8

MADIGAN'S was another relic of New York 's bygone days, a sort of unofficial memorial to a lustier, roughneck age. Located in a seamy section near the docks south of Fourteenth Street, the tavern had outlasted wars, depressions, recessions, Prohibition and several attempts at urban renewal. Its original customers had been sailors, draymen and Irish stevedores working on the piers; and for the first eighty years of its existence only one female had ever been served there: Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink.

The famous opera star had just disembarked from the ship that had returned her to America for another season at the Metropolitan when the horse drawing her carriage went lame practically on Madigan's threshold. It was late fall with a chill rain falling. His chivalry appealed to, Francis Madigan (son of 'Daddy' Madigan, the founder) had reluctantly offered his tavern as a waiting room for her party while another horse was being fetched.

There were dark looks upon her entrance; two or three old-timers standing at the long mahogany bar had muttered into their ale about 'petticoat patronage' and • with ostentatious rudeness had given her r their backs. But the great contralto was then at the height of her powers and had accurately sized up her 'house'-child's play to a woman who would still be able to sing in Das Rheingold when she was sixty-four.

She began with the few Celtic lullabies at her disposal and, when those were exhausted, switched to the sweetest German songs in her repertoire. The language barrier evaporated-sentimentality has never needed translation-and soon the most hardbitten stevedores were weeping into their glasses. (Empty glasses, one might add, since no one had wanted to break the spell to order.) For over an hour the majestic Schumann-Heink held them in the palm of her queenly hand until at last she expressed fatigue and impatience at the nonarrival of a fresh horse; whereupon a dozen strong men hitched themselves to her carriage and pulled it through the rain all the way to her hotel on Seventh Avenue.

"Shure and she was a foine lady," said the pragmatic Francis Madigan, tallying up the evening's lost revenues, "but women do be taking a man's mind off his drinking."

Succeeding owners, even those not of Irish descent, had echoed his sentiments, and Madigan's was one of the last male bastions to fall beneath the feminist assault. Not that women came there very often once their point was made. Madigan's was not quaint, picturesque nor cozy. In point of fact, it was quite hopelessly shabby, for there had been few concessions to modernity. Women were, by law, tolerated; but they were not encouraged with any plastic niceties.

No wine, beer or liquor was served. Dark stout and porter foamed down the sides of chunky glass mugs, and food arrived on chipped brown earthenware, while the wide oak tables and benches were so dingy with age and indifferent cleaning that the sawdust on the floor looked fresh by comparison. The air was thick with stale malt fumes and greasy smoke, and Sigrid

Harald peered through it dubiously.

"I can see at least a dozen violations of the health code from right here. God knows what the kitchen must look like."

"A policewoman shouldn't quibble about minor dangers," said Nauman. "I thought you wanted the best steak in town."

"Not if it comes with a side order of ptomaine," she said tartly.

Their waiter had a poor grasp of English, but he flashed a gold-toothed smile, eager to please. "You no worry about that, senora. We no have it-just plain lettuce for the ensalada."

Sigrid laughed, and a certain familiar curve of her lips pricked the artist's memory.

"Harald," he said reflectively when the waiter had taken their order and gone. "Are you by any chance related to a photojournalist, Anne Harald?"

"My mother," Sigrid said, and her lips tightened defensively as she waited for the inevitable, disparaging comparisons. Anne Harald was known for her vivacious beauty, and casual acquaintances found it difficult to think of this tall, plain young woman as her daughter.

Instead Nauman said only, "She took some pictures of my work for a Life article years ago. Good camera work."

"Were you in that series?" Sigrid asked, surprised. Then she realized her gaucherie. "I'm sorry. Of course, you would have been. That was the whole point of the piece, wasn't it? Profiles of leading American artists. I was away at school when my mother was working on it, so I'm afraid I don't remember any of the details."

"You might want to look it up since Riley Quinn wrote the accompanying text. Your mother writes most of her own stuff now, doesn't she? Haven't seen her in years, but wasn't she nominated for a Pulitzer not too long ago?"

Sigrid nodded. "For a story on how Vietnamese refugees are assimilating into this culture. She keeps an apartment here, but she doesn't use it much. She's all over the world these days, taking pictures about issues with more social significance."

"Meaning that art has none?" Nauman asked, amused.

"Well, does it?"

"Very little," he admitted wryly. "But not for any reasons you might give."

"Probably not. Of course, I don't know very much about art, but-"

"Oh, Lord! You're not going to say it?" he groaned.

"-but I know what I like," she finished firmly.

"She said it!" Nauman mourned to the waiter, who'd just arrived with their steaks.

The waiter beamed uncomprehendingly and deftly distributed their dinner dishes. As promised, the salad had no romaine lettuce, just wilted iceberg under an indifferent bottled dressing; but the baked potatoes had crisp jackets and had been split open to receive huge dollops of butter, while the man-sized steaks still sizzled, and small streams of deep red juices trickled from several fork pricks.

Sigrid suddenly remembered that she hadn't eaten since early morning, and when Nauman insisted that she try an anchovy, she was too hungry to resist. With that first taste of a steak grilled to absolute perfection she instantly forgave the greasy table and smoky air, the food-specked menus and crazed earthenware dishes. And the salty anchovies were such a delicious complement to red meat that she might even have forgiven Nauman's condescension had he not tactlessly brought it up again.

"Very well. Lieutenant, what kind of art do you like?"

"Pictures of people."

"Norman Rockwell?" he jeered.

"No." She speared another anchovy.

Nauman studied her intently, feeling slightly annoyed. Taken separately, the features of the young woman across the table were excellent: strong facial bones, clear skin, extraordinary gray eyes, dark hair that tried to escape from its braided knot, and a wide mouth shaped for generous laughter. Yet collectively her features might as well have added up to total gracelessness for all the use she put them to.

Despite his fame Oscar Nauman was not an arrogant man; still without realizing it, he had become spoiled. He was used to having women make an effort to amuse him. As his reputation had grown in the past thirty years, so had the number of women who sought him out. He was cynical enough to know why many came-the would-be artists, the bored faculty wives, the semi-intellectual sophisticates, all drawn like moths to the flame of his public recognition-but he had attracted women before he became well known, and an innocent pride in his own masculinity made him think he knew why the ones he chose had stayed.

Nor had his relations with every female been purely physical. Among his closest friends were many women whose minds he respected, who could hold their own in fierce intellectual debate. But even with these, there had been an initial period in which they had probed and tested each other, an exchanged awareness of sexuality. Sublimated, yes, but quite definitely there.