by Morris West
The next instant she was out of bed and dashing for the bathroom. Alma sighed in resignation.
“Leave her to me! I’ll catch up with you in the bar. You’ve got a special billing in this operetta.”
“I’ve already got my script, my dear Alma. Father has asked me to come back into the company. As things are, I can hardly refuse!”
Alma threw up her hands in theatrical despair.
“And they say we Jews are meshugganeh volk! They should see what I see of the madness of the goyim!”
* * *
The scenario which Alma Levy laid out for me in the bar had been designed and written by Larry himself. It required me to drive out to the Burgholzli at one o’clock the next day and take him out to lunch alone at a lakeside restaurant—and this only an hour after his meeting with the family, within the confines of the clinic itself!
Alma freely admitted that there were contrasts and contradictions between this script and the one which had been written for Madi and the children. She also admitted that both had been devised by Larry and that his two medical advisers had colluded with him. They were even able to accept two quite different systems of logic.
In the case of Madi and the children, they were afraid of an emotional crisis if any argument broke out. In my case, it seemed they wanted to stage a tournament of reason. Larry felt a great need to explain himself to me, and through me to my father, in rational terms. He had even put a name to the exercise: a dialogue of peers, followed, if possible, by an honorable amends for the damage he had caused and a renewal of basic trust between us.
I thought it was just another manipulative ploy, though I could not see exactly where it might lead. With the best will in the world, how could you trust a man who was by nature unstable? Alma Levy did not contest my opinion. She herself had expressed the same fear to Dr. Langer, but he had reasoned her out of it. This, he claimed, was a positive gesture of goodwill on Larry’s part. It was an essential step in the recovery process. His willingness to venture outside the protective perimeter, to risk a face-to-face encounter with the man who had recently been his pursuer, represented an enormous therapeutic gain.
For me, gain was the worry word. Whatever his qualifications, whatever his ethics, Dr. Langer was the appointee of Dr. Rubens, trustee of all Larry’s interests, associate of another highly suspect character, Francesco Falco of Simonetta Travel. To all of which Alma had no direct answer. Instead she asked a very simple question.
“What do you lose by taking the man to lunch?”
“Time, patience, the cost of the lunch, and a hell of a row with my sister when she hears of it.”
“Don’t tell her until it’s over. She’ll be gone all morning. You’ll have left the hotel before she returns.”
“You have a plotter’s mind, Doctor!”
“What do you expect, Carl?” She gave me a shrug and a world-weary smile. “Every mind I enter is a new labyrinth. At the center of each one is a roaring Minotaur. I’m supposed to slay it like Theseus. The sad thing is that most of the time the bull’s roar is the wail of an infant magnified by misery, but I have to wade through miles of bullshit to find the child. So, please, just buy the man lunch and let’s all go home!”
Although Larry Lucas had been the center of my attention for weeks now, it was with something of a shock that I realized it was nearly a year since we had met, in New York, at a birthday party for my father. I remembered him as a handsome, athletic, smiling fellow, radiating enthusiasm, a turner of heads among women, a boon companion among men.
The Larry Lucas who came to greet me in the reception area of the Burgholzli Clinic was like a wax replica of the one I remembered. His complexion was sallow; his skin seemed to have tightened across the facial bones. His lips were pale, his eyes sunk back into his head. He moved slowly, his speech was deliberate, but there was still a trace of the old raillery in his rueful smile. His handshake was still firm. His first words were an expression of thanks.
“It was good of you to come, Carl. I was afraid you might refuse. I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“How did it go with Madi?”
“Better than I deserved or expected. She’s quite a woman, your sister. The kids were great—very protective. They wanted to impress on me that they understood I’d been sick and they hoped they’d see me again very soon.”
“I’m glad it turned out that way.”
“So was I. Where do you propose we eat?”
“There’s a place called the Black Swan. The concierge at the hotel recommends it highly.”
“Wherever you say. I eat very lightly these days and, with the drugs they’re giving me, I’m not allowed to drink.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. This has been a slow turnaround. It takes a certain time for the medication to take hold. That was part of my problem. I wouldn’t give it time. I wanted instant miracles. It has helped to be in the clinic. I hated it at first, but it was a relief to have other people make up my mind for me. Thank God I’ve still got a mind, or most of it anyway. They tell me the rest of it will begin to function very soon. I’m looking forward to this little drive in the country.”
It was a pleasant excursion. The air was heavy with the scent of mown grass. The meadows were a patchwork of fresh stubble and rising corn and yellow rape flowers and stands of orchard trees. The restaurant was a sunny chamber which opened onto a pontoon deck where tables were laid under striped umbrellas. We ordered drinks: a vodka and tonic for me, apple juice for Larry. We settled on the food: hors d’oeuvres and grilled trout. We told the waiter we were in no hurry. I wanted Larry to begin our talk. I hoped I would be able to steer it toward the information I needed. Once again, he disarmed me.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I was to hear of your mother’s accident. She’s a great lady. I’ve always admired her. I pray she mends quickly. How is your father taking it?”
“He’s taking it hard.”
It was a bald statement but I could not trust myself to extend it; otherwise I might have spun into a tirade against the begetter of many of our present woes, who faced me, mournful as a basset hound, across the napery. His next gambit was a cliché to end all clichés.
“I suppose you want to know the reason for this lunch?”
“It would help, yes.” I gave him a sour grin. “Especially as I’m paying for it and I’ve had to travel halfway round the globe to catch up with you!”
Then he was laughing at me, a genuine, mirthful, schoolboy’s laugh.
“That’s it! That’s the pure, unadulterated Strassberger response: On guard! Engage! And you’re in there, thrust and parry, because it’s Strassberger ground you’re standing on and only Strassbergers have a right to set foot on the sacred soil. That’s the next question I was going to ask you, Carl. What happens if your mother dies? What happens when the job gets too big for your father or he decides there’s no point to it anymore?”
“I’d say, Larry, that was none of your goddam business now. You quit, remember? You wrote the severance letters. You’re working up a takeover bid with Rubens.”
“I did. I am.”
“However, I’ll answer your question. When Madi and the children go back, I’m going with them.”
“Back to the business?”
“That’s right.”
He did not mock me this time. There was no laughter left in his eyes. The waiter walked into our small zone of silence, laid the platters of hors d’oeuvres in front of us, wished us a good appetite, and left. I addressed myself to the food. Larry nibbled a mouthful or two, then picked up the thread of the conversation.
“I’m sorry you’re giving up your career.”
“It isn’t a career. It’s a way of life that I enjoy. I have a modest talent but at least a recognizable one. I have the means to enjoy it. It’s no big deal if I have to defer the enjoyment.”
“You have more talent as an artist than as a banker.”
“I know. That’s why I abdic
ated and you got the job. Then you abdicated and I’m stuck with it again.”
“And you hate my guts. Is that it?”
“No, I don’t. You can thank Madi for that, because she was wise enough to stay with Alma Levy, who taught me something about your problem. You can thank my father, too, because he cared enough to send me chasing after you, so you wouldn’t come to harm!”
“Don’t patronize me, Carl!”
I sensed the deep stirring of anger in him. I knew I had to calm him if I could. I reasoned with him quietly.
“I’m not patronizing you, Larry. I’m here because you asked me. We’re halfway through the first course and you haven’t yet told me why.”
“You’re right. I haven’t. Please be patient with me. I still fly off at a tangent sometimes. Let’s begin then: you, your father, and me. You’re out studying and painting rose windows and gargoyles and flying buttresses. I’m the wonder boy, adopted into Strassberger and Company. Pass me the ball and I run with it—touchdown, touchdown, touchdown! I marry the boss’s daughter, a union made in heaven, blessed on earth. I beget two beautiful kids. I am twice blessed—no thrice!—because I have now endowed the grandparents with continuity.”
He broke off while the waiter removed the platters and offered us each a small thimble of lemon sorbet.
“You’re a very patient listener, Carl,” he said.
“Because you’re telling me something I’ve wanted to know for a long time.”
“One of the problems!” He gave a small, dismissive shrug. “If you don’t talk about it, people don’t ask. If they don’t ask, why tell? How do you describe hell to someone who’s never been there?”
“Hell is an infectious disease. People catch it from you.”
His head came up like that of a startled lizard. There was no anger in his eyes this time, only a kind of wonderment. After a long moment, he relaxed and gave a nod of agreement.
“You’re right. They do—but that’s the last thing you understand. Alma Levy used to say—and Dr. Langer agrees with her—that the betterment only begins when you stop looking inside yourself and start looking outside to other people. There’s a problem, however, with that piece of advice. You’re not looking inside yourself at all. There’s nothing there to see. It’s an empty blackness that goes on forever. You close the door on it. Then you’re looking over your shoulder at the great birdlike shape that pursues you all the time and that one day, sure as sure, will fold its black wings over you and blot out every ray of light or hope. When the darkness lifts—and it does—you don’t see the normal daylight as other people do. You emerge into a kind of panic joy, a frenzy of relief in which you could tear your clothes off and run naked and shouting through the streets, or toss a lifetime’s savings out the window and cheer the people who run off with it. Am I making any sense to you at all?”
“Yes, you are; but only because other people, like Madi and Alma Levy, prepared me to understand it. There’s something, however, I still find hard to grasp.”
“Tell me.”
“This resentment, this need of another victim or a whole series of victims to expiate a suffering they didn’t inflict on you.”
The question was clearly painful to him. For a moment, I thought he was going to retreat into himself and close the shutters on any further intrusion. He recovered, however, and began to piece out his answer.
“The resentment is real; but it’s general and not particular. There were days when I resented you so much that I would cheerfully have murdered you. You were three thousand miles away, painting happily in a chateau garden, and I was in one of my black weeks, trying to raise ten million for some cruddy experimental venture like a tidewater generator in Puget Sound. I needed victims, because I was a victim—come to that, I still am—but I’m learning to think that other folk have worse demons than I do and less hope of escape. Or perhaps the key is that I’m not looking for an escape anymore, just alleviation.”
“Did you have to leave your wife and children to find it?”
“I did, yes. I’m staying away for other reasons.”
“May I know what they are?”
“Sure. You’ve earned the right to know. How can I say it? Given this affliction of fear and frenzy, given even the fact that it can be controlled by medication and counsel and by a certain exercise of self-control, which I’m not yet very good at—given all these things, the Strassberger clan is too tight for me, too judgmental, too trenchant, too much everything I’m not. If I can’t live in it, I shouldn’t work in it. And by the same token, Carl, my friend, you shouldn’t either. I know you’ll tell me again to mind my own business, but I’m giving you the truth as I see it. With all the goodwill in the world, you’ll never make a banker, and if you try you’ll break your heart.”
“So what am I supposed to do, stand by and watch my old man kill himself?”
“No.”
“What then, Larry? You still know the business better than anyone. You know it well enough to want to take it over. What would you suggest for me?”
“They’re bringing the main course now. Let’s eat it while it’s hot. I’ll tell you over the coffee.”
And tell me he did, in spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts. He borrowed a pencil and an order pad from the headwaiter and dazzled me with displays of figures and graphs and diagrams. I could literally feel the adrenaline surging through him as he rode through the last trough of depression and swung up onto the rising wave of optimism which Alma Levy called hypomania. The drugs were buffering him against a high manic surge, but the underlying symptoms were clear. His mind was racing, his speech was faster, he radiated light and confidence. He finished his exposition with a flourish.
“You tell me your father is tempted to sell, yes?”
“That’s what he said. He’s tempted. But that’s off the record.”
“And if he put all the family shares on the auction block—which means the controlling votes in the company—there’s what he’d get for them.” He wrote the figure on the pad, underscored it heavily, and thrust it at me across the tabletop. “Forty-five dollars a share—fifty, tops, in a bull market, which right now we don’t have. Am I right or wrong?”
“As near as dammit, you’re right.”
“What would you say if I promised I’d get you sixty-five?”
“I’d say you were out of your cotton-picking mind.”
“I’d say Strassberger and Company would be out of their minds to refuse it, with an ailing management, a less than competent succession, and quite a lot of dissension among the troops, especially in France.”
“Fomented by you?”
“No. Exacerbated by old-fashioned, heavy-handed management and roughshod audit procedures after I went underground for a while.”
“I became aware of the dissension myself. But to come back to this sixty-five-dollar figure of yours, who would be the fool to underwrite it?”
“I’d sell by tender because I know there’s money on the table. I think you should at least tell your father.”
“Why should he believe me?”
“You mean why should he believe Larry Lucas?”
“Either way.”
“First, because I’m telling the truth; second, because the figure is genuine—all that’s needed is a formal call for tenders to activate the offer—and, third, because this is my way of paying some of the debts I owe to the Strassberger family.”
“You’ll forgive my saying it, Larry, but we weren’t aware that you acknowledged any debts to us. I think Madi and the children have clear claims on your love and care, but they’re private to you as a family. So far as my father is concerned, there’s money owed to you, if you want to claim it.”
“And you, Carl? Don’t I owe you anything? I took away your nice well-planned life and gave you one you didn’t want at all. I feel bad about that. I’d like to make some amends.”
His words made an extraordinary impression on me. Against all reason, I had to take them as t
ruth. One part of my brain told me that this was a sick man who carried black devils on his back, and sometimes the devils turned into angels carrying him to undreamed-of heavens. But angels and devils alike were illusions of an unbalanced psyche.
Another part of my brain had registered the fact that his figures on Strassberger’s value were accurate and that only a few weeks ago he had brought off a huge market coup. Did I believe he could create fifteen dollars a share extra value for Strassberger? If he rejoined the firm, yes, he just might; but he didn’t want to come back and I was sure my father wouldn’t take him anyway. Me? I was drawn to him as I always had been, for his wit and his panache and flair for the dramatic.
I could not give him the lie, direct. I didn’t want to part from him in anger. I signaled for more coffee and began again to question him.
“Help me to understand, Larry. Help me to explain to your children. I’m still their Uncle Carl. They ask me questions. They trust my answers. How did this flight of yours begin?”
“It wasn’t flight, Carl! That’s where you all got it wrong. It was a wild urge for change: What was around the next corner, over the next hill? Maybe the black bird wouldn’t find me. Maybe the sun would shine more days in the year. You thought of me as a fugitive. I felt more like a kid playing hooky and chasing butterflies.”
“But didn’t you think what you were doing to other people?”
“Not much. You find that hard to understand? Let me try to explain. You Strassbergers all have a continuity, a past. You have parents, grandparents, ancestors. The dark bird is perched a long way back in the family tree. I don’t have that. My parents were snatched away. I had to build my future on assumptions of a past. That was tough, but I did it. The wonderful thing your father did for me was to accept me at face value. His judgment of my talents was right. His judgment of my needs and my character was dead wrong. He couldn’t see I was flawed. I was his creation. I was his daughter’s husband. He used to tell me, over and over, ‘You can do whatever you set your mind to, Larry!’ Every time he said it, I used to make a silent scream of protest: How can you say that when you don’t even know who I am?