by André Alexis
– If you don’t want money, what do you want?
– There, now that’s more like it. I was beginning to think you weren’t a serious man. This is about so much more than you and your family. This is going to be a close election. You wouldn’t want to jeopardize your party’s chances, would you?
Rundstedt sighed.
– No, he said.
Larry laughed, politely, as if at a particularly dry witticism.
– That’s good, he said. I was beginning to think you were right we didn’t have anything to talk about. You see, the truth is we have quite a few things in common.
– Yeah? Who’s we?
– Now there’s a very intelligent question, and I wish I could answer it, but we need to know a little more about each other first. And first you’ve got an election to win, yeah?
They had come to Smithe Street, stopped at the light, and it suddenly seemed to Rundstedt that he had lost his hold on reality. He was in Vancouver, at the corner of Smithe and Howe, talking to a man who wished to be called “Larry,” a man who had pictures of Rundstedt being used by a woman named Gudrun, if that was her name, a man who did not want money but, rather, electoral success for the Progressive Conservatives.
Really? Where was the sense in all this?
It took no genius to see that if this was not petty blackmail, it was political blackmail. If it was political, it was about Rundstedt’s influence. If it was about influence, then Larry here was looking to get a hand on the rudder, for himself or others. So he, Rundstedt, was being set up. Now, who in the world would seek influence through a minister whose portfolio was so particular: prisons and prison reform?
– You’re East German, aren’t you?
– No, no, I apologize for my accent. I am Estonian.
So, he was at Howe and Smithe talking to an Estonian.
– Where is Estonia? he asked.
– It is in the Soviet Union, Larry answered dryly.
– And what do the Estonians want from me? asked Rundstedt.
Larry turned to him, astounded.
– Nothing, he said. Nothing at all, as far as I know. Ah…you misunderstand me. I am not Estonian any longer.
No, this had gone far enough. Rundstedt stopped mid-stream, so pedestrians had to move around them.
– Who are you, and what do you want? he asked.
Larry smiled sheepishly, self-deprecating.
– I am working for an eastern government, he answered. I would like your cooperation.
– Why should I cooperate with you?
– First, because I have these photographs. They could cause pain to you and your family, and they could cause pain to your Progressive Conservatives. In the second place, I will not ask you to do anything dangerous. Nothing dangerous to you or your family or your party or your country. Let us keep walking. We are in the way. Look, no one is asking you to do something dangerous. You are not that kind of man, okay? But you are a Cabinet minister. You hear all sorts of things. Most of what you hear wouldn’t interest us, but some of what you hear about America would interest us a great deal, perhaps.
– You want me to spy?
The Estonian Larry seemed genuinely hurt.
– No, no. We want you to listen and if what you hear is good for us we will be happy to pay you for it. Why should you spy? All you would do is listen, and we would pay you if you heard. The more you hear, the more we pay. It is very simple.
– It is spying.
– It is listening, and I know how much you have enjoyed working with Gudrun, so maybe you work with her again. This is my proposition: you help us a little and we help you very much. We kill the pictures and we give you money.
– And if I don’t win the election?
As both men suspected: a long shot.
– That, said the Estonian Larry, would be unfortunate. Very bad for the party, but…What do the English say? Man disposes, God supposes? If you lose this one, there is always a next one, yeah?
So there it was: he was invited to spy for a foreign country.
– What do you say? Larry asked as they reached the corner of Nelson.
He could have a political life, the life he had wanted from as far as he could remember, but it would not be his own. He would have to share it with Larry and his masters. Every victory, from now to the end of his days, would be a victory for himself and the GDR, if “Larry” was working for the GDR.
As he walked along Howe, beside the Estonian fellow, Rundstedt looked up at the sky, could not see the mountains, could not see the ocean but felt, for an instant, the weight of Vancouver within him. It was now clear to him he would lose everything. (Vancouver would forever be the anguish within.) He would miss the friendship of his peers. He would miss the expression of shared (or partially shared) ideals that made friendship possible. He would miss power; not the things he had taken for it (the late luncheons in dimly lit steak houses, the journalists waiting on his wit, the pleasure of walking with the powerful…) but, simply, the conviction that what was important to him was as important to his compatriots or could be made so. He would be left with wife, family, home.
Was that so bad?
No, but what were those things without the world that had given them meaning?
He looked over at the Estonian, who was talking on about something or other. The man had recently shaved. The skin of his cheek was pink with, beneath his ear, a red blotch. Fine black hairs stuck up where the razor had missed. A human being, a man with parents and children, perhaps. When Larry turned to look at him, a crooked half-smile on his face, Rundstedt nodded and turned away. It was all he could do to hide his distress.
{44}
ROMANCE
On the afternoon Minister Rundstedt met the Estonian Larry, it was evening in Ottawa and Louise Dylan sat down to supper with Walter Barnes. Things had been going fairly well for months and her good fortune seemed to have somewhat to do with Paul. Given the feelings her departure had aroused, the unpredictable behaviour it had provoked, you would have thought Paul the least likely avenue for good fortune, and yet…
After fighting her for every scrap, concession, and word, Paul had suddenly come around. One day, his lawyer had let it be known that they had removed all obstacles to an equitable distribution of Paul’s holdings, and by “equitable” Paul meant, it seemed, whatever Louise took to be equitable. The change in his attitude was so sudden, unexpected, and detrimental to himself, Louise considered asking for less than she had. She then wondered what kind of trap it was he was trying to spring and, remembering the misery he had put her through, she asked for four-fifths of everything he owned, every asset, thinking this the best way to find out what Paul was after.
And, the following day, Paul’s lawyer, Perry Newman, informed Louise and Mr. Nenas that Paul agreed to whatever Louise thought fair. This was the man who’d refused to speak with her, who had stolen her money, who had flayed her for whatever it was she’d done, yet she was concerned for his state of mind.
– What’s wrong with him? she asked.
Scarcely able to contain his consternation, Perry said
– He’s found God.
– But he’s an atheist, said Louise. How did he find God?
Both men looked at her as if to say, Why would you ask a lawyer that?
– Never mind, she said.
But she lowered her demands. She wanted only what was equitable: the house and the two hundred thousand dollars he’d taken from her. This she was given, months later, without a word of protest. It was odd, after so much conflict, to take the keys from Perry and to walk into what was now her own home.
She did not, at first, like it. She had asked for the house because she thought it a fair exchange for the humiliation he had put her through, because she loved her neighbourhood (Ottawa South) and knew it well, because it was not so far from
the main library where she worked. It was a good home for her, but though Paul had taken the furniture (and donated it to charity), the house still felt as if it were steeped in him.
The man himself seemed to have disappeared. He did not come to collect the scraps he’d left (books, boxes, a radio). He did not call on her to apologize for past behaviour. It seemed he wanted nothing to do with her. But then, out of the blue, Paul visited her on a Sunday. He was dressed simply, but without elegance: black suit, black shoes.
– I hope I’m not disturbing you, he said. Do you mind if we have a few words?
Given the cooperative side he’d lately shown (and her curiosity about his conversion), she felt almost obliged to say
– No.
There was something unlike him in all of it: appearance, demeanour, humour. The Paul she knew would not have dressed so severely, would not have smiled on being invited into his own home, would not have approved of the changes she’d made to the house.
– It looks lovely, said Paul.
As he sat at her kitchen table, he chose his old place, at the head, and rubbed the tabletop with the middle finger of his right hand as he waited for the coffee she made. There was little else to suggest the Paul she had known, but Louise had always found the rubbing, its implied impatience, offensive. She found it offensive on this Sunday too, but she wondered if it had anything to do with impatience. This Paul did not seem at all impatient. Perhaps, he could not help the motion of his finger. Perhaps, he never could. Odd to discover a new context for an old grievance.
– What is it you want, Paul?
He looked away from her.
– I need to tell you something important.
– What is it?
He drank from his coffee. Then
– I have tried to kill you, he said.
Now, what could you say to that?
– I’m glad you didn’t.
– So am I, he said. I have a soul.
– I’m happy for you, she said.
– You don’t understand a word. I tried to kill you, but I couldn’t. I want you to know I don’t hold your behaviour against you. I’ve forgiven you.
– Let’s just get on with our lives, she said. Let’s put all this behind us, okay? I’m sorry for whatever I did to hurt you.
He brought his hand down on the table, making his cup jump, startling her.
– You’re not listening to me. Please listen to me. I could have killed you. I could do it now, but if I did that I would be killing myself, and my life no longer belongs to me.
He drank from his coffee. She did not know this man. The false humility, the sneaking arrogance. To come here with his murderous feelings, expecting what from her exactly? Gratitude?
– Get out, she said.
– I will, he said.
He reached for his coffee, but she took it from his reach. He was momentarily surprised, but he rose from the table and said
– Thank you.
And walked out of what had been their home.
A dramatic exit, but its significance was unclear, as was the purpose of the encounter. Was he threatening her? Letting her know he wished her dead? Forcing her to be confessor to his sins? A mystery. A mystery still, because, from the moment he stepped out of her house, Paul vacated her life.
It was the last time she saw Paul, but it wasn’t the last time she would deal with him. It wasn’t only because she’d found his visit disturbing that Paul lingered. It was also because she had begun her new life in earnest and this new life was played out against the backdrop of the old. In a word, Louise began going out. One might have thought that seeing other men would have occluded Paul further, further buried him beneath an avalanche of new impressions: darker skin, lighter skin, more beautiful hands, longer eyelashes, pale scars in different places. And so it did, but not enough.
Naturally, she did not look for men like Paul. In fact, it displeased her to discover some aspect of a man that was too close to some aspect of Paul: a way of speaking, for instance. But Paul’s ghost was summoned whenever she found herself in the presence of a man with whom she relaxed because, feeling relaxed, she thought of Paul and of all that marriage had taken from her. And so, feeling relaxed, she would tense up again, as if to say to the man with whom she found herself:
– I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to let myself go.
Certainly, from time to time, she desired the solace of sexual intercourse, or thought she did, and so she would, if she felt safe, as opposed to “at ease,” cooperate in her own pleasure. But freedom from Paul had not brought more occasions for loving. It had brought fewer. To be fair, it wasn’t simply a matter of Paul Dylan. His ghost was one of two that haunted her. (Walter’s was the other, but Walter’s presence was inconstant. It wavered in her memory, like a candle by an open window.) And then there was the problem of “going out.” “Going out” was often an excruciating, perverse wager. Principally because, though Fredrika was a precious friend and knew her well, she was a poor matchmaker.
For instance:
One day, Fred announced she thought Louise had found her equilibrium and that it was time she took some “sexual healing.” Louise tepidly allowed herself to be convinced and, not surprisingly, Fred had a man in mind: Ronald Atkins, an accountant with enough energy to, in his own, rather mysterious words, “sustain a colony of anteaters.”
Their first impressions were dreadful. Louise could not understand how a grown man could care so passionately for basketball, while Mr. Atkins could not fathom a mature woman who filled her mind with sludge like Thomas Aquinas or Proust.
– You don’t really read that stuff, right?
he’d asked when, at his prompting, she’d named a few of the writers she admired.
– You’d have to pay me to read Proust again, he said.
– Again? she asked. You’ve read Proust?
– Every friggin’ word.
He shook his head from side to side, as if disappointed.
– Why?
– Cooze, he answered. Any man tells you he reads Proust ’cause he likes it? He’s lying. All that stuff…literature, philosophy…the only reason you read that is you want what her panties are holding. You know?
Yes, she knew.
– Hope you don’t mind hearing the truth, he said. Some people don’t like my being so direct.
– No, not at all, she said.
She regretted having come, regretted having stayed, regretted Fred’s judgment, but there was something amusing about Mr. Atkins. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to prolong the conversation or end it immediately, but curiosity got the better of her.
– What have you read to impress women? she asked.
– Christ, I can barely remember it all. Let’s see…Proust, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, The Man without Qualities, The Brothers Karamazov…jeez, I don’t know what all.
– And did you get the girl?
– Yes, I did. I wouldn’t have kept reading if I hadn’t. When I was at Carleton, if I liked someone I’d find out what she was taking and I’d read one of the books on her course list and then, next time we’d talk, I’d slip in a little bit about Flaubert or whatever, and we’d go from there.
– Tell me about The Brothers Karamazov, she said.
Atkins smiled. He looked at her over the rim of his glasses. This approach of his had been working for years. Or he thought it had. You could see that. But what was it that attracted exactly? His knowledge, his sense of humour, his boyish pretense at “honesty”? Perhaps he’d even come to this very point in a conversation so often he could tell what kind of woman she was by the title she’d asked him to discuss. Why had she chosen The Brothers?
– I don’t remember it all that much, he said. Have you read it recently?
– A few years ago, she answered.
– Oh, well�
�, he said. The way I see it…
There followed a most unnervingly passionate performance. Mr. Atkins lovingly recounted the story. He then discussed the differences among the brothers, expressing his admiration for Ivan, above all, and his loathing for Smerdyakov. Then, as if he could not quite remember the details, he told the story of the Grand Inquisitor. At times, during the monologue, he paused to spit peanut shells to the floor; at times, he stopped to ask if he’d got the details right, or to solicit her opinion. His eyes did not leave hers or, at least, whenever she looked up he was looking at her.
– So? he asked. Did I get it right?
She did not know what to think. It was…interesting that a man should choose this route to her attention. (She thought of peacocks.) It was even, in a way, flattering and, yes, because he seemed so passionate about the book, stimulating. She was certain he could, if she wished, go on talking about Dostoevsky. But it was, finally, disturbing that something for which she had deep respect should be used for such petty ends. It was as if he had read Proust, Flaubert, and Dostoevsky without being touched by the work. No, no one who knew The Brothers Karamazov as Atkins did could have remained untouched by the work, but he was almost monstrously disrespectful of it. He wanted to sleep with her, that’s all. Why bring in Dostoevsky? Atkins was the kind of man who made her wish for plain speaking. Let him ask a clean question
– Would you care to sleep with me?
politely, allow her the time to decide what she wanted, and they could go from there.