Read Online Andrew's Brain: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow - Free Book Online
Authors: E.L. Doctorow
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of my eyes. And I think as we all laughed and applauded at the end of the soft-shoe number I may have sobbed with joy. And I was made fearless in that feeling, it was not tainted by anxiety, I at that moment had no concern that I might trip and fall over one of them and squash him to death.
So that cold clear emotionless pond of silence—
I was rising from it to living and breathing, to great gasping breaths of life. Finding redemption in the loving attentions of this girl.
Afterward, we excused ourselves and she led me tothe dead end of the street. We climbed over the retaining wall where a path through the ground cover led down to the beach. We found ourselves alone on the beach, not in moonlight, there was no moon to be seen, but in the misty dim light of the cities to the north, the light pollution of Los Angeles spreading out over the sea. I had resisted going for a swim in daylight, not wanting to display my concave chest and skinny arms to the world. Briony had of course seen me in the nude, but one’s structure in a bedroom at night when the predominant light is one’s intellectual presence is not the vulnerable thing that a pale white professor of cognitive science, bony and slightly potbellied, conveys to the world on a public beach. But nothing could stop me now, we kicked off our shoes, dropped our clothes in the sand, and ran into the surf, which was warm and lapping. We swam together in the Pacific sea, and kissed of course, and I felt the smoothness of her, the tautness of her nipples in the briny sea, running my hand between her legs, holding her by the waist, kissing her as we clasped each other as we were rolled over and over together, cupped in the curl of the waves.
When we came out I dried her with my shirt and we dressed and sat there on little thrones I built out of the sand. This was the time of peaceful reflection when I chose to satisfy my curiosity. I had seen on the wall ofBill’s study two framed naturalization certificates. Bill and Betty hadn’t been born here.
Pop was born in Czechoslovakia, Briony said. That’s the Czech Republic now. Mom is Irish, from Limerick.
Well, how did they meet?
Ah, she laughed, then you’ve never heard of Leo Singer!
At this, Briony jumped up and pulled me to my feet. She walked backward, holding my hands. And she told me about this man who went around Europe finding people like her mom and dad, hiring them and training them to work in his show, Leo Singer’s Lilliputians.
Here Briony turned, ran ahead, and found it necessary to do a cartwheel. When she was back on her feet I said, What kind of a show?
Well, Mom says the theme changed every season, and the costumes, but it was essentially vaudeville, with songs and sketches and routines like you saw tonight. Circus acts like jugglers, and wire walkers, people who could play the fiddle behind their back, everything you could think of. The attraction was their size, and how many things they could do anyway that people would come to see and marvel at.
How animated she was telling me this family history—living it, almost, by punctuating her account with handstands, cartwheels, back flips to a standing position,running broad jumps. There on the beach that night to the rhythmic lapping of the surf.
He toured them in all the European capitals and that was how Mom and Dad met. They were in the Leo Singer Lilliputstadt.
So, Doc, did you ever hear of this man, Singer?
No.
That’s two of us. But it turns out he was the go-to guy when MGM needed Munchkins for their film. He was this international dealer in Munchkins.
I hear a note of disdain in your voice.
Clearly an operator who infantilized these people, made a spectacle of them, and made himself a fortune in the process.
Didn’t you say we all have an affection for what is miniature? And here they were in California, her parents, comfortably retired in their own home, a lovely family.
I know, I know. What was in store for them from their villages
So that cold clear emotionless pond of silence—
I was rising from it to living and breathing, to great gasping breaths of life. Finding redemption in the loving attentions of this girl.
Afterward, we excused ourselves and she led me tothe dead end of the street. We climbed over the retaining wall where a path through the ground cover led down to the beach. We found ourselves alone on the beach, not in moonlight, there was no moon to be seen, but in the misty dim light of the cities to the north, the light pollution of Los Angeles spreading out over the sea. I had resisted going for a swim in daylight, not wanting to display my concave chest and skinny arms to the world. Briony had of course seen me in the nude, but one’s structure in a bedroom at night when the predominant light is one’s intellectual presence is not the vulnerable thing that a pale white professor of cognitive science, bony and slightly potbellied, conveys to the world on a public beach. But nothing could stop me now, we kicked off our shoes, dropped our clothes in the sand, and ran into the surf, which was warm and lapping. We swam together in the Pacific sea, and kissed of course, and I felt the smoothness of her, the tautness of her nipples in the briny sea, running my hand between her legs, holding her by the waist, kissing her as we clasped each other as we were rolled over and over together, cupped in the curl of the waves.
When we came out I dried her with my shirt and we dressed and sat there on little thrones I built out of the sand. This was the time of peaceful reflection when I chose to satisfy my curiosity. I had seen on the wall ofBill’s study two framed naturalization certificates. Bill and Betty hadn’t been born here.
Pop was born in Czechoslovakia, Briony said. That’s the Czech Republic now. Mom is Irish, from Limerick.
Well, how did they meet?
Ah, she laughed, then you’ve never heard of Leo Singer!
At this, Briony jumped up and pulled me to my feet. She walked backward, holding my hands. And she told me about this man who went around Europe finding people like her mom and dad, hiring them and training them to work in his show, Leo Singer’s Lilliputians.
Here Briony turned, ran ahead, and found it necessary to do a cartwheel. When she was back on her feet I said, What kind of a show?
Well, Mom says the theme changed every season, and the costumes, but it was essentially vaudeville, with songs and sketches and routines like you saw tonight. Circus acts like jugglers, and wire walkers, people who could play the fiddle behind their back, everything you could think of. The attraction was their size, and how many things they could do anyway that people would come to see and marvel at.
How animated she was telling me this family history—living it, almost, by punctuating her account with handstands, cartwheels, back flips to a standing position,running broad jumps. There on the beach that night to the rhythmic lapping of the surf.
He toured them in all the European capitals and that was how Mom and Dad met. They were in the Leo Singer Lilliputstadt.
So, Doc, did you ever hear of this man, Singer?
No.
That’s two of us. But it turns out he was the go-to guy when MGM needed Munchkins for their film. He was this international dealer in Munchkins.
I hear a note of disdain in your voice.
Clearly an operator who infantilized these people, made a spectacle of them, and made himself a fortune in the process.
Didn’t you say we all have an affection for what is miniature? And here they were in California, her parents, comfortably retired in their own home, a lovely family.
I know, I know. What was in store for them from their villages
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