Fools die

by Mario Puzo

  I thought about Jordan. His death didn’t distress me. Not now anyway. After all, I had known him for only three weeks, and not really known him. But what, I wondered, had been so touching in his grief? A grief I had never felt and hoped I never would feel. I had always suspected him, studied him as I would a chess problem. Here was a man who had lived an ordinary happy life. A happy childhood. He talked about that sometimes, how happy he had been as a child. A happy marriage. A good life. Everything went right for him until that final year. Then why didn’t he recover? Change or die, he said once. That was what life was all about. And he simply couldn’t change. The fault was his.

  During those three weeks his face became thinner as if the bones underneath were pushing themselves outward to give some sort of warning. And his body began shrinking alarmingly for so short a time. But nothing else betrayed him and his desire. Going back over those days, I could see now that everything he said and did was to throw me off the track. When I refused his offer to stake me and Cully and Diane, it was simply to show my affection was genuine. I thought that might help him. But he had lost the capacity for what Austen called “the blessing of affection.”

  I guess he thought it was shameful, his despair or whatever it was. He was solid American, it was disgraceful for him to feel it was pointless to stay alive.

  His wife killed him. Too simple. His childhood, his mother, his father, his siblings? Even if the scars of childhood heal, you never grow out of being vulnerable. Age is no shield against trauma.

  Like Jordan, I had gone to Vegas out of a childish sense of betrayal. My wife put up with me for five years while I wrote a book, never complained. She wasn’t too happy about it, but what the hell, I was home nights. When my first novel was turned down and I was heartbroken, she said bitterly, “I knew you would never sell it.”

  I was stunned. Didn’t she know how I felt? It was one of the most terrible days of my life and I loved her more than anyone else in the world. I tried to explain. The book was a good book. Only it had a tragic ending and the publisher wanted an upbeat ending and I refused. (How proud I was of that. And bow right I was. I was always right about my work, I really was.) I thought my wife would be proud of me. Which shows how dumb writers are. She was enraged. We were living so poor, I owed so much money, where the fuck did I come off, who the fuck did I think I was, for Christ sake? (Not those words, she never in her life said “fuck.”) She was so mad she just took the kids and left the house and didn’t come back home until it was time to cook supper. And she had wanted to be a writer once.

  My father-in-law helped us out. But one day he ran into me coming out of a secondhand bookstore with an armload of books and he was pissed off. It was a beautiful spring day, sunshiny yellow. He had just come out of his office, and he looked wilted and strained. And there I was walking along, grinning with anticipation at devouring the printed goodies under my arm. “Jesus,” he said, “I thought you were writing a book. You’re just fucking off.” He could say the word pretty well.

  A couple of years later the book was published my way, got great reviews but made just a few grand. My father-in-law, instead of congratulating me, said, “Well, it didn’t make any money. Five years’ work. Now you concentrate on supporting your family.”

  Gambling in Vegas, I figured it out. Why the hell should they be sympathetic? Why should they give a shit about this crazy eccentricity I had about creating art? Why the fuck should they care? They were absolutely right. But I never felt the same about them again.

  The only one who understood was my brother, Artie, and even he, over the last year, I felt, was a little disappointed in me, though he never showed it. And he was the human being closest to me in my life. Or had been until he got married.

  Again my mind shied away from going home and I thought about Vegas. Cully had never spoken about himself, though I asked him questions. He would tell you about his present life but seldom anything about himself before Vegas. And the funny thing was that I was the only one who seemed to be curious. Jordan and Cully rarely asked any questions. If they had, maybe I would have told them more.

  Though Artie and I grew up as orphans, in an asylum, it was no worse and probably a hell of a lot better than military schools and fancy boarding schools rich people ship their kids just to get them out of the way. Artie was my older brother, but I was always bigger and stronger; physically anyway. Mentally he was stubborn as hell and a lot more honest. He was fascinated by science and I loved fantasy. He read chemistry and math books and worked out chess problems. He taught me chess, but I was always too impatient; it’s not a gambling game. I read novels. Dumas and Dickens and Sabatini, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and later on Joyce and Kafka and Dostoevsky.

  I swear being an orphan had no effect on my character. I was just like any other kid. Nobody later in life could guess we had never known our mother or father. The only unnatural or warping effect was that instead of being brothers, Artie and I were mother and father to each other. Anyway, we left the asylum in our teens, Artie got a job and I went to live with him. Then Artie fell in love with a girl and it was time for me to leave. I joined the Army to fight the big war, WW II. When I came out five years later, Artie and I had changed back into brothers. He was the father of a family and I was a war veteran. And that’s all there was to it. The only time I thought of us as having been orphans was when Artie and I stayed up late in his house and his wife got tired and went to bed. She kissed Artie good-night before she left us. And I thought that Artie and I were special. As children we were never kissed good-night.

  But really we had never lived in that asylum. We both escaped through books. My favorite was the story of King Arthur and his Round Table. I read all the versions, all the popularizations, and the original Malory version. And I guess it’s obvious that I thought of King Arthur as my brother, Artie. They had the same names, and in my childish mind I found them very similar in the sweetness of theft characters. But I never identified with any of the brave knights like Lancelot. For some reason they struck me as dumb. And even as a child I had no interest in the Holy Grail. I didn’t want to be Galahad.

  But I fell in love with Merlin, with his cunning magic, his turning himself into a falcon or any animal. His disappearing and reappearing. His long absences. Most of all, I loved when he told King Arthur that he could no longer be the king’s right hand. And the reason. That Merlin would fall in love with a girl and teach her his magic. And that she would betray Merlin and use his own magic spells against him. And so he would be imprisoned in a cave for a thousand years before the spell wore off. And then he would come back into the world again. Boy, that was some lover, that was some magician. He’d outlive them all. And so as a child I tried to be a Merlin to my brother, Artie. And when we left the asylum, we changed our last name to Merlyn. And we never talked about being orphans again. Between ourselves or to anyone.

  The plane was dipping down. Vegas had been my Camelot, an irony that the great Merlin could have easily explained. Now I was returning to reality. I had some explaining to do to my brother and to my wife. I got my packages of presents together as the plane taxied to its bay.

  Chapter 9

  It all turned out to be easy. Artie didn’t ask me questions about why I had run off from Valerie and the kids. He had a new car, a big station wagon, and he told me his wife was pregnant again. That would be the fourth kid. I congratulated him on becoming a father. I made a mental note to send his wife flowers in a few days. And then I canceled the note. You can’t send flowers to a guy’s wife when you owe that guy thousands of dollars. And when you might have to borrow more money off him in the future. It wouldn’t bother Artie, but his wife might think it funny.

  On the way to the Bronx housing project I lived in I asked Artie the important question: “How does Vallie feel about me?”

  “She understands,” Artie said. “She’s not mad. She’ll be glad to see you. Look, you’re not that hard to understand. And you wrote every day. And you called her a co
uple of times. You just needed a break.” He made it sound normal. But I could see that my running off for a month had frightened him about me. He was really worried.

  And then we were driving through the housing project that always depressed me. It was a huge area of buildings built in tall hexagons, erected by the government for poor people. I had a five-room apartment for fifty bucks a month, including utilities. And the first few years it had been OK. It was built by government money and there had been screening processes. The original settlers had been the hardworking law-abiding poor. But by their virtues they had moved up in the economic scale and moved out to private homes. Now we were getting the hard-core poor who could never make an honest living or didn’t want to. Drug addicts, alcoholics, fatherless families on welfare, the father having taken off. Most of these new arrivals were blacks, so Vallie felt she couldn’t complain because people would think she was a racist. But I knew we had to get out of there soon, that we had to move into a white area. I didn’t want to get stuck in another asylum. I didn’t give a shit whether anybody thought it was racial. All I knew is I was getting outnumbered by people who didn’t like the color of my skin and who had very little to lose no matter what they did. Common sense told me that was a dangerous situation. And that it would get worse. I didn’t like white people much, so why should I love blacks? And of course, Vallie’s father and mother would put a down payment on a house for us. But I wouldn’t take money from them. I would take money only from my brother, Artie. Lucky Artie.

  The car had stopped. “Come up and rest and have some coffee,” I said.

  “I have to get home,” Artie said. “Besides, I don’t want to see the scene. Go take your lumps like a man.”

  I reached into the back seat and swung my suitcase out of the car. “OK,” I said. “Thanks a lot for picking me up. I'll come over to see you in a couple of days.”

  “OK,” Artie said. “You sure you got some dough?”

  “I told you I came back a winner,” I said.

  “Merlyn the Magician,” he said. And we both laughed. I walked away from him down the path that led to my apartment house door. I was waiting for his motor to hum up as he took off, but I guess he watched me until I entered the building. I didn’t look back. I had a key, but I knocked. I don’t know why. It was as if I had no right to use that key. When Vallie opened the door, she waited until I entered and put my suitcase in the kitchen before she embraced me. She was very quiet, very pale, very subdued. We kissed each other very casually as if it were no big deal having been separated for the first time in ten years.

  “The kids wanted to wait up,” Vallie said. “But it was too Tate. They can see you in the morning before they go to school.”

  “OK,” I said. I wanted to go into their bedrooms to see them but I was afraid I would wake them and they’d stay up and wear Vallie out. She looked very tired now.

  I lugged the suitcase into our bedroom and she followed me. She started unpacking and I sat on the bed. Watching her. She was very efficient. She sorted out the boxes she knew were presents and put them on the dresser. The dirty clothes she sorted into piles for laundry and dry cleaning. Then took the dirty clothes into the bathroom to throw them into the hamper. She didn’t come out, so I followed her in there. She was leaning against the wall, crying.

  “You deserted me,” she said. And I laughed. Because it wasn’t true and because it wasn’t the right thing for her to say. She could have been witty or touching or clever, but she had simply told me what she felt, without art. As she used to write her stories at the New School. And because she was so honest, I laughed. And I guess I laughed because now I knew I could handle her and the whole situation. I could be witty and funny and tender and make her feel OK. I could show her that it didn’t mean anything, my leaving her and the kids.

  “I wrote you every day,” I said. “I called you at least four or five times.”

  She buried her face in my arms. “I know,” she said. “I was just never sure you were coming back. I don’t care about anything, I just love you. I just want you with me.”

  “Me too,” I said. It was the easiest way to say it.

  She wanted to make me something to eat and I said no. I took a quick shower and she was waiting for me in bed. She always wore her nightgown to bed even though we were going to make love and I would have to take it off. That was her Catholic childhood and I liked it. It gave our lovemaking a certain ceremony. And seeing her lying there, waiting for me, I was glad I had been faithful to her. I had plenty of other guilts to handle, but that at least was one I wouldn’t have. And it was worth something, in that time and that place. I don’t know if it did her any good.

  With the lights out, careful not to make noise so as not to wake the children, we made love as we always had for the more than ten years we had known each other. She had a lovely body, lovely breasts, and she was naturally and innocently orgasmic. All the parts of her body were responsive to touch and she was sensibly passionate. Our lovemaking was nearly always satisfying, and so it was tonight. And afterward she fell into a deep sleep, her hand holding mine until she rolled on her side and the connection broke.

  But I or my body clock had flown three hours faster in time. Now that I was safe home with my wife and children I could not imagine why I had run away. Why I had stayed nearly a month in Vegas, so solitary arid cut off. I felt the relaxation of an animal that has reached sanctuary. I was happy to be poor and trapped in marriage and burdened by children. I was happy to be unsuccessful as long as I could lie in a bed beside my wife, who loved me and would support me against the world. And then I thought, this was how Jordan must have felt before he got the bad news. But I wasn’t Jordan. I was Merlyn the Magician~ I would make it all come out right.

  The trick is to remember all the good things, all the happy times. Most of the ten years had been happy. In fact, at one time I had gotten pissed off because I was too happy for my means and circumstances and my ambitions. I thought of the casino burning brightly in the desert, and Diane gambling as a shill without any chance of winning or losing, of being happy or unhappy. And Cully behind the table in his green apron, dealing for the house. And Jordan dead.

  But lying now in my bed, the family I had created breathing around me, I felt a terrible strength. I would make them safe against the world and even against myself.

  I was sure I could write another book and get rich. I was sure that Value and I would be happy forever, that strange neutral zone that separated us would be destroyed; I would never betray her or use my magic to sleep for a thousand years. I would never be another Jordan.

  Chapter 10

  In Gronevelt’s penthouse suite, Cully stared through huge windows. The red and green python neon Strip ran out to the black desert mountains. Cully was not thinking of Merlyn or Jordan or Diane. He was nervously waiting for Gronevelt to come out of the bedroom, preparing his answers, knowing that his future was at stake.

  It was an enormous suite, with a built-in bar for the living room, big kitchen to service the formal dining room; all open to the desert and encircling mountains. As Cully moved restlessly to another window, Gronevelt came through the archway of the bedroom.

  Gronevelt was impeccably dressed and barbered, though it was after midnight. He went to the bar and asked Cully, “You want a drink?” His Eastern accent was New York or Boston or Philadelphia. Around the living room were shelves filled with books. Cully wondered if Gronevelt really read them. The newspaper reporters who wrote about Gronevelt would have been astonished to think so.

  Cully went over to the bar and Gronevelt made a gesture for him to help himself. Cully took a glass and poured some scotch into it. He noticed Gronevelt was drinking plain club soda.

  “You’ve been doing good work,” Gronevelt said. “But you helped that guy Jordan at the baccarat table. You went against me. You take my money and you go up against me.”

  “He was a friend of mine,” Cully said. “It wasn’t a big deal. And I knew he was the
kind of guy that would take care of me good if he was winners.”

  “Did he give you anything,” Gronevelt asked, “before he knocked himself off?”

  “He was going to give us all twenty grand, me and that kid that hung out with us and Diane, the blonde that shills baccarat.”

  Cully could see that Gronevelt was interested and didn’t seem too pissed off because he had helped Jordan out.

  Gronevelt walked over to the huge window and gazed at the desert mountains shining blackly in the moonlight.

  “But you never got the money,” Gronevelt said.

  “I was a jerk,” Cully said. “The Kid said he’d wait until we put Jordan on the plane, so me and Diane said we’d wait too. That’s a mistake I’ll never make again.”

  Gronevelt said calmly, “Everybody makes mistakes. It’s not important unless the mistake is fatal. You’ll make more.” He finished off his drink. “Do you know why that guy Jordan did it?”

  Cully shrugged. “His wife left him. Took him for everything he had, I guess. But maybe there was something wrong with him physically, maybe he had cancer. He looked like hell the last few days.”

  Gronevelt nodded. “That baccarat shill, she a good fuck?”

  Cully shrugged. “Fair.”

  At that moment Cully was surprised to see a young girl come out of the bedroom area into the living room. She was all made up and dressed to go out. She had her purse slung jauntily over her shoulder. Cully recognized her as one of the seminudes in the hotel stage show. Not a dancer but a show girl. She was beautiful and he remembered that her bare breasts on the stage had been knockouts.

  The girl gave Gronevelt a kiss on the lips. She ignored Cully, and Gronevelt did not introduce her. He walked her to the door, and Cully saw him take out his money clip and slip a one-hundred-dollar bill from it. He held the girl’s hand as he opened the door and the hundred-dollar bill disappeared. When she was gone, Gronevelt came back into the room and sat down on one of the two sofas. Again he made a gesture and Cully sat down in one of the stuffed chairs facing him.