by Ali Eteraz
That wasn’t all the hype. Translating “Cheval Blanc” as “White Horse,” I brought up the tavern of the same name in New York City where the poet Dylan Thomas had taken his last drink. I didn’t know a single verse from the guy, but he was among those artists who tended to be feted more for the myth of their persona than for their output, which made it unnecessary to have any familiarity with his work.
The conversation about White Horse Tavern created greater interest in the Cheval Blanc. My approach had been effective. Americans only truly understood the world when it was defined for us in reference to things we already knew. For example, referring to Osama bin Laden with the epithet of Geronimo, or using the sports names Celtics, Mavericks, and Red Wings to refer to military operations in Afghanistan.
We socialized and drank while waiting for the final guest, the new boss, George Gabriel. Soft candles warmed the room. Those that wicked out, Marie-Anne replaced with new flames. I didn’t have George’s cell phone number so had no way of checking if and when he might come. I also couldn’t ask anyone for it in case they turned out to have it. That would confirm to them that they were closer to George than I was.
Marie-Anne went to the stereo and replaced Erik Satie’s soft pianistic sprinkles with Enrico Caruso’s soaring tenor. The music filled the empty time-space between the guests, producing a sense of greater familiarity. I approached Candace Cooper because she had drifted away from the others. Clinking my drink with hers, I asked her how her acting classes were going.
“You remember?”
“I pay attention.”
“It’s not Shakespeare or anything.”
“The opera we are listening to? It’s Macbeth. Adapted by Verdi.”
Candace’s brown eyes flickered. She wiped her hand on her forehead and played with her curls. My eyes turned to the window. An occasional snowflake flitted down the glass and left a web.
I was just about to find someone else to speak to when clutching the seam of her skirt, walking bowlegged, Marie-Anne came over with great concern on her face. She grabbed me by the wrist and waddled with me toward the bathroom. “The flood is here,” she said, looking around to make sure no one heard us, “and Noah doesn’t have an ark.”
“What?”
She raised her eyebrows and gestured between her legs with her chin. “Out of tampons. I can’t find the second box. The bleeding.”
I pulled her into the bathroom and shut the door. One of the effects of her hormonal imbalance was that her menstruation was extremely heavy. On a good day she went through five tampons. I looked at the toilet paper; it was all gone. I rushed to the cupboard. The second box of tampons was empty. I had forgotten to pick up a replacement.
Marie-Anne sat down on the toilet and sobbed. “It will get on my skirt.”
I clenched my fists and knelt down on the cold tile in front of her. I stroked her arms and spoke with resolve, putting a second toilet paper roll in her hand. “I’m going to run to the pharmacy.”
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” I replied. “Just sit tight.”
I locked Marie-Anne in, composed myself, and tried to sneak out the front door of the apartment. I had only made it to the kitchen when Candace came to me with her head tilted to the side, trying to whisper into my ear.
“Something’s wrong with Marie-Anne.”
“You noticed?”
“Just the way she ran out. Is it a woman issue?”
“It is,” I said. “But her issues are my issues too.”
She opened her purse and walked me back to the bathroom. She had two tampons in her hand. “Don’t leave your party.”
I blushed. “Thank you so much.”
“Consider this good karma for when you got me hired.”
With a deep breath I entered the humid bathroom. Marie-Anne was dabbing her eyes with toilet paper and had taken off her shoes. She saw the tampons in my hand.
“My savior.”
“Just your average Southern gentleman.”
“Southerners aren’t average,” she said.
She propped her right foot up on her toes and with a bent arm applied the tampon. I observed the rise of the bones in her feet, like piano keys popping. Long lines with gaps of skin in between. The indentations reminded me of a time Marie-Anne had gotten cornrows, back in college, during volleyball season. She hadn’t been unwell then. The memory of her healthy and spry, resolute like a tree, without sap leaking out of her, brought tears to my eyes. I took the square she had been using and dabbed my eyes with it.
Marie-Anne got up and smoothed her skirt, joyous that there was no stain. I washed my face. One after another we resumed entertaining our guests. They remained oblivious to the effort we put into their seduction.
* * *
The doorbell rang. Once, twice. I turned on the first toll and nodded at Marie-Anne. I wanted her to be the one George Gabriel saw upon entry.
He was a surprisingly tall man, much taller than Marie-Anne, with big wide shoulders, wearing a bespoke gray suit that no longer fit well on account of his expanding gut. He was bald, head full of treasure-map freckles, bushy blond eyebrows, and clean-shaven, though the shadow on the cheeks suggested he had come straight from work. I noticed his eyes, which looked like insects that had been stamped on his face. His overall appearance made me miss my last boss, Tony Blanchard, who, as the first person of color to run a regional Plutus office, wasn’t just the life of the party, but also knew how to dress. Tony had been a legend in every way and had deservedly been promoted to work with the lobbyists in DC where he would never have to worry about turning a profit because in the American capital everyone got paid, especially those like him who helped people get contracts.
Marie-Anne guided George my way. I moved forward and extended my hand. It occurred to me that George had been at work three days already and yet this was the first time I had interacted with him. As we shook hands I angled him into the shade of the Blanc. “A very warm Philadelphia welcome from all of us,” I said with a raised voice. “On a very cold Philadelphia night . . .”
The room turned toward us, expecting some kind of response from George, verbal acknowledgment, hell, a smile. But he only waved and turned away, as if they were easily dismissible.
One by one people returned to their conversations. None of them tried to come over. Marie-Anne and I were the only ones with George. He glanced around and dug his thick-knuckled fingers into a bowl, spilling raisins and cashews and macadamia nuts. I touched Marie-Anne on the small of her back to entice George to say something to her. No luck. He juggled nuts in a palm and popped them into his mouth one at a time. Marie-Anne bit her lower lip and shrugged at me.
“Is this the art museum area?” he asked.
“It is,” Marie-Anne said.
“There’s a restaurant here I like. It’s called Figs. I went there with my wife recently. It’s Middle Eastern. But they call themselves Mediterranean. I don’t think the countries on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean should use that term. It’s misleading. Regardless, the food is exquisite.”
I nodded. “We know Figs.”
I expected George to say something more; but he had moved on. He pointed to the wall with his middle finger, a nut between forefinger and thumb. “That. Interesting painting. I have seen this one. I do believe I have seen it.”
“It’s called The Poet,” Marie-Anne said, running her hand over the image of the upside-down green head taking a cup of tea with a wine bottle near him. “By Chagall.”
“Are you aware that Chagall was a Jew?” George looked at me.
“Yes, I believe his first name was Moishe,” I said. “Russian. Going with his Jewish name was a big deal. Jewish artists in Russia could either hide their roots or express them. He was one who chose to express them.” I said all this in a glib manner, because I was actually insulted by his initial question. There was little about Western cultural history I didn’t know. And I was always updating and revising that kno
wledge. All this technology that came out every few months was developed for people like me. I was a man who ate the West, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“And what do you think about that?” George slid next to me. “Which side do you fall on? Hide or express?”
“Do I look Jewish?”
I had meant it as a joke. But the grim look on George’s face made me pause. I wondered if I should clarify that I wasn’t making a comment about what Jews looked like; rather, I couldn’t be expected to second-guess the fear, the pressure, the persecution that Russian Jews of a particular time and age had been creating art against.
Trying to find a way out of Lake Awkward, I found a life preserver on my bookshelf. I reached forward and touched my copies of Ozick, Chabon, and Roth, with near-ritual piety. “But all kidding aside, in answer to your question, today’s Jewish artists seemed to have followed the route of expression. Children of Chagall, one might call them.”
George Gabriel seemed to find my answer either perfectly adequate or entirely worthless and dropped the line of inquiry. Piqued by the books, he came forward to inspect the bookshelf. The mahogany fixture hung on the wall and had five levels. The bottommost contained a Balinese carnival mask Marie-Anne and I had picked up during our second honeymoon. It was porcelain white and had two faces, one male and one female. The next three levels contained books. And the topmost shelf, far out of casual reach, was empty. George ignored the mask and got lost in reading every last title. Because of his immense height he had to bend and crane in a peculiar way.
Marie-Anne watched George turn away and excused herself to go and open the Blanc. This brought a small cheer from the crowd, and they huddled around the table. George didn’t seem fazed by the other guests. He inspected each and every book, trying to read the tiniest inscription, asking me where I had purchased them, even their prices.
I gave him one-word answers, looking to the party with envy. Here I was, stuck with this boorish inquisitor, while the others were enjoying themselves. I became irritated by his presence. With the way he flicked his hands in his pocket and made the nuts rattle, and the way he poked his fingers around like he had three little erections. I was also annoyed that he had come completely empty-handed. I was even annoyed that judging by his dry clothes it could be surmised that he hadn’t even suffered the ignominy of a distant parking spot. My mind rushed. What kind of name was George Gabriel? Where was he from? What was up with that Jewish question?
It struck me that I had played this hand badly. Had I presented Marie-Anne too blatantly? Had I been too earnest in my welcome? Was it too obvious that I was trying to appeal to him? Maybe George Gabriel had simply seen through my game and now everything was a kind of taunt.
I began wishing I had invited Richard Konigsberg, the man who had brought me into Plutus and otherwise sponsored me through the gauntlets of the profession. He had what I lacked, and what Marie-Anne, as a woman, couldn’t be too blatant about: the authority to command, to instruct, to establish order. “A big swinging dick,” as Marie-Anne put it when describing men with standing.
* * *
It would be George, ultimately, who saved me from my rampant thoughts.
“I see you like your Goethe and your Nietzsche.” He pointed to the complete works of both, taking up the third- and second-highest shelves.
I smiled. Despite the notoriety of the authors, talking about their work was actually the least controversial, least confrontational thing we could do. These two authors were my favorites. They qualified as my intellectual home court. I could talk about them casually, esoterically, academically; probably even make a poem about them. From the start of German romanticism to its end. The earlier antipathy George had inspired seemed to fade. Maybe there was still a way to ingratiate myself to him.
“Gods among men,” I said.
“Agreed,” he said with his first smile since arrival. “And definitely deserving of the elevated place you’ve given them.” He put his hand up in the air and measured the distance of the books from the floor. “They should hover above us mortals. Hover over all the other books in the world.”
George put a hand on my back. It was warm. He kneaded my shoulder. I felt a companionship form between the two of us and the bookshelf. George looked over to a row of idle people leaning against the sofa. He gestured at Mark. “You there. Bring me a glass of the Blanc.”
Mark bowed without so much as a pause and returned holding the wineglass with both hands under the base. George throttled it. He was about to dismiss Mark but caught himself. “Get the host a drink as well.” I wondered when in his life George had reached that moment when he attained total certitude. Were some people simply born with executive force? As the descendent of a subject race, I always feared that authority had to do with genealogy, a kind of historical grooming that took place unseen, maybe an enriching of one’s blood, maybe a kind of spectral psychosexual force field that surrounded you. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it and George did.
I did find a great deal of delight in seeing this sort of docility in Mark. When he had first gotten hired to our team he had completely sidelined Candace and me, refusing to answer our e-mails for unreasonable periods, while taking himself straight to Dinesh’s office to discuss all our ideas as his own. Dinesh started to think that the new employee was simply more talented than the known quantities he used to work with, and appointed him our supervisor. Before long I ended up getting called into Dinesh’s office, where Mark told me the news about the Special Projects assignment. Candace had survived, largely because Mark said that it was good for male morale to have a pretty female to look at.
Mark came back with a bottle of Chimay. He thrust it into my hand and backpedaled. I was disappointed not to get some of the Blanc, but there was nothing I could say.
“Just curious,” George said after sloshing and gargling his first sip and letting out a satisfied moan. “What’s that? Up on the empty shelf?”
I shrugged. “Nothing?”
“No, there’s something. All the way to the back. Can you not see it? It’s something on a stand.”
I had always thought that was just the dusty shelf in the house, the empty one, the one too far to reach, the one that, when I cleaned, I made a little halfhearted flip of a towel at, and that was that.
I got on my toes and then made a pair of desperate hops. My eyes fell upon something, a small X-shaped wooden stand with something multicolored resting upon it. I waited for George to recognize that I wasn’t tall enough to grasp it; but he didn’t move until I verbally requested his assistance. “Please?”
“Yes, sure,” he said, pretending that he hadn’t noticed my struggle.
He took a long sip from his glass. Then, with a casual sweep, he brought the colored object off the wooden stand and handed it to me.
It was a little palm-sized item, wrapped in a glittery pink cloth cover. I put my beer on the shelf and inspected it. The pouch bore my name in green thread. The stitching reminded me of the way my mother used to identify the inside of my golf uniform back in high school in Alabama. I grew nervous. Since she had passed away, this was my first encounter with something that I knew had touched her hands.
George, gleeful at the thought of a new discovery in someone else’s home, leaned in and blew at the dusty pouch. There was a book inside.
I assisted him by swiping my hand over the cloth. Then, with a deep breath, I put forefinger and middle finger into the pouch and pulled at the book. I hadn’t so much as touched the calligraphic arabesques on the spine when I figured out what it was. And rather than pulling it out, I stuffed it deeper and prepared to launch myself up and put it back on the shelf.
“What is it?” George whispered, lowering his head like a giraffe in search of water.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Just something my mother must have put there the last time she visited.”
“How classic. So what is it?”
“Nothing exciting,” I said. “Just a miniature Koran in
a pouch. She came here for the last time after my dad passed away and before she left us. I guess she had nothing to do but stitch and sew this cover.”
I thought that upon being told that both my parents were dead, George would adopt an attitude of condolence, of reluctance, become a little less excited. But he had no such inclination. He thrust his wine glass into my hand and yanked out the Koran. Then, with his mouth still full of the Blanc, he ruffled the pages with a slide of his thumb. He wiped it on his pants, licked his middle finger, and browsed through a few more pages. His fingers seemed to discover the ribbon bookmark and he flipped toward the end of the volume. “Chapter 74,” he said out loud. “The Hidden Secret.” He looked at me, popped his eyebrows a couple of times, and then went back to skimming. At last he closed the Koran, inspected it, and handed it back. It was in his possession no more than fifteen seconds.
I didn’t know what to say. I avoided George’s gaze. I took back the Koran, slid it into the pouch, and moved to place it back atop the shelf.
As I got on my toes, I heard George chuckle behind me. “You’re putting something higher than Nietzsche?”
“It’s just a decoration.” I came back down and dusted my hands.
“Are you sure it’s not an expression of your residual supremacism?”
I turned into a pillar of salt. “Pardon?”
“I’m just noting,” he said, both hands up, but with a smile on his face, “that without thinking, you put the collected works of Muhammad above the collected works of Nietzsche. A theist over an antitheist. The Prophet of Arabia over the Devil of Bavaria. I’m just asking if that was an expression of some residual supremacism on behalf of the Koran.”
“I didn’t mean anything by putting it where I put it. I just put it.”