by Joan Didion
“ ‘The outlook is not all bright.’ ” Charlotte was reading me the draft of an unfinished Letter from Central America. “ ‘Nor is the outlook all black.’ Paragraph. ‘Nonetheless—’ ”
She broke off.
“That’s where I seem to be blocked.”
“I don’t wonder,” I said.
“What do you mean.”
“ ‘Nevertheless’ what? I mean, Charlotte. If you say ‘the outlook is not all bright’ and then you say ‘nor is the outlook all black,’ then you can’t start the next sentence with ‘nevertheless.’ It can’t possibly mean anything.”
“I didn’t start the next sentence with ‘nevertheless,’ ” Charlotte said. “I started it with ‘nonetheless.’ ”
I said nothing.
“Anyway.” Charlotte folded the pages of her unfinished Letter with a neat vertical crease as children fold their weekly themes. “It’s not just a new sentence. It’s a new paragraph.”
It occurred to me that I had never before had so graphic an illustration of how the consciousness of the human organism is carried in its grammar.
Or the unconsciousness of the human organism.
If the organism under scrutiny is Charlotte.
“In any case,” Charlotte said after a while. “It’ll all fall together when I’m away.”
“You’re going away, then.”
“Of course I’m going away. I mean I don’t live here, do I.”
“When?”
“I’m not quite sure when.”
“Where?”
“I have to see someone.”
I did not ask who.
“Or rather I want to see someone. My husband.”
I did not ask which one.
“But I mean there’s no immediate rush about it. Is there.”
“I think there is, Charlotte.” I was suddenly tired. “As a matter of fact I think it’s imperative that you go very soon.”
“No.” She seemed abruptly agitated. “It is not imperative. At all. He is not dying.”
I sat without speaking awhile.
The tissue around Charlotte’s eyes was reddening but she did not cry.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
“I didn’t mean that it’s imperative you go anywhere in particular,” I said finally. “I don’t care where you go. Go to Caracas, go to Managua. Just get out of here.”
She put on her dark glasses and tried to smile.
“Just leave,” I said.
“I don’t believe I can quite manage this display of hospitality.” There was in Charlotte’s voice an inflection of which she seemed entirely unaware, an inflection I had heard before only in the Garden District of New Orleans. “Here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry, seems about the size of it.”
Here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry.
Mrs. Fayard’s been learning West Texas manners.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
“Charlotte.” I felt as if I were talking to a child. “I’ve told you before, there is trouble here. There is going to be more trouble here. You are going to find yourself in the middle of this trouble which is not your business.”
“I don’t know anything about any trouble. So how could I possibly be in the middle of it.”
“Because Gerardo is.”
She looked at me as if I had mentioned someone she had met a long time before and did not quite remember.
I think I fucked you one Easter.
I think I did that and forgot it.
I think she did forget it.
“In any case I’m not affected,” she said after a while. “Because I’m simply not interested in any causes or issues.”
“Neither is anyone here.”
Charlotte said nothing.
“Charlotte.” I tried again. “What do you think all those people were doing at your dining-room table?”
Charlotte looked at me.
“You were there too,” she said finally.
That was July.
Boca Grande is.
10
I RECALL IT NOW AS A YEAR WHEN WE ACTUALLY HAD “seasons.”
Definite “changes.”
Changes not in the weather but in the caliber of the harmonic tremor.
I am not sure when everyone else realized that Antonio had diverted enough “secret” support from Victor’s army to be finally immune from Victor but I know when I realized it. I realized it the evening Gerardo and Charlotte came back from Progreso and Charlotte began to cry at dinner.
“What upset her?” I said to Gerardo when Charlotte had left the table.
Gerardo was picking the meat from a crab and did not look at me.
“I suppose she didn’t like Progreso,” he said after a while. “I suppose she got tired. A day’s outing. Very tiring.”
“I said what upset her.”
“I suppose she didn’t find Progreso as peaceful as you claim to.” Gerardo placed the crabmeat as he picked it on Charlotte’s plate. “I suppose it’s a special taste.”
“I want to know what upset her out there.”
“M–3’s,” Charlotte said from the doorway.
She had washed her face clean of makeup and she seemed entirely composed.
“I grew up with shotguns but I can’t stand carbines.” She sat down and picked up her napkin. “Why are you staring at me?”
There was a silence.
“Whose carbines?” I said.
Gerardo avoided my eyes. “Grace hasn’t been out to Progreso lately, Charlotte. Grace hasn’t seen—what did you call it? Did you call it ‘the machinery’?”
“I called it the hardware,” Charlotte said.
“She calls it the hardware,” Gerardo said.
“I don’t have cancer of the ear,” I said. “Whose hardware is it?”
“Antonio’s got some of the army with him. Of course.” Gerardo shrugged. The only clear evidence I have of Gerardo’s intelligence is that he has always known how to cut his losses, yield the position, supply the information. Gerardo differs in that respect from Victor. “Actually it wasn’t the guns that upset Charlotte. It was Antonio. Antonio and Carmen. Antonio gave Carmen an M–3 and let her shoot up the place.”
Charlotte picked up her fork and laid it down again.
“You have a rather bizarre idea of a day’s outing,” I said to Gerardo.
“Carmen wasn’t using an M–3,” Charlotte said. She leaned forward slightly and her face was entirely grave. “Antonio was. Carmen was using an M–16.”
Gerardo looked away.
“And they weren’t shooting up ‘the place,’ Gerardo. I mean what is ‘the place.’ ‘The place’ is some rusted Cats and five flamingoes. They were only shooting the crates.”
Something about Charlotte’s querulous precision seemed extreme, and unnatural.
“What crates?” I said.
Charlotte looked at me.
“The crates of vaccine,” she said. “The Lederle vaccine.”
Charlotte never changed her expression.
“Unopened crates of Lederle vaccine,” she said. “Cholera. It ran on the street when they shot up the crates.”
I looked at her for a long time.
“It ran on the street,” she repeated. “If you call that a street.”
I think I loved Charlotte in that moment as a parent loves the child who has just fallen from a bicycle, met a pervert, lost a prize, come up in any way against the hardness of the world.
I think I was also angry at her, again like a parent, furious that she hadn’t known better, furious that she had been wrong.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
What had Charlotte been wrong about exactly.
Who was wrong here.
I looked away from her.
“Why are you doing this with Antonio?” I said to Gerardo.
“I’m not ‘doing’ it, it’s done. It’s in progress. Underway. Its own momentum now.”
“I know that,” I said. “I want to k
now why you did it.”
“It was something to do,” Gerardo said.
“I happen to know about M–16’s because Marin had one when she went to Utah,” Charlotte said. Charlotte always referred to the day Marin hijacked the L–1011 and burned it on the Bonneville Salt Flats as “when Marin went to Utah,” as if it had been a tour of National Parks. Charlotte was not looking at me any more. “Or so they told me.”
“Get her out before it happens,” I said to Gerardo.
“The M–16 is supposed to be the ‘ideal’ submachine gun,” Charlotte said. “Leonard called it ideal. They didn’t.”
“Tell me when it’s time,” I said to Gerardo.
“You always hear it,” Gerardo said. “Eat that crab, Charlotte. I picked that crab for you.”
I always did hear it.
I heard it because I listened.
Charlotte heard even more than I heard but Charlotte seemed not to listen.
Charlotte seemed not to see.
Charlotte had stood out there in the bamboo at Progreso and let the sun burn her face and heard Antonio call her norteamericana cunt and heard Carmen Arrellano call her la bonne bourgeoise and heard the carbine fire shatter the vials of clear American vaccine and still she did not listen. Charlotte had watched the clear American vaccine shimmer on the boulevards of Progreso and still she did not see.
That was August.
Boca Grande is.
Boca Grande was.
Boca Grande shall be.
11
LAND OF CONTRASTS.
Economic fulcrum of the Americas.
By the day in early September when Leonard Douglas finally arrived in Boca Grande it was clear that Victor was only playing for time. His couriers shuttled between Boca Grande and Geneva carrying heavy pouches. Military passes had been canceled. All day long Radio Boca Grande broadcast a single message, delivered by two voices, one male, one female, each threatening terrorists and saboteurs with death. It was clear that Victor would be leaving soon to convalesce in Bariloche. El Presidente had in fact already left to convalesce in Bariloche, omitting even the traditional move in which he first spends a week confined to the palace with a respiratory infection complicated by extreme exhaustion. Ardis Bradley had discovered a pressing need to take her children to Boston for school interviews. Tuck Bradley had stayed on but had twenty seats reserved on every flight leaving Boca Grande for any destination. I had two.
One for me.
One for Charlotte.
In other words.
All the markers were on the board.
“I’m Charlotte Douglas’s husband,” Leonard Douglas said to me.
“I know you are,” I said to Leonard Douglas.
I knew that he had arrived in Boca Grande on one of the two or three flights that had managed to land the day before. He had gone directly to the Caribe and after a while he and Charlotte had been observed walking on the Avenida del Mar. It had been assumed that they were walking to her apartment but instead they had turned onto Calle 11 and entered the birth control clinic.
Victor had told me that.
Tuck Bradley had also told me that.
Gerardo had told me that he had no interest in Charlotte Douglas’s former life.
“I wouldn’t call yesterday her ‘former life’ exactly,” I had said to Gerardo.
Gerardo had told me that I had too literal a mind.
Charlotte had told me nothing at all.
I got Leonard Douglas a drink.
He sat in my living room and drank it.
“I met your husband once,” he said finally.
“He’s dead now.”
“I know that.”
I got him another drink.
He put it on the table untouched.
“In Bogotá,” he said. “I met him in Bogotá.”
“When was that?”
“Before he died.”
“Not after, then.”
The acerbity in my voice went unnoticed.
“We had some business.”
Leonard Douglas seemed absorbed in some contemplation of either Bogotá or Edgar, I did not know which.
I recall being uneasy.
“Where’s Charlotte?” I said abruptly. “Did Charlotte send you to see me?”
“No.” Leonard Douglas picked up the drink and put it down again. “I liked him. Your husband. I think he liked me. He gave me an emerald. As I was leaving. He gave me an emerald to take to Charlotte.”
The square emerald.
The big square emerald Charlotte wore in place of a wedding ring.
The big square emerald Leonard had brought her from wherever he was when he met the man who financed the Tupamaros.
Bogotá.
Quito.
Charlotte had no idea whether it was Bogotá or Quito.
It was Bogotá.
I had no idea.
I prided myself on listening and seeing and I had never even heard or seen that Edgar played the same games Gerardo played.
Leonard Douglas was watching me.
“Why did you tell me that,” I said finally.
“I wanted you to know that I understand what’s going on here.”
“Why.”
“Because,” Leonard Douglas said, “I want you to get Charlotte out.”
“It could be smooth,” I said after a while. I did not believe that it would be smooth. “Sometimes it’s smooth.”
“It’s not going to be smooth,” Leonard Douglas said.
“How do you know.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m involved here.”
“Nobody said you were.”
“I want you to believe me.” Leonard Douglas seemed to tense as he spoke. “I have no interest here.”
“I believe you.”
As a matter of fact I did believe him.
I also believed him about Edgar.
I still do.
It still disturbs me and I still believe him.
“It’s not going to be smooth,” he repeated. “I’m not involved but I hear things.”
I said nothing.
“I hear there’s more outside hardware than there’s supposed to be. You know what I mean.”
I did know what he meant.
He meant that someone had outplayed Gerardo and Antonio.
He meant that the guerrilleros were not going to just serve their purpose and get gunned down on the fourth day by an insurgent army under Antonio’s command.
He meant that for a certain number of days or weeks no one at all could be certain of knowing the right people in Boca Grande.
“So get her out,” he said finally.
“Why don’t you take her out?”
“She won’t go with me.”
“Why not?”
Leonard Douglas sat for a while and ran his finger around the rim of his glass.
“She remembers everything,” he said after a while.
And then: “You met Warren Bogart.”
It was a question.
“Once. In New Orleans. He said he was dying.”
“Yes. Well.” Leonard Douglas looked suddenly exhausted. “He was right.”
12
“WHO WAS THERE,” CHARLOTTE HAD SAID WHEN LEONARD told her that Warren Bogart was dead.
As he sat in my living room and told me what she had said he kept repeating the words as if he could not believe them: who was there.
He remembered that she said it at the corner of Avenida del Mar and Calle 11.
He had come to Boca Grande to tell her three things.
He had come to tell her that certain of his former clients had put him in touch with someone in the underground who had put him in touch with Marin.
He had come to tell her to get out of Boca Grande.
He had come to tell her that he had buried Warren Bogart a few days before in New Orleans.
He told her none of these things until they were out of the Caribe and walking on the Avenida del Mar where they coul
d not be heard.
He told her that Marin was living with six other people in a semi-detached house in the industrial section of Buffalo and she said nothing at all. She began to cry and she kept on walking and she said nothing at all. He told her to get out of Boca Grande and she said nothing at all. She folded and refolded the piece of paper he had given her with the number of the post-office box in Buffalo and she said nothing at all. He told her that he had buried Warren Bogart and she walked until they reached the corner of Avenida del Mar and Calle 11 and as they turned the corner onto Calle 11 she said something. He remembered that he had just realized that she was walking not idly but toward a specific destination and then she said something.
She said who was there.
“I told you. He was alone. He’d been in and out of Ochsner for a month and this time he just walked out without anybody knowing and he was alone on the street. And he collapsed. And they took him to Long Memorial and they put him on life-support but he never woke up.”
“Who was there.”
“Charlotte. No one was there. He had a letter in his coat with the number on California Street. Your number and Porter’s number. They tried to get Porter and they couldn’t. Porter was in New York. They tried to get you and they got me. He was on the machine for the rest of the day and he died before I got there.”
“Who was there,” Charlotte repeated. “When he was buried. You said you buried him. Who came.”
“I got hold of Porter. Porter came.”
She seemed to be waiting for something.
“A couple of people I didn’t know.”
She still seemed to be waiting for something.
“And six FBI.”
She had stopped in front of a building on Calle 11 and still she seemed to be waiting.
“It was fine, Charlotte. He didn’t want anyone there. The letter said so. The letter they found in his coat. All he wanted was nobody there and somebody singing ‘Didn’t I Ramble.’ ”
Charlotte said nothing.
The letter in Warren Bogart’s coat also had a message for Charlotte and Marin but Leonard did not mention the message.
“He carried it in his coat. The letter.” Leonard shook his head. “He did. Didn’t he.”