Borderless Deceit

by Adrian de Hoog

  “Better already. You should smile more often. Now words. What can be said about parrots?”

  “Birds of a feather…” I quoted, then stopped to think.

  “Excellent opening. Good potential. Go on.”

  “Birds of a feather are visiting Berlin together. Wish you could trek over.”

  “Uhh…No.”

  I was warming up. “Two exotic birds we are, flitting from spectacle to spectacle.”

  “Hmm. That doesn’t do it either. I’ve got one. Tell me what you think. We’re having some great talks…”

  It took a minute to register. “Rachel!”

  “Parrots talk. In a way.”

  “They don’t. They certainly don’t converse.”

  “Can we claim we do?”

  “Rachel! We can. Of course we can. What are we doing now? You’re the best conversationalist I know.” Rachel shrugged. Sipping coffee, I pondered. “Listen to this one: We’re having an eloquent time.”

  Rachel considered it. “An eloquent time,” she repeated, studying the two parrots. “That could do it. It’s enigmatic, yet revealing. A hint of a pun, a suggestion of irony – never a bad thing.”

  The postcard signed, she dropped it into a mailbox on our way to the boat. As groups embarked a photographer was taking portraits on the gangplank. He snapped a picture of us too. In the photo – later acquired – Rachel was radiant as the day itself, while I in that impromptu setting put on my astringent grin. The photo captured us, I mean our natures, and I said so when we studied the copies. Sweet and Sour, was how I labelled it. “You do look as though you’ve just eaten a green apple,” Rachel said, laughing at my strained face. “But maybe it’s deceiving. People can be the opposite of how they seem.”

  “What?” I replied. “Me sweet, you sour?”

  She laughed again. “Or, Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

  This mystified me and after the river outing, so resolutely used by Rachel to pierce my psyche, I was at a still greater loss to think what her drift could have been.

  The cruise began placidly enough. We found two places on the deck close to the front. The boat cast off, setting a course through a succession of lakes with fine waterfront scenery. Gardens, mansions, parks, palaces – one delightful vista after another. After a loop past Potsdam, the route was downriver through forests and past orchards. The limpid light, the gentle air, the pastoral quiet, our princely seats – hypnotic hours. We scarcely spoke apart from some sparse remarks on the beauty of this scene or that. After lunch on the return leg Rachel ordered two glasses of a local specialty, a wheat beer, a delicacy: Berliner Weisse. The concoction – a sweet red extract had been added – was delivered in thick glasses with drinking straws poking up. Yet the taste suited the mood, and on the deck and in the sun the brew’s effect was amplified.

  “A lovely outing, Rachel,” I said, enthused. “It really is.”

  “Prost,” Rachel said, lifting her glass. “To the world’s fine places.” We continued sucking on the straws. “About the two parrots, Carson. I’m sorry I bought that card. I thought it was witty. Maybe it wasn’t.”

  “It was fine. Don’t give it another thought.” I raised my glass to the light. “Anyway, from a distance, holding this pink beer, we’re probably gaudy enough to look like parrots. And who can say the outing isn’t eloquent?” Blissfully I studied the shore.

  Rachel sipped some more and then, so casually it seemed she merely voiced a random thought, she said, “Carson, tell me about your wife.”

  The remark froze me; the glass nearly slipped from my hands. “My wife? Why? That was long ago. We divorced. It’s been ten years.”

  “I know. When we met just after I joined the Service you were married. A year or so later you weren’t. I remember wondering at the time what happened.”

  “No one knew about it. How did you find out?” I sucked hard, emptying the glass.

  “I don’t remember. There’s always people handling forms that have to be submitted when our private situations change. Somebody somewhere always knows. News like that spreads.”

  “I was scarcely married at all, if you want to know. It was more like a non-marriage.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Carmel.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “Seven years, but it was a mismatch from the start. We both knew it. It ended without hard feelings. Why do you want to talk about this, Rachel? It’s passé. Boring, really.”

  “It doesn’t bore me. Do your prefer not to talk about it?”

  “There isn’t much to say.”

  “After the split, what happened to you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How did you deal with it? What did you do?”

  “The same as before. I worked. I put in long hours.”

  “That was it? Just gathering intelligence?”

  “Analysing it too.”

  “Naturally. But just you and the spook world in a happy clinch? Nothing on the personal side? Not once?”

  “That’s how it worked out.”

  Rachel nodded. She saw the picture. Career fanaticism. On the surface, with her and the UN, it was no different. Casting a look back over her shoulder, she gestured to an attendant to come our way. “Another?” she proposed, holding up her glass.

  “If you’ll have one.”

  She flashed two fingers. When fresh glasses had been clinked, she said, “Tell me more about your mismatch, Carson.”

  The afternoon’s indolence, Rachel’s empathy, the effervescing drink – something in my mind gave way. The story gushed out, a standard, even drab little history. But that’s not how Rachel took it. She had her eyes fixed forward and listened attentively, motionless but for her hair which was played with by the river breeze. As I sketched out my marriage, I stole glances at her profile. I felt privileged to see it. She was dignified, timeless, a sculpted frieze, and from within this cameo, question after question jumped at me. It kept my word rush going. No corners could be cut, each detail was significant to Rachel, down to the style and colour of Carmel’s wedding dress.

  Why didn’t the marriage stand a chance?

  Because as Carmel matured she discovered she needed to be more social and I less.

  How did it end?

  Carmel, amicably, without regret, and with my help, packed her things and left.

  No complications…over things in the apartment for example?

  Carmel was relieved to get away. She hadn’t liked the apartment filling up with stacks of newspapers, magazines and journals – all waiting to be read, reread, annotated, and mined for useful data. In fact, the world which seeped into the apartment with the documents I brought home frightened her.

  Is your apartment still like that?

  You mean, crammed? Mostly it’s books now. The journals are all on-line.

  Books? What kind?

  Mostly classical works. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Dostoevsky, dozens more.

  Freshly married and you spent all your time reading?

  I had a regime of exercise too. To provide balance. The hours were calibrated.

  And Carmel?

  She joined me at first. She wanted our routines to mesh. She would be in an easy chair doing things with her hands – embroidery, knitting, activities like that. I read, she knitted, and the hours ticked by. She enjoyed the breaks when we did callisthenics together. Eventually she became restless, wanting more contact with people. She liked the fitness breaks we had, so she joined a club, working out there every evening. She liked to watch herself in the mirrors, wearing stylish outfits. Between drills she chatted with the others.

  What brought you together in the first place?

  Growing up in the same neighbourhood, attending the same schools, biking around, skating and skiing together, enrolling in the same university, being in the same graduating class – we were each other’s habit. When it was time to get a job, Carmel did social work and I became an intelligence analyst. We agreed to get ma
rried. It was sort of a path of least resistance.

  You drifted into marriage.

  Then out again.

  Without passion.

  There were many incremental steps.

  Rachel looked at me. “No passion at all?” she said with disbelief.

  I tried to explain. Carmel, uncertain of the world and her footing in it, believed I had solid bearings. This led to an implicit bargain. Her strengths were to be supportive, create harmony, generate warmth, whereas I provided structure and led in making the decisions. It had always been that way and it continued when we lived together. When the world’s problems began piling up around her – even filling up the living room – she saw the bargain as too skewed. There was too much of me and too little space for her. There was no room for her nurturing instinct to grow. So she cultivated another world, smaller, more personable, less threatening – acquaintanceships with clerks in neighbourhood stores, chitchats with bus drivers, gossip in the gym. Her work with the elderly fulfilled her and then she discovered she could be self-reliant. The common ground between us thinned until the only thing still tying us was being each other’s habit. Finally she decided to end it. I was sure I’d miss her, but her arguments were sound so I couldn’t disagree.

  “Good friends throughout.”

  “For more than twenty years of growing up together.”

  “And sex?”

  I thought back. Carmel was never more tender than when in bed. “There was kindness,” I said with difficulty, “and respect. There was pleasure even at the end.”

  Rachel, once more in profile, was as inscrutable as ever. Softly she asked, “So what did you get out of it?”

  For years I had been accustomed to contemplating the richness of Rachel’s existence, not the meagreness of mine. Had she asked – Carson, what do you think my days and months and years add up to? – I could have delivered a long monologue on purpose and intellectual force and sensual elegance, all of them gracefully linked. But as for myself I was at a loss. “I decided,” I said stiffly, “that it would be unfair if someone else went through anything like that with me again.” How opposite this statement of withdrawal was, I realised, to Rachel’s approach where one affair was always a springboard for the next. Would she challenge me?

  She sat still. It was impossible to know what was going through her head. “I wonder,” she said, “when you decided that, when you concluded you would not get involved with anyone again, were you being selfless or selfish?” I had no answer. Perhaps neither did she, because she changed tack. “Anyway, you’re not the miserable ogre everyone says you are.”

  It hit me like a hammer. “Rachel!”

  “That’s your reputation.”

  The long scrutiny of my relationship with Carmel was already making me lightheaded. The prospect now of having to go through a confrontation with my reputation, of examining my caustic relations with nearly everyone – it shocked me. It was too raw. My energy drained off; my limbs turned numb. I recognised the signs. “Take this,” I said urgently, thrusting my glass at Rachel and gripping the sides of my chair. The periphery of my vision darkened, I leaned forward fast. Far down there I dimly recognised two glasses appearing between Rachel’s feet. I felt my shoulders being taken. There was a voice too, at a great distance. Steady, Carson, it commanded. Keep your head low. Sit still. Determined fingers began massaging my neck. For a fraction of a moment, I’m certain, I saw before me a domed structure, some kind of vault, or reading room, a temple to wisdom, with Rachel materialising at the entrance and beckoning me to enter. But the development of the image halted, eroded by the persistent pressure of Rachel’s fingers moving up and down my nape. I don’t know what would have happened had the vision come to fruition.

  “Sorry,” I stammered from below. “A bit queasy. Too much sun maybe. I’m fine now. Where were we? My reputation, right?”

  She rubbed my neck. “Take another minute.” After a deep breath, I righted myself and grimaced an apology. “How often does that happen?” Rachel asked. “Was it because of what I said?” She looked concerned.

  “No, no. I was blabbing on, talking too much. Guess I’m not used to it.”

  When the river cruise ended I was back to normal. On a display board on the pier our portrait hung between the others. My sour apple look was amusing. We laughed more heartily still when Rachel then compared us to Tarzan and Jane. Back in town we called it an evening. “Get some rest,” Rachel advised. “Tomorrow – Potsdam. Frederick the Great’s palace. The grounds are full of statues. We’ll be on our feet all day.”

  I was unprepared for the beauty. Sanssouci: a fitting name for a royal retreat in a tranquil setting far removed from the burdens of ruling. It also typified the carefree hours Rachel and I wandered there, that is, all the hours except for the one when we picnicked. As we went, Rachel described the rhythm of King Frederick’s court, the musical soirees and the philosophical debates. She explained how successive Hohenzollern generations added to the expanding palace complex. The park, quiet and cool, had sudden turns around thick hedges and congenial clearings between trees. Strolling through, we studied the statues of classical gods that were everywhere. By Apollo we stopped to picnic. In pleasant shade, birdsong filling the forest, we chatted idly about culture then and now. Unpredictably then, while studying her sandwich, distantly, seemingly unconcerned, Rachel posed a question.

  “Carson, do you consider yourself an exile?” She took a bite and cast her eyes towards the naked Apollo.

  I ceased munching and followed her look to the statue. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I wonder if you live in exile.”

  “In exile from what?”

  The talk which followed was the oddest one. Rachel, musing, made one random observation after another with disconnected, often rhetorical questions thrown it. It was out of character and I had difficulty fathoming her direction. Exile as a philosophical notion kept popping up.

  One line of inquiry seemed to be: if one is condemned to exile, how does one find reprieve? And, if reprieve is not immediately at hand, how does one keep going in order one day to get out of exile? By feeding off dreams? But how does one become condemned to exile in the first place? For not being conventional? What character types are unconventional? Libertarians? And who has the right to exile libertarians?

  Somewhere in this, by going full circle to the day before, Rachel returned to my reputation, which she considered problematical. She reflected on it in a detached way. In that salutary setting where once upon a time famous philosophes from France had advocated enlightenment concepts to a king, I remained uncommonly relaxed. Like Rachel I even managed to objectify myself. Was I an intellectual monopolist? A misanthrope? A stubborn goat? An ogre even? Interesting labels. All of them were amongst the ones she’d heard. What did I think of them?

  My balanced opinion was that there were elements of truth to this. Who isn’t stubborn occasionally? But I explained the other side. When my edges show it’s because I’m confronted by fools, shallow thinkers, dumb innocents. I can’t suffer them gladly. Nor, to be truthful, can I tolerate fudge, even from well-meaning people and, I stated, there is an awful lot of that around. Rachel was nodding. She was well aware of it, she said, adding that she respected my approach. She wished to know, however, whether my reputation, even if undeserved, had made me an outcast. Pondering this further, she speculated whether there was an upside to that. Would I agree that being an outcast had freed me?

  Before I could disentangle this, a new exploration began – about the difference between free thinking and creative thinking. If the distinction is small, she wondered, is that also true for free-living and creative-living. She pointed at my situation. If my work is creative, is that the result of a freedom to explore ideas? But can such freedom be restricted only to the mind? Does it not imply corporeal freedom also. And, considering the converse, if one can’t do with one’s body what one wants, if one can’t be inventive with it, can the mind still reach
creative heights?

  Rachel, I said softly, I don’t get your drift.

  Rachel continued with her eyes stoically unexpressive. Not once did she stop looking at the nearby Apollo. She began to probe further into my marriage. She considered it an interesting case. Given how it had been, she was especially intrigued by how it ended. So rational, she concluded. Was that because neither Carmel nor I had practised ownership? Was this a case where two people intuitively gave and received freedom? But surely when the marriage dissolved, whereby our state of freedom widened, surely that had not turned Carmel and me into exiles?

  Therefore, Rachel concluded, free-thinking, creative-living, eschewing ownership of others, none of these are grounds for exile and I, or others like me, could not be living in that state.

  If not exile, she went on, what about solitariness? Did I have that? She visualised what it had been like living in a warm, nurturing ambience, such as the one Carmel instinctively created. How does solitariness compare to that? Rachel judged that much could be said for Carmel’s approach to living.

  Round and round it went. Numerous difficult questions. I was unable to keep up. Possibly, I would say haltingly. Maybe. It all depends.

  At last her gaze come back to me. It had a darkness which I had not seen in her before. “Rachel, are you struggling with something?” I asked.

  “Just thinking aloud,” was her quick reply. “I sometimes do that when I feel relaxed.”

  We finished the picnic in silence. By the time we gathered the wrappings, her mood had switched back. “Shall we push on?” she said brightly. “There’s more to see. The Chinese Tea House. Tell me if you think it is exquisite.”

  That afternoon, and evening over dinner in another local shrine to history – a chalet where the post-war Potsdam conference plunged Europe into forty years of ideological division – Rachel talked about the last and current centuries. The tone was factual, no introspection. And later when we stood before her hotel – outdoing each other with superlatives about the wonderful time we had and how the days flew by – she had recovered her cryptic smile, the one which mocked yet proclaimed her soul was sovereign. Then we touched cheeks and in this way we parted as we had met.