The Eastern Shore

by Ward Just

  Oh, golly, Lana said. Do we have to?

  Susan was an aficionada, liking the spectacle, the dance and the dancer. She did not care for the blood that was involved but understood that blood was part of the spectacle, as much ritual as spectacle, not exactly a discordant note but definitely Wagnerian. Lana was repulsed at first but came around as she listened to Susan describe the formality of the ritual, a three-act opera in most cases. Susan did hope that they never saw a corrida with the matador gored, the horn nearly always entering the groin or close to the groin, a ghastly finish to a rough ballet that was quite beautiful once you understood the scenario. Of course it was brutal. The Spanish were brutal, not always but often enough. Milo and Harold had no interest in corrida, a barbarian entertainment, so they stayed behind and welcomed their wives for a meal after the event, inquiring into the body count and the bull’s fate and the wild cheering that accompanied it all. If in Madrid, they dined at the Ritz, if in Granada, at the Alhambra Palace Hotel, the meal always late in the evening. Harold often brought someone with him, an official at the Royal Palace or someone from the army or the Guardia Civil. Milo liked to hear stories of palace life and the underworld, stories that never found their way into the newspaper. Lana and Susan sat together so they could reprise the corrida, the matador as silky as an eel, the coup de grâce immaculate and brief.

  That evening at the Ritz in Madrid was the last time they dined together. Lana was unusually talkative, describing what she and Susan saw in the arena. By then Lana had learned the lingo, the picadors, the veronica pivot, the puntillo the matador was forced to use in the event the bull refused to die by the sword, an embarrassment all around. Halfway through the first course the policeman left the table to take a telephone call and did not return. He sent one of the waiters to explain: there was an emergency in the Retiro. As the meal wore on, their table became hilarious generally, Harold telling stories nonstop. One bottle of Rioja after another. Milo was enthralled. He said he felt twenty years younger. Lana was as spirited as a schoolgirl experiencing the wider world for the first time. The cries of the spectators, the president of the arena applauding. That night at the Ritz was a revelation, not because it was new but because it was so intimate. As they were drinking coffee after dinner, Lana turned to Milo and said, We have found Xanadu. This is our place. I’d like to stay one more month, two months. Could we do that? And if not, why not? Isn’t it fun? Aren’t we having the best time? Her eyes were shining. Milo thought she had never looked happier. Lana had been troubled lately but now her trouble had vanished in a storm of amiability and trust. She said, We are so far from the instability of America.

  That night, Harold died in his sleep. Susan called, her voice barely under control. She was hysterical, and so Milo and Lana threw on their clothes and drove at once to the Griffin apartment near the Plaza de España. An ambulance was parked on the sidewalk. Milo explained that they were friends of Señor and Señora Griffin and were admitted at once. Susan was lying down and Lana went to her and took her up in a long embrace. Milo spoke to the doctor, who was sitting at Harold’s desk writing his report. A thunderous heart attack, the doctor said. He died almost at once. You must take care of his wife. She is heartsick. She must not be left alone.

  Milo said he understood and asked if he could pay whatever charges there were.

  There are no charges, the doctor said, sounding aggrieved.

  I am happy to do so, Milo said.

  We will leave now, the doctor said. There is no more to be done.

  They were our closest friends, Milo said.

  You must look after Señora Griffin.

  Yes, we shall.

  She needs a doctor’s care. This was evidently a shock. I believe she was not aware of any heart trouble.

  She was not, Milo said.

  I hope she recovers. I have seen cases like this one.

  Difficult, Milo said.

  Yes, very difficult.

  If you had arrived earlier, Milo began.

  The doctor continued to write. He was young, with an El Greco face and black hair. Not yet thirty, Milo guessed, an aloof doctor who did not look up from the notebook when he replied, It would have made no difference, none whatever. You must accept that as the truth.

  Then Lana was at his side. You go along, she said. I will stay here with Susan. She must not be alone tonight.

  You’re sure? Milo asked.

  Go along, Lana said.

  All right, he said. What about you?

  I’ll be fine, don’t worry.

  Milo nodded. The room seemed to him dangerous, as if inhabited by malevolent spirits whose work was not yet completed. He opened a window to let the night air in. The street below was silent in these early hours of the morning.

  The doctor said good night to them both and departed. Then the stretcher-bearers were in the room with Harold Griffin’s remains wrapped in a white winding-sheet. Milo held the door as they, too, departed. Then the room was silent, but uneasy, too. Lana went into Susan’s bedroom and closed the door. Milo stood for a long moment with his hands on the windowsill, listening to the muffled sounds from the bedroom. He watched the stretcher-bearers load Harold Griffin into the ambulance and in a minute they were gone, without sirens and only the red light slowly turning. That was it, he thought. The world turned and in an instant of time was unfamiliar. The apartment was unfamiliar, though he had been in it many, many times over the years. He turned from the window and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He decided not to go to the hotel. He would remain here in the event he was needed. Offer advice, write a check, stand guard. He stepped to the telephone, thinking he should call Ayres. There was an obituary to be written. But in the end he did nothing. The obituary could wait. Harold Griffin was virtually unknown in America. His books were written in Spanish, published in Spain.

  At the table in Milo Passarel’s Washington club the silence lengthened. The waitress Gretta glided by to place the check on the table for Milo’s signature. Milo looked up and said, Bring us two glasses of port, if you please. Gretta grinned fractionally and slipped away. Milo and Ned Ayres were alone in the dining room, Ned wondering what he could add in the way of a confidence-builder. The conversation had led nowhere. Milo was distracted, apparently back in Spain as he so often was. Milo had thought through the newspaper situation and had decided that the game was up. What Milo saw was the Irish bar and he thought, What was the point? It seemed to him that the struggle was already lost and without lament, except for people in the business. Was this competition worth his while? If you owned a Van Gogh, why on earth would you exchange it for a Koons? At these moments Milo often thought of Andalusia and its comforts, the villa in the high sierra, his books and his music, a mild cocktail at the end of the day, his grandchildren at his feet, Susan Griffin with her lurid tales of Madrid and its dependencies. She and Lana spoke on the telephone every day and the most Susan could say was that the fog was beginning to lift, slowly, with hesitation; she found it difficult to speak Harold’s name, and that was why she wished the Passarels would return to Granada . . . Milo felt the same way about the newspaper. The short-term solution was to cut the budget, cut the size of the newspaper, cut staff. There was no long-term solution. So perhaps he was a visionary after all. Perhaps he had second sight. His view of the future was one of ruin, not today or tomorrow but soon and forever. These thoughts preoccupied him, his only true confidante his wife. Ned Ayres was less helpful.

  Ned said at last, I know you’re troubled by all this. Anyone would be. I am. But the paper is essential. It’s essential to the life of this city, federal business. It’s a gut check for us, Ned went on, and looked at Milo to see if he understood the expression, and apparently he did because he nodded in agreement. The paper is fundamentally sound, Ned said, and Milo smiled because that was Hoover’s phrase to describe the American economy during the Great Depression. Our bottom lines are still relatively strong, Ned went on. We can’t walk away or sell it to some thug on
Wall Street. It’s—cowardly.

  Milo looked up, expressionless but for his thin smile.

  I’ll find the ways and means to make the cuts you want.

  The paper’s a wasting asset, Milo said.

  I won’t touch Madrid. That’s a promise.

  It’s still a wasting asset, Milo said.

  No sir, Ned said in a kind of growl. It’s a beautiful paper. It’s an essential paper in this city. Ned cleared his throat and went on to describe articles published in the past few months, groundbreaking work, admired in the trade. We set the agenda, he said, and began to speak of Washington in the most intimate terms, as if he were describing the smallest town in the world—Herman, Indiana, with monuments.

  Milo Passarel listened without any change of expression, unless his small sigh was an expression. He did not reply. Sitting lost in thought, sipping espresso, he watched Gretta approach with two glasses of tawny port on a little silver salver. In the half light of the dining room her face was in shadow but no less alluring. She said, Are you enjoying yourselves, gentlemen? We are, Ned said. Tell me something, Gretta. Do you read the newspapers? Oh, no, she said. I am a classicist. I read the ancient Greeks, Homer and the playwrights. That grin again, and a bold stare to go with it. She added, But I have to say to you that the dining room is closed. Milo said, We will not be long. We are almost finished here. Thank you, Gretta said, and glided away once more.

  They sipped their port. Ned was uncertain whether Milo was fully awake. Lately he had a way of nodding off, not asleep but not fully conscious either. He was comfortable in some intermediate zone. Milo said, Lana and I had a particularly good time in Spain last summer, until the last week, when Harold passed. It was dreadful. Poor Susan almost lost her mind. It was so unexpected, and she and Harold were so close they could read each other’s minds, but not this time. It brings you up short, something like that. Death concentrates your mind, and not in a particularly helpful way. Did I tell you we had tea with the king and his son? Susan Griffin set it up, so she was there, too, and a good thing because she knew the questions to ask. I mean, she knew what was on his mind. Nothing special about it, but there aren’t very many of them around anymore, kings. He seemed to enjoy being king. He’s quite tall, you know. I have the idea that kings should be tall. Being tall becomes them. Franco was short. He had a peasant’s face and build and manner and yet was revered by his troops. On the other hand, maybe they were just frightened by him, his confidence and his power, what he was capable of, which was pretty much anything. He distrusted people. He distrusted Europe. He wanted Spain to remain apart, under his thumb. So we had a nice conversation over tea and cakes but Franco did not figure in the conversation. I felt it would be impolite to ask the king about the circumstances leading to his ascension to the throne, all Franco’s doing to allow for an orderly changing of the guard, so to speak. In any case, Franco was long dead and only his shadow remained, and it is a long shadow. The queen was not present during our tea. She had apparently gone horseback riding that day.

  Ned smiled politely, wondering where this was going.

  Milo said, For the whole month the weather was perfect, never a cloud in the sky. I spent more time than usual in the Alhambra, a marvel that depends not on architecture but on geometry. Geomancy, too. The zodiac plays a role. It’s built on mathematical principles. In the ninth century artisans from all over the known world came to work on the Alhambra. The dates are in disarray. Facts unverified. That’s what I like about it, Milo said. What a sight it must have been, the construction. A wonder of the world. Milo sat back and sipped his port. He said quietly, What I want is a normal life.

  Ned Ayres did not know what to say to that.

  It’s my turn, Milo said.

  Ned squinted across the table but did not reply.

  Lana agrees with me.

  Of course, Ned said. When did she not?

  Beautiful soft Andalusian summers.

  Sounds good, Milo said.

  We need new blood. In my chair and your chair, too.

  Are you moving me out, Milo?

  The publisher did not answer. He was lost in thought, sipping port.

  Andalusian summers, Ned said, and swallowed the dregs of his port. He said, Jesus, Milo. You can’t give it up like that. You can’t say fuck it and walk away, he added in a voice louder than he intended.

  My children have no interest in the paper. Why would they? They are not attracted to lost causes.

  I know, Ned said.

  And if they did, I would discourage them. It’s no life for them, or for me either. It’s like the art world. Impressionism gives way to expressionism that gives way to abstraction, and what you have finally is a blank canvas.

  But three generations of your family—

  One more reason, Milo said.

  Now they were on the sidewalk, looking through Lafayette Park to the White House. The park was deserted but the lights of the mansion still blazed. Probably the president was giving a poker soiree. A police cruiser idled near the iron gate with its whitewashed guardhouse. Milo had been in the Oval Office but once, summoned with another publisher to keep silent on a leaked story that was a threat to national security. Milo wanted Ned with him, but the national security adviser said no, principals only. When they arrived the president was seated at his desk, flanked left and right by the secretaries of state and defense and the CIA director, who did most of the talking in his rolling southern accent. He set the scene and identified the problem, then described the seriousness of it. After the opening hellos, Milo and the other publisher did not speak for thirty minutes. A few of the details they already knew, the broad outlines, the threat. In the end the publishers agreed to hold off, wait on events. They were thanked and ushered from the president’s office. In the event, the crisis was a false alarm, more embarrassment than crisis. Ned had listened to Milo’s account without comment, though he raised his eyebrows when the publisher said, No harm done. The president and his men were apologetic, if distant and uninformative, as if crises were dissolved by coincidence or misapprehension, an act of fate. Human agency was not involved except at the margins. Specifically, the American government was not involved unless its benign hand could be seen as involvement. Ned Ayres had visited that dead horse many times but chose now not to speak. What was done was done. But when the government and the newspapers collaborated, harm was the consequence. No exceptions. This was the point that Milo Passarel did not grasp. Milo and his beautiful soft summers. His tea with kings. He was irresponsible, there was no other word for it. Milo was an all-points-of-the-compass man, eternally seeking refuge. That was the maddening trouble with Milo. He was elusive. You couldn’t get your hands around him. He lived in a make-believe world from the distant past.

  The publisher’s car was idling at the curb. Milo asked if Ned wanted a ride to Dupont Circle. Ned said he didn’t. He preferred to walk.

  Ned said, I thought you’d have more grit, push comes to shove.

  Milo answered, I have sense enough to know that the curtain has fallen. Some light remains, not much. Milo hesitated, his hand on the door handle. He said, I’m worn out. You are too, for different reasons. You just won’t admit it.

  Ned gave a derisory laugh. He said, This is leading nowhere. I hope you find your beautiful soft summer.

  They shook hands, a fierce grip from both. Milo was stronger than he looked. He asked again if Ned wanted a ride, and Ned said he thought not and walked away to dissolve into the ten o’clock darkness. Milo watched him go but his attention was elsewhere. He was thinking of the girl Gretta, her beauty and her good cheer, her inwardness, her invincible self-possession, her mild amusement at the two old parties unable to settle their dispute, whatever it was. She hovered near their table, a worried caretaker, and then she went away to her cave or castle or wherever it was she lived. She did not read the paper. She read Homer and the tragedians. She did not read the paper because there was no place for her in it. Gretta was sublime, and the pa
per did not do sublime. Milo wondered what would become of her. What did she imagine for herself? A life like no other, certainly. Milo would never know, and that was the beauty of it. That was life itself, secrets and mystery that went on and on without end. She would have a life and it would be her own. It would not be public property. Milo continued to stand sentry at the car’s open door as Ned Ayres disappeared into the shadows of K Street. He speculated that this girl would write a great tragedy, one as great as the works of her ancient countrymen. In the meantime she had the fussy men’s club to earn her way, whichever way that was. Milo doubted he would ever see her again. He wondered if she had an Achilles to keep her company. But no. Gretta would disdain violence, so fundamental to the work of the modern world. It was the modern world. Milo looked up at the dining room of his club. A shadow paused, then passed and was gone. Confusion ruled. Old man’s innocent reverie.