The City of Your Final Destination (9 page)

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Authors: Peter Cameron

BOOK: The City of Your Final Destination
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“I'm afraid I am very cowed by reality,” said Omar.
“Oh,” said Caroline. “Why is that?”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Omar. “I'm just trying to get, well, you know, some things straightened out, get a foundation, I suppose, and then I hope to be less cowed.”
“Oh, but once you get a foundation, you will be chained to it. It will become an anchor, a deadweight. No. Now is the time to break free from all that. Now, before it is too late.”
“Caroline,” said Arden, “would you help me in the kitchen for a moment?”
“Certainly,” said Caroline. “Although I cannot imagine what help I might be.”
In the kitchen Arden said, “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” asked Caroline.
“Why are you flirting with him?”
Caroline laughed. “Flirting? I haven't flirted in years. Surely I have forgotten how to flirt.”
“Well, it seems to be coming back to you.”
“I'm only trying to be friendly. We might as well be friendly, now that he is here. He is so pathetic, coming all the way from Kansas. I am simply trying to be nice to the poor boy. And, after all, it is you who invited him here.”
“I did not invite him here! I wrote him and told him no. He just appeared out of nowhere. What was I to do?”
“Exactly as you did. It is nice to have a new face at the table. And it is rather an interesting face, don't you think?”
“I hadn't noticed,” said Arden.
“Hadn't you? Well. And what help can I be to you?”
“What?”
“You said you needed my help in the kitchen,” reminded Caroline.
“Oh,” said Arden. “I just wanted to talk to you. Warn you. I think we've got to be careful. If we're too friendly, he'll think we've changed our minds.”
“I can be friendly without changing my mind,” said Caroline. “If he thinks that just because I am friendly I have changed my mind, that is his problem.”
“Yes, but it would cruel to mislead him.”
“Well, you be unfriendly, then. Surely we don't both have to be? Doesn't he deserve a little friendliness after such a long journey?”
“I don't mean to be unfriendly,” said Arden.
“Then what do you mean?”
“I mean to be a little less charming.”
“Why?”
“Oh, forget it! Be however you like! But you will have to tell him no this time. I wrote the letter. That was difficult enough. I refuse to do it again. You can be the one to tell him no in person. He
said if he doesn't write the book he can't get his degree. Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “And I think we are doing him a great favor. The last thing he needs is that degree. It condemns him to a miserable life in Kansas.”
“Well, it's his life. I think we should let him lead it where and how he likes.”
“So you have changed your mind? Is that what this is all about?”
“No, I haven't. And it's because I haven't that I think we shouldn't give any indication of softening … I can sense him getting hopeful. I think the champagne was a mistake.”
“Champagne is never a mistake,” said Caroline.
Arden returned to the table with the risotto and eggplant and a loaf of bread. Caroline brought another bottle of champagne.
“Did you enjoy your stay in Montevideo?” she asked Omar, as they began eating.
“I wasn't there very long,” said Omar. “Only two days. And I was mostly preoccupied with finding out how to get here. It was not easy, with my Spanish. I spent most of my time in Montevideo at the bus and train stations. In vain.”
“How unlovely it sounds,” said Caroline.
“It was like a dream,” said Omar. “A nightmare, I suppose. This whole journey has been like a dream. I still can't believe I'm here. I don't feel like I'm here.”
“Where do you feel like you are?” asked Arden.
“I don't know. I don't feel anywhere. I feel a little weird, as if I were floating. Perhaps it's the not sleeping last night. I haven't slept very much since I got here.”
“You must be tired,” said Arden.
“I'm not,” said Omar. “I was before, when I first arrived this afternoon,
I felt exhausted. But now I'm not at all tired.” He looked up at the sky. “It's so beautiful here. Look at all the stars.”
They all looked up at the sky.
“There's the Southern Cross,” said Portia.
“Yes,” said Omar. “You seem to have more stars here.”
“It's just that it's so dark,” said Caroline. “They're easier to see. And we are, perhaps, at this time of the year, a little closer to them then you ever are in Kansas.” She took her shawl off the back of her chair and wrapped it about her shoulders.
“Sister Julian says the stars are the eyes of angels,” said Portia.
“Perhaps they are,” said Caroline. “The angels press their faces against the black window of night and look down at us. Is it with longing, they look? Or concern? Or perhaps with derision. I wonder.”
Arden put Portia to bed and then returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes. They were stacked in the deep sink. She looked at them for a long moment, as if they were an exhibit in a museum of domesticity. She had drunk too much champagne and felt exhausted. She sat and rested her head upon the table, her forehead pressed against her forearm. Oh, she thought. Something is going wrong now.
Caroline sat a long while in her studio, looking at her version of
Madonna of the Meadow
. Sometimes you do things you do not understand. Why did I behave as I did at dinner? Why did I wear my necklace of hammered silver leaves that Jules brought me from Mexico?
It does not look like a meadow to me.
She went to the window. She saw the light dimly pushed through the shutters of Omar's window.
He is still awake. He has come so far, and cannot sleep. Why does traveling, coming far, excite us? Has it to do with what we leave behind or with what we encounter?
But she was wrong: Omar was not awake. He had simply fallen asleep with the light on.
Omar slept quite late the next morning. The loudly ticking clock on the bedside table claimed it was 10:20. The house was quiet in a way that suggested there was no one about—in fact, the quiet suggested that the planet might have been evacuated while Omar slept. In the kitchen he found evidence of life, if not life itself: a loaf of bread, a pot of jam, and a small bowl of honey were placed on the table in a way that clearly indicated they were at his disposal. The bread was rather stale but the jam and honey were delicious and awoke in Omar a ravenous appetite, for he had, out of a nervous, ridiculous politeness, declined second helpings of last night's risotto. With no one there to see him, Omar spread quite a bit of jam and honey (alternatively) on slices of the bread. The honey was dark and fragrant and curiously spicy. The jam was made from cherries, and had some pits. While washing his plate in the sink he saw a note on the counter:
Dear Omar,
I am in the garden, which is through the courtyard and down the gravel path, behind the oleander hedge. Caroline is up in her studio. It may be best if you come find me.
Arden
Why, he wondered, would it be best to find Arden? And did this mean he was meant to go find her, or only to find her if he were inclined toward company? I won't think too much about this, Omar thought. I'll just go find her, like a normal person would, after reading this note. I will behave like a normal person for as long as I possibly can.
He opened the kitchen door, and stepped out into the courtyard. The table they had eaten at the night before was cleared but the tablecloth was still spread across it, mottled by faint stains. One of the mushroom-shaped corks from the champagne bottles sat, conspicuously alone, on the linen. Omar picked it up and slipped it into his pants pocket. I will keep this, he thought, as a souvenir of my first night at Ochos Rios.
The oleander hedge was clearly visible when he emerged from the courtyard. He walked down the gravel path through a formal garden that had been neglected and was subsequently casual: flowers and weeds erupted in the spaces among the overgrown miniature privet bushes. This garden was bordered by a massive oleander hedge through which an arch had been incised, mirroring the one in the courtyard wall. Omar passed through this second arch and discovered the garden, which was large, and surrounded by a flimsy chicken-wire fence. Arden Langdon was crouching in the center of the garden, wearing khaki pants, a faded madras blouse, and a straw hat with a large brim. Her feet were bare. Omar stood just outside the fence and watched her. She was moving down the row in a slow, shuffling squat, gently pulling the weeds out of the earth, shaking the dirt from their roots, and tossing them into a metal bucket she nudged along in front of her. She reached the end of the row and stood up, put her hands on her hips, and arched her back. She saw Omar.
“Good morning,” she said. “So you've arisen.”
“Yes,” said Omar. “Good morning.”
“Did you find the bread and jam?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “Thank you. It was delicious.”
“I hope it was enough for you.”
“It was plenty,” said Omar.
She walked down the row she had just finished weeding and stood near him, just inside the fence. “Did you sleep well?” she asked. Her face was a little dirty and the hair around her temples was moist. She smelt of earth.
“Marvelously,” said Omar.
“Good,” she said. She smiled, and touched the back of her wrist to her temple. “You can come in if you want. There's a gate over there.” She pointed. “Are you interested in gardens?”
“Well, I do not garden myself,” said Omar. “But I have always had a fondness for gardens.” He walked around and tried to open the gate, but could not. It seemed to be locked, or stuck.
“You've got to hold the clasp down and lift the latch up and push,” said Arden. “It needs to be forced.”
After a bit of a struggle, the gate opened, and Omar entered the garden. “It is a very big garden,” he said. “Do you manage it all yourself?”
“No,” said Arden. “Pete helps me.”
Omar must have looked baffled, because she added, “Pete is Adam's partner. His boyfriend, I suppose. Adam is Jules's brother.”
“And they live near here, you said.”
“Yes,” said Arden. “Just down the road a ways. You passed their house on your way here. It's the round, stone building. It was a millhouse.”
“I wasn't very alert, I'm afraid. In fact, I was dozing. I must have seemed rather stupid when I arrived.”
Arden shook her head.
“I hadn't thought I would meet anyone—I mean any of you—so quickly. I had hoped I would be able to collect my wits before meeting you. But there you were.”
“Yes,” said Arden. “There I was.” She picked through the
weeds in the bucket, as if she had lost something among them, or as if some might not be weeds after all and should be reinserted in the earth.
“Perhaps I can help,” said Omar. “Now, with the garden. I think I can manage to pull the weeds and spare your plants.”
Arden laughed. “You're dressed much too nicely to garden,” she said. “And besides, I'm ready for a break. You haven't had any coffee, have you? Or did you make some?”
“No,” said Omar.
“Well, come,” said Arden. She set the bucket down. “We'll have some coffee, if you like.”
They sat at the kitchen table and drank their coffee.
“How did you become interested in Jules's work?” asked Arden.
“Well, I read
The Gondola
in a class I took on literature of the Diaspora.”
“I see.”
“I liked the book very much. Perhaps because of who I was—having left Iran, coming to Canada at the age I did … I don't know. It's a beautiful book. It touched me very deeply. I know that sounds sentimental, but it is true.”
“Yes,” said Arden.
“The other books did not move me so much. I liked the gentleness of
The Gondola
. Its grace. To come so far, to bring so much with you, and to be nevertheless traumatized, devastated …”
“Yes,” Arden repeated, a bit vaguely, as if she were in a trance.
“So,” said Omar, “I became interested in Jules Gund. I tried to read more—by him and about him. And there was none of either. Or nothing I could find. The woman who taught the course on the Diaspora was my thesis advisor. She encouraged me to work on Gund. And so here I am.”
Arden sipped her coffee. It was a little bitter. “Do you take sugar?” she asked. “I'm sorry, I forget to ask you. Or cream?”
“No,” said Omar. “I like it black.”
“It's bitter,” said Arden.
Omar said nothing.
“It's odd that you're here,” she said, after a moment. “I mean, not just the surprise of your showing up like you did.”
“How do you mean?” asked Omar.
“I don't know if I can explain it,” said Arden. She held her hands together, fingers aligned, as if she were praying, and then rubbed them back and forth, lightly against each other. “It just seems odd … I suppose it is because I meet so few people. So that now, when I meet someone, I think, How did this happen? Why?”
“But you know why I am here,” said Omar.
“Yes, of course,” said Arden. She almost said, I know why you are here for you, but I do not know why you are here for me.
“I wonder if …” Omar began, but hesitated.
“What?”
“Last night, when you came to my room, you said there was no chance you would change your mind. I wonder if you still think that?”
“Yes,” said Arden. “I think I do.”
“But you're not sure?”
“I don't know,” said Arden. “I'd like to help. I would. But the thing you want, it's the one thing—it's a complicated thing for all of us: Jules's life. It—well, even though he's been dead three years, we're all still very much engaged with him in some way. I don't think we're ready to let him go. Which is what you seem to be asking, in a way.”
“I'm not asking that at all,” said Omar.
“I know you're not. I mean, intellectually I know that. But emotionally, you must understand—or perhaps you can't—what it is you're asking.”
Omar looked troubled, but said nothing. He sipped his coffee. It was bitter.
“I thought about writing a biography myself,” said Arden.
“Of Jules?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Just recently. Because of you. After we made our decision, I thought, Well, why don't I write a biography myself? I thought it couldn't be so hard. I went so far as to buy note cards. I wrote something I knew on each of the note cards, one fact about Jules on each, and I thought I would just arrange them chronologically and then elaborate upon these facts. And then fill in the blanks.”
“I see,” said Omar. “So that's why you don't want me to do a biography.”
Arden laughed. “No!” she said. “That's not it at all. I've given up on doing a biography myself. I gave it up very quickly.”
“Why?”
“There were too many blanks,” she said. “It scared me, actually. I stopped out of fear.”
“Fear of what?”
“Fear of what I didn't know about Jules.”
“Why did that frighten you?”
She looked at him. She shook her head. After a moment she said, “Perhaps I shouldn't be talking to you about this.”
“Oh,” said Omar.
“Under the circumstances, I don't think it's right.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. I'm sorry.”
“No,” she said. “You shouldn't be. I brought it up. I don't know why. I'm sorry.”
They sipped their coffee for a moment, and then Omar said, “I wonder if I could—well, at some point that was convenient, perhaps speak with all three of you together: you and Mrs. Gund and Mr. Gund.”
“Of course,” she said. “I'll invite Adam to dinner this evening. You can talk to us then. For what it's worth.”
“It's awkward being so dependent upon your hospitality,” said Omar. “Perhaps I could take you all out to dinner someplace. Is there a nice restaurant nearby?” He thought: It can't cost that much, restaurants in this part of Uruguay. But would he be able to use a credit card? Did he have enough cash? He had used so much of it paying the man who drove him here.
“I'm afraid there really aren't many decent restaurants in the area,” said Arden. “We're in somewhat of a backwater here, culinarily speaking. And we can't have you spending your money on us.”
“Please,” said Omar. “I'd like to. You've been so kind, letting me stay here, and feeding me.”
“Oh, yes!” Arden laughed. “Stale bread and bitter coffee! Like prison!”
“And champagne and jam and honey, and that delicious risotto last night. Please: I'd like to take you all out to dinner.”
“Well, I'll phone Adam. He's sometimes very agoraphobic. Other times he quite likes to go out. We'll see what kind of mood he is in. He won't go out to a restaurant unless he wants to.”
“Well, I hope he will say yes,” said Omar. “And his boyfr——his partner, too, must join us, please, if we go.”
“I'll call them,” said Arden. “Now perhaps you should go up and see Caroline. I think she wants to talk to you. She's in her studio. Did you know she paints?”
“No,” said Omar. “I'm afraid I know ridiculously little about any of you.”
“Well, that's reassuring,” said Arden.
“Caroline paints?”
“Yes. Apparently she is quite talented. Or was, I am told. But she suffered some loss of confidence and now only paints imitations.”
“What do you mean?”
“She makes copies of paintings. It's not about her anymore, her art. She has taken herself out of it.”
“Why?” asked Omar.
“I don't know,” said Arden. “Perhaps you should ask her.”
There was a special staircase that led up to Caroline's studio in the attic. Omar crossed the courtyard and opened the door that Arden had pointed out and climbed the stairs with considerable trepidation. He stood outside the closed door for a moment before he knocked.
“Yes,” a voice called.
“It's Omar Razaghi,” said Omar.
“
Entrez
,” said Caroline.

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