My Other Life (17 page)

I watched them kicking their blue ball, laughing, squealing with delight, safe in this lovely place. Alison's face was light with love as she watched them, and I knew that I had done the right thing.

For the first four or five days before the Lazards came back, we lived the sort of life we had never known. Without servants feeding the children, we cooked our own meals and we ate together on our screened-in verandah. We had the swimming pool to ourselves. We played croquet. I did no writing, but I looked over what I had written so far of my novel and it seemed fine to me, so I was confident that when I resumed it would go well. These were glorious, peaceful days and I felt an almost inexpressible gratitude towards this strange couple who had taken us in. I told Alison that this was how Third Worlders must feel when Americans entered their lives. It was as though we had been rescued. Our days were sunlit, our meals were pleasant, and after we had read to the children and put them to bed we had a drink on the verandah, marveling that we were still in Singapore, and then we went to bed. We all woke together.

Alison said, "I like this."

We were at last a family, and family life was possible because we were together, because our needs were met, because we were living in luxury, because we were happy. And on those first days I often thought of our visit to Ringrose's house on the Jurong Road, and shut my eyes and gave thanks.

But I also knew that I had been entrapped, even if it had been in the nicest way. If Harry Lazard had a gift, it was his ability to gauge what it was that a person needed. Everyone wanted something different. Money, a meal, space—when he found this out he had them. There were many ways to a person's heart, and generosity worked best when it filled a profound need. He was not around, but because we were happy we had a sense that he was present. It wasn't poetry, but perhaps, I told myself, Harry's was a poetic gift. How had he known that all this little family wanted was to pay off its overdraft at the bank and be together?

Then they returned—we knew it even without an announcement. It happened in stages, first something in the air, a tremulous attention, a sort of nervousness, as subtle as a cloud shadow crossing a meadow. The servants stopped talking loudly to each other; they worked with greater care, the gardening was more meticulous, the nagging sound of the vacuum cleaner was almost constant, flowers appeared in vases, dust covers were removed from chairs and tables, and most of all there was an air of watchfulness—not as though the Lazards might turn up at any moment, but rather as though they were already there, hovering, humming, about to explode into view.

One evening it was that, intensely, and the next morning Fayette Lazard was in the chaise longue by the pool, in the shade of a thick awning, where I had first met her.

The children hung back, feeling that their swimming pool had been invaded by a stranger, but I gathered them up and introduced them and Alison to Fayette Lazard.

Fayette hardly moved. She tilted her sunglasses and smiled.

"We were in Bangkok."

"Was it nice?" Alison asked.

"We're there all the time, because of Harry's business."

Alison persevered. "I've heard Bangkok's fabulous. I'd love to go there."

"They have TV," Fayette said and frowned.

Alison took this to be a joke, and out of respect laughed very hard. But Fayette's expression was not deadpan, it was serious, and then it was grim.

"Only two channels, though. We have fourteen in San Francisco."

We stared at her and I wished I were able to see her eyes.

"I'll bet you love watching television," the woman said to Anton. "What's your favorite program?"

"Television is bad for you," Anton said in his quacking voice, with all the sententious certainty of a bright three-year-old.

Fayette turned to me, as though blaming, and she laughed insincerely.

"Television gives you square eyes," Anton said.

Alison said, "He's such a philistine. If Will could talk, he would assure you he quite likes the telly."

Was Fayette wincing behind her sunglasses? We could not tell. She said, "I hope you're comfortable."

"The guest house is lovely," I said.

"That's not the guest house, it's the old servants' quarters. The guest house is way over there."

We decided not to be put off by her. We were happy enough and secure enough in each other's love that not even this woman could spoil our fun. She spent an hour outside and then disappeared. The rest of the time she kept to the big house, occasionally shimmering onto the verandah. She stayed out of the sun. She never came to the guest house—as we went on calling it. It was only at the pool that we met, and the pool was big enough so that there was room for everyone.

We had no need to leave the estate, and indeed seldom went outside the Lazards' wall. A grocer came in his van every other day; we bought what we needed and then he sought out Mr. Loy. We used the pool and the croquet lawn, and we walked on the gravel path through the three acres of woods. The arrangement worked because we did not fraternize. The Lazards gave a party. We were not invited. It struck me as comic that we had met as equals at the American ambassador's house, but here we were regarded as glorified servants—at least I was. I did not mind; my family was happy.

It was more than a week after he returned from Bangkok that I gave Harry Lazard his first poetry lesson. I realized that he was very shy, that he liked the thought of my being around, and he was thrilled by the idea that I was working on my novel—he told me so, he inquired about my book's progress. But he was reluctant to expose his own talent, or lack of it. It was amazing to see this powerful millionaire made so timid by the prospect of showing me his poems.

I took the initiative. I saw him dropped off by Ahmed late one afternoon and I hurried across the lawn and up the hill to say hello. We chatted, Lazard offered me a drink; we began talking about things in general, and then about poetry. It was as though sitting in the shade on the sheltered side of the house was our way of being serious.

That first day he asked me, "Do you have any favorite poets?"

"So many," I said. "One is Wallace Stevens." And I remembered. "He was a businessman. Insurance. Went to his office every day. His secretary typed his stuff. Have you read him?"

"Wallace Stevenson, oh, yes, he's very powerful," Lazard said.

I was afraid to embarrass him by correcting him, and it hardly mattered, except that it gave me an inkling that these poetry lessons might be harder than I had thought.

He said, "Do you still hear from Robert Lowell?"

"No," I said. "He doesn't write. Harry, I only met Lowell that one time."

"It's not how often you meet someone, what matters is how deep an impression you make on them," Lazard said, and this was not the poet but the businessman speaking.

"He was impressed that I caught a fish."

"That's what I mean," Lazard said. "I should get him out here."

We looked across the lawn, past the trellises, the statues, the arbors. I tried to imagine Robert Lowell sitting by the pool, a big pale man with wild hair and crooked glasses and crazy gestures, getting drunk, teasing Fayette, insulting Lazard.

"Do him good," Lazard said.

We were seeing our own versions of the same thing.

The next day I ambushed Lazard again, and taking a cue from him, I asked him who his favorite poets were.

"I'm very old-fashioned in my literary tastes. I like the old masters. Shakespeare. Keats. Lord Byron. 'Where have you been, Lord Randall, my son?' That sort of thing."

"I gave tutorials on them. We had to teach all periods. What about the war poets?"

"Which war!" Lazard cried out, startling me.

"The First World War was the one that produced the most poets. I'm thinking of Edmund Blunden. Siegfried Sassoon. Wilfred Owen. Isaac Rosenberg. Have you read any of them?"

"Oh, years ago."

The expression "years ago" always seemed evasive and untruthful to me.

"Isaac Rosenberg sounds pretty interesting. What did he write?"

'"Break of Day in the Trenches' and some others."

"Must have been Jewish," Lazard said. "Strange. A British Jew."

"Disraeli was a Jew."

"Everyone says that," Lazard said.

"'Mendelssohn was a Jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Savior was a Jew and his father was a Jew. Your God was a Jew. Christ was a Jew like me.'"

Lazard gave me a puzzled, almost wounded look. "Are you OK?"

"I was quoting. That's in
Ulysses.
Leopold Bloom says it to some Irishmen in a pub."

Then he was absolutely delighted, and he swished his gin and tonic and drank it and swallowed it with satisfaction and said, "I never thought I'd be sitting on this verandah talking about Joyce's
Ulysses.
That's pretty unique!"

I just smiled. I found it impossible to reply with a straight face to such a solecism without sounding sarcastic.

We did not meet the following day, but later, when he had a spare hour or two, in the late afternoon before dinner, we sat together. He was still very reluctant to show me more of his poems or even to write any, and so I suggested that we simply read and talk about poems, to get into the mood.

"Good idea," he said.

I could see that he was grateful to me for not asking him about his own poems, glad that I did not expect too much of him. He was prompt in paying me my month's salary in advance. With no rent to pay, we were better off than we had ever been when I was working at the university, and at last Singapore seemed pleasant.

But inevitably, with so little to do, I felt a growing sense that I was superfluous. Whenever I saw the chef sitting behind the kitchen, reading the
Straits Times,
I remembered how Lazard had gone into the kitchen of Chez Michel's on Robinson Road and offered to double the man's salary if he left. With me it was money, peace of mind, literary pretention, luxury, and a chance to live in old Singapore on the grounds of an imperial mansion, behind a high wall, with my family. It was a chance to work on my book, to be away from the bitter humor of the Staff Club. But I identified too strongly with the chef to feel much at ease.

One night on our little porch after the kids had gone to bed I said all this to Alison.

She said, "This is the first time in ages that I've been happy. The kids love the pool."

I suspected that Lazard knew that too.

"And I love not having to teach rotten old night school. What are you complaining about?"

"I'm not complaining. I'm just wondering."

"Please don't drag us away from here," she said. Settled here, protecting the children, playing with them, feeding them, she had discovered that the sacrifices of motherhood also gave her intense pleasure. And the boys blossomed in her care.

Their happiness justified everything, and was the best reason for giving this man poetry lessons.

At the next lesson, Lazard said, "Your wife and kids seem very happy here."

So he knew my secret. It was as though he had heard every word that Alison had said to me. But no. All he had to do was look out of the window and see them frolicking on the apron of the swimming pool. Children never sun themselves or sit by a pool; they are like cats, either active or asleep. I had never seen this little family so happy, and I wanted it to continue.

"I'd like to share one of my poems with you."

He was apprehensive, snorting through his nose. He drew a stiff folder out of his briefcase and there, beautifully printed and mounted as though it were especially prized, was a twenty-line poem, about a traveler's inability to communicate with a non-English-speaking person. It was called "Say Something."

I read it, trying to think of a way of praising it.

"Be brutal," Lazard said.

"I like its bluntness," I said. "It's a sort of antipoem. Almost boorish, the way the narrator is making demands on this local guy. Willfully inelegant. Very strong."

He was smiling admiringly at the poem.

"I hadn't thought of that," he said. "I think you're right."

That cheered him up. He showed me another poem in the same folder: "
Market" by Harold Lazard.

It was a clumsy poem, in short lines, listing the sights of a market that was obviously in Southeast Asia: the local fruit—mangoes, rambutans, durians; the cuts of meat, the stacked fish, and swatches of herbs; the bags of rice. It was a list of items.

"It's good," I said.

"Go on, criticize it."

"I love the line 'Dead animals for sale.'"

It seemed to irritate him that I singled out this line for praise. At first he said nothing, and then, "It was an actual sign at one of the market stalls. I copied it down. That didn't take much work."

I said, "It's called 'found art.' Driftwood is sometimes found art. It takes a poetic eye to recognize that a sign like that has poetic value."

"That's very true," he said. "What about its weaknesses. I'm sure it's got some. I just don't see what they are."

"I have a little problem with 'the dried red peppers strung like firecrackers waiting to go off.'"

Harry pressed his lips together and compressed his face, making it fierce.

"I worked hard on that particular line."

"The 'waiting' firecrackers, is all I meant. Firecrackers don't wait. They don't do anything except explode."

"These ones looked like they were waiting," Lazard said. "Didn't you ever notice that some fireworks look like that? Like they're just waiting?"

He had begun to smile in encouragement at me, nodding in a twitchy way. He wanted me to say yes. I heard a child's distant shriek and then a splash, and Alison crying out, "Well done!"

"I guess so," I said.

"Sure. You get the idea."

It was not all misery and submission for me, giving poetry lessons. Harry Lazard did not write many poems. What he seemed to like best was sitting and talking, telling me about his life, his struggles, his success. His father, an immigrant from Odessa, had been a concert violinist, and had never made a decent living. I asked Harry whether he himself played an instrument.