The Rake (4 page)

Grand Forks, December 1969

To get a written note from Eric Monsanto was itself something of a rebuke. Why mail a note to a classmate and close collaborator instead of just calling him on the telephone? Besides, Reuben's dorm was exactly five minutes' drive from the house where Rico lived with his family. There had to be a reason for posting a letter. Reuben opened it sensing that it would not be a routine communication.

“I know you have other concerns in life,” the letter was typed single-spaced, “like, the welfare of the whole fucking college. But you were elected editor of the
Dakota Student
on the understanding that you'd give the office the time it needs. You were absent from the meeting on Thursday to plan the Friday issue, and absent on Monday from the meeting to plan the Tuesday issue. Maybe you should have been elected business manager instead of editor. Forget that. The business manager couldn't get away with neglecting the paper.” It was signed, simply, “Eric.”

Reuben showed the note to Henri when he picked her up at the library, where they regularly met at noon, going on to the Memorial Union for lunch. “Hardly the kind of letter one expects from one's best friend.”

“Honey, does it occur to you that maybe Rico has a legitimate complaint?”

“Well, sure. But
you
know why I couldn't be at the
Student
on Thursday, don't you?”

“No.”

The reproachful tone of her reply warranted reprisal. “Oh, you didn't know? I was busy fixing up a duck blind.”

She swatted him lightly on the head with her book. “Eric can fix his own duck blind.”

“Hmm. Yes.
Anyway
, dear Henri, the duck blinds are off-limits. Duck-hunting season is still on. No, listen, it wasn't the duck blinds. I've got about the best excuse possible. Thursday was the university trustees' meeting, and I am required to stand by, in case a student-body question comes up. It's a duty of the chairman of the Student Council—that's me, your—”

“My what?”

Reuben's pause was freighted. But then quickly, “Your servant and lover. Who shares a big secret with you.”

“Pass the mustard.”

“Okay, if you ask me in French.”

Henrietta broke into one of her radiant smiles. “Don't make fun of the French language, honey. You'll get onto it.”

Reuben had taken a
Living French
record album from the library, promising to practice a half hour every morning before breakfast. That promise was made a month ago, on the solemn drive back from Letellier. Every now and then, though only when he asked her to do so, she would test him on his progress. When he wanted her to drill him, he would always use the identical prompt, the line from the ditty sung by French children of kindergarten age:
Savez-vous planter les choux?
—“Do you know
how to plant cabbages?” She would grin, and pursue the drill for fifteen minutes. But today what he wanted was to talk about Eric's note, and this conversation would be in English.

The note had clearly upset him.

“So what are you going to do? Which reminds me—you dodgy old politico—you explained why you couldn't make the Thursday meeting at the
Student
. What about the Monday meeting? Were you picketing the draft board?—Never mind. But you will swear by your wife and child to attend future editorial meetings. Right, Reuben?”

“I promise.”

“How'm I going to check on you when I'm in Paris?”

“Don't even mention Paris.”

“I don't intend to give birth to our child in the Burtness Theater.”

“I know, I know, but let's not go into it. Though you know something? I've been trying to figure out a way to visit you in Paris, maybe during the Easter break.”

“Visiting me while I'm living with my father will take, well, a little planning.”

It was hard to do what he felt like doing, the student dining hall offering no cozy little corners for private affectionate exchanges; so he reached into his pocket for something to write on, and came up with the note from Eric. He turned it over and wrote on the back: “Je t'adore.” He signed it with a flourish, “Reuben Hardwick Castle.”

Paris, France, December 1969

Raymond Leborcier had excitedly told Nadine, his housekeeper, that little Henrietta, whom Nadine had known since Henri was eleven years old, had married and conceived a child. “I have not met the young man—the lucky young man—who is her husband. His name is Stephen Durban. But he is not lucky in everything. He has been drafted into the American army and told he will be sent to Hawaii for special training. No doubt he will then be sent on to Vietnam. Dear Henrietta will come here, and have her baby here.”

Nadine, a war widow, was instantly sympathetic. She promised to pray daily to her dead husband to solicit special protection for Henrietta's husband. “That terrible Indochina—you do know, Monsieur le professeur, that my Gustave was
almost two full years
fighting for his country—and much good it did, with that phony treaty, dirty beasts, and General de Gaulle. De Gaulle!” Nadine feigned spitting into the wastebasket. “First he betrayed the Vietnamese and now he wants the United States to betray them also!

“When will the dear child arrive?”

“Next month, Nadine. The baby will come in June. Mean
while, Henrietta will study at the university. She is a student of library science.”

“Will she live here, in our apartment?”

“At first, yes. And as long as she likes. We will make room—for her and the baby—will we not, Nadine?”

“Of course. And I will look after her night and day.”

“Perhaps she will want to get her own place, eventually. Nadine, do you know a good…gynecologist?”

“Dr. Hervier is splendid. Even if he did not succeed in saving my child. There is the problem—” she paused.

“What problem?”

“Dr. Hervier was a great patriot in the Algerian struggle. And I learned from Géraldine—my sister, Géraldine, who is also his patient—that he has resolved to return to Algeria to do his duty. That's the language he used—‘do my duty for the people we betrayed.' Gustave would have been proud.”

Raymond Leborcier lifted a finger to his lips. He did not welcome talk about the politics of betrayal. Or about any politics at all. His interest was in philology. He was engaged, regularly, in spirited academic exercises having to do with the historical development of the French language. He smiled with satisfaction, recalling the paper in which he had taken on the work of Emile Abélard. He remembered with mortification that he had gone so far as to accuse Professor Berthier of being disloyal to the school of Jean Larousse—a silly point in a learned dispute having to do with pronunciation. On the other hand, “I won that one,” he mused, looking up at the shelf where the record of the twenty-year exchange was kept. But then he put his own academic concerns to one side. There were things to do before Henrietta arrived. Not least was integrating her into the
university in work that would advance her in the field of library science.

Henrietta was her sparkling self, lively, amiable, undemanding. She told her father—aware that Nadine, in the kitchen, could hear everything she said—that she was deeply in love with her husband, “Stephen,” but that she was reconciled to the exclusive demands the United States Army would put on him for some time into the future. They had agreed that they would not attempt to communicate by telephone. They would simply write.

The letters from the United States came in regularly, postmarked from Grand Forks, near which, Henrietta told her father, Private Stephen Durban was stationed pending his transfer to Hawaii. Reuben and Henri had agreed that it would be safer to proceed using an alias, guarding against stray references to Reuben Castle, a name prominent in the Grand Forks area. “Stephen Durban, à ton service,” Reuben had said to her at the airport, with a courtly bow in continental fashion, the name pronounced “Duhrbahn” in high French accent.

There was nothing remotely like suspicion or incredulity in the Leborcier household. Raymond's attention, once he had seen to it that his daughter was well cared for and was doing satisfactory work at the university, returned to philology.

Henri thought in an early letter to suggest to Reuben on a diplomatic initiative. “Reuben, why don't you make it a point in one letter, in a few weeks, to say something I can read out at the dinner table, as though written during training for combat duty in Saigon? You might say something like this: ‘You've told me
that Nadine's husband perished in that terrible part of the world trying to defend the honor of France. Well, I honor
him
for his effort.' Something like that. And listen, darling, if you want to write that passage in
French
, it will mean all the more to her. And to me. You were making such fine progress. Speaking of which, is Rico now satisfied with your work for the
Student
? If he is making trouble, tell me and I will have him drafted immediately. Did you know that Calvin Stokes is not only head librarian at UND, but also
chairman of the draft board
? So if anybody is mean to you, I'll have him sent to Vietnam.”

By April the intervals between Reuben's letters had increased. His habit had been to write on Mondays and Thursdays—“I do that right after the editorial meeting. I assign myself a letter to you as first priority. Maybe I should publish these letters! Written in—Savez-vous planter les choux?”

She had no letter from him the first week in April, and his letter the second week was oddly strained, the news perfunctory. She heard nothing the third week. She thought to put in a phone call to the
Dakota Student
office—there was no phone in Reuben's dormitory room—but decided against it. She shook her head, wondering what he might be up to. Might he have returned to Zap to welcome the spring? She did not phone, instead concentrating her thoughts on her work at the university.

She took special pleasure first in reading, and finally in fathoming, the points her father had made in his most recent essay in
La Tradition Gauloise
. She found the French languor in linguis
tic matters sharply different from American vigilance, which sometimes bordered on the hysterical. The contrast was rather appealing, as if the Académie Française felt no obligation to stay current:
Let the non-monastic world concern itself with such matters.
When the Second World War broke out, Henrietta learned with delight, there was not yet an authorized French term for a bomber. “A bomber, Reuben, is the person who pilots the airplane with bombs in it which are then dropped on evil people. If you are pursuing your studies, you'll find—why not?—
bombardier
. Logical…right? But the Académie didn't authorize the use of the word until sometime after the Nazis conquered Paris. Maybe that's why they didn't bomb Paris! On n'avait pas de bombardiers!!! Reuben, honey, I haven't heard from you in two weeks. That makes me not only mad and jealous and furious and vindictive, but also—a little worried.”

She fought back again her rogue impulse to pick up the telephone. Instead, she wrote a letter to Eric Monsanto. Only Eric had been told the truth about the reason for Henri's decision to spend the spring semester in France. “Dear Rico, I do wonder. It's been two weeks without any word. Reassure me. He is well?”

Grand Forks, April 1970

“Reub?”

“Yeah. That you, Rico?”

“Yes. And I've got to see you.”

“About what?”

“I've got to see you.”

Reuben would normally have replied with a jocularity of some sort, but the tone of Eric's voice told him,
Not today.
Well, at least Eric hadn't announced himself in another written note.

Reuben was close to Eric. They had discovered each other as freshmen, the day of the required physical exam. Because the student currently being examined required protracted attention from the doctor, those behind him in line had to wait. Reuben and Eric, half naked, were seated on a bench in the anteroom.

“I'm Reuben. Reuben Castle, from Fargo.”

“I'm Eric, Eric Monsanto. My people live here in Grand Forks.”

“Why didn't they look after your health?”

Eric laughed. “They don't believe in prophylactics.”

“I'll give you some from my personal supply, soon as we get out of here.”

Filing past the last medical clerk, Eric looked at his watch. It was two long hours since he had reported for the examination. He looked back. Reuben was just behind, filling out one last form. Eric went out the door of the McCannell Hall Physical Health Center and paused, adjusting his eyes to the bright September sunshine. Reuben emerged.

“You want to have lunch?”

“Sure. I guess that's next door, at the Memorial Union.” Reuben pointed. “How come you're only a freshman? You look old and wizened.”

Rico Monsanto was dark-haired and suntanned. He hadn't shaved that morning. He smiled at the allusion to his seniority and they set out together for the Commons.

“As a matter of fact, I took a couple of years off after school. I worked on a freighter. Maybe they aged me, the Swedes. I did feel about a thousand years older when I finally peeled away.”

“That was just now?”

“No. About a year ago. Then I bummed around some. My father's a lawyer in town. He practically got an injunction to bring me home to begin college.”

They reached the cafeteria and stood in line for food. After finishing their lunch and drinking their coffee, they were still conversing. “But after the Tonkin Gulf business my dad—he's a carpenter—thought it was pretty obvious that the war was going to escalate, and he said”—Reuben mimicked a stentorian voice—“‘If you die over there, I want them to know they knocked off an
educated
American.'”

Both laughed. “Well, I've got an advantage over you, besides my extreme old age,” Eric said. “This is my hometown, and I can show you around a bit.”

Rico became Reuben's confidant. Having competed together for staff membership on the
Dakota Student
, each made his own mark on the paper. Reuben was impulsive, Rico deliberate. Although both aspired to be elected, eventually, editor in chief, Eric acknowledged to himself that Reuben's talents as an entrepreneur exceeded his own—Eric Monsanto would never have come up with the Zap initiative. So he quietly applauded Reuben's success, encouraged him in many of his ventures, and collaborated with him in some. These included the night at the duck blind in September, when Reuben had airily declined to take the advice of his senior counselor. This time it was Reuben who was short of prophylactics.

Eric said he'd pick Reuben up at the
Student
office. At six, Reuben stepped into the familiar 1964 Chevrolet coupé, a high-school graduation present to Eric from his father.

“Where we going, Rico?”

“I figured to get supper at the Hop See.”

“Always good. You going to eat out my ass over something?”

“Yes.”

Reuben's apprehension heightened when Eric ordered iced tea. All the more reason, Reuben calculated, to go in the other direction. He ordered a double daiquiri. To the familiar waiter he said, “Joe, you got some Myers rum?”

The drinks came.

“Okay,” Eric said. “You didn't want the baby. But she said no when you suggested an abortion. You told me you talked with her about who would take care of the baby after it was born; you suggested she give it up for adoption. But she wouldn't agree to that either. She didn't want to stick around once the pregnancy showed, and on that point she took the initiative, went off to Paris. You talked about how the two of you would live—”

“You're the only one who knows all this, Rico.”

“Yes. I'm not going to publish it in the
Student
. And I bet I'm also the only one who knows—besides you—that you haven't written a letter to her in three weeks.”

There was a drop in Reuben's composure. “Yeah. She told you, I guess.”

“Yes. Look, if you're thinking of leaving her, you can't go about it this way, just
not writing her
. Have you decided to walk out on her?”

Reuben lowered his head. He took a long swallow of his drink. Then looked up. “Yes. Yes, Rico. I don't want to be married and have a child at age twenty-one.”

Eric came close to giving his thoughts free rein. It flashed through his mind to get up from the table, get into his car, and drive off. He was deterred by the graphic mental picture of his sometime best friend, the young, blue-eyed Student Council chairman who still looked like a student cheerleader, left standing outside the rustic motel/bar/brothel without even transportation for the ten miles back to his dormitory. The son of a bitch, he thinks only of Reuben Castle, Rico thought. But finally he rejected the idea of leaving him stranded. He asked only, “Reuben. Are you absolutely decided on this?”

“Yes,” Reuben nodded. “And I guess I'd want you to know it wasn't easy.”

Eric could bring himself to say only this much: “Then you have to write and tell her. Tell her right away.”

Reuben nodded. “Yes. And if you don't want to see me again, I'll understand.”

“I'll decide about that.” He rose to pay the bill. “Sometime.”