Exiles in the Garden (19 page)

It did not occur to him to try to win her back. That door was closed and locked, no light visible from her side or his. She was gone and that was the end of it. The next day he gave notice at the newspaper. They were not pleased that he had quit in the midst of an election campaign, for God's sake. But Alec sensed relief also; he had always been miscast, never part of the team. That afternoon he walked to K Street for a conversation with Eliot Bergruen, who promised to do what was best for him and for Mathilde once he heard what Lucia wanted and whom she had hired as her lawyer. Was Lucia a fit mother? Yes, Alec said, she was. Leave this in my hands, Eliot said. When I know more I will call you and we can decide what to do. That is to say, how far we can go. You must provide me with a list of your assets, beginning with the house.

I'm sorry, Alec.

So am I, Alec said.

Was she ever happy here?

In the beginning, Alec said. And toward the end.

The lawyer gave a fleeting smile. I understand.

Can I ask you a question, Eliot?

The smile vanished. Go ahead.

Did you ever feel you might have taken a different path? Run for the Senate like my father. Gone into the government.

I was in the government, Alec. I worked in Lend-Lease.

Stayed in the government, then.

The lawyer leaned back in his chair, hands locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He said, Naturally you're upset. Take a month off, get away from things. I have learned in my life that clear thinking arises from repose, intervals of noninterference. Recreation, if you will. One returns to one's task refreshed. I have learned also that nine out of ten problems solve themselves if you leave them alone. Let nature do its work. By nature I mean fate.

And the tenth?

You take the tenth by the throat.

And that's why you didn't remain in the government?

I was not speaking of the government, Alec.

Or choose one path instead of another.

You have suffered a shock. Your task is to get the shock out of your system. Never look back, that's the key. The backward glance is the guarantor of an unhappy life. Strangely enough, I learned that in the government. What was a waste of time and what wasn't. Good luck to you, Alec. I'll be in touch.

The next day Alec took his clothes to the dry cleaner, then continued down the street to the park. He sat on a bench under a shade tree and watched a group of Georgetown students, all with open books, listening to their instructor. Then they took their places and began to read, evidently a rehearsal in the open air. They seemed to be concentrating intensely, reading, he now understood, Shakespeare. When they took a break Alec asked the instructor if he could make photographs, he was from the newspaper. The instructor gave his permission and the students gave theirs and Alec began to shoot, remembering the afternoon at the theater off Connecticut Avenue. He shot with mounting excitement, staying out of their lines of sight, making his camera disappear, attempting to intercept the awkwardness and innocence of amateurs. He returned the next day and the day after, and when he fini shed with the actors he photographed playgrounds and parks, an empty swing, an empty bench, a tennis court at dusk, a beech tree with initials laboriously carved in its trunk. Mostly the photographs were without people, but now and again he made a long shot of a solitary figure on a park bench or looking into a store window. Of course he understood that the shots reflected his closed-down state of mind, the unconscious orbit of the sleepwalker.

Something had been lost that could never be regained. Some doors, once locked, never opened again. No one had the will. The eventual show, at one of the M Street galleries, was a success, especially the shots of the student actors. That winter Alec took his camera to Annapolis, photographing boats at anchor, under sail, in dry dock. He concentrated on dry dock. Wrapped in canvas tarpaulins, the vessels looked like sleeping beasts. Alec rented a sloop and sailed alone in Chesapeake Bay, freezing cold. But the deserted coves and harbors made wonderful material.

One night he put in at St. Michaels, moored the sloop, and went ashore for dinner. After dinner the bar was crowded. Alec looked in for a nightcap and at once found himself in conversation with a cameraman—he called himself a cinematographer—on the job in picturesque St. Michaels. They were shooting a movie, second-unit stuff, two scenes only on the harbor. A low-budget affair, Tommy confided, but the dailies looked very good. They talked shop for an hour. Alec explained that he was now freelance but had worked for a newspaper in Washington for ten years. At last he was free of that.

Tommy said, I thought Washington was exciting. A good gig.

It's only the government, Alec said.

Then a woman was at Alec's elbow. Who's your friend, Tommy?

Annalise, meet Alec. Alec, meet Annalise Amiral. She's the actress I was telling you about. A pro. Beautiful to work with.

Tommy wandered off and Alec bought Annalise one drink, then another. She described for him the plot of the movie, in which she played a femme fatale. The movie could be her big break if it was produced properly. If money was spent on promotion. The script was not bad at all. What are you doing here, by the way?

Taking pictures of shipyards and boats, he said.

It's winter, she said.

The shipyards and boats don't care, he said.

And where do you live when you're not photographing shipyards and boats?

Washington, he said.

I lived in Washington for a while. My father is a congressman.

You're kidding me.

I'm not kidding you.

Mine is a senator.

I loved politics, Annalise said. My father used to take me campaigning when I was little. Held me on his shoulders when he made a street-corner walk-by, all the matrons oohing and aahing. Good symbolism, my dad said, attentive father, family man. His opponents said he was exploiting a five-year-old. I loved it. "Judah Jones is on your side." That was his campaign slogan. Balanced budget, that was his signature issue. They loved it in Winnetka where everyone's budget was so large it never had to be balanced.

So he's a Republican, Alec said. Mine's a Democrat.

He ever take you campaigning?

No, Alec said. I was not an adorable child.

Hah, she said. I was.

I can believe it.

Then I didn't like politics so much. I liked boys instead. We only lived in Washington a few years. My mother didn't like it. She had work of her own. So we moved back to Winnetka and my father commuted. He still does. Commute.

Later on, the bar almost empty, Annalise confided that she had been married but the marriage hadn't worked out. Her husband was not in the entertainment business and that was difficult because the business was all-consuming. You didn't want it to be but it was. Her husband was the only lawyer in Los Angeles who had nothing to do with the entertainment business. He specialized in patents, so at the end of the day they had nothing much to talk about and drifted apart as people tended to do when the evenings were marked by silence. Alec said he understood about drift. He had been married but was no longer. His wife had left him for a Hungarian layabout. His daughter lived with his ex-wife and the layabout in Switzerland.

Did she meet him in Washington?

Yes, she did.

I didn't know Hungarian layabouts lived in Washington.

This one did, Alec said.

I met a British layabout once. Never a Hungarian.

You probably didn't live in Georgetown.

Chevy Chase, Annalise said.

Well, that explains it.

What do you suppose attracted your wife to the Hungarian?

That's a good question, Alec said. I'm damned if I know. I'm sure it was an affair of the heart.

There are lots of those in Washington, Annalise said.

Evidently, Alec said.

My father had an affair, a girl in his office. My mother put a stop to it. She put her foot down. And so the affair went away and they continued as before. Annalise smiled devilishly and finished her cognac. I'm free tomorrow, she said. What are you doing?

Sailing, Alec said. Come along. We'll have a picnic.

I'll bring my mittens, Annalise said.

Alec parked the car a block from his house and walked slowly up the brick sidewalk. The night was warm, seasonable in April, and no one was about, though he thought he heard music in the vicinity. He passed Admiral Honeycutt's old house and Ronald diAntonio's next to it, both men long, long gone. The count and countess's grand house was sold years before by the lawyers and had passed into other hands twice more before the sale, last year, to an oil man who did something important in the present administration, Alec had forgotten what it was. There was a time when he knew the names of every cabinet member in the government in order to successfully complete his father's dinner table decathlon. He had never met his important neighbor but he did often see the Vietnamese houseman carrying dry cleaning to and from the shop on the corner. The first thing the oil man did was tear up the tennis court and replace it with a gazebo surrounded by hedges and magnolia trees and, implausibly, a giant cactus; the cactus reminded him of Paul d'An's stag's head. Alec had come to think of the house next door as emblematic of the change of administrations. Each new owner put his stamp on the property. A fountain and a giant cedar made way for a tennis court as years later the tennis court made way for a cactus. Idle aristocrats made way for foulmouthed lawyers who made way for Republican oil men. Next year or the year after the cactus would yield to a state-of-the-art lap pool so the new owners could keep fit. In the old days everyone stayed on, lured by the capital's hospitality and sense of occasion and unquestioned authority. And if all you knew was politics and government, where else would you want to make a life? The exceptions were the ex-presidents, who felt obliged to go home to Johnson City or Atlanta or some address of convenience like Palm Springs or San Clemente, returning to Washington for funerals of statesmen like themselves. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and the elder Bush had all known the capital as young men and could not fail to remark on the changes. The grandes dames were gone. The elder statesmen were gone. The small town of their youth was now a metropolis spilling over into the Virginia and Maryland countryside, farther each year. When you looked at the downtown, with its barriers and snipers on the roof of the White House, you could believe you were living in a garrison state. Alec noticed that his street was crowded with German automobiles, the large versions.

Alec had lived on this street for more than half his lifetime, a fixture now like the vanished grandes dames. That came at a price. Now and then a neighbor would pause in front of his house, the neighbor's voice audible through the open windows, explaining the charm of the surroundings, the sense of continuity and history.

That little place belongs to Alec Malone, the photographer. He's been here practically forever, at least since the Kennedy administration. I believe they knew each other well, Alec and the president. Played golf together. Went cruising on the
Honey Fitz.
Was a guest often at Hyannisport and Palm Beach and Glen Ora. Went girl-chasing together. There isn't anyone in this town that Alec Malone hasn't photographed, though for many years he's worked mainly abroad and on the West Coast. Private man, keeps to himself. That's what's good about Washington, the links from one generation to the next. In Washington the past is always prologue, you see. Malone's father was an important senator, friend of FDR. Why, you could say that Alec Malone goes back to the New Deal.

Live long enough in Washington, Alec thought, and they give you bells on your clothes and a false face, like a jester or a Kabuki dancer. They made you a legend.

His house was ablaze with lights. Alec always left the lights on believing they discouraged burglars. And to think that in the sixties he and Lucia never locked the front door day or night. Alec paused by the table in the hall and leafed through the mail, half a dozen bills and circulars and a letter from Mathilde, a long one judging from the weight of the envelope, postmarked London. Alec put the letter aside to read over dinner. He always gave her letters his closest attention. He walked into the kitchen, made a drink, and in seconds was settled in his wicker chair in the back yard. His roses were coming into bloom, especially lovely this evening. Next door the oil man was giving a noisy party complete with fiddle and guitar ensemble playing southwestern music. The very air seemed to vibrate with it. Alec heard the rattle of glassware and women's soprano voices. He listened for foreign accents but heard none, unless you counted the southern accents. And then, quite distinctly, he heard rapid Spanish. A sudden pause in the conversation told him that someone important had arrived. The pause was short, no more than a beat or two, then conversation resumed louder than before. There was a musical term for it, ostinato, a phrase or rhythm repeated again and again.

Alec looked at his watch, bringing it close to his eyes in the darkness. Eight o'clock. The count's menagerie was always gone by a little after eight. Charles removed the champagne and the party ended. All those guests-of-many-languages were either dead or returned home or living in Switzerland. The captive nations were no longer captive, unless you considered global capitalism a kind of captivity. That, apparently, was Nikolas Janos's view, according to Mathilde. Nikolas and Lucia had only recently moved to Prague after living in Zurich for so many years. They also kept a small apartment in Berlin. Alec sipped his drink thoughtfully and listened to the party next door.

Someone fluttered a knife against crystal and the southwestern music stopped. Conversation tailed away and then ceased. The oil man was introducing his special guest. It was an honor having him there, a man of strength and commitment, a very great American, a man of faith, a man who took no prisoners, the government was lucky to have him and didn't deserve him, a man willing to sacrifice so much including the precious gift of privacy ... And then someone began to clap and the others joined in. Applause gathered, here and there a cheer. The special guest apparently declined to answer his host, for in a moment normal conversational ostinato resumed. Southwestern music resumed. Alec slipped into silent thought once more. The Morocco trip was definitely off. He would call Annalise in the morning, attempt another plan. He missed her, missed her easiness, her jokes, her repose turned abruptly to bird-on-the-wing. Perhaps they could meet somewhere else, New York or Los Angeles, when she finished her shoot. She was at her most irresponsible after finishing a film. Alec believed his father had weeks left, maybe more than weeks. But he deserved company in the time he had left. There was little enough Alec could do, but the old man deserved his best effort. Alec slowly sipped his drink and looked through his reverie room, this time giving himself over to the meaning of the red thread and where Annalise fit in.