The Great and the Good Page 17

  ‘A souvenir. Arthur and Elizabeth ate croissants in Rector Street and said goodbye to each other after a night of love.’

  Brustein surprised Arthur with the news that Allan Porter and Gertrude Zavadzinski would be dining with them.

  ‘I invited them for a while later. We’ll have a half-hour to ourselves. My wife’s not ready. She’s Spanish and she lives in New York City the way she lived in Seville. Getting up’s as hard for her as going to bed, and her all-round unpunctuality used to drive me crazy when we were first married, but I got used to it eventually. Now I find her lateness restful. If by some miraculous happenstance she decided to be on time, I think I’d be profoundly disturbed. Allan deals with these things differently. He pointed Minerva towards the Seventh Day Adventists, a wholly idiotic sect but one that has nevertheless put a spell on her. She’s a pain in the ass. Also a tireless proselyte. She avoids the poor neighbourhoods, obviously, and expends her energies on Washington’s smartest districts. When I teased her about it one day she said, “You know, wealthy people also have souls to be saved. Nobody thinks about them.” See what I mean? Come in, come in. I call this room my oratory. I have some lovely things to show you. I know you won’t say anything dumb when I show you my treasures; in any case you’re not the sort of guy to say dumb things. You’ll get the point straight away: that my collection’s alive because I love it. Every painting represents a stage in my life. If they were in a museum, these paintings and drawings would never breathe the love they do here. We’ll have to be quick, before Porter and Zava arrive and start talking business and politics. I see you’re surprised to be meeting Zava here. Allan’s interested in her … no, not like that, obviously. Wrong sort of figure. On the other hand, although she’s a strange girl she has an attractive intelligence. Her brain’s like an elegant, silent mechanism. Not a squeak! Her unswerving loyalty to the US makes her an interesting person from a point of view that we care about. You’re beginning to understand, Mr Morgan – or rather Arthur, if you’ll allow me, since from the day after tomorrow you’ll no longer be an employee of Jansen and Brustein – you’re starting to understand that it’s the Americans of most recent date who are the most loyal servants of their new homeland, and it’s the ones who’ve been settled here for generations who, as a result of a perfectly natural reaction that’s part of the fundamental ingratitude of human nature, are the first to betray it.’

  Brustein took a key out of his waistcoat pocket and opened the door of a circular room whose bay windows overlooked Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum.

  ‘It’s no more than an amateur’s first attempt: a homage to my father. Wherever his soul may be, I hope it’s opening up and marvelling. In Prague he was the top expert on Impressionism. He couldn’t afford to buy even the smallest sketch, but when I made my first real money on the Stock Exchange he ordered me – ordered, do you hear – instead of buying myself a new automobile, to buy a Cézanne drawing that was being offered in a public sale. I did as I was told. That same evening I showed him the drawing. He died in the night. I never saw his face so happy. I keep the door locked not because I’m afraid of burglars, but because I’m sure that my father – well, his soul at peace – comes here day and night to wander at liberty in front of these walls. He’s at home here, doesn’t want anyone disturbing him, and even likes seeing his name painted on the ceiling, despite the fact that it’s a tad kitsch, as the Germans say …’

  Arthur looked up. In a plaster rose was a painted inscription: ‘Jacob Brustein Museum, Prague 1892–New York 1945’. Arthur would have liked to linger. Brustein did not give him the time.

  ‘You’ll be back: this painting and the pen drawing of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire in morning mist are enough for one day. One mustn’t overdo it.’

  He closed the door and reset the alarm.

  ‘Now that you know me better than my wife, better than Jansen, who’s been my partner for ten years and collects nineteenth-century door knobs, better than Allan Porter who’s nevertheless my best friend, and better than my colleagues at the Stock Exchange whose nickname for me is the Fox of the Balkans, which is not all that geographical but as you’ll have noticed the Americans don’t know a lot of geography, am I that much more cunning than they are? My wife will tell you not. It’s a wife’s job to cut her husband’s reputation down to size. Because she was dedicated at birth to the Virgin of the Begonia, she gets called Begonia more often than Maria. This enchants me. I married a flower. Not every man can say that. In a moment or two she’ll make her entrance – entrance is the mot juste – adorned, lacquered, her hair styled, perfumed and wearing something deliciously low-cut, so lovely that despite my height I’ve felt like a gnat next to her ever since I converted to Catholicism and married her in Seville.’

  He led Arthur into the sitting room and poured him a stiff measure of bourbon without asking him.

  ‘And you’re French! What kind of a visiting card is that! You’ll find out how much credit that’s worth in our world! Make the most of it. Be shameless. In a crowd you always pick out the Frenchman from all the rest. Yesterday it was Porter showing an interest in you, today it’s me … and Miss Zavadzinski.’

  ‘Zava?’

  ‘And there are plenty more surprises where that came from.’

  There were. During dinner Porter, Brustein and Zava exchanged a series of remarks that just seemed obscure to a bewildered Arthur. Maria de Begonia presided, imposing, silent, a tortoiseshell comb encrusted with rhinestones fixed in her heavy coil of black hair, only repressing with the greatest difficulty, it seemed, her desire to sing, ‘Si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime / Et si je t’aime, prends garde à toi …’ But perhaps that was a cliché of Arthur’s imagining, and she was merely intent on supervising the serving of dinner by a hired waiter who looked even blacker than he was because he was wearing a white jacket buttoned to his throat.

  ‘Coffee will be served in Karl’s office’ were her first words as she got to her feet after the dessert.

  When she left the room, accompanied by Zava, Brustein assured Arthur and Porter that his wife might say very little in their presence but soon caught up when she was alone with him. Obviously the questions they had been discussing during dinner held little excitement for her. In the melting pot of America, there are those who start to assimilate the second they set foot on the dockside in New York; there are also those who will remain strangers in a land of immigrants where everyone, apart from the Native Americans, is an intruder. Begonia spent all her time among Spanish women, and Andalusians at that. At a pinch she accepted into this restricted female circle – she knew no men – the occasional Latin American, despite a snobbish reticence towards them that took many forms. Brustein was delighted by this reticence, which placed him and her above the rest in a society that was horribly stratified. By contrast, their sons, aged six and seven, already behaved like Yankees born and bred, were mad about baseball and cartoons, keen on rock ’n’ roll, stuffed themselves with popcorn every time they went to the cinema, and were incapable of saying a word of either Spanish or Czech.

  ‘They’re happy! Why should I complain? The funny thing will be that if they have kids, those kids one day are going to want to go looking for their roots, learn Spanish and Czech, and track down the tombs of their ancestors in Prague and Seville.’

  The hired waiter came into the office-library with coffee, followed by Begonia and Zava.

  ‘The children are asleep,’ Zava said with heartfelt relief.

  The little hooligans had ambushed her with enema syringes filled with water.

  ‘They are devils,’ Begonia said proudly.

  Arthur silently willed her to grab some castanets and dance a seguidilla. Sadly the performance was not forthcoming; everything the imposing Mrs Brustein had to say was brisk and to the point.

  ‘Karl never has sugar with coffee.’

  The gravity of this habit was not lost on anyone, and Brustein’s display of satisfaction at having this albeit hardly
secret aspect of his forceful personality underlined made Arthur like this endearing and happy man all the more.

  ‘Where are you at with your plans for the next few weeks?’ Porter asked abruptly, rather less inclined to go into raptures about Mrs Brustein’s pronouncements.

  Arthur almost blurted out that for now the future was limited to the prospect of Key Largo, which was not without a faint shadow hanging over it, in the form of Elizabeth’s ambivalence. It seemed clear, however, that Porter would not be interested in that in the slightest.

  ‘What do you really want to talk to me about?’ he asked, irritated by what was being said and not said among this motley group of dinner guests.

  ‘Do you intend to stay in the United States?’

  ‘No.’

  Begonia rang for the hired waiter, who must have been listening behind the door because he appeared immediately.

  ‘The liqueur tray, Benny.’

  Benny disappeared.

  ‘He’s interested in our conversation,’ Porter said.

  Brustein smiled.

  ‘No danger there. He goes back a long way. In fact, didn’t you recommend him to me, Allan?’

  ‘Ah, that’s it. I knew he reminded me of someone.’

  Then, turning to Arthur, he said, ‘I asked the question because it’s a significant one. We offer a number of foreign students the chance to stay and study in the US, so that they take back to their respective countries our way of doing things. The problem is that unfortunately sixty per cent of these scholars then decide to stay here when they finish university, and our investment’s totally wasted.’

  ‘Why don’t you make them sign an agreement that after their studies at Beresford, or Yale or Harvard or wherever, they’ll go back to where they came from and apply all the American lessons in morality and economics that they’ve learnt here?’

  ‘It would be against our principles. We need friends in the world.’

  ‘Even after winning a world war and saving face in Korea?’

  Porter raised his arms heavenward, waving his fat little hands like a man drowning.

  ‘I often wonder whether the worst fate that can befall a nation is for it to come out of a war the winner.’

  ‘All over Europe where the Allies fought you’ll see graffiti saying “GIs go home!”’ Brustein said. ‘Our policies are openly criticised in Paris and London.’

  Benny came back with the tray of cognac and liqueurs. Begonia sprang back to life and served her guests one after the other, then, Benny having disappeared, sat down again and stifled a yawn. It required far more than this to divert Porter from his speech. In his view, the most problematic issue was the home-grown one of an entire class challenging the system, a phenomenon that was currently making itself felt at the highest levels of state and the universities. McCarthyism was not without a basis in reality, but it was using the tactics of the witch-hunt, incompatible with the principles of American democracy, and dragging through the mud the administration of a country that held its freedoms in high esteem.

  Arthur began to see the direction Porter was going in, and was irritated by his circumlocutions.

  ‘What are you trying to suggest to me?’ he said, with an abruptness that made Zava smile in amusement.

  ‘Nothing at all, my friend. And you, what are you hoping for?’

  Arthur did not hope for anything; he was merely surprised at the interest these two men were showing in him. There were hundreds of candidates as clever as he was, and he would never consider himself to be ‘one of them’. Porter’s solicitude made him feel uncomfortable. Brustein’s character, however, so direct and warmly friendly, penetrated his defences completely. He was about to reply with a wisecrack when he caught Zava looking at him, mutely entreating him not to lose his temper, to stay with them and with her in this discussion, which was still so ill-defined but which she intended to take advantage of in order one day to get her own back on everything life had inflicted on her: parents unable to recover from their misfortune, her deafness, her giant’s hands and feet, her frizzy red hair that had got her so bullied by her classmates. And back in Paris, wasn’t Madame Morgan expecting her son to take his place among the great and the good?

  ‘However hard I try, I just can’t make myself seem important,’ Arthur sighed, profoundly convinced that in the current state of things he wasn’t.

  Brustein came to his aid.

  ‘Don’t think any further than tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We’ll help you.’

  Begonia, more and more obviously bored, stood up to push back a book whose leather spine spoilt the alignment of a shelf. Her gesture was taken as an invitation to leave. In the hall Arthur helped Zava on with a light cape that covered her shoulders. She had said almost nothing, but as he did so she discreetly took his hand and squeezed it unequivocally.

  Like the afternoon he had spent with Augusta in his room in Rector Street, what remains of the two weeks in Key Largo? A string of short films, lazily edited together, whose scenes Arthur will replay again and again in the years that follow, each time with infinite regret and a remorse that is no less enduring.

  The opening scenes: the cab stopping outside Elizabeth’s building, Arthur racing up the stairs two at a time to ring her bell. The door opens and there is Augusta, a suitcase at her feet, her face consumed with anxiety. She seems so paralysed that he wonders if she has gone back on her word and only come to the rendezvous to tell him that they won’t be going away at all because she can’t leave New York as Getulio has postponed his journey.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Her lips are trembling, as if she has just got out of an icy bath. He suspects she might break down and takes her in his arms. Nestled against him, she becomes calmer. What is unfolding at this moment is the start of an adventure from which they both know very well they will not emerge unscathed.

  ‘Let’s go, right now.’

  ‘Isn’t Elizabeth here?’

  ‘No … of course not. You expect too much of her.’

  *

  The next sequence takes place at Miami. Stepping off the plane, they are surprised by the air’s hot humidity. Autumn has come early to New York. In Florida the summer is lingering. Men are wearing shorts or light trousers and brightly coloured short-sleeved shirts, women light dresses, their legs bare and tanned. Everyone looks as though they are on holiday. Augusta’s suitcase is the last off the chute and she fidgets. A car drives them to Key Biscayne. Augusta asks the driver to stop at a clothes store and leads Arthur inside. It must be said that he is hardly dressed for Florida. She chooses two pairs of swimming trunks and some linen trousers and T-shirts for him. She needs nothing, just some saris. It is Arthur’s turn to worry as he watches her pick out three saris. At this rate they will have to cut their holiday short by a day, possibly two.

  Then other images follow: Elizabeth has organised everything. At the dock the white launch from the Key Largo Yacht Club is waiting for them. Sitting nonchalantly on its bow, her long brown legs dangling from each side, a young woman in blue shorts and a yellow polo shirt is smoking a cigarillo which she tosses into the dock’s oily water when she sees them. Her tanned face wears a look of profound boredom that may just be her contempt for the tourists wandering aimlessly, admiring the berthed yachts. Her hair, bleached by sun and salt, is kept in place behind her ears with a red ribbon.

  ‘Hey there! Was the plane delayed?’

  ‘No, we delayed ourselves.’

  Seeing the chauffeur take their shopping bags out of the car, she smiles.

  ‘So I see! It’s not really worth it … No one wears a lot of clothes at Key Largo: shorts, slacks and a sweater for the evenings. There’s no one there. Except at the weekend. I run the club bar and look after Elizabeth’s bungalow. It’s not hard: she comes once a year. My name’s Mandy. What do I call you?’

  ‘Augusta and Arthur.’

  Competently she stows their suitcases in the cockpit and holds out her hand to help Augusta aboar
d.

  Mandy’s presence stamps the next rapid sequence of images, which calls out for a soundtrack to accompany the harmonies of the dark-green islets and mangroves, the pale and hollow sky, the steel-blue sea, and the flat Florida coastline, washed out and quivering in a mirage of misty heat. Wearing a blue, light woollen hat, she sits with her back to them on the Bertram’s bridge deck, piloting it cautiously through the channels marked by black and green buoys. Suddenly-woken tarpons leap and dive in the launch’s wake. Augusta lies down in the cabin. Arthur sees her bare feet and legs, which she crosses and uncrosses.

  Three hours later Mandy lowers the double throttle to idle and the Bertram’s bow dips as it glides between red and green signal lights that are already winking. Night is falling. A few yachts swing at anchor, their sails furled and stored in covers already shiny with condensation in the twilight. Mandy goes alongside the jetty, disturbing two pelicans sleeping with their heads under their wings, and draws up to a wooden gangplank. A pot-bellied man in oil-stained singlet and shorts, his arms tattooed with green snakes, comes towards them, picks Augusta up by the waist, and puts her down as if swinging a feather ashore. Arthur jumps and goes to help with the unloading of the baggage, but the man motions him aside.

  ‘Leave that, that’s my job. It’s quicker. My name’s Cliff.’

  Night has fallen in these few minutes. A cool breeze rustles the branches of the wild pines and the leaves of the frangipani trees, whose sweet scent perfumes a gust of salty air. Carrying the suitcases, Cliff and Mandy walk ahead of them down the dirt path that runs away from the port along the top of the beach as far as a white bungalow. Mandy switches the lights on on the veranda and in the living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. The furniture is Philippine rattan, the armchairs covered in pastel-coloured toile de Jouy. Audubon lithographs cover the walls and there are corals and a few polished shells and pieces of driftwood behind glass on the shelves.