I
was given to understand I was to apprehend three hyenas.
This
lady accosted me on her way to Le Steak de Paris muttering something
about hyenas in a bookshop and Balzac. I hadn't the foggiest what she
was going on about – I wasn't very literary-minded in those days –
though I gathered she seemed to think just from looking at me that I
was a,
a New Yorker and b,
a plain clothes officer or somebody that could at least uphold the
law or whatever the etiquette is in bookshops.
I
was neither. Just an English tourist visiting New York in the fall of
'63. I had to tell her that. She was naturally crestfallen, but
welcomed me to the city and invited me to partake of some sardines
and plain bread. I accepted gratefully, being newly arrived. Although
I didn't know her from Adam and really couldn't be sure she wasn't a
nut. A person escaped from an institution or something, let out for
the day to associate with 'regular' people. I mean this was New York,
right. And anything goes in New York, so I'd been told.
But
hyenas? Balzac? I couldn't find the connection, but then, I thought,
not being familiar with Balzac, maybe there was one...and anyhow I
had come to New York expecting, no, wanting adventure and so in that
spirit I should humour anything the city offered up.
This
lady was it. Though she was, as I found out, Irish-born. And proud of
it, too. I wonder that I hadn't noticed the accent because there were
hints of it there.
So,
on a sleepy Saturday afternoon, over the luncheon table, we spoke
further on Balzac and mashed sardines and hyenas. Or rather she spoke
and I listened, for her brush with 'these horrors' had really quite
rattled her.
She
told a good yarn, like she was practised in it or spent a lot of time
observing people and listening in to their conversations. I wanted to
ask her if the city did that to you: made you curious about the
people around you, but I found her, now we were a little acquainted,
quite formidable; I didn't like to interrupt, just in case she took
off her glasses (as she'd done with the hyenas) to get a better look
at me. Impressionable young men, as I was then, can't bear being
scrutinized, particularly by a woman somewhere in her mid-forties who
to them all of a sudden seem worldly-wise. And inwardly I was
embarrassed, too, for in those first seconds of our meeting hadn't I
presumed she was mad?
She
wasn't, as some of you might now be thinking, a Mrs. Robinson either.
For
some reason we didn't exchange names. It didn't come up or we didn't
get around to it; it didn't seem to matter. Company is company and
talk is talk, I guess. And the sardines were very good, even without
whatever ingredient Balzac was said to add to their paste. That's
what the lady had been reading of, in the bookshop, when her 'ears
were insulted', and now couldn't recall just what it was he added. It
was obviously a puzzle to her that she meant to solve. She hadn't
purchased that book; that book was still in the shop, where she'd
also left the hyenas to their antics.
The
hyenas, I should explain, had human form: a man and a woman and
another. A bookcase hid the third from her. The lady didn't give much
of a description of them, as to their physical appearance, but their
hard voices, 'squawks of laughter' and puns had stirred her into a
quiet rage. She had even bestowed on them names: Cruelty, Stupidity
and Bad Noise, which I saw from her eyes she was testing out on me,
to gage my reaction. Well, I almost choked on a piece of crusty
bread, though I couldn't say if that was the effect she hoped for, to
say nothing of my manners. And I only tell you this so you get a
better idea of just who I was sitting across from. She seemed to me a
Muriel Spark type; in fact, it's Ms. Spark I see whenever I now try
to picture her. But then the years since that chance encounter are
long. I turn eighty this year, though still compose my thoughts like
a boy. Funny what you remember and what you forget...
The
lady and I parted on good terms, but, as with our names, no exchanges
of addresses were made, nor did I run into her again (or she into me)
during my stay. However, I did pay a visit to her
bookshop on Forty-eighth Street. All was calm; no hyenas were
present.
Picture credit: Woman in a Bookshop, Aubrey Beardsley.
Article Recommendation: Balzac's
Favourite Food by The Long-winded Lady (AKA Maeve Brennan).
This post was penned in 2019.
