The Great and the Good

by Michel Déon

  ‘I had a feeling you’d have a visitor today. I just gave it a little dust. Everything’s always so tidy in your room! A real treat.’

  ‘Mr Morgan told me so much about you,’ Augusta says. ‘You should write your memoirs. Very few women have lived through what you have.’

  Arthur smiles: he hardly mentioned Mrs Paley’s name, and the fact that she was a dancer. He notices with amazement, because now he cannot get it out of his thoughts, that Mrs Paley is wearing a grey wig with long dangling ringlets.

  ‘What language you think I shall write my memoirs in? I don’t speak Hungarian since a long time. German, I hate it. French? But I lisp.’

  ‘Mr Morgan told me you had an affair with a royal person—’

  Mrs Paley waves vaguely with her free hand.

  ‘It’s very possible! In those days no one asked for your papers on every street corner.’

  Anxious that the conversation will drag on, Arthur opens the door to his room, goes in and looks around the very restricted universe where there are no signs of any presence besides his. Elizabeth leaves as she came. The table, the books stacked on his trunk, the bed neatly covered with a cretonne bedspread printed with horsemen and young women bathing in a pool: it’s a very average place to welcome Augusta to, but she wanted it. On the landing she is still working her charms on Mrs Paley with a calculated candour.

  ‘Did you ever think about giving dancing lessons?’

  The delighted Mrs Paley is trapped. Her tenants are not nice, always complaining about something. She mentions Diaghilev, Lifar, Balanchine. The Russians hogged everything. She never liked the Russians. Arthur is perfectly well aware that Augusta, frightened by her own temerity, because she was the one who asked to come, is putting off the moment when she will find herself alone with him. When she finally steps into his room and he shuts the door behind her, dispatching Mrs Paley to her gloomy musing on vanished greatness, Augusta – he sees from her embarrassed and mechanical attitude, from the nervousness of her hands, clasped together so as not to give herself away, from her inflamed cheekbones and her inspecting the room’s dingy decoration in order not to meet his eye – Augusta says in a toneless voice that he doesn’t recognise, ‘How lucky you are, Arthur! You make do with so little! You’ll find it easy to be happy. Getulio is just the opposite. He wants everything he hasn’t got. It always surprises me that you two are friends.’

  ‘Don’t be quite so wide-eyed. Getulio and I aren’t friends.’

  ‘He talks about you so warmly. He introduced you to a great friend today, someone who can be useful to you in the future.’

  Arthur wants to tell her that he will look after his own future, a long way from Getulio, but he has seen too many examples of the animal complicity between brother and sister to take that risk. Augusta leafs through some pages of Arthur’s notes, opens a book, and looks up at the engravings on the wall.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Archduke Rudolf.’

  ‘And that?’

  ‘Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary. Perhaps you’d prefer me to say Sissi, the way they do in ladies’ novelettes.’

  ‘That was such a tragedy! In Geneva they showed me the place where she was assassinated.’

  Then, sitting on the bed, smoothing out the bedspread with the flat of her hand, and with her head tilted and not looking at him, she says, ‘What’s happening to us?’

  ‘For six months I’ve despaired of seeing you again. Getulio’s always been standing guard.’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘There’s a reason for that.’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to see where you live.’

  ‘I don’t live here.’

  ‘Where do you live then?’

  ‘In my head, and my head is full of lots of different Augustas all going round in circles.’

  From the street comes the litany of New York, a police siren. Planes glide across the sky of lower Manhattan making their way to LaGuardia where, like black kites, they wheel in tighter and tighter circles when the runway is busy. The neighbourhood is deserted. People have left in their thousands to bake on the beaches of Long Island. Arthur, leaning on the windowsill, has his back turned to Augusta. Her voice reaches him as if through a screen.

  ‘Am I getting in Elizabeth’s way by being here? You’re close to her, aren’t you?’

  ‘She’s just a friend. We see each other when she’s free.’

  ‘You don’t need to hide anything from me. She’s your lover, isn’t she? Oh, don’t answer! It doesn’t cost her anything—’

  ‘You’d have to ask her that.’

  He turns round. Augusta is on her back on the bed, her hands behind her head. All that is between her and Arthur is her light summer dress, which falls into the gap between her legs, outlining them as if she were naked.

  ‘Arthur, do you ever play the truth game?’

  ‘No, it’s a game for liars.’

  How much time passes like this? It’s difficult to remember. It feels as if they talked a lot and were often silent. The evening gradually draws its shadows over Manhattan. A gust of warm air that smells of sea and oil comes up from the Hudson, flies along Rector Street, raises a billow of dust, magically picks up cardboard boxes, newspapers, and paper bags that dart up to the lower floors of the building and fall back to the roadway with a thump or rasp. In the pink and grey sky, which looks strangely innocent above the all-consuming megalopolis, the winking lights of transatlantic airliners trace, like meteorites, smoky parabolas.

  Augusta says, ‘Getulio thinks you’re stupid. He’s the one who’s stupid. You understand everything. I saw straight away that you didn’t like Luis, not because he’s dishonest, which he is, but because his tips are too big.’

  ‘Does Getulio want to sell you to him?’

  Augusta bursts out laughing.

  ‘What an idea!’

  ‘Who did the Rolls-Royce that picked you up from Elizabeth’s belong to?’

  ‘Nobody, Arturo meu. Getulio paid a fortune to rent it for me to go to a party in New Jersey. I was supposed to make a big impression. Sadly there were already thirty Rolls in the car park when I arrived, late. All the latest models. So humiliating!’

  *

  A while later she swings her legs off the bed, stands up, walks back and forth across his room, switches on his bedside lamp, opens the cupboard that contains Arthur’s only two suits, then the trunk that holds more books than clothes, a tennis racquet, walking boots, and the photo of his father and mother on their honeymoon in Venice. Augusta picks it up and takes it over to the light.

  ‘Don’t tell me … I’ve already guessed. You look like them. Were they happy together?’

  ‘I think so. For a short time.’

  ‘It must be wonderful.’

  ‘Yes, at least my father had that before he died.’

  Arthur can feel her hesitating, that her walking around the room is delaying the moment when small talk will no longer be enough to cross the gulf that divides them. Augusta’s lovely face, so animated since their meeting at the Brasilia, has become closed. He wonders if this will be the moment when her childhood’s drama surges irresistibly to the surface and chokes her, when the night falls that brings the world to an end.

  ‘You’ve got something to tell me.’

  She stops and looks at him, her hand to her throat, where red spots have appeared, as though an invisible force was trying to strangle her before she can speak.

  ‘I heard you were the only one to have seen Seamus in hospital.’

  Between themselves they always said Concannon, Professor Concannon, just to avoid the oddity of his first name, which was not pronounced the way it was spelt.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Getulio.’ Augusta shrugs. ‘He never liked him. Is it true that Seamus couldn’t talk?’

  ‘He pretended he couldn’t to the doctor and nurses.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘No, he asked me for something to drink. I gave him a glass o
f water and he said, “Sweet heaven! Ugh!” but he still drank it, then he reminded me that he’d been the best dancer in the university.’

  ‘Nothing about me?’

  Was that what she had been building up to? He would never have guessed.

  ‘Yes. He wanted to know if I’d been to New York to see you again. Are you crying? The first time I saw you you told me, “A woman who cries is ridiculous.”’

  ‘Then I’m ridiculous.’

  She wipes away a tear which is about to roll down her cheek.

  ‘He left the nurse a message,’ Arthur says. ‘She gave it to me without understanding it: “Ad Augusta per angusta”. It feels as if it was meant for us.’

  She walks over to the window and leans on the sill with Arthur. Two seagulls have ventured into the narrow canyon of Rector Street and they rise above the buildings to vanish into the sky.

  ‘I need to get back. Getulio will be waiting for me. I was supposed to be back at five o’clock. God knows what he will be thinking. If he had your address he’d be here already, pistol in hand, determined to avenge my dishonour, and you’d be a dead man.’

  ‘A dead man would do nothing to avenge your dishonour, and by the way I’d like to remind you that I haven’t made a single move to compromise your honour.’

  ‘I know you haven’t.’

  He moves to put his arms around her. She pushes him away with unexpected gentleness and determination.

  ‘Have you made a decision?’

  ‘About the business with your friend Luis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m coming back down to earth … I’ll decide on Monday.’

  ‘I’m not putting any pressure on you, but you’ll tell Getulio that I asked you to, won’t you?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Come and find a cab with me. I don’t want to leave you.’

  The elevator is ancient, uncommonly filthy and covered from floor to ceiling in obscene drawings and inscriptions. Augusta reads them out with great seriousness as they descend.

  ‘I recognise your writing, but honestly I didn’t know you were so good at drawing.’

  ‘I know, it’s a bit boastful of me and a bit naughty … but when I can’t sleep it helps me to shut myself in the elevator and write to you, maybe showing off a little too much sometimes.’

  They come to rest with a thud at ground level. Arthur takes Augusta in his arms this time and kisses her. She presses the button for the twelfth floor and they reascend, redescend several times, seeking each other’s lips. At ground level one last time, she pulls away and holds his face in her hands.

  ‘Now this dirty elevator is sacred. Every time you take it you’ll have to think of me. Everywhere we go in our lives we’ll turn ugliness and obscenity into something beautiful. Nothing will touch us.’

  They walk towards Broadway, hail a cruising cab driven by a gnome whose head is hardly higher than the steering wheel. He is chewing on a cold cigar. Bald, Arthur notes.

  ‘Arturo … this is a secret: in September Getulio is leaving me for two weeks. He has to go abroad. Without me. Don’t leave me alone. Take me wherever you want. Don’t kiss me in the street … I have to go.’

  The gnome fidgets impatiently, revving his cab in neutral.

  ‘Dear Prince Charming, I will get into your superb carriage if you let me say two words to Mr Morgan, with whom I have, this afternoon, undertaken to turn all the ugliness crushing the modern world into something beautiful. Isn’t that so, King Arthur?’

  ‘With this guy and his smelly crate, it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my crate?’

  ‘I adore your crate,’ Augusta says. ‘Listen, Arturo, I want you to remember one thing: if you’d taken advantage of my innocence this afternoon to have your way with me, I wouldn’t have stopped you.’

  ‘We’ll talk about your innocence another time.’

  ‘Where will you take me?’

  ‘It’ll depend on what I can afford.’

  ‘I’m done here!’ the gnome belches.

  ‘Listen, Arturo meu, if you’re very poor we’ll just go to a very cheap place, and to forget our poverty we’ll make love like the gods.’

  ‘What if I take you to a luxury hotel?’

  ‘We’ll try not to make it too sad. Elizabeth will let you know when I’m free.’

  ‘What about your address?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you want me to lose all my mystery in one go.’

  She runs the tips of her fingers along his lips and climbs into the cab, which pulls away with a squeal. Out of the passenger window a hand and arm appear, waving a pink handkerchief.

  So what part of all this is true?

  Brustein ate with his fingers, clamping a chip between thumb and index finger, carrying it greedily to his pink, fleshy mouth. He did the same with the lettuce leaves, having sprinkled them lavishly with salt. Paper napkins he had used to wipe his hands were strewn across the table.

  ‘I spent,’ he said, ‘a spellbinding year in Marrakesh. During the day I worked in an American bank and I spent the evenings with Moroccan friends I’d made who were mad about cooking. They convinced me that you can only taste the most delicate things by plunging your fingers into the dishes. Between courses a big jug and silver bowl goes round with rose petals or rose-geranium leaves floating in it. Compared to that advanced stage of civilisation, we’re degenerates. Jansen’s my most trusted friend, but when I eat with my fingers he has great trouble not being sick. He’s super-sensitive, born in Sweden where everything’s so clean, so hygienic and correct that he’ll never manage to be completely American.’

  Arthur wondered exactly who had lived in America thirty or forty years earlier, when Brustein, who had been born in Prague, was in Morocco, Jansen in Sweden, the Mendosas in Brazil, Concannon in Ireland, Mrs Paley in Hungary. In the luncheonette the broker was fond of, and to which he had taken Arthur, Latin Americans easily outnumbered blond northerners. At the next table the conversation was in Portuguese. The two waitresses were Asian, plump and heavy-calved, with legs bowed like elderly cavalrymen. Out of the hatch to the kitchen emerged the head of an enormous black man, grinning delightedly each time. Where had that Lithuanian couple come from, on the Saturday morning when Arthur had walked to the Brasilia restaurant? He looked around vainly for real Americans, for those Native Americans with copper-coloured skin of whom he knew only two examples, immune to vertigo as they cleaned the windows of the building where the stockbrokers had their offices.

  ‘I’d like to meet some Americans,’ Arthur said.

  ‘For that, my friend you’ll have to leave New York. This is America’s back room. Look on a map, see how narrow Manhattan is. It’s all appallingly compressed between the two branches of the Hudson. As soon as you get out of it, you see that the United States begins where New York ends and that it’s very sparsely inhabited indeed, contrary to what one thinks. I was your age when my parents left Czechoslovakia for reasons you can guess. I was seized by a craving, and for a year I travelled all over the country in every direction, in Greyhound buses that cost me practically nothing. I had fifty dollars a month, not a king’s ransom. I washed dishes, baled hay, sold newspapers on the street in Chicago, was an extra in a Cecil B. de Mille movie. I fed myself on strawberry ice cream and hot dogs. In short, the perfect career path for the future American multimillionaire, apart from the small detail that I didn’t become a multimillionaire … well, maybe … if one day I sell my art collection, my two Cézannes, my Renoir, my Modigliani, a fine series of Picasso watercolours, and of course, for tradition’s sake, because I did after all grow up in Czechoslovakia, a unique collection of Mucha drawings and posters.’

  Brustein was going round in circles. It amused Arthur to wait patiently for the moment when he would come to the point.

  ‘Porter told me plenty of good things about you. It always surprises me that he can be so well informed and then trust only his intuition. He claims to have a gift for i
t, a completely irrational sixth sense.’

  ‘You had a gift too, when you were a codebreaker.’

  ‘Ah. He told you. I had two strokes of luck, breaking the Japanese code and then the Kriegsmarine’s. By pure chance: I tried a key and the lock opened. Let’s get an ice cream to get rid of the taste of these greasy hamburgers.’

  Short-stemmed glasses as tall as vases were placed in front of them containing extravagant multicoloured combinations of ice cream, candied fruit and whipped cream topped with a parasol held aloft by a sugar doll.

  ‘There’s a moment when bad taste becomes art,’ Arthur said.

  His remark plunged Brustein into deep contemplation.

  ‘About,’ he said, his spoon suspended over his dessert, ‘about this Sociedade mineira de Manao, I think we need generously to encourage Mr Luis de …’

  ‘… Souza …’

  ‘Mr Luis de Souza to take it over. It’s been vulnerable for three years; its results have been a disaster. The shares are as low as they can go. Confidentially, however, there are rumours going round that recent drilling has indicated there might be oil there.’

  ‘And if there isn’t any?’

  ‘If there isn’t any, Mr Luis Whatever will take a bath. It’s the sort of risk wheeler-dealers like him encounter from time to time. He’ll recover from it or he’ll go to jail.’

  ‘I’m not out to ruin him.’

  ‘Be sure that in our racket we’re not out to ruin anyone. We want to create wealth that circulates; we want a planet full of millionaires who don’t know what to do with their money. How will we be able to function without them? You’re a quick learner, Arthur: we don’t create anything, we speculate on stupidity, vanity, greed and lack of insight. Even so, I’m surprised that this man chose an intern who is still a complete novice, without worrying that he’ll let the pussy out of the bag. And yet … after all, maybe Mr de Souza is right. Your call. I’m not talking about your conscience. Things move too fast on the New York Exchange to have time to examine consciences.’