An Honorable Man (16 page)

“This is Roger's fiancée,” Altman said, proudly.

The girl shyly put forward one hand and Mueller shook it, surprised it was limp.

“I'm George.”

“Nice to meet you.” Her voice was a soprano whisper. She had a frail, homey look, with freckles, and she was wary. She wanted to retreat from the introduction and return to her anonymity, but the older Altman used his arm on her shoulder to keep her from fleeing.

George heard his name called and he looked off in the direction from which he thought the sound originated. Roger Altman had been with a group of friends, but he'd pulled away, and was coming straight to Mueller, eyebrows raised in an excited approach. Drinking, Mueller thought, but not yet drunk. He wore a tuxedo and a jolly expression flush with whiskey. His voice was exuberant and louder than usual, alive with alcohol.

“George, I didn't see you arrive. Glad you could come, old boy. We're celebrating the Greek holiday of winter racing. Haven't you heard of it? Well, neither have I. This is Emily, my fiancée. Have you met?”

“Just now.” Mueller saw the girl plead for something, but what exactly, Mueller could not tell. She clutched her small cloth purse with both hands.

“What do you do?” Mueller asked Emily.

Roger answered. “She's not much for conversation. Or for crowds. And we've outdone ourselves this year, don't you think? Who would guess that putting in to fifty-degree water was so popular?”

Nothing more was said. Roger Altman tugged his fiancée's hand and led the docile, wide-eyed girl away through the room of drinkers.

“A nice girl,” Arnold said. “He doesn't treat her well. He might lose her.”

Lose her? Mueller shook his head. “I don't think there's a chance of that.”

  •  •  •  

Mueller searched for Beth. The party was raucous and lively with old acquaintances who were at turns loud and foolish, and he steered clear of these groups. Liquor flowed freely from a bar in the dining room served by two men in bow ties. A waiter in sailor uniform passed a tray of champagne flutes and he was followed by a waitress in mermaid costume offering crudités and deviled eggs. The waiter wore white gloves and the waitress was in a sequin dress with a long dorsal fin. Mixing among the guests was a man in a pale pink chiffon toga carrying a great horn of fruit.

This was the “casual drop-in” that Roger Altman had mentioned was their way to celebrate the start of winter sail week. Only daredevil men of the adventurous sailing community, committed to folly, earned bragging rights for braving the frigid water. It was an Ivy League crowd. Mueller recognized a man from his class at Yale, and then another, and there was a clutch of Yalies smoking in the garden.

Mueller spotted Beth across the room. He was glad to see her face among the strangers. It was only as he pushed through the crowd that he saw two men hovering around her in animated
conversation. She responded to whatever was said by throwing her head back, laughing brightly. The two men were almost twins, handsome sailors in identical uniforms, eager faces with the same predation—and it was their intensity that made Mueller jealous.

“Beth,” he said, inserting himself, “I've been looking for you.”

“For me.” Her smile vanished, eyes fierce. “Well, it was you who sent me away. And now I'm in the middle of a conversation.”

Mueller felt slapped. He looked at the two men, his height, but strong to his thin stature. “I'm sorry,” he said. Mueller's fingers wrapped his water glass like a chalice and he stood awkwardly, rebuked. Mueller nodded to her and to the men. “Excuse me.”

“I will find you,” she yelled to his back.

Momentarily, Mueller stood in the crowded hallway among lively strangers whose upbeat mood mocked his hot burn of embarrassment. Did he care that he'd offended her in the garden? It was too easy to pretend that he didn't. He still had not perfected a polite way to have a companionable evening with a woman and not have his attention hijacked by work.

One drinking group of Yalies came down the hall and carried the sullen Mueller into the next room, where a group of singers was gathered around a grand piano. Women stood around the edge of the room in brave dresses, their hair puffed in bizarre shapes. They looked at the singers and the room was alive with interest in the pianist as his fingers danced on the keyboard. The pianist was short, bald, with glasses, and he got the room's attention with up-tempo music and bawdy lyrics. He welcomed new couples to the room with his tenor spoof of “Falling in Love
Again.” He targeted Mueller holding back at the door, watching from his observer's perch, with a mocking version of “Ten Cents a Dance.”

Mueller nodded, acknowledging this attention. He had never been close to these men at Yale and saw no reason to be close now. The bald pianist kept up a monologue between songs that held the room's attention. Floating rounds of floral-colored cocktails passed among the crowd. A momentary hush. The pianist struck a chord and held a falsetto note in his lungs for a breathless minute, and the crowd took his cue. All at once the room joined in singing the hit tune “Road to Bali.” Men and women took up the chorus:
We're poor little lambs who have lost their way . . . we're little black sheep who have gone astray.

Mueller slipped out during the closing verse. He found it tiresome to be sober among a room of drinkers. The foolishness of alcohol wasn't amusing to the observer who stuck with soda water. He saw it all, and would remember it all, but the evening would be a dull hangover for the others.

It was too late to find Beth to apologize, too early to return to his cottage, and too cold to wander the gardens alone. He found himself in the front hallway by a closed door. He tried the handle and found it unlocked. Mueller stepped into a book-lined study and was happy to leave behind the raucous party. There was a ponderous carved wood desk, a brass stand with a globe of the earth, a whiskey-colored leather sofa, and bound volumes on book shelves that rose to the high ceiling.

Mueller's eye caught a framed oil painting the size of a serving tray leaning against the lowest book shelf, and he knelt to
look. The portrait was of a nursing mother, her hand guiding her breast to her child's mouth. She gazed lovingly at the innocent thing in her arms.

“It's a Schiele.”

Mueller turned. Roger Altman was standing just inside the open door, which he closed.

“It's a portrait of Stephanie Grunwald. She was the daughter of Schiele's best collector. He painted her as a memory for the father. He also did that painting.”

Roger pointed to a landscape that also leaned against the book case. “It's titled
Birch Forest
. The Nazis called it degenerate art. We call it modernism, and some of the other work you see here on the floor are good examples of cubism. After the
Anschluss
the Jews of Vienna needed cash to buy their way to Paris or Switzerland. They sold their work. Sometimes for a pittance.”

Altman nodded. “I like your expression. The owner of this painting who sold it to me said, ‘You'll be able to judge whether a man has taste or not if you see that he is able to appreciate great art.' You have taste, George. I can see that in the way that you look at her hand. Remarkable, isn't it, the mother looking at her child and gently holding her breast to feed him with such love in her eyes.” Altman paused, reflected. “For the artist there is nothing better than to know that his work is in appreciative hands.”

Altman turned the painting so it now faced the wall. “Each painting is unique. One of a kind. Irreplaceable. A woman is unique too, but a woman's beauty fades. A painting's beauty is eternal.” He turned to Mueller. “Do you know of Egon Schiele?”

“I do.”

“I see. It's good to know. You always surprise me with the things that you know.”

There was a pause. “Do you have plans in the morning?” Altman asked. The question surprised Mueller. “To go sculling. It's been years since we did that. How is your technique? Are you still the chaser you were in school?”

It was agreed.

  •  •  •  

Dense fog. Dawn light came through the cottony gray that blanketed the bay. A buoy clanged somewhere. Visibility was nearly zero and sound had no provenance. Mist was heavy with moisture over the cool surface of the water.

Two sculls sliced the calm green, moving side by side, bows sharing the lead. Oars dipped in a steady pace, and with each pull the oarsmen grunted, voices lending strength to their arms. There was no one to see them. They traveled in a bubble of visibility that was just an oar's length of water, but they saw each other, competed with each other, straining to gain the advantage. Oars entered the water in a quickening pace. They were dressed in sweatsuits for the dawn chill, but the exertion of their race drew sweat to their foreheads and stained the gray cotton.

Suddenly a monstrous four-masted barque rose straight out of the water and loomed through the fog. Waves slapped the hull. Beads of sweat channeled their eyes, smarting, then blurring eyesight, but neither wanted to risk surrendering the lead by losing half a stroke to gaze at the ghostly mass that slid past.

The finish line was suddenly upon them. A clarion red buoy
bobbed in the wake of their sculls. And then only the sound of air being gulped and labored breathing.

“You lost,” Altman said, gasping. His head rested on his hands, holding his stilled oars.

“I won,” Mueller said. He too gasped for breath and he too rested his forehead on his oars.

Then quiet. The sleek sculls continued to glide the surface still powered by the last great heaves the two men had put into their effort. All around there was only dense fog and the strange silence of water.

“I won,” Altman reiterated, rising to sit upright. “You had nothing to drink. It was my handicap.”

Mueller shook his head, exhausted. He filled his lungs with a mouthful of air, and moved his arms to shake out the tension in his shoulders. “You lost.”

“You've never beaten me,” Altman said.

The two men were still youthfully fit in spite of desk work and job stress, and they grinned at each other, proud of the ambiguous result, each pleased to be spared an obvious and embarrassing loss—neither conceding.

“Will you be crewing in the race today?” Altman asked.

“No. You?”

“Father's boat. The one at the dock. It's old, slow. Work?”

“It's Saturday.”

“That's never stopped you.”

“Reading. Thinking. A bit of work.”

Altman threw out an opinion. “You think too much, George. You're too self-absorbed. The tedious life of perpetual self-exam
ination is a bore. You're moody, dark, always preoccupied. I'm not sure what Beth sees in you.”

Mueller stroked to keep his scull even with Altman's.

“It's not a race,” Altman said.

“I'm not racing.”

“Life, George. Life is not a race. I meant life is not a race. It's a journey with surprises and unexpected twists. Who would have thought you'd be seeing my sister?”

Mueller wondered. Question or observation? He stroked harder to pull away. His bow cut through the murky water.

“You and Coffin met the director last week,” Altman said, voiced raised.

Question or observation? “Yes.”

“What did you discuss?”

The two boats were alongside each other at matched speeds. The two men had picked up their pace and their oars overlapped in the narrow gap separating the boats, oars synchronized, dipping to avoid the other. Mueller spoke in staccato bursts between oar pulls. “Coffin has another theory. He lives in a gloomy castle brooding about all his doubts. In his mind everything—
everything
—is a security risk. I'm a risk. For all the reasons you know.” Mueller looked across the water. “And you're a risk.” Mueller slowed his pace. “I defended you.”

“He's good at that. Talking behind one's back. You defended me? Well, jolly good for you.”

Mueller stopped. He detected offense in Altman's voice when he had instead expected gratitude. Mueller had gone out of his way to protect Altman. It was the right thing. Mueller respected
the choice Altman had made in his life and he knew the burden it placed on him in the hostile, frightened gossip that passed for intelligent conversation in Washington's social circles. Nobody in Mueller's life—not at home, in school, at work—had ever spoken of homosexuality except as a disorder that would destroy a career. Lost in the excited prurience of the conversations by ones who weren't homosexual about someone who was, was the person, the man, the human being. Mueller felt an obligation to defend Altman because he knew Altman, knew the man.

Mueller arrived at Yale from the Midwest with limited experience, and none of the sophistication that the graduates of New England boarding schools brought with them to college. He was naïve and curious. He didn't understand the social fear of affection between men that rose to drama and, at its worst, hypocrisy. Mueller had found Altman attractive in a way he couldn't put to words—the quick smile, his intelligence, a passion for athletics, and a shy vulnerability. Mueller was curious about the tall, lean boy with hair that fell over his forehead and pushed back with his hand, and that made him open to “bonding.” That was the word they used to describe the things they did together, the crewing, a cappella singing, and it was a different type of relationship from the more formal dating on weekends with Vassar coeds. The end of their friendship came one day after crew practice in the boathouse when Altman emerged from the shower. Mueller inserted his arm between their bare chests, blocking Altman's advance. “It's not going to happen again,” he said. He was respectful, but firm.

Neither of them brought up the incident. They never discussed what happened, and as far as Mueller knew, it was some
thing that stayed between the two of them. They were part of the same social set, but they were no longer close friends, and Mueller blamed Altman for that. In time, enough other things filled their lives and the incident was lost in memory. Here they were, twelve years later, the same men with the same competitive spirits, the same fit bodies. Except that Mueller had married and Altman never had.