Memoir From Antproof Case (46 page)

In the evening I met Smedjebakken for a strengthening dinner before loading the bullion from a Transit Authority maintenance train onto a flatbed truck at the end of an unused subway spur in Washington Heights. We had always eaten well at the air museum—venison, fresh corn, tomatoes, spinach, basil, clam broth—but on this occasion decided to have egg creams and boiled beef sandwiches.

We sat at the counter of a delicatessen on 100th Street and Broadway, a neighborhood I knew well from my days as a runner. The owner, a lifelike copy of Otto Preminger, never ventured more than four feet from us, so we had to speak in code.

"Did you get the brassieres?" I asked Smedjebakken.

"Yeah," he said. "Every single one of them."

"Did anyone see?"

"Not a soul. I thought I would die taking them out of the tube. My muscles are cramped. What about you?"

"I'm okay, but, don't forget, I was just dropping them down the hole."

I could see that Otto Preminger was drawn to what we were
saying by an increasingly powerful force. He was trying to conceal his interest by polishing a glass and staring off into space, ears cocked. Hardly a worry, as there was no way he could have known what we were talking about.

"Where are the brassieres now?" I asked Smedjebakken.

"Safe in the tunnel."

"We'll move them after dark."

"Why not just go whenever we get there?" Smedjebakken asked.

"New Jersey state troopers are notoriously suspicious, and they saturate the roads. In the daytime, especially in the light of sunset, the brassieres will shine with a diffuse glow. Better to move them at night."

"I sure as hell hope we don't have a flat tire," Smedjebakken said. "I don't think there's a jack alive that could lift the truck. We'd have to unload every single brassiere and pile it by the side of the highway."

"Don't worry," I told him. "By this time tomorrow evening, you'll be deep in the forests of Newfoundland."

 

I was not very good at flying multiengine planes. In fact, before the C-54, I had never flown one. I read a few manuals and thought about it a lot before we flew back to New Jersey, but you really have to learn this kind of thing incrementally, practicing the maneuvers at the behest of an experienced instructor. Unfortunately, I had to do everything at once and for the first time.

We were certain that we were going to die on takeoff when the plane stupidly battered the runway with its left wing tip. By that time, I was so out of practice flying even single-engine planes that I thought wing tips were shoes.

Landing wasn't so great, either. Never have I bounced as I did on the dandelion-strewn airstrip of the Ramapo Museum of Flight, and I dreaded putting the plane down when it was fully loaded. Nonetheless, at risk of our lives, Smedjebakken and I refused to leave behind even one brick. We had set ourselves a task, and the money was not the issue but rather a sense of completeness. Most thieves would probably have found our attitude incomprehensible.

All our numbers had to be remarkable or round, all our times exact. Perhaps people who have never stolen anything think that you steal because you want something. That isn't so. You steal for the same reason that you would otherwise work or dare—and, trust me, stealing is work. You steal for the same reason that an ice-skater practices for the Olympics, a composer composes, or a truck driver strives to cut his time.

It is exactly the same spark that keeps factories running around the clock, that moved John Henry to take on a steam hammer, that makes a sled dog run happily for ten hours in cold that freezes smoke. It's what makes machines sing and your blood flow.

I refer not to taking someone's wallet or breaking into a house and pulling out all the drawers to find S&H Green Stamps. Nor to selling Bensonhurst retirees Florida land covered by water in which alligators swarm like maggots. Nor to endangering perfectly innocent people by walking into a bank with a necklace of dynamite. My definition of stealing is knocking over the Louvre, Fort Knox, the Tower of London, or the Antwerp Central Diamond Vaults.

All the rest is for termites. And, I ask you, what did you expect? Was I supposed to forget what I had seen and what I had done? I attacked Berlin when Hitler was still in it. I fled from a Swiss mental institution to run away with a woman I still love even though she is dead, and we went to the Arctic
Circle and stood at the foot of the aurora. I was once one of the richest men in the world, and once a kid who worked hard and saved his money for a sugared donut and some sheet music. I fought alongside the angels high above the earth where the air is as thin as helium and defeat is an exploding sun. I have tightened my grip and narrowed my eyes, rushing toward gunfire like gravity. I have been in a great army that took years to conquer half the world. I have sailed across the ocean, rocketed into the clouds, skimmed the Hudson and cut apart its lily pads with my propeller, and I have seen the demise of nations, and new nations arise.

Why not the Louvre, then? All it is is a big building full of the most brilliant reflections of what we know day by day, the great and the small. Had this been a quiet century and had my country been a backwater, perhaps I would have been more easily contented, but the world was swept by great and terrible things, and I was at the heart of them.

They were like the force that lights the aurora, stiffening and firing a host of insignificant particles into a fiery curtain. In times of greatness, every man becomes a king, which is the price paid by kings when they cannot stay the energies that keep them on their thrones.

So, we carried all of the bullion, even at risk to our lives, because it was important not to leave anything scattered behind. What we did cannot be justified except to say that it was much like music, where no theory can explain pleasure or depth, where mathematics cannot elucidate intractable beauty, but where, when things come together, they make a perfection understood by all.

And so it was that when I took off one humid unsettled morning when tall fat clouds drifted on winds that polished great patches of moist blue, I was happy. For me, and for Smedjebakken, what we had done meant not riches and not revenge, but daring and faith. And as we rose into the turbulent air, we were inexplicably moved.

I set a northeast course, and we flew on alone toward the blue-green forests of Newfoundland. Soon the Hudson narrowed to a small silver cord, and the broad lands through which it flowed, where I had grown up, were covered with cloud.

(If you have not done so already,
please return the previous pages to the antproof case.)

 

T
HE NAVAL ACADEMY
has released me from its employment. While I was in the hospital, Watoon took over my classes. With more than double the teaching load he was used to, and no one to whom he could turn for help in the language, he suffered a kind of nervous breakdown. Unable to carry on, he turned to his holy book, the Watoon English phraseology, and forced his students to drill from it directly.

During this time, the English ambassador, a dignified and imposing figure, toured the academy. When he was ushered into Watoon's class, he signaled that it should continue as if he were not there—and it did, for a while. Though it must have been peculiar, ambassadors are used to such things. Then Watoon pushed his luck.

"Phrase to greet English person from England!" he shouted at his charges.

"Blow me!" they chanted in unison.

"Blow me, what?" he asked, turning his head and cupping his hand to his ear.

"Blow me, English shitbird," they shouted, without the slightest idea of what they were saying.

"Say again to our guest. Stand up to show."

They all stood up, faced the stunned ambassador, and shouted, "Blow me, English shitbird!"

The ambassador turned to the commandante, who was smiling placidly, and, realizing that he was on his own, shot a fierce glance at Watoon.

To which Watoon responded, with an expression of absolute innocence and a huge grin, "Suck my ass."

That, of course, was the end of Watoon. And it was also the end of me. Trying to save himself, Watoon told the commandante that I had taught him everything in the holy book, and because the commandante had known for years that Watoon ran to me for help at every opportunity, I was fired, too.

Even had I the energy to contest this in the Brazilian naval courts it would have been immaterial. The academy has replaced us with two Englishmen who, I am told, speak beautifully and are expert at teaching English as a second language. Quite frankly, I think the cadets will have a great deal of difficulty trying to say words like
air,
which they will now have to pronounce "A,ah," but their problems are minor compared to mine.

I was pensioned off with a weekly stipend sufficient to buy a mango, two aspirins, and a postage stamp. I have the gold, but am physically unable to get it, and, quite apart from that, I have always believed that immense wealth would change Marlise for the worse. Great riches are like a tiger—beautiful, captivating, and, once you find them, they eat you. They even ate Constance, and Marlise at her best is less alert than Constance after a magnum or two of champagne.

Funio, for all his brilliance, wouldn't be able to retrieve a single bar or even reach the place where it rests. He will have to be a lot older and a lot bigger, and I gave my word of honor to Marlise that I would tell him neither where the gold lies nor even that we have it. Marlise knows about the tiger, and she doesn't want it to eat her child.

I myself am no longer strong enough, and I trust no one, because I know no one to trust. And what would I do with riches except to prolong a life that is saying to me more and more every day that it has reached its natural end? If I die I'll cheat the assassins of their chance to kill me. But should they manage to find me before I die, their bullets will bring me sublime satisfaction.

I'm in the garden in Niterói. Once again, it is early morning. It has just rained. The blue waves beneath me, silent at this height, are once again drawing me in. The flower beds are steaming, and I am the only one here. Sometimes I wonder what the purpose has been of all the years since 1914. I should have died then. I wanted to. I was nine years old when my time came, and I have lived ever since with immense sorrow. Death, for me, will be like the most comforting sleep.

 

I used to have a picture of my father as an army officer in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. He was kneeling on one knee, flanked by two Filipino soldiers. The three of them were looking at a sand map on the ground, and though the Filipinos steadied themselves with rifles, my father didn't. He was wearing wire spectacles, and clenching a pipe in his teeth. Someone must have said something amusing, because the three of them were laughing. It was neither a polite, nervous laugh nor the kind that is so strong it makes you close your eyes and change your position, but, still, it was happy, fully realized. In fact, they looked just about as happy and healthy as anyone can. In all my eighty years I have never seen anyone quite so relaxed, so strong, and so content. As a child I used to stare at this photograph and dream that I would grow up to know the same feelings as these men crouching in the dirt, and at times, I suppose, I have, but never so well as had my father, before I was born, and this I could tell by the marvelous expression on his face.

The picture of my mother was much different, although it was taken at approximately the same time. Looking at the camera from a gazebo near the pier of a resort island in Lake Erie, she was standing tall and straight in a white Victorian dress and straw boater with ribbons, her dark hair cascading about her sunburnt face. She never would have been considered pretty, because she was too tall and her features were unusual, but her face had so much in it and her expression was so complex and full of life that she was, in fact, a great beauty. The ideal woman at the time was chubby, weak, and round, and she was angular, thin, and strong. She would do better today, but even so she would not meet the thoughtless standards that in matters of beauty so often prevail.

As a child I would consider these photographs, convinced that I would have neither the strength and vitality of my father nor the luck of meeting a woman like my mother.... And then a bolt of wonderful lightning would strike me and pleasantly ricochet as I realized that, because I was my father's and mother's son, I did have a chance, after all, of growing into their strengths and graces.

The photographs became icons. One glance was enough to suffuse me with memory and love, a careful study made me forget the present, and a profound meditation transported me in time until I did not know if, in fact, I had ever left them.
I treasured the images beyond all measure. I had wanted them with me when I was buried or burned, so that they and I would go together, whether by slow oxidation or quick fire. But I lost them when I landed in Brazil. They were taken by the rushing water, the water dissolving, the water flowing and full of oxygen.

 

I was born haplessly at the end of December, 1904. I have always believed, though perhaps illogically, that children born at the height of summer, when light floods the world, prefer summer and all that is bright, and that children born in the darkest days merely dread the cold and dark. Though at times I have loved winter when it is dry and the sun and the moon shine across broad snowfields, in the main I shrink from it. In winter I was never warm enough. Our house did not have central heating, and not only did I dislike servicing the wood stove, I resented that when a passage in a book or a problem in a text seized my attention it meant that one half of me would roast and the other half freeze. Winter with a wood stove was like being on the moon: there was fire and there was ice, and there was nothing in between.

My birthday and Christmas were Siamese twins. Faced with this coincidence, my parents would simply invest as much in a single present as they might otherwise have spent on two. But this was no consolation for me. I was a child, and I innocently wanted everything.