Grace

by Calvin Baker

  By evening, when I left to meet Genevieve, I had frittered away the whole day, beyond a single line of direction:

  INT. Darkness

  “You should quit,” Genevieve said, when she saw my angst over deciphering Davidson. “Forget him. Go and make what you want. Let Davidson figure out his own movie.”

  “It’s a collaboration. We’ll figure it out.”

  “How?” she demanded to know.

  “It will happen.”

  “Yes, if you still believe in it,” she said. “It will show itself to you. But you should make your own things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The film is for the auteur and actor. Write a novel,” she said. “That is your form.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She shrugged. “Everyone has to create; it is the only thing that makes us human. For some people it is enough to build a shed in their backyard, or watch a television show. Others have to invent whole worlds,” she said. “And some have to reinvent this one. Maybe we have come at the end of when people cared, but it simply means we did not come too late.”

  We changed the subject, but I was unburdened by the worry that had weighed on me.

  “How was your day?” I asked.

  “Superb. I quit my job.”

  “Why?”

  “To make my own things.”

  “That is fine,” I said.

  “Yes, it is,” she replied, setting a pot on the stove to boil. “Are we not free?”

  “We are free,” I said. “But free has a cost, too.”

  “Do not be so bourgeois. It is why the world is so miserable. Everybody does false things their whole life, for money or whatever else, but they do not understand it means they then have to live in a false world. We have shelter, and we have good food to eat, and we have each other. What else do we need that we do not have?”

  I was struck by her liquid intensity. “Nothing at all.”

  “I am so happy with you.”

  When I awoke the next morning she had already gone out, leaving me a note to say she wanted to be alone with her thoughts before the rest of the city arose.

  She had left a loaf of fresh bread and pastries, and I made coffee, then dressed, folding her note into my pocket, like a talisman, as I went to hole up in my room.

  By the time I sat down, the answer to the previous day’s silence was there with me, and I hummed with inspiration all afternoon. By evening I had made enough progress to ring Davidson, who suggested we meet for dinner to discuss the revision.

  “In the framing story the director has made three films on three continents in twenty-four months, all for money,” I started, “but has spent his first fuel and is exhausted. He is isolated from society, which to him seems to have traded its soul for material things. He is sick in himself to know how close he has come to doing the same, but finally accepts he does not value what it values, does not think as it thinks, or love what it loves, and yet he loves it. He disappears, hoping to discover a new energy and recover himself, not understanding that the him he thought he knew before no longer exists. He walks the streets of old Europe, streets he knows and streets foreign to him, rummaging the pockets of his life, thinking of his parents, who were split up by the time he was born.”

  “What was that like?”

  “His mother was a great beauty, who remarried while he was still young, and sent him away to live with his grandparents. When the grandparents die he goes to live with his mother and stepfather, but it does not take. He is an outsider, even when he succeeds. It was the desire for acceptance that fueled his craving for success, so when it does not prove what he thought it would, his psyche presents its cracks and through them, all the rest surfaces.”

  “He goes to Switzerland and throws himself to pleasure,” Davidson nodded. “He sleeps with a woman from every country.”

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

  “Of course not. I only rolled my eyes. The pursuit of material pleasure leaves him depleted—creatively, emotionally, psychically—until, in his collapse, he must find a new purpose, an internal sense of where his true home is. This becomes the movie he needs to make in order to bury the past, and move into his next self. It is the question of how to be when there is no longer an external narrative to guide you, and the narrative you gave yourself in youth no longer holds.”

  Davidson laughed. “Yes. It was just like that. Everything except the coup de grâce. So you think you figured me out?”

  “You? No, but I figured out your movie. That is not life as we said yesterday, except maybe slantwise. In a story something happens and there is a reason for it. And if something should happen to blow up, no one is truly hurt. In life things are not that way.”

  “There are signs in life,” he said wistfully, “when we are awake to them.”

  “Signs, maybe, but that is not the same as meaning.”

  “Which is why we need stories, and why they must be true, and characters must be true unto themselves.”

  “Too much,” I said, leaving to meet Genevieve. “I have a date.”

  It was mid-evening, and the city was cast in rose gold as I stopped to buy flowers from a street vendor before climbing the cobblestones up the hill. Someone in one of the flats along the street was listening to Edith Piaf on an old record player, and I felt free and light. I was in my own story, and where I belonged and where I was supposed to be.

  This feeling of utter peace and belonging rose in me, I knew, not because I adored Paris, but because I was in love, and that is all I ever need to feel truly home.

  11

  Genevieve was downcast when I arrived back at the apartment, so I suggested we go to the Cinémathèque to lift her spirits. There was a retrospective of Noir, New Wave, and Neorealism playing, and a Truffaut movie was just starting when we reached the box office. I went to purchase tickets, but she made an elaborate pantomime of standing conspicuously still, like a spy in an old movie, until the usher turned away momentarily and she snuck into the theater. When I found her in the dark she was in a lighter mood, and by the time we walked back into the torpid night air it was as though nothing had ever been wrong.

  On the sidewalk out front someone called my name, and I looked up to see Davidson. He was on a date with a blonde named Elsa, who had hypnotic cat eyes. They were both in full eveningwear, dressed for something formal, but had just exited the Fellini film. I asked where they had been.

  “We were at a party earlier,” Davidson answered. “It was uptight, so we left.”

  Elsa was stunning in her gown and a pair of emerald earrings that matched her eyes and cost a car each. I know what they cost the same way I knew Davidson’s midnight-blue evening suit had been cut for him in London, and that his shoes were hand-stitched for him in Milan, and what they cost, because Davidson told me. He did not buy brands, he had things made no one else had, and took mischievous pleasure in pricing all of it.

  They cut a glamorous figure, especially compared to us in our blue jeans, but he suggested we join them for dinner at a place he knew near Montparnasse. We agreed, and the four of us piled into a taxi, through a part of the city. We arrived at what turned out to be a two-star restaurant, where we did not have reservations. But the wool of Davidson’s suit whispered power, and the emeralds shone money. The maître d’hôtel got the point and seated us at a high table in a corner by a big picture window, which opened onto the street and caressing night air.

  We ordered oysters from Normandy, and Champagne from deep in the cellar, then white lamb, with a Burgundy from high up the hill. Our spirits were awake with pleasure and the conversation was interesting and lively, making us feel princely, as Davidson pondered the sweet wines. While he pored over the list Genevieve stood, excusing herself, and Elsa left to go with her, leaving us alone.

  “She seems good for you, if you are not still too wise for that sort of snare,” I ribbed him.

  “We will see
. I spent an hour talking with her mother at the party, so maybe she is.”

  “I see. Next you’ll be taking her home to meet yours.”

  “You jest, but you do not know what you are saying when you bring my mother into this.”

  “I did not mean any offense.”

  “It’s not that. My mother, my mother is a different sort. Do you know how many women I have introduced to her?”

  “No.”

  “Two. Do you know how many I have dated?”

  “More than two?”

  “Now why would that be, you ask. The answer is simple. After I brought home my high school girlfriend, Mother sat me down in the parlor—she still calls it the parlor—with the most aggrieved expression on her face. ‘You are a man now,’ she said, ‘or soon will be. And you may do with your days, and you may do with your nights, as you must, and as pleases you. You do not have to explain yourself. Neither to me nor anyone else, ever again. Beyond that I cannot advise you of much. There are, however, things about life you have not yet learned. As you do, you must take them in stride, without complaint. I only hope you are in all things jealous of yourself, and your time, as I am of mine.’

  “I looked at her,” Davidson continued, “not knowing what on earth she meant, until she said, ‘I do not need to meet any more of your young ladies, except the one you intend to marry.’”

  “She wanted you to become a serious man,” I said.

  “She was insane about time. If we were going to the store and I was five minute late she would leave me.”

  “She wanted you to know what time is?”

  “I was seven. But that’s what I thought too, until she died and I found a box of letters in her closet, with a bunch of things from her girlhood.” He paused. “Things normal people throw away, old perfume bottles with the evaporated residue of their scent, decades-old boxes of uneaten chocolate, ruined pantyhose, every little luxury she’d ever received was there for me to sort out and make sense of. And then I came upon a box wrapped around with ribbons from old gifts. I started unwinding it slowly, feeling I was opening something I should not. When I finally opened it I remembered two stories. Once, when we were sitting at an outdoor café, up by the museum, some kid runs by and snatches her purse from the table. I took out my phone to call the police, and the waiter rushed over making a fuss, but she was perfectly composed and just said, ‘Don’t call the police. If he stole because he was hungry, let him eat. If he stole because he is bad, God will punish him.’ The other was when she wouldn’t let me go on a school trip to the zoo, no matter how I cried to see the damn pandas. Finally, she slapped me. It was the only time in my life she ever put a hand on me. I was stunned. ‘Nothing in this world belongs in a cage,’ she said, shaking her head in a staccato way that I will never forget. Now can you guess what I found inside that box, in the middle of all that crap?”

  I shook my head.

  “That she had survived the Holocaust. She was interned at a camp called Eschershausen with her parents when she was a girl.”

  “I have never heard of it” was all I could say into the stunned silence.

  “You’ve never heard of most of them. It’s not your ignorance. There were more than anyone knows—thousands and thousands of them.”

  I fell quiet, thinking of how she must have wanted to protect him from knowing, from carrying her burden. “I always thought of the Holocaust as people’s grandparents” was the only thing I managed to say.

  “The past is never as far away as you think,” he returned, implacable to the point of nonchalance. “Her real point, or part of her point I think, was to understand the difference between passing emotions and situations, and the steadiness of what lies behind them.”

  “What is that?”

  “Every day Zuigan called to himself, ‘Master.’ And he would answer, ‘Yes, Master.’ ‘Become sober.’ ‘Yes, Master.’ ‘And after that do not be deceived by yourself or others.’ ‘Yes, Master.’”

  “It is beautiful. What is it?”

  “It is my koan, since I was a boy.”

  “Do you follow it?”

  “We both know I am too vain to go all the way with it. Still, I like to remember it is there.”

  “Why not follow it all the way, if you have followed it so long?”

  “Once you begin to grasp it there will come the question of how sober you wish to be.”

  “How did you and Elsa meet?” I asked, changing the subject, as I tried to parse whether it was only something he had read, or Davidson actually knew something serious and true.

  “Ingo,” he answered breezily.

  “Seems right.” Ingo was one of Davidson’s aristocratic investors. “What does she do?”

  “Give away money.”

  “To whom?”

  “Orphans. Museums. Needy politicians.” He lowered his voice. “You know, she’s the tenth wealthiest woman in Paris. She has a title, too.”

  “She won’t anymore if she marries you,” I whispered back.

  Davidson continued undaunted. He was never daunted. Even in the throes of a nervous breakdown he had greater magnetism and power than most people in their primes. Not just worldly power to work his will, power from faith in his abilities and himself as a man, no matter the company. In his own personhood. That was his security and his charm. “Can you imagine keeping a fortune that size intact that long?” he asked.

  “Where did the fortune come from?”

  “I believe it marched its way from the frigid, ungiving North Sea into the open-hearted embrace of her Monaco bank.”

  “How so?”

  “Why don’t you ask her, if it worries you?”

  “It is not my business.”

  “Then why ask me?”

  “You brought it up.”

  “There was a reason.”

  “Which was?”

  “You still have the didact in you.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Sure you do. Not five minutes ago you liked her. Now here you are sitting in judgment, wanting to know if her grandfather was the Antichrist. What if he were? Would you then be curious to know what is available to her besides shame, denial, or capitulation, and how she obtains it? So long as she is fully within herself, it does not matter.”

  “It matters.”

  “To what? To her character, or to your own particular hypocrisy that you do not see.”

  “I’m not a hypocrite,” I said.

  “As I said, it is not your fault, but whatever politics they whipped up for you as a boy do not describe the human world, just a momentary politics of relative power. But kings give way to presidents. Priests to painters. Painters to entertainers. Presidents to industry. Paupers to billionaires. All in their turn. The money and power only project whatever picture show is already playing inside the people. Vanity, deceit, insecurity, greatness.”

  “That is the same as to say what we do does not matter.”

  “That is to say what matters is exactly what we ourselves do. When you come to Hollywood you will see it everywhere, people who think when the world knows who they are, they will be happy. Only to reach their aim, and turn to see themselves unhappy all over the newspapers every morning. The green-hearted ones look and see partway what’s going on, and turn gleeful to keep pulling them down, because they refuse any kind of world but their own misery. They look and all they see is imperfection, and they hate it, which is the same as hating beauty. But they do not know that. No one does. We all just sit sharpening up our different hates and hurts until we can point it all back at the world, thinking it is a sword, while calling it virtue. But tell me what you judge and I will tell you what you fear.”

  “I was talking about discernment of meaning, which is a high thing.”

  “It certainly is a high thing.” He poured us more wine. “It ain’t the highest. Sometimes discerning shows what’s there; sometimes it veils it from you.”

  “What’s the highest?”

  “You know what it
is.”

  “Do I?”

  “Of course you do. At least you have the ear to hear it. The question is, do you have the faith to trust what you hear?

  “If you like, I will find out who her fathers were, back as far as I can, because fortune like that is not a single instance of luck, but a second and a third; refigured each time history shifted to obliterate them, but did not because of the sheer refusal to die. If they did something in the past I dislike, or that threatens me, should I break with her? Before I have given her a chance? Somebody went to bed one night and decided there in the dark to try for a dynasty, and did not figure she would be on the other side of it all. Maybe she has a mind and will of her own. This play is for the living. Those who do not grasp that are puppets of the past, and the strings are whatever they have been told; and whoever it was who told them that’s the way it is, aims to be puppet master. If you wish to live in that mirage, fine, stick to the didactic. But, if you want to be in the present, it will keep you from the brass ring.”

  “Sorry I brought it up,” I said in the face of his argument. “I didn’t mean to make anything of it. She is lovely.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know. Can I ask you something?” He scanned the room to see whether the women were in sight.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you date a poor girl?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I would not.”

  “I thought you just said it did not matter.”

  “That’s not what I said. I said, politics do not describe people. There is nothing the matter with poor girls, but one could never understand my worries.”

  “What worries do you have, Davidson, other than the ones you invite?”

  “You will find out one day. Before they make you a boss, you think how fine it would be to be top dog. You wait and wait your turn. You pine all night, and you pine all day. Until at last your day arrives, all gleaming and new. They pick you up by the scruff, and carry you along to the limousine, with all your anticipation, only to find it is for nothing more than to be thrown into the pit, where now, instead of pining, you get to fight. So you claw for the staff, and you bite for the crown, like you do not have good sense; or, if you do, you run from it all, until, exactly one day before you are ready, they catch up to you, or come pull you up from the pit. Next, the barber comes to you, and the tailor comes to you, and all the old king’s men, too, everybody come to you now. You are top dog in charge of it all. Boss bitch running the show. You do not sleep much anymore, but that is fine, because you might miss something if you did. So now they get you good and polished, and they put you up in front of whatever little tribe they give you for your own, where you see all your friends, who love you no matter what you do, and you see all your enemies, who hate you no matter what, and all the what-can-you-do-for-me-people, and the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-folks. Behind them you see all the smile-in-your-face-people, and all the knife-in-your-back-kinds. Know-nothings and know-it-alls. Born-again-people and the won’t-never-be-saveds, plus all your good backsliding brothers and sisters in between. Them you beat for the crown. All who want it from you and, way in back, all them you never really saw before. Apart from that, you got all those dogs, and all those bitches who do not keep faith with you at all. You realize then they are all your people now. You own stock and title to a whole restless tribe’s worth of problems no one ever told you about, and you did not know before. It is then you figure out if you have it to be boss dog, or just sit in the chair until the king returns.”