Music for Chameleons (16 page)

BEYOND US, THERE WAS A
commotion at the chess table. Quinn, celebrating a victory over Jake, vociferously congratulated himself: “Sonofagun! Thought you had me trapped there. But the moment you moved your queen—it’s hot beer and horse piss for the Great Pepper!” His hoarse baritone rang through the vaulted room with the
brio
of an opera star. “Now you, young man,” he shouted at me. “I need a game. A bona-fide challenge. Old Pepper here ain’t fit to lick my boots.” I started to excuse myself, for the prospect of a chess game with Quinn was both intimidating and tiresome; I might have felt differently if I’d thought I could beat him, triumphantly invade that citadel of conceit. I had once won a prep-school chess championship, but that was eons ago; my knowledge of the game had long been
stored in a mental attic. However, when Jake beckoned, stood up, and offered me his chair, I acquiesced, and leaving Juanita Quinn to the silent flickerings of her television screen, seated myself opposite her husband; Jake stood behind my chair, an encouraging presence. But Quinn, assessing my faltering manner, the indecision of my first moves, dismissed me as a walkover, and resumed a conversation he’d been having with Jake, apparently concerning cameras and photography.

QUINN:
The Krauts are good. I’ve always used Kraut cameras. Leica. Rolliflex. But the Japs are whippin’ their ass. I bought a new Jap number, no bigger than a deck of cards, that will take five hundred pictures on a single roll of film.

TC:
I know that camera. I’ve worked with a lot of photographers and I’ve seen some of them use it. Richard Avedon has one. He says it’s no good.

QUINN:
To tell the truth, I haven’t tried mine yet. I hope your friend’s wrong. I could’ve bought a prize bull for what that doodad set me back.

(I suddenly felt Jake’s fingers urgently squeezing my shoulder, which I interpreted as a message that he wished me to pursue the subject.)

TC:
Is that your hobby—photography?

QUINN:
Oh, it comes and goes. Fits and starts. How I started was, I got tired of paying so-called professionals to take pictures of my prize cattle. Pictures I need to send round to different breeders and buyers. I figured I could do just as good, and save myself a nickel to boot.

(Jake’s fingers goaded me again.)

TC:
Do you make many portraits?

QUINN:
Portraits?

TC:
Of people.

QUINN
(scoffingly): I wouldn’t call them
portraits
. Snapshots,
maybe. Aside from cattle, mostly I do nature pictures. Landscapes. Thunderstorms. The seasons here on the ranch. The wheat when it’s green and then when it’s gold. My river—I’ve got some dandy pictures of my river in full flood.

(The river. I tensed as I heard Jake clear his throat, as though he were about to speak; instead, his fingers prodded me even more firmly. I toyed with a pawn, stalling.)

TC:
Then you must shoot a lot of color.

QUINN
(nodding): That’s why I do my own developing. When you send your stuff off to those laboratories, you never know what the hell you’re gonna get back.

TC:
Oh, you have a darkroom?

QUINN:
If you want to call it that. Nothing fancy.

(Once more Jake’s throat rumbled, this time with serious intent.)

JAKE:
Bob? You remember the pictures I told you about? The coffin pictures. They were made with a fast-action camera.

QUINN:
(Silence)

JAKE:
A Leica.

QUINN:
Well, it wasn’t mine. My old Leica got lost in darkest Africa. Some nigger stole it. (Staring at the chessboard, his face suffused with a look of amused dismay) Why, you little rascal! Damn your hide. Look here, Jake. Your friend almost has me checkmated.
Almost …

IT WAS TRUE; WITH A
skill subconsciously resurrected, I had been marching my ebony army with considerable, though unwitting, competence, and had indeed managed to maneuver Quinn’s king into a perilous position. In one sense I regretted my success, for Quinn was using it to divert the angle of Jake’s inquiry, to revert from the suddenly sensitive topic of photography back to chess; on the other hand, I was elated—by playing
flawlessly, I might now very well win. Quinn scratched his chin, his grey eyes dedicated to the religious task of rescuing his king. But for me the chessboard had blurred: my mind was snared in a time warp, numbed by memories dormant almost half a century.

It was summer, and I was five years old, living with relatives in a small Alabama town. There was a river attached to this town, too; a sluggish muddy river that repelled me, for it was full of water moccasins and whiskered catfish. However, much as I disliked their ferocious snouts, I was fond of captured catfish, fried and dripping with ketchup; we had a cook who served them often. Her name was Lucy Joy, though I’ve seldom known a less joyous human. She was a hefty black woman, reserved, very serious; she seemed to live from Sunday to Sunday, when she sang in the choir of some pineywoods church. But one day a remarkable change came over Lucy Joy. While I was alone with her in the kitchen she began talking to me about a certain Reverend Bobby Joe Snow, describing him with an excitement that kindled my own imagination: he was a miracle-maker, a famous evangelist, and he was traveling soon to this very town; the Reverend Snow was due here next week, come to preach, to baptize and save souls! I pleaded with Lucy to take me to see him, and she smiled and promised she would. The fact was, it was necessary that I accompany her. For the Reverend Snow was a white man, his audiences were segregated, and Lucy had figured it out that the only way she would be welcome was if she brought along a little white boy to be baptized. Naturally, Lucy did not let on that such an event was in store for me. The following week, when we set off to attend the Reverend’s camp meeting, I only envisioned the drama of watching a holy man sent from heaven to help the blind see and the lame walk. But I began to feel uneasy when I realized we were headed toward the river; when we got there and I saw hundreds of people gathered
along the bank, country people, backwoods white trash stomping and hollering, I hesitated. Lucy was furious—she pulled me into the sweltering mob. Jingling bells, cavorting bodies; I could hear one voice above the others, a chanting booming baritone. Lucy chanted, too; moaned, shook. Magically, a stranger hoisted me onto his shoulder and I got a quick view of the man with the dominant voice. He was planted in the river with water up to his white-robed waist; his hair was grey and white, a drenched tangled mass, and his long hands, stretched skyward, implored the humid noon sun. I tried to see his face, for I knew this must be the Reverend Bobby Joe Snow, but before I could, my benefactor dropped me back into the disgusting confusion of ecstatic feet, undulating arms, trembling tambourines. I begged to go home: but Lucy, drunk with glory, held me close. The sun churned. I tasted vomit in my throat. But I didn’t throw up; instead, I started to yell and punch and scream: Lucy was pulling me toward the river, and the crowd parted to create a path for us. I struggled until we reached the river’s bank; then stopped, silenced by the scene. The white-robed man standing in the river was holding a reclining young girl; he recited biblical scripture before rapidly immersing her underwater, then swooping her up again: shrieking, weeping, she stumbled to shore. Now the Reverend’s simian arms reached for me. I bit Lucy’s hand, fought free of her grip. But a redneck boy grabbed me and dragged me into the water. I shut my eyes; I smelled the Jesus hair, felt the Reverend’s arms carrying me downward into drowning blackness, then hours later lifting me into sunlight. My eyes, opening, looked into his grey, manic eyes. His face, broad but gaunt, moved closer, and he kissed my lips. I heard a loud laugh, an eruption like gunfire: “Checkmate!”

QUINN:
Checkmate!

JAKE:
Hell, Bob. He was just being polite. He let you win.

(The kiss dissolved; the Reverend’s face, receding, was replaced by a face virtually identical. So it was in Alabama, some fifty years earlier, that I had first seen Mr. Quinn. At any rate, his counterpart: Bobby Joe Snow, evangelist.)

QUINN:
How about it, Jake? You ready to lose another dollar?

JAKE:
Not tonight. We’re driving to Denver in the morning. My friend here has to catch a plane.

QUINN
(to me): Shucks. That wasn’t much of a visit. Come again soon. Come in the summer and I’ll take you trout fishing. Not that it’s like what it was. Used to be I could count on landing a six-pound rainbow with the first cast. Back before they ruined my river.

(We departed without saying goodnight to Juanita Quinn; she was sound asleep, snoring. Quinn walked with us to the car: “Be careful!” he warned, as he waved and waited until our taillights vanished.)

JAKE:
Well, I learned one thing, thanks to you. Now I
know
he developed those pictures himself.

TC:
So—why wouldn’t you let Addie tell me what he looked like?

JAKE:
It might have influenced your first impression. I wanted you to see him with a clear eye, and tell me what you saw.

TC:
I saw a man I’d seen before.

JAKE:
Quinn?

TC:
No, not Quinn. But someone like him. His twin.

JAKE:
Speak English.

(I described that summer day, my baptism—it was so clear to me, the similarities between Quinn and the Reverend Snow, the linking fibers; but I spoke too emotionally, metaphysically, to communicate what I felt, and I could sense Jake’s disappointment: he had expected from me a series of sensible perceptions, pristine, pragmatic
insights that would help clarify his own concept of Quinn’s character, the man’s motivations.

I fell silent, chagrined to have failed Jake. But as we arrived at the highway, and steered toward town, Jake let me know that, garbled, confused as my memoir must have seemed, he had partially deciphered what I had so poorly expressed.)

Well, Bob Quinn
does
think he’s the Lord Almighty.

TC:
Not think. Knows.

JAKE:
Any doubts?

TC:
No, no doubts. Quinn’s the man who whittles coffins.

JAKE:
And some day soon he’ll whittle his own. Or my name ain’t Jake Pepper.

OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS
I called Jake at least once a week, usually on Sundays when he was at Addie’s house, which gave me a chance to talk with them both. Jake usually opened our conversations by saying: “Sorry, pardner. Nothing new to report.” But one Sunday, Jake told me that he and Addie had settled on a wedding date: August 10. And Addie said: “We hope you can come.” I promised I would, though the day conflicted with a planned three-week trip to Europe; well, I’d juggle my dates. However, in the end it was the bride and groom who had to alter schedules, for the Bureau agent who was supposed to replace Jake while he was on his honeymoon (“We’re going to Honolulu!”) had a hepatitis attack, and the wedding was postponed until the first of September. “That’s rotten luck,” I told Addie. “But I’ll be back by then; I’ll be there.”

So, early in August, I flew Swissair to Switzerland, and lolled away several weeks in an Alpine village, sunbathing among the eternal snows. I slept, I ate, I reread the whole of Proust, which is rather like plunging into a tidal wave, destination unknown.
But my thoughts too often revolved around Mr. Quinn; occasionally, while I slept, he knocked at the door and entered my dreams, sometimes as himself, his grey eyes glittering behind the wire-framed spectacles, but now and then he appeared guised as the white-robed Reverend Snow.

A brief whiff of Alpine air is exhilarating, but extended holidays in the mountains can become claustrophobic, arouse inexplicable depressions. Anyway, one day when one of these black moods descended, I hired a car and drove via the Grand St. Bernard pass into Italy and on to Venice. In Venice one is always in costume and wearing a mask; that is, you are not yourself, and not responsible for your behavior. It wasn’t the real me who arrived in Venice at five in the afternoon and before midnight boarded a train bound for Istanbul. It all began in Harry’s Bar, as so many Venetian escapades do. I had just ordered a martini when who should slam through the swinging doors but Gianni Paoli, an energetic journalist whom I had known in Moscow when he had been a correspondent for an Italian newspaper: together, aided by vodka, we had enlivened many a morose Russian restaurant. Gianni was in Venice en route to Istanbul; he was catching the Orient Express at midnight. Six martinis later he had talked me into going with him. It was a journey of two days and two nights; the train meandered through Jugoslavia and Bulgaria, but our impressions of those countries were confined to what we glimpsed out the window of our wagon-lit compartment, which we never left except to renew our supply of wine and vodka.

The room spun. Stopped. Spun. I stepped out of bed. My brain, a hunk of shattered glass, painfully clinked inside my head. But I could stand; I could walk; I even remembered where I was: the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul. Gingerly, I made my way toward a balcony overlooking the Bosphorus. Gianni Paoli was basking there in the sunshine, eating breakfast and reading the
Paris
Herald Tribune
. Blinking, I glanced at the newspaper’s date. It was the first of September. Now, why should that cause such severe sensations? Nausea; guilt; remorse. Holy smoke, I’d missed the wedding! Gianni couldn’t fathom why I was so upset (Italians are always upset; but they never understand why anybody else should be); he poured vodka into his orange juice, offered it to me, and said drink, get drunk: “But first, send them a telegram.” I took his advice, all of it. The telegram said:
Unavoidably detained but wish you every happiness on this wonderful day
. Later, when rest and abstinence had steadied my hand, I wrote them a short letter; I didn’t lie, I simply didn’t explain why I had been “unavoidably detained”; I said I was flying to New York in a few days, and would telephone them as soon as they returned from their honeymoon. I addressed the letter to Mr. and Mrs. Jake Pepper, and when I left it at the desk to be mailed I felt relieved, exonerated; I thought of Addie with a flower in her hair, of Addie and Jake walking at dusk along Waikiki beach, the sea beside them, stars above them; I wondered if Addie was too old to have children.