She looked older and prettier. The clothes looked new and I could imagine her walking out of the hospital and going straight to a store for a new outfit. She normally liked color—yellow shoes, bright skirts. Here she was in black and it would have been easy to take it for mourning, but knowing Claire it was not that. She believed in life and considered it her friend. I have never known a more optimistic person. If she was dressed in black, then it was her way of saying I’m empty right now. Give me time and I’ll bounce back. The funny white sneakers were a light at the bottom of her black curtain, a tired smile at the last moment. She turned and saw me. Unconsciously lifting the bandaged hand to wave, she looked down at it, then back at me. Stepping forward quickly, I took her into my arms and hugged.
“I know it looks silly, but I have to wear it for a long time.”
“That’s okay. You look like a tough guy with it. I wouldn’t want to mess with you. I’m glad to see you, pal.”
“Me too, me too, me too!”
“Are you hungry?”
“For you. I want to talk to you for the next three weeks. I’m sorry about Fanny and Big Top. But I’m so happy you’re back, Harry.” She took me in again and hugged me to her bones. I wanted to give it back but was too worried about doing something that would hurt her hand.
In bed later, she told me a story. It still embarrassed her thirty years later and she’d never told anyone else. When she was a girl in fourth grade, her class was taking a test one day and in the middle of it, she felt a terrible need to go to the bathroom. She was a goody-goody student and never made waves. But when she went up to ask if she could be excused, the teacher, normally her ally, said no, she would have to wait until the test was over. She tried in a child’s ashamed way to let the man know it was imperative, but the answer stayed no. So good little Claire Stansfield went back to her desk, put her head on her arms, and pissed on the floor. She said she would remember the sound of the water tinkling down for the rest of her life. I didn’t know what to say, but she cut me off before I opened my mouth.
“It’s so ridiculous, but I made a vow to myself I’d never tell that story to anyone unless I knew they were the greatest friend I ever had. It’s not only because you’re giving me this money, Harry, that I told you. It’s because when you were away and I was in the hospital feeling sorry for myself, I realized you are the only person in my life I have ever wanted to tell.”
THE LAST I SAW of Fanny before she went over the horizon of my life was outside her favorite restaurant downtown. I’d gone there for breakfast with Pup Longwood to discuss construction crews for the museum. I’d met with Hassan and his bunch a week before and he’d laid the first of many surprises on me that made building this thing a major pain in the ass. This first flabbergaster was that the new Sultan had decided he wanted at least a third of the construction crew to be made up of Saruvian workers, even though the museum would be built in Austria. That way, when it was finished, he could say it was built by and for the people of his country. It was no use explaining to him that by satisfying his request, it would make the job even more difficult, since another third of the crew would have to be Austrians, and there were many Americans I wanted to bring along because we were so used to working with them. At the end of the evening I asked if His Majesty was secretly hoping to win the Nobel Peace Prize for International Cooperation. He brushed me off and said Saru would foot the bill for whatever complications arose.
When I told Pup about this, he nearly choked on his pancakes and said it was the goddamnedest thing he’d heard in a long while. Arabs in Austria? It would be bad enough working with Austrians who, by law, were allowed to drink beer on the job. I concurred. He was in the middle of repeating it was the goddamnedest thing, while we walked out of the restaurant. Then, a few steps from the curb, I looked across the street and noticed the Sultaness-to-be with her Hergé hair and “Don’t tread on me!” look. I guess I could have steered us in a wide detour around her, but I wanted to see what she’d do when we passed.
The light changed and we started across. I knew she’d seen me because her face set like cement, but as we approached she looked over my head. I started to smile, thinking she’d give me the cold shoulder and nothing else. Longing for something ripe and brilliant to say, I couldn’t come up with a thing. At the same time, I knew five beauties would come to mind half an hour from now. As a result, I didn’t say a word but kept looking at her eyes to see if she’d give me a second’s contact. No luck. As I walked on, thinking At least I had the balls to look, something stopped my feet and I went down like a chopped tree.
“That bitch tripped you, Harry! Hey, you!”
On all fours I touched Pup’s ankle and, laughing, told him to forget it. That bitch didn’t turn around once to see what she’d done, just sailed right on across the street and around the corner, looking good the whole way.
part three
“quidnunc”
I began to think of the soul as if
it were a castle made of a single diamond.
—ST. TERESA OF AVILA
WHEN FULL-SCALE CIVIL WAR broke out in Saru, even the experts seemed taken by surprise. In the beginning it got little play in the media. They saw it as only another one of the fifty or so wars rumbling in another obscure and backward part of the world and thus tended to deem it either an “uprising” or “revolt”—their patronizing terms for no big deal.
There is nothing like horror to move you up to the front page. When Cthulu’s forces shot down a Lance Airlines 747 with three hundred passengers, scattering bodies, luggage, and electric guitars (the rock group Vitamin D was on board) across forty miles of Saruvian desert, the headlines roared and experts were consulted. Obscure scholars from forgotten colleges and universities who’d spent their measured lives studying the history and customs of this small country were suddenly quoted as if their every word were both gospel and gold. Professor Gernert from Muskrat State University disagreed with Professor Herring from Aloha College about the seeds of revolution which had abruptly bloomed into bloody blossom in a country heretofore best known for its membership in OPEC. Dr. Kufferle at the Sorbonne said it was a question of economics and would blow over. Professor Oppenheimer at Shirley University said it was a family feud and wouldn’t. While these folks preened and pontificated in their fifteen minutes of fame, Cthulu shook hands with Libya and Iran, allowing his freedom fighters to trade their popguns for Kalish-nikovs and handheld rocket launchers.
You had to hand it to Hassan, though. With no more than a bachelor’s degree in business from UCLA and little experience actually running a country, much less commanding it in war, he hung tough and fought back impressively. People from his government flew in and out of Zell am See to check on our project and brought with them facts, rumors, and lies about what was going on in Saru. What we heard most often was the young master was doing things right, and although he didn’t have the enemy on the run, he was more than holding his own. Morton Palm, ex-professional soldier and clever questioner, spent a good deal of time talking to these dignitaries and heard a different story.
“The Americans don’t want Cthulu in power,” Palm said, “because he represents the kind of fundamentalism that is so frightening to the West. They are sending military advisors in to help Hassan’s army, which is neither strong nor well organized. It would be difficult training them seriously for a year to go into battle and do well, but since no one expected Cthulu’s forces to strike so fast and so hard at the same time, they are confused and badly maintained. Also, as you know, the Americans have not done well fighting in guerrilla wars. They even had trouble when they went into Panama where most of the terrain was known and they had many friends. Even more, you cannot bring American battle tactics to the Mideast and expect them to work anymore. The same is true with what happened to the Russians in Afghanistan. There is the geography to think about, the customs of the people, and most important, there is the total passion of the soldiers. The American and Russian soldi
ers are very professional, but they are not passionate. They do their job and want to go home. That is the reason why your Superpowers have done so poorly in these regional conflicts. The enemy not only lives on the land where the war is being fought, they are generally poor people who believe in nothing more than their God and the country He gave them to live in and protect. I will never forget seeing the television pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s funeral. Do you remember that? More than a million people came, Harry, and many, many of them were crazy from the sadness and shock of losing their spiritual leader. There aren’t spiritual leaders in the West. We don’t understand the concept. Iranians were screaming and tearing at their clothes, throwing themselves toward the body. In the West we look at this and shake our heads as if they are totally blöd. But they are not crazy—they are believers, in the greatest sense of that word. Cthulu has an army of believers full of courage and extreme love for him. Hassan has the professionals, the Western advisors, a better supplied army. But study what has happened in that world over the recent years: such combinations of forces do not work successfully there anymore. It is passion that wins now—Iran, Afghanistan, the PLO uprising on the West Bank. We have returned to wars fought for the Grand Ideas: God, Home … instead of wars for more money. I think this is very interesting. It makes the West very uncomfortable. Poor peasants rising up against the rulers in their castles. Simple people who believe in God and their land. And it is so embarrassing! I saw this again and again in the eyes of the Israeli soldiers when I was there. They had the guns against the Palestinians’ stones, but it was equal, neither side was stronger than the other. These soldiers could feel it—you saw it in their faces. Like having a fight with a child but their little arms and legs are as strong as yours, the way they use them.”
“Do you think Hassan will lose?”
“Not yet. It’s too early to tell. He still is stronger because he has the weapons and tactics, but if the fighting goes on a long time, the other side learns. Then it is dangerous—because they have their God, their passion, and strategy.”
The fighting went on a long time. The war, settled down into a comfortable endlessness, was once again relegated to the middle pages of the newspapers and sixth item on the television nightly news. Broadcasters had trouble pronouncing the names of locations and fighters on both sides. There were reports of Russian weapon caches, photographs of bodies sprawled like pinwheels and starfish after major offensives. When film reports of life in Bazz’af were shown, merry children jumped up and down and waved at the cameras. One teenager, ostensibly being interviewed about the loss of family members, was more interested in showing how he could break dance. How could there be a war on with these people so happy and bubbly? In photographs Hassan looked young, strong, and capable. He’d been educated at UCLA, knew his way around the Western world, and was even about to marry an American journalist. It sounded like the plot to a romantic movie. Who wouldn’t guess he’d be the eventual winner?
His prospective bride began showing up more and more on the news, smiling less, sounding terribly serious and intense. One day her short blond Neville hair was gone, replaced with a more sedate brown that I guess better befitted her upcoming position.
In contrast to this Dream Team, Cthulu looked like one of those old paranoids with nasty eyes who sits in the public library all day and hogs the good magazines. What he said too was your usual “wretched-of-the-earth” tripe. Which was another confusing part of the picture: Why would anyone get riled up about the ho-hum stuff this old bum was spewing? How could he have raised and rallied an army of thousands of zealous loons who appeared to want nothing more in life than to give it up for this old squinter?
When the city of Sa’Hiq fell to Cthulu’s rebels, it became clear the government was in real trouble. Strangely enough, four days after the battle Hassan appeared in Zell am See. The transformation was powerful. Whatever he had been through in the last months had made him a different man. Quiet and dignified, he toured the construction sight asking the kind of questions that made you think and even sweat a little. He had done his homework and plainly knew what he was talking about. When we were alone I asked how he’d learned so much about the subject in so short a time. He smiled like a statesman—amused and world-weary—and said he’d taken up the study of architecture as a hobby. It took his mind off his work and allowed him to think about the future rather than the difficult right now. “Some men take mistresses. I have Fanny so I don’t need that. She has been telling me what books to read.”
What encouraged me was how much he enjoyed talking about our mutual friend. Despite what was happening in Saru, he used any opportunity to bring the subject around to her. Now that she had committed herself to him, he was even more lavish in his praise and devotion. With her at his side he could do anything. Since “the trouble” began, she’d been his best advisor and confidante. There was no end to the woman’s abilities. How could I have been so blind to this combination of Diana Von Clausewitz, Marilyn Monroe, and Jehan Sadat? How could I have let her escape? The man knew that if he lost the war to Cthulu he was guaranteed dead, but because he had the best woman at his side, everything would turn out for the best. I remember thinking things couldn’t be too desperate if he had so much time and inclination to wax rhapsodic about his not-so-coy mistress.
Anyway, we had our own troubles which kept me fully occupied. Any architect will agree that there are buildings which go up like dreams. You dig the first hole and the thing is done in what feels like five minutes. The earth doesn’t shift, the molding fits, there are no crippling strikes or need to send for bizarre replacement parts for the machinery that, on the whole, runs dependably. It is analogous to going to bed for the first time with someone and discovering that everything you do, every gesture, every sound, every shift, is exactly what they like. And vice versa. When you are finished and lying there in a happy heap, you think back on the act and the only word that does it justice is “Wow.” There are times too when the earth and steel, stone and plastic, are so empathetic and … eager for each other in the design you have created for them that it is as if you’re partners and what you do with each other is a true consummation. When you’re finished, Wow.
Not unreasonably, I figured that with all the forces at work in the planning of the Dog Museum, its construction would be a breeze, if not downright spooky. Wrong. The only breeze came from a hundred different people and companies trying to blow smoke up our asses. We were not innocent when it came to the normal payoffs, padding, and deceits involved in international building, but soon it began to feel like every crooked, greedy son of a bitch in Europe and the Mideast had gotten attached to the project and were trying to squeeze as much out of it as they could before the police descended and threw them all in jail for extortion. No one appeared to feel or show any shame either when asking fifteen times the proper price for materials or labor. Bronze Sydney did a preliminary cost per square foot at these new inflated prices and told Pup and me. The three of us simultaneously grew exactly the same “You’ve-got-to-be-shitting-me” expression on our faces. Then Pup took a Sunday ski-lift ride up to the top of the Schmittenhohe and came back down in a helicopter with an IV in his arm and a stroke in his head. Those two things happened as the credits were running; our movie had yet to begin.
The most maddening problems had to do with language and culture. The Saruvians spoke Arabic, the Austrians German, the Americans English. Some people spoke one of the other languages. A few people spoke some of each of the languages. Most people spoke only their own and got frustrated the more complicated things became and the less they were understood. Any building, either in its construction or when completed, serves as a visible microcosm of society at work. Since human beings have a natural tendency to live and work in groups, I’ve always felt a crucial part of my job is designing structures that allow people to group comfortably and productively. I knew from the beginning it would be natural for the different nationalities to hang together while wor
king on the museum and in their free time, but what we didn’t figure on was the xenophobia and racism that stood in the shadows waiting until the right moment to spring out and sink their teeth into the flesh of what we were trying to create.
The main meat staple of the Austrian diet is pork. They eat pork like Arabs eat lamb and Americans beef. The first night the Saruvians arrived in Zell am See, they were treated to a big welcome dinner of new wine and delicious pork Wiener schnitzel. Unfortunately, Muslims don’t drink wine or eat pork. The result was an ugly shock of recognition on both sides and a lot of salad eaten. At the end of the evening I heard the German word Tschuschen for the first time. I heard it more than once coming out of mouths that were curled with anger and disappointment. I asked Palm what it meant. “It would be the same as your word ‘nigger,’ Harry.”
The Saruvians didn’t like the Austrians because they were pork-eating infidels who were getting a museum that rightly belonged in Saru. And they didn’t like the Americans because of the recent aggressive American foreign policy in the Mideast.
The Austrians disliked the Saruvians because they were unappreciative Tschuschen who shouldn’t have been in their country in the first place, despite the fact that they had brought in a gigantic building project that created a hell of a lot of new jobs for the Austrian people. And they didn’t like the Americans because they were too confident and condescending and impatient.
To round off this cheerful circle, the Americans didn’t like the Saruvians because they did things “differently,” meaning they functioned like Arabs—slowly, good-naturedly, but not always effectively—which kept the process from moving forward at a brisk American pace. Austrians were stodgy, bad-tempered Nazis who grumbled and drank on the job. Welcome to the Pleasure Dome.
One weekend I had to go to Vienna to confer with one of our Austrian construction companies. I was thoroughly depressed and empty and didn’t want to do much besides sit in the hotel room and mope. That did little to raise my spirits so I took a walk and ended up at the Kunsthistorisches Museum looking at paintings. True to my nature, I avoided the Brueghels because that’s the first thing people do when they go to that museum, like beelining for the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
Outside the Dog Museum Page 19