Little Caesar (22 page)

We slept between thin sheets. Our bodies slid across each other, dry and cool, sometimes half awake, the delicious sense of being alive, of feeling joy at the existence of someone else, of then sinking back into the darkness of sleep.

*

I called the hotel to see if my mother was there, and was put through. She answered. I said I’d be there in an hour.

‘Oh, and Ludwig, could you pick up some sandwiches for us?’

I walked to Loews, bought sandwiches and soft drinks along the way. She knew I was spending my time with a girl these days, and no longer asked about it. I visited her a few times a week. When I asked what she was up to, she remained noncommittal. I had the impression that Rollo Liban’s publicity campaign was working: I saw her in the newspapers and sometimes, when I stopped somewhere for a sandwich, she would suddenly appear on the TV above the counter, in some talk show with an exuberant host who asked her about things to which I closed my ears. Let her go her godless way.

She was sitting on the balcony, wearing a big pair of sunglasses, her head tilted back to catch the sun.

‘So, here I am,’ I said.

It was supposed to be a hint to her to cover herself; she was wearing nothing but a pair of black panties and a hotel bathrobe that was hanging open. I saw her breasts, and felt embarrassed. She smiled.

‘Ah, room service! Get a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge, would you, sweetheart?’

Once I was back in the room, she shouted after me, ‘I had them slide the beds together again, you never sleep here anyway these days.’

The room showed signs of more permanent habitation. There was an electric kettle now and a tray with different kinds of tea. On the windowsill was a wooden plank, inlaid with mother of pearl – the white ash told me she used it to burn her incense. There was a smoking ban at Loews, but she paid it no heed. The pictures of the men with beards had followed her from the house on Kings Ness; she had them arranged beside the mirror, so that every time she looked at herself she could see them too, and perhaps be reminded of their philosophy. In the minibar I found a little bottle of white wine with a twist-off top and took two glasses from the bathroom.

She was still sunning herself as blatantly as ever, with those glorious breasts and all. The last time I had seen them was in
Lilith
, at Selwyn’s house. I stood on the threshold of the balcony, my eyes exploring her body. I looked at her the way Uncle Gerard had once looked at her beside the canal, the sweet gleam of her skin, her slender, elegant limbs.

‘Put something on,’ I said gruffly. ‘I’m not going to eat lunch with you like this.’

She turned her face towards me; behind the dark glasses I couldn’t see her eyes.

‘Why not? I’m your mother, I have nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘I don’t feel like looking at your tits while I eat.’

‘Well then, look somewhere else.’

She nodded towards the sea. I had the uneasy feeling she was challenging me. That she wouldn’t bat an eye if I laid a hand on her breasts, caressed her.

‘Stop acting like some goddamn hippie,’ I said.

‘Oh God, I didn’t know you were so awfully prudish, Ludwig.’

She wrapped her bathrobe around her with a sigh.

‘I brought cheese,’ I said. ‘I hope you like
that
.’

‘Actually, I’m trying not to eat too many dairy products these days.’

She unwrapped the sandwich.

‘I looked at a little house, no too far from here. I can’t stay here forever, unfortunately. A cute little place, perfect for the two of us.’

‘Where?’

‘Venice.’

‘That’s where Sarah lives.’

She wiggled her toes. Light pink nail polish.

‘Sarah, is that her name?’

‘Sarah Martin.’

‘That’s funny.’

‘What’s so funny about it?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. It’s just . . . so normal. I mean, that could be anyone’s name. Is she a spy?’

She thought that was humorous. She asked me, ‘So when do I get to meet her? I’ve never seen you so wrapped up in a girl. Are you in love? Bring her over, while I’m still here. Ask her to come tomorrow, we’ll do a high tea. Lovely scones, bonbons, those little tiny cakes. Or isn’t she allowed to eat sweets?’

‘I’m not sure this is her kind of place.’

‘This is one of the finest hotels in town! Of course, she’ll love it!’

She rented the house for the remainder of her time in Los Angeles, the agent said she could move in on the first of the month. It had two bedrooms, she told me, and a little garden at the front and back. You could open the garden doors to air it out. It was a quiet neighborhood, they had assured her, with none of the violent crime you had in other parts of Venice.

After our lunch I went looking for Berny Suess, the hotel manager, to see whether he needed a pianist – one who could sing as well, a jukebox with fingers. I found him in his office at the end of a dark hallway on the second floor. As soon as I appeared in the doorway, his face went all service-minded. I told him who I was and what I had come for. He came out from behind his desk energetically.

‘So show me your stuff,’ he said. ‘We need someone occasionally, but not real regularly.’

He trotted out in front of me. A wisp of hair had detached itself from the top of his balding scalp and bobbed along at the side of his head. I tried to keep up with him, but he remained one step ahead the whole time.

‘At night we have a guitarist who sings in the bar, maybe you’ve seen him. The only time we need a pianist is for special occasions: private parties, presentations, you know what I mean.’

There was no stool. I fetched a plastic chair from the conference room and sat down at the piano.

‘What would you like to hear?’

‘“Bridge over Troubled Water”,’ Suess said without a moment’s hesitation. ‘The loveliest song I know.’

Fortunately I knew it by heart, and my voice was suited for it.

‘Yes,’ Suess murmured a few times as I was playing.

The song seemed attached to some memory of his, and he was visibly moved by it. When I was finished I launched right into the andante of Mozart’s eleventh sonata, just to show off my eclecticism.

‘Buddy,’ Suess said, ‘where can I get hold of you?’

I grinned.

‘Room 304.’

‘That situation,’ he said. ‘Two people in a single room. Ms. LeSage’s guest. I didn’t want to say anything about it yet. A splendid woman, so friendly I mean, not stuck up or anything. Truly magnificent.’

‘My mother,’ I said. ‘It was only for a couple of nights, these days I usually sleep somewhere else.’

‘Listen, have you got the right outfit for this? Tie, shirt? Blazer?’

Lovers’ insomnia. Whispering, we take little bites of each other’s life stories. I listen to the youth of a stranger, a girl who saw snowcapped mountains to the west and violent thunderstorms over the prairies, with bolts of lightning reaching from the clouds all the way to the ground. The word
nowhere
for Augusta, a dot on the map. Ranch-style houses, pickups out in front. The desperate longing for something else. Once a year there was a big rodeo, men in leather chaps, the gruesome shouting of ‘yee-haw’ in the streets. She remembers the pang of excitement when one day a body was found along the road, riddled with bullets. Later her father read aloud to her from the newspaper, about a married woman who had become involved with a Hell’s Angel; she had complained to him about her husband, how he made her suffer. The plan to murder him had arisen from her lamentations. The Hell’s Angel had asked two friends to help him, they had lured the husband to a strip joint, later that night they had waylaid him along the road and shot him in the chest and face. Her father read such stories to her as a warning, beware of the world, but it had served to awaken in her a desire for that world, for the romance that lay outside the straight and narrow.

Sarah tries to go home twice a year, to Augusta, for Thanksgiving and for the annual family reunion.

‘My mother would like to meet you,’ I say.

‘Already?’

Sarah doesn’t know what a high tea is, but she’ll try to be there on time, after work. The moment I’ve been avoiding all this time. She’ll have to find out before they meet.

‘A while ago you asked me why my mother and I are here.’

I unroll before her a threadbare life story, catchwords, incomplete sentences, compressed until no life is left in them. Mother’s side, father’s side, all those things I left out. Telling it straight. Ignoring her dismay.

‘Oh my God, poor Ludwig.’

She remembered hearing something about it, or reading it.

‘Insane,’ she said, ‘completely insane.’

That sounds a lot more like it already. Then she falls asleep. She has a little over three hours before her day begins. She breathes deeply and calmly. I watch over a wonder.

A little past five, later that same day. I ask my mother whether Mr. Suess has called. She shakes her head. What I really want to know is whether the shooting has already started, whether the irony and the propaganda have already segued into the earnestness of sex for money – have the hordes already descended upon her person?

She says she’ll go ahead and order. Her voice at my back, ‘It takes them a while to put it together. I hope your girl gets here on time.’

Everything she says repulses me. Worse than that. A hatred that nestles high in my chest. If I were to seize her by the throat, I’m afraid I might never let go. I want to know who it is who fucks her, I want to see their faces as they go into her. Sometimes I awaken from daydreams: orgies of crime and rape – by broad daylight, I walk down the street, the events in my head are razor-sharp, the world around me is cast in weak light.

Sarah is late. I know that somewhere, back in the kitchen, the meter is running. Now that I’m paying attention, I notice that you actually hear sirens here all the time. All the time. As though people here immediately act on every bad impulse. The tea and scones must be pretty much ready by now. Maybe I should keep a parking spot open for her along the street, valet parking at the hotel costs a bundle. Don’t forget later on to get a pair of clean underpants out of my suitcase.

*

She arrived just after six. I was annoyed and relieved. My mother was seated behind a silver tower of aromatic substances and flavor enhancers.

‘Hello, Sarah,’ she said. ‘I’m Marthe.’

And then to me, a little more quietly.

‘We would have been better off ordering dinner.’

She poured the tea.

‘No sugar for me, thank you, Marthe,’ Sarah said.

She took an egg-salad sandwich. My mother rattled her spoon in her teacup. Sarah told us that someone had spilled a plate full of pasta all over her that afternoon. The woman hadn’t even apologized.

‘Some people,’ my mother said. ‘It’s not right to judge, but still . . .’

‘You’re very pretty,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s hard to believe that you two are mother and son. In terms of age, I mean.’

‘Lucky genes,’ my mother said. ‘Only our necks, ugly necks run in our family.’

‘I don’t see anything ugly about it.’

‘You do when I do this.’

My mother bowed her head, causing deep wrinkles in her ugly neck.

‘Oh, but I have that too,’ Sarah said.

She bowed her head as well, a double chin appeared.

‘The two of you have other interests in common as well,’ I mumbled.

‘Do we?’ said my mother.

‘Incense,’ I said. ‘Candles. That kind of thing.’

‘Do you mean spirituality, Ludwig?’ Sarah asked with a treacherous kind of amiability.

I smiled at her to confirm our bond, but was suddenly not quite sure we belonged to the same conspiracy.

‘He always jokes about that,’ my mother said. ‘You seem so afraid to believe in anything, sweetheart. Even though . . . life would be so much richer if you weren’t so cynical. Just look at your father . . .’

‘Let’s change the subject,’ I said.

I had told her beforehand that all things Schultz were taboo when Sarah was around. But I was now no longer certain that I had nailed shut that particular fire door firmly enough.

‘Is cynicism something that’s passed from father to son in your family?’ Sarah asked. ‘It seems so typically male to me. As though you men can’t tell the difference between disbelief and strength.’

A little tremor of approval played at the corners of my mother’s lips. Then she started talking about when I was born, how in the hospital in Alexandria she had rocked my cradle every few minutes to hear whether I was still alive. She laid her hand on Sarah’s forearm.

‘Even then I was already so jealous of the girlfriend he would have someday!’

The conversation fanned out into practical idealism; I raised my head with a start when I heard Sarah say, ‘And that’s how I met Ludwig.’

‘Oh really?’ my mother said.

Sarah looked at me.

‘Didn’t you tell her how we met?’

‘Things like that don’t really interest her.’

‘Oh, Ludwig! That’s mean! Those are exactly the kinds of things I love to hear!’

‘I want to get going,’ I said.

The thought of having come out of her – to gag on a mouthful of amniotic fluid.

‘One more cup of tea then,’ Sarah said. ‘I just got here.’

‘Exactly, very good,’ my mother said. ‘He can be so pushy. Stand up for yourself. But now tell me, where did the two of you meet?’

This was getting out of hand. I said, ‘So why didn’t you ask me about it, if you were really so interested?’

‘Oh, well, you’re always gone so quickly.’

‘I’m perfectly willing to tell you,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s no secret.’

I saw how I could come to hate her.

‘I’d rather talk about something else,’ I said. ‘Porn or something. Fucking for money. Prostitution in front of the camera.’

The silence around that silver cylinder full of sweetness was extremely pleasant.

‘That wasn’t very . . . nice, Ludwig,’ Sarah said after a moment.

I was speechless. She should be standing by me, at my side! Not facing off against me! After the victory, the defeat appeared without delay; my mother was sitting with her face averted, her eyes full of tears. Tears, goddamn it. Oh, you bastard, now you’ve ruined everything. And Sarah is looking at you with the most painful kind of distance, and now she’s moving over beside her to put a hand on her shoulder and comfort that tainted whore. A different word. The charm bracelet on her wrist tinkles softly as she runs her hand up and down my mother’s back. My mother, who smiles at her and dabs at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips – all female bonding at this table, it’s unbearable, what a seedy little tableau. And isn’t it amazing that I, the link between those two, have now completely disappeared from the whole situation? A chemical process is what it is: after the reaction the catalyst is regenerated, unchanged, and I am alone again.