Exiles in the Garden (30 page)

Your story interests me. I would like to know more. You see, I have never met anyone like you. With your background. The way you have lived your life.

Andre shrugged and shook his head.

I don't mean to intrude, Alec said.

Would you like Turkish coffee? Without waiting for a reply, Andre rapped sharply on the window and called for the boy to bring the pot and two cups right away. The answering shout was grudging.

Alec's Leica was in his pocket. He said, Would you mind if I took your photograph?

No photographs, Andre said.

As you wish.

Why do you want to know how I came to be at Goya House? It is no business of yours. Lucia said you were curious.

I am curious about Goya House.

It's an ordinary boarding house, Andre said.

Of exiles, Alec said.

Yes, of exiles.

Not ordinary, surely.

Andre sighed and did not speak for a full minute. Rain began to fall softly, more heard than seen. Leaves on the trees shivered with it, the sky lowering. Nothing moved in the street. At last Andre said, The historian Holder arranged it. He was very ill but he made the necessary calls. Goya House has a board of directors and one of them is a newspaper editor. Holder called the editor, who made the necessary inquiries. Quite simple, really. There is a Goya House in the suburbs of Paris and another near Toulouse and a villa in Italy. Mostly for the casualties of fascism but not only fascism. This house had a vacancy and I filled the vacancy. End of story.

I see, Alec said.

There's nothing underhanded about it, Andre said.

I didn't think there was.

Yes, you did.

I was only curious, Alec said.

Andre was silent again, smiling to himself, watching rain leak through the trees. He said, We had a death last month, an old comrade. We had met briefly in Spain in 1938, the Catalonian front. We were on—I cannot say opposite sides but sides that were distrustful of each other, most suspicious. A feature of the Spanish war, a matter of control of tactics and strategy. Who has possession of the genie in the bottle. He was an anarchist and I was on the communist side, of course. It is the nature of anarchists to cause trouble. Anarchy is their way.
Que lastima,
as the Spanish say. What a pity. He was still full of fight, that one, and he was even older than I am. Hated us, hated the priests, hated the fascists, and at the end of his life hated the king most of all. He mourned Catalonia his entire life. He insisted there be no funeral. No formal notice of his death. He did not want to give them satisfaction. He only wanted his ashes returned to Catalonia and scattered in his native village near Gerona. He was a man of the mountains. He left us money for airfare, though he hated doing it. He hated money. Money was the antichrist even more than the priests. So we have this money and now we have to decide who is going to Catalonia with Salvador's ashes.

Not you, Alec said.

Not me. I will spend the rest of my days here, however many days remain to me. Someone will volunteer. We try to look after one another. We are a community after all. We have responsibilities, even toward someone as disagreeable as Salvador.

Andre rapped the glass again. Where is the little shit?

I have a question for you about Mathilde, he went on. Is she one of those responsible for your interventions here, there, and everywhere.

No, Alec said with a smile. I think those decisions are taken at a level higher than hers. The president, the secretary of state. God. God apparently has a role in the administration's statecraft.

She has no part in them?

She is one of those who carry them out, the decisions.

An apparatchik, Andre said.

A Foreign Service officer, Alec said.

Isn't it strange? Time was, America refused to intervene anywhere. Spain, Czechoslovakia, Poland. Now it intervenes everywhere. Asia, Central America, the Middle East, even Africa. No corner of the globe is immune. Do you have an explanation? I mean other than God's hand.

You could say we learned our lesson.

Is that what you would say?

No, Alec said.

One of our group here is Polish. He, too, was in Spain, though we did not know each other. He fought the Nazis and then the Soviets and ended up in the Gulag. In due course he was released, drifted for a time, and ended up here. He has a nephew who lives near Krakow. The nephew calls himself a squatter. He does not work but somehow he gets along. He is forty years old, this nephew. He says he writes poetry but refuses to show his poems to his uncle. My Polish friend does not know what to make of his nephew, who seems to have made nothing of his life. He has a wife but they have no children. He lives day to day with his poetry, which he does not publish. Well, who is to say? Kafka published almost nothing in his lifetime. But my friend does not think his nephew is Kafka. Lately his letters have taken a fresh turn. He has identified his enemies. They are, along with the Americans and the Russians, the state, the church, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the skinheads, and the police. They are destroying Poland. Destroying him. This is the thrashing-about of the powerless. People who have no investment in anything. Their morale breaks. They turn their scorn on anyone and anything outside. Never themselves. They lose their ability to think critically. Therefore they cannot make a life for themselves.

Andre paused and added, I do not know why I tell you this story. But it was what I was thinking about when you arrived.

Then the front door slammed and the boy was at their elbows with the tray of coffee cups and the spouted pot. He said something to Andre, who grunted noncommittally. The boy departed at once and Andre poured, the coffee thick as lava. They sat quietly waiting for the coffee to cool. From somewhere in the house Alec heard Russian music, a balalaika.

Alec said, Do you miss soldiering?

Andre said, Of course. Soldiering was something I did well. Did very well. I was often beside myself with fright. But my fright did not prevent me from acting. Only once or twice was I frozen in place, unable to move forward. This is not a good feeling. Breathing is difficult. Yet it goes away. I am too old for soldiering now so it is just as well that I spend my days here on this porch, drinking my coffee during the day and schnapps in the evening, thinking about the nephews of friends and anything else that occurs to me. I sleep well at night. And you. Do you miss photography?

I still photograph. Mostly for my own pleasure. Now and again I take a job if the job interests me. But the jobs that come along interest me less and less, so I find myself marking time more than I would like. Until very recently I was caring for my father but he is gone now.

You did not marry again after Lucia left you?

No. Once was enough.

Nor I after I left Lucia's mother. It has to be said that I did not have many chances. Spain, then France with the Resistance, later on in Czecho and Yugoslavia. Then the camps. After the camps I was not romantically inclined. I had opportunities for mercenary work in Africa but that did not interest me. I had no interest in Africa. There was nothing in Africa worth fighting for except money. I knew a few women when I was working at the ski resort but they were only tourists and not interested in anything permanent, and I suppose in that way the liaisons suited us both. I did not have the sort of background that lent itself to sharing. Isn't that the word in use now? Sharing? I hear it on television. One time I told a woman about my early life and when I woke up in the morning she was gone, not even a note left behind. And we were fond of each other. I think I frightened her. I know I did, Andre concluded, and gave a shrug.

It's the opposite with me, Alec said. Women love hearing my stories about shoots here and there, particularly Hollywood. They like hearing about movie stars. They want to know what the stars are really like, and when I tell them that what you see in the photograph is all you're likely to get, they don't believe me. They think I'm holding out on them.

And are you?

I don't know the stars. I only photograph them.

That sounds like a pleasant way to make a living. Pays well, doesn't it?

Yes, it does.

The locations are pleasant.

Most of the time, Alec said.

Did you ever photograph Gary Cooper?

He died before I got into the business, Alec said.

I liked watching Gary Cooper. His films were everywhere in Europe before the war. I always thought Cooper represented a kind of ideal American, resolute but with an amusing side to him. Sympathetic to the underdog. Not a city man but rather a man of the West. A mountain man, I would say. Also a man of action, sure of himself but never a bully. A man of few words.

Alec nodded in agreement. Gary Cooper had been dead for decades.

Alec said, Did you ever meet Tito?

Andre laughed and said he had met Tito once during the war. Not a pleasant man but one with great personal force. Andre said, He wanted to bring my commando under his control, his orders, his objectives. I said I would think about it. He said I shouldn't take too long; too much thinking could be dangerous. He gave me this, Andre said, and pulled the ivory cigarette holder from his pocket. He said that would cement our friendship. Our collaboration under his control, his orders, his objectives. I got out of there damned fast, I can tell you. I refused to be under his orders or anyone's orders. When I told that story to Holder, he didn't believe me. But it happened all right. There were witnesses. Andre screwed a cigarette into the holder and struck a match, exhaling a fog of smoke that seemed to hang in the air forever.

I admire your life, Alec said.

I don't believe you.

You fought the right battles, Alec said. And you didn't wait for them to come to you. You went looking for them.

I fought the ones I could fight.

And paid the price. How many years were you in prison?

Many, many years. Twenty years, I suppose. More than that, I think.

I imagine even prison was worth it. If prison was the price.

You don't know what you're talking about. Prison is a terrible experience. You lose track of the world and the world loses track of you. Do you know that it took one man nine hours to dig one-half a cubic meter through the permafrost? And you did this day after day without knowing the purpose of the excavation. Your daily patch, one-half meter of soil. Some days each swing of the pick yielded a finger-sized piece of Siberian soil. The war was a terrible experience, too, but at least you are free more or less. You conduct your business in the open, not in a cell. You have something to show for the struggle. You can believe that what you are doing is worthwhile even if it is but a small part of a much larger picture. Often it was helpful not knowing the larger picture. The larger picture was not your business anyway. I still think of my half-meter. In any case, I survived.

Yes, Alec said. How, exactly?

Andre moved his shoulders and did not reply.

I'm sorry I asked.

Luck, Andre said. And I have a strong constitution. Also, I was born at a particular time in a particular place. Life was always hard for my family. Later on the war was everywhere, inside and outside. I could not avoid it. No one could. The Nazis were a terrible cult and the Soviets not much better. Stalin was a gangster. Still, if you were forced to put your cards down, you'd put them down in Stalin's favor. That was the situation. The war was not an elective and a choice had to be made. That was how I saw it. I think I told you once that I have always looked for the absolute.

And were you disappointed?

Rarely, Andre said.

I had the belief that if I went to the war my photographs would make it beautiful. The very horror of it had a beautiful side also, the kind of beauty that's alluring. Bewitching I would say. It draws one in. Makes you larger than life. Did you ever read the
Iliad?

Of course. Many times.

Such beautiful poetry describing such appalling events.

But surely, Andre said with a wolfish smile, surely we would not be better off without the
Iliad.

Alec removed his eyeglasses and looked away in the direction of the street, his vision more fractured than usual. He ran his thumb over his lower lip as he often did when concentrating. But this time his concentration yielded nothing. Rain continued to fall through the trees and Alec did not see the visitor until he was a few steps away. The intruder wore a blue uniform and carried a heavy pack on his shoulder.

Andre said, Good morning, Vincent.

Good morning, Andre. Not much mail today.

Anything for me?

One letter. The postmark is smudged. I can't tell you where it came from.

Dubrovnik, Andre said when he looked at the letter.

Will you save me the stamp?

With pleasure, Vincent.

The postman nodded, handed Andre the rest of the mail, and went away.

Please, Alec said, read it now if you want.

I'll save it, Andre said. I know what's in it anyway. An old comrade wants me to send him some money. He is eternally in need of funds. He does not care to work and is too feeble to work if he did care. He doesn't have a trade in any case. Soldiering was his trade. So he writes me, and from time to time I send him fifty dollars, whatever I can spare. You were saying?

It gives me pause that the conditions of our world make the
Iliad
indispensable.

We are making progress, Andre said with a sour smile. Remember what Isaac Babel said. You must know everything.

It wasn't Babel who said it. His mother said it.

Andre thought a moment. Yes, that's right.

In order to survive the world. That's why she said it.

That is the sort of idea you get when you are born in Russia, Andre said. Your first thought is to pass it on to your children. He blew a fat smoke ring, evidently enjoying himself. What sort of photographs do you make?

I make still lifes, Alec said, except for the most part they are not arrangements of flowers or fruit but human beings and man-made objects. A doorway or a sailboat. A newsroom. I have photographed my own garden but readily confess that my garden is a sentimental subject. I have a knack for making beautiful pictures. They are pictures without obvious conflict and therefore I was miscast in the news. I have often wondered if I missed an opportunity when I refused to go to Vietnam.