Free Subtle Bodies by Norman Rush Page A

here … as you can see I am lost. Here.”
    Ned wanted to kill Gruen, who was taking a large second portion of eggs for himself but doing it with an excruciating slowness intended to make what he was doing less obvious. Part of the maneuver was to keep his eyes fixed on Iva while his arm worked independently like an animal for which he had no responsibility.
    Iva said, “I present myself to you.
    “I must do something.
    “My life is black …”
    Elliot intervened. He said, “Iva will talk individually later to you, one at a time, later. In the sun room.”
    “What sun room?” Ned asked Gruen in a whisper.
    “I’ll show you,” Gruen said.
    But Iva wanted to say more. She said, “You, you were his true friends. I won’t stop now, Elliot. And you were more his friend than I was, you men, I have to say. I have to say that, yes.” She began wringing her hands. Elliot was walking distractedly around the table, driving his hands deep into his pants pockets. He appeared to be talking to himself.
    Iva said, “We must make a … 
book
.” She was imploring them.
    Elliot said, “Well she doesn’t mean a book per se, she means a memorial collection … statements …”
    “Yes, but in a
book
,” Iva said.
    Elliot said, “She means she wants it
bound
. That’s what she means.”
    “Eulogies?” Joris asked.
    Iva said, “Yes, but
more
. We must
say
them, and it must be the truth, you see.”
    Gruen said, “I think she means a ceremony.”
    Joris was saying something calming to her, and it seemed to be helping. Iva rose and the guests followed suit. The breakfast had been very truncated.
    Now Elliot was saying that individual meetings with Iva would start in half an hour. Ned joined Iva and took her hand. He said, “Why don’t you take me second or third so I can take care of something first.”
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “Nothing, just something I need at the Vale. The
Times
.”
    Iva covered his hand with hers and squeezed with a certain ferocity. She said, “You can go. You can go if you have to. But just be sure you don’t take the top paper on the pile he has, but take the next under. You see they let their filthy dog sleep on the papers.”
    Elliot said, “Man there is no problem. We’re getting the
Times
delivered here starting today.
Washington Post
, too. And one last thing, you’re all coming out of the tower and over here.”
    Introductions to the strangers, most of whom were from
Deutsche Welle
, were managed by Elliot. Ned knew thathe wasn’t going to remember the names. They all looked young to him.

 
    12 Elliot was leading Ned to his meeting with Iva when something disconcerting happened. In a recess in the living room wall between the end of the interminable sofa and a door to somewhere else in the Winchester Mystery House that this was, hung a framed full-length portrait of Iva and Douglas in late youth, in oil. Elliot veered off toward it and seemed to be brushing its surface smartly with his open hand. But that wasn’t what he was doing: he was flicking away a pushpin that someone had stuck into it. There was a lamp fixture on the top of the frame. Ned halted in front of the painting. He fiddled with the fixture but the bulb seemed to be dead.
    Anyway, there he was, Douglas. There seemed to be lots of punctures in the surface. Who would have done that? Elliot was pulling at him. Recently Nina had said, Know what I hate?… puncture wounds.
    Elliot said to come on. “Who did this?” Ned asked. Elliot was impatient and pulled at him.
    Douglas’s ludic period had extended well beyond NYU. The double portrait, done in a photorealist mode by some artist whose name he should doubtless know, was a goof. There he was, Douglas, in safari kit, shirt and shorts and boots and thick socks up to the knee, standing unnaturally straight, separate from and not touching his wife, a miniature umbrella of the kind they put in mai tais held between the thumb and forefinger of his languidly