Echo House (25 page)

"Axel's up to here with it and Willy doesn't have any at all. Willy's ashamed of who he is and where he comes from."

Alec managed, "
Willy?
" He thought Willy Borowy the most civilized man he knew

"Willy doesn't like being a Jew."

"Willy loves being a Jew!" Alec almost shouted. "A Jew at the end of the line. A Jew living on an inheritance, just like your father, except it's a smaller inheritance and getting smaller each day. Willy"—he remembered something Leila Berggren had said to him that morning, a comment on John F. Kennedy's ambassadorial appointments—"likes to cast against type. Who did he vote for? Nixon. Who's his favorite movie actor? David Niven. His favorite city? Berlin. His favorite poet?" He let the question hang.

"You seem to have given quite a lot of thought to my Willy," Sylvia said. "I never would have guessed. So who's his favorite poet?"

"You," Alec said.

"As a matter of fact it's Delmore Schwartz," Sylvia said dryly.

"And Auden," Alec said.

Sylvia shook her head. Poor Alec, so ignorant of the wider American world, so bewitched by Willy's well-known charm. But the charm was a mask to hide his true soul. He lived always in Washington's shadow. His father worked for FDR, so he grew up in Washington and for the longest time didn't think of himself as a Jew. Jew didn't come into it because his family was not religious and no one else cared. In Washington the New Deal was a secular religion and Willy and his family were Feds just like the neighbors. He discovered anti-Semitism later and was surprised by it. Anti-Semitism was new to him and it was disgusting. Growing up in Washington, you weren't Irish or Italian or German or Jewish; you were a Fed. Willy grew up deracinated, even the name, Willy Borowy. And when he found out that Washington was a special island of ethnic agreement—"broad-mindedness," they called it—it bothered him. It drove him crazy. He decided that Washington in its American way resembled Moscow under the Reds, communal hatreds suppressed in the name of patriotism or morale or public relations or setting a good example. And instead of admiring Washington for its tolerance and good sense, he despised it for its deceptions. There was a kind of snobbery among worldly Washingtonians, who believed they were above the coarse prejudices of the mob. In one sense, of course, they were—until there was a crisis, an election, or a sweet piece of legislation or a nominee to the Court, a place at the trough, in other words, and then their elbows were as sharp as axes. Willy grew up living in an illusion and he thought he had been cheated. No one had ever told him the way the world worked really, so he was twenty years old before he heard the word "kike." No one had ever used that word or its many synonyms in polite and civilized Washington and snickered at its use elsewhere, as French-speaking Muscovites belittled the earthy language of the peasant masses. Axel would have slit his throat before using that word or permitting it to be used in his presence...

"Willy thought that growing up in Washington was not a good preparation for life," Sylvia said mildly.

"It doesn't sound like shame to me," Alec said.

"Shame takes many forms," she said imperiously.

"He never seemed to me
ashamed
of who he was. Shame's not a word I associate with Willy. Willy's attitude toward life is ironic. Willy lives by irony."

"Sometimes it's the same thing."

Alec looked up at that.

"Willy likes to undermine himself," she added.

"He never took himself seriously, if that's what you mean."

"Oh, no," she said. "You're wrong there. He took himself very seriously. That was the trouble. Not on the surface, though. Never on the surface. That's one of the things that attracted me to him right away; you could see his mind go in one direction while his mouth went in another. Nine-tenths of Willy was between the lines, like a good poem. It took time and effort to appreciate Willy, who never understood where he fit in or whether he was supposed to. "

Alec was silent, suspecting that a comparison with Axel was at hand.

She fluttered her fingers, smiling brightly. "And one thing I knew for sure, the moment I met him. Willy hated Washington even more than I did."

"Another bond," Alec said.

"That's why he voted for Nixon. He thought Richard Nixon was Washington's exemplary specimen. Washington created him, Washington should have to live with him. Willy believed that Nixon was a creature of his environment no less than a clam in the mud. He was heartbroken when Nixon lost; an opportunity like that only comes along once in a lifetime. He believed that Washington wanted Kennedy to win so that it could think better of itself, an appalling prospect. So he got me to vote for Nixon, too. A Nixon victory would bring Washington to its knees in disgust and self-loathing, though that was probably too much to hope for."

"Much too much," Alec said.

"They'd blame the country."

"Probably they would. Blame the people who voted for him."

"I don't know why things never work out," Sylvia said quietly. "If only men were consistent. If they didn't have one personality for the inside and another for the outside If they didn't spend so much time prowling. If only they'd stop and think." Sylvia turned to look out the window. The rain had stopped and the moon was visible over the giant elm. The croquet court was very bright and frozen as if caught by an artist. Nothing moved; even the trees were still. She was staring intently at the croquet court the way she would stare at a picture in a gallery. If she stared long enough, it would speak and tell her something important. Alec stole a look at his watch and was alarmed to discover that the time was almost seven. Leila's dinner was due to begin in thirty minutes. Sylvia continued to stare out the window, her glass dry.

"Can I make you another drink?"

When she shook her head, Alec thought to ask, "Where are you staying?"

"Some people in Bethesda," she said wearily. "Friends of Willy's."

He was suddenly afraid that she would fall to pieces without Willy Borowy, nine-tenths between the lines. They had always looked after each other, and Sylvia was not the sort of person who easily lived alone; at least she never had. She had never paid attention to the mundane details of life; that was Willy's job. Alec looked at the ceiling, calculating the time it would take to get to the restaurant.

She said, "I suppose I'll go back to New York tomorrow."

He said quickly, "Stay a few days. We can go to the National Gallery tomorrow."

She turned from the window and looked directly at him. "I wanted to tell you about this myself, my own words, and now I can go back to New York. When Willy left he took only his library and his dog; can you believe it? I don't even know where he is."

He said, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Yes," she said promptly. "There is. You can take me to dinner. We can have a little dinner together, just us two, like the old days."

When were they? He could not remember dining alone with her in the old days, unless she meant London during the war. She was grinning broadly, delighted with this thought. In the sudden silence that followed, Alec moved his shoulders indecisively and gave an unwilling sigh. For the last ten minutes he had been thinking about Leila, her long legs and the down on her belly, and her purr when she was excited. He heard her voice in his ear saying how important it was, how
crucial
and
urgent,
that he be at dinner to romance her fat cats—

Sylvia carefully put her glass on the table and prepared to rise.

"Of course," he said

"Oh, goody," she cried. "Sure it's all right? Did I hear some hesitation? I'm not disappointing some adorable girl?" She smiled brilliantly. "I'll tell you something; it'll come as a surprise. I never liked being a mother. That's the truth. I love you, God knows, but the details of maternity always baffled me. It was like trying to learn French, too many verb declensions and they were always criticizing your accent. I never knew what to say or do. I never knew how much to tell and how much not to tell and what a child ought to know. I knew a lot, but I wasn't sure that the things I knew had an)—relevance. Small children frightened me; they seemed so insistent and demanding and so fragile and incapable. God, what a nightmare. The laundry! I couldn't wait until you were grown up. And now you are!"

It was almost ten when he turned the corner of the Treasury, driving Axel's black sedan. He guessed that dinner was ended, though when he'd spoken to the maître d' fifteen minutes before, he was told that the party was still at table. Probably they were finishing their coffee, but it made a late night for the up-with-the-birdies Washingtonians.

The maître d', leaning on his lectern reading a newspaper, sullenly pointed to a staircase. Alec could hear voices upstairs, one voice rising above the others. He opened the door to the private room, pausing just beyond the cone of light to listen to the speaker, her voice rising like a drill sergeant's.

"It's a bad plan, gentleman. It's flawed. It is not
stürmisch.
It lacks
Verordnung.
It has no organizing principle. Where it should be
angestrengt,
it is
schwach.
And where it should be
schwach,
it is
angestrengt.
So we are faced with a disaster unless steps are taken." She glowered fiercely. "Leave this to me. I know what must be done. I will inspissate this plan, and we can move forward."

This seemed to be a private joke of some kind, for there was laughter from the two men who sat with their backs to Alec.

"I will take it to the Attorney General," the drill sergeant said.

"He didn't like your last plan."

"His people didn't like it. His gofers didn't understand it. Go-fers are rats devouring the casualties. I am not taken in by rats. Rats hold no interest for me. Fuck rats!"

Alec was watching Leila, who was sitting next to the drill sergeant, a lazy smile on her face. She knew a performance when she saw one. Perhaps that was what you gained from proficiency in higher mathematics, her unfaithful numbers, her F Factor; everything was a performance.

When Alec stepped from the shadows, she looked up but seemed not to recognize him. He thought that she had never looked more alive, her skin glowing, her eyes luminous; and then she winked. The hairs on the back of his neck began to rise when she grinned broadly and motioned for him to sit beside her.

"Our foot's in the door," she whispered when he was at eye level. "And it's there to stay."

And when he glanced around the table he knew why. To his surprise, Lloyd Fisher was directly across the table, sitting with André Przyborski. Leila's partner, Hugo Borne, was next to Lloyd, and a wiry young Negro was next to Hugo. That would be Wilson Slyde, Leila had mentioned him often, a defense expert from MIT, a protégé of one of the vice president's people. A stranger completed the table. There were two empty chairs and crumpled napkins carelessly thrown beside empty wine glasses. So there had been two others present, and they had been the ones with the money; unless Lloyd was the one with the money.

Alec recognized the stranger but could not put a name to the face. Lean and saturnine, he had the ranginess of a cowboy, but he did not look like a cowboy, in his tailored suit and striped tie and polished shoes, indolently leaning back in his chair, thumbs hooked on a pair of bright red suspenders, grinning maliciously. He had what appeared to be a solid gold PT-109 tie clasp, conspicuous as a headlight. He looked vaguely out of place, and Alec wondered if he was one of Leila's inventory of specialists—weapons, the Soviet rail system, Third World, Swiss banks. But "specialist" was not the word that came to mind as he looked at the cowboy. Alec was certain that he had something to do with Democratic politics, a perennial Washington helpful, university division.

"There will be two areas of concern," the drill sergeant said. "Southeast Asia and the Caribbean."

Alec saw André roll his eyes and pour an inch of the wine into his glass.

"And that is where we should concentrate," she said.

"A sideshow," André said, stifling a yawn.

"It is where the contracts are, my dear André."

"Our two friends will have something to say about that," André said.

"I agree they are serious people," she said.

André muttered something in Polish, and the company fell silent.

"Well," Hugo said. "This is a fine beginning."

Lloyd looked at Alec, nodding fractionally, a finger on his upper lip.

"What are your thoughts, Lloyd?"

"I'll have to take this up with my principals, of course. In all its details. But I do believe we've made real progress tonight, even though there're some rough edges. Do you have a thought, André?"

"I like the rough edges," André said.

Hugo and the cowboy laughed, and then the drill sergeant spoke up again, staring directly at André; the others listened politely, but it was obvious the evening was almost over.

"You are late," Leila said out of the corner of her mouth.

"She wouldn't let me go. Am I forgiven?"

"You're forgiven. What did she want?"

"Family business," Alec said.

"We're done here. If Jo will just shut up."

"Why is she speaking German?"

"Her native language," Leila said. "Her name is Josephine Broch. She uses it when she wants to mystify, which is most of the time. She never uses it around me, because she knows I understand it. She's very good, really. Interpol background. God knows what else."

"I'll have some papers drawn up," Lloyd said, leaning across the table to say something privately to Hugo. The others sipped their coffee, except André, who was drinking wine. The air was dead, as if the oxygen had been drawn from it. Only Leila gave off any vitality, and now she moved closer to him, her fingers reaching. Alec looked up to see the cowboy staring at him with an indolent smile.

"My name's Red," he said. "I know your father."

His voice was low and round, with a vibrato that suggested he had been trained as a radio announcer. Alec recognized him now from a newspaper photograph, Red Lambardo, one of the many young advisers, formal and informal, in splendid orbit now that the new administration had found its feet at last. Alec remembered that he was an economist.