The Saint Louisans (23 page)

The year 2004 had been my own year of discovery, and 2005, this year, would be
Le Annee de Mord
. No getting around that.

My boots crunched snow. Above me, a darkening sky.

Paul Valery said a blank sheet of paper is beautiful because nothing is on it, that nonexistence is beauty. It echoed Pierre's Buddhism, and I thought how I made tracks, words, markings, paper trails of my own when I dropped being called Cindy Lee and became Lee. Not nonexistence, but reinvention.

Through the treetops, the western sky turned into a dappled canvas of yellow streaks transmuting into red and royal purple. Snow glittered like polished ivory. A true sunset befitting a Veiled Prophet Queen.

A brisk wind stung my cheeks, rattling dead leaves and whirling loose snow into a spiral of white powder. It reminded me that Lindbergh said that with all the wind and ice in St. Louis, January was the worst time to fly. In winter, Lindy had a hell of a time teaching flying students to land properly. Thinking of Lindbergh, as always, made me think of Dad. How he convinced Lena Sikes to make me her daughter, another invention.

Now, everything was about burial, Margot's and the spectre of Corn Mother, presumably buried under the mansion. Need we mention Jama's burial under a $100,000 debt? Walking back to the car, swirling snow and leaves seemed like these jumbled problems.

The only light now the orange park lamps shaped like teardrops of glowing sherbet. I frowned as I recalled Valery. He was too delphic. I preferred Robert Doisneau, he who photographed the life of Paris. The charm of a city, now that we come to it, is not unlike the charm of flowers. It partly depends on seeing time creep across it. Charm needs to be fleeting.

I needed comfort food of the soul. I recalled Sara:

‘I shall have winter now and lessening days / Lit by a smoky sun with slanting rays …'

Voices swirling around me. Everything bled. Day, warmth, life.

I had supper waiting for Saul. We ate eggplant lasagna, toasted garlic bread, and I uncorked a bottle. I expected him to recall his latest restoration work, but instead he looked off in space.

“Care to burden Nurse Lee with your angst?” I said, pouring wine.

He drank and sighed. “I kind of have to. I got the skinny on our friend Rasheed.”

“Bad skinny, I take it.”

“Yes. Barrett, my P.I., did some snooping, along with a dashing Israeli I know who can peek into files and the like. He used to be a butt boy for Mossad, and his butt still clicks.” He forked some lasagna, nodded. “Rasheed Hamani is a gofer for this sheik, but his previous day job was with Al Qaeda.”

“What? This guy's a terrorist?”

“Yeah. Did dirty tricks in Iraq. Seemed to be around when things went boom, including IEDs against our troops.”

“We've got to tell someone.”

Saul nodded. “Sure. I'm going to the FBI. Maybe getting him on a plane to Absurdistan will get Jama out of hot water.” He broke off a piece of bread. “Of course, for her, there's another pot boiling somewhere, but at least this one's going off.”

“Christ,” I sighed.

“Where is Jama?”

“Oh, she's around. Hustling, looking for a scam, some war chest to thrust her back into Hollywood, and so far,” I leaned back, swishing my glass, “she knows nothing about our being Desouches.”

“That's not going to last.” He glared. “Sonia. Damn it.” His determination was very real, and that meant a story.

“You never told me how you met Sonia. In Iran.”

Saul leaned back in his chair. “Long story.”

“Tell Nurse all about it.”

Saul was sedately drunk, which was what I wanted, and he faked Ronald Colman. “‘Ah, my dear, you force me to tell you.'”

“I'm expecting more farce than force. So it was
Lost Horizon
?”

“
Bringing Up Baby
.” Saul sipped and gestured. “It was October of '71. When I had sideburns. Dad was with the World Health Organization, and got an invitation to the Shah's 2,500 anniversary of the founding of the Persian empire.”

“You were, what did you say, fifteen?”

“Sixteen. But tall for my age. Iran had just been declared our cop in the
Gulf. Nixon pumped military aid in like kegs at a frat party. A huge tent city was set up near Shiraz, what used to be Persepolis.”

I cozied up. “I remember seeing it on the news. The tents, bejeweled guests, robed Persian soldiers on horseback, parades of nubile maidens honoring the King of Kings.” I waved my glass and recalled a couplet from
Lallah Rookh
: ‘With turbaned heads of every hue and race / Bowing before that veiled and awful face …' “That's the Veiled Prophet, I know, but the whole thing sounds very VP.”

“Except the Prophet had no armored divisions. Or oil.” Saul looked past me as he dipped back into his youth. “It was a débutante ball for Iran. She was open for business. Jets flew in crammed with food. Rich Iranians bought every jewelers stock from Beirut to London. All of it in the background of the ruins.” Saul gazed off to my curtains, seeing not St. Louis behind them but youth. “I first saw Persepolis at sunset. A rich pink blazing against tents, and there were pillars. Like dozens of marble stalks. I was seduced.”

I nodded, thinking of Aunt Mary's long ago ecstasy over pillars. “Not the usual field trip.”

“I tried to imagine what it must have looked like before Alexander burned it. It was then I knew I was going to study architecture, that I wanted to rebuild and restore.” He shrugged. “I was already rebelling against med school and being the bad Lowenstein.” His sigh was middle-aged and wistful. “I knew I wanted to rebuild that palace. I mean, figuratively. That was when the bug bit. That I wanted to rebuild, remake, restore. Save.” He held out his glass, and I refilled it. “Maybe I was like Holden Caulfield and I was going to save kids in the field. You know, be their catcher in the rye. Emotions weren't easy for me. Buildings I could save, or try to. But people …” Saul knit his brows in that troubled way of his. “My ex-wife could tell you all about my being a cold bastard, and maybe I am.”

I touched Saul's hand. “You're very warm.”

He smiled. “So anyway, back in Iran, before young Lowenstein had a wet dream over Persepolis, men from SAVAK came for Dad.”

“The Shah's Gestapo?”

Saul nodded. “SAVAK drove us to Shiraz. Secretly. Quickly. They had an epidemic. Not your run-of-the-mill epidemic like cholera or typhus. It was smallpox.”

I sipped. “Shit.”

“Yeah. A real PR nightmare if word got out. All those kingmakers and mucky-mucks sucking up to Kissinger and the Shah of Shahs, and smallpox not more than a mile away. Peasants were infected by the hundreds. Any case of smallpox anywhere has to be reported to WHO. Shiraz was put under quarantine. Dad helped the locals start inoculating.”

“What did the Shah do?”

Saul shrugged. “Nothing. He probably didn't even know. SAVAK and the local authorities denied there was an epidemic until bodies started piling up.”

“Wasn't your father afraid of you being there?”

“Dad? No. He was snowed with work, I had my shots, and he wanted me to see my future as the great doctor Lowenstein number two.” Another gulp of wine. “I saw the dead. I'd been to a funeral here and there, but this …” He looked off. “Lee, let's drop it.”

“Tell me about the bodies.”

Saul gave that far-off look, seeing into sights and sounds he'd never experienced. “There were stacks of them in trenches. Wrapped up like tamales. Tractors pushed dirt over them. The stench of the corpses mixed with diesel. Whenever I smell diesel, I'm back there.”

His eyes glazed.

“The women. They wailed over dead children and relatives. Flung up their hands. Really mourned, like you see on those reliefs of the tombs of Pharaohs.”

“I don't see Sonia as mourning the dead. So where did you hook up?”

“I hate to admit it, but I got bored. Typical asshole teenager, huh? I wanted to get back to Persepolis and the action. Dad approved, and the chauffeur took me to the ruins. They always had chauffeurs for westerners. See how Iranians drive and you'll know why. There I was, all of that death that I was able to get away from, and return to the stillness of the ruins. Nearby trumpets sounded and cheers came from another yay-hooray for the Shah.”

“You walked,” I said, “and there was Sonia. Leaning against a pillar, with a come hither look?”

Saul's laughter rolled gently. “Pretty much. I smelled cigarette smoke and there she was, in a pearl mini with some kind of glittering scarf that dropped
below her hem. Her long hair blew in the wind. She made me feel like I was trespassing. Of course, in that part of the world, a woman alone arouses you. She stared and puffed. My footsteps echoed as I strolled up the steps to her. Like meeting Liz Taylor in Cleopatra.”

“What did you say? ‘Nice ruins?'”

Saul's laughter was immediate and high. His gotcha laugh. “I just said hi. She kept staring, and I rattled on about Persepolis, trying to be clever and worldly, but it sunk into nerd babble. She aimed her cigarette butt and tossed it, heaving out smoke. I thought ‘Saul, you schmuck, you're striking out.'”

I smiled, recalling photos he showed me. He was everyone's worst yearbook picture. A long-haired, gawky boy in the chess club, who reads Dostoevsky, and couldn't share.

Saul waved his hand, Merlin conjuring the past. “She said, ‘American, aren't you?'”

Her accent was stronger, before she became the great tomb raider and bitch goddess of
National Geographic
and
Nova
. She oozed with European disdain. Like when you're an American abroad, and you're always supposed to apologize, especially if a Republican's in office. Sonia said her father was a diplomat. She'd met Kissinger. ‘He is clever man, although a fascist. Cul-tee-va-ted. For a Jew.'”

A thoughtful raising of the brows came from Saul. “I hadn't had the Jew thing. Not since eighth grade. I shrugged and drank her in. Drank? I was gulping.”

“I assume your tongue was hanging out. When you finally rolled it up and stuffed it back in your mouth, what happened? Did she say something excessively continental and ruinous?”

Saul continued. “‘I was expecting someone,' she said, ‘but the bastard hasn't come. I need a man. Will you come with me?'”

Saul grinned. “‘Sure,' I said. No problemo. We walked past pillars, like they were an honor guard flanking us, to her Peugeot.”

I filled our glasses. “What's Iranian wine like?”

“Back then, it tasted like vinegar. I doubt improving the vineyards was at the top of Khomeini's list.”

“No,” I said, “nor improving women's fashions beyond voluminous shades of black. So, both of you drove off ‘to the Casbah?'”

“Her chauffeur took us to a collection of stinking hovels. Iranians don't use mortar. They use cow dung. ‘Say nothing,' she warned me, ‘but act like a man.'” Saul drank. “How's that for a warning label?”

I edged off my shoe and my toe did a hiya with his ankle. “Go on.”

“This guy comes out. Looks like he shaves with a fork. Eyebrows knit into one long line; fuzzy and thick, like I used to play with on my Etch-a-Sketch. We squat, and Sonia raps Farsi with him. He reaches into his robe. I try to look like a tough guy. I was tall. I had sideburns, remember. I aimed for a polyester Burt Reynolds, but probably was more Elliot Gould. Anyway, it worked.”

“What came out of the robe?”

Saul paused and drank, eyes switching to a dreamy gaze.

“It was a marble figure, about seven inches tall. A male nude. A real Adonis. Not a scratch on it, broken off at the shins. Obviously Hellenistic. The man lay out a fuzzy woolen cloth and set the figure down. Sonia picked it up. ‘It's second century,' she said to me, ‘probably from Palmyra.'” I nodded. “Where do you think he got it?”

“Don't ask questions.”

A long sigh came from Saul. “That was a coda for Sonia's professional life to come. The figure was set down on the wool and the bargaining began between Sonia and the man; gestures, silences, and eye movements Fellini could have won an Oscar with. So here I am, looking tough, thinking ‘what the fuck am I doing here?' But loving it every moment.”

I thought of the younger Saul, stunned and excited about his adventure with Sonia. Despite his protestations, a part of him will always be captivated by her.

“I assume the bargaining ended?”

“Yes. She reached into her bag and came out with a roll of dollars, dropping them next to the figure. In the corner of her bag, I saw a pistol butt. My groin froze. Man, was I happy to see the guy flash his yellow and gray teeth as he counted the money. I hoped he'd use some of it to see a dentist. He scampered off, and Sonia and I went back to the car, her prize wrapped up and tucked into her bag. ‘It helped having a man,' she said to me. ‘Iranians. You have to know how to deal with them.'”

“So you made it back to the Shah's blast?”

“Yeah,” sighed Saul. “Dad was waiting for me, the stern Dr. Lowenstein. He said things were under control. I was twelve feet away from Kissinger.
Sonia headed my way, and I said hi, but she ignored me to hook up with some stud from Argentina.”

I smiled. “But you connected later?” I leaned closer and snuggled. “Did the earth move? The rocks quake? Did she lift your wallet?”

Saul's laughter was hardy, rippling with a man's pleasure. “I felt like that figure on the wool rag. Her looking down, trying to figure out my price on the market.”

“So Sonia was on top. Not surprising.”

Saul raised his finger. “There is one postscript. Two weeks after she ignored me in England, a woman who'd been to the ceremonies came down with smallpox. The authorities wanted to know where it came from, and the Iranians had to 'fess up. In Iran, they were furious. They blamed the British.” Saul wisped into an Iranian accent. “‘How dare the British do this to us! Anything to embarrass Iran! It is not enough they treat us like puppets. Now this. Always the British!'”