Red Heaven

by Nicolas Rothwell

  ‘Corey, is it really you?’ I said: ‘I didn’t realise you still worked for Great-Aunt Serghiana.’

  ‘I don’t—otherwise I’m sure I’d have been pistol-whipped until I agreed to fetch you from the airport. No: I work for that woman now, over there. He pointed to the tall woman standing next to Serghiana.

  ‘Recognise her? You don’t? You should. That’s M.L.—Mary Lou Exner—she runs Central Pictures. I’m an EP with them now.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘Executive producer. And sometimes I even help those two liaise.’

  ‘I heard Great-Aunt Serghiana had stepped away from that world.’

  ‘You heard wrong. Although it looked that way at first, it’s true: and we both thought it was curtains for her, didn’t we, after that showdown, the last time we were together: but she’s still got her interests—she’s still a player. Always will be—it’s in her nature. Ask him—I’m sure he knows the inside story.’

  And he pointed to Professor Leo, who was making his way over to us.

  ‘Young friend,’ he said to me in an enthusiastic way: ‘How tall you’ve grown: taller than me, though that’s not saying anything: I heard you were going to join us—what news from your world?’

  ‘It’s spring break.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A pagan festival,’ said Lipsett.

  ‘You told me you’d call and visit me in Zürich when you came this way,’ Professor Leo said to me: ‘You promised. You never do. Even so—what an experience: what drama we’ve been treated to! We’re all in shock, I think: it’s the first time any of us have seen those pictures—the impact’s still sinking in.’

  ‘Explain to him,’ said Lipsett: ‘He’s only just arrived, he missed the screening, he always misses everything.’

  ‘The evening’s great event!’ said Professor Leo, gesturing in expansive fashion: ‘What we’re all here for: it was pure horror: something to stop the heart: a documentary—from the States—the first on the fall of Saigon—the end of South Vietnam; the coming of the communists: tanks in the streets. That sent a shiver down my spine. But you’d have seen it all already, wouldn’t you, at your school there?’

  ‘Not really, no. I’ve been studying—my exams are coming up. Important ones. I’m not a natural scholar the way you are.’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ said Professor Leo, proudly: ‘But you must have seen some of it, surely—those haunting images that we just watched: the storming of the presidential palace, the lines of people begging to be evacuated, the helicopters on the aircraft carrier flight deck being pitched into the sea. I still can’t quite believe what we were seeing. At last it’s come—the end. The end of the war that seemed to go on forever. Another colonial domino tumbling down.’

  ‘I’m not that torn up about it,’ said Lipsett.

  ‘Naturally not—you wouldn’t have wanted to be sent there yourself and have to flee.’

  ‘Actually I tend to think of you, professor,’ said Lipsett, ‘as the great expert on fleeing communist invaders.’

  I looked at Lipsett, and then at Professor Leo: he seemed uneasy; he paused before answering.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Worrying times, for those of us who chose to change camps. Exciting for you, though, Mr Lipsett—and for all the film people around us here, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s the perfect movie. Fire in the East. The Indochina war—complete at last: the first war that was ever fought on television—for television, in fact: a war of appearances and images, a war decided by them: no? You could almost say a war designed for newsreel clips and propaganda films: staged with them in mind.’

  ‘You really think that?’ said Lipsett.

  ‘I do.’

  Lipsett glanced round. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll have to give M.L. a quick run-through of that idea.’

  ‘What idea’s that, Corey?’ said Serghiana, who had come weaving through the room in our direction.

  ‘Nothing, Madame Semyonova,’ he began, but she had turned away from him.

  ‘My child! How long since I’ve laid eyes on you! A year, more than a year. And you’ve arrived so late: did they tell you at the reception that we were waiting for you: the way I always wait for you? Were they helpful?’

  ‘It was a five-star welcome.’

  ‘I want to thank you for coming so far to see me,’ she said then, and reached out towards me, and let the gesture die halfway.

  ‘And I want to thank you for inviting me, Great-Aunt Serghiana,’ I replied.

  ‘So formal, so correct. You’re here with me now. No need for blandness: for your American persona. Don’t be circumspect and closed up like that. Go back to being what you are—and tell us: first impressions. What strikes you, now you’re back here: how do I seem to you—after such long absence?’

  ‘As magnificent as always.’

  Serghiana stared at me for a second, and frowned. ‘I suppose that’s the right thing to say to some women—when you’ve been flown halfway round the world to see them. Not me, though: I don’t want the well-trained surface—I want the core of you. And what were you three talking about, whispering away in your little splittist group? Why are you looking so anxious, Corey—and what’s that guilty expression on your face—Leo—dear Lyova? Go on, tell me. What’s the secret? I know there’s something—I saw you watching me when I was with M.L. over on the far side of the room.’

  ‘We were talking about the war, of course,’ said Professor Leo: ‘About the drama of the last few weeks. After what we just saw, everyone is.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And saying how cinematic it’s all become.’

  ‘Borrowing my lines again, Lyova. Anyone would think I was the professor and you some novice without a thought or idea to call your own. I was just joking with M.L. and saying that she should have optioned General Giáp.’

  ‘She will,’ said Lipsett, laughing: ‘You can count on it: she options everyone.’

  ‘But it’s not the right comparison, really, is it?’ said Serghiana then: ‘Not if you think the question through. The war was nothing like a well-made film. It might lend itself to another kind of artform, though. Some of the footage looks almost like the backdrop to a piece of modern dance: those plumes of fire exploding in the rice paddies and along the winding rivers—they could be from Merce Cunningham videos.’

  ‘I’m sure they will be, in time,’ said Lipsett.

  ‘The truth is, Vietnam was always something else, wasn’t it,’ Serghiana went on, ignoring him: ‘Something more classical. It was war as opera: it was Wagner—the purest of Wagnerian subjects: a perfect Twilight of the Gods!’

  ‘Your favourite theme,’ said a voice from behind her.

  A tall man in a dark suit had joined us. Two women followed him: soon there was a new audience listening to Serghiana.

  ‘Not at all,’ she said: ‘It’s my nightmare. When empires begin to weaken, the costs rise high.’

  ‘But that hasn’t proved true of your country, has it, Serghiana Ismailovna?’ said the tall man: ‘Rather the opposite—revolution and the collapse of empire brought strength to the East: made the Soviet Union a superpower.’

  Serghiana turned her eyes on him. ‘My country?’ she echoed.

  ‘Forgive me—what a thoughtless thing to say. Let me cover myself in apologies—and try to be more diplomatic. We’ll say instead a country that you used to think of as a homeland; one you still see more clearly than any of us.’

  Lipsett and I had moved away from the centre of the room. ‘Who’s that man talking,’ I whispered to him: ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Lipsett: ‘Unless you’ve got a thing for high technology. His company makes guidance systems. He’s Austrian: very rich; he likes the arts, he’s produced films, he’s on boards, he sponsors festivals—he knows Semyonova—and M.L.’s got some project going with him.’

&
nbsp; ‘But what’s his name?’

  ‘Amborn—Urs Amborn.’

  ‘I have seen him before, then. In different company, a long time ago. He’s very good at apologies—and when he says hello he bows and clicks his heels.’

  ‘You jetsetter! That sounds like him. Quiet now.’

  ‘So you believe we’re at a turning point,’ Amborn was saying: ‘We’ve reached the end of the West’s golden years?’

  ‘Were they really so golden?’ said Serghiana: ‘Was that what we were living through—a golden age? And now the masters in the Kremlin have the upper hand, you think we’re doomed to go through dark and fearful times? But that’s not the way things are in our world. Nothing’s so clear-cut, is it? It’s never rise and fall in perfect balance. Empires are always growing and always faltering and changing into their successors, there’s no noon and no midnight for them, their condition’s always in between.’

  ‘It wasn’t clear-cut enough for you, Saigon collapsing—it wasn’t absolute defeat?’

  ‘Of course it was,’ said Serghiana. ‘For now: Moscow will take everything. They’ll turn Vietnam into their client. All Indochina’s lost. That’s plain already. But it won’t be that way forever.’

  ‘A consoling thought,’ said Amborn, and he gave a little laugh: ‘But if I look from the western point of view, I see this as a reverse, a setback, and that’s all: the end of a futile war we had to watch and live with for too long—much too long. It’s a chapter’s end, something we could all see coming long ago. We became impatient for it, we even wanted it.’

  ‘And now what?’ said Serghiana: ‘You celebrate it—celebrate a disaster: because you made it your cause—defeat’s your victory. Look around you—look at all of us—we’re treating this as though it was some far-off contest staged for our amusement: nothing crucial, nothing that affects us: a game played on our television screens. Failure presents no problem. And that’s the West in a single sentence, isn’t it? Your modern civilisation: your permissive paradise. It goes from disaster to disaster—it survives by accident. The truth is, we’re watching the last convulsions of our dark century. You see that, don’t you? The years flow by: the era limps towards its close.’

  ‘I understand you, Serghiana Ismailovna,’ Amborn said: ‘But I have to disagree with you.’

  ‘A brave man,’ murmured Lipsett.

  ‘Indeed?’ said Serghiana, and she looked at Amborn.

  ‘I must. In fact I think the exact opposite. I think the West’s at its strongest when it seems weakest. We can afford to be weak. We can afford to sell our enemies the rope they want to hang us with: that’s what we always do. And still we prevail. Nothing does us any lasting damage: the only adversary we’d ever have to fear is one that steals our own beliefs—that imitates us so perfectly it becomes us in its turn.’

  ‘And that enemy will appear at its appointed hour,’ said Serghiana: ‘You can count on it. I should have known you’d think this way. The paradoxes of a capitalist! I should have expected complexity and ambiguity from you: that’s what Western Europe’s become—the homeland of subtleties. And you’re something like its crown prince, Amborn—aren’t you: the lord of contradictions: Wagnerian in your tastes—Wagnerian in your acts.’

  ‘A compliment and a reproach at once.’

  ‘And both intended—in the kindest sense.’

  ‘But can you really think you stand apart from us?’ said Amborn then, in a calm, poised way: ‘Do you forget? You made a decision to join us. You chose to be part of us. You’re much more a westerner than those of us who were born western. Once your world was Leningrad and Moscow: today—California and the valleys of the Engadine.’

  ‘The choice I made is always with me,’ said Serghiana: ‘Can you doubt it? I have the taste of exile in my mouth. Every day and every night.’

  ‘I think you were wise to choose as you did,’ said Amborn: ‘And brave, too, and principled. It was our great gain when you changed sides and left that world behind.’

  Serghiana fell quiet and stared back at him. By now everyone in the room was listening to this exchange.

  ‘Is that what you think?’ she said, and she held up one hand and snapped her fingers: ‘That it happened—just like that? A simple change of sides? It’s not so easily done. Those of us who went from East to West can’t go back. We’re stranded here—but we haven’t found a home. Nothing like it. We live in limbo; we’re like flotsam—defined by a single act—defined forever.’

  ‘But we don’t think of you that way,’ said Amborn: ‘Not at all. We think of you as a friend—our dear friend. As if we’d always known you and been close to you.’

  ‘Truthfully? Even though I don’t see the world the way you see it—one side light and one side dark.’

  ‘You don’t believe you went from darkness into light,’ said Amborn: ‘From controlled to free? Why go over, then? Why? Why did you break with them?’

  ‘It was a gesture,’ she said: ‘The moment needed it. It was asked of me: life demanded it: I gave it—but I already knew then what I know now. East, West—at the deepest level there’s no difference. They reflect each other, they summon up each other, they give each other life. It’s the old interplay of opposites. You know that light’s nothing without darkness; you know goodness needs its shadow.’

  ‘And you think those are the forces that rule over us?’

  ‘I do. I see them very clearly—as energies—distant, set high above us, far beyond our knowledge or capacity to frame and understand them—shifting, changing constantly, expressing themselves through us and our lives—and we, poor creatures, we have no awareness of them: we trace out our paths through time and experience, we make up our tales of love and hate—we play out our parts on a great chessboard where we can’t even see the moves.’

  ‘So sombre, Serghiana Ismailovna,’ said Amborn: ‘So bleak.’

  ‘So abstract,’ said Lipsett in a whisper into my ear.

  ‘Another of these verbal jousts between her and Amborn,’ said Professor Leo in a low voice: ‘They never end well. Come with me, young friend—we should talk.’

  ‘Should we?’ I said to him: ‘Why? What about? We never have before.’

  ‘It’s quieter over there, in the alcove.’

  I followed him across the salon. We stood at a bay window, and looked out across the dark valley.

  ‘Now,’ he said, and looked at me in an earnest way: ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘Why are you trying to be so friendly?’

  ‘I’m concerned, of course,’ he said: ‘Madame Serghiana’s concerned as well. That’s why she brought you here: so you two could have a proper talk. She used to say you’d do well at all your schools, you’d be self-sufficient, she was sure of you—you’d live up to her expectations. But she gets reports. She worries. What’s the way ahead for you now? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t even know if you have any idea yourself.’

  I stood still beside him and stared out. ‘She can ask me, then,’ I said.

  ‘It might be easier if you tell me: then I can explain your ideas to her beforehand. Prepare her. Give her a sense of how things stand with you: how you see the world.’

  ‘I don’t need a go-between,’ I said. ‘I’m not afraid of her.’

  ‘Maybe you should be, at least a little. You think she’s your flesh and blood? She’s not. She supports you out of the goodness of her heart. Maybe you should have a story ready for her. Show her you have a goal to aim at. A program, a timetable, even. Have it all clear inside your head. What interests you. What fulfils you. Where you mean to live once you’ve reached adulthood.’

  ‘Should I already know the answers to all those questions?’

  ‘Of course you should. Can’t you say where you feel most at home in the world? Don’t you have a sense of where you belong?’

  ‘What a thing to ask him!’ said a voice from just behind us: ‘No one worth knowing would be able to give you a straightforward answer to that.’

  I t
urned. There, standing near me, was the man with the pensive face who had been at Professor Leo’s side when I first came in. He looked me in the eye.

  ‘Take what I’m saying to heart,’ he said then: ‘Be open to the whole world, not just one small corner of it. Don’t chain yourself down. The free spirit, the individual without ties or shackles, the man who belongs everywhere and nowhere—that’s the ideal for our time—that’s what you should strive to be.’

  ‘Is this talk we’re having somehow your business?’ said Professor Leo to him: ‘Did Madame Serghiana ask you to interrupt us?’

  ‘I’m sure she’d be intrigued to know what you were just saying about her,’ said the stranger.

  He smiled at Professor Leo, and the smile had an edge to it. He turned to me. ‘I know Daru,’ he said. ‘He told me I’d see you here. And he sends his greetings.’

  ‘Are you a diplomat?’ I asked him.

  ‘The opposite,’ he said, and laughed.

  ‘If you’re wondering where you’ve seen his face,’ said Professor Leo, ‘that’s because he’s famous, in a secondary kind of way. You’d have watched his reports. You’d know his name: he’s Delaunay.’

  ‘The war correspondent Delaunay,’ said the stranger firmly: ‘But that time’s gone. I write screenplays now—for your great-aunt. The one leads quite well into the other.’

  ‘Some might say there’s very little difference,’ said Professor Leo.

  ‘How come you know Stephane?’ I asked him.

  ‘You don’t believe me? You want documentary proof? We grew up alongside each other, in Saigon: we were like brothers. We went to the same lycée. We played together every afternoon in the embassy grounds. We used to ride our bicycles down Rue Catinat, and explore all through the parks, and play hide-and-seek in the folds of the banyan trees.’

  ‘A colonial idyll,’ said Professor Leo.

  ‘Didn’t you ever have a childhood?’ said Delaunay to him: ‘Were you always old and grey and critical?’

  ‘And you stayed there and became a correspondent?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice emphatic: ‘No—I didn’t stay. That’s the whole point. That’s why I’m telling you this. I was expelled from my paradise: I had to find my way back.’