Schmidt Steps Back (17 page)

Schmidt raised his eyebrows. One reason, he answered, is the level of corruption in Bulgaria. The foundation doesn’t itself operate schools or think tanks or universities. It gives money to existing institutions and works with them. Gives advice. Finances visits by scholars and political leaders from other countries and visits by local political leaders or potential political leaders to the United States. Sometimes it organizes seminars and lectures. We fear that any money we gave to practically any institution in Bulgaria would be at high risk of being stolen.

I resent that. Popov had raised his voice.

You asked the question, said Schmidt, so I’m giving you the answer.

Popov glowered at him: You think it’s worse than in Romania or Hungary, where you do have offices?

It’s a matter of degree, but yes, we’ve been advised it’s worse.

I resent that, Popov repeated.

Schmidt noticed Alice’s hand on Popov’s sleeve. If she meant to restrain him, she didn’t succeed.

You may be ignorant of my personal saga, Popov continued.

All I know is that you were born in Bulgaria and at some point during the war or later became a refugee. A displaced person of sorts.

You are very ignorant, Popov declared. My father was the last minister of justice serving Tsar Boris III, the heroic ruler murdered by the Germans because he wouldn’t let them send Bulgarian Jews to Auschwitz. My father’s father was, until he died, His Majesty’s court chamberlain. My grandfather died of old age in his own bed in his own palace, but my father was murdered by the Communists, along with the tsar’s brother, Prince Kyril, and other members of the regency council and other high patriots. I had the good fortune to be taken into exile by Her Majesty the Tsarina. My education at boarding school and at Harvard was graciously paid for from the imperial purse. I am on terms of personal friendship with Tsar Simeon II. He is younger than I, but we have known each other since early childhood. I find your discrimination against the country of my birth intolerable.

He assumed a gloomy and superior expression that took Schmidt back to the occasions, fortunately infrequent, when Popov would unexpectedly appear in the suite that Schmidt and Gil Blackman shared at college and jump into whatever discussion of politics and modern European history happened to be taking place. The accent when he spoke English had remained almost the same: an element in it of something unidentifiable but Slavic, and now that he lived in France, and
presumably spoke French much of the time, an admixture of something Gallic. The gurgling that accompanied the flights of eloquence, ire, or hilarity hadn’t changed either.

That is a very grand and, of course, very sad story, replied Schmidt. I can only hope that your Bulgarian connections make it possible for you to help bring better government to your country—now that it’s no longer under Communist rule.

There is more of my story that you don’t know, or you would not be suggesting so blithely that I immerse myself in Bulgarian politics. That had been my hope at college and graduate school and also when I became the editor of
Currents
. I don’t suppose you were a reader of that journal.

Schmidt confirmed that unfortunately he wasn’t.

I’m not surprised. Then you don’t know the defining effect of that seminal journal on political thought in intellectual milieus in the U.S. and Western Europe. But not long after I assumed the direction of the journal, I met my wife. She is a member of one of France’s great noble families, and it was out of the question that she settle in the United States, where
Currents
was obliged to return because of funding considerations. She found the philistine and petty bourgeois mentality of ninety-nine point nine percent of your countrymen intolerable. A form of mentality, I am forced to add, that I too could tolerate less and less. So it happened that I entered the world of publishing in France, where you now find me. We were, alas, soon brought low by fate in a way that further reduced my availability for service to my country. My wife was among the last victims of a polio epidemic. Tanny LeClercq was stricken in 1956; my Solange even later, in 1959, soon after the birth of our second boy. Paralyzed from the waist down.

I am deeply sorry, said Schmidt.

Popov made a snorting noise. Yes. Of course, now that we have disagreed about Bulgaria, and you have seen how you have misjudged my position, you will be hostile to the proposal for the Middle Eastern literature prize.

Far from it, said Schmidt.

There are persistent themes in history, Popov continued, history of men and of nations. Resentments play their role. Wilhelm II. Churchill. De Gaulle. I too have been accustomed to being resented. At school and then at college. Don’t try to deny it. I carried my head too high, I was too fully conscious of my real position, so far superior to what it appeared to be.

He sank into even greater gloom.

Alice, who had remained silent until then, spoke up. We must really go now.

She called the waiter and, to Schmidt’s surprise, paid the check. It had been so clearly stated that it was Popov who was inviting Alice and him to lunch that he refrained from protesting.

They parted in the street, going in different directions, Schmidt first to the store on rue de l’Université in the window of which he had seen a layette that might just do as a baby present for little Albert and then to the shirtmaker on place Vendôme, where he might buy a necktie or two. For big Albert, he whispered. He had not covered more than a few yards, however, before looking back. He wanted to see Alice once more, even if it was only for a fleeting moment. He did see her. She and Popov were walking fast toward rue du Bac, with their arms around each other’s waists, except that Popov’s hand was actually lower. He was patting Alice on her bottom, investigating through her summer dress the valley between her buttocks. Lot’s wife looked back on Sodom
and was turned into a pillar of salt. Schmidt was spared that fate. But Alice, perhaps sensing his eyes upon her, turned her head in his direction. She raised her eyebrows by way of acknowledgment of his gaze and smiled comically, helplessly. He smiled back, set his teeth, and went on to run his errands.

He got to the airport at Roissy in plenty of time. Quarter of six for a seven o’clock flight. Alice’s plane for Nice left from Orly at five. Perhaps that lout Popov fondled all his colleagues’ behinds, male and female. What was that to Schmidt! He didn’t have Alice’s telephone number in Antibes, and even if he did he doubted he would dare call her at her father’s house, knowing that the old gentleman’s friend was ill. The thing to do was to call Alice’s number in Paris and leave a message in his best French:
Je t’aime follement
. The call went through. He heard the first ring, and then the second, and then Alice’s voice. Astonished, he hung up. Had she missed her plane? Had the situation in Antibes changed? How stupid he had been to hang up instead of speaking to her. He dialed again. The line was busy and continued to be busy up to the very last minute before his flight, when first-class passengers were called to embark.

As usual, he fell asleep during takeoff. It was a tic: the response of his helpless body to being strapped into a seat and carried aloft in that infantilized state. The chatter of the stewardesses offering refreshments awakened him. The plane had reached its cruising altitude, and the loudspeaker announced that passengers were free to move about the cabin. Schmidt decided that the
Herald Tribune
could wait, even though he hadn’t looked at it all day. Sipping a bourbon, and devouring the mixed nuts as though he had skipped lunch, he
puzzled over the failed call to Alice. No plausible explanation seemed likelier than any other. He would try to reach her the next day—Saturday afternoon her time—and leave a message explaining that taken unawares he had, like a fool, hung up instead of asking her whether anything was the matter, and trying to ring again found he couldn’t get through. She’d call him back after she had listened to that message. That same day, if she was in Paris, or on Sunday, when she returned from Antibes.

Against his will, his thoughts turned to the interlude with Pani Danuta. A huge blunder. For one thing, how was he to make sure it remained an interlude? They had parted on the best of terms. Would she not expect the vodka-sodden orgy à deux to be repeated on his next visit to the Warsaw Center? How would she respond if he demurred? Would a spiteful account reach Mike Mansour? He supposed that Mike the bon vivant would laugh at his huffy WASP employee’s caper, but his moods were unpredictable. In any event, Mike’s shrugging off the incident did not make Schmidt’s appallingly stupid behavior right or any less stupid. Here is what he should have done: directly after the stroll in the Łazienki Park take or send that sex maniac home. Beyond that, what were the larger implications of his misconduct, what did it say about him? Had he ever said no to a woman who offered herself? Yes, if the transaction involved payment of money; otherwise he could point to no opportunity he had rejected, except perhaps the flirtatious propositions of old hags in the Hamptons, widows of writers or editors or agents gone to seed. He had recoiled from the mere thought of physical contact with even the best preserved of them. But with the student he recruited on the West Coast, Corinne the babysitter, Hecate-like Carrie,
Alice—indeed Alice—and now Danuta, the pattern was the same. The bugle sounds, and Schmidt jumps into the saddle. Was it because he was too unsure of himself to risk taking the first step that a woman’s making herself available made him lose his head? Or was it, more simply, his unabated appetite for sex with new partners, a curiosity he hadn’t outgrown. He thought it could be tamed if he lived with Alice, but not otherwise. Was there a moral distinction to be made between that “curiosity” and Tim’s homosexuality that would make Schmidt’s misconduct less repugnant to Alice? He wasn’t sure. Did his couplings with Pani Danuta prove that his protestations of love for Alice were in bad faith? It seemed to him that such an inference was not inescapable. He was in love with Alice or as close to love as was possible at his age. Was that really true? Could his short acquaintance and still limited knowledge of her justify claim of anything more than an infatuation? He concluded it could. A lifetime of experience told him she was splendid. Another six months of knowing her would not change that judgment.

A practical problem also called into question his good faith. She was so much younger! He had been asking her in various formulations to tie her life to his. How could he ignore the disadvantages and risks inherent in that fact: the inevitable diminution of his libido and potency, incapacitating illnesses he might suffer, the near certainty that he would be the first to die? She was likely to become a widow the second time at an age when finding a suitable man to share her life would be more difficult than now. There were countervailing considerations: his interest in women that he thought was livelier than that of many men her own age; his excellent health that might postpone or fend off those illnesses and debilities; his modest
but perfectly sufficient fortune that should assure a comfortable life for both of them while he lived and for her afterward. Indeed, he thought she would like the way he lived. East End of Long Island and Manhattan: not a bad combination. On the other side of the balance sheet, there was the sacrifice that moving away from Paris would entail, although he would gladly spend as much time there with her as she wished. He had tried to discuss these worries with her thoroughly and objectively. But whenever he tried to discuss their future, she would become impatient; she would sigh and say things like Schmidtie, why must we talk about that? We’re having a very good time together, isn’t that enough? The one time she had seemed willing to listen, she told him that all these concerns were real, but none of them would stand in her way. But that was where she stopped: in the conditional mood. They would not stand in her way, if she decided to accept his suit. But plainly she was not yet ready to do so.

He wished Gil were at his side to help him sort out this jumble.

T
HERE WAS NO MESSAGE
from Alice when he got home to Bridgehampton late that Friday evening. He did, however, find one from Charlotte, recorded in the afternoon, and a note on the kitchen table from Carrie, beside a vase full of white and pink peonies from his garden, saying
Welcome, Schmidtie, we have news for you
. It was a few minutes past midnight, much too late to call Charlotte. The pool house and Bryan’s apartment over the garage were dark. If Bryan had met him at the airport, he would have told him Carrie’s news unless it was to be a surprise and she had sworn him to silence. But he had been picked up instead by one of Mike Mansour’s chauffeurs in the security detail’s huge gray SUV. The news, and the telephone calls to Alice and Charlotte, would have to wait until morning. Sy was on the kitchen table, looking at him with adoring eyes and tapping on his sleeve. This was a message Schmidt never failed to understand. It said, I want a snack, and I want it now!

He was up early, and although it was Saturday he was sure that Carrie and Jason would be up as well. Operations at the marina started at eight. His breakfast finished, he put the
New York Times
aside and was about to go over to see them when
they both appeared. It was three weeks since he had last seen her. The hillock under her paisley top had become an alp. And she had become more beautiful to a degree he thought was supernatural. When had she been a waitress at O’Henry’s, the local steak and hamburger joint? Almost four years ago? O’Henry’s, the joint where she would serve him his meal, and when she was tired late in the evening remind him of Picasso’s
Woman Ironing
. Picasso had never painted a Madonna. If he had, before the need to push his art forward led him to decompose faces and bodies, the result might have been a likeness of Carrie as she was now. Or if Bellini had fallen in love with an olive-skinned, languorous working girl, perhaps a street urchin bearing a child of an unknown father, whom he had invited to pose in his studio. Jason beaming beside her, the blond mountain—whose paintbrush had painted him? Of course, Norman Rockwell! Portrait of a young line repairman, in his overalls, setting out for a day’s work after a hurricane.