Exiles in the Garden (32 page)

They had paused in front of the town cemetery, an acre plot bounded by a rusting wire fence, ancient gravestones tilting left and right. Many stones dated from the eighteenth century and a few from the seventeenth. Alec wondered aloud what promise could have drawn people to this remote island, with all of the American South and Midwest open to them. What was their reward? A growing season of two months maximum, appalling winter hardships, dangerous navigation, and hostile Indians. Perhaps hardship was the point. In colonial times such a place would be fundamentally lawless, and that, too, would be an attraction for a man who had a certain idea of himself and a cast-in-granite vision of the life he wished to lead. Alec looked again at the gravestones and saw that most of the names were effaced, eroded by weather. Here and there he could make out a date and an RIP at the top of the stone. The place looked haunted.

They resumed their stroll into town, Annalise silent.

At last she said, I don't know what takes us into one business instead of another. I could as easily have been a dress designer. If I had been born ten years later I could have gone into politics, followed my father. I always liked the atmosphere of the committee room and even the floor of the House, the wheeling and dealing, the sarcasm. I liked campaigning. My mother hated it, so I was the one who showed up on the street corner or at the candidates' debates with my father, shaking hands and giving them a big wide smile. My mother couldn't disguise her distaste for it all, the handshaking and air-kissing. It's all so insincere, she said. But that's what I liked about it, the acknowledged insincerity. I didn't have to disguise anything. But in my junior year I joined the drama club and found I was good at it. And I was pretty, and that was a big plus. I photographed well. So instead of politics I went into acting. I always thought that if I'd met Ingmar Bergman and seduced him, then my career would have been different. I coulda bin a contendah. I coulda bin somebody. But I never met Ingmar Bergman or Bibi Andersson or von Sydow or any of the others, so I never got to dance on the heath with the angel of death. I never ate wild strawberries. So my career was as it was. Is, I should say, because I'm still working, still in demand, and a lot of girls I started out with are retired and living with their third husbands in Palm Springs. God, I hate Palm Springs. So let up on yourself, Alec. You're an honorable man.

Andre was fundamentally lawless, Alec said.

Sounds like it, Annalise said.

I'm not, Alec said.

Annalise smiled. I am, more than you.

You're in a lawless business.

That's its charm, Annalise said.

I wish you'd met him.

He doesn't sound like my type, Annalise said. You're my type. But what I don't understand is, what are you disappointed about?

Maybe I didn't take advantage of things.

You mean the war, she said.

Not only that, Alec said.

But the war was the main thing.

I knew people who were suited to the war. They had a high appreciation of ambiguity, for one thing. They actually liked the atmosphere of violence. Lawlessness, really. That atmosphere suited them down to the ground. I never liked it. I was never attracted to it. I think they saw in it a kind of romance, some high-flown sense of themselves in a world where everyone was watching. And this was true not only of the men but the women, too, everyone at ease in the butcher shop. Wouldn't life hold an exaggerated importance in such a situation? I was damned if I was going to the war as a good career move. The truth is, I never found an Ingmar Bergman I wanted to seduce or who I wanted to seduce me. I wonder if I missed something.

Annalise gave him a long look but did not reply.

We'll never know, Alec said.

I think you know. You don't want to admit to it. Everyone misses something in life. Andre did. I don't know what it was he missed and I don't care, but I know it was something and my guess is, he knew it, too. I know I wouldn't be content spending my last days in—what was the name of that place?

Goya House, Alec said.

Drinking schnapps and arguing about the soccer match.

He seemed entirely content to me.

In full reminiscence about the camps, for heaven's sake.

He's entitled to it.

He certainly is. And welcome to it.

That's harsh, Annalise.

That's life, Alec.

They ate breakfast at the café and read the Bangor newspaper, two days old but full of surprise crises—North Korea, the bond market, the elderly in far Downeast Maine who were so poor they were convinced that many others were even worse off than they. Alec and Annalise walked to the boatyard and watched the shipwrights at work, caulking and sanding and painting. Alec felt in his pocket for the Leica but did nothing with it. He did not want to be seen as a tourist looking for quaint local color. These men and women were working hard because in little more than a month the summer people would be back, all of them expecting their boats to be shipshape, rails varnished, hulls painted, engines tuned, sails well stitched. There were half a dozen radios in the yard, all tuned to the same music station, Bruce Springsteen from the sound of him. The air smelled of brine, oil, and sweat. Nondescript dogs prowled the premises. The day was not warm but most of the workers were wearing T-shirts and shorts, even the women. Alec thought there was something attractive about the ancient art of boat maintenance. Intrinsic procedures would not have changed since the voyages of Odysseus. This Maine archipelago bore some resemblance to the ancient Aegean if you discounted the weather and the vegetation on the islands, not to mention the color of the sea itself. "Wine dark" did not describe the waters of the Gulf of Maine. Slate gray was closer to the mark, at least on this May morning. By this comparison the summer people would be Myrmidons, the ones who laid siege to Troy; except that the families who arrived here from New York and Boston were not at all warlike, unless they arrived to find their vessels still in dry dock, and even then their complaints would be muted because the islanders did not respond well to threats. In any case, a Leica was out of place, not that the shipwrights would have minded. They were concentrating on the special tasks at hand. Alec did not wish to take advantage.

Annalise sat on an old dory writing postcards, and when she finished they both walked to the post office to mail the cards. When Alec checked for mail, the postmistress handed him a letter that had arrived that morning, postmarked Washington. He recognized the handwriting as Lucia's but rather than open it right away he put the letter in his pocket to read later when they were home. The long hike up the hill seemed to Alec more arduous than it had been the day before. Eyes down, he did not pause at the cemetery, and farther on the hawk had flown away. Annalise tried to pick up the pace but Alec's step was slow and his breathing hard. His feet hurt. The wind had come up and the air was abruptly chilly and filled with the promise of rain. Clouds gathered in the west and the gulls had vanished. They were passed by one pickup truck after another. Alec was relieved when High House came into view, whitecapped Baylor's Harbor below it. The high-bowed ferry had embarked for the mainland, rolling a little now in the long swells, its wake a confusion of white water. Home at last, Annalise put on a pot for coffee and Alec climbed to the third-floor room to read Lucia's hasty scrawl, long ragged lines, occasional illegible words.

Lucia wrote that her father was dead. He was sitting in his usual place on the porch, at dusk, drinking schnapps. Something in the yard caught his eye and he stood, his hands on the railing. When he fell he took the entire balustrade with him. He fell like a tree, causing the house itself to shudder. That was according to Mr. Halvesi, who had been sitting with him. And there was no question that Andre was dead before he hit the ground. A heart attack, according to the doctor's report. The next few words were illegible but contained the word "miracle." Alec could not judge the context. Andre and Mr. Halvesi had been talking about a visitor earlier that day. Something the visitor said perplexed Andre. Was that visitor you, Alec? Mr. Halvesi thought it might have been. Andre was laughing at something you had said to him. He was still laughing when he stood to look for whatever it was on the lawn that caught his eye. And then he grunted and fell forward as if frozen, a statue. Since you seemed to take a liking to him I wanted you to know exactly what happened, Lucia wrote. The next two words were illegible. I am glad I had the chance to meet my father at last and I was looking forward to meeting him again, perhaps even in Europe. I wanted him to meet Mathilde especially, and of course Nikolas. I don't know why it should be that he would be taken from me only as we found each other after all these years. This does not seem just. I looked forward to many years of—and the next word was illegible. I wanted to know how he and my mother found each other. I wanted to know what my mother was like when she was young. Now I shall never know. By the time you get this the funeral will be over and done with. We will have a service at Goya House. One of Andre's friends was a priest, no longer part of the church but willing to preside. It seems my father had no religion but was very fond of the priest. It would break your heart, Alec, to see the look on the faces of my father's friends, Mr. Halvesi, Mr. Minh, Mr. Magris, and the others. They are broken up. One of them told me that my father was the center of their lives, the one they went to when they were troubled or there was some community decision to be made. They trusted his word. They trusted his good will. It was as if they were an ancient tribe that had suddenly lost its headman and was without direction or purpose. They were dismayed when I said I must take my father's ashes to Switzerland. They begged me to reconsider and allow him to remain at Goya House, where he had been happy. But he left a note that stated he wanted to be buried next to my mother in Zurich, so I was bound to disappoint them. I am very pleased he still felt something for her, that after all these years she was not a forgotten episode. He asked me specifically to carry his ashes to Zurich, so I was not a forgotten episode either. Mr. Halvesi found the note in Andre's desk, in his room. Dated last year. He knew he would find me. So I have comfort in that, too. Thank you for helping out, Alec. You must tell me sometime what you and my father talked about that morning. Whatever it was, I am very glad that his last day contained laughter. I will let you know if Nikolas and I decide to move house to Washington. I doubt it will happen. Be good to Mathilde.

Alec sat in his chair tapping the letter against his thumbnail. Annalise was standing with the coffee pot at the top of the stairs.

She said, What's wrong?

He said, Andre's dead, and handed her the letter.

Annalise read the letter and said she was sorry.

It's hard to believe, Alec said.

He was a very old man—

Yes, but he was the sort of old man who looked as if he had ten, twenty more years left. Of course there were the cigarettes and schnapps.

Do you really believe that was what it was?

No, Alec said. It would take more than that.

The camps, she said.

Yes, definitely.

I'm sorry I never met him.

Yes, I am too. You'd be a match for him.

He was probably outside my realm, Annalise said. He was from another country altogether. I'm not sure we would have had much to say to each other. I'm pretty sure we would have been antagonists from the beginning.

Andre was outside my realm, too. But I liked him.

Annalise poured coffee and handed him a cup. She said, It's hard for me to be talking about someone I've never met. I know he's vivid to you. And you've made him vivid to me, but still. As I said, he's outside my realm. My frame of reference, I should say.

Sorry. I'll shut up now.

You don't have to shut up.

I think I'll shut up.

Are you sorry you missed the funeral?

No. Who do you suppose the priest was? A Central American, I'll bet, a liberation theologian. Maybe Spanish, a renegade from the old days. The service would have been conducted in Spanish, nondenominational in character. But I'll give you even money that incense was burning.

Did you ever photograph Andre? It would be easier for me if I saw his picture.

Alec tried to recall his last few moments on the lawn at Goya House. I think I did, he said. I don't remember clearly. I think I photographed him from the lawn. Not a formal shot, God knows. Two quick surreptitious snaps maybe, Andre asleep in his chair, breathing hard, lost to the world. But maybe at the last minute I didn't. I've never favored shooting people unawares. I had to do it when I worked for the newspaper. But I prefer not to.

I know, she said.

Invasion of privacy, he said.

Yes, of course.

Damnedest thing, I can't remember.

If you did, the film would be there.

That's true, he said.

By the way, I look on photography not as an invasion of privacy but a guarantee of it. It seems to me that I've been in front of a camera for half my lifetime. It's an old friend, just like you.

The telephone rang then and they both looked at it. Annalise was first on her feet and when she picked up her mouth broke into a wide smile. She said, Hellohellohello, how on earth did you find me here of all places? What's going on? She sat in the big leather chair, the phone to her ear, listening to whoever it was tell her how he had found her here of all places.

The foghorn had begun to growl at ten-second intervals, incidental music back of the wind. Alec rose with his coffee and moved to the glass door, stepping carefully onto the deck. The boards shifted under his feet and he avoided looking down. He stood staring into Baylor's Harbor, the boats straining at their moorings, wind whipping the water. The Herreshoff looked secure. There were six boats altogether, manacled like prisoners. Low scud came in on the zephyr wind and here and there Alec could see heavy black clouds above the scud. He had the idea that the wind was quartering and that could mean a three-day blow. Probably it would be smart to lay in provisions. Alec sipped his coffee and watched the sea turn and heave. Inside he heard Annalise's laugh, prelude to a change in plans; he knew it as he knew the effect of the quartering wind. The deck felt fragile to him and he stepped back into the doorway, out of the wind and drizzle. The weather disintegrated as he watched it. In a place like this your day was governed by the weather, the first thing you thought about in the morning and the last thing you thought about at night. In the city no one cared. On islands the weather was godlike and therefore inscrutable.