Mandelbaum Descending

Mandelbaum was in love.

That he did not so much as know the name of the young lady in question, that he had never so much as spoken to her might have been odd were it not for the fact that Mandelbaum as was his wont never broke words with anyone. This was after all "the" Mandelbaum, he who had captivated audience after audience with his voiceless eloquence, he who, perhaps voluntarily, perhaps not, had eschewed the facileness of mere speech for the subtle nuances only possible without sound—in short, the actor Mandelbaum famed for the aesthetic silence. She had appeared to him from behind a menu at a diner into which he had happened and overcome by the vision, he had fled none of his appetites satisfied.

Since then, though he had never again entered the diner, he had devoted precious weeks of hours standing across the avenue, far enough he calculated to avoid notice, waiting for at least a glimpse of his Beatrice as he called her in the poetry of his soul, if not for the fortuitous moment when he might catch her departure from her daily drudgery and follow after in rapture.

And now the day had come. She, Beatrice, walked in beauty through the door and out into the early evening street. Mandelbaum glowed and waltzed after her stepping lightly to the music of his heart, concealing the bulk of his huge frame as best he could in doorways or behind chance passers by.

Beatrice strode forcefully, one block, two. Mandelbaum danced after, sending his love in silent waves of song. Beatrice turned down a broad avenue. Mandelbaum bent his song around the corner after her. Beatrice hearing only the noise of mid-town traffic crossed the street. Mandelbaum hurried to make the light. Beatrice stopped to look at genuine designer sunglasses hawked by an enterprising entrepreneur from a folding card table. Mandelbaum busied himself studying a pair of black pumps in the window of a ladies shoe store. And though he had looked away from her for what seemed to him only a few seconds, when he turned back, Beatrice was gone. Up the street and down, he searched in vain.

"Where?" he asked the street vendor with wordless glance.

"Buy something or move on. You're blocking (expletive deleted) commerce,"

Mandelbaum moved on.

The next day, at the same time, there was Mandelbaum across from the diner awaiting the emergence of his love, prepared this time for more diligent pursuit. This day Beatrice would not escape him.

Once again she walked with purpose; once again he followed. And though Mandelbaum had prepared himself for the exigency, today she chose to pass by an assortment of street wares without so much as a glance. Mandelbaum found it difficult to keep up with her: a heavy man, a man in need of exercise, his breathing became labored. She walked and he fell further and further behind.

"Stop for a moment, my beloved," he sang in silence, beads of sweat covering his forehead.

Beatrice walked on. Almost running, he thought, as if she knew someone followed and was fleeing in haste.

"No, my beloved," he shouted dumbly, " it is only—." But even before he finished not speaking, she was gone, out of sight, gone.

That night while he soaked his aching legs in a hot bath, Mandelbaum vowed to himself a third time he would not lose his Beatrice. But the next day she did not appear at the appointed hour. "A day off," he thought. Nor the next day. "Sick?" he asked himself. And the next day. And the … suffice it to say that for the next two weeks a Mandelbaum in waiting waited in vain. After an hour or three, he would trace her footsteps to that spot where last he had seen her. Then he'd wait there for an hour more, for what he didn't quite know. The world passed him by, he noticed not. His eyes were filled with Beatrice, as though an image of her hung before him blocking everything else from his sight. "Beatrice," his heart sang, from his voice, nothing. "Beatrice."

And then as if in answer to his soundless chant, the image before him was a picture, the picture a photograph in the display window of a—Mandelbaum gasped almost audibly in recognition—of a topless dance club, a photograph of his beloved Beatrice. How had he missed it? For days he had stood in this spot, how had he not seen it?

How indeed? Mandelbaum was hardly one for introspection. He had missed it because it wasn't there. Had it been there, he would have seen it. He hadn't seen it because it was not there. Now it was there; now he had seen.

A large puddle, a river of sewage flowed forbiddingly in front of the entrance.

"We got to do something about that." The speaker, a bouncer larger even than Mandelbaum, held open the door. "You want in, you're gonna have to walk through, 'less you want me to ferry you across."

Mandelbaum shook his head in answer.

"You don't want in?"

Mandelbaum shook his head again.

"You do want in?"

Mandelbaum nodded assent again.

"So? You waiting for me to carry you?"

Mandelbaum stepped gingerly into the puddle. A tiny hallway led to a descending staircase. The club, it seemed, was in the bowels of the building. Wondering what Beatrice, a waitress, might be doing with her photograph adorning a topless dance club, Mandelbaum began his descent. At the first landing, a bulb or two had burned out and the staircase grew darker. Mandelbaum put a hand on the dirty covered wall to brace himself against a misstep as he continued. There was no exit on the next landing and the darkness was even thicker. The lover had not even a thought of turning back. Warm from his exertions or his expectations or perhaps from the closeness of the stairwell he walked on. Down another landing and another. He hadn't thought buildings in the city went down this far, but still the stairs descended.

"No wonder she walked so fast," he thought, "walking down these stairs is a workout, imagine walking up."

He imagined, and it wilted his clothes and shortened his breath.

Another landing and the stench of stale smoke crept through him. "Cigars," he thought, "It must be close."

And at the next landing there was a door so heavy with oak and iron that it might have served for a dungeon.

Mandelbaum pushed with all his might and tumbled through head over elbows—the door much less formidable in reality than in appearance—into a neon lit barroom crowded with oglers and leerers, and here and there a scantily undressed object for ogling and leering. At the stilletoed legs of one of whom Mandelbaum came to rest.

"Drunk?" she inquired without interest, "we don't allow no drunks in here."

Rising Mandelbaum tried to scan the room for Beatrice.

"You ignoring me?"

No, Mandelbaum thought, I'm looking for—

"Looking for what? Won't I do?"

Mandelbaum gawked in amazement.

Did you hear me, he thought.

"Of course I heard you," she answered.

But—

"But, what? Friend, you sure don't know the first thing about dealing with a lady."

I'm looking for. . .

"You're looking for Beatrice."

How did you know?

"They're always looking for Beatrice."

They? Mandelbaum wondered.

"You think you're the first guy ever come down here? Guy gets the hots for a broad a couple a flights of stairs ain't gonna stop him. Sure as hell didn't stop you, did it?"

Where can I find—?

"Open your eyes, asshole," she pointed to the stage.

And there was Beatrice covered with nothing but a tiny silver string stuffed with crumpled green bills, squatting elegantly in front of an aging bald lecher in heat. Mandelbaum watched in awe as the delicate love of his life coaxed bill after bill from the bald hand to her beckoning crotch.

If there is a hell, Mandelbaum howled in his pain, this must be it. But if any words came from his mouth none were heard in the shrill laughter and harsh music of the club. He might well have been a painting screaming in anguish for all the notice he was given in the scarcely visible darkness around him. His mute protest, no channel out, turned in upon itself, building itself to an eruption. Through tables of libertines, bimbos and bouncers, beer bellied guzzlers and lap dancing slatterns, Mandelbaum exploded to the stage, wrapped Beatrice in the clothes of his arms an lumbered heavily to the door. Hands reached out to stop him, he brushed them away. Bodies planted themselves in his path, he trampled over them.

A woman's scream filled his ear.

Beatrice, he thought. Beatrice. Didn't she understand? Didn't she see that he was saving her from this place, this hell?

Again the scream.

Beatrice, he wanted to say, everything is going to be alright. I am taking you out of here, back to the daylight and a new life, a different life. Beatrice, he wanted to say, I love you. But if anything was said, she heard nothing.

Mandelbaum—a poet without verse, a singer without song—rushed into the hallway and started up the stairs. At first the weight of his love was light. He moved up with at a pace much beyond his capability, and as he rose his struggling burden grew heavier. At last, not even half way to the top, out of breath and covered with the sweat of his exertion he had to set her down. Fearing a look of horror in her eyes, kept his eye away from the terrified Beatrice. When they got to the top, he would make her understand. He needed no voice to make her understand. His love would speak for him.

One arm extended behind him he led her up the stairs. Slowly the air grew cooler, the smoke dissipated, the stairwell brightened. Mandelbaum fairly glowed with his joy. Now it was time to explain, now when she would be able to see clearly the love in his heart. He stopped at the final landing, dropped his hand and turned to his beloved.

Somewhere in the vastness of this world there is a happy lover, somewhere a love consummated.

Not Mandelbaum. Mandelbaum turned. Beatrice was gone.

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