destroy me. Vaguely—and again I’m not at all sure—I think she’d been some kind of servant in my family’s home. She and I shared a root cellar near an outhouse. Not an esthetic or hygienic location, but then we weren’t exactly royalty. The old woman had hard, pinching fingers and she coughed all night loud enough to wake the dead. But she was all I had, so when I came up with anything edible I brought it home to share with her. I worked the garbage cans behind the Ringstrasse restaurants, where the rich ate. Sometimes I unearthed treasures, a fragment of whipped cream pastry, the carcass of a game bird. I learned to move fast, to scratch and hit—the competition was keen. The reparations that the allies had wreaked on the Austro-Hungarian Empire had spawned an entire class privileged to scrounge in garbage cans.”
Her flesh had gone cold. She kept wiping her eyes, aching to comfort him, yet knowing she mustn’t halt his purgative flow of words. The sky outside grew dark, and the only light in the room was the glowing red circle from Curt’s cigarette. Chain-smoking, he dredged up incidents. A tiny girl he had seen sucking off a fat-bellied old man for one chocolate, boys his age who did the same thing, the “adult”whores, who in retrospect must have been eleven or twelve. “No, I never peddled my bony little ass,” he said. “Don’t ask why not, I just never did. To get my food I scavenged or went in for juvenile assault and battery.”
The old woman’s coughing and blood-spitting worsened. One morning he dreamed of snow and awakening to feel her icy rigid body curled around his. After her death he had deserted the root cellar and taken shelter under a bridge.
“Weren’t there orphanages?” Honora asked.
“Too overcrowded to seek recruits. But don’t think we received no benefits under our bridge. Every night a municipal trolley came around and the sanitation department lugged away the corpses. The old woman had told me I was born in 1921, three years after the final shot. This was 1927, nine years after the war, and the dying hadn’t ended.”
One winter day he had heard a rumor of bread being given out by the Quakers, who were always engaged in such ridiculous enterprises. “I would have set out to China for a crust, so the miles to the Gürtel were nothing. It was dark, and as I charged around a corner, I butted into this solid, well-dressed American.”
“Gideon?” Honora whispered incredulously.
“Mr. Talbott, yes. He asked where I was rushing, and when I told him he took me into a bakery. Since I had no last name, he gave me one—he said after a good scrub I’d be white as ivory. So Curt Ivory I became. A meal, a bath and one thing led to another. He arranged to bring me to California. He found a couplein Oakland, the Howells, to take care of me. They were cold, joyless people, but respectable. They must have figured they were sheltering some crazy sort of animal. The old woman had taught me to bow and click my heels like a little gentleman, so I bowed and clicked while I stole from their ice box. It was months before I left the table without a roll or a hunk of meat hidden in my pocket. I lived for the times Mr. Talbott dropped by to visit. He inspired me to become an engineer; he lent me the money for college. Honora, I know he has faults. He’s self-righteous, a puritanical dictator, but he’s also generous, kind, decent. And if you sometimes think I have too much of a soft spot for him, remember he not only saved my life, he gave me a new country, my name. He gave me my identity. I owe everything to him.”
“Curt, darling, I bless him.”
“One of the reasons I love you is whenever I look into your eyes, I’m healed of my childhood.”
“It’s over,” she said, hugging him fiercely.
“Things like that are never over.” He switched on the light. “Honora, you must always remember that starving boy lives inside me. He’ll always go for the jugular. He’ll
Her flesh had gone cold. She kept wiping her eyes, aching to comfort him, yet knowing she mustn’t halt his purgative flow of words. The sky outside grew dark, and the only light in the room was the glowing red circle from Curt’s cigarette. Chain-smoking, he dredged up incidents. A tiny girl he had seen sucking off a fat-bellied old man for one chocolate, boys his age who did the same thing, the “adult”whores, who in retrospect must have been eleven or twelve. “No, I never peddled my bony little ass,” he said. “Don’t ask why not, I just never did. To get my food I scavenged or went in for juvenile assault and battery.”
The old woman’s coughing and blood-spitting worsened. One morning he dreamed of snow and awakening to feel her icy rigid body curled around his. After her death he had deserted the root cellar and taken shelter under a bridge.
“Weren’t there orphanages?” Honora asked.
“Too overcrowded to seek recruits. But don’t think we received no benefits under our bridge. Every night a municipal trolley came around and the sanitation department lugged away the corpses. The old woman had told me I was born in 1921, three years after the final shot. This was 1927, nine years after the war, and the dying hadn’t ended.”
One winter day he had heard a rumor of bread being given out by the Quakers, who were always engaged in such ridiculous enterprises. “I would have set out to China for a crust, so the miles to the Gürtel were nothing. It was dark, and as I charged around a corner, I butted into this solid, well-dressed American.”
“Gideon?” Honora whispered incredulously.
“Mr. Talbott, yes. He asked where I was rushing, and when I told him he took me into a bakery. Since I had no last name, he gave me one—he said after a good scrub I’d be white as ivory. So Curt Ivory I became. A meal, a bath and one thing led to another. He arranged to bring me to California. He found a couplein Oakland, the Howells, to take care of me. They were cold, joyless people, but respectable. They must have figured they were sheltering some crazy sort of animal. The old woman had taught me to bow and click my heels like a little gentleman, so I bowed and clicked while I stole from their ice box. It was months before I left the table without a roll or a hunk of meat hidden in my pocket. I lived for the times Mr. Talbott dropped by to visit. He inspired me to become an engineer; he lent me the money for college. Honora, I know he has faults. He’s self-righteous, a puritanical dictator, but he’s also generous, kind, decent. And if you sometimes think I have too much of a soft spot for him, remember he not only saved my life, he gave me a new country, my name. He gave me my identity. I owe everything to him.”
“Curt, darling, I bless him.”
“One of the reasons I love you is whenever I look into your eyes, I’m healed of my childhood.”
“It’s over,” she said, hugging him fiercely.
“Things like that are never over.” He switched on the light. “Honora, you must always remember that starving boy lives inside me. He’ll always go for the jugular. He’ll
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