild for such things. The lid came off and was hoisted up and slid aside. On my friend' s behalf I summoned up a steadfast heart. I knelt and looked. A figure lay there in some disarray on its padded white silk couch. And. I tell you now, Captain Donne, I tell you this with impunity because the greater crime was not committed by us. It was a very shrunken corpse, in odd clothing, with a tiny leathered face with its eyes closed and lips pursed, as if it was trying to understand something or recall something it had forgotten. The light I had for my examination was not actual daylight, you understand, I had to see through it, as if through a milky suspension. The air was wet, the ground was wet, and even as I looked, the silken folds of the shroud cloth darkened from the atmosphere. I looked on stupidly, wondering at the arms, one of which lay upon the chest, the other dropped to the side, with their small hands extended from a cuffless sleeve. There was no cravat or collar or frock coat but a short jacket and white shirt with a red bow tie. The trousers came to the ankles. The feet were not booted but wore patent - leather shoes. I tried to reconcile these odd data with what I remembered of Augustus Pemberton. I heard Martin' s whisper,' For God' s sake, Harry.' It seems to me now that an eternity passed before I realized I was looking at the corpse of a child. It was a dead boy in that coffin.

  The d
iggers hoisted themselves out of the grave. My stovepipe fell across my face and into the box and it landed upright on the chest. It looked as if the boy was holding a hat over his heart, perhaps at a passing parade. I laughed, I thought it was funny.

  ' Here, Martin,' I called,' come say hello to our young friend.'

  "I was not as sober as I thought, who knows now what he would have preferred to see there through the white fog in Woodlawn Cemetery. Once he was bent on discovery the result would be terrible, no matter what it was. He came down the knoll and got to his knees and peered in, and I heard a moan, an awful basso sound, not in his voice at all, but brought up from the lungs of a shaggy ancestry, a million years old. My bones resonated. I never want to hear such a sound again. Martin made me swear I would never tell anyone, which I was only too glad to do. The gravediggers closed the coffin and reburied it. I wanted to get out of there but Martin insisted that we stay until the job was done. I remember he tamped down the grass where it didn' t lie to his satisfaction.

  I saw him only a few times afterwards, and now I don' t see him. He stopped coming around. I should run into him now and then - we have the same haunts, after all - but I don' t see him. I don' t know where in hell he is, and I don' t want to know. It is dangerous being around him. Any curiosity on my part, what has happened to the body of his father, what the child is doing there in his stead, if I allowed myself to think about this, lurid, family struggle, Well, they deserve each other with their awful battles that they carry on past death, I refuse to think about it, it is a kind of deep moral damage that can be contracted by too close association, like the cholera. And to think who paid for that glorious evening!. As to a man' s strength of character, I assure you Martin Pemberton has not been as good or great a friend as Harry Wheelwright, and never was and never can he, Certainly he would not comport himself with the same grace and fortitude if, God forbid, the situation was reversed and It was a Wheelwright who escaped from the grave.