Exiles in the Garden (10 page)

Yes, Lucia said.

They met while Alec was on assignment for the Sunday magazine, portraits to accompany an article on ambassadors—the Iranian, the Brazilian, the Saudi, the Australian, and the Swiss. Ambassadors at home on the weekends, watching American television, playing with their children, examining their stamp collections, building a ship in a bottle, reading Pascal. The Swiss ambassador, not quite understanding what the project was about, was dressed in a dark suit and foulard tie as if headed for his office—which, in fact, he was. Alec was placing his lights and wondering how to persuade his subject to relax when he saw a slender, beautifully built young woman in the doorway, two small children at her side. She was unsuccessfully suppressing laughter at the scene before her, and then she bent down and whispered something to the children, giving them a little push in the direction of their father. Alec took two quick shots of the children hanging on the ambassador's blue serge trousers, his startled expression—as if, Alec remarked later to the photo editor, the brats had demanded passwords to the numbered accounts. Quickly Alec turned back and shot the beauty in the doorway, her arms crossed, her hair falling over her right eye, an expression of the utmost amusement. Three cheers for the ambassador, the old goat; she was much too young for him, a freckle-face who looked to be barely out of college. When she moved away from the doorway Alec saw that she had a slight limp, an imperfection that only increased her allure. He took a dozen correct poses of the ambassador for form's sake. The shot that would make the paper was the one of his small children hanging on his trousers.

May I have the name of your wife? Alec asked the ambassador when they were alone.

My wife?

Yes, in the doorway with the children.

She is the au pair, the ambassador said curtly. Her name is Lucia Duran.

How do you spell that? Alec said.

He sent Lucia the photograph of herself in the doorway—it was a fine candid, and he wondered yet again if he were not in the wrong business, his taste ran more to beautiful forms than the grit of the news—and asked if she would have dinner with him. She replied that of course she would and he named a place, a date, and a time. When Alec arrived at the restaurant, a little late, not much, she was seated and drinking a glass of wine. She asked him if he was always late, and he said sometimes he was, not always. Unfortunately his work was governed by deadlines. In that case, she said, why aren't you on time? Because the deadlines keep changing, he said, noticing again the spray of freckles on her cheeks and aware that she was irritated with him. He remembered hearing somewhere that the Swiss had a fetish about punctuality, obsessed as they were by timepieces. The waiter was at his elbow so he ordered a glass of Chianti.

He said, I made a bit of a mess of things at the embassy with your ambassador. I thought you were his wife.

She stared at him a long moment. How could I possibly be his wife? His wife is fifty and quite stout.

Well, I didn't know that. Ambassadors often have wives younger than themselves. Most of the time, in fact. Why—he sought an ambassador from a country she would not know—the Laotian has a wife young enough to be his granddaughter. And I thought that was the situation with the Swiss.

We have nothing to do with the Laotians, she said. They are in Asia, whereas we are in Europe.

They are exceptionally randy in Laos. It's the damp tropical weather. Also the Buddhist spirits.

I don't understand, Lucia said. What means "randy"? But she was smiling when she said it so Alec guessed he had gotten over that hurdle. He was charmed by her accent and the way she sat up straight in her chair as if she had taken lessons in good posture. He complimented her on her dress and the little gold pin she wore. She said the pin had been her mother's, though it was an ordinary gold pin, nothing special. He thought she was blushing but with the freckles it was hard to tell.

He said, Where did you get the limp?

She brought her legs under her chair and shrugged off the question.

I'm sorry, he began.

Skiing, she said. A bad fall.

It's hardly noticeable, he said.

Yet you noticed it, she said.

They sat in silence a moment and she began to tell him about her work at the embassy, looking after the children, seeing that they took their baths and did their homework. The ambassador and his wife had taken the children to Williamsburg for the weekend. The ambassador wanted to know more about the nation's colonial beginnings and he thought he might find out from the blacksmith's shop and the chandlery. Also, such an experience was educational for the children. She did not get out much herself. She was invited to all the embassy parties—ghastly, boring parties, but it was something to do in the evenings. However, her wages were good and she had a room of her own.

She asked Alec about his work and he told her, somehow making it sound both more and less interesting than it was. Mostly his assignments were on the Hill, covering committee hearings.

The Hill?

Capitol Hill, he said. Congress. Men in front of microphones. You try to get them chewing on the bows of their eyeglasses or taking a drink of water. Pointing a finger at a witness, that's good. And the witness pointing back, even better. It's an unwritten rule that you don't take a picture of them when they fall asleep. Professional courtesy. That's still life. The paper doesn't like still life.

Nature morte,
she said.

The paper likes action, he said.

And that's what you like?

Not particularly. Probably I'm miscast as a newspaper photographer. I'm not much interested in the news. I prefer things in repose.

You do?

Yes, he said. Tell me about the accident.

What accident?

Your skiing accident.

I was competing at St. Moritz, leading the trials. And then late in the afternoon I went off on my own, alone as I loved to be, off piste. Where was the harm? A tune-up for the race the next morning. I misjudged a mogul and flew into a tree. Left leg broken below the knee. No more ski competitions for Lucia. I was heartbroken. I thought my life was over. I loved competitive skiing, it meant the world to me. It still does, except now I watch it instead of doing it.

That's a sad story, Alec said.

Don't you like competing in the news?

I never think about it.

But it must be competitive.

I suppose it is. But you either get the shot or you don't. I don't think of the news as competitive. It's grass growing on a lawn. Who cares if one blade grows higher than the others, unless of course you care like hell about what a pretty lawn you have.

Lucia smiled broadly and took a swallow of wine. She said, I was going out for a while with a boy at the State Department. He lived in a house with four other boys. What a place. They acted as if they were still at university. So much filth. An icebox full of beer. It was disgusting. He wanted me to cook for all of them and then he wanted me to sleep with him but I said no thanks and that was the end of that. I think I will go home soon.

All they talked about was the news, she added.

How long have you been here? Alec asked.

Not even a year, she said.

I hope you don't go home.

Of course I will go home. But not just yet.

Good, he said. I'd like you to stay.

And you? she said. Do you involve yourself with disgusting girls with beer in their iceboxes who offer to sleep with you as a reward?

Not yet, he said.

I think this country isn't grown up.

They were sitting outside on the terrace of the Italian restaurant on New York Avenue, a favorite of young staff assistants on the Hill and journalists. Each table had a candle in a Chianti bottle. The waiters wore white aprons and seemed almost to dance as they moved among the tables, trays of food nicely balanced on the tips of their fingers. The night was balmy, spoiled only marginally by car exhaust from New York Avenue. Conversation was spirited because everyone was talking serious politics, the bill that was stalled in committee, Republican obstructionism, Democratic timidity, cynical newspaper reporters. "Everyone's trying to screw Jack. That's what it's about."

Their food arrived with two more glasses of wine. Lucia began to talk about Switzerland, hiking in the Engadine in the summer, skiing the rest of the year, a healthy outdoor life except for the foehn, the dangerous summer wind. Washington's climate was not healthy owing to the tropical heat, so damp everything went limp. Thoughts went limp. Thank God the embassy was air-conditioned, but air conditioning was unhealthy also because it was unnatural. As she spoke she moved her head left and right, not looking at Alec but prospecting far away, the Engadine perhaps or some other idealized grown-up non-Washington milieu.

I am talking too much, she said.

Alec scarcely understood what she was saying. He heard her voice but listened to it as he would listen to unfamiliar music, gradually gathering the tempo and the melody but baffled nonetheless. He was in a state of enchantment listening to her voice. She had paused and now was talking about friendship, how difficult it was to become close to people. Probably that was her fault. Swiss were reserved. Mountain people were reserved generally. Still, she was alone much of the time.

He understood that. He thought Lucia's admission startling and now she sat in a glum little zone of silence while voices rose around them. He had the idea that unless he said something equally startling the evening would be ruined. He would never see her again. Alec hardly knew where to begin. He touched her hand.

I want to tell you something about myself, he said.

You do?

I do. Will you listen?

Of course, she said.

I just broke up with the girl I've been seeing, Alec said. She's married, her husband is overseas, posted to the American embassy in Moscow. He doesn't want her with him because of the hardship, no amenities, constant surveillance. But he doesn't want to come home either so he's staying on for a second tour because his work is so challenging and important. He's fluent in Russian. He's certain to be promoted very soon and that will mean a larger apartment and a more generous allowance and at that time she can join him and they can have a normal life together. He knows how difficult it is for her, alone in Washington, but things are difficult for him, too, similarly alone and without amenities and under constant surveillance. He works twelve-hour days, seven days a week, because there isn't much else to do in dreary Moscow. His work has become his life and he's working to good effect because of his skill with the Russian language and his affection for the Russian people. He understands the Russians. He believes they are soul mates. The ambassador personally asked him to stay on. In two months he would have leave. How did Italy sound? A holiday in one of the hill towns in Tuscany or farther south, Capri or Rimini, one of the places we've always talked about going to. The trouble was, they had never talked about visiting the hill towns of Tuscany or farther south either. She had no idea where Rimini was located on the landmass of Italy. She was from Minnesota. So was he.

He told her he was dreaming in Russian. Thinking in Russian.

He told her that when they had a child, and if the child was a girl, they would name her Nadezhda, meaning hope. If it was a boy, Vladimir, Lenin's nom de guerre.

She thought he was losing his mind. His mind had disappeared into Russia.

Alec paused there because he did not know how to put the next part into words that Lucia would understand and sympathize with. She was bent forward, her chin cupped in her hand, staring at him intently, her wine and food forgotten. She was silent while he grappled with his next thought. At the table beside theirs one of the loud young men was saying that the problem in Congress was that bastard Johnson, wouldn't give the president the help and support he needed. It had been a terrible mistake putting Johnson on the ticket, just terrible. Bobby was against it.

So she took up with me, Alec said. She was lonely. She didn't know Washington well. She said she distrusted it, its glare, its rootlessness, its self-regard. She had no children and few friends. There was no anchor to her life, only her cat and her apartment way out Connecticut Avenue and the grace-and-favor job someone had found for her at one of the foreign policy associations—they call it a think tank. We met at the think tank when I was doing a shoot, Alec said, watching Lucia's mouth edge into a small smile. And we were mightily attracted to each other, although it took us a while to connect because of the distrust she had of Washington, a distrust that specifically included the press, even photographers.

She told me the story in bits and pieces.

He bought a little dog and called it Katya or Strelya, a name like that, Russian in origin. The dog kept him company at night. That caused her to wonder how Katya or Strelya would get on with her cat, called Fluffy.

At any event, the two months came and went and there was no Tuscany or any other part of Italy because of the Cuban missile crisis and its aftermath, when all of us were working our nuts off, as he said, and all leaves were canceled indefinitely. Gosh, I'm so sorry. But this is important. Do you realize we almost went to war? I can tell you that there were some pretty tough moments here at Embassy Moscow and it's only a question of time before they try again. The telephone communications were always bad, lapses and static. They had to shout to make themselves understood. Normal conversation was impossible. Once or twice she heard the dog barking. Alec paused once more.

Lucia said, What was her name?

Alec said, Olivia. His name was Robert. Robert Sorrensen.

Lucia said, How much of that was true?

I don't know, he said.

Did she believe it?

Some of it. Most of it. She didn't know what to believe. She was suspicious of the hill towns of Tuscany.

I would be, too, Lucia said.

And the dreaming in Russian.

So she took up with you, Lucia said.