by Louis Begley
Have you?
I was titillated by the turn the conversation had taken, but not totally surprised. He was single, and yet, in the three years I had known him, I had never met a woman he was connected with or seemed to be pursuing. In Kate’s opinion, that showed he was a capon, interested only in money and gossip. I tended to accept the proposition, first put to me by my gym teacher at prep school, that there are no sexless lives. As Arthur was rich and extroverted, I found it difficult to believe that masturbation was his principal outlet. Therefore, I had constructed three theories to explain my friend’s lack of a known female companion: he was faithful to a married mistress, probably living in Geneva where he officially resided and spent a good deal of time; he disliked wasting time on courtships and resorted to call girls and similar sordid solutions; or he was a very quiet fairy. I knew that there was no lack of those at Harvard, some so discreet that their secret was only known through the compulsive indiscretions of their best friends; why shouldn’t they flourish in international business?
Arthur raised his eyebrows. Unfortunately for Charlie, no! I think Charlie has put me at the head of the plot against him because, although he and I have known each other for years—socially—we have never given him any business. Why should we? He is too expensive. There are good architects in Europe, with good names, who work for one-half of what he asks and manage to finish their buildings on time. What we couldn’t tell him under Città rules is that the jury never even considered his building because the editors didn’t propose it! And that is because the editor-in-chief, a very artistic queen, thinks Charlie isn’t very nice.
Here he made a disparaging gesture, intended to signify a limp wrist.
I’ll see you at dinner, he concluded. You should ask Edna to put you next to Laura. Be nice to her. C’est une affaire—still young, organs in good working order, chic apartment in Milan, house in the country, and the poverina is all alone.
I had no previous experience with Jews like Arthur. Clearly, he was invited by people—indeed was on terms of complete intimacy with them—who didn’t ordinarily have Jewish friends. He just as readily told jokes about Jews that would have been considered unacceptably offensive by Jews I knew on the Law School faculty and Borscht Circuit jokes in which the goy is an idiot. It seemed to me that, in an aloof way, he usually ended up calling a spade a spade, an expression I was learning not to use. I decided to do as he suggested.
MORE PEOPLE than had turned out the evening before were gathered in the dining room, where chiaroscuro villagers, holding each other by the hand or the arm, circled Pulcinella and flashed longing grins at the guests. Instead of the long table there were round tables for six on the terrace. I found my place card; although I had said nothing to Edna, it was between Laura’s and Toby’s. So this evening he would be at dinner. Rodney was next to the boy, then Charlie and a California woman with false eyelashes and jewelry in the shape of giant teeth. On the other side of Laura was the director of the Rockefeller establishment. He seemed to be on a mission to the California woman; I saw him preaching at her even before we sat down. The lecture, about social trend indicators and their use in the study of Chicano elites, continued while we ate the pasta. I introduced Toby to Laura and told her that he had been teaching me backgammon while everyone else was absorbing culture. She enveloped me in a smile directed at Toby and began to question him about school, the work he was doing at Charlie’s office, and his plans for university studies. It turned out she had a niece his age in Florence who intended to go to college in the States. She offered to have them meet. He said yes at once, eagerly, with the easy grace I had earlier liked so much, explaining he was worried about the academic level of his boarding school in anything other than mathematics, not good at all in English composition or in history, while he hoped to become a journalist. Perhaps he couldn’t get into any university and should find a job on a paper through his father, the way his father had got him a job with Charlie. Laura was given to alternating abruptly between English and Italian; the admirable child followed her lead, speaking as distinctly and, I thought, as elegantly as she. I began to think that a candidate like him, out of left field, might in due time be helped to gain admission to Harvard—if I made sure the right person, capable of seeing past the standing of the Swiss school and even Toby’s standard examination scores, should they turn out to be spotty, studied his case. Illogically, my benevolent intentions gained strength as I observed Laura. She had turned in the boy’s direction and was leaning forward; her arm rested against my sleeve, it was naked, and she made no move to take it away. I decided that the red of her jersey dress went perfectly with her hair; earlier, I would have thought the combination was impossible. The light at the center of the table was strong; it turned Laura’s suntan into an ashen pallor. She was probably a little older than I had first supposed. What did Arthur mean about her organs, and how had that information come to him? It occurred to me that I might experimentally touch her knee with mine; she returned the pressure, and I perceived a smile directed at the boy that could have been intended for me.
A platter of lake fish followed the ravioli. Rodney warned us about the bones. They were treacherous; Edna wouldn’t have allowed the fish to be served if the oil lamps they had found the previous winter in Portugal did not give such a bright light. Even the California woman fell silent as we concentrated on removing them. Laura finished first and began to explain to me the proper technique for deboning freshwater frittura; her entire leg was pressed against mine. I chimed in, stupidly, about bones in fillets of shad.
I had noticed that Charlie, even as he spoke with Rodney, had been listening to the conversation between Toby and Laura. Now he addressed Rodney with a deliberate emphasis, which left no doubt that his remarks were to be heard by the entire table.
It is a risky business when a man such as I, responsible, accustomed to caution and old forms of courtesy, undertakes—be it for the brief space of a summer—to nurture and guide the young son of a friend. Distant friend, to be sure, not one of those links forged when we were malleable and so innocently receptive, like my friendship with Max. What a joy to be reunited with you through the intercession of our hosts!
He put his left hand to his eyes, as though to stop a tear, and ceremoniously raised his wineglass to me and then to Rodney.
One has not seen the youth, if indeed in one’s distracted contemplation of the surroundings one deigned to notice him, the resonant voice continued, since he was a child—since a lunch, or perhaps tea, in the garden of his father’s house in the hills above Beirut. Sweet smell of jasmine! His gracious mother—such a tragedy!—would have been there. To her alone this fortunate child owes his complexion. Look at him, he is blushing! Lips like rubies swimming in a sea of milk. Of course, the Levantine bandit’s eyes, the fierce nostrils, the pride—that is his father. A great man, and dangerous like all great men.
Here Charlie reached past Rodney, grasped Toby’s chin, and rotated his face first toward Laura and me, and then toward the California woman, so that we could all see for ourselves, until Toby, tossing his head like a rebellious colt, managed to free himself. I observed with astonishment not only these proceedings but also Charlie’s fingers. These being on his right hand, they were almost brown from nicotine, and they ended in uncared-for, long cracked nails. Earlier, Charlie had mopped his plate clean of the pasta sauce with a little piece of bread. I would not have liked to have these fingers on my face.
I have made him angry! That too is a risk—the affection of an older comrade misunderstood, taken for unbecoming familiarity. Forgive me, Toby. The risk I had in mind was much more grave: that of an unworthy choice. Time and attention wasted, like seed the villein scatters on rocky soil. Fair is as fair does! Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds! Luckily you are like the mysterious youth: unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow. May it ever be thus! For you have talent—promise that I will turn into fulfillment and plenitude. That is, my dear Toby, why I beg you not to speak
of newsrooms and copyboys or meetings with Florentine adolescents—though surely Laura’s niece, like her beautiful aunt, is most distinguished. A high calling awaits you: be a builder, maker, artist! Live in solitude! My studio will be your Harvard and your Yale!
Charlie paused and raised his glass again, this time to Toby. There was no reason to think the tirade would not continue after he had drained it. A vast blush covered Toby’s cheeks.
The California woman tittered. That sure will save a lot of tuition. Mr. Swan, you are too much!
Or the rest of us are too little, obliged the Rockefeller villa director. Apprenticeship is a noble tradition, the key to creating elites, especially the one we have been discussing. If only the custom could be revived!
IN LAURA’S BED that night, lying on my back, careful not to move lest I wake her—she was gripping me with her hand—myself at first quite unable to find sleep in that position, I chuckled at the liberating effect Arthur’s choice of words had had on me. They were no accident. He had my number. Later, already in that state where thought drifts into dream, I listened to the furious, whistling noise outside the window, which I recognized as a gale that must have risen suddenly, and marveled at the day’s other encounters and the change in Charlie. At college, like many former boarding-school heroes, he had the sort of assurance that is conferred by success on the river and with the faster debutantes, and a pomposity about the worldly and cultural advantages he had derived from weekends in New York and long vacations in Europe. Since then he had become a busy, powerful celebrity. But these declamatory passions, the insistent familiarity? Was he taking drugs? I was curious how much time would pass before I saw him again. My sleep was interrupted by Laura. She was shaking me by the shoulder and asking whether I could hear the screams. After a moment, over the wind and the desperate clapping of some open shutter, I distinguished a man’s voice, howling as though life were leaving his lungs together with the air. I said to Laura, Let’s go to the window. We spoke in whispers, although the villa’s walls were thick and the noise outside unbearable.
We could see crisscrossing beams of light at the edge of the water. That was where the screams were coming from. I told Laura I would go to look, and quickly put on my clothes. Outside the house, the force of the wind astonished me. It was blowing down the lake from the Alps, in brutal, cold spasms. I ran toward the lights. Rodney was there, and Arthur and Edna and some Italian men who looked as though they worked on the place. It was they and Rodney who held the flashlights, training them on the area between the steps leading from the terrace to the water, where the big launch was moored. On those steps, majestic, his pajamas gleaming like a marble arch, was Charlie, his bare feet on the moss-covered stone, his back taut, his arms pushing against the hull of the launch. The man whose screams I had heard was still in the water, eyes shut, grasping Charlie’s feet. Charlie was giving directions, and Rodney and one of the workmen took up positions on both sides of him. While he strained, they slowly lifted the man and then carried him to the terrace. There they laid him on a blanket and covered him with another. The screams stopped. He was only whimpering and twitching. Somebody said the ambulance was certainly taking its time. I asked Arthur what had happened. He explained that Charlie had heard the screams and ran to the lake, on his way waking up Rodney, who got the others. Apparently the boatman—that was the man pulled from the water—had gone to the lake to see how the launch and the other boats were doing in the wind. He must have seen that the launch had dragged its mooring and was going to smash unprotected against the steps. Perhaps he tried to fend it off. That was probably when the accident happened. Whether he slipped on the moss or from the deck was unknown, but as we could see he found himself in the water, crushed between the boat and the stone each time the boat lurched. Charlie was there first and managed to hold the boat away until the man was lifted out, something no one else would have had the strength to accomplish.
As we spoke, Charlie and Rodney finished various complicated arrangements concerning rubber tires, fenders, and the other boats. Charlie noticed me and waved jovially as he put on a robe of black and yellow brocade. It seemed that he had left it on the balustrade before undertaking to separate the elements. Taking a flask from the pocket, he drank a swig and passed it to me.
Here, he said, it’s good whiskey. Now I hear the police and the ambulance. Too bad. They’ll get him to a hospital. If the son of a bitch lives, he will be a cripple. He would be better off dead.
II
THE RITZ in Boston. A bank in King of Prussia.
In the sitting room of a suite above the Public Garden, an old woman stares straight ahead, at nothing. Bony feet in newly shined black pumps crossed on a stool. Its petit point matches the wing chair. White nylon stockings. Calves crooked as though from a lifetime of hugging the saddle. It’s the monstrous weight of her body. The flab begins above the knees: there are rolls upon rolls of it under the gray flannel dress, and it has invaded her neck and cheeks. Only feet and hands have been spared. Three strands of pearls. Pale pink hair set in neat curls. Her lips are cracked, although when she leaves the hotel it is always in a closed car. She dabs at them with a stick of grease. My cousin, Emma Hafter Storrow. Thirty years earlier, after the end of the war, already long widowed, she closed the house on Commonwealth Avenue, her father-in-law’s astounding wedding gift, forever useless. Her sons had fallen, neither the lilies nor the tuberoses from the glass conservatory would frame a nuptial altar in the rich church in Copley Square. Along the Charles, cars speed on the drive built with Storrow money. That money too unneeded. In sprawling King of Prussia, from businesses that deface the landscape of her childhood, a nameless river of cash flows to the bank her own father, Judge Maximilian Hafter, founded. The shares are in her trust; she knows how rich she is to the last dime.
No Storrows left; except for her, no Hafters. Because she is the last descendant of the judge’s father, after her death she may send the money where she wishes. By appointment. The Hafters were abolitionists. If she does nothing, a Negro orphanage in Alabama will inherit. That’s written into the trust. She tells me about the bank lawyer, who visits every quarter. Her cataracts have thickened. She requires that the figures be read aloud. Each time he mentions the “power” and the document she must sign if she would exercise it, she chortles. What has he against those damn pickaninnies?
When I knock, the door opens at once. I enter. The companion, really a nurse, Mrs. Leahy, shows me in and withdraws. Her room is beyond Mrs. Storrow’s bedroom. I always knock on Mrs. Leahy’s door first. This is our custom; Cousin Emma has never liked to rise from her chair. She chuckles over my name: Maximilian Hafter Strong. The great-grandson of her father’s uncle, named after her father, the judge. Why? Did my parents, the professor of agriculture at a Rhode Island state college and his librarian spouse, think it droll to bestow such a large name on a tiny baby, did they like its exotic ring, like some explorer of the Amazon? Her own Maximilian and Hugh were alive when this Max was born; the Christmas cards regularly received and acknowledged so long as the librarian lived were the only commerce between them. None other was offered or sought. In the end, it was she who summoned me into her presence. Out of boredom. How many times since then has she told me the story, how many times has she turned the matter over in her mind?
Although it lacks of noon, I mix gin-and-tonics in purple Venetian tumblers. She likes them half-gin and half-Schweppes. Never mind the hour, she says, here the sun is always over the yardarm. The silver, glass, and china are hers, brought from Commonwealth Avenue, together with the Queen Anne and Chippendale pieces, silk rugs, and flower paintings. The hospital bed Mrs. Leahy cranks up and down is the only alien object. That is a recent acquisition; it marks Cousin Emma’s last visit to Phillips House. That’s the field of her battles with cancer: both breasts lost and it’s not over.
The chocolate mints are in the blue Canton dish beside her. She eats them quickly and offers me the last one. Take it, I am not dead yet. I c
an send Leahy to buy more.
I laugh. From the sideboard I take a package I think I have managed to conceal until then. Lindt miniatures, dark chocolate, bittersweet. Cousin Emma’s favorite, purchased at Cardullo’s in Harvard Square. She points to her cheek and waits for my kiss. Another round of drinks, it’s Sunday, the time to indulge. I cheat artfully, only pretending to pour gin in mine. This too is one of our customs. How else will I manage to do the work I have set aside for the afternoon?
Lunch. Mock turtle soup, turkey hash, and baked apples. Mrs. Leahy fetches the splits of champagne from the closet fridge, and also pills on a little silver dish. Mrs. Storrow drinks Veuve Clicquot when it’s not time for cocktails. Corks reverentially twisted by the waiter leave the bottles with a mere sigh. He serves the food and waits on a chair in the corridor until she rings. Except when asked, Mrs. Leahy takes meals in her own bedroom; it makes Mrs. Storrow nervous to watch her eat, she is so slow; besides, she doesn’t like having that Irish woman at the table. She points out that I eat fast, like a Hafter. More champagne. Leahy must fetch it, she won’t have me rummaging in the bedroom. Past the cloud of the cataracts she squints at me. Thoughts and questions are left unspoken. They crowd her room like souls of the dead. Does she like this distant relative? Blond with brown eyes, that’s the Hafter in him, but thin; the resemblance stops with the coloring. Longing for her own sons rises like nausea. She listens to me talk about the summer’s vacation in Italy. Como. Belluno. Udine. Expatriate Americans. She will not say: Why are you alive, why were they not born later, like you, a young man who hasn’t been to any war?
