‘That’s an automatic variable governor. From here down to Hyannis, Route 6 changes top speeds every few miles without warning! The highway police hide just before the signs and nab anyone who doesn’t immediately adjust. I’ve programmed all the changes into the Z-5’s system, I know two cops in particular dying to cite me. They’re frustrated as hell when I sail past doing sixty-four or forty-nine and a quarter miles per hour.’ He laughed his distinctive laugh again.
The road narrowed to four lanes, suddenly closed in on either side by clay bluffs and heavy foliage. When that opened out, the scenery expanded to reveal, on the right, a seemingly endless row of tiny cabins, behind which I could make out the immense flat plane of the bay waters, and across it the tip of Provincetown glittering in the early afternoon sunlight. On our left, a salt-water lake appeared, a far more mysterious prismatic blue than either the sun-speckled bay or the matte sky. From the lake’s most distant expanse appeared vast clouds of what at first I thought were insects but as we approached realized were sea birds – terns, gulls, geese and mallards in the thousands – skimming low along the water surface, bending and curling as though they were a single organism, metamorphosing in front of us from a giant quivering sheet into a tight funnel before breaking and scattering into their thousands, re-forming as a flattened bar that as we watched became an arrow headed north. The Beemer began a long ascent just as massive earthen cliffs on our left limited the lake and, on the right, lofty trees began to conceal the bay waters.
At the top of the ridge, the continuation of high bluffs on our left was more exposed. The entire area, I noticed, was federally protected marshland. All at once, on the right, we were treated to a Currier and Ives etching: a nineteenth-century New England town with snow-white skyscraping church steeple, dormered houses and outbuildings, all embraced by the fattest, roundest, fluffiest, greenest tree tops.
‘North Truro,’ De Petrie said, as the highway narrowed to two lanes and began to descend, at first sharply, then more gently. On either side was forest, mixed in with what looked like abandoned buildings that might have been farms or businesses. Just before another rise, the road forked and the Z-5 took the leftmost tine, leveling off and speeding through a completely residential area, houses hidden from view by trees, hedges, and fencework, although those I could make out were spread upon large plots, unnumbered, post boxes collected at designated spots.
Five minutes of narrow, roughly paved road and we geed onto an even less discernible path. We rose sideways to the view below, allowing me to see more of it, from above. A flat circular drive landed us in front of what might have been a carriage house or early horseless garage, its top-windowed double doors latched shut. Before it was parked a dun-colored Sport Utility. The house, attached to the garage behind, extended along one side. It was painted Crenshaw melon yellow, trimmed with ivory, a conventional two-story salt-box of no great size, with a dinky filigree-columned wooden side porch. Only a few fruit trees. But the front yard was distinguished by robust, well-tended, red rose bushes, and a blue, white and pink ‘English garden’ of daisies, hydrangeas, flags, narcissi and hollyhocks.
De Petrie gave a quick tour of the house. Four rooms had been first erected in the second half of the eighteenth century, he said: the three ground-floor rooms and one above. When the property was purchased by a local ironworks manufacturer who’d made a fortune equipping whaling ships, the house acquired its formal entrance and foyer, the two parlors flanking it, a downstairs master bedroom and dressing room, and three more upstairs garret rooms for servants and children. At the turn of the twentieth century, the carriage house/garage had been added, and indoor plumbing installed. Fifty years later, a furnace had been put in the cellar and the kitchen thoroughly modernized. The circular driveway made its debut then. The house belonged to friends of De Petrie’s, he told me, inherited by them and used as a summer place due to its neglect and deterioration. He’d come to rent it after the Pines season was over, from after Labor Day to Thanksgiving. When his friends decided to sell the house in 1984, he’d just made a ‘financial killing’ – a book contract with a sizable advance covering publication of The Last Good Year for Cadillacs and Chrome Earrings. De Petrie showed me how the entrance had changed position over the years, opening first from the kitchen, then at the long, formal drawing room, later at the foyer, then to the side porch, and back to the dining room again. When he’d moved in, he said, he was in such straitened financial circumstances, it was all he could do to keep the place in minimally required repairs. Eventually, income flowed in for further restoration.
‘You’ll be comfortable here.’ De Petrie guided me through the dining room, into a little formal parlor, from there into the sunny square foyer, with stairs rising to the bright second floor, to a matching library and into a rectangular bedroom. ‘You’ve got a bath and a short cut to the kitchen,’ he pointed out. ‘You should get around at night without breaking anything. I sleep upstairs.’
While I put my clothing away and changed into shorts, he prepared our noon snack in the long, formal yet also family-style dining room that seemed to be an axial point in the house. The phone rang as we’d only just seated ourselves and he’d poured coffee and laid out the pastries we’d picked up in town. De Petrie gestured for me to go ahead, and went to take the phone call in the library, several rooms away, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. For no reason I could put my finger on, I felt certain the caller to be Aaron Axenfeld, perhaps checking that I’d arrived safely, or checking De Petrie’s opinion about my similarity to Len Spurgeon.
As I plunged into the apricot-filled Danish and fresh pineapple slices and heavy French coffee, I remarked through the quartet of tall back windows how ornithologically active the house and its surroundings were. A stolid, immovably rooted, abundantly leaved beech tree some twenty feet away supported several feeders, one of which attracted hummingbirds who hovered whirring as they sipped sugar water. I soon noticed other birds: a puffed-out, red-breasted robin plashing messily in the rust-stained, once-white cement bird bath as a quarrelsome cardinal family contentiously awaited their turn from the various branches of a mulberry bush; tiny brown tits, frosted white, braiding the lower branches of the bordering boxwood; tawny buff swallows buzzing each of the back garden’s trees and shrubs, checking them out, before zooming out of sight; two pensive black-winged red birds daintily perched, snacking only inches away from where I sat, picking at seeds distributed in a drawer-like bird feeder installed athwart the windowsill; a preoccupied dusky-gray secretary bird barely placed on the feeder, busily preening itself until it presumed no one was looking, when it suddenly poked into the midst of the seed pile, came up with the biggest it could hold in its beak, and flew off to dine in private; myriad tiny gold and green finches bejeweling the leaf-umbrellaed air. Watching the birds I found myself relaxing for the first time all day. I must have spaced out a little watching their miniature antics, because I wasn’t even aware De Petrie had finished his phone call and returned.
‘Ready for the beach?’ He took a final sip of coffee.
A short auto ride brought us to a small, nearly full parking lot approximately carved out of the adjacent thickets of beach plum. Beyond it a sand path led up and around a bluff. I could hear but not yet see the surf. A short trudge with our gear and there, abruptly, beyond the narrowing of two earthen walls, it was, spread out before and below us. I was amazed to find that we stood more or less atop a sixty-foot cliff. Those two diagonal, evidently man-kicked-out paths in the sand were the only means of access down to the wide, cream-colored sea strand. From this altitude I could catch sight of only a few people scattered upon the sands.
Once we’d reached bottom, the cliffs seemed to be even more daunting. Because of how empty the place was, we easily found a sunny yet private spot. One close to the water’s edge, as the sun would cross behind the cliffs in a few hours, De Petrie said, blocking our light. At first I simply splayed out on the large beach sheets, absorbing heat, trying to na
p. Unable to, I became restless and tried the surf. The water was cold and rough, but not excessively. I was laved and tumbled.
De Petrie remained sitting, a visored cap protecting him from sun glare, as he pored over all the material I’d managed to gather up and put into his hands: the four manuscript fragments – the kids in the car, the bar on Christmas Eve, the Flamingos, and last, but hardly least, the cable car mishap. Along with them were my reports of conversations with Bobbie Bonaventura, Thomas Dodge, Tanya Cull, Reuben Weatherbury, Camden Phoenix, Irian St George, Damon Von Slyke, and, just completed this morning while I was on the plane coming here, Aaron Axenfeld. In addition were the journal entries, letters, and other documents the heirs and executors had provided me with. A considerable body of evidence, I thought, and one I hoped De Petrie would add to. For the moment, I had to wait his verdict on what I’d so far amassed. So, after boring myself in the surf, I waved to him, gestured in a direction and began walking.
The cliffs closely approached the shoreline, constricting the beach at several points, and giant black rocks rose out of the sands. I realized I’d gone around a bend, out of sight of De Petrie. Once again, the cliffs withdrew and the beach widened, this time so much I could barely make out the couple half hiding behind beach umbrellas directly under the cliff’s edge, although I was fairly certain they were nude. A few hundred yards, and I was surrounded by seagulls the size of turkeys. I was reminded of Damon Von Slyke at our historic first encounter saying to me with that poker face of his that he’d titled his new book The Gulls, and how everyone hated the title. At the time I’d thought it odd. I now wondered if it had been a complete and unblemished put-on. Like renaming the character in that short story Leonard. I mean, he’d not even been trying hard to fool me, had he? How stupid did he think I was? How naive? Another narrowing of the strand ensued, this one so limiting the overarching cliff crumbled at the water’s edge, eroded up to a height of fifty feet. Did the tide go that high during storms? Nor’easters? Another bend of shoreline, even larger rock outcroppings and a few more nudists, this time males of a certain age, alone and, I assumed – rightly? wrongly? – gay. One was dead asleep, his body as though dropped, but with a wideawake, friendly-looking, sand-covered Irish wolfhound that rose to its feet to carefully check me over, looking, sniffing the air, not barking or advancing toward me.
At last, wearied, I sat on a rock ledge, let the gulls come nearer, and scrutinized the ocean. I tried to sort out what was going on in my life. For the first time in months, I felt I had a future ahead. The thesis. The class. St George. The friendship of one, maybe two, maybe all of the remaining Purples. A calculatedly quiet ascent in the Languages Department at UCLA. A stately incremental upgrade in the academic world. Maybe Tanya Cull or St George or Weatherbury endorsing my thesis when it was published as a book by Stanford U Press. Not even Fusumi’s tenured chair and that house in Little Holmby Hills seemed totally out of the picture. I’d get an office in Rolfe or Royce Hall, buy myself a Z-5, maybe in this same pale green with a tan convertible roof, and then, perhaps when I felt settled in, find someone to take Chris’s place beside me.
I had purposely not thought about Chris for weeks. Chris had been the problem, the sticking point, the burr under my saddle for months. Chris; what Chris said that afternoon we’d broken up in that stupid park on Morningside Heights; how Chris had failed to react when I’d gotten this post at UCLA; what Chris hadn’t said when our small group of friends had cheered me goodbye; what Chris thought and didn’t think; what Chris would think and wouldn’t think when I proved to Chris – and everyone! every goddamned arrogant, snooty, high-faluting son of a bitch student and teacher at the Columbia Grad program! – that I didn’t need Chris, nor them, not any of them, to rise to the top.
Behind me I heard a dog bark. I turned to see the Irish wolfhound off its owner’s towel, dancing about as its master stood up, just awakening, and stretched himself. He was tall, well built, maybe in his early thirties, totally naked, with thick curling black hair, a fuzzy-looking goatee, and a large erection that stood out in front of him and bounced whenever he moved. He looked like a more mature Ray Rice. I turned away the second he seemed to try to establish eye contact with me. After what I thought was a sufficiently apt amount of time to let him know I was ignoring him, I stood up and took off, lightly jogging down the beach. As I passed in front of his blanket, the dog briefly ran out to join me, caught up, and accompanied me on my run. He called it back – ‘Bar-neeeee’ sung out in a confident virile baritone, answered by a barrage of barking. I didn’t stop racing until I felt a stitch in my side and thought I would scream in agony, drop onto the sand, and die.
‘“Celebrations and suppressions,” in the words of the master, “are equally painful to me,”’ De Petrie said. ‘Nevertheless, if you don’t too much mind, as tonight is a sort of morose anniversary, let’s raise a glass to it.’
We were in a sequestered candlelit booth in a Italianesque seafood restaurant in Wellfleet, not far from his house. Our waiter had just taken our order. The sommelier had just brought us a complex 1996 California Merlot.
‘To the ravens at Truro,’ De Petrie said, ‘who never lie.’
We clinked glasses and sipped.
‘By “the master”, I assume you mean Henry James.’
‘James the Younger, James the Great, and the Old Pretender, as Max Beerbohm called him. Do you ever read him?’ Before I could answer, De Petrie went on, ‘Does anyone still read him? James, I mean. I know no one reads Beerbohm anymore.’
I mumbled about re-reading The Aspern Papers.
He laughed. ‘I don’t for a second doubt it. You’re sort of living out The Aspern Papers, aren’t you?’ Again before I could reply, he went on, ‘I don’t suppose you ever saw that frightful Hollywood movie based on the novella? What was it called? It starred Robert Cummings as the scheming editor and Susan Hayward as the allegedly frumpy grand-niece. Big stars in my day whom you’ve doubtless never heard of. In the film, every night she goes into a trance and transforms herself into her beautiful grandmother Juliana. Sporting jewelry with stones the size of your fist and a cleavage-deep velvet gown, she crosses over a mini Ponte Rialto to some chandelier-encrusted atelier avec terrace to play Chopin Nocturnes till dawn. One night Cummings follows and is seduced by her. I can’t remember who played the old woman who’d been Jeffrey Aspern’s lover. She looked a million years old. It was beautifully shot. Venice itself never looked so glamorously louche. Romantic twaddle though it was, it was more faithful than more accurate renditions. It conveyed the flavor of the thing so well.’
‘It was called The Lost Moment?’ I said.
‘You clever thing! You’re right! What a trashy title.’
‘I saw it on television when I was a kid. It was so over the top, it blew me away. In fact when I read the James, I thought that was the rip-off!’ And immediately asked, ‘What do you mean before by the ravens at Truro?’
‘You’ve noticed all the birds?’ De Petrie asked.
‘How could I miss them?’
‘How could you, they’ve become so much a part of the place? We’ve encouraged them – with feeders all year round – so that when they’re not there, and especially when they’re both not visible and silent, well, then it becomes remarkably noticeable.’
‘Why would they become silent?’ I asked.
‘When ravens come they hunt and kill other birds. What we are memorializing today is the first time I actually seized upon this phenomenon. It is a phenomenon! Unmistakably so! It was this date in 1991. I was downstairs in the dining room, waiting for Len, who was upstairs getting dressed. We were to go into Provincetown for his doctor’s appointment. The CytoMegalo Virus had worsened the floaters in one of his eyes. I refused to let him drive and said I’d take him. He’d been dry-coughing for weeks, running heavy fevers for nights. He’d grown uncommunicative. As I was scanning some pages from Marty that I’d written earlier that day, there it suddenly was: an amazing, unanticipat
ed, absolute lack of birdsong.’
The waiter came with bread. When he was gone, De Petrie continued.
‘I’m extremely hearing-sensitive. It’s a curse at times. Like Roderick Usher, I can hear rats in wainscoting six floors down. So, it only took a few moments for me to notice the total cessation of sound. I went out to the backyard. Didn’t see any birds. I walked deeper into the woods. Again, no birds. Not a peep, literally. Then, in the distance, in the direction of the highway, I heard a caw-caw, caw-caw. After a few minutes the ravens arrived. They were huge: the size of eagles or buzzards. They especially go after younger birds, you know, nestlings, eggs. I counted a dozen ravens lurking high in tree limbs. A hunting pack. I yelled to scare them off. They flew away. But not far. And a few minutes later I could hear them assault some hapless bird family. A few loud mixed squawks and then the caw-cawing again, terrifyingly triumphant. I went deeper into the woods, thinking I might still save a wounded bird. I found nothing. Not long afterward, I could hear them fall upon other birds up in the trees, near where the property adjoins the Fleischers’. I never saw anything of course, which almost was the most striking aspect of it all. When I got back to the house, Len was waiting. He’d been up the night before and he looked awfully ill.
‘That afternoon the doctor confirmed not only that his CMV had spread, was still spreading, but also that he had pneumocystis. He wanted to hospitalize him. But Len said no. We drove over to Mechanic Street to the medical supplies place and got oxygen masks and tanks and IV racks and all the other equipment he would need. That afternoon when we arrived home, Len went straight upstairs to bed. He never came back down alive. It only took a few weeks. Of course they were frightening, ghastly weeks filled with alarms and crises. For me. Luckily for Len, he only remained conscious a fraction of the time. But that afternoon, as we drove back here with all the gear in the back and in the trunk, I saw the ravens again. They were on Joe and Armin’s lawn, four of them, pecking at something. Incessantly pecking. If I had a gun I swear I would have killed them … Len never noticed.
The Book of Lies Page 42
