“You’re not supposed to throw things in there, you know.”
Pierrot turned and saw a teenage girl in a tartan jumper and black bow tie standing there. “Will you kindly refer to me as Dr. Pierrot?” he said. “And I’m sorry to tell you this, but you are exhibiting all the classical symptoms of a fatal illness. I’ll have to do a nude examination, if you don’t mind. Is there a private place we can find at your house?”
The girl’s face went red and her eyes went wide when he said this. But then she smiled.
Maybe if he made love to this girl, he would go around feeling guilty about sleeping with her and not Elo?se.
? ? ?
THE GIRLS WHO WORKED as servants at the house or in the neighborhood knew that Pierrot was a fool. They knew that if they hooked up with him, they would be miserable and looking after their children on their own and living off charity for the rest of their lives. They would find themselves living in a tiny apartment with cockroaches underneath the wallpaper and eating oatmeal for dinner. He promised you good times. But poor people knew that all good times had to be paid for. You’d be scrubbing laundry for extra pennies late at night. No thank you. If they wanted to hear a Shakespearean sonnet, they would take a collection out of the library and read it themselves. Pierrot didn’t impress them. They didn’t think he had the sophisticated language of an intellectual. They thought he had the mellifluous tongue of a hustler.
In their minds, Pierrot was a man who would deliver a pithy aphorism to a newspaperman upon his arrest and then never be heard from again.
His looks were fundamentally appealing to girls, however, and the rich ones could not resist him. Rich girls didn’t know the bite of poverty. Their parents could buy them a husband like Pierrot. And when they met Pierrot, they wanted their parents to make such a purchase. He was like a pony. He snuck into their windows at their request. They would kiss his neck. He would do whatever they told him to do. But Pierrot always felt lost afterward. Once he climbed out of a girl’s window and up onto her roof after she heard her father come home. He sat up on the roof not knowing how to get home, since he had left his shoes behind.
There was a black cat up there too that was yawning, having come to terms with its bad luck.
? ? ?
ONE AFTERNOON, after making love to a girl named Juliette who lived in a giant house on top of the hill, he found himself particularly blue. As he was walking down the corridor to the front door he passed a large display case with glass doors. He couldn’t help but notice, on one of the shelves, a glittering red apple. When he put his face up to the case, he saw that it was covered in tiny red jewels. He wanted the fruit. It was an urge he couldn’t resist. He stopped for a moment, looking up and down the hall to see if anyone was there, and listening for footsteps. When he was sure that he was alone, he opened the cabinet door slowly and gently. He reached in for the apple.
The apple itself was just begging, begging to be plucked. It always considered itself somewhat of a fake because it could not be consumed. There is no pleasure whatsoever in immortality. But while it was in Pierrot’s pocket, it felt a sense of adventure. And when Pierrot balanced the apple on his head outside, the hard fruit beamed with reflected sunlight.
Pierrot knew that everything in the world was alive. Everything was composed of molecules that shook and vibrated and hummed. There was no such thing as permanence. Even the most stalwart object—such as a statue in the park—was struggling to keep itself together.
? ? ?
AS HE WAS WALKING HOME he began to feel like a thief. Wonderful! he thought. I am not only a pervert but also a thief! Life is a path that you go along, discovering worse and worse things about yourself. He was not quite sure how he could return the apple. He thought of sneaking over in the middle of the night and putting it back. He thought about mailing it, but then he worried it would be traceable. They would know it had been him.
He climbed into the large maple tree in the middle of the park. He was, as you would imagine, an excellent climber. There was a hole in it that he had often seen squirrels dart in and out of. Pierrot reached his hand into the hole and then let the apple fall. From the sudden thud of the falling fruit, one could assume the hole wasn’t particularly deep.
Pierrot scrambled back down the tree trunk. He felt relieved. He wasn’t entirely sure whether he was free of the apple. But he did feel that at least he could forget about it for a moment. During the next weeks, he stopped thinking about it altogether because Mr. Irving began to get sick.
That night five squirrels sat staring at the glowing red apple. They had no idea how in the world it had gotten there. It wasn’t edible. One of the smaller squirrels just kept looking at it. It was the closest that an animal had ever come to believing in God.
18
ROSE AND THE APPLE