Elena by Thomas H. Cook
“I thought you might be here,” I said as I neared her.
She looked at me. “I’m glad you came, William.”
“Really? Father thought you just wanted to be alone.”
“I did. But that’s lasted long enough.” She patted the bench beside her. “Come, sit down. You’ve walked quite a long ways.”
I sat down beside her on the bench. The light rain had stopped hours before and now the clouds were breaking up entirely, silver lines shooting out above the horizon.
“Have you been here a long time?” I asked.
“About an hour,” Elena said. “We’ll go back home in a little while. I just want to stay here a bit longer.” She turned to face the gate of Whitman House. In his memoir of her, Jason wrote that thought moved across Elena’s face in a very physical manner, like a cloud passing over a field. I remember very clearly that at this particular moment it did.
“What are you thinking, Elena?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Just things in general.” She glanced about the park. “It’s very peaceful here.”
Elena would take that sense of peace back with her to New York, the sense, perhaps but half-remembered, of the lines of silver after the long grayness of the day, of the tall, firm gate and the little road that curved gently beyond it. She would take these things back with her, and they would lend a curious calm to the final page of New England Maid, ending that often angry work with a respectful quiet: “And so I sat in a small park across from the madhouse in which my mother died and thought about those things which are a part of all our thinking, from the most common to the most grand: our own youth, the childhood of our children, the old age of our parents … all that lingers but does not abide.”
Elena plunged ever more deeply into her studies after her return to New York. Martha called this a “compensatory act, one involving the release of cathartic effort, transferable from mourning to labor.” There may, in fact, be some truth in this; but it should also be remembered that, at the same time, Dr. Stein was beginning his final assault upon Ossian, and that much of the labor involved fell directly on Elena as his support.
I was attending graduate classes regularly during 1930, and I often ran into the two of them as they made their way down the steps of the library, Elena carrying the books, Dr. Stein barely carrying himself.
Despite evidence of decline, Dr. Stein always appeared quite relaxed and congenial on those occasions. “So good to see you, William,” he’d say. Then we would chat awhile, one or the other of us pursuing some willowy thread through Cowper or Gaelic mythology, while Elena stood silently on the steps, clutching a stack of books to her chest. Looking back on those encounters now, I realize that Elena must have felt somewhat left out as Dr. Stein and I, old professor and ambitious graduate student, grandly elaborated some literary notion or plowed through a complex exegesis of doubtful interest to anyone but ourselves.
At the time, of course, Elena gave no hint of this. But once, years later, when I was late for an appointment and full of involved apology, she cut me off quickly with a single cryptic retort: “Never mind, William, I know how to wait.” There was an edge of personal affront in her voice, and I think it came from all the times she had been made to feel invisible by Dr. Stein and me and countless others. In Quality, she finally expressed this sense of what she called “female waiting” in a passage that deals, at least tangentially, with Kate Chopin’s The Awakening:
In those idle moments on the verandah, while the heroine waits amid the lingering smell of departed cigars, there is all we shall ever need to know of that part of woman which ceaselessly petitions for a wider life, which waits through time, from Sappho on the rock of Leucadia, to Virginia Woolf staring down into the canal, still living in that ghostly pose she thought her only true and living self. Thus is female life stranded in the outer chamber, beneath the arched hallway, while behind the tightly closed, exclusionary door the delegates convene, the generals confer. And then, beyond the great hall and into the streets and houses of ordinary life, this waiting persists endlessly, until it becomes more than manners, custom, law, becomes more than what one does and forms a part of what one is, a silence at the center of the self, one which can no longer contemplate its own release. Until on a sweltering summer afternoon, while the rest of the party watches the regatta from another shore, the summons comes to wait no more, and later there is found only a parasol rammed into the wet sand, and beyond that, nothing at all but the open sea.
If my sister’s resentment was this powerful in 1930, she kept it very much to herself. She did not permit it to spoil the relationship which had grown between herself and Dr. Stein.
This relationship kept our little group buzzing for a time. Tom called it Elena’s “May/December thing,” and Sam said that the problem between my sister and Dr. Stein was mainly aesthetic. “You don’t put a pretty young thing like Elena next to a withered old crone like Stein and come out with a balanced portrait,” he said. Mary was not in the least bothered by it, however. The real worrier was Harry.
“You really should do something about this situation, William,” he said to me as we sat in my apartment one afternoon. “It’s unnatural.”
I laughed. “Unnatural? Really, Harry, don’t you think that’s going a bit far?”
Harry nodded self-consciously. “Well, maybe you’re right. But she’s just a young woman, and a person like that, innocent, you know, she …”
“I think Elena can take care of herself, Harry,” I said.
“You don’t know that old Agrippa, William,” Harry said. “The mind — and he has a powerful one — the mind can do strange things.”
I smiled. “Are you suggesting she’s been hypnotized, Harry?”
“Of course not. But have you seen her lately?”
“Not for a few weeks.”
Harry shook his head. “She looks very bad, William. Sort of frumpy, if you want to know the truth. Old clothes — wrinkled ones, at that. She looks pale, unhealthy, as if she never sees the sun.”
“For God’s sake, Harry, she’s very busy. She has all her own work, then she has this other stuff she has to do for Dr. Stein. She can’t run about looking like a debutante all the time.”
Harry shifted uncomfortably on his seat, then stared at me pointedly. “Perhaps so, William, but when you get right down to it, do you think it’s healthy for a woman her age not to go out, not to be with other people her own age, to stay cooped up with a man old enough to be her grandfather?”
The protective instinct rose in me suddenly. “All right, Harry,” I said. “I’ll make it my business to check in on Elena.”
And that is what I did, the very next day. When she came into the lobby of her residence hall, I could not have been more astonished. She did not look pallid; she looked radiant, her eyes shining, cheerful, her whole manner full of sparkling energy.
I lifted my hand slowly toward her. “You look … Elena …” I stammered, “you look beautiful.”
Elena laughed. “William, please.”
“No,” I said, “it’s amazing. Harry told me you’d grown pale and shriveled with too much reading. What foolishness.” I smiled. “Now I know how I am destined to be remembered, Elena.”
“How’s that?”
“As the man who had the beautiful sister.”
Elena laughed again and took my arm. “Let’s go out for a while. It’s such a lovely day. We’ll go for a walk, get an egg cream. Let’s just do something outside. Harry’s not altogether wrong, you know. I spend too much time indoors.”
We walked down to Columbus Avenue and stopped in at one of the dairy stores that were in every neighborhood in those days. I remember that a large man carefully followed Elena’s instructions as he cut an enormous slice of cheese from the tub, then wrapped it in wax paper.
We took a bus up Broadway. They were green and white double-deckers then, and we sat on the upper level, munching cheese and talking quietly about whatever street scene passed below us.
At 125th Street — at Elena’s insistence — we took an open-air trolley cross-town to the ferry station. A few minutes later we were chugging across the Hudson, the two of us standing together at the rail, watching Manhattan drift away. Elena pointed upriver to an old tumbledown shack on the New Jersey side.
“That’s the Columbia boathouse,” she said. “Dr. Stein took me over there once. He has very fond memories of that place.” She looked at me. “He used to go over there with his wife, to watch the boys practice.”
“I didn’t know he was married.”
“Oh yes, for many years. She died in the Spanish flu epidemic. The same one that almost killed you.”
“He’s been a widower that long?”
Elena nodded, then turned back toward the boathouse. “Yes, he has.”
I touched her arm. “Elena, has it ever occurred to you that this relationship you have with Dr. Stein … that it’s unusual?”
Elena continued to watch the boathouse. A breeze from the river lifted a strand of her hair. “No, but I know that others think it is.”
“Well, I’m thinking particularly of Harry.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been very worried about you.”
Elena glanced down at her hands on the rail but said nothing.
“Are you at all aware that Harry is in love with you?” I asked.
“I am,” Elena whispered.
“Do you plan to do anything about it?”
Elena turned to me. “Do? Do what? Marry him?”
“I’m reasonably certain that’s what he has in mind.”
“He hasn’t asked me.”
“And if he did?”
“I’d say no.”
Someone began playing an accordion inside the ferry cabin.
“He loves you, Elena,” I said. “He would marry you in a minute. Yet you seem to belong to Dr. Stein.”
Elena was listening to the music. “Belong is a bit much, William.”
“What is it, then? Enchantment?”
Elena looked back out over the river. A large white ship could be seen far downstream.
“I learn from Dr. Stein,” she said crisply.
I shook my head. “That’s not enough. For God’s sake, you’re twenty years old. And he’s near — what, eighty?”
Elena nodded. “That’s not the point.”
“What is?”
Elena straightened herself. “I’ve decided to leave the residence hall. I’m going to move into Dr. Stein’s building.”
I was astonished. “You’re what? You’re going to move in with him?”
Elena shook her head. “Of course not, William. I’m simply going to move down the hall from his apartment. There’s a woman, a Mrs. Connolly, a widow whose two sons now have families of their own, she has a room. I’ll be able to come and go more or less as I please.”
“And be near the good doctor?” I asked sarcastically.
Elena said nothing, but I could see the heat rising in her.
“Remember that night with Howard and Elizabeth?” I reminded her. “Remember Ariadne’s voice?”
Elena turned toward me. “I am following Ariadne’s voice.”
I smiled thinly. “And it’s old and has a German accent?”
“Yes, it does,” Elena said firmly. “He is teaching me to be wise, and I am going to stay with him, William, until he dies.” She waited for me to digest this new set of circumstances, then she smiled tentatively. “I’ll be living down the hall from him, but he needs me quite a bit, so I’ll be at his apartment much of the time. You may visit me there, if you like.”
Two weeks later I did just that. It was early in the evening, and I had first gone to Mrs. Connolly’s. As expected, Elena was with Dr. Stein, and so I walked down the corridor and knocked at his door.
Elena answered it.
“Hello, William,” she said. Her voice was flat, but her eyes were questioning. She was trying to guess my mood.
“I’ve just come to pay you that visit,” I said softly as I removed my hat.
Her face brightened. “Good,” she said. “Come in.”
It was a lovely room, lined with mahogany bookshelves, an enormous desk by the window, and in the corner, a cello resting upright in its stand.
“Can’t play the cello anymore, William,” Dr. Stein said as he came into the room. He thrust out his hand. “Good to see you.”
I nodded. “And you, sir.”
“Sit down, won’t you?”
I took a seat opposite a small sofa. Dr. Stein lowered himself onto the sofa, Elena’s arm under his, carefully helping him.
“Now you sit, my dear,” Dr. Stein said.
Elena sat down beside him.
“Would you like a drink, my boy?” Dr. Stein asked immediately.
“Yes, perhaps a brandy, if you have it.”
“Of course,” Dr. Stein said casually. He turned to Elena. “Would you mind?”
Elena went to the kitchen. I could hear her tinkling glasses together.
Dr. Stein seemed to take my measure for a moment, then he spoke. “I understand you disapprove of Elena living down the hall.”
“I’m surprised she told you that,” I said.
“Why shouldn’t she?” Dr. Stein said. “Is it true still, my boy?”
“I have a sister …”
“Whose reputation you must protect?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Stein laughed and shook his head. “I am dying, William. How could I possibly commit an offense against your sister?”
“It’s just that it seems odd, sir,” I said cautiously.
“To whom?”
“I’m told that some people talk about it at the university,” I said, repeating a rumor whose only source was Harry Morton.
“Idiots,” Dr. Stein said emphatically. “You must ignore such foolishness, otherwise your life may be crushed by it.” He leaned back into the sofa and smiled. “Let that be an end to it, then.”
Elena came out with the glasses of brandy, distributed them, then returned to her place on the sofa.
Dr. Stein lifted his glass in the air. “What shall we toast?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
Dr. Stein regarded me pointedly. “To dutifulness, then,” he said.
And so we toasted this virtue, then went on to discuss many things. Dr. Stein talked about Calderón and Elena about Pindar. She sometimes took exception to one of Dr. Stein’s remarks, and he would listen very carefully to her, though he rarely recanted.
Toward six, Dr. Stein invited me to dinner. I immediately agreed, and for the next hour the three of us worked in his small kitchen, which Dr. Stein had stocked with a copious assortment of Old World spices and delicacies. He was not able to move about with much ease by then, but he could shout orders with terrific energy, while Elena and I worked at the cutting board and the stove.
At eight we dined on the meal we had prepared — lentil soup and beef Stroganoff, with a Riesling that a friend of Dr. Stein’s had managed to smuggle into the country a year or so before.
“To all that keeps the heart uplifted, then,” Dr. Stein said, his glass raised high. “And to you, Elena,” he added, glancing at her with a smile.
After dinner, we talked mostly about the work they had been doing together, a conversation I found somewhat tedious since I knew little of the subject.
Dr. Stein noticed this after a time, and he stood up, walked to his desk, and pulled out a large typed manuscript. “Here, William. Better just to read it.”
I took the book from his hand and absently flipped over the title page. He had dedicated it to my sister.
“A university press is set to publish it,” he said, returning to the sofa, “so it won’t be advertised in The American Mercury, if you know what I mean.”
I looked up from the manuscript and smiled.
“No tall stacks of them i
“I don’t think so, Dr. Stein,” I said.
He nodded. “Good.”
Then he talked on for a while about those ideas which had meant most to him, his voice turning almost nostalgic. At one point Elena brought him another brandy.
At around ten, I decided that I had stayed long enough. I stood up and shook Dr. Stein’s hand.
“Thank you very much for having me,” I said.
Dr. Stein did not get up. “Very pleased, William,” he said. “I wonder, would you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Would you take a picture, William, of Elena and me?”
“Now?”
Dr. Stein nodded. “Yes, now. Just as we are, quite casual, nothing posed, just the two of us on the sofa.”
Elena stood up. “I’ll get the camera,” she said and went into an adjoining room.
Dr. Stein smiled quietly. “I trust your mind is at ease, William?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Elena walked back into the room and handed me the camera. I stepped back, indicating to Elena that she should move closer to Dr. Stein, then snapped the picture.
In the photograph they are seated quite close together on that weathered floral sofa, which later became Elena’s and which now rests in the front room of her house on Cape Cod. She is wearing a white blouse and long dark skirt, her “girls’ school uniform,” as she came to call it. Her hair is long, parted at the middle, the strands of the right side held back from her face by a tortoise shell barrette. Dr. Stein appears rather ponderous beside her, dressed in his black three-piece suit, the gold watch chain dangling from his vest. It is a grainy photograph, taken with a flash in indoor light, but one can sense that patina of dust which forever marred the good doctor’s shoes and the flecks of lint which clung to him like tiny flakes of unmelted snow. He has placed one hand beneath his coat, European style, and his head is thrust back, almost cockily, as if captured in a moment of transcendent pride. He seems — how shall I put it? — most deeply pleased to be alive.