The collected stories Page 14

  'Always?'

  'We have no humor,' she said, proving it in her solemn tone of voice. 'We are - how do you say - melancholiqueV

  And Harper, who knew almost no French, translated the word. Then he complimented her on her English. Claire said that she had lived for two years in London, with an English family.

  He wanted her to drink. She said she only drank wine, and that with meals. He took her to a restaurant - again she chose: a narrow noisy room. Why did they all look like ticket offices? Harper stared at the young men and women in the restaurant. The men had close-cropped hair and earrings, the women were white-faced and smoked cigarettes over their food. Harper said, 'There's something about this place.'

  Claire smiled briefly.

  'That guy in the corner,' Harper said. 'He's gay.' Claire squinted at Harper. 'A pederast.'

  Claire glanced at the man and made a noise of agreement.

  Harper smiled. 'A sodomite.'

  'No,' she said. 'I am a sodomite. But he is a pederast. Un pede:

  "5

  world's end

  'I knew there was something about this place.' Harper's scalp prickled.

  'You seem a bit shocked.'

  'Me?' Harper tried to laugh.

  'Didn't you do it at school? Playing with the other boys?'

  'They would have killed me. I mean, the teachers. Anyway, I didn't want to. What about you?'

  She thrust out her lower lip and said, 'Of course.'

  'And now?'

  'Of course.'

  The food came. They ate in silence. Harper could think of nothing to say. She was an anarchist who had just disclosed that she was also a lesbian. And he? A courier with an empty briefcase, killing time. He thought of the poet Bumgarner: Paris belonged to him. Harper could not imagine the feeling, but Bumgarner would know what to say now.

  'It is easier for a woman,' said Claire. He guessed that she had perceived his confusion. 'I don't care whether I make love to a man or a woman. Though I have a fiance - he is a nice boy. It is the personality that matters. I like clever men and stupid women.'

  'That guy who was in the office the other day,' Harper said. 'He's a poet. He writes poems.'

  Claire said, 'I hate poems.'

  It was the most passionate thing she had said so far, but it killed his ardor.

  In the twilight, under a pale watery-blue sky, they walked past biscuity buildings to the river. Although this was his eighth day in Paris, Harper's yearning for home had deserted him, and he could ignore his errand, which seemed trivial to him now. He no longer felt humiliated by suspense; and another thing released him: the girl Claire, who was neither pretty nor ugly, seemed indifferent to him. It did not matter whether he slept with her or not - he felt no desire, $o there could be no such thing as failure. He enjoyed this perverse freedom, walking along the left bank of the Seine, on a mild spring evening, feeling no thrill, only a complacent lack of urgency. But that was how it was, in spite of Pans; and urgency had been no help the previous week. He did not speak French. The churches and stonecrusts were familiar; he recognized them from tree calendars and jigsaw puzzles and the lids of fancy cookie tins.

  PORTRAIT OF A LADY

  He had never been overseas before. It was the stage set he had imagined, but he felt unrehearsed.

  'I'm tired,' he said, to give Claire an excuse to go home.

  She shrugged as she had before, but now the gesture irritated him because she did it so well, using her shoulders and hands and sticking out her lower lip.

  'I'm staying at a hotel near Les Invalides,' he said. 'Would you like a drink there?'

  She shrugged again. This one meant yes - it was pliable and positive.

  By the time they found a taxi rank it was ten-thirty. There was traffic - worse than Boston - and they did not arrive at the hotel until after eleven. The concierge stepped from behind a palm to tell Claire the bar was closed.

  Harper said, 'We can drink in my room,' although he had nothing there to drink.

  In the room, Harper filled a tumbler with water from the sink. This he brought to Claire and presented it with a waiter's flourish. She drank it without a word.

  He said, 'Do you like it?'

  'Yes. Very much. It is a pleasant drink.'

  'Would you like some more?'

  'Not now,' she said.

  He sat beside her on the bed, and kissed her with a clownish sweetness, holding her elbows, and she responded innocently, putting her cool nose against his neck. Then she said, 'Wait.'

  She untied the drawstring at her waist and shook herself out of her dress. She did this quickly, like someone impatient to swim. When she was naked they kissed again, and he was almost alarmed by the way her tongue insisted in his mouth and her foraging hands pulled clumsily at his clothes. Soon after, they made love, and in the darkness, when it had ended, Harper thought he heard her whimper with dissatisfaction.

  He woke. She was across the room, speaking French.

  'What is it?'

  'I am calling a taxi, to go home.'

  'Don't go,' he said. 'Besides, I don't think the phone works.'

  'I have to take my pill.'

  The phone worked. J am in Paris: he said it in a groggy foolish voice.

  world's end

  Claire, who was dressing, said, 'Pardon?'

  The next day was a repetition of the previous day. He waited at the hotel for Undershaw to ring. At four, he went to the office. This time there were no preliminaries; only romance required them, and this was no romance. Harper was glad of that, and glad too that he was not particularly attracted to Claire. Since his marriage - and he was happy with his wife - he had not been attracted to any other woman. It did not make him calm; indeed, it worried him, because he knew that if he did fall for another woman it would matter and he would have to leave home. They skipped the bar, ate quickly, then hurried to the hotel and went to bed, hardly speaking.

  In the pitch dark of early morning, he waited for her to make her telephone call. But she was asleep. He woke her. She was startled, then seemed to remember where she was. He said, 'Don't you have to go?'

  She muttered rapidly in French, then came fully awake and said, 'I brought my pill.'

  Harper slept badly; Claire emitted gentle satisfied snores. In the morning she opened her eyes wide and said, 'I had a cauckemar?

  'Really?' The word, which he knew, bewitched him.

  She said, 'You have a beautiful word in English for cauchemar.'

  'Cauchemar is a beautiful word,' he said, and quoted,

  How much it means that I say this to you -Without these friendships - life, what caucbemarl

  'I don't understand,' she said.

  'A poem,' said Harper.

  She pretended to shudder. She said, 'What is cauchemar in English?'

  'Nightmare.'

  'So beautiful,' she said.

  'What was your cauchemat about?'

  'My - nightmare' - she smiled, savoring the word - 4 it was about us. You and me. We were in a house together, with a cat. It was quite an ordinary eat, but it was very hungry. I wanted to make love with you. That is my trouble, you see. I am too direct. The cat was in our bedroom.'

  'Where was this bedroom - Europe? 1

  'Paris, 1 she s.ud. 'The cat was so hungry it was sitting on the

  PORTRAIT OF A LADY

  floor and crying. We couldn't make love until we had fed it. We gave it some food. But when the cat ate the food it caught fire and burned - oh, it was horrible! Each time it swallowed it burned some more. It did not burn like a cat, but like a human, like Jan Palach. You know Jan Palach?'

  Harper did not know the name. He said, 'A saint?' - because her tone seemed to describe a martyr.

  'No, no, no,' said Claire. She was troubled.

  Harper said, 'It's about being a lesbian - your dream. Killing the cat, us making love.'

  'Of course,' she said. 'I have thought of that.'

  Her troubled look had left her; now she was abstracted,
her features stilled by thought.

  A fear rose in Harper that he was not in Europe at all, but trapped in a strange place with a sad crazy woman. He had made a great mistake in becoming involved with her. It was worse when they were dressing, for the telephone rang and Harper panicked and screamed, 'Don't touch it!' He imagined that it was his wife, and he felt guilty and ashamed to be in this room with this incomprehensible woman. He had never loved his wife more. He seized the phone: Undershaw.

  'It's ready. You can come over.'

  'Thank you,' said Harper, tongue-tied with gratitude. He turned to Claire. 'I've got to go to the office.'

  But she was buckling her small watch to her wrist. 'Look at the time,' she cried. 'I'm late!'

  They arrived separately - it was his idea - so that no one would suspect what they had done. Harper, who had spent days wishing to punch Undershaw in the face, introduced himself to the gray, rather tall Englishman feeling no malice at all. He took the parcel of money and locked himself in a small room to count it. He repeated the procedure, and when he was satisfied the amount was correct he packed the money in neat bundles in the briefcase. And, as if he knew how long it took to count eighty-five thousand dollars, Undershaw knocked at the door just as Harper finished.

  'If everything's in order I'll be off then,' said Undershaw.

  'Take care,' said Harper, and watched him go.

  In the outer office, Claire was filling her handbag. Harper paused, because he believed it was expected of him to ask her out to dinner - he would not be able to leave until the next day.

  WORLD S END

  Claire said, 'I can't see you tonight. I am meeting a woman. I may have an adventure. You can stay - shut the door and it will lock.'

  'I hope she's nice,' said Harper. 'Your woman.'

  'Yes,' said Claire, ladylike in concentration. She went to the door and stuck out her lower lip. 'She is my fiance's girl friend.'

  When she had left, Harper wanted to sit down. But the chairs disgusted him. There were four of them in this dreadful yellow room, this rallying place for the crooked - they were not evil, but idle. The room had held Bumgarner, and Claire, and Undershaw; and now they had gone on their tired errands. But their snailtracks were still here. There are rooms - his hotel room was one - in which the weak leave their sour hope behind; from which they set out to succeed at small deceptions and fail in the hugest way. Harper wanted to be home. He felt insulted and had never hated himself more. The briefcase, weighted with money, reminded him that he was still in Paris, and that he would have to complete his own shameful errand before he could look for a new job in the United States of America.

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  the impertinence to ask, 'Why was it that you were known as the Mephisto of the Twentieth Plenum?' Spurning the assistance of the translator, I shot back quickly, 'Could I help it if I was all things to all men?' smartly putting a stop to his nonsense. I am especially sick of these interviewers looking over their clipboards into the camera lens and solemnly prefacing their questions with my full name - something that would only be done in my country in a courtroom or a grade school. Is this intentional ridicule (perhaps my name sounds a bit silly to the American tin ear?) or is it done for the benefit of viewers who have tuned in late and wonder, in their ample distraction, who is the hairy chap on the stool being abused? I know I lost my temper in front of (or so I was told) ten million viewers. There was a simple explanation for that. I had, at that point in the program, reached the conclusion that I was not being interviewed but having my head examined. I have more than compensated the studio for all breakage and all injuries sustained.

  On my arrival I graciously consented to the interviews, and now I am terminating them. I have four lawyers working day and night on what I believe are serious breaches of contract; it would be unfair of me to make more work for them by engaging in yet more of these abusive television shows. Editorial innuendo has not escaped my notice either. You are not easy with strangers, you are not above the petty suspicions of your peasant ancestors who left their plows and groped toward these shores as stowaways.

  It is not as if I came to this country cap in hand pleading for asylum. Far from it. A narrow-shouldered Italian publisher of Iron Curtain horror stories dogged my heels throughout Europe. He tossed lire my way and, alternately whining and shrugging in the Italianate style, pestered me for a peek at the manuscript I kept photographed on a roll of film in my pocket. Others, French, German and English, each clamored for a hearing. I lunched with each but said no and fled west, leaving in my wake many a crestfallen editor. I am nagged by the thought that my negatives - the ones on my lips, not in my pocket - were a mistake. Both Stern and the London Sunday Observer offered particularly good terms, and Paris-Match dumped lashings of francs beside my plate. My accountant is understandably furious and keeps reminding me that on Jersey, in the Channel Islands, I could be living like a king, whereas here in America I am subjected to your spiteful taxes. But let this pass. The early brouhaha here has, after the expensive legal

  THE PRISON DIARY OF JACK FAUST

  tangle, neither soothed nor enriched me. The bungalow that was so grandly presented to me after my arrival has a leaky roof and a perpetually flooded cellar; and my television is, as you say, on the fritz. Still, I can't complain.

  My concern is the diary. It is to this I now turn.

  The manuscript that caused so many powerful Europeans to cluster about me is indeed a rare document and deserves patient study. I am happy to report that my present editor has consented to print it in full and has paid a substantial sum for the American rights. This is especially gratifying for, after getting to know you better, I find that you have really no taste for literature at all. Not like my country, where any garbage collector can sing grand opera or quote you whole cantos of the classics. You make a whole literature out of the sordid and silly nuances of Jewish behavior and, ironically, the writing style you most admire sounds like a direct translation from Perplexed Old Teutonic. You love obvious symbols and popular science. Long sentences annoy you, sentiment embarrasses you; you feel safe with alliteration - you think that is a sign of genius. Your heroes are as unlettered as their creators, your gods are all dogs, you have no appreciation of the simple human story.

  The following diary if published in my country would be unacceptable and might land the author in jail. But this is not to say that we are an artless people. Other books have readerships in the millions, they go through forty editions in a matter of weeks and have workers banging through the doors of bookshops at all hours. They are read on factory and farm; the authors are mobbed on the pavement, their names are household words, they get proposals of marriage in the morning mail.

  Mind you, the present manuscript is an exception. The author is not heroic; he never did a stroke of work in his life. That he is a simple soul is apparent in every craven line he writes. He is not to be emulated., only studied. His story shows just the sort of quaint dilemma expressed in grumbles that is common to a certain sort of person - though no more common, I repeat, no more common in my country than in yours. Frankly speaking, when I left I was under the impression that this was someone only our system chucked up; but since being warmly welcomed in your very lovely country I have noticed that you get these deluded cranks too. And so take this as a cautionary tale: read it to those unkempt sons of

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  yours who stuporously slope along wearing garish beads around their filthy necks; read it to your daughters who lick at drugs and keep condoms in their handbags, and to those uncles of yours who when their god failed began striking out, cursing us with the sorry wrath of the recently reconverted. And those of you who chaffed me about my 'convenient departure' and 'untrustworthy explanations,' remember that although I am hesitant to use this manuscript as a visa de voyage, I am aware that it gained me access to your country, and with it in my pocket I know I am welcome anywhere. You need me much more than I need you.

  The pseudonym
ous author of this diary was known to me from youth. As the poet Drunina puts it so skillfully, 'We were as twinned lambs that did frisk in the sun, / and bleat one at the other: what we changed / Was innocence for innocence . . .' The difference, a large one, was that he made at least one big mistake and possibly more. This is clear in the text. The diary requires very little explanation except the following two points.

  Number one, his name was not Jack Faust. Another Slav scurrying westward dropped half the letters from the dozen of his name and in doing so earned a permanent place in English literature (would anyone seriously believe a man called Korzeniowski capable of writing a story called 'Because of the Dollars'?). I have taken that hint and expunged his real name and, on the advice of my present editor, adopted this crisp two-syllable alias. It is intentionally symbolic: a jack is used to hoist a heavy object; he is jack, the object a weighty truth he was too simple to grasp wholly. For consistency I will neither name the country nor the prison in which this diary was written. This will not confuse anyone. Western readers are not unfamiliar with this prison, despite its edited anonymity. Our dungeons are as familiar to students of Eastern European political fortunes as our boarded-up synagogues are to anxiously vocal Western Jews who have never set foot in our country (name-calling is easy at that distance!). One has the impression that any regular reader of the current crop of frenzied memoirs by ex-Bolsheviks ('The man of steel took me on his lap and cooed, "My little sparrowchik"') would have no difficulty at all rinding his way about in a penal colony in Pskov, though he would probably become irretrievably lost in the rather grand Moscow metro or the modern \ arsaw sink works. Even a dispirited and disaffected Party hack like myself is appalled by the general ignorance in the West

  126

  THE PRISON DIARY OF JACK FAUST

  of my country's achievements: sharp new flats have replaced cheesy peasant cottages, to name but one. Progress is progress; one should not hate the jackboot so much that one fails to notice whether it is down at the heel or making great strides. And simply because I was never given a chance to mention these things on television does not make them untrue.