A Book of American Martyrs(158)

“How long have you been coming to visit Mr. Kinch?”

“How long here? As long as he’s been living here—he’d used to live in Washington Mews, in one of those charming brownstones owned by the university. But when he became seriously ill, about fifteen years ago, he decided to move away from Washington Square Park—he thinks the city is too intense there, it grates against his nerves. So I’ve been visiting Kinch in this building for approximately fifteen years. In fact, I’d helped him find his ‘bourgeois’—that is, ‘deeply boring’—apartment, which he finds protective as a kind of ‘quarantine.’ And I must say, I never—really—know how Kinch will greet me.”

Madelena was feeling so exhilarated, having been not-rebuffed in the foyer, she didn’t object to her granddaughter asking so many questions.

For the visit Madelena wasn’t wearing her usual stylish black clothes but a dark magenta suede coat with a matching hat, that hid much of her silver hair. She’d stopped at an expensive food shop on University Place to buy a bag of mangoes for Kinch—“His favorite fruit, he claims.” Her usual cool, slightly ironic composure seemed to have vanished leaving her both excited and apprehensive, as Naomi had rarely seen her.

As they waited for the doorbell to be answered Madelena cautioned Naomi: “Don’t be surprised when you see Kinch. And don’t feel sorry for him, please! He’s very sensitive to what he calls ‘gratuitous pity.’ He is quite happy with his life, which has been very creative. He has won many awards which he won’t mention. He has few friends—but those he has are special to him, and love him. What you will see is just the outer man, the surface. Our true lives are interior and inaccessible to the eye.”

The door was opened by a middle-aged woman with a severe expression who let them in without a word, and took their coats to hang in a closet.

Was this person a nurse? Caretaker? She wore a shapeless cardigan sweater over white nylon slacks and white crepe-soled shoes. Stiffly she smiled at Madelena, who called her “Sonia.” She took no notice of Naomi at all.

Blindly Naomi followed her grandmother into the apartment—through a small dim-lighted foyer in which books were stacked on the floor like stalagmites and into an equally dim-lighted living room in which books were similarly stacked on tables and on the floor, as well as crammed into floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The single window in this room was obscured by heavy velvet drapes. Madelena moved briskly without waiting for Sonia to escort her as if there were some old, familiar friction between them, which Madelena blithely ignored.

Naomi was dismayed by the smell of the apartment—airless, gingery-medicinal, faintly rancid. Worse yet, there was an underlying odor of tobacco smoke. How strange that Madelena who was fastidious about the air in her own apartment seemed oblivious of the stale air here.

“Professor Kein! Bonjour.”

A young-old man in a motorized wheelchair rolled in their direction, to greet them with a wide smile.

“Bonjour, Professor Kinch. Thank you for seeing us!”—gaily Madelena stooped to brush her lips against the young-old man’s cheek, even as he stiffened just perceptibly as if fearing being touched, yet not wanting to offend. “And here she is, the granddaughter from the wilds of the Midwest, Naomi.”

“Ah yes—‘Na-o-mi Voorhees.’”

So Kinch knew her name. Her full name. Well, that was not so surprising perhaps. Madelena must have told him.

Naomi wondered if Voorhees meant anything to Kinch? Surely he would know that Madelena had been married to a man with that name, though she’d never taken on the name; and possibly, he knew of Gus Voorhees.

(Except: Madelena was so elusive, and so exulted in secrecy, it was possible that even her longtime New York City friends didn’t know of her former marriage or that she’d had a doctor-son who had been assassinated.)

“Naomi, this is Karl Kinch—you need not call him ‘Professor’—but he does not like to be called ‘Karl.’”

Naomi had no idea what this might mean. Surely she could not call him Kinch?

Now came the motorized chair in Naomi’s direction. Kinch’s manner was playful as an adolescent with an oversized dangerous toy. Do you dare step aside, try to escape me?—Kinch’s wide smile, filled with discolored teeth, seemed to be taunting her. Naomi guessed that, wheelchair-bound, a man would resent having always to look upward, crane his neck, at persons of normal height. Kinch lifted a long slender soft-boned hand to be shaken by Naomi even as she tried to sidestep the motorized chair.

“Bonjour, Naomi! Welcome to the mausoleum.” The word was given an exuberant French pronunciation.

In an aside Madelena murmured to Kinch, “Elle est belle, est-elle?” and Kinch murmured, “Pas si belle que tu, ma chère.”

Madelena smiled with a look of irritated pain to signal that she did not approve of this remark. Naomi pretended not to have heard.

Kinch had a large head that looked sculpted out of some fragile material like eggshell. Sparse graying hair fell in ringlets to his bowed shoulders. He wore formal clothes—white dress shirt buttoned to his thin throat, dark trousers with a crease. He might have been any age between thirty and fifty—his skin was papery-smooth and white, presumably from lack of sunshine. Yet his manner was youthful, even boyish. A sort of bad-boyish. He fidgeted constantly, his legs and long white toes in (open) sandals twitched on the footrest of the wheelchair. Except for a subtle deformation of his face and the exceptional size of his head he would have been an attractive man. His features were fine-chiseled. His voice was subtly modulated like an actor’s or a singer’s voice. He was not wearing glasses though one of his eyes was milky and the other appeared severely myopic. His mouth was strangely wide, his lips wetly sensuous. From the way he blinked, smiled, squinted at Naomi she supposed he was seeing her as a blur.