High Crime Area (22 page)

En route to Berlin several days later, X inwardly vowed he wouldn't behave in such a way again, no matter how provoked, for after all he was a gentleman, yet soon after his arrival, during a press conference at his hotel, he found himself another time repelled by a young female—a striking blond journalist attached to the cultural desk of one of Germany's premiere weekly magazines. This girl-journalist was younger even than the French girl-translator, or appeared so; considerably younger than the other interviewers, who were nearly all men. X found it difficult to take his eyes off her even when he was answering questions put to him by others; for here was a brazenly attractive female, no doubt one of the new-generation Berliners of whom X had heard who were professionally ambitious and sexually liberated. Here was a girl well aware of the impression she made upon male eyes. She had long straight dyed-blond hair that fell past her shoulders, and large, staring eyes behind green-tinted glasses, and full, fleshy lips that shone with crimson gloss; she was forever moving her body seductively, and brushing her hair out of her eyes with nervous gestures, and fixing X with a gaze of starstruck adulation so extreme as to seem mocking. And how absurd her costume, resembling a parachutist's jumpsuit of some silvery-steel synthetic fabric, clinging to a thin, perversely erotic body. X felt a shiver of repugnance that a female so blatantly lacking both breasts and hips should present herself in a seductive manner. And her Berliner-accented English grated against his ears. And she was hardly shy, posing questions with the confidence, or more than the confidence, of her fellow interviewers. How did she dare! The girl seemed to pride herself on her ability to speak English, allowing X to know that she traveled often to the United States and had stayed for some time in New York—“in TriBeCa”; and she'd read “almost every one” of X's books as a college student, in English of course. X stared at the girl-interviewer with scarcely concealed fury. There was a tremor in his left eye, and he was obliged to grip his left hand tightly with his right; someone must have been smoking in the room, for his throat was constricted. How offensive, the way the girl-interviewer wetted her lips as she posed a question of X; brushing her shining hair out of her face for the dozenth time, and leaning forward so that the neck of the jumpsuit shifted to reveal the tops of her small waxy-white breasts, naked inside the costume. Worse yet, she had a way of uttering X's full name with heavily accented solemnity as if the distinguished man of letters were already dead, and this were some sort of posthumous occasion honoring him. Unbearable! At last X lost his patience, startling everyone in the room by bringing his fist down hard on a tabletop, and saying, with icy courtesy, “Excuse me, fraulein. Would you please speak English? I am having a most difficult time understanding you.”

X had interrupted the blond girl-interviewer in the midst of a lengthy, pretentious question about X's literary forebears and his political leanings, and now she blinked at him in stunned chagrin, startled as if he'd leaned over to slap her arrogant face. There was an abrupt silence in the room. (It seemed to X that the other interviewers glanced at one another with small smiles—they approved, did they, of X's admonishment?) A half-dozen tape cassettes spun in their machines in the awkward stillness.

Then the girl stammered an apology, her face flushed; the press conference resumed, though with more formality and hesitancy; no one wished to offend X, but posed to him questions of a sort he encountered everywhere in Europe, to which he answered with his usual balance of wit and sobriety, casualness and elegance. At the conclusion of the hour everyone applauded; everyone, with the conspicuous exception of the blond girl who'd sat silent and hunched in her chair as others spoke, staring at X's feet, twisting a strand of hair and bringing it to her mouth unconsciously, like an overgrown, hurt child. As the others politely shook X's hand in farewell, and thanked him for the privilege of the interview, the girl retreated without a word, and was gone. X frowned after her, annoyed. It would only have been good manners for her to come forward and apologize, after all.

It was clear that the new generation of German youth lacked the courtesy of their elders. X had noticed, too, belatedly, with a small tinge of regret, that the girl had brought with her a tote bag no doubt crammed with books of X's she'd hoped for him to sign; but she'd crept away without asking him to sign even one. So rude.

Also in Berlin, X was vexed by the publicist assigned to him during his visit, a fleshy, perfumy girl in an alarmingly short vinyl mini-skirt, black-textured stockings and shiny black boots to mid-thigh, who, in the limousine in which they traveled together from appointment to appointment, was forever chattering on her cellular phone; yet he maintained a dignified composure, and made no complaint of her apart from a casual, glancing remark to the head of the publishing house, about the amusing resemblance between the professional class of young Berlin women and “women for hire”; for in Berlin, as through Germany, X was treated with the respect due one of his stature; as his German agent pointed out, sales of X's books were high, and steady. In Stockholm, Copenhagen, in Amsterdam, and at last in Rome, at the conclusion of his itinerary, X was treated royally, and so made an effort to bear in stoical silence, as much as he could, the grating imperfections of girl-translators, girl-interviewers, girl-publicists and even, outrageously, girl-editors—for it was quite a shock to X, to discover that the editor at his Italian publisher who'd overseen his books for twenty years had retired and been replaced by an exuberant young Milanese woman of no more than thirty-five; a specialist in American literature who'd taken courses at Columbia and whose name was something like Tonia, or Tanya. X took an immediate dislike to this girl-editor whose complexion appeared slightly coarse, and whose long face and nose were so recognizably Italian; he disapproved of makeup in one so homely, and wondered if the single gold ring on her left hand was a wedding band—or was X supposed to play a sort of guessing game, not knowing if she was married or not? Though Tonia, or Tanya, was deferential to the elder distinguished writer, he resented her familiarity with his books as if, knowing his books, she somehow knew
him
; forever quoting, in the presence of others, from X's writing, as if he were a revered authority on literature, politics, morals, the very universe. Nothing more vulgar than fulsome flattery! Almost, X wondered that Tonia, or Tanya, was deliberately making him out to be, by her excessive homage, a pompous old fool? “Enough please!” X several times protested, but his distress was misinterpreted by the girl as old-fashioned humility, or shyness; she persisted in her enthusiasm, until X had all he could do to listen in pained silence. It annoyed him, too, that Tonia, or Tanya, should exhibit such a general zest for American writers, including on her list even notorious feminists who had, for political reasons, long ago denounced X. Had she no sense? Had she no embarrassment? X was particularly incensed when she introduced him as “the greatest American writer of his generation.”
American, only! Of his generation, only!
As if X's achievement had not lifted him well above the merely provincial and time-bound. X felt the sting of this insult as if the arrogant young woman had reached over to tweak his nose; but he bore his displeasure in dignified silence until at last, on the eve of his departure from Rome, at a small, elegant dinner in his honor, when the girl-editor began again to quote him in her proprietary, maddening way, to his host, the wealthy owner of the publishing house, he said, in a voice clear and penetrating enough to be heard about the table, “Excuse me! I am so very weary of chattering sycophants, I believe I would like to be driven to my hotel.”

How silent everyone was, at once. How like magic, X's effect upon these strangers. He did not deign to glance at the stunned girl-editor but was well aware of the incredulity and hurt in her eyes.

And so, dramatically, there came to an end X's European itinerary, the last publicity tour of his career.

You won't readily forget X, will you, my girl?

X smiled to himself as, in his luxurious hotel suite at the top of the Spanish Steps, he prepared somewhat distractedly for bed, and for an early awakening in the morning. Yet he was incensed, still; insulted; his dinner hadn't agreed with him, nor the several glasses of Chianti; an artery throbbed in his head, and his breath was short as if he'd been running. The indignities he'd had to bear on this European trip, outrageous for one of his stature and age! No doubt there was, in his wake, a flurry of anecdotes, in time to become literary legends; much would be embellished, and exaggerated. But such was unavoidable, for X was after all a famous man; about famous men, all sorts of wild legends accrue; he was an artist, a creator; like Picasso, Beethoven—a man of unpredictable moods; a man of genius, of course; and genius must be indulged, not stifled.

X had been driven back to the hotel in his host's limousine, accompanied by the contrite, apologetic man, and though X had of course accepted his publisher's apologies for the tactless behavior of an employee, X was well aware that the girl-editor herself had retreated from the table in mortified silence, no doubt to a women's room to repair the damage done to her vanity; but she'd made no effort to follow after X, to explain and to apologize. X wondered if it might be time to instruct his Italian agent to find another publisher for his books, one more congenial to his needs?

So you will see, X is not to be treated lightly.

This prospect would ordinarily have placated X, for through his career he'd derived considerable pleasure from making abrupt switches from publisher to publisher, and indeed he'd switched literary agents several times; but, happening to turn on an overhead fluorescent light in his bathroom which he hadn't turned on previously, he was shocked to see how exhausted, how sallow, how aged he looked.
Is that X? I? Dear God!
X's heart thudded as if a cruel prank had been played on him. Like many individuals of a certain age, he had long practiced the technique of what might be called selective scrutiny; rarely did he approach a mirror head-on, but at a discreet angle; he seemed to know by instinct which mirrors would glare out at him, and which would soothe his eyes; in his imagination, it was not a mirror-reflection he saw when picturing himself, but his most frequently reprinted publicity photograph, which showed a handsome white-haired gentleman with sensitive eyes, a wide, thought-creased brow, and a sympathetic expression. But, now, in the bathroom mirror, what did he see but a ghastly frog-face, sunken eyes and quivering jowls and a pug nose with dark, hairy nostrils! Is that X?
No, it cannot be
. All along others, including women, had gazed openly upon this face, while he himself had been spared; but now he saw his own true face, in the fluorescent glare of a bathroom mirror in Rome, and the sight of it made him sway with dizziness, nausea. He slammed the flat of his hand against the mirror and cried, “I deserve better. I deserve your respect. How dare you insult me!”

Though X was exhausted, as exhausted as he'd ever been in his life, and though the enormous canopied bed was as comfortable a bed as he'd ever lain in, he had difficulty sleeping; his brain swirled with vivid, hallucinatory images and shrill snatches of voices and laughter; his dinner weighed heavily in his stomach, and the wine he'd drunk, against doctor's orders, for X took blood-pressure medication, made his temples ache and his heart pound in a wayward, lurching manner. As often at such times when, in a foreign city, amid luxurious surroundings, he was suffused with a sense of regret, melancholy, guilt; for what exactly, he didn't know; for having quarreled with his wife, perhaps, before leaving on the tour; for having refused to take her with him; even as, in his confused state, he had to acknowledge that he didn't clearly recall which wife, which woman, this was; on a previous European tour he'd fallen in love with a woman some years younger than he, and he'd divorced his wife to marry this woman, but precisely which woman she was, and whether she preceded, or succeeded, one or two other women who resembled her, he didn't know; the effort of trying to make sense of it exhausted him, and disgusted him.
What do I care for the merely personal life? I am destined for higher things.
With a start he recalled that he had children scattered about the world, not only grown but frankly middle-aged children, and there was something repulsive about middle-aged children, something very unnatural; could he be responsible for squabbling offspring, must he be their father forever? Why should he, X, who'd labored so hard to create a reputation, to amass a modest fortune, provide them with the charity they seemed to think they deserved? As if, crouched forever in X's shadow, deprived of natural sunshine, these hulking, overgrown children possessed no volition of their own, no souls.
Leave me alone! I don't know a single one of you
.

Suddenly the dark of the unfamiliar bedroom was shattered by a gaily ringing phone close beside X's bed. X fumbled to answer, stunned, groggy, yet relieved, for he'd had enough of his miserable thoughts; this was his last night in Rome, his last night in Europe, and he deserved better; the call was from the hotel room service, a heavily accented Italian voice inquiring if the signore would accept a midnight treat from admirers of his books; X heard himself say, with childlike eagerness, “Yes, good! Send it up, please, at once.” Though the suite was already filled with virtually untouched gifts, bottles of wine, champagne, liqueur, expensive pâté and cheeses, as well as enormous, cloyingly fragrant floral displays of the kind suitable for a funeral home. Quickly X climbed out of bed, struggled into his silk dressing gown, squinted into a mirror and made a swipe at brushing back his disheveled, filmy-pale hair from his flushed forehead. Here was a more flattering mirror, softened by lamplight, providing a more authentic portrait of the elder distinguished writer. Even as X stumbled into the other room he heard a low rapid knocking at the door, for already the room service delivery was there; he heard, too, curious muffled voices and giggles in the corridor. Excitedly he called, “Yes, thank you, I'm here!”