Shibumi (44 page)

The open fi shing boat plowed the ripple path of the setting moon, quicksilver on the sea, like an effect from the brush of a kitsch watercolorist. The diesel motor chugged bronchially and gasped as it was turned off. The bow skewed when the boat crunched up on the pebble beach. Hel slipped over the side and stood kneedeep in the surging tide, his duffel bag on his shoulder. A wave of his hand was answered by a blurred motion from the boat, and he waded toward the deserted shore, his canvas pants heavy with water, his rope-soled espadrilles digging into the sand. The motor coughed and began its rhythmic thunking, as the boat made its way out to sea, along the matte-black shore toward Spain.

From the brow of a dune, he could see the lights of cafés and bars around the small harbor of St. Jean de Luz, where fishing boats heaved sleepily on the oily water of the docking slips. He shifted the weight of the duffel and made for the Café of the Whale, to confirm a telegraph order he had made for dinner. The owner of the café had been a master chef in Paris, before retiring back to his home village. He enjoyed displaying his prowess occasionally, particularly when M. Hel granted him carte blanche as regards menu and expense. The dinner was to be prepared and served in the home of Monsieur de Lhandes, the “fine little gentleman” who lived in an old mansion down the shore, and who was never to be seen in the streets of St. Jean de Luz because his physiognomy would cause comment, and perhaps ridicule, from ill-brought-up children. M. de Lhandes was a midget, little more than a meter tall, though he was over sixty years old.

Hel’s tap at the back door brought Mademoiselle Pinard to peer cautiously through the curtain, then a broad smile cracked her face, and she opened the door wide. “Ah, Monsieur Hel! Welcome. It has been too long since last we saw you! Come in, come in! Ah, you are wet! Monsieur de Lhandes is so looking forward to your dinner.”

“I don’t want to drip on your floor, Mademoiselle Pinard. May I take off my pants?”

Mademoiselle Pinard blushed and slapped at his shoulder with delight. “Oh, Monsieur Hel! Is this any way to speak? Oh, men!” In obedience to their established routine of chaste flirtation, she was both flustered and delighted. Mademoiselle Pinard was somewhat older than fifty—she had always been somewhat older than fifty. Tall and sere, with dry nervous hands and an unlubricated walk, she had a face too long for her tiny eyes and thin mouth, so rather a lot of it was devoted to forehead and chin. If there had been more character in her face, she would have been ugly; as it was, she was only plain. Mademoiselle Pinard was the mold from which virgins are made, and her redoubtable virtue was in no way lessened by the fact that she had been Bernard de Lhandes’s companion, nurse, and mistress for thirty years. She was the kind of woman who said
“Zut!”
or
“Ma foi!”
when exasperated beyond the control of good taste.

As she showed him to the room that was always his when he visited, she said in a low voice, “Monsieur de Lhandes is not well, you know. I am delighted that he will have your company this evening, but you must be very careful. He is close to God. Weeks, months only, the doctor tells me.”

“I’ll be careful, darling. Here we are. Do you want to come in while I change my clothes?”

“Oh, Monsieur!”

Hel shrugged. “Ah well. But one day, your barriers will fall, Mademoiselle Pinard. And then… Ah, then…”

“Monster! And Monsieur de Lhandes your good friend! Men!”

“We are victims of our appetites, Mademoiselle. Helpless victims. Tell me, is dinner ready?”

“The chef and his assistants have been cluttering up the kitchen all day. Everything is in readiness.”

“Then I’ll see you at dinner, and we’ll satisfy our appetites together.”

“Oh, Monsieur!”

They took dinner in the largest room of the house, one lined with shelves on which books were stacked and piled in a disarray that was evidence of de Lhandes’s passion for learning. Since he considered it outrageous to read and eat at the same time—diluting one of his passions with the other—de Lhandes had struck on the idea of combining library and dining room, the long refectory table serving both functions. They sat at one end of this table, Bernard de Lhandes at the head, Hel to his right. Mademoiselle Pinard to his left. Like most of the furniture, the table and chairs had been cut down and were somewhat too big for de Lhandes and somewhat too small for his rare guests. Such, de Lhandes had once told Hel, was the nature of compromise: a condition that satisfied no one, but left each with the comforting feeling that others had been done in too.

Dinner was nearly over, and they were resting and chatting between courses. There had been Neva caviar with blinis, still hot on their napkins, St. Germain Royal (de Lhandes found a hint too much mint), suprême de sole au Château Yquem, quail under the ashes (de Lhandes mentioned that walnut would have been a better wood for the log fire, but he could accept the flavor imparted by oak cinders), rack of baby lamb Edward VII (de Lhandes regretted that it was not cold enough, but he realized that Hel’s arrangements were spur of the moment), riz à la grècque (the bit too much red pepper de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s place of birth), morels (the bit too little lemon juice de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s personality), Florentine artichoke bottoms (the gross unbalance between gruyère and parmesan in the mornay sauce de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s perversity, for the error had been mentioned before), and Danicheff salad (which de Lhandes found perfect, to his slight annoyance).

From each of these dishes, de Lhandes took the smallest morsel that would still allow him to have all the flavors in his mouth at once. His heart, liver, and digestive system were such a ruin that his doctor restricted him to the blandest of foods. Hel, from dietary habit, ate very little. Mademoiselle Pinard’s appetite was good, though her concept of exquisite table manners involved taking minute bites and chewing them protractedly with circular, leporine motions confined to the very front of her mouth, where her napkin often and daintily went to brush thin lips. One of the reasons the chef of the Café of the Whale enjoyed doing these occasional suppers for Hel was the great feast his family and friends always enjoyed later that same night.

“It’s appalling how little we eat, Nicholai,” de Lhandes said in his surprisingly deep voice. “You with your monk’s attitude toward food, and I with my ravished constitution! Picking about like this. I feel like a rich ten-year-old in a luxurious bordello!”

Mademoiselle Pinard went behind her napkin for a moment.

“And these thimblesful of wine!” de Lhandes complained. “Ah, that I have descended to this! A man who, through knowledge and money, converted gluttony into a major art! Fate is either ironic or just, I don’t know which. But look at me! Eating as though I were a bloodless nun doing penance for her daydreams about the young curé!”

The napkin concealed Mademoiselle Pinard’s blush.

“How sick are you, old friend?” Hel asked. Honesty was common currency between them.

“I am finally sick. This heart of mine is more a sponge than a pump. I have been in retirement for—what? Five years now? And for four of them I have been of no use to dear Mademoiselle Pinard—save as an observer, of course.”

The napkin.

The meal ended with a bombe, fruit,
glacés variées
—no brandies or
digestifs
—and Mademoiselle Pinard retired to allow the men to chat.

De Lhandes slid down from his chair and made his way to the fireside, stopping for breath twice, where he occupied a low chair that nevertheless left his feet straight out before him.

“All chairs are
chaises longues
for me, my friend.” He laughed. “All right, what can I do for you?”

“I need help.”

“Of course. Good comrades though we are, you would not come by boat in the dead of night for the sole purpose of disgracing a supper by picking at it. You know that I have been out of the information business for several years, but I have orts and bits left from the old days, and I shall help you if I can.”

“I should tell you that they have got my money. I won’t be able to pay you immediately.”

De Lhandes waved a dismissing hand. “I’ll send you a bill from hell. You’ll recognize it by the singed edges. Is it a person, or a government?”

“Government. I have to get into England. They’ll be waiting for me. The affair is very heavy, so my leverage will have to be strong.”

De Lhandes sighed. “Ah, my. If only it were America. I have something on America that would make the Statue of Liberty lie back and spread her knees. But England? No one thing. Fragments and scraps. Some nasty enough, to be sure, but no one big thing.”

“What sort of things have you?”

“Oh, the usual. Homosexuality in the foreign office…”

“That’s not news.”

“At this level, it’s interesting. And I have photographs. There are few things so ludicrous as the postures a man assumes while making love. Particularly if he is no longer young. And what else have I? Ah… a bit of rambunctiousness in the royal family? The usual political peccadillos and payoffs? A blocked inquiry into that flying accident that cost the life of… you remember.” De Lhandes looked to the ceiling to recall what was in his files. “Oh, there’s evidence that the embrace between the Arab oil interests and the City is more intimate than is generally known. And there’s a lot of individual stuff on government people—fiscal and sexual irregularities mostly. You’re absolutely sure you don’t want something on the United States? I have a real bell ringer there. It’s an unsalable item. Too big for almost any use. It would be like opening an egg with a sledge hammer.”

“No, it has to be English. I haven’t time to set up indirect pressure from Washington to London.”

“Hm-m-m. Tell you what. Why don’t you take the whole lot? Arrange to have it published, one shot right after the other. Scandal after scandal eroding the edifice of confidence—you know the sort of thing. No single arrow strong enough alone, but in fascine… who knows? It’s the best I can offer.”

“Then it will have to do. Set it up the usual way? I bring photocopies with me? We arrange a ‘button-down’ trigger system with the German magazines as primary receivers?”

“It’s not failed yet. You’re sure you don’t want the Statue of Liberty’s brazen hymen?”

“Can’t think of what I’d do with it.”

“Ah well, painful image at best. Well… can you spend the night with us?”

“If I may. I fly out of Biarritz tomorrow at noon, and I have to lie low. The locals have a bounty on me.”

“Pity. They ought to protect you as the last surviving member of your species. You know, I’ve been thinking about you lately, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. Not often, to be sure, but with some intensity. Not often, because when you get to the bang or whimper moment of life, you don’t spend much time contemplating the minor characters of your personal farce. And one of the difficult things for egocentric Man to face is that he is a minor character in every biography but his own. I am a bit player in your life; you in mine. We have known one another for more than twenty years but, discounting business (and one must always discount business), we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another’s minds and emotions. I have known you, Nicholai, for half a day. Actually, that’s not bad. Most good friends and married couples (those are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles. So… I’ve known you for half a day, my friend, and I have come to love you. I think very highly of myself for having accomplished that, as you are not an easy man to love. Admire? Yes, of course. Respect? If fear is a part of respect, then of course. But love? Ah, that’s a different business. Because there is in love an urge to forgive, and you’re a hard man to forgive. Half saintly ascetic, half Vandal marauder, you don’t make yourself available for forgiveness. In one persona, you are above forgiveness; in another, beneath it. And always resentful of it. One has the feeling that you would never forgive a man for forgiving you. (That probably doesn’t mean much, but it rolls well off the tongue, and a song must have music as well as words.) And after my twelve hours of knowing you, I would capsulize you—reduce you to a definition—by calling you a medieval antihero.”

Hel smiled. “Medieval antihero? What on earth does that mean?”

“Who has the floor now, you or I? Let’s have a little silent respect for the dying. It’s part of your being Japanese—culturally Japanese, that is. Only in Japan was the classical moment simultaneous with the medieval. In the West, philosophy, art, political and social ideal, all are identified with periods before or after the medieval moment, the single exception being that glorious stone bridge to God, the cathedral. Only in Japan was the feudal moment also the philosophic moment. We of the West are comfortable with the image of the warrior priest, or the warrior scientist, even the warrior industrialist. But the warrior philosopher? No, that concept irritates our sense of propriety. We speak of ‘death and violence’ as though they were two manifestations of the same impulse. In fact, death is the very opposite of violence, which is always concerned with the struggle for life. Our philosophy is focused on managing life; yours on managing death. We seek comprehension; you seek dignity. We learn how to grasp; you learn how to let go. Even the label ‘philosopher’ is misleading, as our philosophers have always been animated by the urge to share (indeed, inflict) their insights; while your lot are content (perhaps selfishly) to make your separate and private peace. To the Westerner, there is something disturbingly feminine (in the sense of yang-ish, if that coinage doesn’t offend your ear) in your view of manhood. Fresh from the battlefield, you don soft robes and stroll through your gardens with admiring compassion for the falling cherry petal; and you view both the gentleness and the courage as manifestations of manhood. To us, that seems capricious at least, if not two-faced. By the way, how
does
your garden grow?”