Exiles in the Garden (22 page)

Yes, he said. I'm fine.

A beautiful service, she said.

Reverend Willis has a wonderful voice, Mathilde said. I bet if you asked him he would have sung a hymn.

Yes, Alec said. He did very well.

Where did you find him? Mathilde asked.

He came recommended, Alec said.

I'm sorry we were late, Lucia said. We lost our way—

It's all right. No harm done. Alec noticed two young men in blue overalls standing under the big oak on the hillside, evidently the Reverend Willis's cemetery personnel preparing to tidy up. There was no reason for him to stay but he was not yet ready to leave. However, he did not wish to witness the tidying up.

Mama has an idea, Mathilde said. She wants to take us to lunch.

Only if you want to, Alec.

The new place on Connecticut Avenue, Mathilde said.

What place is that? Alec said.

It's quiet, Alec. French.

French restaurants are never quiet, Alec said.

This one is, Mathilde said.

All right, Alec said. Just give me a minute.

The two women walked off arm in arm and Alec remained. He thought he would say a few last words but no words came to him. He thought that his father had led a fine life, spoiled only marginally by his struggle at the end. Lord knows he did fight and that was a surprise because he was no friend of lost causes. "Show me a lost cause and I'll show you a loser." He won nine terms in the Senate either because of or in spite of his view of lost causes. Alec bowed his head a moment, then looked across to the workers waiting patiently under the big oak. He gave them a signal and they collected their tools and advanced down the hill with their wheelbarrow.

Mathilde and Lucia were watching him from under the umbrella, causing him to reflect again how much they looked like affectionate sisters, arm in arm, their heads almost touching. They walked away in slow steps up the path. Lucia's limp seemed more pronounced. When they were married Alec found the limp sexy. Her left leg was a mess, long vertical scars, the knee shapeless. That was sexy, too. Looking at her it was easy to imagine her splayed on the mountain, her limbs every which way. Easy to imagine her pain and her helplessness, her ski cap gone, her hair in her eyes and damp from snow. But no such thoughts came to him now.

The restaurant was not crowded. The maitre d' showed them to a table next to a window in the rear. Alec and Mathilde declined drinks and Lucia ordered a bottle of Sancerre. Mathilde began to talk about the Iraq War and the administration's hostility to diplomacy. Diplomacy was a sign of weakness. Not that diplomacy would solve much; the war was a tragedy brought about by hubris, ignorance, and carelessness. Events were in the saddle. Whirl was king. Perhaps diplomacy was useful at the margins but the consequences of the war would be terrible and affect everyone. These consequences could not be avoided. No one could say this out loud, Mathilde said. To say it was to suggest that nothing could be done and that the situation was hopeless and in the hands of the Fates. The Fates were indifferent. They played no favorites owing to their affinity for chaos. The Republicans were terrible and the Democrats not much better with their platitudes about benchmarks and deadlines. The Fates had no interest in benchmarks and deadlines. So if you are trained as a diplomat, spend your life at it, you feel like a fool. You're wearing white gloves and a flowered hat in a garbage dump. Still, you do what you can. I've had some contact with the Iranians but I'm not allowed to talk about that.

A zone of silence settled over the table. A light rain fell outside. Neither Alec nor Lucia wanted to discuss the war even though their daughter was, as they heard now, somehow involved. Alec could think of nothing to say to her.

After a long pause he said, Be careful.

It's not dangerous, Papa.

Be careful anyhow, Alec said.

Listen to your father, Lucia said.

It's just a thought, Mathilde.

You're infantilizing me, Mathilde said. I never should have said anything. It's always a mistake with you two.

Alec was watching a smoker lean against a lamppost and light up. It had been years since he had had a cigarette but he wished he had one now. But society had infantilized cigarette smokers, irresponsible hedonists threatening their own health and the health of others. This smoker seemed content enough despite sharp looks from passersby.

He said, Where are you living, Lucia?

We've left Zurich. Nikolas wanted to and I agreed. Now we have a house in Prague and a small apartment in Berlin. But we are spending more and more time in Berlin because the mood in Prague is foul. I suppose the word is "flat." Nikolas believed that Zurich had lost its savor also, and this is why we moved to Prague. I do not think it is wise to move house when you are of a certain age. But it is certainly true that in Prague the oxygen became thin. It was as if we were living high on a mountaintop somewhere. The snap went out of things, do you know what I mean? There is greed and materialism in Prague and it is not good for Nikolas's work. Also, it is not good for sales.

I can imagine, Alec said.

Berlin is quite exciting.

It is?

Yes. It is avant-garde. Of course there is materialism in Berlin also.

The one often follows the other, Alec said.

Did you read Nikolas's last novel, Papa?

No, I'm afraid not.

I gave it to you for Christmas, remember?

Yes. I never got around to it.

It was very good, Mathilde said. A generational novel set in Poland. The father is an old socialist and his son is an entrepreneur. He imports Japanese wristwatches into Krakow. Makes a fortune. The son bribes people in the government. So there's a natural conflict between the old values and the new.

Yes, I can see that.

It's a sort of natural history of the new Europe, Mathilde said.

And about time, Alec said.

I don't see why you have to be sarcastic about it, Papa.

Nikolas wants to come back to Washington, Lucia said.

Alec looked at her blankly. Why would he want to do that?

I don't know if I want to but he does. Nikolas says Washington is where the tension is. He thinks America is beyond Rome in its decline, overextended, a debtor nation, its resources exhausted. It no longer controls the capital markets. Nikolas specializes in declining civilizations. He believes that only a European can write successfully of the American situation, its pathos, its inner contradictions, its strife. It's the European who has the authority to make such assessments, given our direct experience of the burden of the previous century. It's history from the point of view of the victims. However, Nikolas rejects the idea that the CIA controls American politics as the KGB controls the Russian. The Russian situation is a different matter entirely, a Slav thing. Nikolas has thought it through, you see. And he believes it's necessary for him to assess the American crisis firsthand. He loves America, actually. He particularly wants to visit Chicago.

Alec nodded sympathetically while he looked out the window at the middle-aged smoker, who took a last drag and flipped the cigarette Bogart-fashion into the street and strolled off. The sprinkles had ceased, and the sun shined dimly. Alec wondered how you would go about photographing a civilization in decline, choosing the correct subjects and the milieu and how the light fell. Not the whore in the gutter or the banker lighting a cigar with a hundred-dollar bill. What? Beckmann, Kirchner, and Grosz did a beautiful job with Weimar but they were artists. Alec was uncertain how to classify Beckmann's self-portrait in a tuxedo, decadent or not decadent. The face was not a decadent face but the truculent posture showed signs of incipient corruption; and then, thinking it through, Alec decided that the self-portrait revealed a glum satisfaction on the part of the artist and they were of course the same person, another thing surely. Contemporary American artists did not seem much interested in decline. Warhol would be an exception, though Warhol's work always came with a wink. Drawing his swine-faced men and feral gap-toothed women, George Grosz would slit his throat before he'd wink at his subjects or his audience. Winks were not in George Grosz's repertoire or Beckmann's or Kirchner's. Perhaps Bacon or Hockney, but they were British to the spine. Perhaps contemporary artists had too much invested in the decline. They would be ungrateful, perhaps naive, to bite the hands that fed them except in ironic ways that could be disowned later or laughed at. Sincerity was not in their repertoire either. Irony ruled. It would be difficult for them to look at the subject expressively and paint the results with sincerity, meaning savagely or with pity. Of the photographers Alec was even less certain. He himself had never thought of decline as a subject.

Lucia said, Nikolas has concluded that people do not believe in fiction. They do not have the time for it. They are impatient with it. They read fiction as a form of the author's autobiography. He is wondering if a new form must be invented.

Alec did not hear Lucia. He continued to look out the window at the quiet street and ponder decline. Weegee was dead. Diane Arbus was dead. Alec faltered there. The superb Walker Evans was dead, but Evans was always more interested in resilience than decline. Some of the
Vogue
photographers would qualify, all those dark portraits of louche women in dishabille. Fashion photography generally offered splendid opportunities but the results did not approach Beckmann, Kirchner, and Grosz, and Otto Dix also, even Man Ray and his sleek-bodied blank-faced nudes. "Decline" would not be the word for Steichen or Karsh. Alec reflected that decline had never much figured in his own work and wondered if his long-ago missed opportunity to photograph Vietnam was the reason, or anyway one reason, since there was always more than one reason for choosing one project instead of another. He certainly had plenty of time on his hands if he wanted to take it up now, although there was every possibility that through-thinking Nikolas was correct that only a European could do the subject justice owing to direct experience of the horrors of the previous century. Alec watched a cat slink from the alley next door and scoot across the street, tail high.

He's in a reverie again, Mathilde said.

He never changes, Lucia said.

The first time I noticed I was five, six years old.

Reminds me of the old days, too.

It's weird. But no harm done.

No, I never thought it was harmful.

Disconcerting?

Most disconcerting, Lucia said. Whenever I asked him where he was when he went away like that, I always got a false answer.

How did you know it was false, Mama?

I don't know. I knew.

The waiter arrived with the wine and made a show of pulling the cork and pouring a splash for Alec, who looked up with a start. He nodded at Lucia; hers to taste. Lucia sipped, said the wine was fine, and in a moment the three glasses were full and the wine bottle was in its bucket. They listened while the waiter recited the specials of the day, then stood with his pad, pencil poised. We will order in ten minutes, Lucia said, and the waiter went away.

What were you thinking of, Alec?

When?

Just now, looking out the window.

I was watching a smoker and thinking how much I'd enjoy a cigarette about now.

You haven't smoked in years, Mathilde said.

That's why, Alec replied.

Anyway, Lucia said with a smile, that's enough about Nikolas.

Perspective, Mathilde said. The European angle of vision.

I'm sure he's on to something there, Alec said.

Nikolas is exceptionally hard-working, Mathilde said.

That's what it takes all right.

He's published twenty books, Mathilde said.

Say a prayer for the forests of Canada, Alec said. He swallowed some wine and said to Lucia, Does your leg still give you trouble?

No more than usual. They want to do another operation since the first one was botched, they say. I don't know about it, though. I don't know if it's worth it at my age. But they tell me I'll be able to ski again without it hurting all the time.

That's something, Alec said.

Not enough, Lucia said. But thank you for asking.

I noticed your limp, he said. It seemed a little worse.

I go back and forth on the operation. One day I think I'll do it, next day I won't. Today is one of the won't days. Tomorrow I'll say what a great thing it would be to ski again without it hurting all the time. What do you think?

I don't know, he said.

No, really. Nikolas is against it.

I never liked any sport well enough to get cut for it.

Sailing?

You don't need to get cut to sail. Anybody can sail.

So you still do.

Not much, he said, neglecting to add that he did not see well enough to sail. Bad enough driving a car. Alec imagined closing his good eye during a regatta and seeing half a dozen Munchboats coming at him and commencing a reverie about the Norwegian forests and piling into a pier.

Why are you smiling, Alec?

I like the wine, he said.

If I may ask. What are you going to do now?

Nothing new. What I've always done.

No trips?

I'm leaving for Maine tomorrow.

An assignment?

No. There are fewer and fewer of those each year. I get older, the magazines downsize or go out of business. I mostly photograph for my own pleasure.

You always did, Alec.

Not always, he said.

Mathilde drove me by your house this morning. It hasn't changed much, at least from the outside. The dry cleaner is still on the corner. The Alhambra's the same, too, at least the facade is. Lucia turned to Mathilde and remarked that the house was much smaller than she remembered it. Alec ceased to listen because of the commotion at a table in the corner of the room, the one that promised privacy. A very old man was struggling to his feet assisted by a gray-haired woman and the waiter. Upright at last, he swayed a moment then ambled from the restaurant, much stooped, the woman at his side. He turned at the door and Alec got a clear look at him, the secretary of defense of so long ago. Alec remembered Lucia's mischievous wave and the secretary's answering smile. It was said that when he departed from his post at last, neither he nor Lyndon Johnson could say for certain whether he had resigned or was fired. Kim Malone called it a true Washington whodunit. Those years were laden with mysteries.