5

THAT EVENING, AFTER DINNER, WE WENT TO A NIGHTCLUB. IT WAS AT KITTREDGE’S suggestion, and much against Hugh’s inclination, but she was insistent. Pregnant, she was insistent. There was an entertainer named Lenny Bruce performing at a new bar and coffeehouse called Mary Jane’s, and she wanted to see him.

Montague said, “Bar and coffeehouse? One or the other ought to be enough.”

“Hugh, I don’t care what it’s called. I want to go.”

An old roommate at college had described this comedian in a letter as “devastating.” Kittredge was curious. “She never said devastating once in four years at Radcliffe.”

“Why do I know this evening will not work?” asked Hugh.

The lighting was harsh, the sound system had squalls, and a small black-painted dais served for a stage at Mary Jane’s. The drinks were expensive, and we sat on folding chairs. I remember Montague complaining at the expenditure of a dollar fifty for Scotch and soda against the two-dollar minimum. “Outrageous,” he declared in no small voice.

Since we had come in before the second show, there was opportunity to look about. While most of the couples in the room appeared to be office workers in D.C., I estimated that none of them could be employed at the Agency. No, as if I were a personnel officer, I could see they would not do. They were—I thought of a new word making the rounds—permissive. There was some sly secret they seemed to share.

The lights went down. Against a black backdrop, a spotlight focused on a microphone and stand. Out strolled a slim young man with short curly hair, dungarees, and a dungaree jacket. If not for protruding eyes and a wan face, he might have been pleasant in appearance. The applause was fevered.

“Good evening,” he said. “That’s a nice hand. Thank you. I appreciate it. Am I getting all this because my first show was good? Yes, I guess the first one tonight did take off. Yes. A few of you seem to have stayed for the second, haven’t you? Yes, you, over there,” he said, pointing to a man in the audience, “you were here for the first show and so was your girl.” They both nodded vehemently. “And you, too,” he said, pointing to another couple, “and you. Yes, there are quite a few people back.” He stopped. He seemed low in energy, and surprisingly sad for an entertainer. His voice was mild and colorless. “Yes,” he said, “that first show was terrific. In fact, if I say so myself, it was so good that I came.” He stood looking out at us with his wan face.

A gasp of delight, half full of pure public terror, came forth from the audience. The most incredible sound issued unexpectedly from Kittredge. She could have been a horse who had just seen another horse trot by with a dead man in the saddle.

“Yes,” said Lenny Bruce, “I came, and now I feel out of it. Ah, fellows, I have to get it up for the second time.”

I had never heard laughter like this in a nightclub. It was as if the plumbing in the building were breaking up. Laughs slithered out of people like snakes, tore out of them, barked forth, wheezed forth, screamed out. “Yeek,” yelled a woman.

“Yes,” said Lenny Bruce, “I got to face it. It’s no real fun to get it up for the second time. I’ll let you girls in on a secret. Men don’t always want that second helping. Yes, I can see some of you fellows nodding your heads. Honest people. You agree. It’s tough, isn’t it? I mean, let’s face facts, getting it up again is the ego bit.”

There was pandemonium. It was followed by applause. I had found my own fever. He was talking in public to strangers about matters that I knew little enough about but still, on my night with Ingrid, had there not been some hint from her for more? The fire and ice of that Berlin hotel room came back to me, and the dread I felt of staying any longer in that rented chamber. Now I did not know if I wished to remain in this club. Where could it all end? Kittredge’s eyes, reflecting the spotlight, glowed; Harlot’s expression seemed set in stone. And Lenny Bruce had emerged from his fatigue. He seemed to be offering full proof of the proposition that he who gives life to an audience receives life back. “Yes,” he said, as if everyone present were either a close friend or a dear adviser, “that second time is for your rep. You women, watch your guy next time he finds some reason not to go for the second shot, oh, he’ll lie—he’ll say anything—‘Honey,’ he’ll tell you, ‘I can’t, because of the atabrine.’ ‘The atabrine?’ you’ll ask. ‘Yes,’ he’ll tell you, ‘they gave us atabrine in the South Pacific to hold off malaria but the Army never told us. It discolors the semen. That shows up when you do it the second time. Yellow! Yellow semen. It looks like pus!’ A guy will tell any lie to excuse himself for not producing it that second time. Anything to keep his wife from getting wise to him. Believe me, isn’t that what it’s all about? Lying to your wife? Isn’t that what all the bullshitters mean when they talk about marriage as a sacrament? We know better. Marriage is the advanced course in lying your ass off, right?”

Harlot reached into his pocket to pay the bill, and Kittredge put a hand on his arm. Their eyes locked. “I will not make a spectacle of us,” she whispered, “by leaving.”

“Maybe we’re on to a working principle, fellows,” Lenny Bruce went on. “Never tell your wife the truth. Because biologically it has been proven. Women’s ears are not constructed to hear the truth. They will slaughter you if you tell it like it is. So, lie your ass off. No matter the circumstances. Suppose you’ve gone to bed with a new girl in your own house in your own double bed because your wife is away for the day, and you are giving this girl one hell of a shtup. Whew!—can you believe it?—in walks your wife .  .  .”

“What is that word, shtup?” whispered Kittredge.

“Yiddish,” said Harlot.

“Oh,” said Kittredge.

“There you are, lathered up, banging away, zoom, you’re trapped! In your wife’s own bed. What do you do?” He took a full pause. “Why,” he said, “you deny it.”

He paused again for the laughter. “Yes,” he said, “deny it. Tell your wife any cockamamie story. Tell her you just got home, and here was this naked girl in our bed, honey. There she was, honey, shivering with acute malaria. Believe me, she was turning blue with cold. She was dying. The only way to save a life in such circumstances is to warm her naked body with my body. That’s the only way, honey, to bring a human being back from fatal chill. Yes, tell her anything. Because in marriage you have to lie your ass off.”

“Do you know,” said Harlot in a clear voice that obviously did not care how far it might carry, “I understand for the first time what Joe McCarthy was afraid of.”

“Hush,” said Kittredge, but one small splotch on each cheek had appeared, and I did not know if she was angered more by Harlot or the comedian.

“Of course,” said Lenny Bruce, “you can make the case that we were taught to lie by the apostles. They agreed to sell the story that Jesus gave them the wafer and the wine. ‘Hey,’ they said, ‘We ate His flesh. We drank His blood. So, be a good Christian, will you?’” Lenny Bruce whistled. “Hey, hey! That had to be a pretty heavy line back then. You don’t think everybody was jumping up to buy it, do you? Why, the first guy who heard it must have said, ‘Give me a shovel—I got to dig my way out of this. I mean, what the fuck are they saying, “Drink my blood, eat my flesh.” Come on, man. I’m no cannibal!’”

The audience laughed, although uneasily. It was happening too fast, and Bruce’s voice was harsh. Two women got up and left the room. A man followed in their wake.

“Sir,” said Lenny Bruce, “when you come back from the men’s room, don’t forget to tip the shvartzer. So he’ll know you’re not a tightfisted prick!”

The door slammed. “Jerk-off artist,” said Bruce. The man walked out of the club to the sound of laughter behind him.

“You know, I think a lot about this sacrament business. The wafer and the wine. They go together like ham and eggs. I start to wonder. Would it work with substitutions? Like give me a piece of that pie, man, I need a little more taste with the flesh. Or, keep that coffee hot, I can’t drink wine, I’m in A.A., dig?” He shook his head. “Now that we’re on the subject, let’s get to the Big Lie. ‘What! You never shtupped a guy? Come on, Mary, not even one stud? Not one leaky drop got in? It was a what-do-you-call-it? A what? An immaculate conception?’ Well, knock off, Mary. I’m not blind and dumb. I don’t buy stories that stupid.”

Kittredge stood up. She took a step toward the stage but Hugh gave a nod to me, and we managed to escort her outside. “Come back, lady,” cried Lenny, “or you’ll miss the circumcision.”

Hugh turned and said, “Contemptible!” We walked out. Kittredge was weeping. Then she was laughing. For the first time, I was truly aware of the size of her belly.

“I hate you, Hugh,” she said. “I was going to smack his filthy mouth.”

We drove back to the canal house in silence. Once inside, Kittredge sat down in a chair and placed her hands on her stomach. The spots of red remained on her cheeks.

“Are you all right?” asked Hugh.

“I’ve never felt such anger. I hope it didn’t pass through to the child.”

“No telling,” said Hugh.

“Why didn’t you let me hit him?” she asked.

“I didn’t want it to end up in the newspapers.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

“Once you saw what they did with it, you would have cared.”

She was silent.

“Newspapermen,” said Hugh, “are swine. I think I saw a few of them in the place paying homage to your comic genius.”

“How do you know they were press?” Kittredge asked.

“Some people offer that look. I tell you, there’s an abominable culture breeding away in God knows what sort of filthy dish. And Mr. Lenny Bruce is their little microbe.”

“You should have let me at him.”

“Kittredge,” said Montague, “I am trying to hold the world together, not help to pull it apart.”

“Do you know,” said Kittredge, “I thought if I could beat that dreadful man with my handbag, I would knock something back into place. I haven’t felt so awful since that damned ghost this summer.”

“What?” I asked. “What ghost? At the Keep?”

“Yes, there,” she said. “Something. I know he wanted to bother my baby.”

“Harry, have you ever heard of a history of visitants on the island?” Hugh now asked.

“Well, there used to be talk about a kind of phantom, an old pirate named Augustus Farr, but we used to laugh about that. My cousin Colton Shaler Hubbard’s father, Hadlock, told us that the creature went dormant about a hundred years ago.”

I had intended this to have its humor, but Kittredge said, “Augustus Farr,” and seemed to be holding off some near-involuntary tremor. “That’s just the name to fit my awful night.”

I was thinking of Dr. Gardiner and his bloody Elizabethan stumps. That had probably been sufficient to stir some poor shade.

“I don’t care if this gets the baby stinko,” said Kittredge, “I’m going to have a drink. I need to banish Mr. Bruce.”