The Boiling Season

by Christopher Hebert

  At the end of the hall my escort slid open a set of glass doors, and he stepped aside to let me through.

  It appeared at first glance that I was alone in the room. Directly in front of me another set of glass doors, flanked on each side by small lemon trees in fluted ceramic pots, looked out upon the garden and the pool. Beneath my feet a rich burgundy rug stretched out to the far ends of the room. At one end huddled a wing chair and a small teak table supporting a white porcelain lamp. The tassels at the other end of the rug pointed toward a massive mahogany desk.

  Paul stood up to greet me. “Alexandre, I’m glad you made it.”

  In the three years since I had seen him last, Paul had undergone yet another transformation. Whereas for me the arrival of our fifth decade had expanded the cavities around my eyes and rubbed the hair away in patches around the crown of my head, Paul had not only retained but improved the compact body of his youth, which seemed perfectly molded to his soft, neatly tailored suit. A tie was fastened tightly around his neck. Never before had I seen him wear one.

  The room was cool despite the light bursting through the gauzy drapes.

  “What happened?” Paul said as I came closer, wincing at the cuts and bruises on my face. “Another run-in with a waiter?”

  “Yes,” I said. “With several.”

  The man sitting in front of the desk glanced disinterestedly over his shoulder at me, remaining seated.

  “Come.” Paul waved me toward him. “Come. There’s someone I’d like you to meet. This is Charlie.” He gestured affectionately to the seated man. “He’s my right-hand man. I’m nothing without him.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  Charlie nodded.

  Paul put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Could you excuse us for a minute, Charlie?”

  My escort was waiting for Charlie at the door, and when he stepped out into the hall, the doors closed behind him.

  “I’m glad you came,” Paul said, as if genuinely surprised that I had. As if I really had a choice. “I’ve been worried about you.” He smiled. “We get so caught up in our work, we forget the little things that would bring us pleasure.”

  Given the circumstances of my visit, I could only assume we had very different ideas about what constituted pleasure.

  “Your house is beautiful.”

  “That’s kind of you to say.” Paul took a seat and motioned for me to do the same. “Of course, it’s nothing compared to yours. I owe most of the credit to my wife.”

  “I wondered if you’d gotten married.”

  Paul scratched his head and gave me a quizzical smile. “In fact,” he said, “I sent you an invitation.”

  “I—,” I began, but the air escaped my lungs as if from a punctured balloon. I could not allow myself to wither before I had even begun.

  “I must not have received it,” I said. “You know how it is with the mail.”

  Paul brushed away the disappointment. “It doesn’t matter. I’d like you to meet her,” he said. “She’s a beautiful girl.”

  “Is she the one from the restaurant?”

  “The restaurant?”

  “I thought it might be the one I met—I don’t know how many years ago.”

  Paul laughed. “Oh, no no no. A lot has changed since then.”

  Indeed, in that time he had evidently gone from petty criminal to king of Lyonville. Not quite as rapid an ascent as Hector’s, but impressive nonetheless. All around me it seemed great men were suddenly attaining great heights. Meanwhile, I slid closer and closer to oblivion.

  “How is your mother?”

  “My mother?” Lifting a silver letter opener from his desk, Paul bounced the tip against his open palm, frowning at its dullness. “She passed away. Almost two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I hadn’t heard. I can’t remember the last time I was in the neighborhood. I lost touch with everyone.”

  “I know how hard it is to get away. Even living this close. I try to go back when I can. We’re building a school there. Or will be, soon. Charlie is from the neighborhood. Some of the other guys, too. They keep me connected.”

  “Everyone back there must be very proud of you.”

  Paul put the letter opener down. “You know how it is. Pride is easy,” he said with a shrug. “It costs almost nothing, especially compared to what it can get you in return.”

  “Oh?” I had not expected so complicated an answer to so idle an observation.

  Paul stood up and sauntered over to the French doors overlooking the garden. It looked as if he were preparing to deliver a lecture on some great philosophical truth. I felt myself growing weary even before he had begun.

  “Consider your father,” Paul said. “He was honest and he had principles. He never did anything just for what it might get him. It took me a long time to understand how rare that is.”

  Having been unprepared for the turn the conversation had taken, I suddenly found myself uncertain of what to say. No one could deny my father was a righteous man, but he was also miserable, and it is unfair to admire the one and ignore the other. It is the real world we must live in, not the world of our ideals.

  Paul smiled warmly, still looking as though he were genuinely glad to see me. He took his seat again. “Do you know why I asked you here, Alexandre?”

  Behind me I could hear the men outside in the hall. Charlie was waiting to be let back in. “I’m desperate,” I admitted. “I would have come even if you hadn’t invited me.”

  “It’s a terrible mess,” Paul said, falling away from me as his chair tipped back. “Madness on all sides. It can’t help but end badly.”

  Suddenly my hand was shaking on the arm of the chair. I tried tightening my grip, but it still would not stop. “I need a visa,” I said. “And one for Hector, just in case. I’ve written to Mme Freeman, but there isn’t time.” The calm I had so carefully been guarding was quickly slipping away.

  Paul demonstrated his sympathy by lowering his eyes. “I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

  I tried to say that I was too, but nothing came out.

  Paul said, “You’ve been like a father to him.”

  A father? I had taken Hector in and tried to give him a better life, and then I had let him slip away. And now, eight months later, I was in danger of losing him for good. “If so,” I said, “I was as poor a father as I was a son.”

  Paul folded his hands together on top of the desk. “It’s not easy being a father.”

  I thought to myself, must we do this? My sigh surely revealed my impatience, but Paul seemed not to notice.

  “Do you have children?” I asked, as I knew I was supposed to. In fact, the possibility had not occurred to me until now.

  Paul smiled with modest pride. “Two. A boy and a girl.”

  I started to congratulate him, but then I stopped myself, fearing he would feel obliged to lecture me further on the topic of fatherhood.

  “I have no doubt that you’re an excellent father,” I said, hoping we could leave it at that.

  Paul spent a moment staring at his open palms. “It’s kind of you to say, but it wasn’t me I was thinking of.” And then I realized his gaze had shifted. He was looking at me with an unusual intensity. “I was thinking of our fathers, yours and mine. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately.”

  There was no time for this, but what could I do?

  Paul tapped his thumbs thoughtfully together, another of the genteel gestures that seemed to have come along with his success. “What do you remember about my father?”

  “Your father?” I said, trying to hide my annoyance. “Very little. Almost nothing.” And then as an afterthought I added, “Except for his laugh.”

  Paul smiled. “His great big rolling-around-in-a-chair laughs.” A strangely wistful look came into his face. I was not used to this sort of nostalgia from him. Nor was I convinced that this was a fitting occasion for it.

  “He was like a kid himself.”

  I woul
d not have put it in those terms, but I could see it being true.

  Paul said, “I was eight or nine when he left. My mother didn’t talk about it. She made it clear she didn’t want to answer a lot of questions about him, so I didn’t ask.”

  The same had been true of my father and me.

  A silent moment passed between us, and I asked, “Why are we talking about this now?”

  Paul leaned forward over his desk again. “They were best friends,” he said. “Our fathers. Did you know that?”

  I answered with another shrug. I had never thought about it in those terms, but I failed to see why it mattered. In truth it was difficult to imagine anyone being my father’s best friend. “I remember them spending a lot of time together.”

  “They grew up together,” Paul said. “Like you and me. And in a lot of ways they were as different as you and me. My father was the one that was always laughing and having fun. He was always enthusiastic about things. He had all these dreams and plans. All of them completely unrealistic. But even though they were so different, my father really looked up to yours. He admired him. Your father had his shop, and that was a big deal.”

  I could think of nothing to say in return. There were aspects of my father that I admired too, but it was difficult to separate them from the things that had always driven me away.

  Paul asked, “Do you know what my father did for a living?”

  I shook my head. Did he not see how little time I had left?

  “He worked in the dockyards. Sort of like where I started out, actually, only less—”

  “—illegal?” I suggested, hoping to move things along.

  Paul’s grin seemed to concede that was what he had in mind. “From what my mother told me, he didn’t have the stomach for more adventurous things. He may have been a dreamer, but he didn’t like to take risks.”

  It was clearly there that the paths of father and son diverged. “At least in that way he was like my father,” I noted.

  Paul nodded distractedly. There was evidently a different point he was trying to make, and he did not wish to be sidetracked.

  “My father liked the docks. The work was grueling and the pay was pitiful but he loved the camaraderie. He loved people. He loved joking around and telling stories.”

  “I remember,” I said reluctantly. “There was never a quiet moment when he was around.” And my father, I saw no need to add, contributed only silence.

  “It’s true,” Paul said with a nod. “And maybe if he hadn’t been the kind of guy he was, he might never have disappeared.”

  I shook my head to show that he had lost me. I had hoped we were nearing the end of this detour, but the intensity of his concentration suggested we were only just getting started. Finally I understood the restlessness Hector felt when he was in this position in my office, waiting for me to stop talking and wasting his time.

  “Everyone remembers it a little differently,” Paul said. Everything about his leisurely tone suggested that he thought he had all the time in the world. “But the general outline is the same. It began when a couple of university boys started showing up at the docks. They came at odd hours, whenever my father’s boss was away, smoking their imported cigarettes, wearing their tailored suits. Everyone else smelled trouble, but not my father. He was the same with them as he was with everyone else, only too glad to make friends. These were rich boys from the hills. Professional students. Never had a job of their own. The sort of kids who solved all the world’s problems without ever leaving the library. They had pamphlets and philosophies. They especially had ideas about people like my father. The exploited class of workers, the ones who provided all the labor and got nothing in return.”

  “Communists?” It came out in a gasp. Any sentence containing Paul’s father and Communists could not help but sound absurd. “Are you trying to tell me your father was a Communist?” Of all the ridiculous things Paul had said to me over the years, this topped them all.

  “It was the usual thing,” Paul said. “Rich people were the enemy of the worker. Until then I doubt it had ever occurred to my father that anyone was his enemy. He was poor, but there was no bitterness in him. All his get-rich-quick schemes, they were just dreams.”

  Although I had things I was tempted to say on the subject of my own father and bitterness, I held back, realizing this would all go more quickly if I remained silent.

  “Of course, these university boys were rich themselves, but I’m sure my father never thought about that. For all their talk, they didn’t know the first thing about poor people’s lives. Of course, that didn’t stop them from telling my father what he should be doing to fight back.”

  “Why your father?” I said. He seemed the least likely choice.

  “They went to the docks because they wanted to organize a strike. I’m sure they’d gone to other places too, but everyone else just slammed the door in their faces. But my father would never slam a door in anyone’s face. He swallowed every bit of it.”

  “I find it hard to imagine,” I interrupted. “I never saw your father angry—”

  “I don’t think it was anger,” Paul said. “I don’t think he ever really saw it like that. I think he just liked talking. He was an endless optimist, enthusiastic about everything. I think he thought it would be fun. He never thought about where it would lead. He must have been their dream come true,” Paul said with a shake of his head. “He was totally guileless. Even as a child I remember I could always see right through him.”

  “That was one of the things I always liked about him,” I said. “He was probably the only adult I trusted.”

  With a thoughtful smile Paul leaned back in his chair, swiveling a bit from side to side as his eyes scanned the ceiling. The silence went on so long that I raised my eyes too, but I saw nothing there.

  “Of course,” Paul finally said, “there was another reason I suspect he was so willing to go along.” As he paused to consider how best to say whatever was to follow, I could see the pensive movement of his tongue across the sharp bottoms of his teeth.

  “The first time those university boys showed up at the docks, they weren’t alone.” Paul slowly urged the casters of his chair forward a few rotations. When he reached the desk, he carefully folded his hands together on the blotter. “Your father was with them,” he said, his eyes suddenly boring into mine. “He introduced them.”

  “My father?” I said with a start.

  “Who knows, even if your father hadn’t been there, my father might have gone along. But the fact that he was made it that much easier. He would have done anything your father said.”

  “You must be mistaken,” I said, suddenly feeling my skin prickle with cold. “My father was never involved in anything like that.”

  Paul’s face had turned stony. “He was. They both were.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. And Paul’s confidence only made it seem all the more inexplicable. “Your mother told you all of this?”

  “She told me some, but most of it came from other people who knew them.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “This is impossible.”

  Instead of being angered by my skepticism, Paul seemed bemused. “Why is it so impossible?”

  “My father?” I said, driving my thumb into my chest. “My father? He would never have had anything to do with people like that.”

  Paul truly seemed to be enjoying my frustration. The amusement settled deeper into his face. “How can you be so sure?”

  It was as though he thought being a Communist were of no greater significance than being left-handed. “Have you met my father?”

  Paul shrugged, still unmoved by my protestations.

  “How long is this supposed to have gone on?” I said, making no effort to hide my incredulity.

  “A few months after they met my father,” Paul said, settling comfortably back into his chair, “the house of one of the university boys was raided. The kid’s name was Clement.”

  The nam
e meant nothing to me.

  “In his house the police found a pile of correspondence Clement had been having with other Communists, mostly in the States. There was one letter in particular they made a big deal about, something Clement said about requesting ‘material’ that his comrades were supposed to send. The police claimed the ‘material’ was explosives, and that they’d uncovered some sort of plot to overthrow the government.”

  “That’s absurd. My father would never—”

  Paul gestured for me to wait. “—I said that was what the police claimed. Really it was nothing more than some pamphlets the kid had ordered. But it gave them the excuse they needed. They cracked down on everyone,” Paul said. “There weren’t many of them anyway. A dozen university boys in different parts of the capital. The police closed the newspaper they’d been putting together. Not even a newspaper, really. It was mostly poetry and other bullshit masquerading as politics. They arrested all the leaders. They made up charges when they had to. Eventually they arrested my father, too. He wasn’t a leader, of course, but they knew about him. The secret police had been following Clement for a long time, and at his trial agents testified that he was constantly receiving literature sent from known Communists abroad. They said he regularly went to pick it up at the docks. They probably suspected my father had been Clement’s inside man at the docks all along.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, throwing up my hands. “It’s impossible. I never heard anything about any of this.” I could hear the voices again in the hall, and I was tempted to get up and let Charlie back in. Let him be Paul’s audience, if that was what he was looking for.

  “We were kids,” Paul said. “Besides, it wasn’t the sort of thing that got publicized. The papers printed what they were allowed to print, and things like this were better left alone.”

  And yet I was supposed to believe that somehow all of these details had been preserved for the day Paul would come looking for them. Is that what this is, I wondered, a story Paul had invented to give his father’s disappearance a more romantic luster?

  Paul’s fingers opened and closed, opened and closed. He seemed to be exercising the tension out of his fists. “They say he was tortured. The police did everything they could to get him to talk, but he never mentioned your father.”