“Who’s the boy?” I asked.
“Lenin,” Ilya said. “All us good communist kids got them, like medals.” He took the baby Lenin, the one child our mother could truly love, and pinned it to my black sweater. He kissed me lightly first on my left cheek, then on my right, as if he were awarding me the Croix de Guerre. “For valor, comrade,” he said.
After that, I helped him out of his sweater and jeans and into bed in his shirt and underwear, not on the futon in his room but in the big bed. I propped him up on the snow bank of pillows so he would be able to breathe. I gave him the second of the three shots. He tried not to flinch when I stuck the needle into the bruised flesh of his thigh. I pulled the comforter over him.
I brought him a glass of wine and a banana. He ate a little, drank a little. Then I propped myself up next to him. We sat, side by side, together on the bed where it seemed likely we had been conceived.
“Talk to me,” he said, his voice drifting on the morphine. “Tell me a story.” In the dark, I told him the plot of my novel. “It’s about an American woman who makes a sudden, irrational decision to come to Paris,” I said. My brother laughed, and I held my breath for fear he would start coughing, but he didn’t. Then I told him what I hadn’t before, how the heroine left America after the unexpected death of her husband. Ilya raised his eyebrows at this bit of art beating life into the world. “But no children die in it,” I said. “I swear.” I hadn’t been capable of imagining that tragedy to come.
In Paris, my American meets a half-Alsatian, half-German man. “I’m not any part German,” Ilya pointed out.
“So? In my novel, he’s not her brother either,” I said. “I mean, what kind of novel do you think this is?”
The American and the Alsatian fall in love, I told him, and then are separated. But in the end, they’re reunited, and their child is born—what joy! A novel with a gloriously happy ending! the jacket copy read. Like fireworks. What did that say about my ability to see my own future?
“It will happen,” Ilya said. “Mei-mei saw it in your cards.”
“She did not.”
Ilya closed his eyes. “She should have. That’s what people pay her for.”
Near dawn, I told him what Mosjoukine had said about how your forties were the toughest decade and how if you could just get beyond them it was easy. “‘Live to be 100, Vera,’ he said to me.”
“More than 100, Vera,” Ilya said, “Live to be 110 at least. Promise me. One of us should have a long life besides that old bastard. Live beyond all this, until there isn’t any more getting sick.” He was lying on his back, trying hard to keep breathing, his hands behind his head, looking at the ceiling as if he could see something there I couldn’t.
I told him about my feeling that the dead were always with me. I told him it felt as if I could put out my hand and touch them, the wall in front of me an illusion, the thinnest veil.
He said, “God, it sounds like you’re in the shower and your family is on the other side of the scummy plastic curtain, looking in. When I’m dead, I’m gone. Take my word.”
I didn’t answer him, because I wasn’t planning on staying behind this time. If two shots would stop Ilya’s heart, then they would do the same for mine. I would just need to get my hands on more morphine, and I knew perfectly well where I could do that.
19
The next morning, I gave ilya the last of the Russian morphine, trying not to look at the black and purple bruise on his thigh from the shot I’d given him the night before. It wasn’t hard to do, if I made sure not to think about how tender the flesh was where the needle went in, didn’t think of the tiny hole it made as symbolic of any larger loss. Ilya closed his eyes, felt the rush of the morphine, waited for the pain to recede. I would have a talk with the neighbor before we went to the hospital to see a doctor. I needed to have enough morphine for Ilya to make good on my promise that I wouldn’t let him end up like Anne-Sophie. Enough for me as well, if I decided not to stick around either. I knew the neighbor would sell me as much as I needed, as long as I had the money. I felt Ilya’s eyes on me.
“Don’t even think about it, Vera,” he said. “You promised me. You swore to live to be 100.”
“No,” I said, “110.” Which was a bigger sin, suicide or lying to a dying man?
I went to get my purse, but when I looked in my wallet I remembered giving the taxi driver the last of my cash. I would have to find an ATM. There would be one near the hospital, or failing that, at a bank on the Boulevard de la Villette. I doubted the neighbor would charge the morphine to my credit card the way the Russian pharmacist had. “I have to go out and get money before we go to the hospital,” I told Ilya. “Will you be okay for a while?”
“I’m lovely,” he said, smiling. He was. His eyes glowed like the sea in a tropical postcard.
“Yes, you are,” I said.
He poked me with a long finger. “You, too, little sister. You, too.”
I didn’t feel beautiful. I felt raw. I felt like I had been living on a diet of broken glass. More than anything, I wanted to keep Ilya alive and with me as long as possible, even if that meant his being in the hospital. I put some water by the bed for him and, though I didn’t really think he would be reading, the paperback life of Houdini there as well. Then I put on Ilya’s jeans, T-shirt, and the blue sweater. I took the baby Lenin pin off my black turtleneck and pinned it over my heart. I even put on his boat shoes instead of my boots, knowing as I did it that I was trying to keep my only brother close. I took his keys and let myself out.
I nodded to the neighbor as I went past. She was cracking walnuts into a bowl, her muscular forearms bare in the morning sun. I found an ATM inside the courtyard of the hospital. The leaves on the trees were open now, the tulips, too, a blaze of red. An old man was sitting on the bench where I had sat the morning I set out to find the Place Ste-Odile a lifetime ago. I counted the days. Jesus, just ten days had passed. Ten days. It felt like my whole life, or like one really long Russian silent movie.
I put my card in the machine, punched in my number, asked for two hundred euros. But the ATM, instead of thinking about that for a moment while it chatted with the ubercomputer in touch with my bank in America, instead of spitting out fresh bills phit, phit, phit, it made an odd clucking sound and a message flashed on the screen. We are desolated, but your card has been confiscated. Please contact your home institution. I hit the cancel button, once, twice, but the card would not come out.
What could have happened? Sure, I had been spending like a sailor, but the card had a ten thousand dollar limit, and I hadn’t gone that crazy. Then I remembered John saying this had happened to him once while he was traveling through Europe with Tricia, because she’d bought too many designer clothes in one day. My spending pattern, buying tickets to foreign countries at the last minute, buying expensive luxury items (those boots!), paying for two hotel rooms in two different capital cities at the same time, must have tripped some kind of security program. Somebody, one computer told another computer, has stolen this card. The owner would never spend money this way. Take my word for it. I know.
What was I supposed to do now? The card probably had an emergency number on the back to call in case of trouble, but the machine had the card and it wasn’t giving it back. I needed cash. Now.
Then I remembered the two other cards I had squirreled away in my suitcase back at the Hôtel Batignolles. I would go there, get them, and come back. It wouldn’t take long. We could still get to the hospital that afternoon. I thought about running back to the apartment, telling Ilya where I was headed, but that would just take extra time. He would be sleeping. I could call, but—stupid—I still had no idea what the number was that made the antique phone in the kitchen ring. I would be fast.
I ran as far as I could, Ilya’s boat shoes flapping a bit. Every burning breath I took along the way reminded me that nothing I had been doing lately was in the least bit good for me. I had the foolish thought that all this dying would be the
death of me.
I took the Metro, then, panting, I half-ran and half-walked the long way from the nearest Metro stop to the Hôtel Batignolles. The clerk could barely conceal his alarm at my sudden sweat-drenched appearance. I expected him to mention the dead credit card, since it was the one I was using to pay for my room, but apparently the hotel hadn’t caught on yet. So I grabbed the key from him and took the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator. I pulled the stolen suitcase out of the closet. The cards were still there, thank God.
I took them both, also the bottle of Percoset and my three-year-old Valium. Neither was morphine, but who knew? Maybe the neighbor would be willing to talk trade. My only question was whether I should try to find an ATM near the hotel—surely the clerk would know the nearest one—or head straight back, find something closer to Ilya. That way I would know where to go when I needed more cash. I didn’t want to risk the one at the hospital again. I put the pills in my purse and kept the cards, ready, in my hand.
Just as I reached for the knob, there was a knock on the door. I opened it holding up the new credit cards, expecting to see the desk clerk with my unpaid bill in his hand. Instead, standing in the hall was a plump, middle-aged woman wearing the kind of pink flowered pantsuit that marked her as an American. “Can I help you?” I said.
“Emma, I found you,” she said in English with strong midwestern vowels. Her eyes were wide in her round face. Her blonde hair needed washing, and her clothes were even more wrinkled than mine. She reached out and grabbed both my wrists as if she were drowning and I was the only hope she had of reaching dry land. I noticed that her nails, painted pale pink to match her pantsuit, were chewed to the quick. I was pretty sure I had never seen her before.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“We met once. Don’t you remember? At the College Open House. I’m Nance Olmstead,” the woman said. “I work for Dr. Parcher.” Ah, I thought, now it was beginning to make sense. Harry Parcher was our dean of students, the one who was so crazy about the Hôtel Batignolles that he booked our faculty and students there year after year.
“Did Dean Parcher send you?” I asked. I’d told John where I was staying and obviously he’d squealed.
“You don’t know why I’m here?” Nance Olmstead looked puzzled, as if we had an appointment she couldn’t believe I’d forgotten.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, “not really.”
“It was my son Josh,” she stopped, watching my face. Josh, I thought, spinning the Rolodex in my mind. Former student? Classmate of my daughter? Then it clicked, and she saw the answer hit me. “Yes,” she said, her voice low, “it was my son who ran the red light.” She was clinging to my elbows now, and her hands were inching higher as I tried to back away. “It was my son …” The back of my knees hit the bed, and I sat down. I finished her sentence for her.
“Who killed my family.” Nance Olmstead nodded. She looked exhausted. She looked worse than I did. I pulled my arms free from her. “It was your damn SUV,” I said. She nodded, though I wasn’t really sure why I said it except she was there, ready to take my anger, and her dead son was not. I put my hands on my cheeks as if I were afraid my head might come apart. She pressed her hands with their raw nails together as if she were praying for me not to hit her. Or maybe praying that I would. Something, anything to take her mind off the echoing space where she lived.
“Oh, Christ,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you. I came to make sure you were okay. I know Tricia Silver. She told me where you were, how worried everyone was. I come all the time; it’s part of my job. I was a French major. At least once a year, I fly over to get a junior who has broken her ankle or who the faculty think is suicidal. I’m good at it. Really. I thought, if I go, if I get there in time …”
What was in time? I thought. Two months ago was in time. Two months ago when your son and my daughter were both alive. Now I was dying of something a plane ticket wouldn’t cure. I wanted to tell her to go to hell, but looking at Nance, it was hard to say that. She was already in hell.
So now she wanted to be the lifeguard, to save me as if I were the one drowning. She would do her duty or die trying. If she couldn’t rescue me, I thought, she wouldn’t be coming to shore either. I had it in my power to take both of us down. But my brother was waiting, and every minute his pain was creeping back. I stood up and backed Nance toward the door.
“I can’t talk about this now,” I said. “I’ll call you tonight, I swear it. Or I’ll come back tomorrow. You’re staying here, right?”
“Don’t go,” she said, grabbing at my sleeve.
“Listen,” I said. “You can trust me. Take my stuff into your room and check me out of mine. Then you’ll know I’ll be back.” I waved at the shopping bags of video tapes and photographs on the bed. “It’s like I’m leaving a deposit.” Nance moved toward the bags and, in that instant, I slipped by her and out the door. I took the steps two at a time, and when I reached the street I ran like hell and caught a bus at the corner. I looked back to see her coming out of the Hôtel Batignolles. Even from that distance, she did not look well.
After riding the bus for ten minutes, I got off and found an ATM near the Metro station, got some money, then ran to the train. I got on, got off, and kept running, some secret supply of adrenaline kicking in. Still, it was nearly noon when I ran through the passageway into the courtyard, chest out as if I expected to cross a finish line, break the white tape. The neighbor was cracking the last of her nuts, the bowl still in her lap. I would talk to her in a minute. Whatever she wanted, I was willing to give. She could name her price. First, I had to check on my brother. I unlocked the bottom door, then the top. “Ilya?”
No answer. I looked in the bedroom. The bed was empty. I checked the kitchen, the bathroom, even his room, but the futon was as empty as everywhere else. Note? Had he left a note? Maybe he’d gone out to find something for the pain himself. I thought of the vodka in Moscow. He would try anything in a pinch.
The kitchen table was bare. I looked in the bedroom again, and there it was, in the middle of the middle pillow. Not a note, but a picture. I sat on the bed. It was a still of Mosjoukine in bed dying at the end of Kean. Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust. It was torn neatly in half. There was no writing, but I could read the message clearly. There would be no long death bed scene for Ilya. No hospital this afternoon or any afternoon. I had lied to him. He had lied to me.
I looked around the room. My boots were missing. Hard to believe he had worn them since his feet, as his shoes had proved to me all the way across Paris, were at least two sizes larger. I went to the window. The neighbor hadn’t moved while I was gone, but there was something different about her. I looked down at her on her chair. She was wearing her usual flowered housedress, but on her feet were a pair of five hundred euro Jean Gabot boots. More than enough for the two vials of morphine Ilya needed to kill himself. She sensed me at the window and looked up guiltily, like she might run, but I was down the stairs and across the courtyard before she could put her bowl on the ground.
“Where is he?” I said. I had her arm in my hand, my fingernails digging into her skin. The muscles underneath were as hard as wood.
“Don’t look for him,” she said. “You won’t find him.”
“Where is he?” I said. “He needs me, if he is going to …” I stopped.
“I gave him enough,” she said. “You think after all this time, I don’t know my own business?” She took my hand off her arm, but she didn’t let it drop. Instead she held on to it, squeezing my fingers so hard they turned white. “I owed him that much. Take my word. It’s over by now.”
“I have to see him,” I said. “I have to. You know where he is, don’t you?”
She looked at me. She pursed her lips, considering. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll take you there, but if you make a scene, you’ll get us both arrested.”
We went to the hospital, headed for t
he very spot where the ATM had eaten my credit card. As soon as we stepped through the archway into the courtyard, I saw him. He was sitting in the shade, the tulips on fire behind him, on the bench where I had sat when I was searching for the mysterious Place Ste-Odile. His legs were outstretched, his arms limp at his sides, his head thrown back as if he were sleeping. “No,” I said, and started forward, but the neighbor wrapped her broad arms around my chest, held me to her in a grip like a trap, and pulled me back into the shadow of the archway.
“I told you,” she hissed. Her breath stank of fish and fried onions. “You’ll get us arrested. What good is that going to do him?” As she spoke, a doctor crossing the courtyard saw Ilya, went running toward him. He pressed a hand to Ilya’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He shook his head, then he called to an orderly. Why couldn’t someone I loved die while I was there? Why did they always leave me to leave me? “It’s over. It’s over,” the neighbor was saying in my ear as I struggled. A hospital security guard appeared, talking into his two-way radio. Was he calling the police?
The neighbor kept her arms so tight around me I could hardly breathe, both of us half-hidden in the archway, while the orderly came back with a gurney and gently loaded my brother’s body. I struggled against her without making a sound as if this were the moment the world finally went deaf, turned once and for all into a silent movie. The orderly rolled Ilya away, but the doctor didn’t follow. He sat down on the bench, picked up the needle that lay on the ground. Then he looked across the courtyard, straight at me and at the neighbor. The doctor was the one I’d seen buying drugs, her best customer. The guard was following the orderly, but at any moment he might turn and see us.
The neighbor said nothing. For a moment I stopped struggling, and we stood looking back at the doctor. Then the doctor stood, dropped the used needle in the pocket of his lab coat, and followed my brother inside. I kicked the neighbor hard in her shin, or as hard as I could in Ilya’s boat shoes, and pulled away. She grabbed two handfuls of my brother’s old blue sweater and hung on, holding me back. “What good would it do him?” she said again. “His sister getting arrested. If they think you helped him, that’s against the law.”
My Life as a Silent Movie Page 22
