In America Read Online Free Page A

time, have disavowed the name of leader. To be explained, nevertheless: why anybody follows anyone else. Or, just as puzzling, why anyone ever refuses to follow. (What writing feels like is following and leading, both, and at the same time.) I watched how everyone obeyed the long-awaited command to sit and be served. I didn’t mind just watching, listening, I don’t ever mind, especially at parties; though I did imagine that, could the guests at this party have become aware of my presence, of the intrusion of so exotic a stranger, a place would have been made for me at the table. (That I might be pushed out on the snowy street never crossed my mind.) Uninvited, unseen, I could look at them as long as I wanted, stare at them even: a piece of bad manners I usually can’t practice because it’s likely to incur a stare in return. As a child, I mean like many solitary children, I often wished I were invisible, the better to watch—I mean, to not be watched. But I also played, sometimes, at not seeing at all. Around thirteen, after the family pulled up tiny stakes and moved from Tucson to Los Angeles, this walking around with my eyes shut when I was alone or unobserved in the new house became, I recall, a favorite game. (My most memorable venture in blindness was when, on a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom, there was an earthquake.) I like the feeling of being reduced to my own resources. Of having to do nothing but cope. About time, the judge murmured irritably to his wife. She smiled and put two fingers to her lips. Will there be ice cream? said the little boy. The guests were approaching the table, Ryszard edging ahead, impatient to see how close to Maryna he had been seated, with Tadeusz right behind him, but it was Ryszard, hurrying his step, who reached the table first. I saw him scan for his place card and his grin told me that he was not dissatisfied. Once the guests had occupied all the chairs, while they were still unfolding their starched upright napkins, the squad of waiters began distributing the bounties of the first course. I had moved forward, too, and was sitting cross-legged in the embrasure of a tall window at that end of the room, and while I was trying to take in some first words at the table had to silence some words in my head: “sorrel soup,” “carp à la juive,” “sole au gratin,” “boar’s meat in cherry sauce” … the quotes are just to mark what I lack the patience right now to describe; I would have plenty of time to describe, I thought, after I’d understood the story. Though I knew they had been kept waiting (as, in another way, had I), I was a little surprised that everyone tucked in without ado. Did I expect them to say grace? I suppose I did. And, actually, one person, Bogdan’s homely sister, did mutter at length to herself before lifting her fork; I’m sure she was reciting a prayer. Though I hoped that they wouldn’t have tired of arguing, for the moment everyone seemed diverted by the sumptuous meal. What I was watching was the gamut of eating behavior, from dainty to wolfish, dotted with colorful comments about the food, and, even, the snowstorm. Good Lord, not the weather! Come back, noble idealists whom I’ve conjured up from the past. To be sure, not everyone was just eating. The doctor, I saw, much preferred the champagne and the Hungarian wine to the second courses. (“Turkey stuffed with walnuts,” “baked black grouse and partridges” …) And the young actress, who never took her eyes off Maryna’s pearly, unlined face, was chewing in slow motion; hardly anything was missing from her plate. Like her, like most of the guests, I found it hard not to keep Maryna at the center of my attention. I wondered what her real age was; after all, she was an actress. If this were happening now, I would have said she was in her mid-forties (the ample bosom and heavy jaw, the