The Vixen

by Francine Prose

  “It’s a fun place. Lots of young publishing people go there,” I said through gritted teeth.

  After we hung up, I took the train to Brooklyn and spent the rest of the day and night with my parents. Visiting them seemed like the most useful, virtuous, penitential thing I could do.

  But my visit helped no one. My mother’s migraines had come raging back, more painful, erratic, and debilitating. The doctors had changed her prescription, but the new medication made her sleepy and forgetful, and she refused to take it. I felt guilty for being relieved that my mother’s health prevented my parents from noticing how distraught I must have looked. We ate dinner in front of the TV: the 1946 David Lean film of Great Expectations. I couldn’t watch the scenes in Miss Havisham’s ruined bridal chamber. I thought of Anya; I thought of Preston. I had to look away.

  How could I sleep in my boyhood room when I had begun to suspect that I might have been working for the enemy of everything my family believed in, of every ideal we shared? Surrounded by liars, I’d become one. Never, not under torture, would I tell my parents that I was editing a long filthy lie about Ethel, concocted and funded by her enemies, if not by her actual killers, then by others as cruel and deranged. Without agreeing, I’d become the CIA’s most ignorant, underpaid, low-ranking employee. So low-ranking that I hadn’t even been told that I was working for them.

  I was yet another innocent dupe whom no one would believe.

  I woke up exhausted. My mother was stretched on the couch, under an ice pack. For the first time I could remember, she didn’t offer to cook me breakfast. She flinched when I hugged her goodbye. I was sorry for feeling relieved to leave, to escape into the light.

  My father and I took the train into Manhattan. How peaceful, how normal: dad and son going to work in the morning. I should have taken the job in his sporting goods store. I might still need it, if they’d hire me.

  Even our trip to work was a lie. I was lying to Dad about going to the office. I went home and changed my clothes and lay on my bed and closed my eyes until it was time to go meet Florence Durgin.

  * * *

  I was terrified of Florence, the way you can only be scared of someone who exhibits all the qualities that you most fear in yourself. Florence’s watery indecisiveness—was that my fatal flaw? Was that why I couldn’t decide what to do about The Vixen? Why I couldn’t act on what Preston had told me about Warren? Should I confront Warren? Denounce him and quit the firm? Find myself called to testify before a Senate committee? Or should I do nothing and hope for the best?

  The restaurant was empty except for Florence, who must have begun to suspect that I’d lied about its popularity with the bright young literary crowd. Maybe she’d started to wonder what else I was lying about. Or maybe I was the only one who was thinking about lying.

  Alone in that sea of tables, Florence looked like someone stranded on a desert island, not a new arrival but a reconciled exile. From the doorway I watched her alternate between anxious perusal of the menu and quick anxious glances toward the door. I was half afraid to make eye contact and half afraid to catch her off guard.

  On every wall was a rug woven with an image of a white mosque against a cloud-flecked scarlet sky. Above the carpets were gleaming swords, below them filigreed tables, samovars, hookahs, kilim-covered banquettes. Amir’s—where I’d never been, but only passed—was decorated like a sultan’s antechamber, and Florence looked as uncomfortable as she would have been in the sultan’s harem.

  On this warm afternoon, she wore a mouse-colored cloth coat and a matching hat, a felt helmet pulled tightly over her curls. She seemed weighed down by gravity and at the same time unmoored, floating inside a private bubble of obligation and sadness. She half smiled when she saw me, then half rose, then decided against doing either. We shook hands, our limp protracted handshake mercifully interrupted by a waiter in a tasseled fez and a graying moustache.

  He asked what we wanted to drink. They had some excellent Turkish wines.

  “I don’t think so.” Florence took off her hat and placed it on the chair beside her, then patted down the curls that sprang free. “It’s awfully early in the day.”

  I said, “Do you have anything stronger?”

  The waiter grinned. “Raki. Turkish whiskey.”

  “A double for each of us. And keep them coming, will you?” Keep them coming was another phrase, like a proper meal, that I’d never once uttered before. But wasn’t that how editors were supposed to talk? For all I knew, Warren was saying those very words at one of the stylish midtown spots where Florence wished we were. Make that a double—and keep them coming. If I got Florence a little drunk, a little loosened up, I might persuade her to tell me what I wanted to know.

  Earlier I’d watched her studying the menu, but now that a decision was required, she shrank from it as if from a list of tortures. Maybe I only thought about torture because I’d been thinking about Warren and wondering if torture was involved in his covert actions. If what Preston said was true.

  The waiter brought two shot glasses, ruby red flecked with gold. He filled them with clear liquid.

  “Down the hatch,” I said.

  I drank mine, as did Florence. We coughed. Already I felt that mysterious sense of well-being.

  “My goodness! The Turkish liquor must be terrifically strong. I feel quite tipsy already.”

  “Have another,” I suggested.

  “Are you . . . having another?”

  “Yes, indeed I am.”

  “I’m afraid to,” said Florence. “I don’t know what—”

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said.

  The waiter seemed proud of us, the older woman and the younger man, partying in the middle of the day. His approval was heartening. I knocked back another raki, hoping it wasn’t expensive and that I would be able to pay the check, even or especially if I was drunk. The alcohol gave me courage and at the same time fear, helping me with one hand, threatening with the other.

  When Florence asked what to order, if I had any suggestions—she assumed I’d been there before—I steered her away from the expensive roast lamb and swordfish pilaf, toward the cheaper stuffed grape leaves, the salads and dips.

  I said, “The portions are huge here. If we split two appetizers, it should fill us up.”

  For all I knew, the portions were tiny, and I dreaded the awkwardness of splitting anything with Florence. But even that seemed better than a bill I couldn’t pay.

  “Another raki,” I said. “Florence? Join me?”

  “Why not?” said Florence. “There’s nothing else on my schedule for the rest of the day.”

  Since coming to work for Warren, I’d been drinking with experienced drinkers, men with a high tolerance who held their liquor better than I did. But now Florence had taken on my role, and I had become her Warren, her Uncle Maddie, lowering her defenses with every sip.

  “So! Florence!” I said, before the food arrived to sober her up. “Tell me how you came to write that marvelous first book.” My enthusiasm sounded so false I wondered how anyone could be fooled, even Florence. Only later, when I became a writer, did I discover how susceptible writers are to praise, no matter how blatantly hollow.

  Florence stared into the middle distance. I had made a mistake. Tell me, Quasimodo, how did you get that hump? Tell me, Captain Ahab, how did you lose that leg? Tell me, Mr. Rochester, when did you go blind?

  She said, “I assume you know about Junchi.”

  I knew that Florence’s first book was a suite of poems about the pain and glory of adopting a boy badly disfigured in the bombing of Nagasaki.

  “I knew it would be a challenge, adopting a fourteen-year-old with burn scars on half his face and not one word of English. But I’d wanted a child for so long, and the adoption agencies were so obdurate in their refusal to allow a mature single woman to adopt. I’m certain that many less qualified, less stable, and less loving young couples were given as many babies as they wanted.”

  “Surely no
t as many babies as they wanted.”

  “Oh yes, it’s true,” insisted Florence. “As many and more. I always used to see stories about adoptive families of twelve. Heroic, everyone calls them. But I’d say just plain greedy.”

  I hoped that Florence didn’t get argumentative when she drank. So many people did. Though my college experience with drinking was limited, I’d caught up—caught on—at the literary parties.

  “I’d left my name with agencies where my plight fell on deaf ears. And then one day I got a call from one of the more elite organizations, saying they had a child with a painful history. A child? Painful history? Junchi was no longer a child, and painful history was quite a euphemism for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. I didn’t hesitate for a moment.” Florence downed the last of her raki. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to have so much love and no one to give it to.”

  “You’re right, Florence. I can’t imagine.” The love that Florence was talking about was nothing like what I’d felt for Anya. Maybe it resembled what my parents felt for me, but their love was more relaxed, since they’d had me from birth and never had to beg to raise me.

  “Just the thought of adopting Junchi made me feel like my heart was expanding. But the reality was hard. I don’t have to tell you—it’s the second poem in my book—how I had to school myself to touch that scarred flesh with unconditional love, to lay my palm on that rutted cheek as if it were smooth or just afflicted with ordinary teenage acne. As I wrote in the poem. I’m quoting myself.”

  I felt a little like I often did, reading unsolicited manuscripts. Simultaneously compassionate and irritated for the involuntary swell of pity.

  How could I not have read Florence’s first book? Something always kept me from getting past the dedication: “To Junchi. And to those who helped. You know who you are.” After what Preston said, I saw Florence’s reticence about her mentors’ names in a different light.

  I’d been so preoccupied with The Vixen, I’d lost focus on anything else. I’d begun averting my eyes from the torrent of manuscripts flooding my office. And Florence’s need to make small irritating changes in her new book had hardened my heart. I couldn’t let myself think that, not if I wanted our conversation to go well.

  The saintly waiter brought the taramosalata and the tzatziki, each divided into two separate portions with a basket of pita bread. I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to dip my bread into the same plate as Florence. That, and the raki, relaxed me.

  I said, “This is a wonderful place!”

  “It is,” said Florence. “Who would have thought?”

  “So tell me more about Junchi.” I was hoping to work my way around to confirming or disproving what Preston said about why her poems were published.

  Florence sighed. “I don’t think anyone really expected Junchi to learn English. A few people involved in the adoption knew about his circumstances, who his parents were and where he’d come from. But they couldn’t imagine that a boy with so many strikes against him would ever be able to tell me what he’d been through.”

  “And what had he been through?” I modulated my voice to sound interested, not interrogative. Even so, Florence ignored my question.

  “It took a while. First we had the problem of trust. And then there were language and cultural barriers. The words for criminal and threat and blackmail are tricky to translate from one language—one culture—to another.”

  “What?” I’d managed to drop my bread into a bowl of yogurt. “Criminal? Threat? Blackmail?”

  “It took years for the story to emerge, and frankly some details are still unclear.”

  “Should we have a drop more raki?”

  “I think I’ve had enough,” she said. “I’m boring you, I can tell. Oh, I’ve drunk too much.”

  “Not at all.” I refilled her glass from the bottle that had appeared, as if by magic, on the table. Only now did I notice that she was still wearing her coat. She caught me looking, unbuttoned it, and shrugged it onto her chair back, revealing a similarly mouse-colored shirtwaist dress of dimpled cotton.

  “Junchi’s father was a notorious gangster, a war criminal and profiteer. Some kind of a double agent. He made a fortune during the war and was directly and indirectly responsible for many, many deaths. Near the end of the war the father insisted the boy go stay with his maternal parents . . . in Nagasaki. Where he’d be safe.”

  Florence shuddered and shook her head. I reflexively mimicked her gesture.

  “Both his grandparents were killed in the bombing. It was a miracle he survived. He has no memory of the burning city, the trauma. You’ve heard of selective amnesia. By then Junchi’s father had been installed, with US government help, at the very highest level of Japanese government.”

  “What do you mean, with US government help?”

  Florence looked around stagily, leaned forward and whispered, “C-I-A.” She said each letter like a word. I concentrated on keeping my face blank, to conceal the strain of hearing what I knew and didn’t want to believe. “Maybe it was still the OSS. I’m not sure about the dates when they switched over or what they called themselves when. But I know what happened and who did it. The same bad men working under different names and in new disguises.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m not a fool,” said Florence. “Regardless of what you may think—”

  “Florence, I don’t . . . I never—”

  “I figured out the truth. I pieced it together with the help of a pen pal who works in the adoption agency in Japan. Junchi’s father had become even more powerful. Respectable. Squeaky clean. My pen pal was brave to tell me. She’d taken a liking to Junchi. Someone let something slip about who was supporting Junchi’s father, who had installed him in office. And it was us, our intelligence agency, working undercover, unsuspected by anyone except one brave woman at a Tokyo adoption bureau—”

  So there it was.

  “What a brave woman!” I parroted.

  “Junchi remembers feeling unwelcome at his dad’s house after his mother died days after the war ended and his father remarried. It’s a common story. But history and Junchi’s scars gave it a special twist. His stepmother convinced his dad to put him up for adoption. At that time, in Japan, burn scars were a mark of shame. No one wanted to be reminded of the defeat they’d suffered. Remember the Hiroshima maidens? Ostracized for being disfigured, they came here to be treated by our plastic surgeons. Free of charge, I think. It was all so noble and generous of us that everyone forgot we dropped the darn bomb on them in the first place.”

  I nodded. I had some memory of that. I didn’t want Florence to know that I was stuck on the story about her son’s father being a gangster backed by the CIA. The part of the story that matched Preston’s.

  That was how Florence’s book had come to Warren’s attention. Likely it was also behind the decision to palm the boy off on a sentimental American lady and make the gangster’s new wife happy.

  “As I said, it took time. First for Junchi to trust me, then for him to learn English, then more for him to tell me about the past. I hated how he had been treated, as a bargaining chip. This wonderful boy was part of a package deal. I hate to imagine what else was in the package.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Murder.”

  “Murder? Who was murdered?”

  I’d gotten unsubtle. But it was too late to unsay it.

  Florence put her finger to her lips. “Anyone who knew too much. Anyone who stood in the way. It’s a miracle my friend in the adoption agency survived, and that no one came after me.”

  I said, “That must have been awful for you.”

  “Awful isn’t the word. If I may disagree with my editor about a word choice.” She smiled at me, coquettishly. My mouth ached from smiling back. “It was how I got Junchi, so I was grateful. But the thought of what he’d suffered and who installed his dad at the top . . . I felt as if someone ought to apologize, not to me but to him. And the American taxpayer!”
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  Florence’s voice had risen. I was glad the place was empty.

  “I poured my heart out in my poems. Along with my feelings about my son and his injury and the war. But I couldn’t live with what I knew. I went to see my congressman and told him about Junchi and his father.”

  So there we were. Florence and Preston agreed about why her book was published. I blinked away the touching image of Florence, in her mouse-colored coat and hat, waiting, her hands in mouse-paw gloves, folded in her lap, on a bench in the chilly hall of the Capitol Building.

  “My . . . Oh, dear, I’m feeling a bit . . . fizzy. In the brain.”

  “Enjoy it,” I said, too brusquely. “So what did your congressman do?”

  “At first he didn’t know what I was talking about. I assumed he’d be grateful. But once he understood, he didn’t look happy. I’d dropped a problem in his lap. He invited me to lunch at a very swank steak house in Georgetown.”

  Swank. The way she said it made it clear that Florence wanted me to know: she hadn’t forgiven my failure to take her someplace swank. It was maddening. I hadn’t chosen Amir’s to make her feel worse about herself. After all this raki, I’d have to eat at my parents’ house until my next paycheck.

  “My congressman asked lots of questions about my background. I had nothing much to say. Mother and Father left me enough to live simply. In fact my representative only wanted to talk about Junchi. He kept saying how brave I was.”

  “And you were,” I said. “You are brave. Very brave.” I couldn’t stop saying brave, perhaps because I was frightened. What had happened to Anya? What would happen to me?