The Book of Air and Shadows (41 page)

“Oh, my God, I must look frightful!” she said.

“No, you look fine. Is there anything I can do? I mean I don’t want to get nosy…”

“No, it is fine. Just the normal stupidity of life in which sometimes it is necessary to cry.”

She had the right accent too. In a couple of seconds Bergman or Fass-binder was going to come out of the cockpit and adjust the lighting. What was his next line? He groped for something suitably world weary and existential.

“Or to drink champagne,” he said, raising his glass. “We could drown our sorrows.”

She rewarded this small sally with a smile, which was one of the great smiles he had seen so far in his life, either on-screen or off. “Yes,” she said, “let us have champagne. Thus the sad problems of the rich can be made to dissolve.”

The flight attendant was happy to bring a chilled bottle, and they drank some.

“You are the writer,” she said after the first glass went down, “who discovered this terrible manuscript that has disrupted all our lives. And yet you still write away despite this. In my misery I hear you click-click-clicking. I’m sorry, I have forgotten your name….”

Crosetti supplied this and in return was directed to call her Amalie. “What are you writing?”

“A screenplay.”

“Yes? And what is this screenplay about?”

The champagne made him bold. “I’ll tell you if you tell me why you were crying.”

She gave him a long look, so long that he was starting to think she had taken offense, but then she said, “Do you think that is a fair exchange? Truth for fiction?”

“Fiction
is
truth. If it’s any good.”

She paused again and then gave a quick nod of the head. “Yes, I see how that could be so. All right. Why do I weep? Because I love my husband and he loves me, but he is afflicted in such a way that he must sleep with other women. And there are many women who would put up with this, would have affairs of their own and keep the marriage as a social arrangement. This is called civilized in some places. Half of Italy and Latin America must do like this. But I cannot. I am a prig. I believe marriage is a sacrament. I wish to be the only one and have him be the only one, and otherwise I cannot live. Tell me, are you a religious person?”

“Well, I was raised Catholic….”

“That is not what I ask.”

“You mean
really
religious? I’d have to say no. My
mother
is religious and I can see the difference.”

“But you believe in…in what? Movies?”

“I guess. I believe in art. I think that if there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit it works through great works of art, and yeah, some of them are movies. I believe in love too. I’m probably closer to you than to your husband.”

“I think so. My husband cannot believe in anything. No, that is incorrect. He believes I am a saint and that his father is the very devil. But I am not, and his father is not, but he believes this because it saves him from thinking he is hurting me—she is a saint, so of course she is above such jealousies, yes? And he need not forgive his father for whatever his father has done to him, he has never said what it is. He is a good, kind man, Jake, but he wishes the world to be other than what it is. So this is why I cry. Now, what is your movie?”

Crosetti told her, and not just about the script proper but about its basis in real life, Carolyn and their pathetically brief encounter, and about his own life and where he wanted it to go. She listened attentively, and in near silence, unlike his mother, who was full of lame ideas and
not shy about sharing them. When he’d finished, Amalie said, in a tone of frank admiration, “And you have thought all of this up in your head. I am amazed by this, as I have not one creative bone in my body, except to produce children and small things, like decorations and cooking. And to make great heaps of money. Is that creative? I don’t think it is.”

“It’s certainly useful,” said Crosetti, who had nothing of that talent.

“I suppose. But in the end it is a low art, like plumbing. And one has always the nagging feelings that it is undeserved. As it is. This is why the rich find it so difficult to enter heaven.”

At this point the attendant emerged from behind her curtain and began the dinner service. Amalie made her children take off their earphones and have what she called a civilized dinner. The seats swiveled around so that Crosetti found himself facing the little boy across a wide wood-grained table, which had been laid with a cloth and real china and silverware and a little vase with a baby white rose in it. Apparently Mishkin had decided to eat with his brother instead of with his family. After a few minutes, Crosetti could appreciate why. Neither of the kids shut up for a second during the meal, which for the boy was, remarkably, a bowl of Cheerios. The girl’s conversation consisted largely of wheedling—things to buy, places to go, what she might be allowed to do in Switzerland, what she refused to submit to. Amalie was firm with her, but in an exhausted way that, in Crosetti’s opinion, presaged tears and screaming fights amid the lofty Alps. The boy responded to a polite question about the computer game he was playing with a continuous stream of information about his entire history in the Warcraft universe, every feature of his game persona, every treasure he had won, every monster fought. The spiel was uninterruptable by any of the conventional sociolinguistic dodges and the boredom was so intense it nearly sucked the flavor out of the excellent filet and the Chambertin. Crosetti wanted to stab the child with his steak knife.

His mother must have picked up the vibrations, because she said, “Niko, remember we agreed that after you talk you have to let the other person talk too.” The boy stopped in the middle of his sentence like a
switched-off radio and said to Crosetti, “Now you have to say something.”

“Could we talk about stuff besides Warcraft?” said Crosetti.

“Yes. How many pennies are there in a cubic foot of pennies?”

“I have no idea.”

“Forty-nine thousand, one hundred and fifty-two. How many are there in a cubic meter?”

“No, now it’s my turn. What’s your favorite movie?”

It took a while to figure this out, especially as Niko felt it necessary to review the plotlines of his choices, but eventually they settled on the original
Jurassic Park
. Of course the boy had it on his hard disk (he had watched it forty-six times, he announced), and Crosetti made him run it with the promise that he would tell him how they did all the effects, and he brought out the special little plug that enabled two people to use their headsets at once off a single computer. After that it was dweeb vs. dweeb, and Crosetti felt that he had not disgraced himself as a purveyor of tedious facts.

The pilot announced their descent into Biggin Hill airport, and they reversed their seats and buckled in. The attendant distributed hot towels. Amalie smiled at Crosetti and said, “Thank you for bearing with Niko. That was very good of you.”

“No problem.”

“It is for most people. Niko is unlovable, but even unlovable people need love. It is a wretched fate to love them, but I think perhaps you are one of us who shares that fate.”

Crosetti couldn’t think of anything to say to this, but found himself thinking about Rolly. Certainly unlovable, but did he love her? And did it matter if he did, as it was unlikely that he would ever meet her again?

The plane landed gently and taxied briefly through the small airport to the terminal. A blowing rain beat against the windows of the jet. Crosetti and the Mishkin brothers gathered up their carry-ons and outer garments. Crosetti got a handshake and an unexpected kiss on the cheek from Amalie Mishkin, who said, “Thank you for talking with me, and
with Niko. And now you will go off to whatever insane adventure Jake will take you to and we will not see you again. I hope you will make your movie, Crosetti.”

Then Jake Mishkin stopped in the aisle, looming behind him; Crosetti got a strong third-wheel feeling and quickly left the plane. The terminal was small, clean, efficient, and a small staff of uniformed ladies carried him through customs and immigration with the sort of service now available only to the very rich, and which Crosetti had never before experienced. A Mercedes limo waited outside along with a fellow carrying a vast umbrella. Crosetti entered the vehicle and within ten minutes was joined by Paul and Jake Mishkin. The car drove off.

“Where are we going?” asked Crosetti.

“Into town,” said Jake. “I have some legal business to attend to, trivial really, but enough to write off this trip and keep my firm happy, or at least less unhappy with me than they are. It should take no more than a day, if that. I’m sure you’ll find a lot to do in London. Paul can show you the sights. Paul is quite the world traveler.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Crosetti. “And after that?”

“We’ll go up to Oxford and see Oliver March. We’ll return Bulstrode’s personal effects and see whether we can get a line on what he was doing here last summer. Beyond that we’ll just have to play it by ear.”

They stayed in a small, elegant hotel in Knightsbridge. Mishkin had stayed there before, and the staff made noises indicating they were glad to see him and that Crosetti was included in the welcome. Paul did not stay in the hotel.

“My brother dislikes the trappings of luxury,” Mishkin explained later in the hotel’s tiny bar. He had drunk several scotches to Crosetti’s single pint. “I believe he’s gone to stay with his fellow Jesuits. And also to arrange for our security.”

“He’s a security guy?”

“No, he’s a Jesuit priest.”

“Really? He said that, but I thought he was putting me on. What does a priest know about security?”

“Well, Paul has a range of talents and interests, as I’m sure you’ll
learn. I often think he’s one of the elite corps of papal assassins we read so much about nowadays. What did you think of my lovely family?”

“They seemed very nice,” said Crosetti warily.

“They
are
nice. Nice as pie. Far too nice for me. My wife is Swiss, did you know that? The Swiss are
very
nice. It’s their national specialty along with chocolates and money. Did you know that Switzerland was a very poor country before the Second World War? Then it was suddenly very rich. That’s because they supplied the Nazis with all kinds of technical goodies from factories that couldn’t be bombed because they were oh so neutral. Then there’s the matter of the hundred and fifty million reichsmarks the Nazis stole from exterminated Jews. That’s nearly three-quarters of a billion bucks in current dollars. I wonder what became of that? Not to mention the art. My father-in-law has a superb collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings—Renoir, Degas, Kandinsky, Braque, you name it.”

“Really.”

“Really. He was a bank clerk before and during the war. How did he manage to accumulate such a collection? By being
nice
? My children are half Swiss, and that means they’re only half nice, as you probably observed. You’re probably a good observer, Crosetti, being a creative type, a writer like yourself, always lurking and taking things down. You probably have Amalie and me and the kids all figured out by now. You got a screenplay working in there? The Family Mishkin, now a major motion picture. The other half is half Jewish and half Nazi, which is definitely
not
nice. Have another drink, Crosetti! Have a cosmopolitan. The drink of your generation.”

“I think I’ll stick with beer. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling a little lagged out so—”

“Nonsense! Have a cosmopolitan on me. Best thing for jet lag, everyone knows that. Bartender, give this man a cosmo! And have one yourself. And give me another, a double.”

The bartender, a swarthy fellow a little older than Crosetti, made eye contact before he started fixing the drinks, the kind of glance that asks whether this moose is going to go batshit in my tiny bar and are you in a
position to get him out of here before he does? Crosetti let his eyes slip downward in a cowardly way.

“You think I’m drunk, don’t you?” asked Mishkin, as if reading the vibes. “You think I’m going to be out of control. Well, you’re wrong there. I’m
never
out of control. Except sometimes. But this isn’t going to be one of those times. Jews don’t get drunk, according to my mother-in-law. That’s the only advantage she admitted in reference to my wife’s generally disgraceful marriage. They were not fooled by my membership in the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church. That, and they’re good providers, Jews. Money, sobriety…oh, yeah, plus they don’t beat you. She actually said that, lounging on her silk settee under her stolen dead-Jew Renoir. The Catholics of southern Europe are extremely anti-Semitic, did you know that, Crosetti? Most of the major Nazis were Catholic—Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels. How about you, Crosetti? You’re a Catholic. You anti-Semitic? You ever get pissed at the Jewish mafia controlling the media?”

“I’m half Irish,” said Crosetti.

“Oh, well, that lets you off the hook, then, the Irish being notably free of all taint of racism whatsoever. I myself am half anti-Semitic on my mother’s side. Isn’t it funny that all the big Nazis sort of looked Jewish. Goebbels? Himmler? Heydrich was constantly getting pounded in the school yard because the kids thought he was a Yid. Aryan features but a big fat soft Jewish ass. My grandfather, by contrast, was a real Aryan, as so of course was my mother, his daughter. And my wife. Do you think my wife is attractive, Crosetti? Desirable?”

“Yeah, she’s very nice,” said Crosetti, and checked the distance to the exit. The place was so small and Mishkin was so huge that it would be a damned close-run thing if he had to make a dash for it. It was like being trapped in a bathroom with an orangutan.

“Oh, she’s more than
nice
, Crosetti. There are deep wells of heat in my Amalie. I noticed how you leaned toward each other across the aisle. You got a little kiss there too at the end. Did you arrange to meet somewhere? I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least—it cries out for redress. I must’ve fucked forty or fifty women since we got married, so
what could I say, right? You should go for it, man! Forget this Shakespearian horseshit and fly out to Zurich. They’re at Kreuzbuhlstrasse 114. You can fuck her in her little yellow girlhood bed. I’ll even give you some tips on how she likes it: for example—”