American Romantic (32 page)

Wrong number? she said.

Somebody selling something, Harry replied.

From the parts of Andres's letter that he read there was no mention of a specific rendezvous. He decided to ignore the five-figure codes. May's was apparently an epistolary romance, at least after the Belgian had left Africa for his career in finance. Harry wagged his finger at her photograph on the desk, a gesture of reproach. She smiled back at him from poolside in Sfax, the water so blue, the sky pale white. Her skin was a golden tan, her hair bleached by the sun. Her mouth was parted slightly and he remembered her saying something when he snapped her picture, one of her straightforward Vermont endearments. He smiled at her and winked. She said it the instant he took her picture and then she asked for the camera and made one of him, waiting until she got the look she wanted. The photograph was in a frame in their bedroom. The colors had faded over the years, the water not so blue, his skin a washed-out white. However, the rest of him was the same, his broad shoulders and sandy hair, his capable hands, his half-smile, in the distance a minaret. He remembered the call to prayer.

All the embassy residences they had lived in came equipped with a study. This one was unfortunate, a formal space with heavy furniture and leaded-glass windows, in shadows at all times. He had never felt at home in it, using it mainly for personal correspondence and bills, now and then a nap. Sometimes May would drop by in late afternoon bearing a plate of marzipan cakes and a pot of tea, and after the marzipan and tea a leisurely tumble on the long davenport, a slow-motion tumble until slow-motion became insupportable, the conclusion raucous, May's high shriek that, he swore, only an animal could hear. Afterward he would tell her what he was up to, personnel problems, difficulties with the government, both his own and the one he was accredited to. My struggles, he said with only a little sarcasm. The last conversation they had, Harry admitted to weariness. He said to her, We have been at this so long, you and I, that I seem to meet myself coming around the corner. Different personalities, same problems. At those late-afternoon times he felt they were alone in the world, the experience so dense and private that he was loath to describe it.

He said, I'm losing interest.

She said, You'll never give it up. Never in a hundred years.

Don't be so sure, he said. There's a time for everything and maybe it's time now to think about something else.

May looked at him doubtfully and said, That time is past. It's been past for a while now.

He said, Pessimist.

The next day, she was gone before he was awake. But she was there with him now. She lingered in the dark corners of his study and in the air itself. He could smell her perfume and hear her voice, the words run together like an unfamiliar language, fluent but unintelligible, their meaning obscured. He did not know if she was smiling. Her face was turned from him. Surely she could read his thoughts, understanding that he saw himself now as a soldier on a worn-out battlefield at twilight. He thought of Othello's words at the end of his life: I have done the state some service . . .

He wished she had disposed of the diaries and letters herself. They were her responsibility. But that task had fallen to him and he decided to delay a minute more, allow his emotions to settle. He was not himself. Nor Othello. He was in the eye of an invisible storm, unable to move safely or make a decision. He made himself another whiskey, a strong one, avoiding the photograph only a few feet away. Harry sat at the big desk and looked at the letters with their colorful stamps and returned them to the manila envelope one by one, closing the flap, winding the string around the cardboard wheel. Night had closed in for keeps and he felt May's spirit withdraw from the room, leaving him alone at last. Alone and half drunk, he said to himself. He glanced at the correspondence on his desk, three letters that required his immediate attention. But they would have to wait awhile.

He knew that from time to time for the remainder of his days she would appear in the shadows, the smell of her body, the lilt of her arcane accent, a trace of the north country in every line, her wink. Harry took another swallow of whiskey and felt things go down another notch. A tap at the door caused him to pause but, listening hard, he decided the tap was imaginary, a
trompe-oreille.
He realized he had made a pun.

I made a pun, he said aloud. How do you like it?

But the audience was silent.

Harry sat a while longer, sipping whiskey and contemplating a future that refused to take shape. The tide was ebbing. He had the idea that there were rules somewhere and that if you followed the rules things would come out all right. He thought about that, wondering where fear came in, fear of the known and fear of the unknown, fear of capricious gods rolling dice for their own amusement. And without warning your world turned upside down. No logic to it. Your world was no longer familiar. Instead, he heard mysterious taps at the door, surely a warning, but of what? His desk lamp cast a wan light, shadows dim at the edges. The clock on his desk was fast. He had a meeting in the morning but could not remember what it was about. Finally, having exhausted the other possibilities, he dropped the manila envelope into the burn bag, waiting for a signal, any signal at all. But what he heard was the dull thump of the envelope as it settled. He was alone in the room and all he heard now was the heavy north wind rattling the shutters. He tried to imagine life without May Huerwood but was unsuccessful. That was Rule One. Rule Two was to press on. Even so, he could not bring the future into focus. He could not see its shape, and so he touched the CD button to summon the
German Requiem,
which did bring a measure of comfort.

 

In Washington, they gave him a comfortable office and he easily settled into the routine, the senior staff meeting at nine a.m. sharp, his own assistants gathering in his office at eleven. The in and out boxes were arranged just so, east and west on his desk. Read the cable traffic after lunch. He filled the bookshelves with old favorites. Miłosz was there, along with Koestler and Kennan, the poems of Poe, the five-volume life of Henry James, Bismarck's
Gedanken und Erinnerugen,
Barzun's
From Dawn to Decadence,
Fitzgerald's
The Crack-Up,
many others. During the slow afternoon hours he would take down a book and read an excerpt before dozing off to the hum of the air conditioner. All in all, Harry thought, a pleasant way to spend the day.

The Department was in a state of unease because the Secretary was contemplating a reorganization, and in any reorganization there were winners and losers, and the strategy of the senior staff was to move cautiously, leave no stone unturned until the next election when a new Secretary would take office and then—well, the stones would be passed on to the new chap, a fat filing cabinet full of stones, and so many of them too heavy to lift. In any case, the senior staff would be gone by then, into retirement or the public sector, Harry among them. He rented a row house in Georgetown within walking distance of the Department, though often enough he drove his car or took a bus, a question of his feet. Harry was in at nine and out at five unless there was a crisis that spoke to his own experience. But there was only one of those, and it was cleared up in a week. One day rolled into another and almost before he knew it he had accumulated leave time and thought he would take a break and visit his father, his first visit in more than six months. No one objected. Take as much time as you need, Harry. Everyone deserves a holiday from time to time. We'll soldier on.

 

Harry flew to La Guardia and rented a Chevrolet convertible to drive to Salisbury through towns familiar to him since childhood. Kent, Cornwall Bridge, West Cornwall, Lime Rock. The afternoon light fell beautifully from a clear sky. The hill towns had not changed much. The lawns were tidy, the houses middle-aged and older, well maintained behind rail fencing or low stone walls. They were comfortable houses with porches and gardens, here and there a youthful mansion, surely the object of derision from the squires. If they had wanted a Hamptons house why didn't they build it in the Hamptons? His father had told him that the mansions were popular with people in the entertainment industry, who tricked them out with tennis courts and Olympic-sized swimming pools and, in one instance, a seven-hole golf course with a resident pro. Can you believe it? The entertainment industry people were strange. They were not dangerous but they were often foulmouthed. The children were foulmouthed, too, and spoiled. Well, his father said, they were here today but they would be gone tomorrow. They were people who were always moving on, you see. Harry drove slowly as he reacquainted himself with the landscape and the small towns. There were horses everywhere in the fields and that put him in mind of May. He stopped once near Lime Rock to watch the horses cavort in the fields. A lithe equestrienne was exercising a jumper and the way she moved her head and body reminded him of May. Harry leaned against a rail fence and watched the girl, wondering all the while why he had been so against retiring to Connecticut, and then a BMW station wagon thundered by at high speed trailing loud music, a teenager at the wheel, and Harry's wondering ceased. When the girl completed one of her jumps, she raised her hand to give Harry a jaunty wave and he called back, Bravo!

When Harry arrived, his father was waiting for him in the Adirondack chair near the stone wall where the dogs were buried. He was engrossed in a book. The season was late autumn, the trees nearly bare of leaves, the weather unseasonably warm. The old man gave him a bear hug and a kiss on the cheek. He said, You look tired. Have you lost weight? He was in fine spirits and excellent health, save a little of this and a little of that: arthritis and indigestion, failing eyesight. Harry glanced at the open book next to the Adirondack chair, Philip Roth's novel
American Pastoral
in large type. The old man was full of surprises.

He had arranged Sunday lunch as in the old days. Many of the Sunday regulars were still alive, causing Harry to inquire if there was something auspicious in the Connecticut water. Of course Congresswoman Finch and her doctor husband were long gone but well remembered. Mr. Wilson had been gone for a decade. But the Candlesses were there, he with a walker, she with a cane. Despite the walker, Jimmy Candless maintained the bearing of a brigadier general. The widow Born, she of the diamond business, was still a consultant to the Fifth Avenue shop. The brothers Green had long ago sold their concern on Wall Street but continued to trade on their own account. When Harry asked if they had a strategy, they hemmed and hawed until the widow Born said, Oh, for God's sake, you two, tell him. Buy and hold, they said in one voice.

They drank cocktails for an hour and sat at table for three. His father brought out his best Bordeaux and the good glassware and china. The Regency table, one leaf less than in the old days, accommodated everyone nicely. His father carved the lamb himself. They talked American politics and, a concession to Harry, a little about foreign affairs. But the conversation always returned to Washington. What do they think in Europe of this fellow Clinton? Gives a good speech, doesn't he? His wife's a hellion. They were mostly Democrats but they had a high regard for George H. W. Bush. Harry Sr. and Horace Green had been at Yale at more or less the same time as Poppy, give or take a decade or two. Like the former president, Horace had been a member of Skull and Bones, though of course that was not mentioned. They agreed that Poppy wasn't much of a politician but that was what they liked about him, a gentleman through and through. Jimmy Candless thought the Kuwait action was superbly conceived and executed. Over the years Harry's father had lost his enthusiasm for Bob Taft, humorless man of principle. Instead, he favored Adlai Stevenson, a man of his own generation. They said Adlai dithered but that was a vicious calumny. Adlai was patient, quite another thing altogether. Whatever happened to wit in our politics? Instead of wit we got Reagan.

Harry was relaxed at his father's table, everything in the room familiar, including the roast lamb, the Bordeaux, and the conversation, the company ever so slightly dotty. Harry had the idea that this Connecticut world was a closed circle that had existed since the Continental Congress, or anyway since the first Roosevelt administration, with a way to go before the impatient God of the universe snapped His fingers and closed it down, never to be seen again. Time's up! Too much of a good thing. Harry's mind drifted as the company commenced a discussion of FDR's love life, Missy Lehand and Mrs. Suckley and others before them. Of course everyone knew but no one said anything. That was the way things were done then, in the way that news photographers never photographed Roosevelt in his wheelchair. A common courtesy. That was before the press flew out of control, putting themselves on the wrong side of common decency in their zeal to air dirty linen, bedroom stuff. Didn't you find them that way, Harry? Well, Harry said, no, not actually—and then, noticing the frowns, he knew he had to throw them a bone lest he be seen as a spoilsport. He said, Some of them are egomaniacs. Well, of course, Horace Green said, that's the fundamental problem, unchecked power. They're ghouls, you know . . . And then, distracted once again, Harry noticed that the Marsden Hartley was missing from the wall behind his father's head. Munnings's horse was there next to Homer's boat but Marsden Hartley's landscape had vanished. Harry waited until the guests had departed before he asked his father about it. The old man made a dismissive gesture.

He said, What's it to you?

What happened to it? I always liked it where it was.

Gave it to Yale, his father said.

What are they going to do with it at Yale?

Put it in the art museum, dummy.

I didn't know they had an art museum at Yale.

Of course they do. Beautiful museum. First-rate stuff.

I miss it on the wall.