The Lonely Hearts Hotel(24)

But she also had to learn her place.





13


    PORTRAIT OF PIERROT AS A YOUNG ARISTOCRAT



Although Pierrot was elegant by nature, Irving decided that he could further enhance the young man’s sophistication. He made Pierrot walk around while balancing an encyclopedia on his head. Pierrot became quite good at balancing things in this manner. One afternoon Irving, hearing a commotion in the kitchen, entered to discover all the servants crowded around Pierrot as he balanced a small stool with three books and an apple on top of his head.

“Never let anybody tell you that you can’t pass as an aristocrat. Remember, it’s all superficial. It has to do with mannerisms. You can learn how to be an aristocrat by following a few rules in a very short book. There is nothing to it.”

He gave the boy a small copy of a book called Manners for the Perfect Gentry.

He taught Pierrot to hold his chin up higher and to cry out that he didn’t know why on earth he wasn’t in Italy. The absurdity of it all did not faze Irving in the least. He was at an age where even being alive was absurd and so he had retired from the realm of common sense.

? ? ?

IRVING ENROLLED PIERROT in a private school. He thought Pierrot would be good at school, given his artistic temperament, but he was wrong. The boy was brilliant on the debate team. No one on the opposite team understood what he was saying, and so they had great difficulty responding to or challenging his points. However, he failed in every other subject. Pierrot couldn’t handle any kind of structure, or hard work, or discipline. He refused to learn even basic algebraic equations. And he refused to learn the birth date of a single war. He wasn’t even accomplished in music class, as he couldn’t learn to read music. Pierrot ended up missing most days at school and staying home with Irving.

? ? ?

IRVING DRANK EVERY NIGHT. One day, when Pierrot was seventeen, a bottle of very expensive wine was sent over by the mayor as a gift for Irving’s endowment to Montreal’s art museum. Irving was loath to drink it alone and so he told the servant to fill the boy’s tumbler to the brim with wine as well.

“Have a drink, my boy. I need to make a toast and I need someone to raise their glass and drink to it. A toast must be seconded.” He held up his wineglass and Pierrot held up his tumbler. “Let us toast that we were born intelligent men. There are more and more stupid people born in the world every day. We are lighthouses for brilliant ideas lost in the dark, searching for an audience.”

They clinked their glasses together. Pierrot knocked back his wine. He loved the warm feeling at the back of his throat and its strange burgundy sweetness. He put the glass back on the table when he was done. The alcohol entered his heart and was sent out in a gush through all the veins in his skinny body.

For a moment Pierrot felt as though a trapdoor had opened beneath him and he was plunging downward. He felt as though he had slipped off a diving board and was now doing somersaults under the water. He felt numb. He picked up a fork and pressed it against his skin. He was surprised to find that he hardly felt anything, no matter how hard he pressed.

A similar thing was happening to his mind. When he thought about things that had previously caused him pain, they only tickled him. He was always afraid to think of the other children he had left behind at the orphanage because it would break his heart. But now he thought about them and their memories had no power over him. Not only did the thought of them no longer cause him any pain, they no longer caused him to have any reaction at all.

After the seventh toast, Pierrot had finished four tumblers of wine. His lips were dark red, as if he had kissed a Parisian whore. His teeth were purple, as if he had bitten into an animal. He was feeling hot. So he unbuttoned his shirt and flung it onto the floor. He sat there like a mad Roman emperor.

He started laughing. He picked up his chair and he carried it to the other side of the table and he sat next to Irving. He put his arm around Irving and announced that he was swell. He jumped up when the maid came in and gave her a big kiss on the lips.

“Sit down! Let this be a lesson to you. No matter how wild you get, the one rule you have to follow is don’t impregnate the servants. A pretty servant girl is like a cupcake—you can have some pleasure in it, but only in a momentary way. You don’t want to commit to her. There has to be a division between high and low. Looking down on people is an important motivator.

“I became the man that I am in order to look down on people. That’s why a doctor found a vaccine for smallpox, you know, not because he was interested in helping out all those sick people, but because he wanted to make all his doctor friends jealous.”

Pierrot stood up on the table and stuck his arms in the air. “Look at me way up here!”

“Well, you don’t have to be so literal, my boy. Think in terms of the big picture, will you?”

“Let me get my notebook!” Pierrot exclaimed. “I have to record these instructions for my edification. I have so much to catch up on.”

Sometimes when Irving was particularly loquacious, Pierrot would take out a notebook and write down things he was saying. Pierrot had a way of looking so intently: his eyes would open up so wide. He would wear the most compassionate expression and his dazzling blue eyes certainly never hurt. It inspired Irving to share his most improbable pensées.

“Appearance is the most important thing. People are rarely curious about anything else. They don’t go the extra mile. Just get yourself a well-tailored suit and never mind personality, et cetera . . . Did you get that?”