Jacob's Folly (33 page)

“I am gentle. The plays are cruel.”

“Le Naïf,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “What is your Christian name?”

“Johann.”

“I had an Austrian mother.”

“Yes?”

“But the past is so boring,” she exclaimed, waving her hand before her face and raising her frank, searching gaze to mine. “Isn't it, when there is so much to enjoy right now?” She didn't care where I was from. I was an artist; for her, I transcended class—and even, perhaps,
religion. This fact was still miraculous to me. In the days when I had worn my peddler's box or borne a tray of pastries, this great lady would not have acknowledged my presence. Now, not only did I exist, but she was very slightly in awe of me. Not that I was her equal. She wished from me only a little cruelty—understandable in a woman who got everything she wanted—and much affection. I played the game until she tired of it.

Thus began an affair marked by a complete lack of drama or posessiveness. Rose-Béatrice was incapable of jealousy. She simply wanted to enjoy her life, and to help others enjoy theirs. I was glad to assist her in her vocation, eating off the fat of her plentiful income, stretching out in her creamy bed. Mad about plays, the marquise often assembled little companies to play in her private theater. Though it was against my contract, I often did so, on my night off. Private performances were lucrative. Rose's husband, the old marquis, had his own mistress—an actress from my company, in fact—so it was all quite cozy. Even after our story had ended, the marquise had me star in her private productions, and allowed me to slip in and out of her shimmering world at will. In my new guise, I saw quite a few of the nobles I once served at the Hôtel de Villars when I was working for the count. None of them recognized me. My one worry was that I would run into the count himself at one of Rose-Béatrice's gatherings, and he would try to shoot me again. But I did not see him. I was not to find out why for some time.

When I was not scaling the social heights of Parisian society, I was busy nosing its depths; when the curtain at the Comédie-Française descended, I often took my carriage to the Tuileries. My wheels inching along the avenue, I peered out my window and watched the little whores, male and female, bravely walking through the shadows, waiting to be snatched up and squeezed like lemons. This might have been me, I often thought. I would have the coachman stop my carriage and chat with a young boy or girl. Sometimes I picked up several, and we
made a merry party at my house. I was often robbed on these occasions. When in a hurry, I made do with the bushes. If I was flush, I would simply drive to one of various houses where my tastes were catered to. I didn't ask much: several girls and the use of a sitting room for an hour or two. In this blissful span I would create little erotic parties. Being the only male at these affairs, and surrounded by prostitutes, I was guaranteed a great amount of attention. Standing at a window, I could have a casual conversation with one lovely, a hand spanning her bosom, while another girl knelt at my feet, my battering ram down her throat. I could set up little stories between the girls. I could join in. I had an endless appetite for pleasure and work in those days. Each morning I woke feeling I could eat the world.

As an actor, I rose to the very top, playing Alceste in
Le Misanthrope
, which put me in a lousy mood. It was at this point that I ran into Blond Nathan. He had been to see the play, doubtless in order to steal from the patrons. I saw him first, skulking by the open stage door, his hands in his pockets, the edges of his protective fringes peeking out from under his vest. I considered turning tail, going out the front entrance to avoid him, but my desire to lord it over him was too great. I emerged.

“Jacob?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“Le Naïf. I knew it was you. I stood there for an hour watching the thing, thinking,
It's him! It's not him. It's him! It's not him
.” Nathan had changed little since we were teenagers. He was heavier, his hair was thinner, but he still had the two-tone teeth and the overbite, the big, innocent blue eyes. He kept looking at me, shaking his head, until he made himself laugh. He laughed and laughed until tears came to his eyes. I just stood there. “They all think you're back in prison, or dead. How in the world did you become an actor?” I looked at the friendly ne'er-do-well with contempt, wondering what he had lifted during tonight's performance and where he had stowed it.

“You sold me a stolen weapon, for starters,” I said, smiling coldly.

“Sorry about that,” said Nathan. “But how did that lead to this?”

“Come,” I said, looking around us. I didn't want to be seen talking to him.

Back in my house, the disgruntled cook, woken to tend to my surprise guest, whipped us up a couple of omelets as Nathan admired my cozy rooms: freshly upholstered furniture, a large tapestry of a hunting scene, Oriental rugs, all purchased secondhand, gave off a feeling of quiet luxury. My many books spilled from the library into a glass case in the sitting room. A marble bust of Aphrodite, given to me by Rose-Béatrice, glowed on the mantelpiece. Nathan walked from one corner of the room to the other, examining everything while my flunky stoked the fire.

After we had eaten in the dining room in relative silence, we returned to the sitting room. Nathan drew his pipe from an inner pocket of his black jacket. I told him my story, omitting the baptism. He listened, shaking his head, staring into space, the smoke rising from his mouth in lazy wisps.

“You have a son,” he said dreamily. At first I didn't understand him.

“That's impossible.”

“How so?” he asked.

“No, I mean, I am surprised.”

If the child was mine, he had been conceived when Hodel was unclean. Atheist that I was, I was not free from all the old superstitions. If anything, my years in the theater, a superstitious place if there ever was one, had strengthened them in me. The child Hodel bore was cursed, unclean, the product of sin. Of all the Torah's precepts I had been taught to observe in my early life, I now honored only one: a bloody quim filled me with repugnance bordering on horror.

“Hodel,” said Nathan, “is dead. She went very strange after the child was born. Violent. She jumped into the Seine.” My Hodel had returned to the river. Perhaps the river demon had never been expunged.
What kind of child did she give birth to? “The child,” continued Nathan, “is a fine, healthy boy, about ten years old now. He lives with the Mendels, of course. Madame Mendel is raising him as her own. She has called him Ethiop.”

“Ethiop!” I exclaimed.

“An ugly name to guard against the evil eye,” Nathan explained. I was quiet for a moment, imagining my son walking through the world with that name around his neck like a lodestone. What luck could find him now?

“Nathan,” I said. “Will you do something for me? If you do, I will completely forgive you for what you did to me. The slate will be wiped clean.”

“I can't see how I did anything so terrible, given the outcome,” he said. “But tell me anyway.”

“Tell my mother you had news of me, that I am well, living in Italy. That she should not worry anymore. Will you do that?”

“Yes, I will do that, Jacob,” he said in an insolent singsong, a strained smile on his lips. “Tell me, within all of this, you still live as a Jew?”

“I live as a man,” I said with a cool shrug. A long silence ensued. At last, Nathan stood up. Without saying goodbye, he left. I sat motionless until the sun came up. I had a son. I tried to imagine his face. I could not go back. It would have to be enough to know that when I died, I would not be extinguished.

L
eslie woke up and checked the clock. Three a.m. He brushed his teeth in the downstairs bathroom, splashed water on his face. As he dried off with the towel, he looked at himself. What an exhausted-looking man, he thought. He went to the dryer, grabbed a few of his own T-shirts, shoving them into a plastic bag, then opened the front door as silently as he could, crept out to his truck, and felt for the fire gear he kept in the backseat. It was there. Deirdre's cigarette and lighter were in his glove compartment. He started the engine and pulled out, glancing at the clock on the dashboard: three-fifteen.

He got to Masha's minutes later, parked by the side of the building. The door to the basement was still taped open, as he had left it that morning. Once inside, he peeled the tape off the door strike, ran up the basement stairs, shut the door leading to the rest of the house. That would give him a few extra minutes before the fire spread. He walked across the basement, reached behind the dryer, and loosened the fitting with his wrench, jiggling the line until he could just hear the hiss of gas. It had to fill the room slowly if it was going to catch. Swiftly, he took the laundry from its plastic bag. He placed the clothes in one of the wicker
baskets, kicked the basket over to the dryer, took the cigarette from his pocket, lit it with a trembling hand. The smoke made his throat clench. He dropped the lit butt into the laundry basket, knelt down on the floor, and blew till a little tongue of flame flared.

As he stoked the fire, his breath caught the plastic bag he'd brought the clothes in; moved it, ghostlike, a few inches across the floor.

I exulted. How good was my good man now?
All righteousness is a mask
, I thought. The only truth is the black mirth bubbling like pitch from the center of the earth.
Beauty is Truth
, I thought with a chuckle, having gleaned the phrase from a skin-care advertisement in one of Deirdre's magazines.

Having rigged the dryer, Leslie ran to his truck, drove the five miles to the end of his fire district, and picked a house. He figured he had a good twenty minutes before Masha was in any kind of trouble. Plenty of time. The phone booth receiver felt heavy in his gloved hand. He dialled 911. His hands were shaking. A woman's voice picked up immediately.

“There's smoke comin' out of the first-floor window in 48 Division Street,” he said. It was a Cape house. He'd seen so many fires in this type of house.

“What is your name, please?”

“Bobik,” he answered, hanging up and hurrying back into the truck. As he sped toward Masha's house, he heard his pager go off. “Calling all units. A called-in fire, 48 Division Street.” The whole department would report to a called-in fire.

Turning onto Masha's street, Leslie saw smoke coming out of the first-floor window of her building. He stepped on the gas, passed the house, and made a quick U-turn so his truck would be facing the right way when he parked, as if he were on the way from his place. He called the fire dispatcher on his radio.

“It's Leslie. I got a structural fire on 155 Marine. By the boat club.
I was on the way to the other one, on Division. Be advised, I'm going in to investigate. I'm gonna be off the air for a few minutes.” He had about ten minutes before the department caught up with him. He needed to get her out himself.

He reached behind him and grabbed the heavy jacket, the helmet. He stepped into the boots, pulled on the bunker pants. The smoke coming out the window was black. This fire was moving faster than it should.

He banged open the front door with his shoulder. Worried for my own safety (who knew how much smoke a little fly could take?), I decided to zip outside and witness the rescue in absentia: I nestled in the crook of a tree and inhabited Leslie, seeing what he saw—the first floor was clotted with black smoke. He could just make out the staircase. He had no air tank with him; if he didn't get up there fast, he'd be overcome. As he reached the first step, he looked down and saw that a wide square of the first floor was missing. The workers were putting in a new floor! He hadn't known. The fire in the basement would flash through the house now. He ran up the stairs. The hallway was gray. Masha's door was open. He could barely make out her bed. He radioed in: “I have located a victim on the second floor, three-four corner.”

Masha woke, confused, logy, coughing. Leslie heaved her up, walked her down the stairs, crouching low. He had to get her out. He could hear the sirens now, faintly. They were on their way. It was pitch-black on the stairs. He felt his way along the wall. It seemed as though he was creeping down those blackened stairs forever. Her body was so heavy, slung over his shoulder. The heat and smoke were hellish. He thought he would pass out. At last he saw the open front door, a faint rectangle in the evil dark.

The trucks were on the lawn as he knelt at the doorway, set Masha down on the porch gently. She flopped like a rubber mannequin. She was barely conscious, but her eyes focused on him. She knew he was the one. There were men crawling by him, carrying a hose into the
building. They would have the fire out out in minutes. Curious to see the firemen at work, I flew up to the second floor and peered in a window. I could see a fireman crawling up the stairs, the light on his helmet the only illumination as he felt his way through the darkness, looking for victims. I could have told him no one else was there. I looked into Shelley's room, to see what was left of it. A lick of light from one of the flashing trucks illuminated a hand. I stared in horror. Leslie and I had both assumed Shelley would be in the city, having gotten back together with her boyfriend. I dive-bombed down toward Leslie, screaming.

Unaware, Leslie walked to the ambulance where they had Masha on a stretcher, oxygen up to her face. The paramedic set him down on the bench and gave him some as well. I buzzed around his face frantically. He waved me away. I kept bashing myself against his mask, yelling into his mind, but he was deaf to me, swatted at me. Masha looked up at him.

“I was driving toward another fire,” he explained to her. “I saw smoke coming out of your basement window.” She nodded, then drew the mask from her face. Asked him:

“Did they get Shelley out?”

Leslie ripped the oxygen mask off his face and stood, suffocated by fear. He grabbed his helmet, tore actross the lawn, his eyes only on the blackened door of the house, running over crisscrossed hoses, through beams of colored light pulsing from the trucks. When he reached the door, Tony stepped out of the house and blocked Leslie's path. His fire hat was set far back on his head; sweat streamed down his face.

“What's up?” he asked Leslie.

“There's another victim up there.”

“McCauley's got her,” said Tony.

“Did she make it?” asked Leslie.

Tony unclipped his walkie-talkie from his vest pocket, legs spread
wide. “Hey, Jim. Do you read me?” There was a pause. “Come in, Jim McCauley.”

The walkie-talkie let out a hiss. “I'm comin' down.”

“What's the status of the victim?”

“She's conscious. Looks like she burned her hand.”

At this, Tony looked up at Leslie, his flat mouth turned down at the corners. “Okay, Les?”

“Okay,” said Leslie.

Tony stepped to the side, away from the door, putting his hand on Leslie's arm. Leslie turned to face him. “The fire's out, Les,” he said. “Nothin' left to do. You …”

“What?” Leslie said.

“Take a load off. You gotta stop worrying about everybody so much. You're just … too good a guy, sometimes.”

Leslie crossed his lawn. The birds were chirping. The dawn was fine and clear. He walked into the open garage, unlocked the green metal cabinet in the back, and pulled the gun from behind the motor oil. He couldn't remember where the bullets were. He always hid them so carefully so Stevie wouldn't find them, now he couldn't remember where they were.

He walked into the silent house, sat down at the kitchen table, the handgun balanced on his long, splayed fingers. He looked around him, at his place, this kitchen he had built with his own hands. It seemed like a kitchen in a commercial now; nothing to do with him. What had happened? It all seemed like a dream, and now he had nearly murdered that girl. He would never see Masha again. He didn't even want to. The shame of what he had done was unbearable.

The solution to the problem was obvious. They say it runs in families. In all the world, Leslie thought himself the least likely to. Mr. Positive.
Yet here he was, bowing his head to the symmetry. Where were the bullets? He didn't feel sad, only determined to remove himself. He still wondered at it, though, how he had been ruined so quickly. Maybe it had been coming on a long time.

For the first time, I wished I had left Leslie alone.

There was a shuffling on the stairs. Leslie felt afraid. He didn't want to see her. It was Stevie. Tiny blond boy. Leslie was holding the gun under the table. He shoved it into the loose pocket of his sweatpants.

Stevie signed: “There was a fire?”

“Yes,” signed Leslie.

“Did you save anybody?”

“Yes.”

Stevie walked over to him, climbed up on his big lap, put his head against Leslie's chest. In his toneless, too-loud voice, he proclaimed, “I wanna watch cartoons!”

“Is that why you came down here?” Leslie signed.

Stevie nodded. He slid off Leslie's lap and pulled at his hand. Leslie stood up, led, shuffling, into the living room. He slumped into the soft leather couch, pulling the boy up on his knee. Stevie switched on the TV. It was on mute. The bright colors on the screen flashed and whizzed and popped. Leslie took the remote and turned on the sound. He held the little boy very close and watched the cartoon, the empty gun in his pocket. Deirdre entered. She was wearing her fluffy peach robe. She sat beside Leslie, squeezed his limp fingers.

“I didn't hear the pager last night,” she said.

He stared at the TV. A tear made its crooked way down the crags of his face. My poor man. He had fallen, crashed into pieces, and I got no pleasure from it, after all. Stevie watched the cartoon, nestled into Leslie's lap, oblivious.

“Did something happen?” Deirdre asked.

He turned to her. It was Deirdre's face again, her dear face. He tried to move his arm to touch her, but it felt too heavy.

“I need you to help me, Deirdre,” he whispered.

“Of course I'll help you,” she said, infused with sudden, startling gratitude for all she had not quite lost. Leslie stared into her, his eyes fierce, clear globes.