Collages (12 page)

When he had delivered Renate to her home, he
gave her his card: “You can always call on Emile, the painter from Marseilles,
if you have any secret missions, secret love missions to accomplish. I am
discretion itself.”

One day the Consul’s wife asked Renate and
Bruce to take her to the American desert which she had never seen. They agreed
to drive her there. The Consul’s wife packed a wicker basket with a picnic
lunch. The wicker clasp was broken so she slipped a pencil through the noose.
For the desert she wore sandals as worn as the Turkish rugs and loose fitting
clothes which seemed like pale echoes of former Oriental wear.

Was it the American desert she had come to see
or was she in her mind, superimposing over it the deserts of China, Africa,
India, and this one a background upon which to weave reconstructions of ast
scenes, drum heats by an open fire, horse’s hoofs and Arab shouts, while lambs
roasted on a spit at night, black tents and midnight blue robes, black eyes and
shining beards?

She was appreciative of the American desert but
Renate did not know if she was using it like her worn rugs as a framework upon
which to reweave more luxuriant scenes and wilder musical accompaniments.

Bruce was singing Western songs for her,
accompanied by his guitar. The pure voice of a young man who had never known
the raucous tones ofpassion, the wild cries of battle, fever, pain, despair,
lust. She lost herself in the songs which matched his flawless beauty. Was he
evoking for her other songs, other guitars, other young men?

With those who had lived such full lives it was
difficult to know which one they were evoking at the moment, and how much of
past colors they were using to paint the present with. Did she seesignboards,
motels, coffee shops, giant hot dog signs, or mirages, ochre sand dunes, and vermilion
sunsets?

“How strange it is,” she said, “this beautiful
desert seems uninhabited, as if the people living on it did not belong here. As
if all of us were tourists!”

Then she talked about the Consul. The pattern
of their marriage was frayed. The silver, gold, purple, red and green threads
were worn away. What was left was her knowledge that he was possessed by his
mother’s spirit who had willed him first of all to be a war hero, then to
surpass Don Juan with women. He had dutifully proceeded to fulfill all her
wishes. He had brought her his war scar and his medals. But before he could
present her with his prize for the best novel of the year, she had died.

The Consul’s wife had played the role of
substitute mother almost to perfection. She admired military prowess, she
collaborated in his writing, she took pride even in his lover’s prowess. She
shared his love of politics, history, languages. She was at one with his
ambitions. Her English coolness saved him from tears and clinging. She thought
they would remain life companions if not bed companions.

Every scene between them was a witty charade.
She always held the door open and he never left.

But it was only in Los Angeles that he began to
talk about adopting a daughter. All these years while they traveled and he
wrote his books, he had not thought about children. But now he felt he needed a
daughter.

The Consul’s wife had smiled and said: “That
should be simple nowadays. There are so many orphans in the world, in Korea, in
Hungary, in Poland.”

But the Consul protested: “Oh, no, oh, no. I
don’t want an undernourished, a deficient, pathetic, anaemic war victim in the
house. I want a tanned, healthy, American child.”

The Consul’s wife was telling Renate and Bruce
this story. “He means Lolita,” said Renate.

The Consul’s wife remembered that in Turkey in
moments of crisis, she had smoked opium. The poet Michaux had described how it
was hashish which gave the illusion of levitation, and that it was from taking
the drug that the legend of the “flying carpets” had originated. It was a
flying carpet she needed now. But she knew of no opium den in Los Angeles, so
friends gave her a tranquilizer.

She lay on her canopied bed and waited for its
effects, waited to be wafted away from the Consulate.

“The opposite happened. I felt myself growing
heavier and more passive. I felt myself turning into a white slug.”

In spite of the tranquilizers, the Consul’s
wife realized that the adoption of an American daughter, a healthy American
orphan, had subtly developed into an expedition into the realm of nubile youth
from which he might never return, for it was he who had been adopted by a young
film star. She began to wonder if their story were finished.

She remembered a day in Morocco, when she sat
in a cafe and while waiting for the Consul to end a conference, had been
embroidering a
petit point
tapestry. The Moroccans had gathered around
her to watch her as they watched other craftsmen working the streets. She was
using all the colored wools they loved, and her needlework was nimble. She
worked on a small square and was but halfway done. One of the Moroccans in long
black robes, with a dignified bearing, bent over her and whispered: “Would the
lady give me this embroidery in memory of her fair hands at work? I have never
seen such fair hands at work.”

The Consul’s wife had been startled by the
request. She had never parted with her embroideries. They covered all the
chairs at the Consulate for many years. And all she could think to say was:
“But it is not finished.”

The Moroccan did not ponder this very much or
very long. He almost immediately answered: “But dear lady, according to the
Koran, nothing is ever finished.”

Nothing is ever finished.

Yet there at her feet lay an open magazine with
a photograph of the Consul and the young film star in a gondola in Venice. And
the young film star had commented to the press that she did not believe in the
European system of a wife and mistress in close collaboration.

Nothing is ever finished. As they had always
shared and paralleled their interests, the study of dialects from all the
provinces of India, the Tibetan
Book of the Dead
, the history of Turkey,
the classification of Arabian war cries, the history of rugs and pottery of
Egypt, the history of ship building, birds of Africa, diseases of Tahiti, would
she now parallel his experience and fall in love with someone like Bruce, the
masculine counterpart of the Consul’s new love?

Could she love such an unstormy sky as his
eyes, such a downy and untarnished skin, such a candid smile?

The man she carried in her mind at the moment
was a Turkish war hero, a dark and wild man. She was writing his biography. The
magnetic pull of his violence was greater than that of innocence and serenity.

A romance with a man who had died long ago
promised at least no pain, no separations, no betrayals.

She boarded a plane to his native city.

Few people knew about him, but she knew him as
well as if she had been his wife. She was adept at resuscitating a human being
out of dusty books and files and letters in library vaults.

When she arrived at the Capitol, at the big
hotel, she asked about ways to reach the village birthplace of Shumla. She was
told she would have to wait for a guide, that no woman could travel there
alone, and that it was the middle of the day, time for a siesta and that she
should rest and wait.

But she could not sleep, and she could not
wait. The photograph of Shumla which she carried in her wallet was so vivid, so
alive, that she felt as if she had an appointment with him which could not be
postponed.

She slipped out of the hotel and walked to the
bus stop, asking her way. The buses were taking their load of men, women,
babies and animals. She was the last to climb on. She was the only pale,
fair-haired woman aboard.

Nothing is ever finished. The Consul was
walking into the future with his young film star, learning to dance jazz in
caverns without windows, studying
The Dictionary of Slang
, helping to
compose instant films; and the Consul’s wife was retrogressing to the seventeenth
century. Was this a form of faithfulness in her?

The bus jogged along. She was not treated like
a tourist as her clothes were loose, crumpled and anonymous. She asked the
conductor for Shumla’s village. He was surprised she would want to stop there.
A small village, half in ruins. No foreigners, no hotels, no guides. She
persisted and he stopped the bus. The road was white with sun and dust, as
white as a ski slope. The stones like chalk. No shade from the silvery,
denuded, thirsty pepper and olive trees. A few women in black carrying baskets
and pottery, or standing by the well. Streets of earth or rough stones. Her
heel broke. She tore both heels off. She wrapped her neck scarf around her
hair. She walked alone while half of the village slept through the heat of
noon. Now and then she stopped to ask someone: “The house of Shumla?” Some
would look blank and suspicious. Others pointed the way. It was outside the
village. From inside the shops whose entrances were covered with strings of
beads which sang in the breeze, people watched the pale-faced woman stumbling
over stones. She finally arrived at a group of half-ruined houses. There was no
sign. But someone said: “That’s Shumla’s house.”

The big wooden door was open, because the
hinges were half rusted and half gone. The house had been built around a patio.
The garden was taken care of; it had flowers and bushes and fruit trees in
bloom. But the rooms were in ruin. There were vestiges of murals. A few broken
colonnades. The ceilings were gone, and trailing plants fell from the beams.
The heat like a hypnotist made everything stand still as if deep in sleep. No
leaf stirred. No voices were heard. His presence, six feet of dark brown flesh,
heavy black hair and strong voice must have filled the fragile place. It was no
wse e that though born there, he had run away to fight wars. And only came home
to die.

His religion forbade biographies, photographs,
records of personal lives. So she had found little to reconstruct his life.
Whoever thought about him, or tried to make a living portrait of him would be
struck with misfortune. But the Consul’s wife felt that having already suffered
a loss, she could not be cursed any further. What else could happen to her? So
she was fearless. She sat on one of the stone benches and tried to relive his
life. Ill, dying, he must have listened to the sound of the trickling fountain.
He did not die in the middle of battle. Did he regret this? Charging,
screaming, with a curved sword held high above his head, he might have died
then. Who had been there to hold the large, heavy head? As she said this she
heard footsteps. A figure dressed in black appeared behind a column. It was a
girl about fourteen. Her face was dark, her eyes of a highly polished black.
But her mouth was tender, and a soft smile never quite left her lips.

“I came to see the house of Shumla because I am
writing a book about him.”

“But it is forbidden,” said the girl.

“In your country, yes, but outside your country
people think he was a great man, a hero, one of the bravest, and they would
like to know about his life.”

“People dared to write about him?”

“Not his own people, but scholars and
historians. They are embalmers. They are taxidermists. I wanted to write about
the living man. I loved him. What do they know about him here in the village?”

“He was born here, in this house. I am a
descendant of his. His great grandchild looks like him, they say. Come in and
have tea with us.”

At the back of the house in ruins, in a wing
preserved from decay, she found a complete family, great grandparents, silent
and like mummies, grandparents, grandchildren.

They served her tea. They read her manuscripts.
They said: “You have been truthful. You have not done him harm. You really know
him.” It was the young girl who knew English and who translated it for them.

They invited her to stay a few days.

She slept in his bed. She saw his costumes, his
swords, his knives, his shoulder bags, his bugle, his horse’s saddles and
silver ornaments. She saw his boots, his shawls, his tents, his carpets for
sleeping, his blankets for the cold, his fur-rimmed hats, his necklaces, his
medals, his spurs.

The great grandchild who was said to look like
him, like Shumla at fifteen, loved horses and war, and could reproduce the
special cries they had for battle. He sang the songs they sang around the
campfires.

She saw the rough maps he had used, the rough
notes, the messages, and many drawings of the period which portrayed battles,
executions, punishments, ceremonials, victories, banquets, weddings, burials,
decorations of heroes.

There were no clocks in the house, no
calendars. It facilitated her return to the past, a long journey. It washed
away the years from her body.

She lived with Shumla; he visited her in her
dreams. Even though the times dictated ferocity towards the enemy and no mercy
towards prisoners, his obedience to them had been tempered with as much mercy
as he could display without being branded a woman.

She took many notes from their stories. She
convinced the family that Shumla, as a symbol of courage, belonged to the
world, that it was not desecration to expose his life.