“I did. Did you?” Jaycee asks. “We knew what was being done to Charlie every step of the way. It was a hep C study. Helena and I injected him—”
“—with some kind of super-nutrients to strengthen his liver.”
“Yes,” Jaycee says, almost in a whisper. “And we also injected him with the hepatitis virus to test the efficacy of the supplements. Make no mistake: We knew exactly what we were doing. We watched him die when the supplements did nothing to repair the damage we—me and your wife—had caused. That’s when I decided to learn all I could about chimpanzees, when I vowed that I’d never let another primate suffer the same fate if I could help it.”
“You’re lying. Helena would never have done that. And she certainly wouldn’t have lied to me about it.”
I know precisely what David is thinking because I feel exactly the same way: How could it have been a lie? How could it have been a lie when I confessed my story to you while warm in your arms after the accident that first night? How could it have been a lie when you comforted me afterward and then never left me? What kind of creature could maintain for so long a fable so fundamental to the creation of us and to the myth of me? You looked at me our first night together and thought you saw grief—an emotion you know too well. But what you really observed was my guilt, and you were too innocent to know the difference.
“All I can tell you is that we thought we could save him. We thought—”
“How dare you!” David shouts. “You come into my house trying to manipulate me. And when that doesn’t work, you try to throw Helena under the bus so I’ll take your case?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Of course it is. You can get out now.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew. Helena was my friend and she learned from this mistake and so did I. We can’t correct that one, but we can save this life. I know we can.”
“You don’t care who you hurt, do you?”
“I didn’t come here to cause you more pain. I came because you understand what it’s like to lose someone you love.”
“Get the hell out of my house!” Even as David yells these words—his defense of me—I know that the seeds of doubt have been sown in his mind. He’s too good a lawyer not to consider Jaycee’s story a real possibility.
But Jaycee has no choice and nothing left to say. She grabs her coat and walks out.
I tried a hundred different times at the beginning to tell you the truth, David. I wanted you to know what I’d done, because I wanted your absolution. But each time my courage and then my words were lost to me. As time went on, it just became easier to hide the truth than to tell it. And then, when the end for me became visible, when I had to face the reality not only of my own mortality, but of my weaknesses as well, I was too scared. I just couldn’t do it.
Instead, I sought out Jaycee. That was not only a quest for understanding, but candidly also for the punishment I believed I deserved. Every interaction I observed between Jaycee and Cindy was another reminder of the life I’d taken and the debt that I still owed.
I can’t tell you, even at this late date, all the reasons I decided to take the job with Vartag knowing the true nature of my responsibilities in her study. Much of what I’d confessed to you during that first evening was true. It was an honor to be selected to work with her and she really made you believe in her work—that we could end human and non-human liver diseases within our generation. My name would forever be associated with the research for those cures. Charlie wouldn’t perish because I would be able to save him. I could defeat death.
I also was young and stupid and gullible and arrogant and Vartag was a supreme manipulator.
Even as I hear them now, all these excuses seem remarkably hollow and disingenuous.
These excuses are now my bequest. And instead of being able to offer you some type of motivation to take Jaycee’s case and perhaps save Cindy, my deception has only served to drive you light-years away from my last significant contribution to anything that really mattered.
How many times am I supposed to fail and be forced to witness the impact of my failures upon others? When will I have seen enough?
15
Simon hasn’t aged well since I last saw him four years ago. The stroke and its aftermath—and perhaps something more—clearly have taken a toll on him. Simon had been a confident, energetic man with clear blue eyes that were a window to his mischievousness—“a real charmer,” as my grandmother used to say. The eyes were a little dulled now, the speech slightly slurred, and the animation dampened by the metal of his wheelchair.
Still, Simon is genuinely enthusiastic to see David. They sit next to each other at a long black marble table in a huge boardroom that has more fine furniture and even finer art than I ever owned.
The table is now loaded with several towering stacks of documents. Simon signs the final page of the final document with a gold fountain pen and then places the document on top of a stack of others with an umph of finality.
“Done?” Simon asks hopefully.
David nods. “Done.”
Simon wheels his chair away from the table to a shoulder-high armoire set against the wall. He opens the doors to the armoire, revealing a modern refrigerated wine cabinet. A bottle of red wine has already been decanted and sits waiting for him. Simon carefully takes the bottle and decanter and wheels them both over to the table.
David examines the wine label, which is yellow with age and written in French by hand. The only thing David recognizes from the bottle is the date. “Am I reading this correctly? Nineteen thirty-five?”
“Yes. The year I was born. Two years before my family and I left this city and Europe just ahead of those Nazi pricks.”
“I didn’t know you were originally from Paris.”
“Yes. That’s why I’ve always been waiting to come back. I will die here. I’m home.” Simon closes his eyes and inhales, as if he’s trying to capture every last nuance of the city he clearly loves before it is too late. I know that feeling.
Finally, Simon opens his eyes. “Would you be kind enough to get the glasses from the cabinet?”
“Of course.” David retrieves the items and returns them to the table.
“Very few of these bottles left. It was my father’s last and greatest vintage.”
“I’m very fortunate then,” David says.
Simon waves him off. “It is only a bottle of wine. The only loyalty it knows is to the one who drinks it. But it’s the very least I could do to show you my appreciation for coming over here to take care of this. I know the timing is inconvenient.” Simon squeezes the sides of his wheelchair. “But it was not possible this time for me to come to you.”
“Well, it’s a lot of business.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Max will take most of that credit for himself. I can’t do anything about that. But I’ve impressed upon him and others on the executive committee the importance of your involvement.”
Simon swirls the maroon-colored wine in the decanter. “I also want you to know again how deeply sorry I am about Helena.”
“Thank you.”
“She was very kind to spend time with an old fart like me while you were at the office working on my trial. I enjoyed our time together.”
“As did she. She said you were a gentleman and a class act—the highest compliment she ever bestowed. I think you probably were the only client that she genuinely liked.”
Simon beams at this and for a moment he is transformed into the man I knew before the stroke. It fades too soon as his face collapses in the frustration of his thoughts. “I don’t understand it.”
“What’s that?”
“Here I am, sitting in this chair three-quarters of a century gone. I’ve done what I’m going to do. I will leave nothing behind me but money to be fought over. And yet your wife, half my age, is the one taken.”
“I don’t try to figure those things out anymore. I’ve learned that I’m not equipped for it.”
&nbs
p; Simon nods in sympathy. “She certainly did love her animals, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did.”
“You have them all now?”
“Actually, it’s more the other way around.”
Simon pours a small splash of wine into his glass, swirls, and inhales. “Not just yet. Don’t rush,” he says to himself and pours the wine back into the decanter. “Will you be able to see any of Paris this trip? I’d love the company.”
David shakes his head. “Being back here…” David doesn’t finish his sentence. I believe he doesn’t know how.
“Of course. I forgot. You honeymooned with Helena here, yes?”
“And proposed, too.”
“It was insensitive of me to ask you to come.”
“Please don’t think that. It just shows me most clearly that I’ve still got a lot of work to do.” David taps his chest by his heart for emphasis.
Simon appears to be lost in some memory. “There was so much of Paris and the countryside I intended to show her. Did Helena ever tell you about L’Île aux Chiens?”
“It doesn’t sound familiar.”
“That was number one on our list, but I guess…”
“No, we never did make it back here.”
Simon smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I’m so stupid sometimes,” he says as he pushes a small button on a control panel that I now see is hidden in the side of the table. A young woman immediately enters the room with a pad and pen in hand. “Oui, Monsieur Dulac?”
Simon and his assistant speak briefly in French, and then she departs.
“Forgive me. I should’ve thought of this sooner.” Simon is suddenly more excited than he’s been the entire afternoon. “My driver will take us. We’ll bring the carafe. This stubborn wine will be ready by the time we get there.”
“But I—” David begins to protest.
“Do this thing with me. It would allow me to feel like I’ve made good on at least one promise, you understand?”
“Not really. You owe us nothing.”
“There are different types of promises and they impose different types of debts. Please, David.” Simon’s voice is almost child-like in the request.
“Is it that important to you?”
“It is. Yes, it is.”
In a small suburb north of Paris, Simon’s Maybach limousine pulls up to a gothic wrought-iron gate set within a long ivy-covered stone wall.
Simon’s driver, a large man who probably doubles as his bodyguard, quickly exits the car and removes a wheelchair from the trunk. While the driver helps Simon from the car, David wraps himself in his topcoat and wanders up to the gate.
The gate is a work of art. Interlocking angels of different shapes and sizes create a celestial panorama.
Just beyond the gate lies what appears to be a garden, now fallow in winter, and an old brick building.
David is still studying the gate’s artistry when Simon, with a picnic basket and blanket in his lap, wheels past him. Simon pushes his chair against the gate, which opens easily on well-oiled hinges, and then he passes through, signaling David to follow. David jogs to catch up to him.
An elderly groundskeeper in an even older woolen coat and cap emerges from the brick building carrying a shovel. He is the only other person in sight. The groundskeeper tips his cap to David and Simon and walks down a path through the garden. David and Simon follow a few yards behind.
From a crest in the path, I can see that it continues through a cemetery at least an acre in size. There are rows of gravestones and small statues like the ones found in cemeteries almost anywhere in the world—including mine.
This cemetery, however, is different. All the statues are dogs.
David walks over to the first few gravestones as I look over his shoulder. The inscriptions on the gravestones are in French, but I can make some of them out. They are all about dogs loved and lost.
“L’Île aux Chiens?” David asks. “What does it mean?”
“Land of Dogs,” Simon answers. “That is what we call it here. It is also known as le Cimetière des Chiens.”
Many of the stones are very old with embedded images or aged black-and-white photos of the dog who lies beneath. A few of the graves have fresh flowers. A favorite food dish lies on one grave, and an unopened can of tennis balls presented with a bright red bow sits on another. Everywhere there are signs that someone once cared or still does.
David runs his fingers over the cut grooves in the gravestone nearest to him. His finger traces the image of the broad square face of a Newfoundland. The lengthy inscription on the stone is in French.
“What does it say?” David asks Simon.
“It’s a quotation. Sir Walter Scott, I believe. ‘I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives, and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?’ ”
“Trust me,” David says quietly. “Grief doesn’t quite work that way.”
Simon leads David toward a bench under a large tree at the far end of the cemetery. When they are settled, Simon carefully pours two glasses from the carafe and hands one to David. David sips the wine and I can see from the look on his face that it must be extraordinary. Simon is obviously pleased.
“To say it is the best I’ve ever tasted does not do justice,” David says.
Simon smiles at the compliment. “Now, tell me what you taste?”
David takes another sip and closes his eyes. “Let’s see. Chocolate… honey… smoke… peppercorns, I think.” Then David shoots Simon a confused look.
“You taste something else?”
“Yes. But I can’t place it. It’s not so much a flavor as a…”
“Feeling?” Simon offers.
“Do you taste it, too?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I didn’t really know for many years. I couldn’t find it in any other wine and my father, who crafted it in secret, was long gone. And then after my stroke I tasted a glass of this wine again and suddenly it came to me.”
“What’s that?”
“This wine was grown in the soil of the year 1935. We had survived one world war and we were better for it. The winds were beginning to carry the hint of a greater darkness from another land. We were afraid, but we were confident. We would be able to overcome grief and whatever came to our borders. There would always be another summer, more light, a chance to seek and obtain forgiveness, another love. I think what you taste is the flavor of hope.”
Simon takes a soup bowl out of the picnic basket. He fills the bowl with a long splash of the precious wine and then hands the dish to David. “Put it on the ground over by that tree.” Simon points to a large elm.
“Say again?”
Simon laughs at the confused look on David’s face. “Just do it. You’ll see.”
David shrugs and complies.
By the time David returns to his seat, I’m amazed to see that feral cats have emerged from every direction of the cemetery—out of the bushes, over the stone wall, from behind trees and gravestones. The cats, oblivious to David’s presence, head toward the bowl. Soon five are jockeying for position to get a few laps of the wine. Others quickly join around the bowl.
David watches in amazement. “Only in Paris. Cats that like wine.”
Simon shakes his head. “I don’t think they drink it because they enjoy fermented grapes. I think they taste the feeling that you do. But who’s to say for sure?”
As one cat is satiated, it moves off to make room for others. Soon the wine is gone, but the cats don’t leave. Instead, they silently take up positions on the various graves and statues. Some clean themselves; others stretch and bask in the winter sun. The cats have no fear of David or Simon and act as if they’ve come here to rest on these graves for generations.
“So much life among the dead
,” Simon says quietly.
“Here, perhaps, but not everywhere.”
Simon shakes his head. “Don’t make my mistakes.”
“Which mistakes are those?”
“Pessimism, cynicism, fear. They will only lead you to a very small life.”
I can still remember my last dinner with Simon. He was talking about losing his parents to the ravages of their despair following World War II.
“I was raised to believe that God speaks in the language of sacrifice,” he told me. “You are expected to sacrifice because it is the measure of the depth of your belief. That is the God of Abraham and Isaac, of Job and of David.”
“And now?” I’d asked him.
“I’ve seen too much sacrifice to believe that God is behind all of it, and I’ve seen sacrifice that has no indicia of the hand of God at all. Loss is not always part of some greater plan explainable by reference to the actions of a divine being with a divine purpose.”
“That’s not too comforting, is it?”
“No. Sometimes events that leave us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance—a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late—and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we ever are able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation. Sacrifice today has become a crutch of the persecuted, an excuse to remain powerless. I can’t imagine that this is how God would communicate to his children.”
“So then how does God speak?” I challenged him.
“I know it is presumptuous of me, but I think God’s language is juxtaposition. His—or her—voice is heard most clearly in the reconciliation of the contradictions and contrasts of life. God lives in the peaks and the valleys, the jarring transitions, not in the mundane, the safe, the smooth, or the repetitive. But that means there must be at least a certain amount of dissonance. Without dissonance, there is no need of belief, and without belief there surely is no God.”
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