“The fireworks are starting,” Earle said, looking up at the Reno sky.
Mary Lore opened the door into the garden, letting in the cold November air.
“Anyone who wants to see the fireworks can go outside!”
Ángela asked me to fetch the girls’ coats, and I went out to the coat stand in the hall. The house was full of the smell of roast meat, which had taken over now from the smell of the caramelised red peppers. I also caught a tiny whiff of orange.
When I returned, I saw Dennis in the kitchen, crouched in front of the oven. I joined him. The skin of the fifteen-pound turkey had turned golden brown. The red peppers, which were dark red by then, filled two huge frying pans. On a small, crowded table were three tarts – two pumpkin and one chocolate – and ten or twelve different bottles of wine.
“Perfect!” Dennis said.
Ángela peered round the kitchen door.
“It’s really cold outside,” she said.
I handed her the girls’ coats, and we went to join the others in the garden.
The rockets were being fired from the roof of the tallest casino, the Silver Legacy. Although the explosions were really loud, the twinkling lights were barely visible. There was too much ambient light and too much colour: the fuchsia, red and green glow from the casinos themselves.
“They should have turned off all the city lights. As it is, you can hardly see the fireworks,” said a man I hadn’t noticed before.
He had the air of an ascetic. He was very thin and his bald patch looked almost like a monk’s tonsure. He held out his hand and introduced himself:
“I’m Jeff, Dennis’s brother. I’m a typographer. I’ve been in bed up until now, resting.”
I looked surprised. Dennis had never mentioned having a brother.
“I live in San Francisco,” he said. “Besides, why would Dennis mention me? His real family are his electronic gadgets.” He wasn’t joking.
I thought that, had Earle been with us, he would have included spiders in Dennis’s family, but Earle was at the other end of the garden with Mannix, Mary Lore and Dennis himself.
The more powerful rockets were being launched now. In the sky, in the half-dark, they formed cascades and flowers of light that expanded and changed like a kaleidoscope. The cascades of light were prettier than the flowers.
“The word ‘typographer’ is misleading, of course,” Jeff said. “Most people think it means someone who works for a printing house, but it also means someone who is an expert in typographical fonts. I belong to the latter group.”
“Interesting,” I said.
Jeff wasn’t even looking at the fireworks.
“Which font do you use when you’re writing on your computer?” he asked.
“Garamond, Times, Lucida …”
“Yes, Lucida is a nice font.”
Suddenly, it was as if the rockets were being fired out of a machine gun – the climax of the display. Two minutes later, Reno reverted to its usual self: a city of white lights, in which the Silver Legacy, Harrah’s and the other casinos rose like cathedrals. The girls protested. They thought the display hadn’t lasted long enough.
“I thought it would be prettier than that,” Sara said as she came back into the house with Izaskun and Mary Lore and Mannix’s three daughters. In the middle of the room, the table was ready, complete with hors d’oeuvres and drinks.
Jeff sat down next to me, Ángela opposite. Diagonally across to my left was Dennis, and to the right the teacher from the School of Journalism who had been playing the piano. Then came Mary Lore’s niece Natalie and her intellectual-looking friend.
Mannix was standing at the head of the table, pointing to the hors d’oeuvres and naming them one by one:
“Tuna with avocado, rice with sun-dried tomatoes, endive salad with Gorgonzola, Spanish ham, Spanish chorizo, some hummus …”
Then he pointed to the bottles.
“Californian wine, Chilean wine, Spanish wine, French …”
“Is water still banned in this house, Mannix?” Earle asked. He was sitting to Mannix’s left and to the right of Dennis.
“Anyone who wants water, lemonade or Coca-Cola can sit with the girls. And the same for anyone who wants pizza,” declared Mannix, folding his arms and drawing himself up, like an actor pretending to be a wrestler.
“No offence meant, Mannix. And if wine must be drunk, then I’ll drink it,” Earle said.
The girls had sat down at the table in front of the television. Mary Lore was serving them pizza. It was supermarket pizza, heated up in the microwave.
“The bird is turning a really beautiful colour,” Mannix said, returning from the kitchen. The living room was filled now with the smell of roast meat.
“What do you like about Lucida?” Jeff asked me as soon as we began eating. I had served myself a little tuna with avocado, and he had taken some ham.
“Oh, I like Garamond a lot too,” I said.
Jeff took a notebook from his shirt pocket and began to draw various letters. He had a really nice pen, black with a gold nib.
“Garamond and Lucida look identical, don’t they?” he said, showing me his notebook. He had written the letters F, H and T in capitals. “But they’re not. The letters in Garamond are slightly broader, as you can see with the H. See? The H in Lucida is more upright. Now compare those two Ts. The two serifs on the arm are different – one is straight and the other leans slightly to the right. The serifs in Lucida are both straight …”
“Jeff, listen a moment. Everyone listen. I have an idea,” Mannix said. He was again standing at the head of the table, hands on hips.
Jeff picked up his notebook and put it back in his shirt pocket. Ángela, Dennis, Earle and everyone else at the table stopped talking and listened. In the room, all that could be heard, very faintly, was the soundtrack of the film the girls were watching. It was probably “Ratatouille”, I thought, which, at the time, was a particular favourite with Izaskun and Sara.
Mannix told us his idea.
“It would be a shame on a day like today, at a feast like this, if we ended up having separate conversations, so here’s what I propose. We all talk about the same subject, but one at a time. One of us speaks, and the others listen.”
“Have you chosen a subject?” Dennis asked.
“He’s been worrying about it all afternoon, and, finally, inspiration struck,” Mary Lore said. She had sat down now, to the right of Mannix and to the left of Jeff.
Mannix took an exaggeratedly deep breath, again imitating the mannerisms of a catch wrestler.
“Smells!” he exclaimed. “While I was in the kitchen, I thought of other subjects, love, money and suchlike, but when the bird began roasting in the oven, I knew what it had to be: smells! You have to say what your favourite smell is and talk about it to the others. We’ll start on my left. You’ll be first, Bob.”
“Yessir!” said Bob.
Mannix poured us some wine, then raised his glass.
“Let’s wait until the bird is served. Meanwhile, you can talk about whatever you like. Happy Thanksgiving supper! Cheers!”
We all joined in the toast and carried on eating.
“That gives us time to think,” Jeff said.
Beginning with Bob, and following the order set by Mannix, I would be the seventh person to choose a smell. Jeff the eighth and Ángela the third.
The hors d’oeuvres, the sun-dried tomatoes and the avocado, the hummus and the Gorgonzola cheese, barely triggered any memories at all, or only of recent experiences, fragments from my life stored in the first or second layer of memories. On the other hand, the tuna, rice, ham and chorizo – or, rather, their various smells – penetrated deeper, and the four together, especially the peppery taste of the chorizo, reminded me of suppers shared with other soldiers in the barracks at Hoyo de Manzanares thirty years before, experiences buried in the seventh or eighth layer of my memories. But when Mary Lore and Mannix brought in the roast turkey and the caramelised red pepp
ers, the threads of my thoughts transported me straight down to scenes from the twelfth or thirteenth layer, to the time when my mother subscribed to the Reader’s Digest. In those days, the 1960s, my family used to gather for lunch at my aunt and uncle’s restaurant to celebrate the feast of San Juan. Sometimes, as in Joxe Austin Arrieta’s story, “Abuztuaren 15eko bazkalondoa” (“Table talk on August 15”), the conversation would be about the family’s past history, with more or less veiled allusions to the Civil War; at other times, as in Bertolt Brecht’s “A Respectable Wedding”, the mixture of moods and alcohol provoked arguments as the meal progressed. But the meal was never what Mannix was hoping for now – or what Agathon had hoped for many centuries before him: an excuse for a good conversation.
Earle praised the food. The turkey was delicious, and the orange peel gave it an exquisite taste. We all agreed and, prompted by Dennis, applauded the cook.
“Enough of that nonsense,” Mannix said, “let’s begin with the smells.”
“I’d love to be original,” Earle said, “but I’ve chosen the smell that anyone living in Nevada would choose, and that’s the smell of sagebrush.”
I immediately remembered what Monique Laxalt Urza wrote in The Deep Blue Memory, about how the smell of sagebrush made her feel at home again when she returned to Nevada after a long stay in France.
“We invited Monique,” Mannix said, “but she couldn’t come. She says her brother’s illness has become the family hearth around which they all gather.”
“Which brother are you talking about? Bruce Laxalt? The poet?” I asked.
“Yes, he’s very ill,” Mary Lore said.
“We just bought his book in Borders,” Ángela said.
Mannix held up his hands, indicating that the conversation should not go down that route. He looked at Dennis.
“It’s your turn. What smell have you chosen?”
“The smell of the inside of a new car,” answered Dennis.
Jeff leaned towards me.
“I knew he would choose a machine. He’s always been like that. His fondness for insects is more to do with where he lives now. If he lived in San Francisco, he wouldn’t feel like that.”
Dennis told us about the memory he associated with that smell. When he was six or seven, his mother had bought a new Packard and immediately took him for a spin round the block. That had been a big moment for him. A moment of happiness.
Jeff was following this explanation with a distinctly distracted air. Before his brother had finished speaking, he took out his notebook again and wrote something down.
It was Ángela’s turn.
“I really like the smell of rain on dry earth,” she said.
She was referring to the small village in the Basque Country where she used to spend the summer as a child. There would always be a storm at some point during the August fiestas, when the earth in the square was at its driest. Her choice had to do with that period of her childhood.
“That would be a rare smell in Nevada,” Mary Lore said. “It never rains here.”
“And there are no fiestas in villages either,” added Jeff.
The teacher from the School of Journalism spoke next.
“I choose the same smell Marilyn Monroe chose. Chanel No. 5. I’m serious. I love it.”
There was laughter around the table. Jeff again leaned towards me.
“I knew he would make a joke of it.”
The talk turned to Marilyn Monroe. The teacher at the School of Journalism explained that, in the actress’s last interview, she had referred to Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and that it wasn’t so very strange to think of her as a kind of poet. Had she lived longer, perhaps she might even have become a real poet, we would never know. He then went on to talk about Bob Dylan’s lyrics, saying he deserved to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
Jeff’s whole body shook with laughter.
“These university people crease me up,” he whispered in my ear.
“She was married to Arthur Miller, remember,” Mannix said. “They came to Pyramid Lake while they were making that Huston movie.”
“‘The Misfits’,” the teacher from the School of Journalism said.
“I can never think of Monroe without thinking of Kennedy,” Jeff said, out loud this time. “Marilyn showing off her tits and thighs and singing, ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President,’ and Kennedy in his hotel room, making time to screw her. I understand they helicoptered her in specially, complete with tits and thighs. Definitely one of the high points of our democracy.”
A silence fell.
“I’m going to take advantage of this impasse and put the turkey back in the oven. It’s getting cold,” Mary Lore said, picking up the dish; and then the tension eased somewhat.
“Kennedy wasn’t just a womaniser, Jeff. He was rather more than that, I think,” Mannix said.
Jeff took a sip of wine.
“Oh, without a doubt. He nearly triggered a Third World War over that Bay of Pigs affair.”
“I think we need to change smells,” Earle said. “Chanel No. 5 is definitely not contributing to the spirit of Thanksgiving Day. I’m sure Natalie will suggest something more appropriate.”
He winked at Mary Lore’s niece. In her tight jeans and black tank top, she was the very opposite of Liliana, the young Russian woman at the swimming pool. She spoke with great energy and used her hands to express herself more eloquently.
“Did you know she’s been made captain of the hockey team?” Mary Lore said.
This did not surprise me.
“I know exactly which smell to choose. I like the smell of liniment,” Natalie said.
We all waited for an explanation, but she made a gesture indicating that she had nothing to add.
“I’m dying to know more, Natalie,” Earle said. “The smell of liniment seemed so full of promise.”
We all laughed, including Jeff.
Mannix, Dennis and Ángela began clearing the table of empty wine bottles, the little plates of hummus, the bowl of grated Gorgonzola, the pans of red peppers, while Mannix hoovered up the crumbs with a mini-vacuum cleaner.
The threads of my thoughts once again reached down to the layer of memories from forty years before, and I was back in my aunt and uncle’s restaurant, at a table decorated for the feast of San Juan. They had one of those tabletop hoovers too, a present from our French relatives, as were the bottles of Legrain champagne and the Duralex plates. There was wine as well, and cider too, and to eat, fried hake served with slices of lemon, and roast chicken rather than turkey, but the red peppers were the same. The atmosphere, though, was sad and full of foreboding: the life of José Francisco, my aunt and uncle’s autistic son, was set to end tragically.
Ángela noticed my thoughts were elsewhere and asked me to “rejoin” the party. Earle, Dennis and Mannix agreed.
“My mother wept the day Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas,” I said, as if that was what I had been thinking about. “She believed that Kennedy, like her, was a good Catholic, who had never broken the seventh commandment.”
“How absurd!” Earle said.
That was what I thought too, but it hurt me to hear those words on someone else’s lips.
“She was a subscriber to Reader’s Digest, which is where she got her view of Kennedy. My aunt was quite a different matter. She barely knew how to read at all. She probably didn’t even know who Kennedy was.”
Jeff gave an approving thumbs-up.
“We are all children of our age, aren’t we?” Earle said. “You judge others too harshly, Jeff.”
“He thinks an older brother’s most important role in life is to pick holes in other people’s arguments,” Dennis said, trying to make a joke, and for the first time that evening, Jeff smiled at him.
Mary Lore brought in the dish with what remained of the turkey and sliced it up with a knife.
“We still haven’t finished with the smells,” Mannix said. He was walking round the table, serving everyone more turkey
. We all had seconds, apart from Ángela.
Then Mannix addressed Natalie’s boyfriend.
“Your turn.”
“I like opening a new book and sticking my nose in among the pages. On the other hand, I hate the smell of old books. They often stink of cigarettes, especially if they’ve been in someone’s personal library. I speak from experience. The shelves in my dad’s study were crammed with books, and he was an inveterate smoker.”
“Thank you, Mr Scholar,” Mannix said.
“I like the smell of new-mown grass,” I said.
“Well, I like the smell of dogs’ paws,” Jeff immediately added. “That will doubtless seem like an odd choice, but it’s a really nice smell. Michael Ondaatje says the same in one of his books, and I agree.”
He took a sip of wine.
“I choose the smell of freshly baked bread,” Mary Lore said.
We all sat looking at Mannix.
“While I’ve been listening to you all, I’ve changed my mind five or six times,” he said. “I like the smell of roast turkey, and I like all the smells that you chose too, rain on dry earth, new-mown grass, sagebrush … all of them! But I’m going to choose the one that occurred to me while we were watching the fireworks: the smell of spent gunpowder! That brings back my childhood when we used to let off firecrackers.”
“I still prefer the smell of dogs’ paws,” Jeff said. “The smell of gunpowder is the smell of war. That must be the predominant smell in Iraq at the moment. Although, when I think about it, the deadly substances they use now are probably odourless. We’ve progressed. We’ve got better at killing.”
He poured himself some more wine and, before drinking, raised his glass as if in a toast.
“The only person who’s at war today, Jeff, is you,” Mary Lore said.
“I’m going to bring in the desserts, and see if we can make peace,” Mannix said. Earle went with him into the kitchen, and they returned bearing a pumpkin tart and a chocolate tart.
Mary Lore brought more plates and placed one before each guest.
“Do your girls like chocolate?” she asked Ángela.
“They love it.”
“Fine, I’ll give the girls half the chocolate tart. And Jeff, you divide up the rest of the tart. You deserve to be punished for being so contrary.”
Nevada Days Page 14
