Van Gogh's Room at Arles Read online

  By the time he’d made it the eight steps to the landing— his hand kept slipping off the button and stopping the chair—a second walker—one he could keep permanently set up at the bottom of the stairs—had gone on his wish list. When the Stair-Glide slowly started its turn into the second flight—he’d timed it once, it took exactly one minute to do the trip—the telephone began to ring. He knew it would stop ringing before he could get to it. I’m in farce, he thought. I take to farce the way ducks take to water. But, even in farce, Schiff was a hopeful man—a man, that is, obsessed with solutions, even though he tried always to live by the cripple’s code with all its concomitant notions about the exponentiality of litter and his grand ideas about every solved problem creating a new one. Now, for example, he had still more items for his wish list. He could leave cordless phones all over the house, in every out-of-the-way place he was likely to be when a phone started to ring, by the shelf where the toilet paper was kept, along the tops of tables, between the cushions of the sofa, in the gap between his pants pocket and the side of a chair, beside potted plants on windowsills—— in each inconvenient closet, pantry, alcove, and cuddy, adjunct to all the complicated, nesty network of random space.

  The minute was up. He was at the bottom of the stairs. He disrobed himself of the walker and set it down, aware at once (by the relief he felt, that suffused him like a kind of pleasure) of how rough it could be, how heavy it became if one wasn’t up to the burdens of aluminum. The burdens of aluminum. And, still seated in the Stair-Glide, already accustomed to his relief, no longer surprised by the return of his off-again, on-again energies, restored—so long as he remained seated—to health, which after the ordeal of the stairs he intended to savor a while longer, not even tempted by the telephone which he suddenly realized had never stopped ringing. It’s Claire, he thought. Only Claire knew he was alone in the house, how long it took him to get to a phone. Then he thought, No, that’s not true, plenty of people know, Claire’s driver, even the dispatcher at the taxicab company, the agents at the airlines, the woman at the bank, friends to whom he’d spilled the beans, Harry in Portland, Bill at S.O.S. Even, when it came right down, Information. God, he hoped it wasn’t Information. Then he realized he was wrong about that one too. He hoped it was Information. They could be checking up on him to see if he was still crippled. He wanted Information on his side and decided not to pick up. The phone stopped ringing. Though, actually, Schiff thought once it had stopped, it could have been anyone. Thieves checking to see if the house was empty so they could come out and strip it, take what they wanted. If it was thieves, Schiff thought, it was probably a good thing he hadn’t yet had time to do anything about his wish list—— that second walker, the dozen or so extra cordless telephones he’d thought he might buy. And suddenly scratched the cordless telephones and had another, less expensive, even better item for the wish list—— an answering machine. They didn’t have an answering machine—Schiff felt clumsy speaking to them and didn’t like to impose on others what he hated to do himself— but he had to admit, in his new circumstances, under his novel, new dispensation, an answering machine could be just the ticket. It might just fill the bill. The problem with an answering machine as Schiff saw it was the message one left on it to tell callers you couldn’t come to the phone. If the device caught important calls you didn’t want to miss, it was also an open invitation to the very vandals and thieves he was concerned to scare off. “I can’t come to the phone just now, but if you’ll just…” was too ambiguous. It wouldn’t keep the tiger from your gates. A good thief would see right through the jesuiticals of a message like that and interpret it any way he wanted. Schiff wouldn’t take it off the wish list but he’d first have to compose an airtight message for the machine before he ever actually purchased one. An idle mind is too the devil’s workshop, Schiff thought, and rose from the chair, plowed—he often thought of his walker as a plow, of his floors and carpets as fields in which he cut stiff furrows— his way to the tchtchk and, quite to his astonishment, found almost at once statements from the banks with their account numbers on them. These he put into his mouth, but he couldn’t go up just yet, couldn’t yet face the struggle with the walker on the Stair-Glide; he had to rest, build strength, and decided to go into the living room for a while and sit down.

  Where he collected his strength and doodled messages in his head for the answering machine.

  Hi, he thought, this is Jack Schiff. Sorry to have missed your call, but I’ve stepped out for five minutes to run out to the store for some milk for my coffee. Just leave your et cetera, et cetera, and I’ll get right back to you.

  That wasn’t bad, Schiff thought, but what would people who knew him make of it, of his “stepped out” and “run out” locutions? Of the swiftness and fluency of movement—so unlike him—he implied in that “get right back to you” trope? Unless they read it as the code that it was, they would think they’d reached some other Jack Schiff. Also, what if the thieves waited five minutes and called back? Or ten? Or fifteen? Or a whole hour and then heard the same damn message? After they robbed him they’d probably trash the place, maybe even torch it.

  Hi, et cetera, et cetera, he revised, but——WOULD YOU CUT THAT OUT, PLEASE? DOWN, DAMN IT DOWN! Sorry, my pit bull’s acting up again. Look, just leave your name at the sound of the——oh, my God, BEEEEP!

  Well, Schiff thought, pleased with the new composition and his invention of the pit bull. But there was a problem of verisimilitude. Wouldn’t there have to be growls, the sound of snarls and vicious barking? Probably he could manage a fairly convincing growl, or even a snarl, particularly over a telephone with its gift of enhanced, electronic sibilance, but he was an academic not an actor, he’d never be able to handle the rough barking. (A pit bull went on the wish list. Then, thinking of the effort it would be to care for, came right back off again.)

  Et cetera, et cetera, he began over, I’m too depressed to come to the phone right now. Thieves cleaned me out. I called the cops. They tell me it looks like the work of professionals. Like that’s supposed to be a comfort? Leave your name, if I ever cheer up I’ll try to get back to you.

  There were people at his front door. From where he sat on the sofa he could see the S.O.S. van through the French windows. Well, thought Schiff, thank God for small favors.

  It was good he was downstairs. If he’d gone up—he had the wrong temperament for someone with his disease; really, he thought, he wasn’t laidback enough; not trying to get to the phone earlier before it stopped ringing was the exception not the rule—he could have had an accident in an effort to rush down to them before his visitors gave up and left. Even now, knowing what he knew about himself, and no more than twenty feet from the door, he scampered to it. The bank statements were still in his mouth.

  “No no,” Bill, who was in the business, who knew a rotten hand when he saw one, who’d told him as much, said, waving off the hand Schiff extended, “let’s wait, why don’t we, until you sit down before we try to shake hands?”

  In the living room Bill introduced him to the technician he’d brought with him, a woman. For a fellow with a quiet libido, it was astonishing to Schiff how much at ease women could put him, even women like this one, got up in gray coveralls like a repairman’s, moving man’s, or delivery man’s jumpsuit, a person’s who worked basements. It was generally true what Claire had said. Workmen tended to frighten him. At something like the ambassadorial level Claire handled the workmen, though Schiff began to wonder if he hadn’t been missing something. After some initial small talk—“Have any trouble finding the place?” ““Yes, it is a nice neighborhood, St. Louis’s best-kept secret”—which he quite enjoyed but wouldn’t have guessed he had in him, Bill presented him with some brochures about the equipment and service. Schiff accepted and started to read them before Bill interrupted. “Those are just to give you an idea of the colors that are available.”

  “Oh, I don’t care about the color,” Schiff said.

  “Well
, good for you,” said Bill.

  “The olive would have to be special-ordered anyway,” Jenny Simmons said. “So would the teal.”

  “We don’t have the teal?” Bill said.

  “I don’t think Indianapolis even makes it anymore. When was the last time you saw a teal?”

  “Come to think of it,” Bill admitted.

  “I really don’t care about the color,” Schiff said.

  “Most clients don’t,” Bill said.

  “Hey,” Schiff said, “I’m far gone, but I’m not that far gone. I still get a kick out of life. It’s not all monochromatic. All I meant was, it ticks me off when a company tries to make a profit off the paint it splashes over its products. I can remember when the Princess telephone first came out and Ma Bell charged you extra for any piece of equipment that wasn’t black.”

  “That’s what I thought you meant,” Bill said, “Wasn’t it Henry Ford who said you could get the Model T in any color you wanted so long as it was black? Some clients are a little fussy is all. It actually matters to them whether the unit they wear around their neck and that could save their life is green or gray. Though don’t get me wrong. The S.O.S. Corporation isn’t Ma Bell. We don’t charge extra for the color.”

  “There’s no scientific reason for it I can think of,” Jenny Simmons said, “but it’s been my experience that we have less trouble with a plain white unit than with any other color.”

  “Plain white it is for me,” Schiff said.

  “There you go,” Bill said. “It’s just we’re required by law to show you what’s available.”

  Schiff looked to Jenny, who seemed to be frowning. By law? Was he serious? Required by law? Schiff smiled at her. Jenny looked down. Then Schiff wondered if she knew about his situation. Sure, he thought, she had to. They’d come together in the van. They were partners. Like cops. The salesman would almost certainly have passed on all that Schiff had himself volunteered—— that he’d been married thirty-six years and that this was the day the Lord had made for his wife to just up and leave him, fled to her boyfriend in Oregon, spilling his life like a suicide. Also, she’d seen him with bank statements in his mouth. Now Schiff looked down. And only a few minutes earlier he’d been thinking of giving them tea, hard stuff even. (Schiff remembered when he was a kid, his parents offering “a shot” to men who came to do for them, carry their furniture up and down flights of stairs. Maybe that’s why he was still afraid of them—— their power and rough, blue-collar ways.) He felt a little betrayed. Even at that, though, he took a sort of comfort in their company, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he had still to call the banks and check with them about his accounts he would have been content to spend the rest of the afternoon being sold to. There was something soothing about it, like watching a fishing show on TV that taught you to tie your own flies or showed you how to paint a picture. It was a little, he imagined, like a woman getting a free makeover in a department store. (Schiff, abandoned, on his own, was coming a little to terms with the domestic.)

  “I took the liberty of making some notes during our earlier phone conversation.” Bill said. “Whenever you’re ready we can check out your floor plan. Jenny’s the expert. I’d like her to walk us through it. Nothing’s written in stone yet. There could still be some changes you might want to make.”

  “Of course, of course, but I don’t think you really need me. While you’re pacing it off I could be making some calls.”

  “Sure thing,” Bill said, “we’ll take care of it. Go make your calls.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” Schiff said. “I have this cordless phone? I may even have mentioned it to you.”

  “I remember you did.”

  “It’s up on the bed in my room. I live by the cripple’s code. That you must never do anything twice. Unfortunately, I do just about everything twice. Well,” he said, “I’m crippled. I almost have to.”

  “You mustn’t say that. You’re hardly a cripple,” the salesman said. “You know how to cope. I hope I cope half as well as you do if I’m ever handicapped.”

  “Well,” said Schiff, “in any event. I wasn’t able to bring it with me when I came down. If someone could just get it for me?”

  “No problem,” Bill said. “Your room is——?”

  “First door on the left, top of the stairs.”

  Which left him alone in the living room with Jenny. She seemed shy for someone who worked with Bill. Stuck for something to say, she grinned at him goofily. It occurred to him she was embarrassed by everything she already knew about him. Bold cop, shy cop. Schiff poked around, looking for something he could say to put her at ease.

  “I had you for a professor,” Jenny told him.

  Schiff felt himself flush, a stain of red discovery cross his features.

  “I don’t blame her,” he blurted. “Not for a minute. She should have done it years ago. I would’ve. In her place I would’ve. No one owes anyone that kind of loyalty.”

  Before either of them could recover Bill was back with Schiff’s phone. “There you go,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Schiff said, “thanks.”

  “No problem. It was just where you said. You give very good directions.”

  Schiff waited impatiently while Bill explained what was going to happen, that he and Jenny were going to go over the house looking for the best spots to install their relays. He had his notes, he said, he just wanted to make sure they hadn’t overlooked anything. “For example,” Bill said, “I notice the house has a third floor.”

  “I’m never up there.”

  “Well, I know,” Bill said, “but can’t you conceive of a circumstance which might bring you up there?”

  “There’s no Stair-Glide. I couldn’t get to the third floor if I wanted to.”

  “What about the basement, what if something went wrong in the basement? If the furnace went out, or, God forbid, your storm drains clogged and you had severe water damage?”

  “Same thing,” Schiff said, “no Stair-Glide.”

  “Well, sure,” said Bill. “I’m not prying. That’s just the sort of thing the corporation has to find out about if it’s to render its services properly. Also, I’ll tell you something, we have to cover our behind. If something happened to a client in an area of the house we overlooked or failed to warn him he was vulnerable we could be looking at a pretty good lawsuit.”

  “I consider myself warned,” Schiff said, getting a little cranky now, the charm of being sold to having worn off, and oppressed by all he had yet to do.

  Bill chuckled. “Well, I know,” he said, “and I hope you don’t mind putting your signature to that when we close the deal.”

  “I have to sign a consent form? Like you’re my surgeon? Like you’re operating on me?”

  “It’s for both our protections,” Bill said in exactly the same tone of voice Schiff often used in class when he had to explain something. He turned to his partner. “What do you say, Jenny? We start down here?”

  Shit, Schiff thought, fingering his bank statements, getting anxious now, feeling suddenly rushed, hurried, his oppression compounding into a sort of spiritual indigestion he could almost feel.

  Now see, he told himself, that’s exactly what I meant about farce. He was furious he had to call the bank while S.O.S. was there, more outraged than by his condition itself, than by Claire’s leaving. It wasn’t fair. It was none of the corporation’s business that his wife might have plundered their accounts. It was that straw that breaks that camel’s back. He waited for them to clear out of the living room, which they went over, deliberate as sappers. Maybe she’d been his student when he still taught undergraduates. But that was just what he meant, too. It wasn’t just her odd garment that threw him off the scent. He simply didn’t know these people. His students, he meant. It wasn’t even only that they failed to keep in touch. They weren’t in touch to begin with. Many of his colleagues’ former students were like family. They had pictures of the people their students had married, of t
heir kids. Also, it a little depressed Schiff to see one of his old students got up in coveralls, doing, he didn’t care how much electronics she probably knew, a sort of manual labor. It was a long way from political geography, from the high ground of pure theory, the strictly hands-off of scholarship and the sheer delicious luxury of an arcane discipline. Schiff knew professors of painting whose students had pictures hanging in museums, business profs with kids who were CEOs. It diminished already diminished old Schiff that he couldn’t think of a single one of his students who’d gone on in the field. He taught graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in history, in poli sci, and many of them had distinguished careers, but Schiff kept up, he knew the people in his field, hotshots in Washington think tanks many of them, high-ups in the CIA, consultants to or officials in the Census Bureau, advisers to Rand- McNally, the publishers of other important atlases, and couldn’t think of anyone who’d been in one of his classes who was a practicing political geographer. They were probably waiters, he thought, drivers in the taxicab trade very likely, or, like Miss Simmons here, got up like people you see when your airplane has landed, signaling jets to the gate.

  They left the living room and moved through the rest of the first floor, going into the dining room, Schiff’s kitchen, his half bath, the small storage area at the rear of his house where the backdoor opened out onto the porch, the small in-ground pool.

  Schiff waited until he heard their steps on the stairs. Then, cupping his hand over the speaker, he lowered his voice and asked Information for the bank’s phone number. Even as was doing so he saw it, plain as the nose, right there on the statement. It would have been too much trouble to tell the operator that never mind, forget it, he’d found it (never mind, forget it, more farce), so he waited for the little mechanical recitation to come on and dutifully checked it against the phone number on the statement.