Benjamin's Gift

by Michael Golding

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

A richly crafted novel, here is a tale that is at once the adventure-filled story of an unusual father and son and a front-row view of the momentous events that shaped the 20th century.

Release date: September 26, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

ON OCTOBER 31, 1929, Jean Pierre Michel Chernovsky sat in his Carrara marble bathtub in his twenty-seven-room Fifth Avenue mansion and
stared at the putty-colored, porous sphere that floated in the violet water. Approximately the size of a small grapefruit,
it was carved to resemble the elusive fellow who peered down from the night sky over Manhattan. The pumice moon was not the
only object to adorn Jean Pierre Michel's bath; on the broad ledge that surrounded the tub sat a red-and-gold Japanese eggshell-lacquer
dragon, a hexagonal fired-clay bowl inscribed in Sanskrit, and a miniature Egyptian chrysoprase-and-moonstone funerary urn.
The pumice moon, however, was the only thing that interested Jean Pierre Michel at the moment. It had been given to him the
night before by one of the chief attractions of the Lieberman Follies, one Clarisse Mimsette O'Connor. She'd presented it
to him in bed after having discovered, the night before that, that after having made love to her four times, at the age of
seventy-one, Jean Pierre Michel was still erect. Clarisse Mimsette O'Connor had been too exhausted for a fifth round (she
had, after all, performed three solo numbers in that evening's Follies, including an elaborate and somewhat embarrassing routine
with an ostrich), but she'd spent the following afternoon, between the matinee and evening performances, in search of an appropriate
gift to express her gratitude. When she'd found the pumice moon she was delighted: as far as she could tell, the only thing
that Jean Pierre Michel did not possess was the moon.


Jean Pierre Michel wanted everything. Cars, clocks, cloaks, pianos, horses, houses, racing yachts, swimming pools, aeroplanes.
To money itself he was indifferent; he spent no Scrooge-like hours stacking up coins, and he gave away prodigious amounts
to hospitals and universities and arts foundations. All that mattered was that he had enough left over to buy beautiful things.
Beauty was like a drug to Jean Pierre Michel; it filled him with such intense pleasure, he became near catatonic. An Aschermann
lamp or a Matisse nude simply froze him in place, and a woman—well, just thinking about Clarisse Mimsette O'Connor set his
septuagenarian body on fire.


Jean Pierre Michel slid down beneath the water and laid his head back into the smooth cavity that had been carved, at the
apex of the tub, to fit the exact dimensions of his cranium. As he glanced down at his body, it looked distorted beneath the
water, yet even from that skewed perspective it held no surprises for him. When dressed in a waistcoat and a silk cravat,
Jean Pierre Michel could easily pass for a man in his late fifties. Without his clothes, however, he was every bit his age,
and he could almost chart the decay on a daily basis. It was strange to be old, like suddenly finding yourself driving a car
that was desperately in need of a paint job. Only the infallibility of his sexual drive kept him from junking the entire thing;
with an engine so insistent, he could accept the brutal decline of the outer shell.


Having settled beneath the water, Jean Pierre Michel looked about the room. It was lavish by any standards, with eighteen-karat-gold
fixtures and carved onyx sinks and rose quartz sconces upon the walls. No matter how magnificent his surroundings, however,
he could never forget that he had not always lived in such splendor. Jean Pierre Michel had been born in 1858 in the small
town of Lud, North Dakota. As far as anyone could tell, his mother and father were the only Jews ever to have lived in Lud,
and how they had gotten there was something of a mystery. Yes, Jews wander; in the middle of the nineteenth century, however,
they rarely wandered to places where pig farming was the chief means of earning a living. Isaac Aaron and Alma Esther Rosenberg
Chernovsky had nevertheless managed it and once there had set up a small general store, stocked with the basic necessities
of the North Dakota life (plus a few oddities, like Isaac Aaron's mothers cheese piroshkis), and had proceeded to live quite
nicely. Alma Esther was a delicate girl, with frail, slender limbs and that pale, almost translucent skin that reveals the
fine tracery of the veinwork beneath. It was from her that Jean Pierre Michel got his air of nobility, as well as his somewhat
unorthodox name. After a lifetime of Rosenberg, Chernovsky was little relief to Alma Esther. She therefore chose to give her
firstborn son (her only son, for birth, with her tiny body, was a trauma she would never allow herself to repeat) a set of
fluid French prénoms to balance it out. Isaac Aaron thought that it was ridiculous to give French names to a Russian-German—North Dakotian Jew,
but he soon discovered that they suited his son: there was something strangely refined about Jean Pierre Michel, though it
was coupled with a vigor that prevented him from seeming effete.


Jean Pierre Michel's affection for beautiful things was apparent from the start: before he could even walk he began rearranging
the decorative objects in his mother's salon. When he was old enough to do chores, he hired himself out to the neighboring
farms in return for whatever caught his eye: a pair of old stirrups, a milking pail, a piece of bubbled glass. He would carry
these things back to his room and study them for hours — holding them gently up to the light, running his fingers across their
rough or smooth surfaces. There was a secret inside the beauty of these treasures; there was a reason that they gave him the
feeling they did, though he did not know what it was.


As childhood gave way to adolescence and adolescence to manhood, Jean Pierre Michel found his life taking on the shape and
specificity of one of his gathered objects. After selling enough bromide and licorice root to gather independent means, Isaac
Aaron and Alma Esther decided to move on from Lud: first to Spokane, Washington, then to Baton Rouge, Philadelphia, Phoenix,
and New York. Try as he might, Jean Pierre Michel could never get either of his parents to explain their crisscross journeying.
Alma Esther suggested that they were exploring the parameters of a new diaspora; Isaac Aaron suggested that Jean Pierre Michel
stop asking so many questions and learn to leave his suitcases partially packed. Because each city was so far from the one
that preceded it, Jean Pierre Michel was forced to assemble a new collection in each new place he went, thus experiencing
respective seasons with objects of the Pacific Northwest, the South during its reconstruction, the City of the Founding Fathers,
the Seenaw and Moojalook Indian tribes, and, finally, whatever his heart desired. Manhattan was a dream city to Jean Pierre
Michel, a place that contained the sort of diversity and energy for which he had spent his entire life developing an appetite.
When Isaac Aaron and Alma Esther announced that they were pushing on for Europe, Jean Pierre Michel took a large chunk of
his personal savings and bought them a steamer trunk. He was staying put.


For the next fifteen years, from the late 1870s to the mid-1890s, Jean Pierre Michel lived the exuberant life of the New York
intellectual, holding down a wide variety of menial jobs while pursuing the erudition of his soul. It was a glory time in
America: the Civil War was receding into the past, the second hundred years were just beginning. It was a time of hope, of
the advent of iron and steel, of the promise of a new tomorrow. And Jean Pierre Michel was content just to sit at the table
and be a part of the discussion. Until one day—June 16, 1895, to be exact—he decided that it was time to become rich. It was
actually a decision: he woke at dawn, and by the time he had finished his morning coffee he had determined that he would become
a millionaire before he reached his fortieth birthday. Perhaps it was his version of awakening in a dark wood, or perhaps
it was the brisk, wagging finger of the approaching new century. Nevertheless he made the decision, devoted himself to it,
and within a few short years had earned enough money to never have to work again.


How did he do it? How does anyone amass a sudden fortune: luck, a bit of chicanery, the strength to risk everything on an
idea that glows in the moment, and, in Jean Pierre Michel's case, the efficacy of trout acacia resin for making spearmint
chewing gum. But what mattered more than any of these factors—including luck, which figures in everything—was will. Once Jean
Pierre Michel determined himself to become a millionaire, there was little left to do but count the money as it leapt into
his pockets and the objects as they accumulated, from the Lacroix boxes to the Limoges porcelain to the beads to the birds
to the bells to the pumice moon.


Jean Pierre Michel raised his bony knees, and the pumice moon bobbed gently on the surface of the water. When he looked at
his new toy a thrill coursed through his body, but also a trace of irritation. Why hadn't he thought of it before? To possess
the moon. What was the use of all his money if there were things still beyond his reach?


Jean Pierre Michel clasped the floating ball in his hand and lowered his legs. “Cassandra!” he cried. “The water's getting
cold!”


For a moment there was silence. Then, somewhere in the mansion, a door slammed. Then silence again. Then the door to the bathroom
swung open and a large, coffee-colored woman (a finger of cream, four teaspoons of sugar) wearing an elegant set of gold lamé
lounging pajamas entered the room. She was carrying a stack of folded garments, and she looked at Jean Pierre Michel as if
he were a highly impressionable, if somewhat demanding, child.


“I told you not to stay in there so long,” she said. “If that body o' yours gets any more wrinkled, I'll have to take you
to the cleaners and get you pressed out.”


Cassandra Nutt was Jean Pierre Michel's companion. She'd been in his service for twenty-five years, having come to him, in
1904, as a girl of sixteen and having worn, in the interim, every possible title from scullery maid to personal assistant.
The only role she had consistently managed to avoid was that of mistress, although Jean Pierre Michel had tried everything
he could think of to make her yield. When he'd come to her the first time, in the second-floor pantry, wearing nothing but
a vast, salacious grin, the young girl had simply stared; she had seen a man's penis before, even an erect one, but she had
never seen one so pale and so pink. It seemed comical to her, and strangely innocent, like the flexed, flailing arm of a petulant
child. And though she'd gone on to have her share of white lovers, she could never quite take Jean Pierre Michel's penis seriously,
no matter how many times, or in how many settings, he had presented it to her over the years.


In spite of her refusal to sleep with him, however —or perhaps because of it — Jean Pierre Michel lavished Cassandra Nutt
with gifts. Jade-and-ivory brooches, pheasant feather hats, evening dresses trimmed with Spanish goat. Cassandra Nutt was
fitted out in greater style than many of the women on the New York Social Register. More significant, she wore her finery
both day and night, sporting chiffon tea dresses to do the morning shopping and hand-stitched furs to post Jean Pierre Michel's
correspondence in the afternoon. She was so refined, so always elegant, that it was assumed by virtually everyone she encountered
that she was Jean Pierre Michel's mistress. Cassandra Nutt, however, cared nothing for what people thought. She liked her clothes and
she liked her work, despite her employer's frequently proffered penis. If she wished to wear a Paris gown to take out the
trash, whose business was it but her own?


Jean Pierre Michel placed his hands on the ledge that surrounded the tub and raised himself to a standing position. “You can
press me out now, Cassandra,” he said. “If you like.”


Cassandra Nutt placed the clothes she was carrying on the crystal stand that stood beside the sink and reached for one of
the large salmon-colored towels that hung behind it. “That thing o' yours don't need pressin', Monsieur C. It needs cold storage.”


Jean Pierre Michel took the towel and began to dry himself, beginning with his head and then working his way down his thin,
loose-skinned body. When he was done he handed the towel back to Cassandra Nutt, who placed it in a wide-mouthed basket that
sat in the corner.


“Is the Hispano-Suiza ready?” he said.

“Yes,” said Cassandra Nutt.

“Then help me dress.”

Cassandra Nutt reached for the garments she'd lain on the crystal stand and began to layer them over Jean Pierre Michel's
naked body; they were the crisp robes of an Arabian sheikh, complete with turban and veil.


“Seems mighty early in the day to be goin' to a dress-up party,” she said.

“We're not going to a party,” said Jean Pierre Michel. “No one can afford to give a party besides me. And if I gave one, no
one could afford to come.” He raised his arms as Cassandra Nutt placed the paneled sash about his waist. “We're going to have
our own party,” he said. “Just the two of us.” He lowered his arms. “One does the best one can, Cassandra. No matter the circumstance.”


There were several interesting things about October 31, 1929. The first was that it was Halloween, a day that had special
significance for Jean Pierre Michel. For though he relished beautiful things, and reveled in the splendid clothing with which
he graced Cassandra Nutt, he himself always wore a black waistcoat, a pair of gray trousers, a white, wing-collared shirt,
and a black-and-silver cravat. He had dozens of each, never wearing one out, never tiring of what, to someone else, might
seem a prison of sartorial monotony. Only once a year, on Halloween, did he allow himself to deviate, to indulge in fancy
dress, to become himself one of the elegant objects that he preferred only to look at the rest of the year. This year, however,
Halloween fell precisely one week after the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange—the second interesting thing about October
31, 1929. As most of Jean Pierre Michel's friends either had leapt from one of the city's recently constructed skyscrapers
or remained frozen, over their week-old coffee, in various positions of shock, a party seemed improbable, if not totally lacking
in taste. So Jean Pierre Michel decided to dress for himself and to drive, like a visiting potentate, through the ruined city.


Jean Pierre Michel had not lost a penny in the stock market crash, partly because he did not believe in the stock market and
partly because he did not believe in pennies. He kept his money in the country where he made it, convinced that billions of
ducatos were even nicer than millions of dollars. He had what he needed wired to him regularly, and if things continued in the direction
they were going, with prices plummeting and the bulk of the nation's fortunes disappearing overnight, the stock market crash
would most likely end up tripling or even quadrupling his worth.


He would have to stop at Carrier and buy Cassandra Nutt a new pair of earrings.

There was one thing Jean Pierre Michel desired that could not be purchased in a shop—the third interesting thing about October
31, 1929. It was not entirely triggered by the pumice moon, yet the pumice moon had helped him to articulate it: yes, Jean
Pierre Michel wanted the moon, but, more than the moon, he wanted a son. The thought had not occurred to him before, nor,
more surprisingly, had it been thought of by any of the countless women he had been with. Now, however, at the age of seventy-one,
that old, inevitable instinct had kicked in — and the rest was simply a matter of ducatos.

Cassandra Nutt adjusted the two veils that floated out from either side of the white turban. “Valentino lives.”

Jean Pierre Michel looked into the mirror. The outfit was arresting, but even the flowing veils could not camouflage the thick
folds above the eyes, the deep creases about the mouth, the tough, lived-in quality of the skin.


“Go start the motor,” he said. “Before I expose myself again.”

Cassandra Nutt adjusted the pearls about her neck and moved toward the bathroom door. “Nothing like an incentive,” she said—and
like a great, gold lamé gust of wind, she was gone.


BENJAMIN KNEW THAT HE WAS expected to remain in the hard wood chair until Mr. Petersen returned for him, regardless of the fact that the bumps in the
seat cushion pressed into his bottom and his feet could not touch the ground. He'd wanted to sit on the ledge that footed
the window and look down at the street; he'd never been up so high in a building before, and when he'd passed by the window
and had looked down, the people had looked like the tiny figures from his train set and the cars had looked like the ones
that he kept in the shoebox under his bed. Mr. Petersen, however, had told him to sit in the chair, and as he did not know
Mr. Petersen very well and as he was wearing his very best trousers (the gray ones, with the flaps on the pockets), he did
as he was told — even if the bumps in the seat cushion pressed into his bottom and his feet could not touch the ground.


It was an awful room. The walls were covered with dark printed wallpaper, and the furniture was heavy and ominous looking.
And even though it was only ten o'clock in the morning, it was mostly dark: the sunlight that came through the one lonely
window seemed to stop a few inches after entering. The only thing that alleviated the gloom—the only thing that kept Benjamin
from minding how uncomfortable the chair was and how long Mr. Petersen was taking in the other room — was the large oil painting
on the wall across from him. It was a picture of a storm at sea, with a large boat crashing on the waves and a smaller boat
carrying a group of survivors to safety. Benjamin had seen the ocean only once, on an ill-fated outing to the Jersey shore
that had included a flat tire, a very bad chicken sandwich, and about forty-five minutes to actually look at the water. But
he knew from that brief visit how wonderful it was, so the painting helped him take his mind off the interminable wait.


Benjamin was an astonishingly beautiful child. His body was strong and lithe, his face the product of a sculptor's chisel,
perfect and radiating light. His only flaw—although a wise eye would not have seen it as such—was a large strawberry birthmark
that spread, like the Russian steppes, across his right cheek and throat. When his parents first saw him, the contradiction
of it stunned them into silence: the startling beauty, even as a newborn, and this strange, sprawling mark across its surface.
Whatever they called it — spot, stain, blotch, smear—it stole away their joy at the birth of a wonderful child.


As Benjamin grew, his beauty grew, too, so that the strawberry birthmark eventually began to seem like a natural balancing
mechanism: a silk scarf thrown up against the light of God. The more beautiful he became, however, the more his parents hated
the birthmark. His mother, Lavinia, interpreted it as a punishment. It reminded her of the stain on the bedsheet in the morning
after she'd made love with Benjamin's father, the dried insignia of her husband's seed that spilled out of her as she slept.
At least one of those seeds had managed to find its way up into her womb, and Lavinia was convinced that the mark on the body
of the child that it had grown into was intended to chastise her for the pleasure she'd taken in the embarrassing act that
had produced him. Benjamin's father, Edward, had a different interpretation. To him the birthmark was a sign not of what had
been, but of what was yet to come: Benjamin was the future, and there was a stain upon it.


Had Benjamin looked into the mirror for the first time in a world in which neither his parents nor anyone like them had ever
lived, he would have liked what he saw tremendously. The cerulean blue eyes were strong and clear. The nose was straight and
the mouth delicately curved. The dark blond hair feathered softly into neat, attractive waves. And the strawberry birthmark
was really quite fascinating — a splash of color on a pale canvas, a burst of good cheer like the wine that spilled from the
goblet turned over at a wedding. Edward and Lavinia, however, were most decidedly in Benjamin's world. So when he looked into
the mirror and saw the strawberry birthmark, the only thing he could feel was his parents' shame.


At first he tried rubbing it off, using terry-cloth toweling, soap detergent, cotton batting, rubbing alcohol, and half a
jar of what his mother referred to as, but was obviously mistaken in calling, vanishing cream. When this didn't work he tried
covering it over with a paste he concocted of bourbon and baking soda, using the bottle of bootleg his father kept in the
broom closet, being careful to top it up with water. When this didn't work he tried spreading strawberry jam across the rest
of his face, though by the time he'd emptied the jar he realized that the strawberry birthmark was not really strawberry,
but more like stewed cherries or twisted candy whips or the small glass relish dish that his mother brought out whenever company
came to dinner.


It was when all these methods failed that Benjamin, tired of being sticky and seedy, stumbled upon his fate. He was sitting
on the large, flowered sofa in the sitting room of the small Brooklyn brownstone where he and his parents lived. His mother
had told him to wait there while she answered the doorbell, and from the emphasis in her voice he understood that she wished
him to remain hidden rather than to accompany her and produce that look of amazement that always appeared on the face of whoever
was at the door. As he tucked his legs up under him and listened to the conversation through the wall, he wished that he could
curl up tight enough to disappear. And for a moment he did. He closed his eyes and entered a half-world — a blue zone—a limbo.
And when he opened them again he found himself on the kitchen floor between the icebox and the stove. He was quite confused
and had to concentrate feverishly to return himself to the sitting room before his mother came back. But the next morning,
after he had transported himself from his bedroom to the bathroom, and the bathroom to the back garden, he knew that, whatever
was happening, it was more than just chance.


For the next few weeks Benjamin refrained from wishing himself. . .