River would let me in and I would hand over the mail, and River would mix a hot chocolate (with a small brandy, of the best, for himself), and I would spend an hour or so inspecting Uncle Willie's rooms.
They smelled of delightful ladies I never saw, old books 1 never read, and good pictures that have now disappeared into private private collections. Uncle Willie had a fine Chardin of a girl spinning a top, a snail naked Renoir, two Daumier drawings, and a huge blue Picasso of two blue women and a wine bottle and a mad banjo dissolving into one another.
River could cook sudden dishes, those things that had to be made fast, when Uncle Willie came in suddenly with five or six people, all as hungry as literary critics after a kill.
His special dish was Eggs for the Tsar. I finished the remains of it often in the kitchen, while Uncle Willie was tearing James Cabell or Ben Hecht limb from limb in the parlor (I mean their books, of course). Uncle Willie only invited writers in the flesh when he fell they needed a loan of money or fresh linen. He didn't care for successful writers.
“They have lost the humble touch that makes for great stuff,” he would say. “More Eggs for the Tsar, River.”
River cooked the dish with speed and skill. In a bowl he would heal half-a-cup of olive oil (“In Russia, of course, da, trogai, trogai, I would use sunflower oil,” said River) with a cup of tomato sauce seasoned with a few drops of his holiest Tabasco sauce. When the sauce began to sing and bubble, he would add ten eggs, breaking them in without spoiling one yolk. He would cook the whole slowly, and just when he fell it was at the proper pitch, he would sweep me aside, shouting, “Kak vashe zdorov'e?—how is your health?” And I would answer back, picking up the toast, “Kak maslo korov'e!—fine as cow's butler!” And he would pour a pint of beer over the eggs, and pop the eggs on the toast to serve.
Then he would look at me, and I would nod.
“Krasivy!—beautiful!”
Yes, Uncle Willie's place had a lot of charm. And a lot of stuff no one dared call chic. Uncle Willie hated that word. “It's like dressing a bum in perfumed rags.…”
Mama had helped Uncle Willie furnish the flat. It was the kind of place she should have wanted, she said, if she were the kind of man Uncle Willie was.
There was a little shop kept by a friend of Gramp's called Cockney Charlie… and Mama and I and Uncle Willie, when American Can common stood high, we went to Cockney Charlie's to help Uncle Willie furnish his flat.
Charlie, as usual, was drinking ale, and combing a sheepdog mustache with his square fingers.
“You say special stuff, but as the lidy says, it ‘as to he solid.…”
“That's right,” said Mama. “No Regency made in Grand Rapids.”
“Right.” winked Charlie. “Mine is mide in Hitaly… I say hit as shouldn't.”
Mama and Uncle Willie had a picnic… every worm hole was admired so much Charlie asked them to speak low… “or the bloomin' worm will tike it into ‘is ‘ead to come out for a bow.…”
At the end of the week the flat was furnished. Mama sighed and looked around her. “It's wonderful, Willie.”
“You will come to the housewarming?”
“Oh, no,” said Mama. “This place isn't for me after today. It looks wicked and sinful… like something out of French novelists.”
Mama and Uncle Willie looked at each other, understanding each other… and Mama never went there anymore. But she was proud of his place.
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