Babayaga: A Novel (28 page)

But no matter where they were, he thought, not one of them was experiencing anything like the strange misadventures and exquisite pleasures he had known in the past twenty-four hours. Then again, he thought, who was he to guess? Maybe two or three were out there in the throes of wild cataclysms that would make his recent escapades seem positively provincial. Chewing his sandwich, he enjoyed thinking that some of his staff were, at that very moment, caught up in riotous, bawdy, action-packed exploits involving various disguises, swashbuckling swordplay, suitcases stuffed with franc notes, the whooshing sound of throwing knives, loose prowling circus lions, or fleeing half-naked lovers racing across sunny, aristocratic courtyards. Perhaps that’s what they were all doing right now, out on their lunch breaks, desperately trying to extract themselves from their absurd situations in time to make it back to their desks before anyone noticed.

Eventually, though, they did return and the afternoon went on, and though he waited for the phone to ring, Zoya never called. Finally, as the clock neared five, he filed the papers away in his desk and prepared to head out, wondering if she would still be there, waiting for him. She might have found an apron somewhere, poured wine, thrown together a cassoulet, and put it in the oven. No, he smiled, he could not imagine that. No cassoulet. But he felt his pulse pick up at the thought she might still be undressed, waiting for him there beneath the white duvet, her skin still warm and soft. He closed his eyes to savor the image. When he opened them again the first thing he saw was Brandon’s two men heading down the hall, aiming straight for his office. Will realized he would not be going home any time soon.

“Hello, Mr. Van Wyck?”

“Hi, boys, what can I do for you two?” Will said.

“Brandon sent us over. You promised us those personnel files.”

“Of course, I remember.” Will lit a cigarette. “Say, what were your names again?”

“I’m Mike Mitchell and this is Caleb White.”

“Right, well, Mike, look, I really haven’t had time to—”

They both gave him a cold smile. “You did promise us the files,” White said.

Something about their manner bothered Will. Both of them were a few years younger than him and they each seemed to share the same smug expectation that he would unquestionably acquiesce to their authority. Brandon, at least, had always been collegial and chummy, like they were fraternity brothers just goofing off. But these two took it seriously and played it straight in a way that made things both clear and ugly. They honestly irritated Will, and so, before he had thought through the possible repercussions, he said, “Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking it over and I’m not entirely comfortable handing those files over. After all, I don’t really know what you’re going to do with them.”

He watched them take this news. They gave him a pair of official grins.

“We’re only going to look them over, see what we can learn, and then give them back to you,” said Mitchell.

“I understand that’s what you want to do. But it doesn’t seem right to me. So I’m not going to turn over those files.”

He was surprised at his resolution. He wasn’t sure what had caused him to be so headstrong, but he could see that, without the friendly presence of Brandon overshadowing them, Mike Mitchell and Caleb White both looked like small and mean men. These were not the sort of fellows you wanted digging into anyone’s past.

“You mind if we use your phone?” said Mitchell. “We need to call Brandon.”

“Suit yourself,” said Will.

“He’ll probably want to come here and talk to you.”

“That’s fine.”

“He’s not going to be happy. He’s got another project right now that needs his full attention. We’re supposed to take care of this for him.”

“Well, do what you gotta do. But I’m not giving you those files.”

Will realized that there was not much they could do. There was no one they could appeal to; no one else in the entire building knew about the agency’s relationship with the CIA. Will was their only guy, and if he refused to play along, the only thing they could possibly do was fire him, which they had actually already done a few days before when Brandon had come by for his visit.

Mitchell dialed the phone while White worked on giving Will a hard, mean stare. Will could tell the guy wanted to look like a killer, but he didn’t. He looked like an overfed Boy Scout, fresh-faced and cocky in his sense of righteous justice. Will did not care, he was not afraid of these two, he was experiencing his own sense of certainty, one that was coming together to make perfect sense of the present moment.

Will was reminded of the Hollywood writers he’d seen in the papers who had been called before various committees to rat out their fellow members in the Communist Party. A few of them had refused, even when they were threatened with jail. Will didn’t know if they were really Communists or not, but he knew it took some character not to talk. Whatever their ideology, their resistance had shown a rare kind of integrity. Will thought about all the other people who had, over the ages, gone the other way, turning in people they actually knew were innocent: the ones who dodged suspicion by passing it on. The Nazis and Stalin were the most recent examples, interrogating and torturing innocent citizens until, finally, desperate to mollify their tormentors, the accused denounced their equally innocent neighbors. In the end, how many scapegoats were herded up? And when did this nightmare of evil arithmetic stop? Crystalizing within Will was the realization that what he was being asked to participate in now was in a way no different, it was the awful conveyor belt of history, a butcher’s carnival where ultimately no one innocent escaped, they lost their jobs and homes, or their throats were cut and they were dumped in bloody piles. The only ones who ever seemed to get away were the guilty.

At that moment, as if punctuating his resolution, there was the loud cheerful ping of the elevator arriving and around the corner came Guizot, with outstretched arms and tears rolling down his cheeks. “Will! Will!” he cried out, oblivious to the stares of Mitchell, White, and the other employees in the office. “We are the destroyers of the world!” Guizot cried out. Will almost had to smile.

“You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” he said, getting up and leaving the two men there.

A half hour later, Will was still sitting with his inconsolable client. Between sobbing and loudly blowing his nose, Guizot told him his saga, about how, after the terrible argument over the Surrealist painting, his wife had packed her bags (“So many shoes, Will, when did she buy them all!”) and stormed out of their flat, leaving him shocked, appalled, galled, and completely brokenhearted. After a few days of suffering from inconsolable grief, he had rushed out to her art dealer and purchased every Surrealist painting he could lay his hands on, de Chiricos and Ernsts, Klees, and Mirós, along with countless others that the dealer, sensing a vulnerable moment, pawned off on him. Then he drove to the hotel suite where his wife was staying and begged her to come home.

“I was on my knees,” Guizot said. “I pleaded. ‘You are the most important person to me!’ I groveled. ‘You are the best part of my soul!’ I kissed her ankles over and over like a desperate supplicant at the feet of a great princess, crying, ‘You are the first woman, the only woman, I have ever loved in this way!’ And you know what she did, Will? She looked down at me—oh, those eyes, so cold they could turn a mountain into ice, and she sneered at me, Will, she sneered.
‘Oh, Guizot, listen to yourself, “most,” “best,” “first
,
” how pathetic, you sound like one of your cheap little advertisements.’
I am telling you, I crawled out of there a destroyed man.”

Since then, Guizot said, he had been holed up alone in his apartment, with the nightmarish shapes of Surrealism’s asymmetrical jungles and melting timepieces looming over him as his wife’s bitter words burned inside his head, quickly driving him mad. “Then in an instant, it hit me! I saw it! She was right! She was absolutely correct! Listen to the language we pepper people with, Will, listen to how our advertisements are ripping all the meaning from the world, tearing it out! How can a sacred word like ‘adore’ mean anything between a man and a woman when we say ‘You will
adore
this creamy butter! You will
adore
this smelly fragrance! You will
adore
this fruity, delicious cherry cream soda!’ What is adoration when our advertisements are done with it, Will? What are we destroying with our absurd and exaggerated creations? We are monsters, and we are sucking out the marrow from the world!”

With that, Guizot collapsed into a flood of tears on the desk and, in between sobs, fired the agency. Will could hardly believe it. Guizot vowed that from that day forward he was only going to sell his product personally to retailers, one to one, with no television, radio, newspaper, or outdoor advertisements. “All I need is a handshake, the handshake of a man, eye to eye, that is how I will sell! That is all!” He pulled himself together, wiped his eyes, and, giving Will a warm embrace, excused himself. “My friend, you should get out of this racket too,” he said. “While you still have a soul.”

“Yes, well, I appreciate your sentiments, and I very sincerely hope you work things out with your wife,” Will said, sounding stiff and awkward even to himself.

“Ah, Will, you are a vampire. No, we are both vampires!” Guizot gave him a bittersweet smile. “But I have put the stake through my own heart.” Then Guizot walked off down the hallway, his head hung low.

Will watched him leave, unsure of exactly what had occurred, other than having been fired from his last and final account. Perhaps Guizot would come to his senses. If not, it did not matter. Will’s career in Paris was over. There was not much left to do.

He headed back to his office. He knew Brandon was there by now, waiting. He did not know if Brandon would be tough with him or friendly. He did not care. He was not handing over the files.

So, as he walked into the room, he was not surprised to see Brandon sitting with the two others, staring up at him as he entered. He was, however, surprised to find Oliver sitting with them.

“Oh, hullo,” Oliver said, looking up from behind Will’s desk, where he had clearly made himself comfortable. “What a nice surprise, I stopped by to pick you up for our appointment and ran into these fine fellows. Have you all met?”

Will gave a nervous smile. “Um, yes, Oliver, they’re sitting in my office.”

“Well, then of course you have!” Oliver laughed. “Turns out Caleb here hails from Cleveland. You two must have a lot to talk about. Ohio’s got the oil and the tires and you’ve got the automobiles in Detroit, so there’s a nice symbiosis there, right? But then there’s that funny football rivalry and the war you two fought against one another back in the 1830s. The Toledo War, wasn’t it? Yes, well, happy to chat all day but look, boys”—he slapped his hands together and stood up—“I must borrow Will for a bit. Your business can wait, can’t it?”

“Listen, I don’t have time to joke—” Brandon began to speak, but Oliver stopped him with a raised hand.

“I’m as serious as a saint, I won’t take no for an answer. In return I promise you a substantial round of drinks. I do need him, you understand.”

Brandon just glared as Oliver took Will’s hat off the rack, popped it on Will’s head, and swiftly guided him out the door. Will went along, a little confused by Brandon’s silence. From what he had been able to gather, everyone did Brandon’s bidding, not the other way around.

Two minutes later they were in a taxi, where Will was still trying to work out how they had gotten away. Maybe Oliver’s sudden appearance had taken Brandon by surprise, or perhaps Brandon had felt he did not have the authority to stop them, or maybe the man was a little wary of Oliver, which maybe made sense; Oliver might come across as a bit of a foolish dandy, but he did seem to know a lot of influential people.

“Well, that went well.” Oliver straightened his cuff buttons. “Glad I found you, because, you see, the jazz boys rang me up. They finally tracked down the whereabouts of Ned, and they tell me she’s not doing so hot. I promised I’d phone when we were on our way. You have any
jetons
on you?”

“No,” said Will.

“Well, your place is only up ahead, right? I’ll have the driver wait while we dash up and make the call.”

Remembering that Zoya was probably still in his apartment, Will tried to avoid the awkward encounter. “Oh, I bet we could find a
tabac
and get some phone tokens there.”

Oliver chuckled. “Don’t be daft, we’re only a block away from your building.” He leaned forward and told the driver, “
Prenez une gauche et laissez-moi à côté du trottoir.
”

IV

A dazed Noelle sat cross-legged on the hotel bed, watching Elga dig through the oversized canvas carpetbag. The old woman had been bustling about the room for over an hour, muttering phrases to herself and barely acknowledging the girl. From the bottom of the bag the old woman hauled out a large bundle wrapped in an old sheet. Inside was an exquisite-looking clock, which she set on the table; then she went back to searching the carpetbag. After a minute of rummaging, she pulled out a pistol.

“Look around carefully and weigh all things, weigh them right, like a butcher weighs meat,” the old woman said, giving Noelle a raised eyebrow as she waved the pistol in the air. “Especially dumb toys like this. People think guns are important—ah, so much fear and lust over this chunk of steel, right? But like so much else, they are very wrong, guns are not important; they are stupid. But…” She held up her finger to make a point, then suddenly went back into her carpetbag, searching and digging until she came up with a box. “Bullets yes, bullets are important.”

“What do you have a gun for? What do you shoot?” asked Noelle.

“Oh, I’ve shot lots of things. Mostly food, animals, some troublemakers,” said Elga. “The other day, I had to shoot a stupid pig to shut up his big pig mouth. I was careful, though, I only used one bullet, see?” She pulled at the loading gate on the gun, unslid the rod, and the chamber popped out. Noelle could see it was full of bullets except for one empty casing. Elga popped the empty casing out, took a bullet from the box, and refilled the chamber. “First, I walked into the man’s store and put the gun right up to his head and pulled the trigger. No chance of missing there. Then, to be sure the idiot stayed quiet, I cut out his tongue.”