Elena

by Thomas H. Cook

  But the fields were burning, as I told Martha that same afternoon, even if only in my sister’s mind.

  Martha cleared her throat pointedly. “But wouldn’t you say that Jason and Elena were still happy together the day of the party?” she asked.

  “Relatively, yes,” I said.

  “Why only relatively?”

  “Because despite what Elena said that day,” I told her, “despite the fact that she no doubt believed it herself when she said it — despite all that, Martha, it was not enough.”

  “You mean Jason was not enough?”

  “I mean that whatever it was she had in her life, whatever Jason was to her, it wasn’t enough.”

  “Was that obvious at the party?”

  “No.”

  “When did it become obvious?”

  “There were little signs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, once when we were at dinner,” I told her, “Jason began a long story about the last hours of John C. Calhoun. It seems that Calhoun was completely lucid until the exact second of his death. The doctor, Jason said, even told Calhoun when his pulse had stopped, and Calhoun had simply nodded and waited for his life to end, quite calmly waited.” I could see Elena’s face before me, staring oddly at Jason as he wound his story to an end. “Anyway,” I said, “Jason told this anecdote in his usual style, very full of drama. He was relishing the tale himself, completely captivated by it. But when he finished, there was a short silence, and then Elena said crisply, ‘What’s the point, Jason?’”

  Martha nodded. “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “She meant that he was too verbose, too florid in his style,” Martha said confidently. “That he was always losing his place, getting all tied up in his language.”

  I shook my head. “No. She meant that his stories had no point, that they related to nothing, that they were only connected to his own sense of the dramatic, and that beyond this very subjective sort of appreciation, there was nothing.”

  “Well, what did Jason say?” Martha asked.

  “Nothing much. He just shrugged it off. He laughed and said that he wasn’t sure there was a point at all. He didn’t seem bothered by it.”

  Martha jotted something in her notebook, then looked back up at me. “That’s it? The only sign of what was happening, just that question, ‘What’s the point?’”

  “No, there were others,” I said. “For example, Alexander and Saundra were married not long after Elena’s party, and within a year my grandson, David, was born. Elena began to spend a great deal of time with the three of them and a great deal less time with Jason.”

  “Did he resent that?”

  “I don’t think so. He had his own work. Whatever else may be said about Jason, he didn’t need Elena to complete himself. He had his life, his work. He never gave them up to my sister.”

  “I see,” Martha said.

  “Of course, at that time, the worst hadn’t happened,” I added quickly. “But later Elena began to work on that section of Quality which dealt with America’s vision of itself. And that brought her, at last, to The American Experience.”

  Martha nodded. “Ah, so that’s where the conflict really began, over The American Experience. That’s when she found it necessary to desert him.”

  “Well, perhaps,” I said dully.

  Martha looked at me very pointedly. “I know you disagree with my approach, William,” she said, “this theme of mine, about desertion. I know you disagree with that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too convenient, I think. But more than that, I think it may be basically false.”

  “But people deserted Elena, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t that matter?”

  “It matters, perhaps, but it did not make her an artist.”

  “Then when she deserted Jason, that was not a kind of subconscious revenge?” Martha asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then why did she leave him?”

  “Because she came to see him more clearly. Is that wrong?”

  “What did she see?”

  “The clouds within his mind.”

  Martha quickly scribbled the phrase in her notebook. “And that caused her a great deal of trouble, that insight?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “And for Jason?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said immediately. “Very much for Jason.”

  I could recall the first time his distress became apparent. The three of us, Elena, Jason, and I, had planned to have dinner together at a restaurant in the Village. I had arrived around seven and was seated in the lounge with my wine, nibbling at a bowl of peanuts, when I saw Jason come in. It was autumn, and I remember that a very hard rain had been falling all day. Jason was drenched. He shook his umbrella vigorously, then hung his sodden overcoat on a rack by the door.

  I waved to him and he came trudging heavily toward me, as if slogging through a field of mud.

  “You look as though you could use one of these, old boy,” I said, lifting my brandy. I was in a very cheerful mood. I had spent the entire day with my grandson and the afterglow was still upon me.

  “Yes, I think so,” Jason said wearily. He slumped down in the chair across from mine and shifted about in it, trying to find a comfortable position. There was a creakiness in him that I had not noticed before. He looked rather like an old house, chipped and peeling. One could almost see the places where the wind came through.

  “Elena’s not coming,” he said. “She called me this afternoon to let me know.” He glanced about irritably. “She’s gotten caught up in some research and doesn’t want to leave it.”

  I smiled. “Ah, so that’s it. The Great Book. She’s getting to be something of a caricature of the obsessed scholar, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is,” Jason said crisply. “I’ve gotten used to it over the past few years, of course, but it gets worse and worse.” He glanced quickly about the bar. His edginess was unusual. It was as if a little animal were clawing at the basic calm of his temperament.

  “You seem a bit distracted, Jason,” I said.

  He turned toward me. “You’ve never written on anything American, have you?” he asked.

  “No. It’s strictly English literature for me, except for an occasional review.”

  “Has Elena ever commented on your work?”

  “From time to time,” I said. “Sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable.”

  “How many books have you written?”

  “Five.”

  Jason nodded. “You’re like me, sort of a plodder. You’re not like Elena.”

  “I have never been like Elena.”

  “She doesn’t work like a scholar at all, William. She works like a revolutionary, with fanatical purpose. If she built bridges, there’d be no river on earth without one.”

  I remember thinking at that moment that he looked curiously emaciated. Even his language sounded pared down.

  I leaned across the table toward him. “What’s the matter, Jason?”

  “Your sister is obsessed.”

  “You should be able to understand that.”

  “It’s not just the incessant work, William,” Jason said, “it’s the way she goes at it. In the beginning, she would ask me something, and I’d give her an answer. She knew I was very learned in the field. She took the answer. Now my opinions seem to mean very little to her.”

  I forced myself to smile. “Well, Jason, you know your Plato: opinion is, after all, the lowest form of knowledge.”

  Jason’s face darkened. “There is such a thing as informed judgment, isn’t there?”

  “Of course.”

  “And shouldn’t it be trusted?”

  “Well, that depends.”

  Jason looked at me irritably. “On what, may I ask?”

  “On just how learned it actually is.”

  Jason’s eyes narr
owed. “Well, what about my judgment? Does that mean anything?”

  “Of course it does.”

  He seemed on the verge of explosion, an attitude alarmingly out of character.

  “Look, Jason,” I said, “I’ve been through this sort of thing with Elena before. There’s a rising passion as the work progresses, then it crests and everything goes back to normal.”

  Jason looked utterly unconvinced. “And what is normal? Is respect normal?”

  “For Elena? Yes.”

  “Perhaps for you, William,” he said with sudden, deep bitterness.

  “Are you saying that Elena has lost respect for you, Jason?” I asked.

  He actually laughed. “My God, how stupid I can be.” He was about to add something else when the barmaid stepped up. Jason ordered a Scotch. Then he turned back to me.

  “You know, William, a man can go through his entire life thinking that he is one sort of person, and then discover that he is quite another.” He shook his head. “That’s me, you know. I’ve done that.”

  “In what way?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I’ve always been a rather vain man, I suppose. But I’ve always thought that this part of me was offset by a certain generosity, a certain kindliness.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He shook his head again, and his eyes closed slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

  The barmaid brought the Scotch and Jason drank it down quickly.

  “I’ve become a victim of my own charm, William,” he said. “I’ve used it like a pose. I’ve filed down my rough edges with it, filed them down so well that they’ve almost disappeared.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  He smiled. “I’m not surprised. I’m talking to myself, you see. It’s an interior monologue.” He motioned for the barmaid and ordered another Scotch. “Do you know what Goethe’s last words were, William?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a well-known anecdote. ‘Mehr Licht,’ more light.”

  “Have you brought more light into the world, William?”

  The question was so grand that only a modest reply was possible. “Perhaps a little,” I said.

  “And your work,” Jason said. “Does it ever look like a sham, a deception?”

  “No.”

  “Good for you,” Jason said. He smiled quietly as the barmaid brought his second drink. He lifted the glass. “To the truth of the work, then,” he said, and tossed off his Scotch.

  “Perhaps we should order dinner,” I suggested.

  Jason laughed. “You don’t have to worry about my getting drunk in a public place and making a fool of myself, William. I haven’t done that since I was a very young man with a wife in Hollywood.”

  I continued to watch him closely but said nothing.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Jason asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  Jason looked at me very gravely. “I never willingly lied, William,” he said, almost pleadingly. “I never willingly distorted.”

  I leaned toward him. “What is this all about?”

  Jason shook his head. “It’s just too embarrassing,” he said with a mocking smile. “Just too embarrassing.”

  “What?”

  For a moment he seemed determined to tell me. I could see the resolve clearly in his face, and an instant later I saw it just as clearly disappear.

  “It’s not your problem,” he said as he slowly got to his feet. “It’s not even Elena’s problem. It’s mine.”

  I stood up, too. “I’m totally at sea in all this, Jason,” I told him.

  Jason nodded quickly as he laid a ten-dollar bill on the table. “I’m not surprised,” he said dryly. “Sorry I can’t stay for dinner.”

  I took hold of his arm. “I’m your friend, Jason.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jason said, almost sharply, as if such indulgence offended him. He hesitated, and then regarded me intently. “You wouldn’t think of me as a violent man, would you, William?”

  “No.”

  Jason looked at me as if I were the shallowest person on earth. Then he turned and walked away.

  I suppose that had Jason been a less understated man I would have let the matter drop, simply gone home and slept off my concern. But his agitation was so contradictory to his usual calm that my alarm increased after he had left the restaurant. I sat nursing a second brandy and replaying our conversation. The mystery only deepened, however, and before long I had to find the answer.

  I went first to Jason’s apartment, but he was not in. So I went to Elena’s in Brooklyn Heights.

  She opened the door immediately. She was dressed in a long skirt and bulky sweater. She tugged her glasses from around her ears and look at me quizzically.

  “Didn’t Jason tell you that I couldn’t make it to dinner?” she asked.

  “Yes, he did,” I told her. “He seemed out of sorts.”

  Elena nodded. “He probably was.” She opened the door and stepped back to let me in.

  I walked through the short hallway and into Elena’s combination living room and office. Her desk was at the side of the room, near the window. It was covered with papers, and her old typewriter, the one my father had given her so long ago, sat open on it. The manuscript of Quality was sitting on the wide windowsill beside the desk. It was perhaps six inches thick.

  Elena was entirely calm, quite different in her mood from Jason. ‘This afternoon Jason and I fought like a couple of teenagers,” she said, shaking her head. “It was ridiculous, really. I think we’re both ashamed of ourselves. Sit down, William.”

  I remained standing.

  Elena walked to the fireplace and leaned against the mantel. “I’m too old for this sort of thing, and I won’t put up with it.”

  “I don’t mean to pry,” I began, “but could you —”

  “Of course you mean to pry, William,” Elena said firmly. “Every life is a soap opera but our own.” There was a harshness in her voice that I had never heard before.

  “I could leave now, if that’s what you want,” I said.

  Elena waved her arm dismissively. “Oh, for God’s sake, sit down, William. I don’t need another display of wounded pride today.”

  I sat down on the sofa.

  “We had a fight,” Elena said. “It’s just that simple. I happened to mention some doubts I had about some of the things he’d written in The American Experience.” She glanced angrily toward the window. “His response was hysterical.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Jason,” I said.

  Elena remained on her feet. She glared down at me. “I don’t care how it sounds, that’s what happened.”

  “Well, what exactly did you say?” I asked cautiously.

  She was about to answer when there was a knock at the door.

  “That’s probably Jason,” Elena said. “He called a few minutes ago.” She did not move.

  “Should I leave?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. She walked slowly to the door and opened it. From the living room I could see Jason standing in the doorway.

  “William’s here,” Elena told him. “Do you still want to come in?”

  “Yes, I do,” Jason said. His voice was very soft. She stepped out of the doorway and allowed h m to pass in front of her.

  Jason nodded to me as he walked into the living room, then he turned to Elena.

  “I’ve come to apologize,” he said.

  “I accept,” Elena said coolly. “Now you can go, if you like.”

  “No, Elena, I can’t,” Jason said. “Now I have apologized to you, and I think we both know that I am not the only villain of the piece.”

  Elena walked across the room and took up her position by the fireplace again.

  “You expect an apology from me?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “For hasty judgments, Elena.”

  “About what?”

  Jason shook his head despairingly. “You know exactly what I’m
talking about.” He looked at me. “She believes that The American Experience is — how did she put it? A work of rhetoric, not of history.” He looked at Elena. “Isn’t that about right?”

  “Yes,” Elena said firmly.

  Jason glanced at me helplessly, then he turned back to my sister.

  “You’ve learned a great deal since you started your book, Elena,” he said, “but you shouldn’t believe that you’ve learned everything.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Not about American intellectual history,” Jason added, “and not about me.” He turned to me. “She thinks I glorify war and violence in my books.”

  “Wittingly or unwittingly,” Elena added.

  “She says this about a pacifist,” Jason said, still looking at me.

  Elena rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Jason, there’s no need to go over this again.”

  Jason continued to stare into my eyes. “How can she believe such a thing?”

  I looked into Jason’s face, and I realized that what my sister had discovered was the truth. There was a violence in his soul which he had spent a long, heroic life suppressing. It had been born, no doubt, in the rage he had known in his youth, the rage to escape from the heavy wool of family and regional loyalty, which only the force of a violent temperament could have overthrown. But the violence had remained, in the long passages of cathartic battle and massive destruction that flared up in his work — the almost loving portrait, for example, of the burning of Atlanta. Elena had seen this, had seen how his early hatred and the need to control it had “continually shifted his work,” as she wrote in Quality, “between roseate romanticism and a terrible swift sword.”

  When I made no response at all to Jason’s question, he turned back to Elena.

  “Do you think my whole life is a charade?” he asked. “Just one long hypocrisy?”

  “No, Jason,” Elena said. She glanced toward the window. “Perhaps you’d better go.”

  “No!” Jason said. He walked over to the window and picked up the manuscript of Quality. “Do you think there are no errors in this goddamn thing?”

  Elena turned toward him. “Put it down, Jason.”

  Jason waved the pages in the air. A few slipped from the stack and scattered across the floor in front of him. “Your mind is a knife, Elena,” he shouted. “Just a knife to slash things with!”