Read Online Trust by Cynthia Ozick - Free Book Online

check would turn up, a certain check made out to no one—no cause, mind you, no charge, no invoice, no broker's statement, no charity, no bill of any kind, no reason on earth for it—money for no one in the world. And Connelly went to my father to find out who it was for, to name a category for it at least. He had to account for it, you see—he hates theories, and he has none of his own. But my father wouldn't reply. I was there, you see—I saw it all. 'Never mind,' my father said, and a terrible look came over his face. 'Go ahead and post it anywhere,' I heard him say, 'and never mind.'"
    "What sort of terrible look?" Stefanie demanded, leaning close.
    "Angry, but more ashamed than angry. My father is never ashamed. He was angry because he was ashamed."
    "Ah," our companion murmured, "he's ashamed of Mrs. Vand."
    "He's fond of Mrs. Vand," William's son amended, staring over her head at me. "He's engrossed in her affairs."
    "I should expect so," I retorted. "Her attorney ought to be."
    "But he doesn't think her responsible. I suppose he never thought so—not even long ago. Nevertheless he's fond of Mrs. Vand," he asserted. "I imagine he's forgiven her."
    "There was nothing to forgive."
    "True: it was all unforgivable," he said.
    "They did each other no harm," I declared.
    "I'm in the dark!" cried Stefanie. "Were they in love?" she marveled, searching out my reply, "your mother and his father?"
    "No," I gave out. "They were married."
    "How absolutely crazy!"
    "We," William's son supplied rapidly, "were born after the divorce—both of us. Don't get the idea that we're related."
    "But in a way—" she began doubtfully.
    "Not at all," he vouchsafed her.
    "Not at all," I conceded, and reflected how I had once claimed him for a brother.
    We sat for a while in the ambiguous air—after rain a mid-August night breaks the heart—and no one cared or dared to speak. The little orchestra› worn down by the clamor (or my mother's program worn out beyond its last Valse Militaire), was playing a samba too quickly, in somewhat clandestine style, as though trying to get through each bar as unobtrusively (although contrariwise as loudly) as possible. The saxophonist had rid himself of his instrument and was now plying a shining brass horn. Perhaps it was our distance from the dancers that charged them uncannily, like charmed snakes emerging from baskets: from afar they seemed miniature but dangerous: if too clever for snakes, then clever enough for leaping swords. They thrust toward one another and away, dueling, while the horn, choked off by the wind in our ears, rose and rose. It towered finally, and I thought of the bugle that did not sound again while I waited for it in the washed grass; but it was not the same. The horn was no more holy than the workaday lips, pressed to the tongue of the brass, of its shallow-jowled master—it did its duty merely, and screamed as well as it could, and promised nothing. The stiff high note broke off eventually, and the ball-room sent out applause like ululations of the leaves of countless paper forests; it was, as celebration, counterfeit and sad. Nothing in the world can be sustained, neither bugles nor hope nor woe nor desire nor common well-being nor horns, and even redemption, that suspect covenant, can be revised by the bitter and loveless Christ to whom alone nothing, not even life, is irretrievable. Relief is our reward for recognizing this truth, that the note cannot be sustained forever and the irretrievable can never be returned to us; and there is no alternative but to go on with the facts exactly as they are.
    I came away from the cactus plants and stood against the railing, as in a ship on the high seas, and because William's son had done so before, I looked down into the meditative river. But there was little to see, only a moon-shaped excursion boat with its hundred lights and its hidden cargo of contraband lovers, and I moved instead to the other side of the terrace to watch the