by Belva Plain
“Have you any idea where you’re going?” asked Ilse, when they had been wandering for half an hour past stone walls and curlicued iron gates.
He was aware of her impatience with this whim of his. Perhaps it was a foolish whim, and perhaps it wasn’t. An unanswered question was still bothering him, so he replied with deliberate firmness, “I know very well where I’m going. The village was named in one of the newspapers.”
They drove through more narrowing, more winding, hushed, and shaded avenues, through the fragrance of orange and lemon trees, past more walls and gates and glimpses of great houses far beyond the gates.
“This must be it,” Paul said at last.
Four or five cars were parked along the road. People were clustered at the gate, on which an enormous padlock had been fastened, trying to peer up the driveway.
“Sightseers,” Paul commented as he got out of the car.
“Like us,” sniffed Ilse.
A man was arguing in broken Italian with another man, apparently the gatekeeper, who was shouting from the portico of a small stone house that stood just within the fence.
“No, no, nobody goes in, I tell you. You can argue all day. You don’t go in.”
“Come,” said Paul, “we’ll drive on.”
Some yards farther down the road he stopped again and got out.
“Paul, this is really silly,” Ilse complained.
He made no answer, because he had barely heard her. An idea had seized him with an explosion of white light in his head. He remembered now what he had wanted to remember.… And jumping again from the car, he walked over to the fence. It was built of narrow, graceful black iron posts an arm’s width apart; eight feet high, it was tipped with gilded spearheads and lined on the inner side with a thick variegated shrubbery, scarlet hibiscus, old rhododendrons, long-needled pines, all to screen the property from the road.
Along this barrier he walked slowly, looking for a keyhole space to see through. Ilse followed. They went on for a hundred yards or more. The property was enormous and endless. Suddenly Paul turned around.
“Wait a minute. I’m just going back to the car for the umbrella.”
“The umbrella!” The sun was blazing in the afternoon sky. “Paul, what on earth do you want with an umbrella?”
He knew. When he came back on the run with it, and still on fire with the idea that had seized him a few minutes before, he climbed up on a stone, making himself as tall as he could, and, poking the umbrella through the fence, managed to part a crevice in the foliage. It was enough to give him a glimpse of the grounds.
“Lawns,” he muttered to himself. “You can’t even see the house. Just lawns.”
“Of course. What did you expect, a chicken farm?” Ilse demanded.
He didn’t know what he expected, but he knew what he hoped. And he moved down along the fence for another few yards and then repeated the action. He kept trying. At the fourth attempt he drew in his breath. Here among the bushes were willows, young and supple, more easily pushed aside to afford a better view. So he stood and stared and then cried out.
“Yes, yes. This must be it. Come look, Ilse. Here, I’ll hold the umbrella. Peek in.”
“Oh, yes, it’s lovely. Worth all the trouble,” she admitted. “Beautiful creatures, aren’t they? So proud, the way they hold their necks up. And the pond’s like glass. Would you call it a small lake or a large pond? Blue glass. But is this what you were looking for?”
“Swans. It was at Meg’s house. She said that Tim had gone with Jordaine to this place on Lake Garda that was famous for swans.”
“What does that prove? Does it prove a connection? You don’t suppose, do you, that this is the only estate that has a pond with some swans on it?”
“She said it was a hobby, that he had flocks of them,” Paul argued stubbornly. “There must be fifty in there. I don’t think many people would have that many. Three or four pairs, perhaps, that’s all.”
“Well, now that you’ve seen them,” Ilse said doubtfully, “what next?”
“Nothing. But let me take one more look.”
He had just climbed out when a young boy, no older than ten, came walking down the road along the ditch.
“Signor,” he called, “you can’t climb in there. It’s not allowed.”
“I was just looking at the swans. Isn’t that all right?”
“You’re not supposed to look. All the crowds should stay away, my father says.”
“Oh? And who’s your father?”
“The gatekeeper. That’s where I live, in the house by the gate.”
“So you must know everybody who comes to visit. Mr. Martillini’s friends.”
“Of course. He has important friends. From all over the world. Speak many languages. We know them all.”
“Really? Do you know Mr.”—and Paul sought a name out of the air—“Mr. Applegate from England?”
The child shook his head, and then, visibly remembering something, he sobered. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
Paul was not going to let go. His heart was pounding. The swans. The face in the newspaper. The dark, sardonic face.
He took a coin from his pocket. “This is for candy, for you. Now tell me, do you know Mr. Powers? Tim? Timothy?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Martillini’s good friend, the one with yellow hair. He stays a long time, sometimes two weeks at Christmas. Last year he gave me a dog, a real hunting dog. He—” The boy stopped, clapping his hand over his mouth. His eyes went wide, appalled at what he had done. “Oh, oh, I told you a name!”
Paul laid a hand on his shoulder. “I hardly heard it. I’ve forgotten already. Listen, go home and don’t think about it a minute. Nobody will ever know.”
They walked slowly back to the car. Paul’s white explosion had settled now into gray ashes. His heart, quieted, lay like a stone.
He spoke grimly. “Well, Ilse, what do you think now?”
“I’m remembering that night at dinner in Jerusalem. Your young cousin has come a long way.” It was as if the information they had just received were almost too heavy to carry. They rode some miles on the way back before Paul spoke again.
“I can understand the agitation at home about Vietnam. I can even understand how someone like Tim can be part of that violence. But this horror, I can’t comprehend.”
“Easy,” said Ilse. “It’s revolution. You disrupt whatever you can. Wherever there’s a fire, as there is now in America over Vietnam, you pour gasoline on it. That’s the idea, to destabilize governments, to weaken them until they topple. We in Israel have known that all along. The rest of the world has still to find it out. I hate to be a prophet of doom, but I predict that the seventies are going to show us all a thing or two about terrorism.”
“All right, I see the picture. What gets me is, why Meg’s son? Why Tim?”
Ilse shrugged. “Who knows? Why this spoiled son of wealth, this Martillini?”
“Also known as Jordaine and God knows how many other names. And the kids,” Paul asked, “the kids who rioted all through Europe and the ones who are rioting at home now, what about them?”
“Some of them are just as cool and tough as Martillini. The rest—oh, some are pure, misguided idealists, and a lot are just unstable and unhappy, looking for some cause that will make life worthwhile.”
“A dismal picture,” Paul muttered.
Iris is frantic. We haven’t heard from Steve.
“Not entirely. They’re not going to break up American or European society. I give them ten years, maybe twenty. By the nineties, at least, I think the tide of world revolution will have played itself out. I hope.”
“But it will get worse before it gets better, you think.”
“Things usually do. When you look back at history, you see that.” Ilse paused, then reached over and laid her hand over his hand that was on the wheel. “Paul, I’m going home now.”
He looked straight ahead. “Yes, I know.”
“I’m so
rry, but I have to.”
He swallowed hard. What they said about the proverbial lump in the throat was true. “I’m going home too. I’ve been away long enough.”
When he looked over at her, he found that she couldn’t face him, but was looking out in the other direction.
“When?” he asked.
“Next week.” It was almost a question.
“Good enough, since you must.” And he was thinking, It would have been better if I hadn’t seen you again at all.
“Maybe there’s some music on the radio,” she said.
Obediently, he turned the dial, and an orchestra from Switzerland obliged with the overtures from William Tell, The Merry Widow, Gaieté Parisienne, and more bright, weightless music, as if the orchestra had known how much they needed a cover under which to hide their sadness.
They were both to leave from the airport in Milan on the same day. There was little packing to do except for the crating of the paintings that Paul had acquired while he was here. The servants had begun to crate them, but somebody had dropped one, breaking the frame, and Paul, to whom a painting was always more precious than the crown jewels, had decided to do the rest of them himself. It was while lifting a large oil—a seascape, or more accurately, a lakescape of a fishing boat in early-morning fog—that he felt a stab of the most excruciating pain in his chest. The young servant caught the painting as Paul, grasping his chest, sat down on the floor.
Ilse, who had been watching, ran to him, crying for brandy. She made Paul drink, got him onto a sofa, and made him lie down while she took his pulse. In a few minutes the pain had gone, and Paul sat up with a feeling of enormous relief and also of embarrassment. He’d “made a scene.” He’d been “conspicuous.”
“Now, what the hell could that have been?” he demanded. “Something I ate, I suppose.”
“Not likely,” Ilse said. She had a serious expression. “I want you to see a doctor.”
“I am seeing a doctor. Right now, in front of me.”
“Very funny. I’m taking you to Milan this afternoon to a doctor.”
“Now, look here. I’m perfectly all right, as you can perfectly well see. It’s all over and I feel fine.”
“Yes, and you felt fine twenty minutes ago too, didn’t you?”
“No, I admit, it was a wretched feeling, but it’s gone, and there are these pictures to pack and—”
She interrupted him. “Giorgio will pack them. He’ll be very careful not to drop them, while you and I go to Milan, Now, get up and don’t argue with me.”
In a way, embarrassing as it was, it felt good to be ordered around by someone who cared. That was one thing about the single life that he had been living so long; one forgot how it felt to be cared for.
So it was that they went to Milan and saw a doctor. How Ilse managed to get an appointment, he didn’t ask and never found out.
He was examined, X-rayed, cardiographed, and lectured to. After the examination Ilse sat in the office with Paul and the doctor, who, after the very thorough examination, turned rather vague.
“One gets older.… The heart gets weaker, inevitably. You fooled me.… You don’t look your age at all, but still …”
“I strained myself lifting pictures,” Paul explained.
“Ah, yes, well, one must accommodate time. Don’t go doing strenuous things anymore. Really not. I’ll give you some medicine, and when you get home, you will of course see your internist. Be sure to have regular checkups. But you know that, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I know,” said Paul, feeling the whole business to be unnecessary foolishness.
“I have longevity in my family,” he assured Ilse on the ride back to the villa. “My grandmother, who went through the Civil War and lost everything, still managed to live until she was almost ninety.”
“I’ll bet she didn’t lift crates, though.”
Paul smiled to imagine the elegant Angelique, with her ruby-ringed fingers, lifting much of anything.
“I’ll be good,” he promised. “I’ll see a doctor when I get back. I’ll write and tell you all about it.”
“You needn’t write,” Ilse said.
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Because I’m going back with you.”
“Traveling back with me? I don’t need a nurse on the plane, for God’s sake. I’m not sick, Ilse.”
“All right, I’ll make myself clear. It has nothing to do with what happened this afternoon. I’ve changed my mind, that’s all. I’m going back with you to stay. You’d better buy a collar and leash for Lou, so I can walk with him in Central Park.”
20
It was good to be home. If anyone had ever told Paul that he, with all his need for quiet spaces and long green vistas, would actually savor New York in the summer, he would not have believed it. The city spread itself now before his eyes as if he had never seen it before. There were new office buildings throughout midtown, along with pocket parks, pleasant innovations where people could sit outdoors on a bench to eat a noontime sandwich or read the newspaper under a freshly planted ginkgo tree. The European custom of sidewalk dining under an awning had taken hold too, as if people had made up their minds at last to enjoy the city even in a muggy July.
Katie, forewarned, had taken the dustcovers off the furniture, stocked the pantry, polished the beautiful old apartment, and decorated it with flowers. At the office Paul’s room was as undisturbed as if he had never been away. The ficus in the corner had added inches, but the stern eyes in his grandfather’s portrait still followed him around the room as they had done when he, a neophyte just out of college, had first come to work for the firm and uphold the family’s name.
The younger partners came crowding in to greet him. “We knew you’d be coming back. You couldn’t leave us,” they told him. And Paul, pleased with the welcome, answered, “I guess you’d have to shoot me to keep me away.”
He had, however, no intention of going back on the old schedule. The time for it had passed, and he recognized that. Besides, he wanted to spend time with Ilse, who, she said, was still trying to decide whether to retire completely or to reopen some sort of practice in New York. Two or three mornings in the office would be enough.
He was feeling fine. Naturally, he went to see his doctor, and would have done so even if Ilse had not insisted. He was, after all, no fool, he told her. The episode in Italy could not be entirely disregarded. After another cardiogram had been taken, it turned out that he had indeed had a heart attack, a very slight one, the doctor assured him, and added that people had been known to live for thirty years after one like it.
Well, he knew he wasn’t going to have thirty more years, he said; could he possibly expect another ten, perhaps?
“Perfectly possible,” the doctor told him. “Continue your medicine, live sensibly, and carry the nitroglycerin with you just in case.”
“You see,” Paul said to Ilse when they came out into an unexpectedly cool and breezy morning, “we’ll have some good times yet.”
“I never doubted it,” she replied. She tucked her arm through his, and they walked on down Madison Avenue. “There’s a new gallery, I see. American primitives. Shall we take a look?”
Yes, it was good after all to be home.
Yet it was not a pure and simple good.… He had been back for three weeks; he knew what he should be doing and that he should have done it before now. It was a thing that he wanted to do and at the same time dreaded doing. Looking out of the library window one afternoon, he saw Ilse coming from the park with Lou on a leash. He saw a party of Japanese tourists in a long line, like schoolchildren following their leader to the Metropolitan Museum. He saw two young women in summer dresses pushing their high English perambulators. What had all these to do with the reason, the real, true reason, why he had come home in such a hurry?
“I must see Theo,” he said abruptly when Ilse came in.
He expected a cogent argument from her as to why he should not, but she said only, �
��If it will ease your mind, do it.”
He sat in Theo’s office waiting for the last patient to leave. This office was light-years away from the one where he had first known Theo Stern. It was properly professional, functional, and sunny. The furnishings were of good quality, but nothing cried out: Money! The paintings that had adorned the previous reception room had been replaced by well-hung photographs taken with an artist’s eye: sand dunes; goldenrod against a rail fence; a red-haired young girl sitting on the grass with her knees drawn up to her chin.
The receptionist had been following Paul’s glances. “They’re lovely, aren’t they? The doctor’s taken up photography. These are all his.”
The girl with the flaming hair must be the daughter, Paul was thinking, when Theo appeared in the doorway.
“Admiring my work?” he asked as they shook hands.
“Yes, very much. And I’m admiring you too. You’re looking great.”
“So they tell me. Work always did agree with me, and I’m thankful to be getting plenty of it, though in my field it’s too often a tragedy for the patient. And you? How are you?”
“Well, thank you.”
“And is Italy as marvelous as ever?”
“Yes. But I came to hear about you. You have troubles, you wrote.”
Now that he was here, Paul wanted not to prolong the friendly courtesies but to get to the point. A sense of urgency propelled him.
“Well, then, come inside.”
The consulting room, too, had been changed. Gone were the Impressionists in their gilded frames and gone from underfoot was the precious Oriental. All that was left of the former splendor was the massive desk.
“Don’t fend me off,” Paul began. “I need to know.”
“All right, here it is. Steve’s still gone. There’s not a trace of him. There’s nothing. We’re a house in mourning. Iris is—What can I tell you? Like any mother, she—” And Theo’s voice broke.
Paul looked away, thinking, It’s easier perhaps to know that someone is dead rather than lost. To be lost is to drop over the edge of the world. When the dog Lou strayed for two days last year, I couldn’t sleep for thoughts of that soft, helpless thing crushed on the road or wandering somewhere in pain. And he’s only a dog.