Afternoon of a Faun

by Afternoon of a Faun (retail) (epub)

  She heard me out—patiently, though also, I felt, somewhat unwillingly. She was fond of Marco: I knew that, just as I knew that the convolutions of an Englishwoman like Julia Gault were unlikely to engage her sympathies. At first I put her slight air of impatience down to a reluctant but growing conviction that Marco had in fact committed a grave wrong. But I was mistaken. It was apparently Julia’s role in the story, not Marco’s, that troubled her. Julia’s revisions of her own feelings about the past, far from conveying a complicated authenticity (as they had for me), struck her as highly suspicious. The candor that I’d found so compelling merely seemed expedient to her. That absurd lie about Marco’s “banishment” was plainly damning, while the phone call the next morning was self-evidently manipulative:

  “She must have realized she’d overplayed her hand. That’s all that was about. She was just trying to get you back on her side . . .”

  I didn’t entirely disagree with her, and yet I felt an obligation to play devil’s advocate.

  “You don’t think she could have been telling the truth about the other stuff, even if she was lying about that?”

  Caitlin shrugged. “She’s someone who lies. What else is there to say?”

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was by her verdict. I knew from her policy with our children that she had no tolerance for lies, so perhaps I should have foreseen that she’d react the way she did. And it’s possible I had foreseen it in some way—that I was counting on her to give me the permission I couldn’t quite give myself, to put Julia’s accusations into a permanent moral quarantine, and continue my friendship with Marco as if nothing had changed.

  At any rate, the conversation brought a change of mood that continued through the weekend. I felt calmer, less inclined to torment myself about possible ulterior motives for what I did or didn’t believe about Marco, and increasingly able to think of my coming reunion with him that Sunday without misgivings.

  It was the kind of liberated mood that, in my case, often builds toward a state of mild euphoria, feeding on any stimulus that strays into its orbit. The burned-out beauty of the Indian Summer with its rustling bracts and burrs, its sweet, pervasive scent of dried grasses and leaf mould, became a part of it, as did the dawning realization that Caitlin and I were not after all going to be spending all our days and nights grieving for our departed children. Even my work fed into it. I’d put Mallarmé’s Afternoon of a Faun back on the syllabus for the literature seminar I was teaching, and remembering my conversation with Marco earlier in the year, I’d tracked down a film of Nijinsky’s 1912 ballet based on the poem. The ancient footage was grainy, ghostly—fragmented to a point of near abstraction, with phosphorescent images of the faun and nymphs flickering in and out of focus. It was hard to follow, even knowing the story of the faun’s dreamlike encounters with the nymphs. But purely as spectacle it captured some quality of delight that made a powerful impression on me: ­Nijinsky in his dappled skin, moving like a reclusive forest animal; his gestures, at once cryptic and familiar as some language one had always known but never heard spoken, seeming to arise out of a wellspring of elemental joy. I remembered something D. H. ­Lawrence, that maligned genius, had written about the figure of the faun. It was in his book on the ancient Etruscans, an account of a civilization dedicated to a celebratory vision of life, utterly unlike that of the lugubrious Romans who supplanted them. I looked it up: “They can’t survive, the faun-faced men, with their pure outlines and their strange non-moral calm. Only the deflowered faces survive . . .”

  They can’t survive, the faun-faced men . . .The words were in my mind as I drove down to New York that Sunday afternoon. Inevitably, in the mood gripping me, they seeped into my thoughts about Marco. Was it possible, useful, to look at him, as his old tutor had, through the lens of the faun, that mythic incarnation of a masculine sensuality radically unlike the militaristic “Roman” version that had replaced it, marching down through the generations in its heavy muscled armour all the way to the pornographic ideal of our present era? I thought of Tarquin, that archetypal Roman, with his “rage of lust,” as he forces himself into Lucrece’s bedchamber in Shakespeare’s poem. Was that Marco? Or was he one of the faun-faced men who don’t survive? Perhaps he was both—had been one, had become the other. In any case the question brought in its wake the sense of a hunted, hounded innocence that I found hard to shake off. It struck me that I hadn’t, for one second, believed Marco unreservedly, and that this placed me among those doing the hunting and hounding . . . I remembered my wariness when he first told me about his troubles—that triangulating impulse of mine, which instantly added to the two of us a third figure in the shape of public opinion, wagging its finger and warning me: be careful. I remembered my hesitation in rejoicing with him at his moments of apparent victory; my lukewarm words when I finally did . . . the memories displeased me. I didn’t like the portrait they painted: a study in craven equivocation. Marco himself seemed, by contrast, magnanimity incarnate. I thought of his insistence, from the beginning, that he didn’t expect me or anyone else to take him on trust: “You can’t not have doubts . . .” Even his subdued response the other day, as I’d described my meeting with Julia, seemed, in this new light, a part of that same tact, which itself appeared positively heroic as I considered it now. No hint of reproach for my evident belief that there really must be two sides to the story—no attempt to influence me against Julia’s version of things, or even ascertain whether I found it credible. Only that poignant gratitude for my “support” . . .

  How little I’d done to earn that gratitude! How little “support” I’d actually given! True, I’d sympathized with the public aspects of his situation—the various kinds of ruin and disgrace threatening him, but I’d never considered the peculiar private agony of being innocent and not being believed. For a moment I seemed to see it squarely, feel on my own nerves the pain of realizing that not even the one friend he’d chosen to confide in could give him the assurance of unqualified belief. I remembered my refusal of empathy when he showed me that gun—the grim look on his face when he saw I wasn’t going to take him seriously. I felt ashamed of myself, and then immediately a little worried, too. What if he really had been thinking of blowing his brains out? And what if my report from London the other day had pushed him over the edge? I heard his voice again, thick and low: Ah god, I am so tired of this . . . I am sick to death of it . . . An image of him staging some terrible act of self-immolation in front of his guests tonight, came to me. Unlikely, I told myself. Marco wasn’t the histrionic type. All the same, in the flux of this restless, remorse-filled enthusiasm, it seemed to me that some gesture of solidarity was called for.

  I happened to be on Route 17 just then. There was a discount liquor store in one of the malls along the highway where Caitlin and I often stopped for supplies. On impulse, I pulled off into their parking lot, marched through the automatic doors into the glittering interior, and before I could change my mind, bought a bottle of expensive vintage champagne. It would make a suitable mea culpa, I thought, carrying it back to the car—an eloquent statement of confidence in Marco’s ultimate victory.

  A peculiar clarity seemed to distill itself in me as I drove on. I was in front of that campus star chamber again, only this time I was on the offensive, attacking my interrogators with the icy fluency one commands during these purely imaginary exordia. They were reactionaries in the guise of progressives, I informed them; puritans whose obsession with female victimhood masked impulses as controlling and infantilizing of actual women as the code of gentlemanly “chivalry” that the pioneer feminists had diagnosed two centuries ago as the male sex’s insidious means of female subjugation. I accused them of trying to bring back shame as an instrument of social control, of wanting to re-create a world in which a word, a rumor, an anonymous posting, could once again destroy an entire life. They’d trapped themselves, I declared, in the escalating logic of hysteria that ends, unfailingly, in the witch hunt . . . I was aware
of flaws in my own logic—weaknesses and exaggerations—but the awareness had little effect on the sense of exuberant vindication. It was as if the visions of some feverish genie had started wafting out of the wrapped bottle on the seat beside me, and into my brain.

  10

  I’D INTENDED to arrive early at Marco’s but I hit traffic at the Holland Tunnel and again at the Brooklyn Bridge, and by the time I got to Bed-Stuy the party was in full swing.

  Alicia’s partner answered the door, wearing a long green apron over her jeans, with the words “wi-cook.com” printed on it.

  “Hi Erin,” I said, pleased with myself for remembering her name.

  “Actually, I go by Eric now.”

  She stared up with a mild but steadfast look. The tuft of beard at her chin, or his chin, was neatly combed and trimmed. His hair, shaved at the side, glinted in the streetlight.

  “Ah, okay,” I said, trying to project an attitude of nonchalant approval. “Right!”

  It seemed to pass muster. At any rate, a hospitable smile spread over his face.

  “Come on in. Hey, champagne! Would you like me to put that in the refrigerator? I’ll tell Marco you brought it. He’ll be super happy.”

  I hung my pack in the entryway and followed him in.

  “I’ll get you a drink,” he said, still smiling solicitously. “Gin and tonic, right?”

  I nodded, a little surprised at his affable warmth.

  There were thirty or forty people packed into the suite of dimly lit rooms, with a din of excitable voices making themselves heard over loud music. I glimpsed Hanan in a sleeveless white top at the far end. Alicia, wearing the same caterer’s apron as Eric, came up with a tray of canapés—elaborate confections that looked like combinations of sushi rolls and cream puffs. I asked about the matching aprons. She gave her bubbly laugh and told me she and Eric had started a catering and party management company.

  “This is our first gig. Daddy invited all his most important friends, so we’re trying to make a good impression!”

  “Well, these certainly look impressive,” I said, taking a canapé. It had a custardy texture; I tasted shrimp in it, and horseradish, and possibly banana.

  “Delicious!”

  “Thanks!”

  She hovered, unpracticed at detaching herself.

  “I thought you were going to grad school,” I said.

  “Oh. We want to see how things go with the business first.”

  I remembered a conversation we’d had when she was still at Vassar. She’d told me she hoped to work at the State Department one day.

  “You don’t want to be a diplomat any more?”

  “No, I do, but right now I kind of feel this is more important. Eric needs to make money.”

  It wasn’t my place to inform her she had her priorities wrong. Instead I embarrassed myself telling her the story of Nancy ­Reagan’s reply to the diplomat who asked what she thought of Red China: “I think it’s alright on a yellow tablecloth”—to which Alicia responded with a puzzled laugh that made me feel at once old, condescending, sexist and mildly deranged.

  I caught sight of Marco in the next room, where the giant TV was splashing color on people’s faces. He didn’t look as gloomy as I’d been expecting—certainly not suicidal. In fact, he looked remarkably well: holding court in an untucked lime shirt with a half dozen energetically gesticulating men and women grouped around him. Eric, passing them with my drink, paused to tell him something, pointing in my direction. Marco looked toward me and raised a hand in greeting, giving Eric’s shoulder a friendly squeeze as he let the hand drop.

  “Your dad looks well . . .” I said to Alicia.

  “He’s great. He actually took the weekend off, which he never normally does. We’ve all been hanging out together.”

  Eric came up with my drink.

  “You need to keep circulating, girl,” he said to Alicia, cuffing her on the back. She laughed, and they went off.

  I looked for someone to talk to. The guests were a mixture of mostly white people in their fifties and sixties and a more diverse younger set—Hanan’s friends, presumably. They weren’t ostentatiously glamorous but they had an air of relaxed confidence very unlike the midlevel freelancers and adjuncts I mostly hung around with. It would be a powerful thing to have a crowd like this on your side, I felt, taking in their well-made outfits and upbeat chatter. On the other hand, they looked like they could give you a very cold shoulder if your stock happened to fall for some reason, or even looked in danger of falling. It didn’t surprise me that Marco hadn’t wanted to share his troubles with them.

  I moved in his direction, passing the TV, on which pundits were pantomiming the scandalized incredulity that had become the default facial expression among commentators during this campaign. The cause was more misogyny—on this occasion, leaked tapes of the Republican candidate bragging about assaulting women. Seeing me, Marco turned from the tight throng surrounding him and grabbed my shoulder, hugging me with unusual warmth.

  “Really touched, really touched by the champagne.”

  I smiled, glad he’d understood the gesture even though he clearly wasn’t in any imminent danger of blowing his brains out.

  “It’s a new day, right?” he said, staring into my eyes.

  I nodded, not sure what he meant. He gripped my arm.

  “You heard the news, I assume?”

  “You mean . . . about these tapes?” I gestured at the TV.

  “What? Oh, well, yes, the guy’s obviously toast, but no . . . Oh, hold on . . .” He detached himself from me. “Chiara!”

  A woman with vigorous features and hair piled in a dissheveled updo had appeared next to us. She and Marco embraced warmly and began speaking in Italian, Marco with his mother’s sinuous Milanese accent. I realized I’d never heard him speak Italian before—it was like having an entirely new side of his personality revealed—subtler and more cunning than the one I knew. He broke off to introduce the woman: a filmmaker who’d made a documentary about the trafficking of women refugees that had won great acclaim in Europe and was about to come out in the States. The Cinema Collective, of which Marco was a board member, was involved in its release.

  “It’s getting serious attention,” Marco said. “Chiara’s going to be on Charlie Rose next week, and Leonard Lopate . . .”

  They began speaking in Italian again. I moved away, wondering what Marco’s news could be. Some major development with his own documentary, I guessed, judging from the happy atmosphere of his household. Across the room I saw Hanan leaning against a door-jamb in a cluster of people, listening thoughtfully to their conversation. I caught her eye, and after a momentary blankness she smiled, flashing her even teeth.

  “Oh, hello!”

  We exchanged some pleasantries. I thought that would be that, but she stepped toward me, her coutured silk top catching the light in ripples like sculpted drapery.

  “Actually I wanted to talk to you.”

  She spoke in a quiet, intimate tone, as if we knew each other better than we really did, and evidently confident that I would acquiesce in the change of register. It crossed my mind that she might want to question me about that message of Julia’s on the answering machine last month, and I realized I still hadn’t asked Marco what he’d told her. But I was on the wrong track entirely.

  “Marco says your wife gave up her career when you and she had children . . . is that really true?”

  I was surprised: aside from the unexpectedness of the question itself, I didn’t think Caitlin’s existence had registered on Hanan.

  “Well . . .” I said, warily, “she did continue working from home on other things . . .”

  I’d learned from experience that some people regarded ­Caitlin’s decision to quit her career as an occasion to deliver a stern lecture—to Caitlin herself, or to me if she wasn’t around—and I didn’t want to hear one just then.

  “Anyway, it wasn’t based on any particular belief about child rearing. It was just that she
preferred being around the kids when they were growing up, and we were living a pretty frugal life out in the country, so we could afford it . . .”

  Hanan nodded.

  “How does she feel about it now?”

  She tilted her smoothly angled face up toward me, closing her lips as she waited for my answer. Her interest, which seemed genuine, puzzled me.

  “She fluctuates. Sometimes she regrets it. Sometimes not.”

  “What are her main regrets?”

  “Well, there’s a big void now that they’re gone, but she’s doing her best to fill it . . .”

  It occurred to me, suddenly, why Hanan was asking.

  “Hanan, are you thinking of, I mean—”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  I tried not to appear too astonished. She laid her hand against her shoulder, her long red nails fanning out.

  “It was an accident. But assuming I keep the child, I’d love to talk to your wife.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m sure she’d be happy to talk any time.”

  She smiled, and turned back to the other people. I wandered off to get another drink, trying to sort through the many and somehow staggering surprises contained in Hanan’s words. How cosmically harmonious Marco’s household had become since I was last there! I supposed I was going to be adding the imminent patter of tiny feet to the list of things we’d be toasting with that bottle of Krug. The thought trailed a slight caustic burn in its wake. An irrational annoyance at Hanan’s questions seemed a part of it—as if she’d been trying to reduce Caitlin’s difficult process of figuring out full-time motherhood to some kind of lifestyle option one could simply select like a new car or fridge. But it was more than that. There was some animus against Marco, too. A resentment of his seeming invincibility; his amazing capacity for continually reviving and expanding his field of operations. And once again, as I saw this, I felt the dismaying pettiness of my reflexes. What was the matter with me, I wondered, that I could only fully sympathize with him when I thought he was on the ropes? Why did the prospect of Marco victorious, Marco the loved and honored paterfamilias with his troops of friends, his unstoppable career, fill me with such peevishness?