Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (28 page)

           
So did Kwan. On the white metal
table beside his bed were the magazines Bob had brought him, plus a pencil and
notepad in case he wanted to ask for anything or make any kind of comment. He
had nothing to say, no reason to use the pencil and notepad, but he did read
the magazines, in Chinese and in English, and despite his efforts to keep it
out, the world did crowd in on him, in its hopelessness and its faithlessness.

           
Other times, he slept. He took his
medicines, submitted to the tests, underwent the physical therapies. Because of
the damage he’d done to his throat and esophagus, he couldn’t eat, or drink any
liquids, or talk, but the intravenous-feeding needle fixed into the fleshy part
of his left: forearm dealt with the first two of those problems, and he had no
need to deal with the last.

*
 
*
 
*

           
Because he slept so lightly, once
they no longer needed to give him painkillers, he was aware of the door when it
opened, and had turned to look that way while it was still swinging wide, so
that the person coming into his dark room—Venetian blinds closed over the night
view of the river—was silhouetted against the lit corridor. Then the person
swung the door shut and shuffled softly forward, and in Kwan’s mind the afterimage
showed the corridor, and the empty chair against the opposite wall.

           
The policeman? Coming in here for
some reason?

           
No. The quick impression of that
silhouette, the backlit border of it, had suggested the kind of long white coat
worn by the doctors, not a policeman’s uniform at all. But when medical staff
came into the room at night, they always kicked down the little rubber-tipped
metal foot attached to the door, to hold it open, so they would have the light
from the corridor to help them see—plus their own little flashlights—and
wouldn’t have to disturb him by putting on the main lights.

           
Kwan, because he’d already been in
here in the dark, could see faindy, could at least make out shapes. The other
person in the room, who’d been in the brighdy lighted corridor, was obviously
having trouble finding his way across the blackness toward the bed; Kwan heard
chair legs scrape when the person bumped into it.

           
And suddenly he knew. Trying to sit
up, hampered by the board attached to his left arm that kept it rigid for the
intravenous needle, and by the tubes still inserted in his nose and the new
hole in his throat, Kwan gargled out hoarse ragged frightened noises, the first
sounds he’d made since waking up in the hospital. These noises caused him
extreme pain, but also caused that shuffling dark presence over there to stop,
to become very still for a moment, and then to whisper, in smooth educated
Cantonese, “So you’re awake, are you, Li? I am here to help you.” And he sidled
forward again.

           
Kwan knew what sort of help this
smooth bastard was here to provide. He had tried to kill himself, for his own
reasons, to gain his own goals, but of course his desires had meshed
wonderfully with theirs. How convenient of him to want to get
himself
out of their hair, eliminate all
potential future embarrassment. But he had failed—as he had failed in
everything, he now saw—and so they had decided to help him along the way, had
sent this undersecretary or chauffeur or military attache from their embassy or
U.N. mission, to see to it that he didn’t fail a second time.

           
Not
this way!
Kwan thought, instinctively resisting, clawing to retain life as
automatically as he’d tried to throw it away. He made that hoarse croaking
sound again, regardless of the pain, but it wasn’t at all loud enough to be
heard through that closed door.

           
And where was the policeman? The
easy pleasant whisper answered him: “Relax, Li, no one will disturb us. We paid
for one tiny mix-up in assignments—they believe, simple souls, they’ve gotten
out of the way of a photographer from the
New
York Post
—and so we’re all alone. You want to sleep, Li, I know you do, and
I am here to assure you of sleep. A long and dreamless sleep.”

           
The figure was at the bed. Kwan,
still struggling to rise, felt the man reach past him for one of the pillows.
He dropped back, pressing his palm flat against the man’s chest, pushing as
hard as he could, but he was too weak, and the chest he pushed at rippled with
hard muscles.

           
The pillow came down tight onto his
face, wrenching the one tube from the hole in his throat, crushing the other
inside his
 
nose. The damage he’d already
done to his throat was made worse, much worse. Kwan fought not for life but to
make this pain go away. He flailed uselessly with his one good hand as the man
bore down, his weight keeping the terrible pain inside.

           
Kwan’s hand slid off the solid
shoulder and upper arm of the man, waved out and back, flung wide, rapped his
knuckles hard against the white metal table, scrabbled like a spider on that
surface, found an object, stabbed upward with it.

           
“nn”

           
Good; a reaction. Kwan, planets and
fiery satellites spinning against his eyelids, head and chest swelling with the
need for air, stabbed again, and a third time, and a fourth, and the thing in
his hand that he was stabbing with broke just as the weight on the pillow
abrupdy eased. Kwan pushed it away, gasping, to see that he held tighdy gripped
in his fist half of the pencil that had been placed with the notepad on the
table, for which he had had no use.

           
And the figure was reeling backward,
both hands clutched to his face. Kwan half leaped and half fell from the bed,
the pain when the intravenous needle ripped from his arm almost unnodceable in
all the other pains clamoring at his body. He staggered across the room, good
arm out, reaching for the door, finding the knob, pulling it open, so weak the
door seemed to come toward him through water.

           
With a quick look back, he saw the
man, Oriental, tall and sinewy, dressed like a doctor, wide-eyed with horror
and rage, openmouthed, gripping with one palsied hand the pencil that jutted
from his cheek, afraid to pull it out. He saw Kwan in the doorway, about to
escape. He stared, then gave a little cry, and yanked the pencil free, flinging
it across the room. Blood spurted from the attacker’s cheeks, and Kwan fled.

           
They keep moving earlier than I
anticipate. First Frank, and now Kwan.

           
I hadn’t realized that some
overreaching bureaucrat within the sprawling Chinese government would decide to
order Kwan’s execution. A close thing, that. Kwan saved himself, fortunately,
or I would have had to begin all over again, abandoning this entire first group
to work out their shortened destinies on their own.

           
I did arrive to help Kwan, though
belatedly. When he let that room door close behind him and ran down the
corridor on his tottering legs, his guardian angel was once more at his side. I
permitted the assassin, back in the room, once again in the dark and going into
shock, to fall over the chair I’d placed in his way, giving Kwan extra seconds
to get to the double doors, and through, and find the stairwell.

           
Kwan’s weakness would have ruined
him, but I gave him of my own strength, enough to get him down the stairwell to
the ground floor and through a door that was locked until one second before he
touched it and locked again one second after he passed through. Various
pedestrians—three nurses and one doctor—were shunted slighdy from their
original routes so that Kwan could pass by unseen. A closet he opened now
contained— though it had not previously contained—a tattered topcoat that would
fit him reasonably well and cover most of his hospital- issue pajamas. On their
sides on the floor lay a pair of shin-high black rubber boots, only a bit too
large for Kwan’s feet. He tucked the pajama legs inside the boots and moved on.

           
A uniformed private security guard
would have been at the side exit, except that he’d just been called away to a
telephone call, only to find that his party had hung up. (More graceless and
clumsy work on my part, but what was I to do with no time for preparation?)

           
Kwan emerged into a chilly and
cloudless night. It was just after five in the morning.
First Avenue
was to his left, with very litde traffic
apart from the occasional cruising taxicab.
FDR Drive
was to his right, scattered with
fast-moving cars, and the river lay beyond.

           
Kwan went to the right, found an
on-ramp to the Drive, avoided it, followed a narrow street that ran between the
Drive and the rear of various buildings in the hospital complex, found a group
of three bundled-up people asleep on a warm-air grate against a high brick
wall, and joined them. Lying down, immediately unconscious, the wounds in his
neck and left forearm beginning to scab over, he became at once invisible,
merely another of New York City’s many thousand street sleepers.

           
I left him there, and went briefly
back to Susan, only to assure myself the demon hadn’t attacked her again—he had
not, he was still off somewhere licking his wounds—and turned my attention to
my other primary actors.

           
They’re doing it on their own now I
don’t have to do a thing. Particularly Maria Elena, and also Grigor. I started
those tops spinning, but now it’s all happening without any extra push from me.
I don’t even appear.

           
And they’re moving so
fast
. It’s as though they know, and are
in a hurry to reach their end.

           
At ten-thirty the dryer buzzed, and
Maria Elena carried the sheets upstairs. She looked out the bedroom window, and
of course the gray
Plymouth
was still there, across
Wilton Road
, in front of the house two doors to the
right. Yesterday it had been one house farther away, and the day before it had
been on this side, down two houses to the left. Always facing in this
direction.

           
Did they think she was a fool? Or
were they showing themselves deliberately, trying to intimidate her? That would
be ironic, wouldn’t it? Having already given up her connection with the
dissenters, to now be pressured by the government— the FBI, the state police,
whoever that was out there—to do what she’d already despairingly done.

           
There were so few cars ever parked
on the street along this curving suburban road at the edge of Stockbridge,
Massachusetts
, that a strange vehicle would of necessity
draw attention. Did they think, because the lone observer in the car was a
woman—a chain-smoking woman—that Maria Elena wouldn’t understand what was going
on? The nondescript gray car, the vaguely progressive (but inoffensive) bumper
stickers—i luv
EARTH; SAVE THE WHALES
—were
hardly disguise enough, not in a neighborhood like this.

           
Making the beds—she and Jack slept
in different rooms now—Maria Elena engaged in angry silent conversations with
the woman in the car. But these fantasy speeches had lost their power to
tranquilize. Her make-believe diatribes at the rich and powerful and greedy and
cruel did nothing to solve actual problems, had never done anything but soothe
her own brittle nervous melancholy. And now they didn’t even do that much.

           
The worst of it all was, probably
she
was the one now who should go to the
authorities, the one with the specific grievance, but she couldn’t bring
herself to do it. Although she was pretty sure by now that Andras had stolen
her past.

           
Andras Herrmuil, the so-called
record producer, the man who made all the promises, and who now, apparendy, had
disappeared. With her records, her posters, her photos, her clippings.

           
Not quite two months ago he’d
phoned, this enthusiastic baritone voice on the telephone, saying, “Maria
Elena? Is this
the
Maria Elena?”

           
Even here? she’d wondered, amazed,
but even though the thought pleased her she automatically said, “No, I’m sorry,
I don’t know what you mean.”

           
“You
are!
I can hear your voice!” And he dropped into natural native
Brazilian Portuguese:
^cc
When you were singing I was still at home, I
was young, I was one of your most rabid fans, I went
everywhere
you appeared.”

           
“I’m sorry,” she said, unconsciously
answering him in Portuguese, “you’re mistaking me for—”

           
“But I’m
not.
Do you know how many times you played
Belem
?”

           
A small city in the far north of
Brazil
. Maria Elena said, “What? No, I—”

           
“Three!” he announced triumphantly.
“And I went to every one of them, even though I lived then in
Sao Paulo
. Maria Elena, do you remember the
Live in Sao Paulo
album? Fm on it!
Screaming
my head off!”

           
“Please, no, you’ve—”

           
“Forgive me,” said that insistent
voice, “I get so carried away.

           
My name is Andras Herrmuil, Fm an
^C
A
and R’ man now with Hemispheric Records, and this is, believe it or not, a
professional business telephone call.”

           
“A and R” had been said in English;
it caught at Maria Elena’s attention. She said, “A what? A and R? Fm sorry, I
don’t know what that means.”

           
Again in English, he said, “Artists
and Repertory.” Then, back to Portuguese, he said, “It means, I help select
which records we put out. I don’t know if you know Hemispheric—”

           
“No, I don’t.”

           
“We release in the
United States
,” he said, “music from other parts of the
Americas
. Canadian, Mexican, Central and South
American. To have
Maria Elena
on our
list would be such a—”

           
“No, no, please, I—”

           
“You should
not
be forgotten! When you were singing, you were the best! You
were the only one in a class with Elis Regina!”

           
One of the major superstars of
Brazil
, before she killed herself. “Oh, no,” Maria
Elena protested, feeling herself blush, “I was never, I could never have been—”

           
“Ah, you
admit
who you are! Maria Elena, may I come see you?”

           
How could she refuse? And so he’d
come to see her, a darkly handsome man in his mid-thirties, who had flirted
with her (but had not overstepped the bounds) and painted glowing pictures of
her career reborn in this cold dry northern world. He had given her his card,
and she had given him the two cartons that made up all that was left of her
career.

           
Promising to phone soon, and to
forward a contract, Andras had gone away, and for the next few weeks Maria
Elena had moved in a happy daze, fantasizing her new career. Could it happen?
Could she actually sing again? She was sorry she hadn’t kept just one album, so
she could hear afresh what she used to sound like. Could she do it now? Would
the cold North Americans accept her?

           
But Andras didn’t phone, and no
contract came in the mail. Maria Elena fretted, she grew sleepless. She
shouldn’t call him, she should wait, businesses had delays.

           
But finally, yesterday, she had
taken out his business card and called the number on it, in
New York
, and a recorded voice had told her that
number was not in service.
New York City
information then told her there was no business in the city known as
Hemispheric Records.

           
Oh, Andras. What have you done, and
why? Were you just a fan, a cruel fan? Was
that
all you wanted, to steal my souvenirs for yourself?

           
One can get used to living without
hope. But to have hope suddenly offered, to be tantalized with hope till one
begins to believe in that bright specter once more, and
then
to have hope snatched away, that is unbearable. Maria Elena
ground her teeth that night, alone and awake in her bed, thinking the darkest
thoughts of her life.

           
And this morning, to hammer it home,
there was the stakeout, the woman in the gray car.

           
Not yet eleven in the morning, and
there was nothing more to do in this house, no other way to distract herself
from her thoughts. This hateful place took care of itself with all of its
“labor-saving devices.” There was still labor, of course, it was actually time
that was saved, but time for what?

           
Going downstairs, Maria Elena firmly
turned her back on the living room and its television set. The daytime soap
operas were too seductive, with their open-ended stories, in which great
passion and great absurdity were at every instant inextricably mingled. The
characters cared deeply, vitally, as Maria Elena had once cared and had always
wanted to care and could no longer care, but what the characters in those daily
stories cared so vividly
about
was
invariably trash. Nothing that could possibly really matter to anybody ever
arose in their invented lives, and that was why they were so seductive; become
a regular watcher, a daily observer of these brightly colored puppets, let
them
experience your passion for you.
All gain, no pain. A legal drug, as efficient as the illegal ones.

           
Maria Elena’s pride would not let
her give in to the release of drugs. Of any kind.

           
Turning her back on the living room,
Maria Elena drifted purposelessly into the dining room. This elaborate neat
house contained a separate dining room, perfectly waxed and preserved, never
used for anything at all. When she and Jack took dinner together, which wasn’t
often, they ate at the breakfast table in the kitchen.

           
Maria Elena stopped in the dining
room, not knowing where to go or what to do with herself. Her fingertips
brushed the polished surface of the mahogany table. Seats twelve. What would
she do with the rest of her day?

           
She thought of Grigor Basmyonov, but
she’d been to see him again only the day before yesterday. And she’d told
him—with such hope!—about Andras Herrmuil and Hemispheric Records and the
sudden new career opening up before her. He’d been so happy and encouraging for
her; how could she go to him with today’s news?

           
But there was another reason to stay
away. She was afraid of
using
Grigor,
of turning him into a kind of flesh-and-blood soap opera of her very own, over
whose dramatic problems she could wail without risk to herself, releasing her
emotions in a safely ineffectual way.

           
But on the days when she didn’t
drive across western
Massachusetts
and into
New York
State
to see Grigor, what was there to do? What
purpose in life? She looked toward the plate-glass dining room window, with its
view of
Wilton
Road
,
and saw the first slanted lines of rain sweep diagonally down it, as though God
had shaken out his just-washed beard. Rain. So driving would be more difficult,
staying at home even more claustrophobic.

           
Maria Elena stepped forward to look
at the sky, to find out just how much of a storm this was going to be, and was
astonished to see that gray Plymouth turning into the driveway of this house.
Pulling up beside the house. Stopping.

           
Arrest!
thought Maria Elena, and couldn’t hide from herself the thrilled feeling, the
sense that something of interest, something worthwhile, might at last be about
to happen. Lightfooted, suddenly lighthearted, she turned toward the front
door.

           
The bell didn’t ring for a long
time, while Maria Elena stood in the front hall, one pace from the door, trying
not to look eager, trying not to know just how eager she was. What was the
woman in the
Plymouth
doing? What was the delay?

           
Ding-dong.
Very loud, because the bell was set to be heard everywhere in this large house,
and Maria Elena was standing direcdy beneath it. She started, even though she’d
expected the sound, then stepped forward and opened the door. She would be
calm, dignified, rigid, and silent.

           
At first she thought it was rain on
the woman’s face, but the rain was only a sprinkle, and the woman’s cheeks were
very wet, her makeup running, her expression twisted with emotion. Tears!
Expecting arrest, Maria Elena was completely lost. Did the woman so hate her
work for the government that it made her weep?

           
“Mrs. Auston?”

           
“Yes?”

           
“I’m Kate Monroe, I have to talk to
you.”

           
“About what?”

           
“About John.”

           
The name meant nothing to her.
Someone in the anti-nuclear group? “John?”

           
“Your husband!” the woman cried.
“Don’t you even remember you
have
a
husband?”

           
“Oh, my God,” Maria Elena said, and
stepped back. “Come in, come in.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
They sat in the living room, Maria
Elena on the soft sofa, Kate Monroe on the uncomfortable wooden-armed
decorative chair; her choice. She was about thirty, somewhat overweight,
dressed in a distracted manner in bright colors in several layers of cloth, as
though she were a fairy in a hippie production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Her hair was ash blond, cut fairly
short, at the moment tangled and unkempt. Her round face would be pretty if it
weren’t puffy red from emotion. Tears periodically poured down those round
cheeks.