Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

  "A game played by senior citizens with nothing else to do," Hannah explains.

  "There is no respect for age in America," says Karl.

  He has an almost sexual interest in the United States: when not complaining about its money-grubbing ways and desire to pollute the world and vapid beer he wants to know everything there is to know about Vanna White and Cher, freeways, Pismo Beach, Spring Break at Daytona, Kansas City steaks, foot-long wieners and Ronald Wegeman. Hannah is willing to answer all his questions in great detail, and he finds her answers pleasing.

  "Let me tell you about those ski resorts," she says after he throws out the phrase Hunter Mountain. "Skiing is the last sport on anybody's mind. They're nothing but meat markets."

  His eyes widen at this charming idiom. "Meat markets!"

  Hannah smiles patronizingly. "Tell him, Agnes."

  "Ma, you know I've never been skiing in my life."

  Karl leers at Agnes. "You should go sometime. You might have fun. Maybe get away from your mother for a while."

  Karl and Hannah laugh suggestively.

  Food arrives: shank of veal and radishes and dumplings like bocci balls. Hannah and Karl eat from one another's plates. Together they read the International Herald-Tribune. They come upon an article about Ronald Wegeman, who is being sued by the stockholders of the Palace of Versailles.

  "Wegeman," says Karl with apparent contempt. "I hate that guy. I hope they put him in jail."

  "He is one of our more flamboyant characters," says Hannah.

  "Pretty soon he'll be mopping out toilets," says Karl.

  "My daughter works for him," says Hannah.

  "He seems like one big asshole," says Karl. "Thinks money is everything. A real American."

  "You may have something there," says Hannah. "We do tend to export greed, don't we?"

  "He's been nothing but nice to me," says Agnes. "More than I ever deserved, really. When I worked for him in New York, he was absurdly generous to me. He arranged for my job over here, too. It's surprising even to me, but I have nothing bad to say about the Great Man."

  "Agnes saved his life," says Hannah proudly.

  "Oh yeah? That was stupid," says Karl, calling to the waiter for more beer. "Drei Gestorbener."

  "Make it zwei," says Agnes, reaching for her bag.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I have to go to the office for a while," says Agnes.

  She is employed doing German translations of American children's books for a publishing house owned by the Great Man. The work is satisfying; the books are mostly on the level of Goodnight, Moon, and, as it turns out, Agnes has a swath of poetry in her soul. Her translations are praised. The Great Man pays her well, even though his own financial outlook isn't exactly rosy.

  "I think I'm going to stay," says Hannah. "I'd like some coffee."

  "Are you interested in a movie, maybe?" asks Karl.

  "That's a thought."

  "Casablanca's showing on the Leopoldstrasse."

  "Sold."

  Agnes doesn't worry about leaving her mother with Karl. This isn't America, and Karl, though eccentric, probably isn't a serial killer. In Europe, people can be strange without being threatening, the way they can drink heavily on their lunch break without being branded as alcoholics.

  Agnes takes a streetcar to her office. She is happy—happier than she has been for a long time. Moving to Germany, putting all the memories behind her—it was the right thing to do. (She is even calmer about the financial collapse of The Bristol, her mother's co-op, and the untold thousands of dollars lost.) At first, neither she nor her mother liked living in Germany very much, and they indulged in frenzied tourism to distract themselves. They went to see Dachau (only nine S-Bahn stops northwest of the Marienplatz on the S-2 line) which inspired them to do a full round of German and Polish concentration camps. At Sorbibor, while Hannah was reading the tourist literature and Agnes was gazing down the ominous railroad spur where the Jews were unloaded from the boxcars, who did they encounter but—small world!--Dov and his new wife Helen. Helen was the girl Agnes saw in the police station that night, the one whom Dov met through the matchmaker. Dov was friendlier than Agnes had ever seen him, delighted to see a familiar face. Helen was subdued, shaken by the atmosphere of the death camp. She went off by herself. Dov confided that it wasn't just Sorbibor that was upsetting her. "We lost a baby. It's been a bad year," he told Agnes and Hannah. "I am hoping this trip will make Helen forget."

  "I'm very sorry for you," said Agnes.

  Hannah and Agnes and Dov rejoined Helen at the memorial statue of the woman and child. As they parted company, Helen dropped her cardigan sweater. Another tourist, A British man, picked it up for her.

  "Your jumper, miss," he said.

  A strange light ignited in Dov's eyes. The connection with the hypnotist had not been broken entirely, and this repetition of jumper, Dov's key word, spurred him on to tell the whole truth, as he had been instructed.

  He turned and spoke pleasantly to Agnes. "I liked Barbara, and I liked watching her. But it was you I really wanted to fuck."

  It takes Agnes about an hour to complete her business at the publisher's. She walks the streets, window-shops, eats a pastry. She sits on a bench in the Marienplatz. A man passes with his young son. The boy is four, maybe five years old, eating from a bag of candy. He has a fit of temper and throws the bag. A flock of pigeons swoops down to gobble up the candy. The great cloud of birds encircles the child, as if to carry him off, and for a moment it looks like the reenactment of some ancient myth.

  Agnes opens Tommy's letter, which arrived that morning.

  Dear Agnes,

  It took me a long time to get your address. You've covered your tracks well, if that's what you meant to do.

  Before I say anything else, let me say that I'm sorry. I cannot say it enough.

  I won't ask to see you again. I know you probably just think of me as that rapist lunatic you were dating while hunting down that killer lunatic.

  I told you all men were depraved but I was probably just thinking about myself. There are nice guys and I hope you get one of them.

  I am too embarrassed to write any more.

  I still love you.

  Tommy

  Agnes sits in the park and cries. People stop and ask if she is all right, if they can be of some help. Imagine that happening in New York.

  Hannah would have forgiven Tommy. But Agnes is stricter than her mother.

  Agnes winds up in Schwabing, in the student quarter. She sees her mother and Karl walking toward their movie theater. They will share a bite to eat, and, perhaps alarmingly for Karl, a Weltanshaung. In her mind, Agnes hears her mother: "Did you know, Charlie, that Bogie and Bergman were not the original choices for the leads in Casablanca?" Who, Agnes wonders, will be the completely incorrect pair that she tells him? Buddy Ebsen and Ann Blyth? Lew Ayres and Grace Kelly? Alan Ladd and Victoria Lake? Sebastian Cabot and Mercedes McCambridge?

  What does it matter? thinks Agnes, disgusted with herself. Leave the poor woman alone.

  Agnes hops on a crowded tram. She makes her way to the back. A young man offers her his seat. Agnes looks down at her own figure, the loose dress she is wearing, and laughs. She takes the seat because it is easier than explaining she has to lay off the lager and strudel.

  She looks contentedly out the window. In Munich, all the buildings please her. Even the new, ugly ones.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Shed no tears for the Great Man.

  Bankruptcy follows bankruptcy. WEGE-AM and WEGE-FM are the first to go under; the Hotel Scheherazade follows, then Czaki, and the floodgates are open. Unsuspected debts in the amount of 20 million dollars or so are revealed. There is a chummy, interconnected quality to the finances of the various Wegeman holdings. None, now, seem solvent. Times Square Redevelopment is a disaster.

  The Graphic now refers to Wegeman as the 5 Billion Dollar Madman.

  But the Great Man seems barely to notice. H
e doesn't change his manner of living in the slightest. He continues to reside in the Wegeman Tower triplex, maintains his private jet, and glides in the foaming Atlantic on his yacht, Frozen Princess. The banks and bondholders know that full-fledged bankruptcy proceedings would take a decade or more. His creditors choose to prop the Great Man up and accept settlements that are greatly reduced. They put together a bankruptcy package for the Great Man. He will still make a cool million a year in management fees from the Hotel Scheherazade alone. The cable station sill bring in a million; Wegeman Tower, twice that.

  "It's nice not to own anything," he says. "No more headaches. I should have gone bankrupt years ago."

  The Great Man rolls on.

  "Geister's wife was right," he says. "This is the Age of Wegeman."

  As Arthur Tollivetti writes in a column, "The rich you will always have with you. The same ones, in fact."

  END

  BOSON BOOKS 277