Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51

by Humans (v1. 1)

  Making the beds—she and Jack slept in different rooms now—Maria Elena engaged in angry silent conversations with the woman in the car. But these fantasy speeches had lost their power to tranquilize. Her make-believe diatribes at the rich and powerful and greedy and cruel did nothing to solve actual problems, had never done anything but soothe her own brittle nervous melancholy. And now they didn’t even do that much.

  The worst of it all was, probably she was the one now who should go to the authorities, the one with the specific grievance, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Although she was pretty sure by now that Andras had stolen her past.

  Andras Herrmuil, the so-called record producer, the man who made all the promises, and who now, apparendy, had disappeared. With her records, her posters, her photos, her clippings.

  Not quite two months ago he’d phoned, this enthusiastic baritone voice on the telephone, saying, “Maria Elena? Is this the Maria Elena?”

  Even here? she’d wondered, amazed, but even though the thought pleased her she automatically said, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You are! I can hear your voice!” And he dropped into natural native Brazilian Portuguese: ccWhen you were singing I was still at home, I was young, I was one of your most rabid fans, I went everywhere you appeared.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unconsciously answering him in Portuguese, “you’re mistaking me for—”

  “But I’m not. Do you know how many times you played Belem?”

  A small city in the far north of Brazil. Maria Elena said, “What? No, I—”

  “Three!” he announced triumphantly. “And I went to every one of them, even though I lived then in Sao Paulo. Maria Elena, do you remember the Live in Sao Paulo album? Fm on it! Screaming my head off!”

  “Please, no, you’ve—”

  “Forgive me,” said that insistent voice, “I get so carried away.

  My name is Andras Herrmuil, Fm an CA and R’ man now with Hemispheric Records, and this is, believe it or not, a professional business telephone call.”

  “A and R” had been said in English; it caught at Maria Elena’s attention. She said, “A what? A and R? Fm sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

  Again in English, he said, “Artists and Repertory.” Then, back to Portuguese, he said, “It means, I help select which records we put out. I don’t know if you know Hemispheric—”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “We release in the United States,” he said, “music from other parts of the Americas. Canadian, Mexican, Central and South American. To have Maria Elena on our list would be such a—”

  “No, no, please, I—”

  “You should not be forgotten! When you were singing, you were the best! You were the only one in a class with Elis Regina!”

  One of the major superstars of Brazil, before she killed herself. “Oh, no,” Maria Elena protested, feeling herself blush, “I was never, I could never have been—”

  “Ah, you admit who you are! Maria Elena, may I come see you?”

  How could she refuse? And so he’d come to see her, a darkly handsome man in his mid-thirties, who had flirted with her (but had not overstepped the bounds) and painted glowing pictures of her career reborn in this cold dry northern world. He had given her his card, and she had given him the two cartons that made up all that was left of her career.

  Promising to phone soon, and to forward a contract, Andras had gone away, and for the next few weeks Maria Elena had moved in a happy daze, fantasizing her new career. Could it happen? Could she actually sing again? She was sorry she hadn’t kept just one album, so she could hear afresh what she used to sound like. Could she do it now? Would the cold North Americans accept her?

  But Andras didn’t phone, and no contract came in the mail. Maria Elena fretted, she grew sleepless. She shouldn’t call him, she should wait, businesses had delays.

  But finally, yesterday, she had taken out his business card and called the number on it, in New York, and a recorded voice had told her that number was not in service. New York City information then told her there was no business in the city known as Hemispheric Records.

  Oh, Andras. What have you done, and why? Were you just a fan, a cruel fan? Was that all you wanted, to steal my souvenirs for yourself?

  One can get used to living without hope. But to have hope suddenly offered, to be tantalized with hope till one begins to believe in that bright specter once more, and then to have hope snatched away, that is unbearable. Maria Elena ground her teeth that night, alone and awake in her bed, thinking the darkest thoughts of her life.

  And this morning, to hammer it home, there was the stakeout, the woman in the gray car.

  Not yet eleven in the morning, and there was nothing more to do in this house, no other way to distract herself from her thoughts. This hateful place took care of itself with all of its “labor-saving devices.” There was still labor, of course, it was actually time that was saved, but time for what?

  Going downstairs, Maria Elena firmly turned her back on the living room and its television set. The daytime soap operas were too seductive, with their open-ended stories, in which great passion and great absurdity were at every instant inextricably mingled. The characters cared deeply, vitally, as Maria Elena had once cared and had always wanted to care and could no longer care, but what the characters in those daily stories cared so vividly about was invariably trash. Nothing that could possibly really matter to anybody ever arose in their invented lives, and that was why they were so seductive; become a regular watcher, a daily observer of these brightly colored puppets, let them experience your passion for you. All gain, no pain. A legal drug, as efficient as the illegal ones.

  Maria Elena’s pride would not let her give in to the release of drugs. Of any kind.

  Turning her back on the living room, Maria Elena drifted purposelessly into the dining room. This elaborate neat house contained a separate dining room, perfectly waxed and preserved, never used for anything at all. When she and Jack took dinner together, which wasn’t often, they ate at the breakfast table in the kitchen.

  Maria Elena stopped in the dining room, not knowing where to go or what to do with herself. Her fingertips brushed the polished surface of the mahogany table. Seats twelve. What would she do with the rest of her day?

  She thought of Grigor Basmyonov, but she’d been to see him again only the day before yesterday. And she’d told him—with such hope!—about Andras Herrmuil and Hemispheric Records and the sudden new career opening up before her. He’d been so happy and encouraging for her; how could she go to him with today’s news?

  But there was another reason to stay away. She was afraid of using Grigor, of turning him into a kind of flesh-and-blood soap opera of her very own, over whose dramatic problems she could wail without risk to herself, releasing her emotions in a safely ineffectual way.

  But on the days when she didn’t drive across western Massachusetts and into New York State to see Grigor, what was there to do? What purpose in life? She looked toward the plate-glass dining room window, with its view of Wilton Road, and saw the first slanted lines of rain sweep diagonally down it, as though God had shaken out his just-washed beard. Rain. So driving would be more difficult, staying at home even more claustrophobic.

  Maria Elena stepped forward to look at the sky, to find out just how much of a storm this was going to be, and was astonished to see that gray Plymouth turning into the driveway of this house. Pulling up beside the house. Stopping.

  Arrest! thought Maria Elena, and couldn’t hide from herself the thrilled feeling, the sense that something of interest, something worthwhile, might at last be about to happen. Lightfooted, suddenly lighthearted, she turned toward the front door.

  The bell didn’t ring for a long time, while Maria Elena stood in the front hall, one pace from the door, trying not to look eager, trying not to know just how eager she was. What was the woman in the Plymouth doing? What was the delay?

 
Ding-dong. Very loud, because the bell was set to be heard everywhere in this large house, and Maria Elena was standing direcdy beneath it. She started, even though she’d expected the sound, then stepped forward and opened the door. She would be calm, dignified, rigid, and silent.

  At first she thought it was rain on the woman’s face, but the rain was only a sprinkle, and the woman’s cheeks were very wet, her makeup running, her expression twisted with emotion. Tears! Expecting arrest, Maria Elena was completely lost. Did the woman so hate her work for the government that it made her weep?

  “Mrs. Auston?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Kate Monroe, I have to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About John.”

  The name meant nothing to her. Someone in the anti-nuclear group? “John?”

  “Your husband!” the woman cried. “Don’t you even remember you have a husband?”

  “Oh, my God,” Maria Elena said, and stepped back. “Come in, come in.”

  * * *

  They sat in the living room, Maria Elena on the soft sofa, Kate Monroe on the uncomfortable wooden-armed decorative chair; her choice. She was about thirty, somewhat overweight, dressed in a distracted manner in bright colors in several layers of cloth, as though she were a fairy in a hippie production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her hair was ash blond, cut fairly short, at the moment tangled and unkempt. Her round face would be pretty if it weren’t puffy red from emotion. Tears periodically poured down those round cheeks.

  Kate Monroe, while they talked, used and shredded any number of tissues from the box Maria Elena had given her. “I love him, and he loves me! You can’t hold a man who doesn’t love you!”

  “I know that.”

  “You have to let him go!”

  Maria Elena spread her hands, at a loss. “Yes, if he wants. That is the American law.”

  “It’s a mockery,” Kate Monroe went on in her shrill voice, obviously not listening to a word Maria Elena said, “to hold on to him if he doesn’t love you any more! We deserve our chance at happiness!”

  Maria Elena lifted her head at that, suddenly incensed at this slobby ignorant person in her house. “Deserve? Why do you deserve happiness? What did you do that you deserve happiness?”

  “You must let him go!”

  But Maria Elena would not be sidetracked. “You said that you deserve happiness. But why? Why do you deserve anything? Why you?”

  This time Kate Monroe heard the question. It made her blink, and look briefly evasive. “I said a chanceshe decided, and became self-assured again, crying, “You had your chance!”

  “Yes, I did,” Maria Elena agreed.

  Kate Monroe misunderstood: “If you and John lost what you—”

  “Oh, not Jack,” Maria Elena told her. “No. My chance at happiness was long before that.”

  Kate Monroe couldn’t follow the conversation, and it was making her angry. She’d come into this house with a clear simple burning truth to express, but now it was all turning muddy and difficult. Maria Elena could understand what had happened there, could almost sympathize with the woman; this is the way it is when you try to act out your fantasies in the real world.

  Trying to recapture the initiative, Kate Monroe said, loud and angry and vicious, “If that’s the way you feel, if you never cared for John, if all you ever wanted was a ticket to the United States—”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  Kate Monroe stared, thunderstruck. “You admit it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Then why won’t you let him go?”

  “Because he hasn’t asked.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “I’ve never heard of you, Miss Monroe,” Maria Elena said.

  “Jack and I don’t talk much. But of course he can go, if he wants.”

  “He did ask you,” Kate Monroe insisted, clutching to the chair arms. “You refused.”

  Maria Elena got to her feet. “John will be home in six or seven hours. Why don’t you look around the house, become familiar with it? When he comes home, you can discuss it all with him. You can tell him I will not stand in your way. That you yourself asked me if I would let him go, and I said yes.”

  Kate Monroe was getting frightened now. The solid base of her universe was sliding beneath her feet. Staring up at Maria Elena, she said, “Where are you going?”

  “I have a friend to visit in the hospital. I will probably be several hours.” Maria Elena pointed at the television set. “You could watch TV while you’re waiting for Jack. There are several interesting dramas on in the daytime. I hope your car isn’t blocking the garage.”

  “No, I put it on the— Why? Why won’t you stay and talk with me?”

  “Because it has all been said,” Maria Elena told her. Imagining Kate Monroe’s future, she couldn’t hold back the smile. “You’ll have your chance,” she told the wretched woman. “At happiness.”

  27

  More and more, in these latter days, Grigor couldn’t get out of bed at all. He had a knob of controls handy beside the bed, and could raise himself to a sitting position, and there he’d stay all day, sometimes reading, but more often—when the books were too heavy to hold, even the paperbacks—watching television. There were many channels to watch, and almost always there was something of a news or non-fiction nature somewhere within range. Grigor watched such programs because he still thought of them as grist for the mill, the raw material for more jokes for Boris Boris. But the truth of the matter was, there were now weeks when he didn’t fax even one miserable reject of a joke to the studio in Moscow.

  He knew what the problem was, of course. It was obvious, and inevitable, and there was no way to counteract it; like the disease itself. The problem was that he’d been away too long. He no longer knew Russia as naturally as before, as automatically as he knew himself. What changes had taken place there, that Boris Boris should be commenting on? What was the cm courant subject in Moscow this week? Grigor didn’t know. He would never know.

  Almost the only bright spot in his darkening and narrowing world was Maria Elena Auston, that strange lady they’d picked up at the demonstration. She wasn’t exactly a cheerful person, not as enjoyable as for instance Susan, but Susan had her own life to live, had a man of her own now—not some bedridden shell of a man—and very seldom came all the way up from the city to visit. Maria Elena did visit, usually twice a week, and there was something about her very solemnity, that awareness that at all times she carried sorrow somewhere deep within her, that made her a comfortable companion for the person Grigor had become.

  We have both been damaged by life, he thought. We understand each other in a way the undamaged can’t know.

  What a quality to share; he ought to make a joke about it.

  * * *

  When Maria Elena walked in, it was her third visit that week, a new record, and she was in better spirits than he’d ever seen her. ccThe plant is on strike!” she announced.

  Grigor had just been brooding on how litde of the world he recendy understood, and here came Maria Elena to prove it. Unable to keep the impatience and irritation out of his voice, he said, “Plant? What plant?”

  “Green Meadow! The nuclear plant!”

  “Oh, yes. Where we first met. But you said you didn’t go there any more.”

  “I drove by it.”

  Maria Elena pulled the green Naugahyde chair closer and sat down, her strong face transformed by what appeared to be happiness. She was actually a beautiful woman, in a dark and powerful way.

  It’s more than a nuclear plant being on strike, Grigor thought, but he didn’t know enough about her private life to be able to guess at what had changed her. A new lover? Something.

  Something to make her drift away from him, like Susan?

  Maria Elena was saying, “It’s the quickest route, so I sometimes drive by, and today there were many more pickets, and some had signs saying they were on strike! The workers are, because the
y know the experiments in there are too dangerous. A school bus was just going inside, with the pickets trying to stop it, so I had to wait, and one of the strikers told me the school bus was full of managers and supervisors!”

  “But it’s still operating?”

  “Oh, yes. And they're still experimenting. But you know how they are, they don’t care about the danger, the most important thing to them is that their authority not be questioned.”

  Grigor looked at the window. “That’s very close to here.”

  “Eight miles.”

  “Too close.” With a bitter smile, he asked, “Am I going to be assaulted by two nuclear plants in one lifetime?”

  Maria Elena looked startled, then frightened, then disbelieving. “They wouldn’t let that happen!”

  “No, of course not.” Grigor nodded. “No more than the officials at Chernobyl would let such an unthinkable thing happen.” Again he brooded at the window, thinking of that structure eight miles away. “I’d like to get inside that place,” he said. “Alone. Just for a little while.”

  Sounding breathless, Maria Elena said, “What would you do?”

  Grigor turned his head to look at her. When he smiled, his gray gums showed, receding from the roots of his discolored teeth. “I would play a joke,” he said.

  X

  What is he doing?

  I prowl the earth, I tear furrows from the ground in my frustration, I sear the rocks and lash the gravestones. What is that silken slavey up to?

  I can’t attack him head-on, that’s the most aggravating part of it. I have to acknowledge that now, after two encounters. He’s too strong for me to meet in direct confrontation.

  Well, what of it? Direct confrontation has never been our specialty. He has a back; eventually, I will find it, and I will drive a sword into it.

  In the meantime, I watch the woman. Susan Carrigan. Dull as church, predictable as famine. She does nothing to even endanger herself, much less the species, the planet. God’s alabaster moth hangs around her, sometimes in his enriched white- bread guise—Andy Harbinger! that’s his idea of humor!—so I don’t dare to make a move against her, not yet.