Schmidt Steps Back (39 page)

What do you think should be done, asked Schmidt.

Pas de problème
. Send the CIA and whoever else you need, borrow some Mossad agents, find the bastards who were behind this, cut off their balls, stuff them in their mouths, and then slit their throats. Posting photographs of the corpses on the Web would be a nice touch. Ha! Ha! Ha! But this government is too dumb and too weak to do that.
Pas de problème!
They’ll go for another Gulf War! Look for an easy triumph on the cheap!

Do you agree, Caroline, asked Schmidt, as a historian, as someone who has written about the Red Scare in the twenties?

She drew a deep breath and continued to fondle Mike’s hand.

Mike’s right about weak governments in general, and this is a weak government. Wilson was unable to function, he was out of it, when his attorney general, Mitchell Palmer, launched
his raids. Would Wilson have let him do it if his mind had remained unclouded? I doubt it. Bush, the people around him, right now they’re in shock. When they realize that this is a golden opportunity to kick some butt, they’ll have no trouble selling him on the idea.

You’re so astute, Caroline, Schmidt blurted out, I am so glad you allowed me to join you tonight, I’m so grateful to you and to Mike.

Hush, Schmidtie, she said, you’ve already had a couple of rough years, and now this! We have to endure it, you have to endure it, we didn’t want you to be alone. Who can say what sorrows your daughter has been spared?

The swine in Schmidt began a retreat, it seemed to Schmidt, the beginning of which dated from the unexpected and weird concern he had suddenly felt for the odious Jon Riker. No, it hadn’t been a moment of weakness. To have wished that Riker had been asphyxiated or burned alive in the tower where his office had once been would have meant he had gone mad. He had avoided folly. One thing leads to another. Myron Riker had appeared out of the blue at Charlotte’s funeral, standing among the handful of other mourners: the Blackmans, Mike Mansour, Caroline (without Joe), Jason and Carrie, and Bryan. Myron had read about the accident, he told Schmidt and, having murmured a few words of condolence, disappeared instead of following the others to Schmidt’s house for the baked funeral meats. And so, some days after he, Mike, and Caroline had returned to the Island, Schmidt remembered Myron’s gesture. He still had the cell phone number. He called Myron and told him about verifying Jon’s
address. Yes, Myron replied, thank you, they only moved a year ago. Otherwise, with Jon’s habit of always being at the office before eight … He didn’t finish.

The quality of his grieving for Charlotte, the outrage that had been like a long shriek, gradually was transformed into a ritual of remembrance. When he was at home, he would look at the albums Mary had put together recording Charlotte’s childhood and adolescence and go over and over incidents that they recalled. The pictorial record stopped there, that fact offering a reminder of a different sort, attesting to how early she had grown away from them, even while Mary was still alive, well before the onset of open hostility after she and Jon decided to get married. When he was traveling, he carried a frame holding four photographs of her at different ages, always setting it on the nightstand, and he would think back, proceeding year by year but leaving out the bad times, until it seemed that her ghost had been appeased. Yes, Charlotte had been spared a lot. Inevitable disappointments in a new marriage, the ravage wrought by passing years, the constant menace of a return of her depression, illnesses, and pain. Doctors he had asked about sudden decapitation were unanimous: there would have been no anxiety, no possibility of conscious sensation. She had likewise been spared the knowledge of the Dark Age engulfing the country and the shame that Schmidt like many other Americans felt when going abroad, whether he went to Europe on foundation business or to South America or Asia on museum tours, for which he had resumed signing up.

After the disgrace of Abu Ghraib and the still open sewer of Guantánamo, hope for his country began to stir in
Schmidt with the first signs of strength in Barack Obama’s candidacy. He read hastily his autobiography, wondered whether anyone so angry at American racism could be the president of white as well as of black Americans, and decided to trust this skinny and brilliant young man, a man married to a girl who, in a simpler time, had she been white and single, would have been America’s sweetheart.

It was in mid-September, after Obama had secured the Democratic nomination, that Schmidt and Gil Blackman met at Schmidt’s club for their first lunch in town that fall. The subjects of their conversations had changed little over the years, except that now Mr. Blackman avoided mention of his daughters and stepdaughter or Charlotte, a tactful omission for which Schmidt did not fail to be grateful. Another difference was that Gil no longer mentioned DT. The film business Aphrodite had decamped, pocketing a million dollars she had extracted from Mr. Blackman as the price of not telling Elaine about her abortion. It was money well earned and well spent, was Mr. Blackman’s stated opinion, with which Schmidt agreed, although he knew that behind the façade of his friend’s Olympian calm lay a lake of fury and resentment. The show must go on, and Mr. Blackman, not having had a hit since
The Serpent
, was thinking about another cooperation with the unbearable Joe Canning. One that would be truly difficult: the idea was to make a film based on Joe’s first book, the novel that had made him instantly famous.

It will be hell, said Mr. Blackman. The story is about a woman called Magda, who, like Joe’s grandmother, emigrates with her parents from Belorussia. The family settles in Minnesota, but Magda leaves to lead her own life in South Dakota.
From there on, the stories of the two women are very much alike, the only interesting difference being that the grandmother was Jewish and Magda is a shiksa. Joe’s line has always been that Magda’s story is fiction, and not the story of his grandmother. He claims it only follows the grandmother’s story in outline. You can imagine how this sort of hairsplitting goes over with journalists and other interviewers who are convinced he has written a barely disguised true story of the grandmother. True or not, it’s clear that there are things Magda does that Joe would have trouble admitting had been done by his beloved grandmother. On the other hand, if they are invented, that bastard is even sicker than we imagine. If they are true, he is a monster of indiscretion. Adding to the complications of fact versus fiction, there is the question of Joe’s surname. Canning doesn’t have much to do with the name of his Belorussian shtetl forebears on his father’s side, and none of his cousins has adopted it. There is no telling what his siblings might have done. He doesn’t have any. I have to hand it to him, though. After being badgered more often and far longer than he liked with questions about whether the book is a fictionalized biography of his grandmother, and about his Anglo-Saxon name, he finally came up with a reply that rings true: he said he doesn’t want to be thought of solely as a Jewish novelist. That’s fair enough. Who would want to stand in the shadow of Bellow and Roth?

The die is cast, Mr. Blackman concluded. I’ve spoken to Mike, and he’s crazy about the project. Hot to trot. No turning back now.

That’s wonderful, said Schmidt. I hope it does as well as The Snake!

You and me both. Now I have some other news for you. Fasten your seat belt and open your mind. I don’t suppose you read
Harvard Magazine
. Do you?

Schmidt shook his head. Can’t stand it, he said. Ever since they changed the format.

That was a hundred years ago. Well, I read it, mainly for the class notes. Guess what I read about our class?

Once again, Schmidt shook his head.

Serge Popov is dead. Died last June. In Paris. Fell off his bicycle. No helmet. Boom boom: he’s dead.

Goodness, said Schmidt.

Schmidtie, please stick you know where your “my goodness” and “my my” and “good heavens.” That’s not the response I was hoping for. It’s your last chance, you old fart. You owe it to yourself to find out whether Alice is free, whether you still like her, and whether she can stand you.

Gil, thanks for this news. But stop looking for a Hollywood ending. You do recall that Alice and I did not part on a good note. You’re asking me to make an even bigger fool of myself. Sending me to offer her an old fart with whom she can have the pleasure of living out the last ten years of his life? That’s one offer I bet she can resist.

Why ten? What’s to stop you from living till you’re ninety-five?

That would only make it worse.

A
RE YOU A VULTURE
, or one of those
pauvres types
, losers, who can’t resist a funeral? I mean any funeral? Alice asked Schmidt when he finally reached her at home. Her voice was as harsh as her words. He had been trying her number for several days, without leaving a message. You heard that Tim was dead so you showed up. Now poor Serge is dead, and right away it’s you again. What kind of man are you?

A desperately sad man. A man who fell in love with you many years ago and now wants a second chance. Please give it to me. Please agree to see me.

I don’t see why.

I want to come to Paris to explain to you why. Please let me. What possible harm would that do?

It would upset me. I’m sad enough as it is. I don’t see why I should give you a chance to make it worse.

He heard her stifling a sob.

Alice, trust me, please! I won’t upset you. You’ll do us both a great injustice if you refuse to see me. Please think about it overnight, or longer—but not too long please! When may I call you again?

All right, she said. Tomorrow, a little earlier. Call me at eight. Good-bye.

That would be two in the afternoon, Schmidt’s time. He would be in New York, which was a good thing because work would keep his mind off the call he was to make. He ate a sandwich in the cafeteria, wished that he still smoked, and at quarter of two was at his desk, a triple espresso laced with hot milk before him. She answered on the first ring.

Dear Alice, he said, please give me a favorable answer.

There is no favorable answer. Anyway, I don’t know what it would be. If you do come to Paris, I suppose I can have dinner with you. When will you be here?

The day after tomorrow, he said, this coming Thursday. October fourteenth.

Very well. Call me at the office.

It was close to noon by the time the plane landed. He could hardly contain himself waiting for the announcement that cell phones could be switched on. If it took much longer, she’d have gone to lunch, and there was no telling when she’d get back. He’d been an idiot not to agree with her where and at what time they would have dinner. At last! She answered at once; he did not have to speak first to the secretary. Alice, we’ve just landed. I’m still in the airplane. I am so eager to see you, so happy that it will be in a few hours, I can hardly wait for this evening!

Are you staying at that hotel? she asked.

No, in an apartment the foundation rents on place du Palais Bourbon.

What’s the number there?

He gave it to her, slowly, and then also his cell phone number,
asking her to read them both back and to try the landline first when she called.

Look, Schmidtie, she said, the fact is you pressured me. I’m not at all sure that agreeing to see you was a good idea. I’m having lunch with a friend whose advice I trust. If after talking to her I decide to see you I’ll call. Otherwise, I won’t. Please don’t argue with me. In the worst case you will have a very good dinner somewhere alone. I hadn’t thought about you in a long time, and now that you’ve reminded me that you exist I’m furious.

She hung up.

Somehow he got off the plane, collected his suitcase, and took a taxi to his apartment. Would she call? He thought the chances were slightly better than even that she would. But to think that his fate would be decided by some biddy working in Alice’s publishing house! Probably not Claude, the wife of the
pénaliste
, at whose St. Cloud house she’d been on the “sleepover” that had caused Schmidt so much grief. If she were the trusted advice-dispensing friend, wouldn’t Alice have named her? It had to be someone else, and although the friend was French he thought he knew the kind, knew it intimately. Enough of them had come to dinner or lunch or drinks and God knows what else while Mary was still alive. Widowed, divorced, or lesbian, all permanently soured on men for one reason or another. Ugh! The thing to do was to go out and clear his head before it burst. As the chances of her coming to the apartment in the afternoon were close to zero, proper unpacking could wait.

The sun had come out from behind some very high clouds. Walking quickly, he crossed the square and then the Seine at the Pont de la Concorde. He knew where he was going: to that spot in the Tuileries where he now knew that final chapter
of his life, his rebirth under the sign of Alice, had begun. He found a green metal folding chair near the
bassin
. If it had been a Wednesday afternoon, when schools were closed all day, a flock of children would have been there taking advantage of this glorious October afternoon. They’d be launching their model sailboats and motorboats under the supervision of mothers, nannies, or retired grandfathers, all of them hovering just behind their charges, ready to restrain a child who was leaning too far over the water. Long ago he had dreamed of bringing a grandchild and the fancy sailboat that was a present from Grandpa Schmidtie to the pond in Central Park. Watching other people’s grandchildren was the best he could aspire to now. If he was still around on Saturday and the weather held, he could have his fill of children at this
bassin
or at the one in the Luxembourg Gardens, at the pony and donkey rides, at the carousel where they tilted at the brass ring, or at the remarkably well-appointed Luxembourg playground that charged admission. That was a practice that had never ceased to shock Schmidt: paying for the right to play in a public park! For that matter, if the grandparents were feeling flush in the midst of a financial crisis that could turn into a second Great Depression, they would perhaps be at the atrociously expensive aquarium at the Trocadéro. The day before, the Dow had closed at around 8,500, a dispiriting decline considering that a year earlier it had stood above 14,000. Not that Schmidt was worried. He still had more than enough money. No, as Mike Mansour had been fond of saying before the spectacle of Schmidt’s misery made the inquiry seem cruel, the question was: Did Schmidt have anything to spend his money on or anyone to spend it with? Did he have a life or only an estate plan? The answer to these unanswered questions now
depended on Alice. Alice seeking lunchtime counsel from some feminist fossil who was surely one of Serge’s allies; Alice at her office, where everything, perhaps even a photograph on her desk, must remind her of Serge; Alice recalling the humiliation to which Schmidt subjected her in London.