Текст книги "Grace"

Автор книги: Calvin Baker

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11

Genevieve was downcast when I arrived back at the apartment, so I suggested we go to the Cinémathèque to lift her spirits. There was a retrospective of Noir, New Wave, and Neorealism playing, and a Truffaut movie was just starting when we reached the box office. I went to purchase tickets, but she made an elaborate pantomime of standing conspicuously still, like a spy in an old movie, until the usher turned away momentarily and she snuck into the theater. When I found her in the dark she was in a lighter mood, and by the time we walked back into the torpid night air it was as though nothing had ever been wrong.

On the sidewalk out front someone called my name, and I looked up to see Davidson. He was on a date with a blonde named Elsa, who had hypnotic cat eyes. They were both in full eveningwear, dressed for something formal, but had just exited the Fellini film. I asked where they had been.

“We were at a party earlier,” Davidson answered. “It was uptight, so we left.”

Elsa was stunning in her gown and a pair of emerald earrings that matched her eyes and cost a car each. I know what they cost the same way I knew Davidson’s midnight-blue evening suit had been cut for him in London, and that his shoes were hand-stitched for him in Milan, and what they cost, because Davidson told me. He did not buy brands, he had things made no one else had, and took mischievous pleasure in pricing all of it.

They cut a glamorous figure, especially compared to us in our blue jeans, but he suggested we join them for dinner at a place he knew near Montparnasse. We agreed, and the four of us piled into a taxi, through a part of the city. We arrived at what turned out to be a two-star restaurant, where we did not have reservations. But the wool of Davidson’s suit whispered power, and the emeralds shone money. The maître d’hôtel got the point and seated us at a high table in a corner by a big picture window, which opened onto the street and caressing night air.

We ordered oysters from Normandy, and Champagne from deep in the cellar, then white lamb, with a Burgundy from high up the hill. Our spirits were awake with pleasure and the conversation was interesting and lively, making us feel princely, as Davidson pondered the sweet wines. While he pored over the list Genevieve stood, excusing herself, and Elsa left to go with her, leaving us alone.

“She seems good for you, if you are not still too wise for that sort of snare,” I ribbed him.

“We will see. I spent an hour talking with her mother at the party, so maybe she is.”

“I see. Next you’ll be taking her home to meet yours.”

“You jest, but you do not know what you are saying when you bring my mother into this.”

“I did not mean any offense.”

“It’s not that. My mother, my mother is a different sort. Do you know how many women I have introduced to her?”

“No.”

“Two. Do you know how many I have dated?”

“More than two?”

“Now why would that be, you ask. The answer is simple. After I brought home my high school girlfriend, Mother sat me down in the parlor – she still calls it the parlor – with the most aggrieved expression on her face. ‘You are a man now,’ she said, ‘or soon will be. And you may do with your days, and you may do with your nights, as you must, and as pleases you. You do not have to explain yourself. Neither to me nor anyone else, ever again. Beyond that I cannot advise you of much. There are, however, things about life you have not yet learned. As you do, you must take them in stride, without complaint. I only hope you are in all things jealous of yourself, and your time, as I am of mine.’

“I looked at her,” Davidson continued, “not knowing what on earth she meant, until she said, ‘I do not need to meet any more of your young ladies, except the one you intend to marry.’”

“She wanted you to become a serious man,” I said.

“She was insane about time. If we were going to the store and I was five minute late she would leave me.”

“She wanted you to know what time is?”

“I was seven. But that’s what I thought too, until she died and I found a box of letters in her closet, with a bunch of things from her girlhood.” He paused. “Things normal people throw away, old perfume bottles with the evaporated residue of their scent, decades-old boxes of uneaten chocolate, ruined pantyhose, every little luxury she’d ever received was there for me to sort out and make sense of. And then I came upon a box wrapped around with ribbons from old gifts. I started unwinding it slowly, feeling I was opening something I should not. When I finally opened it I remembered two stories. Once, when we were sitting at an outdoor café, up by the museum, some kid runs by and snatches her purse from the table. I took out my phone to call the police, and the waiter rushed over making a fuss, but she was perfectly composed and just said, ‘Don’t call the police. If he stole because he was hungry, let him eat. If he stole because he is bad, God will punish him.’ The other was when she wouldn’t let me go on a school trip to the zoo, no matter how I cried to see the damn pandas. Finally, she slapped me. It was the only time in my life she ever put a hand on me. I was stunned. ‘Nothing in this world belongs in a cage,’ she said, shaking her head in a staccato way that I will never forget. Now can you guess what I found inside that box, in the middle of all that crap?”

I shook my head.

“That she had survived the Holocaust. She was interned at a camp called Eschershausen with her parents when she was a girl.”

“I have never heard of it” was all I could say into the stunned silence.

“You’ve never heard of most of them. It’s not your ignorance. There were more than anyone knows – thousands and thousands of them.”

I fell quiet, thinking of how she must have wanted to protect him from knowing, from carrying her burden. “I always thought of the Holocaust as people’s grandparents” was the only thing I managed to say.

“The past is never as far away as you think,” he returned, implacable to the point of nonchalance. “Her real point, or part of her point I think, was to understand the difference between passing emotions and situations, and the steadiness of what lies behind them.”

“What is that?”

“Every day Zuigan called to himself, ‘Master.’ And he would answer, ‘Yes, Master.’ ‘Become sober.’ ‘Yes, Master.’ ‘And after that do not be deceived by yourself or others.’ ‘Yes, Master.’”

“It is beautiful. What is it?”

“It is my koan, since I was a boy.”

“Do you follow it?”

“We both know I am too vain to go all the way with it. Still, I like to remember it is there.”

“Why not follow it all the way, if you have followed it so long?”

“Once you begin to grasp it there will come the question of how sober you wish to be.”

“How did you and Elsa meet?” I asked, changing the subject, as I tried to parse whether it was only something he had read, or Davidson actually knew something serious and true.

“Ingo,” he answered breezily.

“Seems right.” Ingo was one of Davidson’s aristocratic investors. “What does she do?”

“Give away money.”

“To whom?”

“Orphans. Museums. Needy politicians.” He lowered his voice. “You know, she’s the tenth wealthiest woman in Paris. She has a title, too.”

“She won’t anymore if she marries you,” I whispered back.

Davidson continued undaunted. He was never daunted. Even in the throes of a nervous breakdown he had greater magnetism and power than most people in their primes. Not just worldly power to work his will, power from faith in his abilities and himself as a man, no matter the company. In his own personhood. That was his security and his charm. “Can you imagine keeping a fortune that size intact that long?” he asked.

“Where did the fortune come from?”

“I believe it marched its way from the frigid, ungiving North Sea into the open-hearted embrace of her Monaco bank.”

“How so?”

“Why don’t you ask her, if it worries you?”

“It is not my business.”

“Then why ask me?”

“You brought it up.”

“There was a reason.”

“Which was?”

“You still have the didact in you.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Sure you do. Not five minutes ago you liked her. Now here you are sitting in judgment, wanting to know if her grandfather was the Antichrist. What if he were? Would you then be curious to know what is available to her besides shame, denial, or capitulation, and how she obtains it? So long as she is fully within herself, it does not matter.”

“It matters.”

“To what? To her character, or to your own particular hypocrisy that you do not see.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” I said.

“As I said, it is not your fault, but whatever politics they whipped up for you as a boy do not describe the human world, just a momentary politics of relative power. But kings give way to presidents. Priests to painters. Painters to entertainers. Presidents to industry. Paupers to billionaires. All in their turn. The money and power only project whatever picture show is already playing inside the people. Vanity, deceit, insecurity, greatness.”

“That is the same as to say what we do does not matter.”

“That is to say what matters is exactly what we ourselves do. When you come to Hollywood you will see it everywhere, people who think when the world knows who they are, they will be happy. Only to reach their aim, and turn to see themselves unhappy all over the newspapers every morning. The green-hearted ones look and see partway what’s going on, and turn gleeful to keep pulling them down, because they refuse any kind of world but their own misery. They look and all they see is imperfection, and they hate it, which is the same as hating beauty. But they do not know that. No one does. We all just sit sharpening up our different hates and hurts until we can point it all back at the world, thinking it is a sword, while calling it virtue. But tell me what you judge and I will tell you what you fear.”

“I was talking about discernment of meaning, which is a high thing.”

“It certainly is a high thing.” He poured us more wine. “It ain’t the highest. Sometimes discerning shows what’s there; sometimes it veils it from you.”

“What’s the highest?”

“You know what it is.”

“Do I?”

“Of course you do. At least you have the ear to hear it. The question is, do you have the faith to trust what you hear?

“If you like, I will find out who her fathers were, back as far as I can, because fortune like that is not a single instance of luck, but a second and a third; refigured each time history shifted to obliterate them, but did not because of the sheer refusal to die. If they did something in the past I dislike, or that threatens me, should I break with her? Before I have given her a chance? Somebody went to bed one night and decided there in the dark to try for a dynasty, and did not figure she would be on the other side of it all. Maybe she has a mind and will of her own. This play is for the living. Those who do not grasp that are puppets of the past, and the strings are whatever they have been told; and whoever it was who told them that’s the way it is, aims to be puppet master. If you wish to live in that mirage, fine, stick to the didactic. But, if you want to be in the present, it will keep you from the brass ring.”

“Sorry I brought it up,” I said in the face of his argument. “I didn’t mean to make anything of it. She is lovely.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know. Can I ask you something?” He scanned the room to see whether the women were in sight.

“Yes.”

“Would you date a poor girl?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I would not.”

“I thought you just said it did not matter.”

“That’s not what I said. I said, politics do not describe people. There is nothing the matter with poor girls, but one could never understand my worries.”

“What worries do you have, Davidson, other than the ones you invite?”

“You will find out one day. Before they make you a boss, you think how fine it would be to be top dog. You wait and wait your turn. You pine all night, and you pine all day. Until at last your day arrives, all gleaming and new. They pick you up by the scruff, and carry you along to the limousine, with all your anticipation, only to find it is for nothing more than to be thrown into the pit, where now, instead of pining, you get to fight. So you claw for the staff, and you bite for the crown, like you do not have good sense; or, if you do, you run from it all, until, exactly one day before you are ready, they catch up to you, or come pull you up from the pit. Next, the barber comes to you, and the tailor comes to you, and all the old king’s men, too, everybody come to you now. You are top dog in charge of it all. Boss bitch running the show. You do not sleep much anymore, but that is fine, because you might miss something if you did. So now they get you good and polished, and they put you up in front of whatever little tribe they give you for your own, where you see all your friends, who love you no matter what you do, and you see all your enemies, who hate you no matter what, and all the what-can-you-do-for-me-people, and the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-folks. Behind them you see all the smile-in-your-face-people, and all the knife-in-your-back-kinds. Know-nothings and know-it-alls. Born-again-people and the won’t-never-be-saveds, plus all your good backsliding brothers and sisters in between. Them you beat for the crown. All who want it from you and, way in back, all them you never really saw before. Apart from that, you got all those dogs, and all those bitches who do not keep faith with you at all. You realize then they are all your people now. You own stock and title to a whole restless tribe’s worth of problems no one ever told you about, and you did not know before. It is then you figure out if you have it to be boss dog, or just sit in the chair until the king returns.”

“You are just seduced by her,” I said.

“We will see,” he retorted. “But I do not have any preconceived ideas about who it is who might wind me back up in line with time. People like us cannot afford to.”

I could tell he liked her, so I let it drop, as Genevieve and Elsa returned to the table. Genevieve looked piqued, dabbing at her eyes, and it was clear she had been crying. Elsa had a worried expression on her face, and looked to Davidson with distress.

“I think we should probably go home,” I apologized, bidding goodnight to Elsa and thanking Davidson for the meal.

“Call me tomorrow?” Davidson asked, with an expression of real concern.

“I’ll ring around ten o’clock.”

We left the restaurant, and I went to hail a taxi, but Genevieve wished to walk, because she did not think she could bear the motion and closed space.

It was the longest night of the year, and music poured from every block as far as the river. When we reached the center, the streets were still crowded with people, and the full moon behind the cathedral shone down silver on the white stone of Notre Dame, and pure and clear on the velvet blackness of the Seine. Below, on the sand, musicians played, and families strolled, and the tourists, and the lovers, and the hustlers; the beautiful in their prime, the powerful at their height, the babes at their mothers’ breasts, and the ancients on their canes, all promenaded, alive and pleased the earth was theirs that night.

“Are you pregnant?” I asked.

“No. I am just dizzy. But the fresh air is making it better.”

“It is okay if you are.”

“Oui,” she said. “I know. We are together.”

She took my hand as we crossed over the river.

“The princess and Davidson are perfect.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she is so boring, and he can be such a boor.”

“He’s bright.”

“It does not matter. The nice clothes do not matter. The money does not matter. Paris does not. New York does not. Hollywood especially is not important. Art is the only thing that matters, besides an incorruptible love.”

We were still holding hands, and in my hand she was the truest girl on the Left Bank, and, when we crossed over the bridge, the river and I had the truest girl in the city in our right hand. The two of us walked the remainder of the way to her house, listening to the music from each block as we passed. When we finally made our way up the cobbled lane again, the people in the same apartment were playing Nina Simone, and Genevieve brightened to the sound.

At her door, she told me she did not think it a good idea for me to stay the night. “I’ll be fine tomorrow,” she assured me, wiping her damp brow. “I just need to rest.”

“I’ll come by to check on you in the morning.”

“Oui, that would be good. We will take breakfast.”

“You’re okay?”

“Yes, but I want to work. I have not in days. And if I do not, I feel like I will go crazy.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, kissing her atop the head, where the walk and the heat had lifted her scent to the crown of her scalp. I inhaled her fragrance deep into my diaphragm, deep as memory, and if I had my way I would have never ceased.

12

I had left my room key at the front desk of the hotel, where I had not been for several days. When I returned that night and asked for it, the night clerk looked at me appraisingly, without recognition, and what felt like undue suspicion.

“Et, vous-êtes?”

“M. Roland.”

“Et, quel est votre numéro de chamber?”

“Au dernier étage.” It was the only room on the floor, and the only one in the hotel with a balcony.

“Et, que faites-vous, M. Roland?” he asked, attempting to seem nonchalant, but obviously wondering why I did not keep set hours.

“I’m a writer,” I said briskly.

“I see,” he nodded, still looking confused. “And how come you speak French, you are American?”

I had tried to humor him before, but was unamused by his insolence, and gave him a look to let him know what part of the desk I needed him to operate. His cheekiness may have been motivated by anything. It may have been something specific. I didn’t care as long as he got my key, and called me if there was a goddamned fire in the middle of the night.

“Ah, oui,” he snapped to attention, scrambling to retrieve the keys. “You know, I once saw Miles Davis perform, many years ago at Olympia, when I was a young man. It was raining, and I did not have a ticket, so I wait by the gate. When the usher isn’t looking I sneak in, and run, and do not look back.

“When I stopped running, I am in the front, with all the special people. There is a seat free, and I take it. Nobody say nothing. The lights went dark and it was the most amazing concert I have ever seen. At the end the people next to me, in the furs coats, invite me to another party, because they see how I love the music, or maybe see I listen in a different way.

“The party was in a small, petit, petit club, maybe the size of this reception, and when Mr. Davis come, everybody shut up. He went to the front of the room, and still does not say anything, and he turn his back on us. It is like, fuck you, my appointment is with the music.

“He create a space that nothing can enter but pure music. He begin to play, and it is even better than at the concert, and no one say nothing the whole two hours. It was the best night of my entire life. And it is only because a spirit see me, and take me from the rain and put me in the concert, and the same spirit put me in the party. Life is like this, no?”

“When we seize it, my friend.”

“Or are fortunate and remember what gives us happiness, and see possibility to have it.”

We were friends after that, and his words were still with me the next morning when I left the hotel, easy-hearted and centered, to see Genevieve. On my way to her place I stopped to buy bread at our favorite pâtisserie, and oranges for juice from the fruit seller. It was still early when I reached the top of the stairs to the atelier, the quiet morning light streaming through the skylight in the hall, where I could hear her footsteps on the other side, so knew she was awake.

When I knocked there was no answer. I called out to her, full of a joy that had welled up inside of me for no seeming reason, but still she did not respond. I knocked again, louder, before fishing in my pocket for the key. As I turned it in the lock I heard unintelligible sounds from the other side, but the security chain was fastened and the door would not budge.

I rang her on the telephone, but could not reach her that way either, so thought she must have been wearing headphones, or earplugs. I wrote a note, and slid it under the door, before leaving her breakfast on the table outside in the hall and making my way back to the street.

When I returned in the evening the pastries were still there. I knocked again, and heard the sound of her moving around inside the apartment. I called out to her. Still there was no answer. I was worried by then, but told myself she was in a mood and just wished to be alone.

I returned the next day in late morning. There was still no answer, and I became consumed with dread. One of the neighbors heard me out in the hall and opened his door to see what the commotion was.

“Have you seen Genevieve recently?” I asked.

“No, but there has been an awful racket in the apartment all night. I do not know what it was.”

I tried my key again, but the security chain was still in place, and the door cracked only partway ajar.

“Genevieve,” I called through the opening. She did not answer. I pressed my eye to the crack, where I could see a horrible mess inside, as if something had exploded.

“Genevieve!” I heard her sobbing from deep within the apartment. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you alright?”

“Oui.”

“Do you want to let me in, baby?”

“Non.”

“Why not?”

“I do not want you to see me like this. You will be angry.”

“I will not be angry. I promise.”

“Non, amour. Go away. I will call when I am feeling better.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be at the hotel.”

I heard her still crying from the other side. The neighbor remained in the hall, and I asked whether I could cross over from his balcony. He agreed and I went through his apartment with a feeling of slight embarrassment, but offered no excuses.

From the balcony I heard Etta James rising from lower down the hill, and saw Genevieve’s windows were open. I sprang over the wall separating the flats, and down along the widow’s walk. From my perch outside I could see the extent of the damage in the apartment, and my mind raced with worry. She had covered the walls with paint, and lashed string all around, with pieces of paper pinned to the string, and stacks of what looked like papier-mâché, crisscrossing the room in a maze of confusion, where she was seated on the floor amidst it all. She was still wearing the same clothes from two days earlier and obviously had not slept and was in the most awful way.

When she looked up and saw me on the balcony, she shrieked, and threw the water glass in her hand, which shattered against the window frame as I clambered inside.

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I figured it all out, and wanted to make it before I forgot,” she said.

“What did you make?” I asked, tenderly as possible.

“It does not matter. I did not finish, and now you are angry because you think I did the wrong thing, and I have lost my concentration, so you have ruined it. I told you to leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to ruin it.”

“It is too late. Do you want to see what you ruined?”

“Yes, show me what you made.”

“I know you were worried, because I do not work anymore, and thought I would be like some silly princess who does not do anything and does not know anything except how to wear jewelry, and takes everything for granted. So I wanted to show you all the meaning of everything. Here, see, are the cave paintings and here is the totem pole and here is the primitive perfection, with its ancient sacred magical power, and here is the perfection of the Goyas. Here is Tintoretto, and Michelangelo with all the known universe of God, and the choirs of angels and the saints and the kings and the pilgrims and the penitent and the sinners and the demons. Here is the modernism, and one of Picasso’s crying women, because every time he don’t know what to paint he makes his woman cry and because the people they love the suffering, and here is the surreality, and here the beautiful light from Corot and the perfect life force from Manet and here is Degas looking at his girls and here is Matisse and all the immaculate colors and the object is here and the form is created and the form is destroyed here by the photo that makes realism into something else, and the abstract is here with pure consciousness and here all the pop things and cartoons for the Americans, and on the wall is Guanyin Bodhisattva and, next to it, there, you will see, is the Virgin, and the suffering the people love so much and here is the creation and it is all the meaning because if you look from here are the eyes that are not gone from the world. Okay I will take the pills again now, and now you know all before we marry but first I wanted to show you this, the entire world. It is everything, almost everything, before the pills make it stop.”

I felt knifed through the core and stood frozen with pain; afraid for her and afraid of her, and in awe of the sheer amount of energy that had poured out of her, as I navigated that divine madness, not knowing what I should do. I reached her at last, but she only bit down on her lip anxiously, and turned and went straight away to the bathroom, before emerging with a bunch of pills, which she took with water from the faucet.

“How long has it been since you stopped taking them?”

“Two weeks,” she said. “I will be fine again. You will see. But perhaps it is you no longer love me, because I do the wrong thing, the crazy thing. But the crazy thing is necessary.”

“I still love you,” I said.

“Okay, we go now.”

“Where?”

“To the hospital,” she answered, as I tried not to cry and kissed her wild, wild eyes.