The Hothouse by the East River Read Free Page A

Seventy-sixth Street is beautifully cool this summer. Paul
envies the silent air-conditioning system of his son’s apartment, distributed
from a noiseless central equipment throughout the house, and once more decides
to move from the apartment by the East River down there in Forty-fourth Street
where the air-conditioners hum separately in each room.
    ‘Look,’
says Paul, ‘it was before you were born, a long time ago.’
    ‘But
Father, be reasonable and methodical, that’s all I say. See a lawyer. Have the
F.B.I. make a thorough investigation. And if you can’t leave it at that, have a
private firm investigate the man. ‘Paul does not want to leave this evenly cool
apartment. He lingers, even having said all he has wanted to say, even to the
point of beginning again. ‘It was when your mother and I were young, in
England, during the war…’
    The
apartment is cool in its decorations. Very little furniture, like a
psychiatrist’s consulting room. Elsa has said she enjoys a sense of repose when
she visits her analyst.
    ‘Then
I’ve got the problem of your mother on top of it,’ Paul says.
    ‘Leave
that to Garven. It’s Garven’s problem.’
    ‘Oh, is
it? Oh, is it Garven’s problem?’ Paul says. ‘Sometimes I wonder.’
    ‘Wonder
what?’ says Pierre with a sudden stare that betokens, surely, an innocent
question.
    ‘Have
you ever thought there was something strange about your mother?’ Paul says.
    ‘Yes.
What else does she see Garven for? But we shouldn’t let her go away again. Not
into the clinic, not there. It isn’t necessary. Not with modern drugs and
therapy and so on.’ Pierre is anxious for him to leave; he has something else
to do, or is perhaps afraid that his father will say too much.
    ‘I
think about Kiel, real name Mueller, that’s the main problem,’ Paul says.
‘Anything you can think of, let me know. I just wanted to put you in the
picture, Pierre, in case anything happens to me.’
    ‘Don’t
worry.’ Pierre looks out of the window.
     
    Pierre,
looking out of the window, resembles his mother more than usual.
    His
shadow falls in folds on the curtain, cast by the lamp behind him, his shadow
falls where it should fall. It moves as Pierre moves. The father says, ‘I want
you to have the whole picture, Pierre.’ He watches his son’s movements as if
almost hoping the tall young man could cause things to happen by the mere
waving of that wand, his body.
    ‘I have
the picture, I think.’
    ‘Yes,
but the picture, the whole picture and nothing but the picture,’ Paul says.
‘Pierre, it’s a complex matter. If your mother can’t rouse herself or feel
anything about my predicament with Kiel, then I’m in all the greater danger,
Pierre.’
    Pierre
looks round, briefly and with an irritated opening of his lips, as if to say
‘Don’t “Pierre” me. ‘After a while he sits down and says, ‘Mother is no fool.
She doesn’t panic, that’s all.’
    ‘Panic!
I don’t say she ought to panic. I say she might show some concern. After all,
she saw the man. It was your mother who first saw him in the shoe store. She
simply told me. She sat there calmly and told me, as if it were something as
meaningless as a pair of shoes.’
    ‘Shoes
have meaning, Father.’
    Paul
wants to hit his son, and scream at him that his rotten education has made him
unfit for the modern world, and it has been his mother’s rotten money that has
sent him the rounds of the world to every school of Art History that money can
buy. Paul lays his palms on the arms of his chair and for the usual reason that
deters people from violence of word and deed, refrains from it. He says, ‘She
sits looking out. She remembers Kiel very well. She remembers what happened
when we were engaged during the war. She knows that Kiel was a double agent and
went to prison after the war. She heard that he died in prison and now she’s
seen him in New York. But if one makes any appeal to her sense of its
significance she’s