Exiles in the Garden (25 page)

Andre hardly moved during this recitation. By now he had lit a fresh cigarette, and when Lucia waved her hand to deflect the smoke he seemed not to notice, for he immediately took a deep drag and released it in a thin stream. Alec was conscious of the thick silence inside Goya House and wondered whether Andre was the only tenant and the liddle beggah the only worker. He moved quietly to the doorway and took his seat on the porch as Lucia was winding down her tale, her years in Washington and her subsequent move to Zurich and then to Prague with a new husband. She stopped there because she was much more interested in her father's story than her own story, and she had not gotten far with him.

Nikolas Janos, Lucia concluded, and fell silent.

Why do I know the name? Andre asked.

He writes novels, Lucia said. Wonderful novels.

Oh, yes. I read one of them.

He is very successful, Lucia said.

He is of the new generation, Andre said.

Lucia smiled at that. Not anymore, Papa. There are two generations behind him. And one still in front.

I used to have a beautiful library.

What happened to it, Papa?

It was lost, he said. He turned to Alec and said, Did you find the toilet?

Yes, thank you.

We are very quiet here today. Everyone has gone to the soccer.

But not you, Alec said.

I have never cared for sport except skiing.

Do you ski, Papa?

I have always skied. I started skiing when I was six.

Lucia was a skier, Alec said.

And then I broke my leg, Lucia said. I still ski but not seriously. When I broke my leg I thought my heart would break. I thought my life was over so I came to America.

Alec gave her a look of surprise. He had never heard that.

And you, Alec, Andre said, what is your sport?

Alec said, Sailing.

I myself am an inland man, Andre said. I do not care for the sea.

It can be a dangerous place, Alec said.

I'm sure, Andre said with a smile. If I may ask, what is your business?

Photography, Alec said.

There are many sides to photography. What is your side?

Alec was silent a moment. He never knew how to answer the question. He supposed by "side" Andre meant "subject." But Alec had many subjects. He said, I suppose I prefer photographing actors onstage, preferably in rehearsal. I believe they are most natural when playing a role. Also, I like their company. He explained that he favored repetition, his garden and sailing vessels in the Chesapeake Bay. Over the years he had photographed landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, bowls of fruit, baseball infields, and the heavens, along with the actors.

I started out with news, he said.

Automobile accidents? Andre asked.

Once or twice, Alec said.

I watch the television in the evening and they seem most interested in automobile accidents and murder.

No murders, Alec said. We weren't that kind of paper.

Politicians?

Oh, yes, many politicians. The paper was interested in politics above all else. The politician with his wife, the politician with his children, the politician campaigning. But never asleep. The politician never sleeps. Andre was looking at him with a sly smile and Alec saw at once that he had misunderstood the question. He returned the smile and said, Of course a murdered politician would be news.

Andre considered that, and then he said, War?

The paper was interested in war, Alec said. Vietnam and the wars that came after. Andre looked at him with an amused expression and Alec felt that he was being led into troubled terrain. He said, I mean Somalia and the Balkans and Iraq One and now Iraq Two. One of our people was badly wounded just last year. He wondered at his use of the word "our" because he had not worked for the paper for almost forty years. He said, The Iraq War is the biggest story in the world.

Andre said, Did you go?

I was out of the newspaper by then. They asked me to go to Vietnam but I said no. Lucia and I were still married then. We had Mathilde. I didn't see the point. I told them that photography glorified the war. Vietnam was not my business.

Yes, Andre said mildly, I can see that.

I think he did it for me, Lucia said.

Not entirely, Alec said.

Yes, I'm certain of it, Lucia said, looking at her father who did not appear to be listening. His face seemed set in stone. His eyes were closed. I remember the conversation, she said.

Very different, Andre said, and fell silent, extracting another cigarette from the pack at his elbow and screwing it into the holder. He struck a match and resumed contemplation of the squirrel, now burrowing near the privet hedge that bordered the lawn. The sun was disappearing and lights winked on in the houses around the neighborhood. An elderly couple strolled by and they and Andre exchanged waves. The woman said something and Andre laughed and gave her a thumbs-up. My favorite time of day absolutely, Andre said, and blew a fat smoke ring.

I remember the conversation very well, Lucia said.

Hush, Lucia, her father said.

My opinion, Lucia said.

In error, Alec said.

You two, Andre said, stop bickering. Enjoy the evening.

What difference does it make? he added.

A moment passed, the sky continuing to darken. Alec said, You were in the war.

Yes, of course. Everyone was. You had no choice. Even if you wanted to make a choice there was no choice.

Lucia asked her father where he had fought.

Central Europe, he said. All over.

Whose army, Papa?

The partisan army, he said. We operated in Yugoslavia and beyond. I suppose you would call us irregulars. We were not under normal military discipline. We fought where we felt like fighting, mostly in the mountains. It seems to me in those years that it was always winter, snow, frostbite. You would wake up in the morning and the water in your canteen was frozen stiff. I have no memory of the summer or spring. I have no memory of the month of May or the month of July. We went where the opportunities were. A bridge that needed to be taken down, a section of railroad track, a munitions depot. When we came upon a German patrol we would engage it and we were usually successful. We chose carefully. The fascists chose carefully also in their reprisals, whole villages taken out and shot without pity. A mayor hanged. A farmer's wife raped in front of her children and her husband. There is an obvious abnormality here, an imbalance I should say, but we chose to ignore it. For the most part they were not our villages, our mayor, or our farmer's wife. As a consequence we were not admired by the local population. Instead we were feared, even hated. So we moved as often as possible, fighting on the run. And we took many casualties but there were always young men prepared to join up. I daresay among the young men there was a romance about us. The romance was at a distance. Up close we were not the young woman of your dreams but the witch of your nightmares. Our idea was your Lincoln's idea: save the Union. And that was reduced to a single mission: kill the fascists. Nothing else mattered. So we did what we could, badly equipped until the end. At the end, there was plenty of German ordnance to choose from. The Germans were beautifully equipped. Leather boots and gloves, warm greatcoats, superb weapons. Snow gear. Even their skis were professional quality, made in Switzerland as I remember. We looted the dead. And then we moved in a direction we should not have moved in. Our intelligence was faulty and it is all but certain that there was a betrayal. In any case we outran ourselves. It's often the way with an irregular army, filled with confidence and the elation that comes with it. We thought the fascists were fini shed. We thought we were untouchable. So we got careless. We did not take elementary precautions. We heard rumors of an Allied landing in North Africa so we believed we were at the endgame. By God we had given them a bloody nose, but that's all it was, a bloody nose. In our confidence and elation we decided to attack one of their headquarters and they just beat the hell out of us with tanks and heavy artillery and more infantry than we thought possible. Fresh troops, well trained, disciplined. Where did they come from? I don't know. They were waiting for us and it was all over in under an hour.

But you escaped, Lucia said.

Captured, Andre corrected. I was sent to a fascist prison camp in Poland. We were there two years. We were liberated, if you want to call it that, by the Red Army. And then we were sent to a camp in the Soviet Union. Andre was silent again, the only sound the creak of his rocker.

The German camp, Lucia began.

I will not speak of the German camp, Andre said.

Oh, Papa, Lucia said.

They were swine, Andre said.

Yes, Lucia said.

There has been too much talk already of the German camps. I can add nothing to what has been said and written. I have no interest in going over it again. Do you understand?

Yes, Papa.

Good, Andre said. But I will tell you about the Russian camp if you wish.

Yes, Lucia said. Of course.

We were sent to a camp in the Soviet Union. It was south of Murmansk. I wasn't sure where it was located precisely. I'm still not sure. My papers, such as they were, had been lost. They had no idea who I was, only that I was not Russian. I tried to tell them that I was one of them, a loyal communist. Had been a communist since the Nazis overran Sudetenland. They didn't believe me. They thought I was a fascist trickster and the unit I led, the one that was not strictly speaking under discipline, a gang of hooligans. Bandits. And it was true, we lived off the land while we fought the Wehrmacht. We took what we wanted when we wanted it. We tried never to lose sight of our Lincoln ideal, kill the fascists where they stood. That was in first position and everything else in second position. So they took us for bandits or maybe only revisionists. I never knew for certain. There was no trial. There was no due process, as the Americans like to say. The commissars made a decision and the decision was final. Three men and a woman in one small room in the headquarters section of the German camp. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. They allowed a one-minute statement from me, in Czech, which none of them spoke. One day I was in Poland and a few months later I was in the Soviet Union, in the camp south of Murmansk. By then I was separated from my commando. We were transported in cattle cars, Hungarians, Bulgarians, some Czechs, even a Swiss, all charged with various crimes. Or simply "detained." The train never reached a speed of more than twenty kilometers an hour, with long stops along the way. Food and water were short. Men fell sick and died. Everything stank. During the long stops the guards dismounted and stood along the siding, jokes, laughter, the smell of tobacco.

I can't listen, Lucia said. I can't hear any more of this.

But Andre did not hear her. Still, he said, it was spring. A cold spring but spring nonetheless. It was an improvement over what we had. In due course we arrived at the camp. There, it was not yet spring. Snow was on the ground and I remember thinking that it would be there forever. Snow as far as my eye could see, gray snow, snow the color of a dirty sheet. Andre shook his head heavily. Well, he said, enough of that.

He rose suddenly, surprisingly agile for so large a man. He stretched his arms wide as if embracing the night and pitched his cigarette on the lawn where it bounced in a little shower of sparks. He looked around him and then he rapped again on the window. The boy appeared at once.

Schnapps, Andre said. Three glasses. Have one yourself.

Right away, the boy said, and hurried off.

He's better at night, Andre said. His manners come back to him at night because he knows very well that I'll give him a glass.

Bring the bottle, Andre said loudly.

Thank God you're here, Papa.

Yes, I'm comfortable.

It's a nice house.

Adequate, Andre said.

I didn't know what to expect, Lucia said. But Papa, what do you do here?

Do? I don't understand.

Your life, day to day.

Andre shrugged. The question had no meaning for him.

I mean, Lucia began.

I am happy to be alive. In good health. I enjoy my Turkish coffee, my schnapps. In the evening I often play cards. He smiled broadly. I suppose I have always looked for the absolute, Andre said.

Night came in a rush. The street was suddenly busy with arrival and departure. Somewhere nearby a dog barked and an infant began to cry. The tray that held the coffee now held a bottle of schnapps and three delicately etched glasses. Lucia was certain the glasses were Czech made, the works at Zelezny Brod. Andre poured three glasses of schnapps and sat back again in his rocking chair, another cigarette in the ivory holder. Lucia watched her father fill the schnapps glass in his hand, the one that was missing the little finger. He appeared the picture of contentment, a man at ease in the world, lost in thought now. His thoughts, whatever they were, looked to be pleasant, for he was smiling.

Lucia had the idea he was thinking of her mother, dead so many years. They must have had a tremendous romance before he went away and disappeared, dead in her mother's eyes. She wondered when his birthday was. She would ask him the date and buy him a Borsalino as a present. She would invite him to Prague and take him to a fine café for lunch. Nikolas, too. They would have a sumptuous lunch with wine and schnapps to finish. He and Nikolas would like each other. She heard them discussing the literature of central Europe, Zweig, Kafka, Walter Benjamin. Perhaps Nikolas could get him to talk about the camps and how he survived. She wondered if there were any women in his life. Andre looked twenty years younger than his age. Everyone said she did, too. Alec looked exactly his age, seventy years old; or was he now seventy-one? She couldn't remember. Alec didn't look well. His face had a kind of pallor and he shuffled when he walked, like an old man. His eyesight was failing and he still wouldn't answer a direct question. Lucia wondered if he was still seeing his Hollywood star, though "star" was far too generous a term. She had never been a star, merely a competent second lead. Mathilde told her that whatshername mostly acted in made-for-television movies of the policier variety, cops-and-robbers business. Well. Whatever made him happy.