The Emperor's Children

by Claire Messud

  “Nicole Kidman,” Seeley murmured. “Newly single, newly a star.”

  “Right.” Danielle worried now that she had been too direct, that she had seemed unimpressively, bulldozerishly, forthcoming. Usually, she was most confident in her presentations; but this time—the marionette problem—she had felt the control to be his, throughout. He was curling his lip—still? Again?—but said nothing, and she didn’t know what he was thinking. “Like I say, it’d be great for The Monitor. For your profile over here. I know it would. But you should have a think, see how you feel.”

  He bowed his head slightly. “I’m honored. And flattered. And certain you’re right in many ways. But I’ll take some time, just a little.” He let his eyelids flutter slightly, before he resumed his heavy stare. “I find it’s best, for me, to reflect. I’m only rarely impulsive.”

  Like a snake in the sunlight, Danielle thought. She said, “Great. How’s the hiring going, by the way?”

  “Ah.” He threw up his hands in mock despair. “It’s an agony!”

  “But why?”

  “The budget’s never big enough; the times, as you said, are suddenly uncertain. Why leave an existing job for an imaginary one? A year ago, yes; now, it’s not so easy.”

  “What about the woman at the Met?”

  “Julie Chen?”

  “That was Julie Chen? God, she was tiny!”

  “But a viper. A tiny viper. The most powerful sort. And I urged her to reflect, the way you’ve urged me, but she declined.”

  “She’ll regret it, I’m sure.”

  “Not nearly so sure as I am, believe me. But slowly, slowly. I’m getting a team together. A bloody good team.”

  Danielle nodded, tackled her poussin. Their starters had been removed and their entrées delivered without her fully having been aware of it. Full marks for the service, at least. She looked up at him and allowed herself a genuine smile, a slightly lopsided one she knew made her eyes crinkle and her nose a little more beaky; but it was a smile she felt was fully hers, and she had the impression that in the return of his gaze, jaunty, slightly lingering as it was, there was fondness, perhaps even attraction. There was, at least, and mercifully, flirtation. There was hope. “You know,” she began in a different, more confidential tone (and later, although she would ask herself why she had embarked unbidden on this path, she would not satisfactorily be able to reply), “this may be way out of line, but I have a friend—she’s really smart, and she’s done a certain amount of freelance stuff—she was at Vogue, at one point, but that was ages ago, and she’s much more serious, really, than that. Anyway, she’s just finishing a book and she’s looking for a job—”

  “In journalism?”

  “Yes, that would be right. I mean, I don’t know what positions you’re still looking to fill, but—”

  Seeley shrugged. “It all depends.”

  “You met her, actually. The friend, my friend. At the Met.”

  Seeley raised both eyebrows at once. “Surely not your mother?”

  “Don’t be silly. The other one. Marina. Marina Thwaite. Do you remember? Dark hair, tall—well, she was sitting down—pretty?”

  “Certainly, I remember.”

  “She is pretty,” Danielle insisted, keen in spite of herself to get his opinion. He seemed vague on this score, however—almost gay in his indifference. Perhaps he was gay?

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Pretty, yes. But tell me, because I wondered: she’s not by any chance related to the Thwaite, is she?”

  “Daughter.”

  “Thought she might be. Right age. Bone structure.”

  “It’s been something of a burden for her.”

  “I’d imagine so. That lazy wombat of a man. He’s been riding on reputation for as long as we’ve been alive. Hasn’t got an original thought in his head.”

  “Do you think so? I think he’s quite brilliant, actually.”

  Seeley snorted.

  “Maybe there’s no point discussing Marina, then, because she really thinks he’s brilliant. She’s her father’s Anna Freud. I think she’d marry him if she could.”

  “You intrigue me. You may not mean to, but you do.”

  “How so?”

  “She sounds an interesting candidate for, well—for revolution, as you’d like to put it. In a literal sense, maybe: for turning around. The Monitor might work wonders for her intellectual development.”

  “You make it sound like a sinister Frankensteinian experiment.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Or Orwellian.”

  “No, I think not. It’s the television that’s Orwellian. Your business, I’m afraid, not mine. I’m an old-fashioned fellow—I still believe in the printed word.”

  “As does Murray Thwaite.”

  Seeley inclined his head in ironic assent. “It’s a matter, though, of the meaning of the words.”

  “Or of the words having any meaning at all, if we’re getting po-mo about it.”

  “Quite. That’s exactly right.”

  “Murray Thwaite thinks things do mean,” Danielle went on. “And my sense is that you don’t, really.”

  “It’s not as simple as that—”

  “Not that you don’t think ‘table’ will suffice to indicate this thing between us, that’s not what I’m saying—”

  “It’s more a matter of questioning the meaning of emotions,” Seeley said, “or of asking what they are and how they color our reality. Of letting go of their falsehoods so you can see things for what they are.”

  Danielle waited for him to continue. The beggar had returned to his personalized festooned bench in the park across the avenue, and the sidewalk was calmer, relieved of its noontime hurry.

  “That’s what I hold against Thwaite—he’s a sentimentalist. There’s nothing clear-eyed about his analyses; they’re rants, just empty rants. And people buy them because they subscribe to some antiquated notion that a passionate reporter is more valuable than a dispassionate one. Bollocks.”

  “Well, more interesting at least, don’t you think?”

  Seeley seemed illuminated, almost aquiver in his seat. Danielle thought again of a reptile, a beautiful but dangerous one. “No, precisely no!” He leaned forward over their coffee cups, his voice low and fervent. “What could be rarer, more precious, more compelling than unmasking these hacks for what they are? Than an instrument to trumpet that the emperor has no clothes, and the grand vizier has no clothes, and the empress is starkers, too—do you get my point? Debunk the lot of them.”

  “That’s revolutionary, sure, but what are you left with?”

  “The seething truths about these guys, the lot of them, these hereditary asses—you reveal what really gets them going.”

  “And then what? What do you give people instead?”

  “You give them something bigger than private opinion. You give them something in its way more true, or certainly more real, if truth is a fungible term.”

  “Which is?”

  “Think about Napoleon.”

  “What about him?”

  “An important chap, my dear, particularly here, particularly now.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “Let me share what was said about him—ultimately always key, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm.”

  “It was said that ‘if Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is Europe, it is because the people whom he sways are little Napoleons.’”

  “I see,” said Danielle, not at all certain that she did.

  “Show people that Murray Thwaite is the Wizard of Oz, a tiny, pointless man roaring behind a curtain. Then learn what they are, and show them themselves. What could be more compelling than that?”

  “You’re a big fan of Napoleon, then?”

  Seeley’s incisor once again caught the light as he replied. “Isn’t everyone, in one way or another, a fan of Napoleon’s?”

  “I’m not sure you’d be the best employer for Marina.” Danielle said this laughingly, but no
t wholly in jest. She was both alarmed and attracted by Seeley’s outburst. She didn’t think he could be gay.

  “Please, please,” he said, laughing now, too. “Don’t hold it against me. Have her ring me. I’d be delighted. Truly delighted.”

  As they were leaving the restaurant—among the last diners to depart; and why not, thought Danielle, at $123 plus tip—she felt his hand at her back and the warmth of his breath, his proximate body, as he leaned to whisper in her ear: at last, for her, the intimacy he bestowed so profligately upon others; and the knowledge tingled beneath her skin on a current all the way to her extremities. He said, “Just think of it as a taste.”

  “A taste?”

  “Of what you might get on camera, if we were to go ahead.”

  And that night, among her Rothkos, Danielle, mint tea in hand, the downtown lights winking knowingly at the window, could not help but remember that taste, the electricity of him, the charisma, the focus. As if he were alight. And the hand, delicate but firm, not directing but engaging, somehow, a sensation that carried within it, surely not just for her, the promise of something—was it sex? Could it have been?—a promise that she carried away like an unopened present. For next time.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Fat Man Cometh

  When her mother came down the corridor, Marina was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in shorts and a tank top, her back firmly against the wall, collating and labeling the articles she had downloaded and printed out for her father. In front of her lay the entrance to Murray’s study, its door half ajar, and from that seclusion emanated the scent of burning tobacco and the occasional clicking of fingers on the computer keyboard. This was as close as Murray would allow anyone to loiter while he worked; and it was, for his daughter, a special dispensation. Aurora, the maid, was not permitted, he joked, within a hundred yards of his office. Marina, for her part, was grateful to be busy at a necessary task that was not her own book. Serving as her father’s amanuensis pleased her more, she knew, than it ought; and more, certainly, than she would ever have admitted to the highly critical Danielle.

  “For God’s sake,” Annabel said as she approached, “turn on a light! What are you doing on the floor?”

  “I’ll be done in a sec. Dad asked for these in a hurry, and I thought this way he could get each one as soon as it’s done.”

  “I’m not criticizing, sweetie; I’m just worried you’ll go blind.” Saying which, Marina’s mother swept into her husband’s room with a peremptory rap on the door. She left a trail of bergamot and neroli oil in her wake—her summer perfume.

  “Murray, dear,” Marina heard her say, in a tone that suggested that Annabel expected, but would not brook, resistance.

  Marina could tell from her father’s voice that, in the first instance, he didn’t even look up from his screen. She could picture his half-moon glasses, slipped, pinching his nostrils. He said, “Can it wait, beloved? I’m just in the throes of—”

  “No, dear. I’m afraid it really can’t wait. I do need to have a word now.”

  Marina, who had stopped shuffling papers, heard the creak of her father’s chair as he swiveled. He sighed. Marina could see his thigh and shoulder through the doorway, but could not fully read their posture.

  “That was your nephew on the phone,” Annabel said.

  “Judy’s boy?”

  “Is there any other?” Annabel was herself an only child.

  “Everything okay up there?”

  “Fine, Judy’s fine. No, it seems he wants to come for a visit.”

  Marina stood, avoiding her papers, and slid frankly into the doorway. “Fat Freddie?” she said. “Coming here?”

  Annabel, whose arms were crossed, nodded.

  “What’s wrong with that? Sounds like an excellent plan. How old is he?”

  “Must be nineteen,” said Marina. “Maybe twenty. Depends on his birthday.”

  “That’s what I told him,” said Annabel. “That we thought it was an excellent idea.”

  “When, and for how long?” Murray had already turned back to his computer, by way of dismissal, when he asked.

  “Hence the word, Murray, dear. I just thought you should be informed. He’s coming Thursday—”

  “The day after tomorrow?” Murray looked over his shoulder, peering over his glasses.

  “And I’m not sure he has any plans to move on.”

  “What does that mean?” Marina asked.

  “It means he told me that he’s thinking of settling here—interpret that for yourselves—and he just needs a place to stay while he figures things out.”

  Murray grunted.

  “And he’s very sorry to impose—he’s certainly polite—but he doesn’t know where else to turn.”

  “He’s like one of your clients, Mom. Like that kid—what’s his name?”

  “DeVaughn. I know. And do we know anywhere he can park his car cheaply, he asked.”

  “Tell him no and he’ll have to push off after a couple of days,” said Marina.

  “He’s a nice boy,” said Murray, almost tenderly. “Or he seemed it, back at Bert’s funeral.”

  “That was years ago, Dad.”

  “I know Judy’s been worried about him, dropping out of college, no job, no prospects. A bright kid, though, she says.”

  “I’m sure all this is true, Murray, but are we really—”

  “Aren’t we off to Stockbridge in a few weeks? It’s not so long to put up with him.”

  “Depends what he’s like,” Marina said. “I remember him as fat.”

  “He was quite thin at the funeral, actually,” said Annabel. “But this isn’t about his weight, or his shoe size, either.”

  “The boy is family. We’ll just see how it goes,” Murray said with finality, turning not only his head but his hands, fingers poised to type. “Marina, if you have those articles? To my left there would be great.”

  Marina trailed her mother back down the hallway and into the kitchen, a sheaf of as-yet-uncollated papers clasped to her bosom. “Are you pissed off?” she asked.

  “No, not exactly.”

  “It is an imposition, though.”

  “Oh, sure.” Annabel had turned her attention to supper, was rifling through the fridge. “I thought Aurora was making gazpacho?”

  “Top shelf at the back. And the cold salmon’s in foil down below. She made mayonnaise, too.”

  “Bless her.”

  “I’ll bet he eats a lot.”

  “Who?”

  “The boy.”

  “Your cousin? He’s not ‘the boy.’ And it’s been a long time.”

  “Where will he sleep?”

  “I’ve told Aurora to make up the guest room down by your dad.”

  “At least I won’t have to share the bathroom.”

  Annabel paused in her rummaging, for a corkscrew this time. “My, you are a spoiled little girl, aren’t you? Glass of wine?”

  “It’s not chardonnay, is it?”

  “Chablis, actually.”

  “That’s very seventies of you. I just don’t think it’s on, that’s all, descending on you guys indefinitely, like that.”

  “Like what? Like you, you mean?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I know, I’m teasing. But, sweetie, he’s one of your only two cousins on the planet. It’s strangely—I just think, like your father, that we should wait and see how it goes.”

  “But he’ll probably bug Dad, of all people. He’ll get in the way. He doesn’t know what it’s like to work at home.”

  “That’s why I wanted your father to be prepared. But who knows? It may work out. Maybe he’ll become your father’s indispensable right hand.”

  “Careful, Mom. That’s my job.”

  “Oh, really? I thought it had been mine, all these years. You’re welcome to it, though.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  No Place Like Home

  That evening after supper, Murray Thwaite retreated to his study, ostensi
bly to continue work on his current long article, but actually, he hoped, to steal a couple of hours uninterrupted on his book, with which he had been making only minimal progress. He blamed, obscurely, his daughter, whose presence was more a source of anxiety than a help, in spite of her eagerness. Marina, unlike her mother, had a habit of lurking; and while he knew there was nothing but goodwill in her, at least in her conscious mind, he felt dogged by her need, by a spirit that, even when she wasn’t curled like a waiting python outside his door, was always hovering and hopeful. Sometimes, absurdly, he imagined that she wanted purely to consume him, eating his words and the air he breathed and spewing them out as her own. At other times, their dance seemed the most naked seduction, a mutual consumption, a strange passion of a kind he did not share even with his wife. She discomfited him, his lovely, his adored, daughter, and he blamed the distraction of her for his inability to pursue the book. Each time he thought his insight sufficiently crystallized, he found it in shards as he sat down to write. He’d been mulling for weeks the matter of independence, of independent thought and what, frankly, it might entail—an apt topic, he considered, for a man thought iconoclastic, and in some measure the heart of his book—and had felt himself ready to opine. But instead, this evening, with an oily stain on his shirt from Aurora’s fine mayonnaise and a tumbler of scotch, ice melted, on the desk before him, in this hour when he ought to have felt most at his ease, he kept imagining that he heard Marina’s soft, approaching tread, or the rhythm of her breath in the hallway. He opened his window to the street, to the racket of exhaust and jarring potholes, but these noises, too, disrupted, as he began to listen for patterns in the run and stop of the cars, in the city night’s swelling and diminishing waves.

  This boy’s arrival might help. Then again, the opposite was possible, even likely. When Murray was trying to work, he could feel the egos, the ticking minds, of those who shared his space, as surely as if they were actual blimps, expanding, rising and compressing the little air in which his own soul might move. The notion that an additional self roaming Murray’s hallways might free him seemed, in truth, fanciful; but if Frederick guzzled the air, he would simply have to go, and promptly. Harder, by far, to get Marina to clear out.