The Destiny of Nathalie X (5 page)

“Kaiser?”

“Bob?”

“He’s not at the house, Kaiser.”

“Shit.”

“He’s got to phone her. He’s got to apologize.”

“No. He’s got to lie.”

“She called Vincent.”

“Fuck. The bitch.”

“That’s how bad she wants to do it. I think it’s a good sign.”

“Where is that African bastard? I’ll kill him.”

“Nancy says the French babe showed.”

“Oh, no. No, fuckin’ no!”

“It gets worse, Kaiser. Vincent told me to call Tim Pascal.”

“Who the fuck’s he?”

“Some English director. Lanier wants to meet with him.”

“Who’s his agent?”

“Sheldon … Hello? Kaiser?”

G
EORGE
M
ALINVERNO
. I got a theory about this town, this place: everybody likes pizza. Even the French. We got to
know them real well, I guess. They came back every night, the French. The tall black guy, the ratty one and the blond girl. Real pretty girl. Every night they come. Every night they eat pizza. Every night she ties one on. Everybody likes pizza. [Bitter laugh] Everybody. Too bad I didn’t think of it first, huh?

They film one night. And the girl, she’s steaming. Then, I don’t know, something goes wrong and we don’t see them for a while. Then he comes back. Just the black guy, Aurélien and the girl. He says, can they film, one night, a thousand bucks. I say for sure. So he sets up the sound and he sets up the camera behind the bushes. You know it’s not a disturbance, exactly. I never see anybody make a film like this before. A thousand bucks, it’s very generous. So the girl she walks up, she takes a seat, she orders beer and keeps on drinking. Soon she’s pretty stewed. Aurélien sits behind the bushes, just keeps filming. Some guy tries to pick her up, puts his hand on the table, like, leans over, she takes a book of matches, like that one, and does something to the back of his hand with the corner. I couldn’t see what she did, but the guy gasps with pain, shudders like this, just backs off.

Then we get a big party in, birthday party, they’d already booked, fourteen people. She sits there drinking and smoking, Aurélien’s filming. Then we bring the cake out of the kitchen, candles all lit. Whenever there’s a birthday we get Chico to sing. Chico, the little waiter, tubby guy, wanted to be an opera singer. Got a fine strong voice. He’s singing “Happy Birthday to You”—he’s got a kind of drawn-out, elaborate way of singing it. Top of his voice,
molto vibrato
, you know. Next thing I know the girl’s on her feet with a fuckin’ gun in her hand, screaming in French. Nobody can hear because Chico’s singing his balls off. I tear out from behind the bar, but I’m too late. POW. First shot blows the cake away. BAM. Second one gets Chico in the thigh. Flesh wound, thank God. I charge her to the ground, Roberto jumps on top. We wrestle
the gun away. She put up quite a fight for a little thing. Did something to my shoulder too, she twisted it in some way, never been the same since. Aurélien got the whole thing on film. I hear it looks great.

Aurélien sat outside the Alcazar screening room with Kaiser Prevost and Bob Berger. Berger combed and recombed his hair, he kept smelling his comb, smelling his fingertips. He asked Prevost to smell his hair. Prevost said it smelled of shampoo. Prevost went to the lavatory for the fourth time.

“Relax,” Aurélien said to them both. “I’m really pleased with the film. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

Berger groaned. “Don’t say that, don’t say that.”

“If he likes it,” Kaiser said, “we’re in business. Lanier will like it, for sure, and Aurélien will apologize. Won’t you, Aurélien? Of course you will. No problem. Lanier loved him. Lanier loved you, didn’t she, Aurélien?”

“Why are we worried about Lanier?” Aurélien said. “Delphine came back. We finished the film.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Bob Berger.

“Don’t worry, Bob,” Kaiser said. “Everything can be fixed.”

Vincent Bandine emerged from the screening room.

Aurélien stood up. “What do you think?”

V
INCENT
B
ANDINE
. I believe in candor. I have a theory about this town, this place: we don’t put enough stock in candor. I am into candor in a big way. So I take Aurélien aside, gently, and I say, “Aurélien, or whatever your name is, I think your film is goatshit. I think it’s a disgusting boring piece of Grade A manure. I wouldn’t give the sweat off my balls for your goatshit film.” That’s what I said, verbatim. And I have to give it to the kid, he just stood there and looked at me, sort of a slight smile on his face. Usually when I’m this candid they’re in deep shock, or weeping, or vomiting by now. And
he looks at me and says, “I can’t blame you for thinking like this. You’re not a man of culture, so I can’t blame you for thinking like this.” And he walks. He walks out jauntily. I should have had his fucking legs broken. I’ve got the biggest collection of Vuillard paintings on the West Coast of America. I should have had his fucking legs broken. We had to pay the waiter fifty grand not to press charges, keep the Alcazar name out of things. The girl went to a clinic for three weeks to dry out … Aurélien No. Not a man of culture, eh?

K
IT
V
ERMEER
. Ah, Lanier took it badly. I don’t think that. Do you mind? Thank you. Bats and lemurs, man, wow, they didn’t get a look in. Bats and lemurs. Story of my life.
Weltanschauung
, that’s what I’m up for. No,
Weltschmerz
. That’s my bag. Bats and lemurs. Why not owls and armadillos? No, I’m not looking at you, sir, or talking to you. Forsooth. Fuckin’ nerd. Wank in a bath, that’s what an English friend of mine calls them. What a wank in a bath. Owls and armadillos.

M
ATT
F
RIEDRICH
. Aurélien came to see me before he left, which was gracious of him, I thought, especially for a film director, and he told me what had happened. I commiserated and told him other sorry stories about this town, this place. But he needed no consoling. “I enjoyed my visit,” he said. “No, I did. And I made the film. It was a curious but interesting experience.”

“It’s just a dance,” I think I remember saying to him. “It’s just a dance we have to do.”

He laughed. He found that funny.

From my tenth or eleventh year I remember the following incident:

In this city, and at this time, you should understand that suicide was a completely acceptable option, an entirely understandable, rational course of action to take. And I speak as one who knows its temptations intimately: three of my elder brothers took their own lives—Hans, Rudi and Kurt. That left Paul, me
and my three older sisters. My sisters, I am sure, were immune to suicide’s powerful contagion. I cannot speak for Paul. As for myself, I can only say that its clean resolution of all my problems—intellectual and emotional—was always most appealing; that open door to oblivion always beckoned to me and, odd though it may seem, suicide—the idea of suicide—lies at the very foundation of all my work in ethics and logic.

I came down from the Hochreith, our house in the country, to Vienna especially to meet Herr Ficker. The big white villa in the parks of Neuwaldegg was closed up for the summer. I had one of the gardeners prepare my room and make up a bed, and his wife laid the table on the terrace and helped me cook dinner. We were to have
Naturschnitzel
with
Kochsalat
with a cold bottle of Zöbinger. Simple, honest food. I hoped Ficker would notice.

I shaved and dressed and went out onto the terrace to wait for him to arrive. I was wearing a lemon-yellow, soft-collared shirt with no tie and a light tweed jacket that I had bought years before in Manchester. Its fraying cuffs had been repaired, in the English way, with a dun green leather. My hair was clean and still damp, my face was cool, scraped smooth. I drank a glass of sherbet water as I waited for Ficker. The evening light was milky and diffused, as if hung with dust. I could hear the faint noise of motors and carriages on the roads of Neuwaldegg and in the gathering dusk I could make out the figure of the gardener moving about in the allée of pleached limes. A fleeting but palpable peace descended on me and I thought for some minutes of David and our holidays together in Iceland and Norway. I missed him.

Ficker was an earnest young man, taller than me (mind you, I am not particularly tall) with fine thinning hair brushed back off his brow. He wore spectacles with crooked wire frames, as if he had accidentally sat upon them and had hastily
straightened them out himself. He was neatly and soberly dressed, wore no hat and was clean-shaven. His lopsided spectacles suggested a spirit of frivolity and facetiousness that, I soon found out, was entirely inaccurate.

I had already explained to him, by letter, about my father’s death, my legacy and how I wished to dispose of a proportion of it. He had agreed to my conditions and promised to respect my demand for total anonymity. We talked, in businesslike fashion, about the details but I could sense, as he expressed his gratitude, strong currents of astonishment and curiosity.

Eventually he had to ask, “But why me? Why my magazine … in particular?”

I shrugged. “It seemed to be exemplary, of its sort. I like its attitude, its, its seriousness. And besides, your writers seem the most needy.”

“Yes … That’s true.” He was none the wiser.

“It’s a family trait. My father was a great benefactor—to musicians mainly. We just like to do it.”

Ficker then produced a list of writers and painters he thought were the most deserving. I glanced through it: very few of the names were familiar to me, and beside each one Ficker had written an appropriate sum of money. Two names, at the top of the list, were to receive by far the largest amounts.

“I know of Rilke, of course,” I said, “and I’m delighted you chose him. But who’s he?” I pointed to the other. “Why should he get so much? What does he do?”

“He’s a poet,” Ficker said. “I think … well, no man on this list will benefit more from your generosity. To be completely frank, I think it might just save his life.”

My brother Hans drowned himself in Chesapeake Bay. He was a musical prodigy who gave his first concert in Vienna at
the age of nine. I never really knew him. My surviving brother Paul was also musically gifted, a brilliant pianist who was a pupil of Leschetizky and made his debut in 1913. I remember Paul saying to me once that of all musical tastes the love of Schubert required the least explanation. When one thinks of the huge misery of his life and sees in his work no trace of it at all—sees the complete absence in his music of all bitterness.

I had arranged with Ficker that I would be in the Österreichische Nationalbank on Swarzspanierstrasse at three o’clock. I was there early and sat down at a writing desk in a far corner. It was quiet and peaceful: the afternoon rush had yet to begin and the occasional sound of heels on the marble floor as clients crossed from the entrance foyer to the rows of counters was soothing, like the background click of ivory dominoes or the ceramic kiss of billiard balls in the gaming room of my favorite café near the art schools …

Ficker was on time and accompanied by our poet. Ficker caught my eye and I gave a slight nod and then bent my head over the spectral papers on my desk. Ficker went to a teller’s guichet to inquire about the banker’s draft, leaving the poet standing momentarily alone in the middle of the marble floor, gazing around him like a peasant at the high dim vaults of the ceiling and the play of afternoon sunshine on the ornamental brasswork of the chandeliers.

Georg——, as I shall refer to him, was a young man, twenty-seven years old—two years older than me—small and quite sturdily built, and, like many small men, seemed to have been provided with a head designed for a bigger body altogether. His head was crude- and heavy-looking, its proportions exaggerated by his bristly, close-cropped hair. He was clean-shaven. He had a weak mouth, the upper lip overhung the bottom one slightly, and a thick triangular nose. He
had low brows and slightly Oriental-looking, almond-shaped eyes. He was what my mother would have called “an ugly customer.”