She took notes on lined paper. She stared out the window. She paged through books from her grandmother’s crammed shelves searching for—what, she wasn’t sure.
She tried to see the “emptiness” of which Madelena had spoken with such feeling, miles away at Ground Zero; but since she had not ever seen the twin towers there originally, she could not fathom their absence.
“Naomi, dear?”—there might come a light rap at the door.
Madelena was slipping away for a few hours, or for most of the day. But they would be going out in the evening—of course.
So many people! Names and faces soon began to blur.
Madelena’s colleagues in philosophy, linguistics, theater; musicians and composers; painters and sculptors, journalists, writers and poets . . . There was a tall courtly white-haired and -bearded Hungarian-born semioticist named Laslov whose heavily accented English was difficult to decipher, who seemed very fond of Madelena, as Madelena was of him; during Naomi’s visit she would meet Laslov several times, at restaurant dinners in the West Village arranged by Madelena. (Naomi wondered: were Laslov and Madelena lovers, or had they been lovers? She was struck by a playful ease between them that she hadn’t observed between her grandmother and other men, and a particular gentleness in the way Laslov pronounced “Lena.”) There was the New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm whom Madelena much admired as “fearless” and “intransigent” in her non-fiction essays, and who seemed to admire Madelena as a “kindred spirit”; there was the controversial gay writer Edmund White, who hosted a dinner party for Madelena and her visiting granddaughter in his elegant Chelsea apartment, and quite charmed Naomi with his wit, warmth, and erudition. An Israeli filmmaker named Yael Ravel, a visiting fellow at the Institute known for her documentaries about communities of Israeli and Palestinian women, made a strong impression upon Naomi by saying, to the audience, following a showing of one of her films: “What is most required for the documentary filmmaker is patience. When you encounter your true subject, you will know it.”
And then there was Karl Kinch, the most memorable of all the New Yorkers.
“WE WON’T STAY LONG. Kinch rarely has visitors. He expressed some interest in meeting you.”
Naomi noted the qualification—some interest.
Yet more improbably—meeting you.
Doubtfully she asked why would this friend of Madelena’s want to meet her?
“Why? Why d’you think?”—Madelena smiled, though with rather an edge.
“I—I don’t know . . .”
“Of course you don’t ‘know.’ But you might infer, Naomi, that I’ve spoken of you to him.”
Naomi could not think of a reply. Wondering what on earth her grandmother could have said about her to arouse the interest and curiosity of this stranger?
Madelena added, “And Kinch is not a ‘friend’ of mine, exactly. We are too close, we know each other too intimately, to be for each other what the bland word friend implies.”
Kinch had been variously a poet—(“A prodigy, who published his first book of poems at the age of twenty-one”)—a composer—(“Atonal music, exquisite and subtle if grating to the ordinary ear”)—a memoirist—(“Memento Mori is the title of Kinch’s precocious first memoir, told from a posthumous perspective”)—a translator—(“Working with a native speaker and ‘translating’ texts into his own, idiosyncratic English prose”)—a critic—(“Fiercely original, with terribly high standards, and feared by many”). He’d made himself into something of an amateur-expert Biblical scholar, with a particular interest in the poetry of Psalms; he’d taught himself Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Aramaic. He had no advanced degrees—he’d begun Ph.D. programs at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia but dropped out after realizing that the individuals entrusted with assessing his work were “inferior” to him intellectually and imaginatively; he did teach from time to time, graduate seminars in esoteric special topics, at Hunter College, Columbia College, New York University, and Princeton, as a “distinguished” visitor.
“Of course, Kinch is ‘not well.’ That is the first thing that is said about him though when you are with him, it is the last thing, or nearly, that you are struck by.”
Naomi asked in what way Kinch was “not well”?—but Madelena seemed reluctant to explain.
“Kinch has written beautifully and persuasively of the tyranny of ‘wellness’—‘normality’—‘sanity.’ You will see for yourself.”
The first time Madelena took Naomi to visit the mysterious Kinch, who lived on the sixteenth floor of a grimly featureless high-rise building several blocks north of Washington Square Park, they were rebuffed in the foyer by an embarrassed doorman who informed Madelena—(whom he called “Professor Wein”)—that “Professor Kinch” could not have visitors that day, and “deeply regretted” that their visit would have to be rescheduled.
“Really!” Madelena laughed, though visibly annoyed. “May I speak with Professor Kinch? Will you call him?”