Subtle Bodies Page 14

  She was getting used to the media swarm. A ninja flashed past. One of the ninjas, a young Frenchman with long hair, a child, really, had tried to be friendly to her.

  In the morning she’d said to Ned It’s going to take all day to figure out what I can’t wear. But it had worked out all right. There were conflicts. There were the funerary considerations. There was the need to try to blot out the image of the world’s most beautiful woman not counting Iva, the tremulous Claire.

  She was getting a funny idea. If it worked she would be able to flaunt mystifyingly accurate information about the secret discussions the men were having. They were meeting behind her back, literally, on the other side of the living room wall. Looking hard, she was detecting a long narrow lozenge set into the wall and two spots on it that must be hinges. It was a barely visible rectangle with an irregularity down the right side that was undoubtedly where the door could be pulled open. It was a closet, in short. The opened door would clear the end of the sofa. If she could get into it unobserved, and if it was reasonably empty and there was room for her, she could press her ear against the back of the closet and listen to some of the proceedings. She had perfect hearing. Because he was older, Ned would occasionally stop and wonder if or when they should make long-term-care plans. She hated nursing homes generically and her position was that they would only enroll when one of them became too weak to do the Heimlich maneuver. Getting into the closet would be easy enough if it wasn’t locked.

  She thought, Should I do this?

  She knew she should wait and read. She was surrounded by reading matter in that room. A wave of resentment passed over her. She thought, I’m a constant reader … I signed a letter to the Chronicle book page as Constant Reader, when they had one … I read more than Ned!… my family culture was better than his in terms of grammar and I knew when I was still tiny that there was no such month as Febuary and no such word as nother.

  Getting into the closet would be easy enough because she could start by just idly peering into it and then if the coast was clear hopping in and closing the door behind her.

  God what have I done? she thought. There was no air to speak of. When she got out she was going to smell worse than her cedar-sachet-smelling insane mother. And she was about to cough. No, she was not. Yes she was, she was going to cough. The wire coat hangers she was trying to keep control of were making a racket. There was a pool of them on the floor of the closet that she hadn’t noticed.

  She was attempting to remain stock-still. The wall was unconscionably thick and these characters seemed to be arguing in murmurs, if they were arguing at all. This was not a good environment. She had gained nothing by putting herself in this predicament. The crouch she was forcing herself to assume to get her ear against the wall was painful and not working.

  Someone had heard something. Someone was fiddling with the closet door.

  A maid pulled it open. She thanked God she knew her name, which was Norma. The woman was astonished to see her bent over there in the darkness.

  “Norma, hi. I was trying to hear what the men were talking about. You know they are being so secretive, Norma. Please don’t tell on me. It would be humiliating, okay?”

  “No problem,” Norma said.

  35 He had to find Nina to let her know about the mutiny. It had been a real mutiny and it had been great. Where was she, his Soft Gem? It was impossible to keep track of her. He filled his lungs with sun-sweetened air, which was a little poetic. It was drier out, today. Maybe Nina would lay off referring to the estate as the water park.

  These days he could never locate Nina because she had invented a role for herself. She was a CPA and she was transposing her skills into investigative activities nobody had asked her to undertake. If only he could think of something for her to do other than snooping around. Clearly she thought she was going to uncover the secret gestalt behind the arrangements between Douglas and Iva, and Elliot—who appeared to Nina to have managed the family into bankruptcy, although if that was the case, why didn’t he mind Nina’s browsings in Douglas’s stuff?

  Nina saw it as a bad opera. You have a mind like a tweezers, he had said to her once, making her laugh.

  He had left her in the living room.

  Where was she now? It was warm. She’d said she wanted to look at the physic garden but she wasn’t there, he could tell from where he stood. There were so many places to look for her. Her investigations came from two things. One was sheer Funktionslust. She always had to be busy. And the other was that she wanted to be his best friend. And she had criticisms of his old milieu of friends, and resentments about them. All his life he had wanted a strong and present friend. His only sibling, his older brother, had been abducted into piety, absence, the Salesian House of Studies, priesthood. They had never been friends. Nina understood it all and wanted to undo it, be his total friend, which he understood, because of course she was. And she was somewhere around there, but where?

  Elliot should have seen it coming. I led the way, Ned thought. First he had led the refusal to produce short little scripts on assigned subdivisions of Douglas’s life. And he had learned something in the process that was new to him. He looked forward to telling Nina about it. When Elliot had been listing some of Douglas’s contributions, articles, on matters of substance, he had mentioned one, an opinion piece in the Financial Times about the European Monetary Union. Apparently Douglas had been skeptical of its prospects and had sarcastically described it as Jean Tinguely’s Last and Greatest Creation, the joke of course being that Tinguely specialized in art object machines that destroyed themselves when they were plugged in. And surprisingly, Joris had said that he was in effect its author. The two of them had been talking and Douglas had written up Joris’s thoughts, including the Tinguely conceit, and turned them into an op-ed piece supposedly by him which he sent to someone he knew at the Financial Times. They took it. Douglas sent Joris a copy of the issue containing it, along with a thank-you note! Joris had been cool with it, and what he was telling the group wasn’t for the record.

  So, it had been conceded that they could write on whatever aspect of Douglas’s life they chose to. So then part two of the mutiny had been that nobody was going to grant script approval to Elliot or Iva or anybody. Elliot was going to have to trust them to solve the problem of overlapping. He’d had no choice.

  Ned saw Nina. She was in conversation with someone he couldn’t make out, near one of the media trailers. She waved, but continued talking to her friend. He thought, God damn her, in a way. He knew the name of the guy she was talking to but he couldn’t remember what it was. Nina had talked to him several times, and he was French. Ned wanted to tell her the Joris story.

  She was taking her time coming to him. He was standing on a rude bark-chip jogging path that ran close to the perimeter of the manse on three sides but looped out and away on the west side, down toward the gorge where Douglas had died. Ned guessed he would never jog. He was going to stop feeling guilty over it. There was no time in his life. Apparently he was blocking the way of three stately plump black turkeys. They were fearless. Possibly they were pets of some sort. He stepped aside for them. The story was that Douglas had once had a pet peacock. Pets would die when the fire came to Iraq. He thought, Americans love pets more than they love mankind. Maybe some agitation could be built around harm to animals. The turkeys were gross. They were unpleasant to look at and Nina was going to wonder aloud what could possibly be the evolutionary advantage of that bell-pull-like excrescence attached to the chest of the males. Survival advantages were a recurring concern of hers, and he would invent notional answers to amuse her. He could tell from Nina’s expression that she had news of her own.

  As he explained what had happened at the meeting with Elliot he realized that although she was nodding she was only half listening. She wanted to talk herself.

  She said, “I learned some fascinating things about your friend Douglas.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as this. Well,
he was kind of a man of mystery. He took something called special commissions. Which means that he did work for the German Bundes-something and for the Israelis.”

  “You mean verifying documents and that sort of thing?”

  She was staring at the turkeys, who seemed reluctant to leave them behind. She said, “What in God’s name is the use of the disgusting ropey thing that big male has on his neck? You’d think it would get tangled in the underbrush and hinder escape from predators. Maybe the lady turkeys find it attractive, maybe because it suggests macho with regard to underbrush.”

  Ned said, “That’s definitely it. So we can move on.”

  She said, “Well verifying documents and maybe a lot more. Maybe helping his clients make perfect forgeries no one could detect.”

  “Ah this is ridiculous. Who told you this?”

  “A source! And why do you think the Israeli consul general from New York is expected?”

  “I have no idea. I mean I’m sure the Israelis appreciate his work on the Dreyfus carnets. Anyway, it’s the consul from Newark, not New York.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No it is not.”

  “Anyway, he did something for them. And he got money in odd ways. He was paid a huge amount for writing a screenplay for a movie called Tambov that was never produced. It was about a remote province in Russia during the revolution where all the defectors and deserters who were sick of killing fled to and formed their own army against all the others. It was a mélange. They were communists and monarchists, anarchists like you of course, anybody who was sick of war and killing—oh and they had a green flag. Just plain green.”

  “So are you saying it was laundered money? Wait, I think I know who told you all this.”

  He squinted back in the direction she’d come from to see if the culprit, the guy she had been talking to, was still there. He was. And Ned should have realized it earlier. His name was Jacques and he was wearing a signature matelot jersey, echt French.

  “Oh God, you’ve been talking to that French guy, Jacques, I forget his last name.”

  “I’m getting forgetful too. And oh, remind me to remember to tell Ma about my food adventures around here. When she figured out I was eating stuff I’ve never eaten in my life before, like, lobster roe, she said I had to remember everything and tell her …”

  “Don’t you think I have enough on my mind? Get a memo book like I have. I don’t feel like writing down entries for your gourmet life list …”

  “Lobster roe, and sticky toffee pudding and what was the other thing—mushroom strudel, and oh, flavored salt.”

  “If the French guy comes over here I’m going to have to beat you.”

  “You’re saying that like you hate the French or things French or something.”

  “I am God damn not. Actually I’ve talked to the guy already. He snagged me after breakfast twice. And he’s okay.”

  “And he’s jolly, Ned! At least compared to your friends. And he’s against the war, sorry, the invasion. And by the way he’s a squatter.”

  “I’m not surprised. You mean he’s living in a squat commune in Lyon or someplace?”

  “No no no. He’s squatting here. He isn’t official. He’s a stowaway here. He’s sleeping in one of the basements in the tower. And he’s against the war.”

  Ned was annoyed. She was romanticizing her Frenchman, thinking Jacques was the real article, unlike some people she could name.

  “I know he’s against the war. I had to tell him twice he couldn’t sign my petition because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Politically he’s fucking way off the left edge of the map. He works for an alternative FM station in Lyon called Diffusion Ravachol. He’s been searching for me to give me a book by his hero Thierry Meyssan that’s going to prove to me that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, not a plane …”

  “But he’s on our side at least! I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a brother but …”

  Ned said, “I am grinding my teeth, you may notice. It’s my own fault. I made the mistake of starting off with him in my New Chardenal French. So now he thinks I speak French when in fact I hardly know what I’m saying. Oh Christ descend! He’s coming to join us.”

  “Salut!” Jacques shouted, arriving. He was a short, eager, muscular man probably in his late thirties although he might be younger and suffering the effects of a dissipated existence. That was just a guess. His face was pear shaped, heavy around the mouth. He had his graying blond hair in a ponytail. One wing of his very full gray moustache was stained amber. He chain-smoked Gitanes, was smoking one now, and in a moment Nina and Ned would both get the chance to appreciate the considerate way he had of carrying on conversations with declared nonsmokers like themselves: he would blow plumes of smoke out laterally from the corner of his mouth. It was something to see! And Ned wondered if Nina had already noticed that. He had the trait of lowering his voice and instantaneously looking left/right before conveying bits of information he thought were important, which so far, in Ned’s experience, they hadn’t seemed to be. Women would like his bright blue eyes, no doubt. Jacques was a Breton, if Ned had understood him in an earlier conversation.

  Jacques embraced them, Nina first and more thoroughly.

  Ned had an existential problem with the Frenchman he wanted to get across. It wasn’t that he didn’t like him. But there was an issue.

  He patted Jacques’s shoulder. He turned to Nina and said, “Hey, can you help me? You took French. I want to explain something to this man. Don’t make a face, just do your best. And I know he claims he speaks English but give me a break. Now listen, here’s what I want to explain.” Ned kept a reassuring smile on his face and again patted Jacques on the shoulder.

  “Okay,” Jacques said irrelevantly.

  Ned said to Nina, “I want to explain up front that we differ on something. It’s important. His mindset is all over the antiwar movement. Here’s the thing. I see a shitty outcome of causative events I can mostly only guess at. I say we have to stop the outcome. Like the invasion. But au contraire he wants to root around in the causes, the conspirations, as they usually turn out to be in his opinion … the causes. I want to get across to him the concept of fait accompli if I can. We need to forget the conspiracies. Let history sort it out! … but stop the invasion.” Jacques had just said what sounded like “jolie” under his breath and he had winked at Nina. Ned said very softly, to Nina, “He just winked at you.”

  “Oh do I know it. I’m going to France, mon ami. But you have to stop this, you’re acting like we’re talking in front of a horse. But I will say this, apparently they have tons of petite women stars over there. French movie stars I look like that I never heard of. He’s so acute.”

  “I em a cute?” Jacques said.

  Seize power, Ned said to himself. “Jacques, listen to me. Okay, first, comment ça va tu?” He couldn’t help but notice Nina groaning loudly enough for Jacques to hear. He was going to proceed anyway and she could fuck herself.

  “Bien. Bien.” Jacques had had to repeat himself because he had spoken crookedly, having had the need to stick his tongue out and pick a few wayward flecks of tobacco off it. His tongue furrow was black.

  Ned said, “Secondaire, il y a deux visions entre nous au contraire. A la regard de les deux … towers—les neuf onze tours …”

  Nina whispered, subtly, she obviously thought, “Jumeau. Twin is jumeau.”

  “Would you please shut up,” Ned replied.

  Jacques said, “I understand well.”

  Ned, with effort, resumed. “C’est un fait accompli. Les auteurs originals, avec l’argent, peut-être, sont inconnus. Les Saudis peut-être. C’est n’importe. Et maintenant puisque les explosions de les jumeaux, nous avons un invasion, la guerre!” Ned stopped. It was too hard, although he could easily understand what Jacques was saying in French which at the moment appeared to be an invitation to them to come and visit him on the Rhône. And here Jacques swung into English. Apparently from his porch one could see “La
Rhône right affront of you.”

  Ned thought, To be fair, it’s hard to know what’s a fait accompli and what isn’t. He had to keep that in mind. What he wanted to say wasn’t that complex. It was that there could be a conspiracy at the root of a great evil, and there could be appendages to the conspiracy, and the problem was that the outcome was the same whether there had been a conspiracy, or not. Douglas’s term for the right attitude to take toward politics had been selective fatalism. The term had come up in discussions of the Kennedy assassination, which was a perfect example of a fait accompli. There was only so much social energy available for addressing evil, which never stands still. You had to forget conspiracies tout court, if that was right, and get on with the outcomes.

  And then like a bird from God, Nina put it all into perfect concise French and did it too fast for him to follow. And Jacques nodded sharply and she nodded sharply and Ned felt stupid and blessed.

  Ned accepted the Meyssan book. Jacques had someplace to go.

  Nina said, “I don’t know where it came from. It just all came back to me in a sort of flash.”

  Ned said, “I seem to know very little of what is going on these days. And why did he say, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Maternité’ when he left?”

  “Because I told him I was pregnant and couldn’t have sex with him.”

  “He asked you that?”

  “Of course. He’s an anarchist, like you. He asks everybody.”

  “I’m glad you said no.”

  “Good,” Nina said. Then added, “I better be pregnant.”