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  Text originally published in 1958 under the same title.

  © Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT:

  A NOVEL

  BY

  NORA JOHNSON

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

  DEDICATION 5

  CHAPTER 1 6

  CHAPTER 2 13

  CHAPTER 3 21

  CHAPTER 4 27

  CHAPTER 5 37

  CHAPTER 6 47

  CHAPTER 7 55

  CHAPTER 8 67

  CHAPTER 9 79

  CHAPTER 10 89

  CHAPTER 11 99

  CHAPTER 12 110

  CHAPTER 13 122

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 133

  DEDICATION

  TO MY FATHER

  CHAPTER 1

  It was very cold that morning in October. The sun had risen, but was only a faint orange blur through the gray fog, and the water of the East River was full of chilly silver glints. I had come early, to avoid the school bus. I indulged myself in this way once a week, to give myself a few moments longer in the comforting society of strangers, and to be able to stand and stare at the insane asylums on Welfare Island before going into the dreaded school building.

  It wasn’t that there was anything really wrong with the Norton School. It was more that I didn’t like myself when I was in it, and I suffered through each day like a prisoner filling out a jail sentence. When school was out, I would take the school bus halfway home, get out and go to a certain drugstore for a butterscotch sundae, then go home on the gay and wicked public bus. The sundae marked my independence for the day, and I usually sat over it and dreamed of myself in wild and heroic situations. I didn’t read much, as I had outgrown comic books and was not interested in my school subjects, and it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be something in between. The rest of the girls at Norton bewildered and frightened me. They were shrill-voiced, athletic and sophisticated, and they talked as though they were forty-year-old demimondaines whose every week end was spent in pursuit of a new and exhausting love affair. I believed all they said, was duly terrified, and went my own way: eating sundaes, staring at the insane asylums, and imagining myself having escapades that would scandalize all the other girls in the eighth grade.

  I had a particular place where I sat, behind a corner of the building, where the railing curved out slightly and allowed me a private corner, all to myself. Just above was the cement pier, and I could hear the shrieks of the girls who came early to play prison ball. This was a malicious game whose only apparent object was to abuse the opponents by hitting them as hard as possible in the stomach with a heavy rubber ball. It sounded vaguely unreal, like something on another planet; and to distract myself I pulled a history book out of my schoolbag and began to read about the Assyrians. I read furiously for two pages, then, finding Sargon as dull as ever, closed the book. As I did so, I heard a slight scuffle just outside my hiding place. I looked up, and saw a strange girl standing in the entrance.

  She was rather tall, with scruffy dark red hair and an elfin face, like some sort of wood nymph in the wrong wood. She was dressed exactly as I was (and as all Norton girls) in a dark green gym tunic and a white starched Wright and Ditson blouse, ironed into unrelenting squareness. Over this she wore a fitted, fur-trimmed coat, much too old for her and flying wildly open at the front. In her arms she held a large and hectic pile of notebooks, mittens, stray pieces of paper, a pair of dirty sneakers, a tennis ball, and balanced precariously on top, a thick folder with MUSIC inked in large and ornate letters across the front. As she stood there, the pile began to wobble dangerously. She grabbed at the top, but everything slipped, and before either of us could do anything the whole collection was flying through the air. The music folder opened and one piece of music hit the railing and balanced on top for a moment. She snatched at it, but it went over into the river.

  “It was the exercise book,” she said. “Mr. Drago will say I did it on purpose.” She giggled wildly, then sat down on the ground and began to stuff everything, even the sneakers, back into the notebooks. The more she stuffed, the more disorder she seemed to make, and the more stray objects seemed to appear. Finally she sat back on her heels and glanced at me as though seeing me for the first time, which of course wasn’t so, and said:

  “Sorry.”

  I had been staring at her as though she were a strange animal in a zoo. “What for?” I asked, in an astonished voice.

  “For interrupting you—in whatever you’re doing,” she said.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said.

  “Oh,” she answered. She stuffed the last of the papers away, then fished around in her bulging pocket for something. At last she produced a package of gum and offered it to me. We both took a piece and sat chewing in silence.

  “How do you like Mrs. Cooney?” she asked after a while. She referred to the home-room teacher, a pouchy old owl who laughed hysterically and called us all Kiddo.

  “Are you an Eight?” I asked in surprise. I had never seen her before.

  “Supposedly,” she said, with another giggle. I said nothing, but continued to stare at her in fascination. “I’ve seen you,” she went on. “You sit two rows in front of me. You always look as though you’re in a fog.”

  Feeling embarrassed, I said nothing, but pretended to concentrate on my gum. We sat in silence for a moment. Then, to change the subject, I asked her about Mr. Drago and the exercise book.

  “He’s my piano teacher,” she said. “He knows I hate finger exercises. But they’re good for me,” she added in a bored voice. “Like the Assyrians,” I said gloomily.

  She glanced up and smiled. “Oh, they are awful! Phoenicians are much more fun. I’ve been reading about them.”

  “Have we had an assignment on the Phoenicians?” I asked in alarm.

  “No,” she said. “I was just reading anyway.”

  “You mean when you didn’t have to?” I asked.

  She looked at me curiously for a moment. “Is that peculiar?”

  “I guess not,” I said. There was another silence. Finally she said: “What’s your name?”

  “Marian Gilbert. What’s yours?”

  “Valerie Boyd.”

  “Boyd...say, aren’t you the one who goes home early every day?”

  She didn’t answer, and for the first time I saw the look of fear come into her face. I had no idea why she left early, nor did I particularly care, and had meant it only for the purpose of identification. But her eyes became guarded, and she began picking up her possessions.

  “Have to go,” she said quickly. “Have to see somebody.” And she was gone, almost before I knew it.

  I sat there for a few moments longer, hearing the noise louder on the pier,
and the rattle of voices in the street, knowing it was almost nine o’clock. And I felt an annoying curiosity to know who she was, and where she went every day at three-fifteen, because of the look I had seen on her face. If she had laughed, or made up something, it wouldn’t have mattered. But even though she was so young, she had already begun to protect herself, as though she knew her survival would depend on it. She understood far more than she should have for one her age. I understood far less, and it might have been that which drew us together.

  When I got off the bus that day and went into the drugstore, I felt elated at having something to think about besides myself. The world continued to exist outside me, and some novelty existed in it. As long as this was so, life would be tolerable, I thought, sitting at the counter and staring at a spot of spilled milk shake on the black surface. Besides, I dared to hope that I would have a friend at Norton; if this were so, I could bear the rest.

  The spot was whisked away with a cloth and my sundae appeared, in its white paper cone, set in a nicked metal container. I ate it very slowly, staring thoughtfully at the spigots with their flavorsome labels. I did not dread going home particularly, but I liked my hour of suspension between two worlds, responsible to no one but myself. In this hour I could be—at least in my own mind—important. Today, however, the pleasure of the hour faded quickly. The incident of the morning, a relatively inconsequential bit of life, had supplanted my usual imaginative wanderings and made them worthless. It was real and they weren’t; it had infinitely more power, but there wasn’t enough of it to occupy me; it was a mere beginning. And I realized, with despair, that I had nothing else that was real to think about. While I pondered over meeting Val by the East River, she had other things to occupy her. She could think about playing the piano, about the Phoenicians, and about her mysterious doings, whatever they were, at three-fifteen in the afternoon. She had another world and could afford to ignore Norton. And she had unwittingly made me dependent upon her.

  Full of these depressing thoughts, I put my quarter down on the counter and left, lugging my schoolbag across Lexington Avenue. It was a damp, cold evening and the bus was warm and cheerful. I stood wedged between packages borne by three hawknosed women who complained about prices in loud voices over my head. Sitting in a nearby seat were two boys, probably from Trinity School, who were trying to out-burp each other. One had a low, rumbling and impressively long burp; the other’s was short, windy and loud. After each burp they laughed loudly and cuffed each other. I thought how revolting prep school boys were, and got out of the bus.

  Home was a brownstone in the Sixties between Third and Second. It was a curious neighborhood, and I was too young to appreciate its virtues. Most of the girls at Norton lived on Fifth or Park, a few trailing over to Lexington. Third was, in this junior snob set, something of a slum. Actually, it was nothing of the sort. Here was a neighborliness, here was a feeling of the past of New York such as the enormous monuments on Park or Fifth never had. This, however, meant nothing to me. I was embarrassed at being unable to discuss the Elevator Boy, the People Upstairs and Downstairs, the Doorman, and other such essential features that the rest of the girls took for granted. As a result, I had never brought anyone home from school or invited them to lunch on Saturdays (even if I’d had a friend I probably would have avoided it) for fear they would see the squalor I lived in and condemn me forever.

  I considered this as I walked up the street, thinking of the possibility of sometime inviting Val. I had a feeling that there was some impropriety in her background too, and that she might not take too badly to Third Avenue or our way of life, which was not precisely the Norton pattern, either. My parents being divorced, I lived with my mother, whose name was Avis Gilbert, and Mrs. Erica Booth, known as Boothy. Boothy was a vastly energetic divorcee with a mysterious income and several passionate hobbies, who had known my mother since high school. She was living with us in New York for the sake of convenience and friendship, and because she and my mother had both had unfortunate marriages and they felt the mutual dependence of two women who must fight the world on their own. I was fond of Boothy and considered her as permanent as the bathroom fixtures, but I realized that the other Norton girls had fathers who came home in the evening, and might consider Boothy as peculiar as Third Avenue.

  I walked into the house, dumping my schoolbag and coat on the hall chair. My mother was in the living room reading the paper, and sounds and smells from the kitchen downstairs indicated that it was Boothy’s night to cook dinner. On the floor, stretched out sensuously in the lamplight, was Sweeney, the cocker spaniel. The room was a beautiful one. The walls were sea blue, the furniture all in satin and velvet, the tables of cloudy glass. On the marble mantelpiece stood two graceful Japanese dolls, in red satin, their faces flat and chalk white, their hands like birds in flight. The whole scene was pleasant and peaceful. If you assumed Boothy was the maid, and Father was due home any time, it really did quite well.

  “Hello, dear,” said my mother, putting down the World Telegram, and giving me her calm smile. She had a peaceful, beautiful moon face, which led one to believe she was cool as Italian marble. “How was school?” She asked this every evening, in the eternal hope of getting an enthusiastic answer. So far, she had never gotten one.

  “Oh, about the same as usual,” I said, sitting on the floor and scratching Sweeney’s stomach. “Classes and prison ball, more classes and more prison ball.” I thought of telling her about Val, then wondered what there was to tell. My mother looked at me for a moment, then leaned forward with an earnest little frown on her face.

  “What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you all day?” she asked.

  “I got a fail for the day in history, because I didn’t know anything about the Assyrians,” I said. “I had macaroni and cheese for lunch, I skinned my knee in gym, and Val dropped her exercise book in the East River.” I went on, rather irrelevantly, “She goes home every day at three-fifteen, and nobody knows why.”

  “Who’s Val?” my mother asked.

  “Oh, just somebody I met.”

  There was a silence, and my mother picked up her newspaper again. I felt vaguely annoyed that she didn’t ask any more questions, and I pulled Sweeney’s ears in revenge. My mother never forced me to do or say anything. She believed in letting me make my own mistakes, partly because she believed I learned more that way, and also because she believed she had her own life to live. Undoubtedly I did learn more, though I felt alone and helpless a good deal of the time. Usually I didn’t mind, however, because it meant I could do pretty well anything I wanted. But recently I had begun to resent it. The other girls at Norton (who preoccupied me, though I would die rather than admit it) had mothers who scolded them, made them go to dances and parties, and were forever introducing them to Groton boys. My mother did none of these things, and deprived me of both the pain and the pleasure. She only made suggestions, and left the rest up to me.

  There was a clump in the hall, and Boothy appeared.

  “I’m making the most amazing curry,” she said. “Hi, Marian. How was school?”

  “Oh, fine.” I said, pulling back the corners of Sweeney’s eyes to make her look Oriental. Boothy strode across the room and sat down. She was tall, angular and near-sighted, and she had a pair of glasses to match almost every dress. Her hair, at present auburn, also underwent constant change, and it was always interesting to see Boothy’s latest color scheme. Today it was a green dress and green-rimmed glasses, relatively subdued.

  “Are the little pre-debutantes still whamming each other in the stomach with a medicine ball?” Boothy asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “By the way,” said my mother, “I got an invitation today for you to go to Mrs. Leopold’s tea dance. Are you interested?”

  I sat staring at the floor. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Who’s Mrs. Leopold?” Boothy asked.

  “An old bag who has a dancing class,” I said. “A lot of the
Eights go.”

  “She’s not an old bag,” my mother said. “She’s an extremely nice woman who has patience enough to give these little brats an opportunity to meet boys. She’s called me two or three times to ask if Marian wants to join.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I whined, “I’ve told you I’m not interested in the damn thing.”

  “Marian, I’ve told you not to use that word.”

  “I think she’s too young, Avis,” Boothy said. “I never met any boys till I was about fifteen, and I never had a date till two years after that.”

  “Things are different now.” My mother resignedly folded the invitation and put it back in the envelope. “Now they go out on dates at thirteen.”

  “My God,” said Boothy. “They do? What do they do on the dates? Play prison ball?”

  “They neck,” I said.

  “My God,” said Boothy again.

  “They say they neck,” said my mother. “I doubt if they really do.”

  “Have you ever necked?” Boothy asked me.

  “Of course not,” I said scornfully.

  “Well, Boothy,” my mother said, as though she’d had enough of that subject, “what’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you all day?”

  “Oh, Mom,” I groaned.

  “Well, I almost got picked up by the cops,” Boothy said. “I was trying to get some shots of the Mall, and I had to climb a tree to get one of them. Patrolman O’Leary didn’t quite understand.”

  Boothy was entering an amateur photography contest with Scenes of Central Park. Besides this, she wrote articles on interior decoration for a magazine, had three pet canaries in her room, and occasionally shook a can for TB or cerebral palsy. My mother, meanwhile, made bandages at a hospital, did some free-lance editing, juggled real estate, and was taking a course in electronics with her eye on getting a “useful” job. She was making a radio for the course, which was set up on a card table in a corner of the living room. She spent an hour or so every day sticking tubes into it and attaching red wires to blue ones. She would go to it in the evenings as some women pick up a bit of knitting. Besides all this they both did reducing exercises every morning at seven-thirty with an enthusiastic little Finn, alternated nights in cooking dinner, and ran the house in a pleasant, if slapdash, way. A maid named Florida came in twice a week to clean and iron.