The City of Your Final Destination

by Peter Cameron

  Caroline sat a long while in her studio, looking at her version of Madonna of the Meadow. Sometimes you do things you do not understand. Why did I behave as I did at dinner? Why did I wear my necklace of hammered silver leaves that Jules brought me from Mexico?

  It does not look like a meadow to me.

  She went to the window. She saw the light dimly pushed through the shutters of Omar’s window.

  He is still awake. He has come so far, and cannot sleep. Why does traveling, coming far, excite us? Has it to do with what we leave behind or with what we encounter?

  But she was wrong: Omar was not awake. He had simply fallen asleep with the light on.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Omar slept quite late the next morning. The loudly ticking clock on the bedside table claimed it was 10:20. The house was quiet in a way that suggested there was no one about—in fact, the quiet suggested that the planet might have been evacuated while Omar slept. In the kitchen he found evidence of life, if not life itself: a loaf of bread, a pot of jam, and a small bowl of honey were placed on the table in a way that clearly indicated they were at his disposal. The bread was rather stale but the jam and honey were delicious and awoke in Omar a ravenous appetite, for he had, out of a nervous, ridiculous politeness, declined second helpings of last night’s risotto. With no one there to see him, Omar spread quite a bit of jam and honey (alternatively) on slices of the bread. The honey was dark and fragrant and curiously spicy. The jam was made from cherries, and had some pits. While washing his plate in the sink he saw a note on the counter:

  Dear Omar,

  I am in the garden, which is through the courtyard and down the gravel path, behind the oleander hedge. Caroline is up in her studio. It may be best if you come find me.

  Arden

  Why, he wondered, would it be best to find Arden? And did this mean he was meant to go find her, or only to find her if he were inclined toward company? I won’t think too much about this, Omar thought. I’ll just go find her, like a normal person would, after reading this note. I will behave like a normal person for as long as I possibly can.

  He opened the kitchen door, and stepped out into the courtyard. The table they had eaten at the night before was cleared but the tablecloth was still spread across it, mottled by faint stains. One of the mushroom-shaped corks from the champagne bottles sat, conspicuously alone, on the linen. Omar picked it up and slipped it into his pants pocket. I will keep this, he thought, as a souvenir of my first night at Ochos Rios.

  The oleander hedge was clearly visible when he emerged from the courtyard. He walked down the gravel path through a formal garden that had been neglected and was subsequently casual: flowers and weeds erupted in the spaces among the overgrown miniature privet bushes. This garden was bordered by a massive oleander hedge through which an arch had been incised, mirroring the one in the courtyard wall. Omar passed through this second arch and discovered the garden, which was large, and surrounded by a flimsy chicken-wire fence. Arden Langdon was crouching in the center of the garden, wearing khaki pants, a faded madras blouse, and a straw hat with a large brim. Her feet were bare. Omar stood just outside the fence and watched her. She was moving down the row in a slow, shuffling squat, gently pulling the weeds out of the earth, shaking the dirt from their roots, and tossing them into a metal bucket she nudged along in front of her. She reached the end of the row and stood up, put her hands on her hips, and arched her back. She saw Omar.

  “Good morning,” she said. “So you’ve arisen.”

  “Yes,” said Omar. “Good morning.”

  “Did you find the bread and jam?”

  “Yes,” said Omar. “Thank you. It was delicious.”

  “I hope it was enough for you.”

  “It was plenty,” said Omar.

  She walked down the row she had just finished weeding and stood near him, just inside the fence. “Did you sleep well?” she asked. Her face was a little dirty and the hair around her temples was moist. She smelt of earth.

  “Marvelously,” said Omar.

  “Good,” she said. She smiled, and touched the back of her wrist to her temple. “You can come in if you want. There’s a gate over there.” She pointed. “Are you interested in gardens?”

  “Well, I do not garden myself,” said Omar. “But I have always had a fondness for gardens.” He walked around and tried to open the gate, but could not. It seemed to be locked, or stuck.

  “You’ve got to hold the clasp down and lift the latch up and push,” said Arden. “It needs to be forced.”

  After a bit of a struggle, the gate opened, and Omar entered the garden. “It is a very big garden,” he said. “Do you manage it all yourself?”

  “No,” said Arden. “Pete helps me.”

  Omar must have looked baffled, because she added, “Pete is Adam’s partner. His boyfriend, I suppose. Adam is Jules’s brother.”

  “And they live near here, you said.”

  “Yes,” said Arden. “Just down the road a ways. You passed their house on your way here. It’s the round, stone building. It was a millhouse.”

  “I wasn’t very alert, I’m afraid. In fact, I was dozing. I must have seemed rather stupid when I arrived.”

  Arden shook her head.

  “I hadn’t thought I would meet anyone—I mean any of you—so quickly. I had hoped I would be able to collect my wits before meeting you. But there you were.”

  “Yes,” said Arden. “There I was.” She picked through the weeds in the bucket, as if she had lost something among them, or as if some might not be weeds after all and should be reinserted in the earth.

  “Perhaps I can help,” said Omar. “Now, with the garden. I think I can manage to pull the weeds and spare your plants.”

  Arden laughed. “You’re dressed much too nicely to garden,” she said. “And besides, I’m ready for a break. You haven’t had any coffee, have you? Or did you make some?”

  “No,” said Omar.

  “Well, come,” said Arden. She set the bucket down. “We’ll have some coffee, if you like.”

  They sat at the kitchen table and drank their coffee.

  “How did you become interested in Jules’s work?” asked Arden.

  “Well, I read The Gondola in a class I took on literature of the Diaspora.”

  “I see.”

  “I liked the book very much. Perhaps because of who I was—having left Iran, coming to Canada at the age I did … I don’t know. It’s a beautiful book. It touched me very deeply. I know that sounds sentimental, but it is true.”

  “Yes,” said Arden.

  “The other books did not move me so much. I liked the gentleness of The Gondola. Its grace. To come so far, to bring so much with you, and to be nevertheless traumatized, devastated …”

  “Yes,” Arden repeated, a bit vaguely, as if she were in a trance.

  “So,” said Omar, “I became interested in Jules Gund. I tried to read more—by him and about him. And there was none of either. Or nothing I could find. The woman who taught the course on the Diaspora was my thesis advisor. She encouraged me to work on Gund. And so here I am.”

  Arden sipped her coffee. It was a little bitter. “Do you take sugar?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I forget to ask you. Or cream?”

  “No,” said Omar. “I like it black.”

  “It’s bitter,” said Arden.

  Omar said nothing.

  “It’s odd that you’re here,” she said, after a moment. “I mean, not just the surprise of your showing up like you did.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Omar.

  “I don’t know if I can explain it,” said Arden. She held her hands together, fingers aligned, as if she were praying, and then rubbed them back and forth, lightly against each other. “It just seems odd … I suppose it is because I meet so few people. So that now, when I meet someone, I think, How did this happen? Why?”

  “But you know why I am here,” said Omar.

  “Yes, of course,” said Arden. She almost
said, I know why you are here for you, but I do not know why you are here for me.

  “I wonder if …” Omar began, but hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Last night, when you came to my room, you said there was no chance you would change your mind. I wonder if you still think that?”

  “Yes,” said Arden. “I think I do.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “I don’t know,” said Arden. “I’d like to help. I would. But the thing you want, it’s the one thing—it’s a complicated thing for all of us: Jules’s life. It—well, even though he’s been dead three years, we’re all still very much engaged with him in some way. I don’t think we’re ready to let him go. Which is what you seem to be asking, in a way.”

  “I’m not asking that at all,” said Omar.

  “I know you’re not. I mean, intellectually I know that. But emotionally, you must understand—or perhaps you can’t—what it is you’re asking.”

  Omar looked troubled, but said nothing. He sipped his coffee. It was bitter.

  “I thought about writing a biography myself,” said Arden.

  “Of Jules?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Just recently. Because of you. After we made our decision, I thought, Well, why don’t I write a biography myself? I thought it couldn’t be so hard. I went so far as to buy note cards. I wrote something I knew on each of the note cards, one fact about Jules on each, and I thought I would just arrange them chronologically and then elaborate upon these facts. And then fill in the blanks.”

  “I see,” said Omar. “So that’s why you don’t want me to do a biography.”

  Arden laughed. “No!” she said. “That’s not it at all. I’ve given up on doing a biography myself. I gave it up very quickly.”

  “Why?”

  “There were too many blanks,” she said. “It scared me, actually. I stopped out of fear.”

  “Fear of what?”

  “Fear of what I didn’t know about Jules.”

  “Why did that frighten you?”

  She looked at him. She shook her head. After a moment she said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”

  “Oh,” said Omar.

  “Under the circumstances, I don’t think it’s right.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she said. “You shouldn’t be. I brought it up. I don’t know why. I’m sorry.”

  They sipped their coffee for a moment, and then Omar said, “I wonder if I could—well, at some point that was convenient, perhaps speak with all three of you together: you and Mrs. Gund and Mr. Gund.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll invite Adam to dinner this evening. You can talk to us then. For what it’s worth.”

  “It’s awkward being so dependent upon your hospitality,” said Omar. “Perhaps I could take you all out to dinner someplace. Is there a nice restaurant nearby?” He thought: It can’t cost that much, restaurants in this part of Uruguay. But would he be able to use a credit card? Did he have enough cash? He had used so much of it paying the man who drove him here.

  “I’m afraid there really aren’t many decent restaurants in the area,” said Arden. “We’re in somewhat of a backwater here, culinarily speaking. And we can’t have you spending your money on us.”

  “Please,” said Omar. “I’d like to. You’ve been so kind, letting me stay here, and feeding me.”

  “Oh, yes!” Arden laughed. “Stale bread and bitter coffee! Like prison!”

  “And champagne and jam and honey, and that delicious risotto last night. Please: I’d like to take you all out to dinner.”

  “Well, I’ll phone Adam. He’s sometimes very agoraphobic. Other times he quite likes to go out. We’ll see what kind of mood he is in. He won’t go out to a restaurant unless he wants to.”

  “Well, I hope he will say yes,” said Omar. “And his boyfr——his partner, too, must join us, please, if we go.”

  “I’ll call them,” said Arden. “Now perhaps you should go up and see Caroline. I think she wants to talk to you. She’s in her studio. Did you know she paints?”

  “No,” said Omar. “I’m afraid I know ridiculously little about any of you.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” said Arden.

  “Caroline paints?”

  “Yes. Apparently she is quite talented. Or was, I am told. But she suffered some loss of confidence and now only paints imitations.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She makes copies of paintings. It’s not about her anymore, her art. She has taken herself out of it.”

  “Why?” asked Omar.

  “I don’t know,” said Arden. “Perhaps you should ask her.”

  There was a special staircase that led up to Caroline’s studio in the attic. Omar crossed the courtyard and opened the door that Arden had pointed out and climbed the stairs with considerable trepidation. He stood outside the closed door for a moment before he knocked.

  “Yes,” a voice called.

  “It’s Omar Razaghi,” said Omar.

  “Entrez,” said Caroline.

  Omar opened the door and stepped into the room. It was not at all how he had expected: it was large and full of light. Caroline was sitting near the windows, in a dilapidated wicker chair. A large book of paintings was open on her lap. “Hello,” she said. “Come and sit down.”

  Omar sat in the chair she indicated.

  “I’m sorry I’ve got nothing to offer you up here. Unless you’d like some scotch?”

  “No, thank you,” said Omar.

  “Yes, it is a bit early for that, isn’t it?”

  Omar agreed it was.

  Caroline closed the book: The Drawings of Alberto Giacometti. “Do you know anything about painting?” she asked, after a moment.

  “No,” said Omar. “I’m afraid I don’t. I like paintings, very much, but I don’t know a lot about art.”

  “What sorts of paintings do you like?” asked Caroline.

  Omar looked around the room, as if he might see one that fit into this category. All he saw were a lot of canvases turned to the wall, and one displayed on an easel: a blue-shrouded Mary holding a baby Jesus. It’s odd, he thought, you never see a painting like that and think, Oh, there’s a mother with a child on her lap; you always know it’s Mary and Jesus. He looked at Caroline. “Well, I like the Impressionists—Monet and Cézanne and van Gogh. Perhaps they weren’t all Impressionists, however.”

  “What is it you like about Monet and Cézanne and van Gogh?”

  “Well, I think their paintings are beautiful,” said Omar. “I think they found something that painting could do, that nothing else could do.”

  “And what is that? What can painting do that nothing else can do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Omar. “Capture a place and time, a moment, but capture it personally, subjectively, evocatively. They are about paint but not just about paint. I don’t really understand abstract art.”

  “And that is what you think painting does: captures a place and time?”

  “No,” said Omar. “I mean, I don’t really know. I think the Impressionists—if they were Impressionists—did that. But painting can do many things, I’m sure. I can’t really speak intelligently about it; I’m sorry. It isn’t my field.”

  “No,” said Caroline. “You speak intelligently. Of course you can speak about it. I have noticed this: this hesitation to speak about anything outside of one’s field. This caution. How boring it makes everything. It didn’t used to be like that. People used to talk about whatever they liked.”

  “One gets a bit scared, in academia,” said Omar. “You can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing, for being wrong.”

  “Well, I like what you had to say about Monet and Cézanne and van Gogh. I agree with you: they did get something right, each in his own way.”

  “Were they Impressionists?” asked Omar.

  “As far as y
ou need be concerned, they were,” said Caroline.

  She stood up, put the large book on the floor, walked over to, and looked out, the windows. They were high up, Omar noticed: the windows looked out onto the treetops, the green, sloping, glossy shoulders of the firs.

  Looking out the window Caroline said, “What do you know about me?”

  “What?”

  She turned toward him. “What do you know about me? I feel I am at a disadvantage. I want to deal with you, but I want to do it equitably. What do you know about me?”

  “Very little,” said Omar. “I know you were married to Jules Gund. That you are French. That you paint. I have just learned that.” He looked at her. She was looking back out the window. He could not see her face.

  “I am more than that,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course you are.”

  “Your coming here,” she said, “your wanting to write a biography of Jules, makes me think of that.”

  “Of what?” asked Omar.

  “Of who I am.” She turned away from the window. “Of who I would seem to be if a biography were written of Jules. If, let us say, you were to write a biography of Jules. Who would I be? A mad Frenchwoman. Who had been married to Jules Gund. Painting in an attic.”

  “You are not mad,” said Omar, although at that moment she did look a bit mad to him: her body was tense in some potentially mad way, and the light around seemed to be bursting. But perhaps it was he. He could feel himself sweating. For the first time since he arrived in Uruguay, he felt actually, vitally there. Last night seemed like a dream.

  “Am I not?” she asked, with a wild, potentially mad laugh. “What am I doing here, if I am not mad?”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” said Omar.

  “You don’t follow me?”

  “No,” said Omar. “I don’t think I do.”

  “What are your thoughts on marriage?”

  “On marriage?” said Omar. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think of marriage? As an institution? Do you believe in fidelity? Monogamy? Divorce? Do you think men are naturally promiscuous?”