Echo House

by Ward Just

  She had never been undressed in an automobile, but she liked the sexy carelessness. This was something Daisy Buchanan would do, not with college boys or the oafish Tom but with Gatsby himself, her true and only love. College boys were all thumbs and urgency and you never felt secure with them. She liked the light of the streetlamps on her breasts while a few yards away the good people of Georgetown were preparing for nighty-night. When he put the car in gear he did not turn in the direction of his club but north to Rock Creek Park, driving very slowly through the deserted streets. In a moment they were swinging into the driveway of the famous Echo House. She was still bare-chested, leaning against him, feeling his soft shirt against her skin. She kissed his neck. Seconds later they were moving hand in hand through the front door and across marble floors into the kitchen and up the back stairs to his big bedroom, where they tumbled to the floor and began to undress each other slowly and then make love more slowly still, until the very end of it when they were flying.

  Of course she was swept away. Who wouldn't be?

  The affair burned for a summer, and then it didn't burn. Axel was working, Axel was in Cuba, Axel was on business in New York, Axel had an evening meeting, Axel had accepted an embassy dinner, Axel had promised an evening at home with Constance and the senator. Billie heard stories that he had been seen here and there, always with an attractive woman on his arm, older women, younger women, short, tall, blond, brunette women. And wasn't that Axel to a T, never serious about anyone, never faithful to anyone. Axel Behl was absorbed in his work, his whatever-it-was at the State Department, and women were an inconvenience. Axel had too many irons in too many fires. He was one of those organized men who didn't need women, Alice Grendall said.

  Billie didn't think she was in love with him, and she couldn't imagine marriage to him. She was mightily attracted to him, the way he looked and moved, and his command of things. He sailed through life with the confidence and élan of a young prince. He had the mystery of one, too, as if Echo House were the capital of some vast and turbulent realm that required constant supervision. When he told her he would be away for a week, New York and then Chicago, she said that as it happened she was going to Chicago also, to see her aunt. He thought a moment and asked her to join him on the Twentieth-Century Limited. She could see her aunt, he could do his business, and they'd rendezvous and complete the round trip together. There's nothing like a fast train, he said.

  She did not tell the story for many years, and she and Axel discussed it only once, to no satisfactory conclusion. Axel humiliated her in the most public way, the humiliation greater because he seemed to have no recognition of it and took no responsibility for it. When she reminded him, You were a bastard to me, Axel, an absolute bastard, he professed confusion and ignorance; and then he conceded yes, perhaps he had behaved badly but he had no choice, given the situation. From the flustered look on his face she was convinced he was apologizing only to have done with the conversation. If he apologized, he would not have to explain. And this was also true. If she had not known him so well, she would have said, at that moment, that he was frightened of her.

  He said he would be late so it was better if they met in the bar car. When she arrived thirty minutes before departure, she was surprised to see his bags already in the compartment, his clothes neatly hung in the tiny closet, his razor and shaving bowl and aftershave and comb laid out on the basin. She tipped the porter and changed into her traveling ensemble, a clingy print dress and the gray cashmere sweater he had given her, no jewelry except for the plain gold bracelet. She lit a cigarette and stood for a moment looking out the window at the platform traffic, men in business suits and fedoras, women in furs, everyone hurrying though there was plenty of time. She was happy and excited, thinking of cocktails in the bar car and dinner later, and returning to the compartment, the bed turned down and welcoming. By then they would be in Ohio. She had bought him a little clock at Peacock's and placed it on the basin next to the aftershave.

  When she opened the door to the bar car, she could not see him. There were two men reading newspapers but neither of them was Axel. Then she heard his voice at her elbow. He was out of sight at a table backed up to the barman's pantry. She could see his shoe and his black sock with the narrow ribbing.

  You wouldn't like it, he was saying.

  How do you know? The voice was a woman's, a low, teasing voice.

  It's a haunted house, he said.

  Ghosts? she said. Bats? The dead rising from their graves? What?

  It sits high on a windswept hill. The wind howls at night. There's a cemetery across the street.

  She said, Gosh.

  I can't believe you've never been to Washington. Come to Washington; I'll show you the sights.

  Tell me about the sights, she said.

  Such sights. Washington is like Venice except that we have boulevards instead of canals. They are the widest boulevards in America. We have an obelisk. We have—bell towers. We have grand palaces. We have intrigue. Do you want to visit the White House?

  I wouldn't mind, she said. Do I get to see the haunted house, too?

  Permit me to give you the guided tour. It has eight rooms on the first floor. The rooms diminish in size until you get to the broom closet. It has an Observatory with a telescope. Like roses? My father cultivates roses. He has a rose named after him.

  That's what he does?

  When he isn't in the Senate, Axel said.

  He's a senator?

  That's what he does, Axel said.

  Does that mean you'll be a senator, too?

  No, it doesn't.

  Good, she said.

  You don't like senators?

  The Senate would not become you, she said.

  It's very formal, he agreed. It's tedious. But the vacations are long.

  I suppose you work for the government?

  I have an office there, yes.

  In the White House, I suppose. So you'd be at the center of the intrigue.

  The Department of State, he said.

  What do you do at your Department of State?

  Raise money for Franklin Roosevelt.

  Doesn't he have money of his own?

  He's running for President.

  He is?

  Yes, Axel said.

  Will he win?

  Do you think he should?

  I have no idea. I like his wife.

  Will you come to Washington then?

  Yes, of course.

  In the little silence that followed, Billie tried to collect herself. Their voices had lowered until she had to strain to hear. She stood as still as she was able to, listening to their inane conversation. The words bore no relation to their subjects. Axel and this woman were seducing each other, and he had told her things he had never told anyone. She did not know he was raising money for Franklin Roosevelt. She had never heard him compare Washington with Venice, a ludicrous idea. She wondered if he had come on board with this woman or had picked her up in the bar car. Probably he had met her somewhere in Chicago. She recognized his tone of voice because it was the same tone, breathless yet edgy, that he had seduced her with.

  I don't know your name, he said.

  Sylvia, she said.

  Axel Behl, he said. I never met a Sylvia before. You're my first Sylvia.

  Billie watched the barman approach.

  Axel, Sylvia said, and gave a muffled laugh. What's your sign, Axel Behl?

  My sign?

  Of the zodiac, she said.

  Lion, he said.

  Ram, she said, laughing again.

  The barman said to Billie, May I seat you, miss?

  I belong here, Billie said, looking around the corner of the pantry to the table where the lovers were. The woman was very young, nineteen or twenty, an age that did not go with her voice. She was very pretty in an exotic way, not at all Axel's type. This Sylvia was a recognizable New York type, well-built, with short fair hair and too much jewelry, an aggressive manner. They did not look u
p when she appeared around the corner, the Lion and the Ram tête-à-tête across the narrow table. Their fingers were touching and they looked as if they had been there together for a century. Axel began to speak again, so softly that Billie could not hear what he was saying. He was talking into her eyes and as he spoke he moved his fingers slowly across her bright red nails. Her head was tilted slightly as she looked at him, her chin in her palm. The barman shifted awkwardly but still the two did not move, absorbed as they were in their own zone of enchantment.

  Sylvia was the first to notice that they were no longer alone. She raised her eyes and looked first at the barman and then at Billie, her eyes narrowing when she saw Billie, whose hand rested now on Axel's shoulder. The barman asked if he could serve them a cocktail or a glass of Champagne or perhaps they would prefer to see the list of mixed drinks and he would return to take their orders when they had decided, certainly no hurry, take all the time you need—

  But Axel was already rising to his feet, bending forward to take Sylvia's arm as if it were fragile as porcelain. She rose with him, and standing there in the aisle, they looked like two sleep-walkers.

  Axel! Billie said loudly, mustering all the indignation that had been building inside her these many minutes.

  But he did not seem to hear and when he turned to look at her fully he gave no sign of recognition and indeed looked questioningly at her hand, still resting on his shoulder. From the expression on his face, she might have been a block of wood.

  You must excuse us, he said pleasantly.

  Yes, Sylvia said.

  There's been some mistake, Axel said.

  Mistake? Billie said.

  We're expected, you see.

  What? Billie began.

  Now they turned and moved up the aisle at a run, swaying a little because the train was under way. It gathered speed, rocking definitely now, and the last Billie saw of the Lion and the Ram was through the window of the rear door of the bar car, wrapped tightly, kissing ferociously. The girl was massaging Axel's head, standing on tiptoe to reach him, leaving Billie—as she admitted to an enthralled Alice Grendall many years later—as lonely and forlorn and chaste and discouraged as any sullen little virgin.

  Bastard, she said. Who did he think he was? He looked through me as if I didn't exist.

  What did you do? Alice said.

  If you think I went back to my compartment and wept bitter tears, think again. I had heard about the coup de foudre but I'd never seen one. Now I had seen one and it was just about what I imagined. So I had a cocktail and then another cocktail and after the cocktails I had dinner and went to bed alone. Truth was—and these many years later Billie was able to summon a strangled little laugh—I think I was envious. I still am.

  The community watched the affair with fascination and delight, the strait-laced prince of Echo House and the ravishing princess of Gramercy Park, who at a certain angle bore such a startling resemblance to one of Modigliani's demimondaines, an oval face with eyes turned down at the corners, a lovely long neck that sprouted from sloping shoulders. She was trim and voluptuous at the same time. She was so very young and unselfconscious, her bright laughter an antidote to Axel's grueling solemnity. Harold Grendall believed they made a superb match, not the first time nor the last that he let his head rule his heart. Axel had always had just a little bit too much of everything and it was good for him—eat your spinach, Axel—to want something that couldn't be had at the snap of a finger or his signature on a check. If Sylvia was a little too cavalier about the capital—well, it had to be admitted that Washington took itself too seriously and often closed in on itself in unhealthy ways. It was essential that she learn about the government and how it functioned, and to that end someone suggested some courses at G.W., a suggestion laughingly declined; and that was a storm warning. Whatever would Sylvia do? Their circle was tight and when she vowed to let some air in, introduce New York's cosmopolitan spirit to the monotonous city of government, people objected. Washington liked its own spirit. It had something of the satisfied atmosphere of the undiscovered resort and didn't need blasé New Yorkers telling everyone how to behave.

  They were the couple that other couples talked about, the word spread by the usual tom-toms, Harold and Alice and Ed and Billie tapping out the messages; there was nothing to be done about it. They all had connections, each to the others—as Judge Justin Aswell tactlessly pointed out at the rehearsal dinner. Justin had been given the chore of keynoter and took the occasion to instruct Sylvia and her family on exactly how connected everyone was. Ed Peralta's father, Curly, was Senator Adolph Behl's closest friend. Harold and Ed and Axel had been in school together. Billie and Alice grew up around the corner from each other. Justin's charts showed just how close they all were, related by blood or by marriage or by school or university, in-laws and stepchildren and stepparents and cousins, roommates, clubmates, teammates, friends from summers on Cape Cod or Long Island or Mackinac. Justin had connected Alice Grendall to Sylvia, via Sylvia's great-aunt and Alice's brother's first wife's grandmother. Axel and Lloyd Fisher were related in some fashion that Justin found difficult to explain, perhaps the bar sinister. By then he had taken on so much Champagne that his attention had begun to wander.

  He ended by saying that in times of crisis these connections were an advantage, everyone pulling together believing that an attack against one was an attack against all. Moreover, the connections were not coincidence. They represented a kind of natural selection. Justin had an idea that there was a specific gene that predisposed a man to public service, a life inside the government, a gene not unlike the one that determined musical talent. Otherwise, why did so many men of the same woof and warp opt for the judiciary, the foreign service, or the military, badly paid posts that were under the scrutiny of a venal Congress and the wretched newspapers, and the answer was the gene and the determination to participate in the political life of the nation.

  They finally pulled him down and Axel rose—out of turn, it had to be said—to deliver a graceful little essay describing the tremendous affection he had for his wife-to-be and her charming parents, who represented the best of old New York, and how many happy afternoons he had spent at their lovely apartment on Gramercy Park. Axel's words were an attempt to reassure Sylvia, but everyone there could see the stricken expression on her face, the look of someone who has heard a dismal weather report; she had thought that it would be she and Axel against the world and now believed it would be the world and Axel against her. She smiled a little at her father's brief and pointed response: Harry Walren hoped and believed that his daughter would be well protected in such a—he paused here, showing steel for the first and only time that evening—serious and important and strenuous environment, so charged with possibility, so vital to the American democracy. Axel and Constance applauded heartily, but old Senator Behl did not, knowing cosmopolitan sarcasm when he heard it.

  After the honeymoon that took them halfway around the world they returned to Washington, where Axel worked on German affairs for the State Department when he was not raising money for Franklin Roosevelt's presidential campaign; young Alec was born the night Roosevelt was nominated. They were living then in a house near Dupont Circle, Axel walking to work each day and Sylvia remaining at home with the baby. She began to write seriously for the first time and in due course began to publish. She told no one, not even Axel. The poems were private; they were between her, her pen, the page, and her anonymous audience. Axel was often away, and despite the community's best efforts, Sylvia withdrew, traveling frequently to New York and leaving the baby in the care of a nanny, whose only instructions were to be present at all times when Grandmother Constance came to call.

  I don't give that marriage six months, Alice Grendall said. Poor Axel.

  Poor Sylvia, Billie Peralta said.

  Things seemed to improve when Axel was posted to England, but almost immediately he left for Spain with Fred Greene, who was not a suitable companion for such a journey. Sylvia was
disgusted by the Spanish adventure, though she conceded that the stakes were high and the Republicans worthy of support. When she asked Axel what happened to Garcia Lorca, he replied that he did not know. Who's Garcia Lorca? After he returned to ' England, things were very bad and only got worse when he was wounded in France.

  Both Grendalls were in England during the war. Sylvia had pleaded with Harold to allow her to do something serious for OSS. She thought she had a natural talent for codes and ciphers; perhaps there was something in that line or in propaganda. She had done some writing—it was the first anyone had known of that—and wanted to contribute. Was it true that the British had faked the photograph of Hitler doing a jig outside the railway car at Compiegne? Anything sensitive was out of the question—Sylvia Behl, my God no, the woman's unreliable—so she was put to work as a file clerk. Rebuffed, she slipped into London's wartime demimonde, where everyone arrived without a past and left the same way. Harold and Alice saw less and less of her, and when someone finally noticed that she had not shown up in Files for a week, she was quietly let go.

  Sylvia was unrecognizable as the girl who had walked into Axel's life fifteen years earlier, younger than springtime and oh so naive. Suddenly she knew too much. Her high spirits had been replaced by weariness or fear or boredom or some combination of the three; no doubt she had realized that her marriage was a misalliance, the white dove evolving into the black sparrow and vice versa. Harold thought that she and Axel and the boy were like a ravaged nation in the aftermath of a war, disoriented and without leadership or hope for the future, or resources to begin the reconstruction.