The New Republic

by Lionel Shriver

  Ridiculous. Reflections off the fountain, weird night, definitely too much cabernet. Edgar moved his highball glass sternly out of his own reach. He scowled intently into the monograph, even when he detected out of the corner of his eye that one of those pillows had been rearranged.

  “Notice how slyly Henry co-opts you.”

  Edgar’s eyes shot up. The space over the pillows had grown milky, opaque; he could no longer make out the pattern on the drapes behind them.

  “It’s not easy to get people to feel sorry for you because you’ve shouldered forty million quid,” a teasingly familiar voice continued. “The lad’s resourceful, don’t you agree?”

  The echo, and there was one, didn’t seem to reverberate off the hall’s arched ceiling so much as under the crown of Edgar’s skull. But if this was merely the voice of his own thoughts, Edgar didn’t pronounce his Ts so precisely, nor elide his Rs so aristocratically. While he often used slang like C-note or ten-spot, Edgar wasn’t in the habit of pretentiously tossing off British colloquialisms like quid, even in his head.

  “Though he can be a bit obvious,” the baritone reverberated. “By plying the newcomer with wine and confidences, Henry protects his delectable wife from the stranger’s depredations. Eddie puts a hand on her knee now, and he’s betrayed his trusting and tragically well-heeled new chum.”

  The milky cloud over the pillows had solidified somewhat. If Edgar concentrated, he could detect the birds-of-paradise stitched on the vast cream kimono from the upstairs closet. Smoke rose above the ivory expanse, exuding the faint aroma of a fine Cuban cigar.

  “So Henry’s obvious,” said Edgar, recalling Nicola’s explanation for why a certain reporter preferred his Yankee employers. “Like Americans.”

  “Took offense at that, did you Eddie? Quite the patriot.”

  “Don’t call me Eddie.”

  At last a face cohered above the kimono. It was a clever face, an animated face. Edgar couldn’t quite pin it down, fix the image, its planes forever flickering like butterflies in sunlight. It was the kind of face that never photographed well; a snapshot froze the animation, stabbed the monarchs to pressboard. Still, even in the study’s unflattering portrait, the face was big. Big, big, big.

  “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about this hostility of yours.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be hostile?” Edgar charged. “I’m supposed to be covering a terrorist insurgency, and all anybody in Barba wants to talk about is you.”

  “Never fear. You’re right on top of the story, Eddie.”

  “How would you like it if I called you Barry?”

  “A few have tried,” said Barrington dryly, tapping his cigar ash into the fountain. “But names are queer; you can’t call people anything you fancy. Some names won’t stick.”

  Of course, Barrington was right. Barry simply wasn’t Barrington’s name.

  “I was trying to warn you,” said Barrington tolerantly. “You’ve your eye on Nicola. Respectable taste, if not especially original. But you’re already falling into the friend-of-the-family trap.”

  “What was I supposed to say?” Edgar grumbled. “No, I won’t come to dinner, I don’t want to get too pally with your husband in case I slip my hand up your dress? Besides, you fell into the friend-of-the-family trap big-time. You didn’t find it too restrictive.”

  “You and I aren’t quite peas in a pod.”

  “So everyone seems intent on telling me.”

  “You’d feel bad!” Barrington scoffed. “I can’t roger Henry’s wife, he’s my friend!”

  “Typical, from what I’ve heard—” Edgar retrieved his highball glass—“that you’d think loyalty is for suckers.”

  Barrington tsked. “Lotta calories in that Noah’s Mill, Eddie. Watch yourself.”

  “Fuck you.” Glaring, Edgar drained the glass.

  “Ooh,” Barrington purred. “Scary.”

  “Scarier than you. You’re not even real.”

  “I’d say that puts me at a considerable advantage.”

  It did.

  “I did all the hard work for you, Eddie.” Barrington piddled his fingers into the pool. “You should have seen those two lovebirds when they first came here. It was sickening. Never took their bloody eyes off each other. Always holding hands, if you can credit it. And they’d crafted some cutesy private goo-goo language that was unendurable.”

  “You took care of that.”

  “Entirely. Now she’s ripe enough to drop to hand. You simply have to keep from tripping over those scruples of yours. Worse than marbles on the stairs.”

  “What makes you think I’m such a choir boy?”

  “You’ve got it written all over your earnest, well-meaning face. Gawd,” said Barrington. “And you’re supposed to be my replacement.”

  “I’ve served my time as a degenerate!”

  “At Yardley,” Barrington reminded him. “You’re thirty-seven. And still clinging to public school pranks to prove how naughty you are. Even then, you merely followed Falconer’s lead. What have you done since? Snorted the odd line of coke. I couldn’t name a solicitor who hasn’t. You’ve not even taken a swing at a chap since you were twenty-nine. I know your sort. Your idea of chancing your arm is to skip out on your Visa minimum for a month and have to pay the late-fee. But when was the last time you did something wrong? You think you’re irreverent, caustic—slick, downtown, and better-not-cross-me. In truth, you’re an easily injured former fat boy looking for love.” Barrington’s mini-bio was breezy and paternalistically affectionate.

  Cheeks stinging from Saddler’s geeky portrait, Edgar tried a different tack. “If I haven’t betrayed every friend within arm’s reach or ‘rogered’ all their wives, what’s so shameful about decency?”

  “I wouldn’t waste any shame on it. You used up your lifetime’s quota of shame by the time you were fourteen. But as for decency? It’s a matter of taste. Decency has never much engaged me.”

  “I don’t see morality as an optional leisure activity, like water skiing.”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret, Eddie.” Barrington rolled into an intimate loll. “Since you’re so keen on getting people to like you. Remember inversion? Benevolence of any description bellies up like a top-heavy bath toy. Righteousness flips to sanctimony, the good to the goody-goody. Virtue, Eddie, is not very attractive.”

  “Yeah, well neither are complete pricks.”

  Barrington’s laughter boomed through the hall. “Life would be so much simpler if that were so.”

  Edgar dragged himself upright. The blood drained from his head, and the room swam. “You’ll think I’m a stick in the mud, but it’s four a.m. and I’m going to bed. I’d appreciate it if before you hit the sack, or whatever it is you people do who aren’t really there, you blew out the lanterns. And stop using the pool as an ashtray, would you?”

  “Eddie, Eddie,” Barrington called at Edgar’s back. “You’re disappointing me.”

  “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

  “Your curiosity,” Barrington goaded. “Where’d it go?”

  “At this point, I don’t give two shits what happened to you,” said Edgar defiantly.

  “There are more wonders in this world than my whereabouts. Scratch beneath the surface, Eddie. Why are there rubber gloves in the tower?”

  “Something warped, I assume,” Edgar said aloofly. “None of my business.”

  “You need more business,” Barrington cooed. “Why don’t you talk to Verdade?”

  “I’ve tried,” said Edgar sullenly. “Can’t get past the flacks.”

  “O Creme runs a small, grotty office. Anything you say—anything salient—will get back to Tomás. I’d advise you to feed his ego, but that would be like plying the winner of a pie-eating contest with an apple tart.”

  While Edgar was reluctant to solicit a nonentity’s counsel, an interview with Verdade would yield mucho brownie points at the Barking Rat, and it wouldn’t do any harm to hear Saddler out. Warily, he
asked, “What else can I do besides suck up to the guy?”

  “Play on his insecurities instead,” Barrington purred. “Tomás has more than a few. Announce that the National Record is planning to scrap its Barban bureau in a matter of weeks. You believe that your editor is making a tragic mistake, but it’s out of your hands unless Verdade makes a convincing case that the SOB is still alive and kicking.”

  “So I threaten to pull up stakes. Why should Verdade get bent out of shape?”

  “You’re not quite clued up about journalism yet, are you, Eddie?” Barrington chided, as if trying to get Dorothy to notice her shoes. “You have the power. You create the world, Eddie, and that’s what makes a journalist an artist. Verdade merely influences the course of events in Barba. You control events on paper, in comparison to which reality is mere bagatelle. You may seem to need Verdade for now, but verbose demagogues are common as dirt; you can always plug another petty tyrant into your copy instead. By contrast, Verdade desperately needs you. If the headlines don’t imply that he’s important—he isn’t. Don’t ever forget, Eddie, who calls the shots, who keeps the most dangerous arsenal at his disposal. You. And one of the most considerable of those weapons is your neglect.”

  “I don’t leave call-backs,” Edgar sorted out haltingly. “I say, I’ll call him. That is, ‘when I can find the time.’ Then I—don’t call him. For days.”

  “At which point, he’ll ring you.” Barrington beamed, as if one of his least promising students was finally catching up with the rest of the class. “And when you get your interview, ask Verdade—just for me. Why hasn’t the SOB claimed a single atrocity since April? Has he gone soft on us, is he a poofter? While you’re at it, you might ask yourself the same question.”

  Edgar was no longer having any of it. “Bye,” he said coolly, marching from the atrium and up the stairs with as minimal an alcoholic weave as he could muster.

  Edgar refused to feel nuts. He’d merely been visited by a Frankensteinian assemblage of walking, talking gossip. Still, Edgar wished Abrab’s phantom weren’t so fucking rude. Former fat boy looking for love, indeed. Edgar slammed the bedroom door. And locked it.

  Chapter 17

  Playing Hard to Get with a British Accent

  WITH A PRETENSE of casualness whose theater was for his own benefit, Edgar rummaged through Barrington’s closet the next morning. There it was, the ivory kimono embroidered with birds-of-paradise, roughly where he remembered the garment hanging before. Yet the satin was crumpled. When Edgar brushed an ashy smudge on the front panel, the gray flecks came off easily, as if fresh.

  Edgar snorted, and chose a shirt. He’d taken to pinching Barrington’s ludicrous wardrobe with regularity. The oversize shirts had a pleasantly parodic, Charlie Chaplin flap about them; Nicola could wear them as dresses. Just then the image came unbidden, Nicola sidling to the round, black bath in this smashing rayon print, the short sleeves reaching her tiny wrists. “Please, Bear,” he implored aloud. “Don’t torture me.”

  No response. His lordship must sleep during the day. Edgar resorted to his own jeans. Likewise he was obliged to leave the magnificent black leather riding boots, natty wingtips, and luminous Italian cordovans where they lay. Alas, they were size-fourteen, reminding Edgar yet again that he couldn’t fill Barrington’s shoes.

  Downstairs, he found the lanterns extinguished, the paraffin depleted but not spent. The pillows were scattered, on both sides of the pool. Despite the circulation of the fountain, in patches the water had developed a filthy skim.

  “Pig,” Edgar muttered, and took his coffee up to the study to immerse himself once again in Barban politics.

  A dozen national self-determinations later he couldn’t help but wonder whether this journo gig was so far proving any more stimulating than corporate law. Anyway, you could bet none of those lightweights at the Rat bothered to slog through the likes of Ansel P. Henwood. Clearly you could wing this beat by memorizing the last five most recent SOB atrocities and the names of a few victims. But while rote, up-to-date recitation seemed to pass for insight with this crowd, Edgar was determined to distinguish himself as a cut above. As he underlined another turgid passage about rates of legal versus illegal Barban immigration, the word earnest came tauntingly to mind.

  In truth, he was dodging a certain phone call. Anything to do with O Creme de Barbear made him anxious, tempted to procrastinate. Though he didn’t like to think of himself as prim and moralistic, much less violence-averse, there was something tainted about these SOB shills, something unsavory that felt, irrationally, contagious.

  Fidgeting, he forced himself to dial. He tried to sound hurried, perfunctory and abrupt, which wasn’t a strain. His eagerness to get off the phone with the haughty, self-impressed twit who ran interference for Tomás Verdade was genuine enough.

  “No, I’d really prefer he didn’t ring back later,” Edgar concluded, clipping his consonants crisply. “Things are moving fast on this end, and I may have to be closing down the entire bureau tout de suite. It’s possible that the idea for this interview is quite past its sell-by. With no bombs bursting in air for months, your Mr. Verdade is passé. The SOB has turned out rather a damp squib, I’m afraid. Let’s leave it that I’ll get back to him, shall we?” Edgar hung up first.

  And laughed. The bureau—what “bureau”? And where’d he pick up “damp squib”? Brit-speak. That’s when Edgar realized that he’d conducted the whole exchange in an Earl Grey accent.

  As a reward for getting that distasteful task dispatched, Edgar took a break from Henwood, tucked his laptop under his arm, and scooted up the circular staircase to the tower.

  Seated at the schoolboy desk, as ever he was unnervingly nagged by the hotel stationery stacked on its corner, as well as by the curious pipe contraption and rubber gloves lurking in the drawers. Attempting to turn a blind eye to this detritus of a bygone resident’s life, he began another ritual letter to Angela that would never be posted. Indeed, “Dear Angela” had already evolved into a “Dear Diary” format, and was really just an excuse for teaching himself to touch-type. Hunt-and-peck seemed unprofessional, and Edgar was attached to a black-and-white film noir vision of a hot story coming in, his fingers flying at the keyboard in a blurred, blind fury.

  It was magic. The flak had left messages, eight of them, in a supercilious voice that grew whiny, then pleading, at length obsequious. By the last message the silken-toned Verdade himself called, saying that he was “at the National Record’s disposal.” Maybe Saddler was right, that for a journalist open arms were not nearly so effective as a turned back. Edgar phoned his editor with the good news.

  Guy answered with a gruff, get-to-the-point, “Wallasek,” that always made Edgar feel like a pest.

  “Guy, Kellogg here. Listen, a great opportunity’s come up. I’ve got Tomás Verdade to agree to an interview.”

  “So?” said Wallasek flatly. (The editor had grown chilly since his probationary stringer filed the Saddler piece, which had insufficiently inflated the beloved Barrington’s mystique. Whatever happened to my reporter, Wallasek had snarled in their last call, it wasn’t ordinary.)

  “I hear tell it can be as hard to get at Verdade as J. D. Salinger,” Edgar spieled, having expected the profile to sell itself. “Most hacks here have rarely got a foot in his door. Even Saddler.” Christ, he thought, I’m turning into one more sycophantic schmuck.

  “You know why you can’t usually get at him?” Wallasek returned. “Because he’s giving other interviews. Which translates into hundreds of features on Verdade already.”

  “Maybe in Le Monde,” Edgar argued. “The Record hasn’t run a profile for over a year. I figured this was the time to make my move. With the SOB dormant, he’s less in demand.”

  “He’s available because there’s no peg,” said Wallasek impatiently. “Besides, on paper Verdade is a wet noodle. It’s on camera that he’s spellbinding. Gross, maybe, but when he ogles soulfully into the lens, women wet themselves. In print, he’s bor-
ring.”

  “Leave it to me. I’ve read some of those interviews. Nobody challenges the guy. They let him get away with murder—literally. I’m thinking, tough questions, hard-hitting, right? Don’t let him spout propaganda, weasel out from under. Force him to face what the SOB campaign has cost innocent people. Make him uncomfortable.”

  “Good luck!” Wallasek jeered. “I’ll look at what you come up with, but no promises. And Kellogg? Don’t burn your bridges.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Some incident goes down, you’re gonna need that man to talk to you—when there is a peg. You make him mad, you’re not gonna get another appointment. In which case, I would be personally put out.”

  Ah. Hanging up, Edgar grasped why all the interviews he’d dug up on the Internet had been so infuriatingly polite. Never mind Verdade’s gate-keeping for the SOB. For a correspondent’s purposes, Verdade controlled an even more vital resource: access to himself. Despite Saddler’s alluring prattle about who-really-needs-whom and how journalists “have the power,” no reporter could competently cover Barba without Verdade, which meant tiptoeing in print to keep O Creme de Barbear’s president on-side. So Edgar was permanently snookered. He wanted to excoriate the guy, but to preserve a capacity to excoriate him in the future Edgar was obliged to make nice.

  Grabbing his microcassette recorder, Edgar bustled out the door, wondering what it would take for Wallasek to be glad to hear from him. He lunged into the Saab, tuned the radio to the World Service, and prayed desperately that something, somewhere, would blow up.

  Chapter 18

  Couscous and Balaclava

  THE HEADQUARTERS OF O Creme de Barbear was located in the heart of Terra do Cão (literally, “Dog Land”) above the Creamie gift shop on the ground floor, into whose gaily bunted window Edgar peered before heading for the upstairs’ side entrance. He could see why Roland Ordway was a regular customer. Any healthily warped young lad would be tempted by “I’m an SOB” gimme caps, ceramic ashtrays brightly glazed with bullets and detonators, and those classy gold AK-47 tie pins like the one the barman wore at the Rat. But Edgar wasn’t about to interview o presidente clutching a Tomás Verdade coffee mug.