A Million for Eleanor: A Contemporary Story on Love and Money (6 page)

He was flowing through the text with ease, oblivious to both Eleanor and the impending enterprise. His thoughts were in a Mauritanian jail into which he was thrown by the enemies, and which he had to escape in a frail boat, trying to disregard the fact that the very idea of sailing across an open sea in it was optimistic. He knew the ending of the chapter, and yet kept reading with
unabating interest, expecting, if not another glimpse into the wisdom of the masterpiece, another encounter with a beauty that was at stake here. He never paid much attention to fictional heroines, knowing they were inserted in the text for the author’s own good, but when it came to Cervantes he felt he had to pay a tribute to him. The proud old man inspired too many generations of romantically inclined European boys who, their heads full of Spanish Claudias, would relentlessly fall in love with local Maries, Marias and Marthas and try to revive chivalry in their own England, France, Germany, or whatever else.

When Eleanor returned, wearing a dark blue dress and sapphire earrings, he was still reading, looking like a monk immersed in the Bible. For a couple of seconds she stood still, waiting for him to notice her, but, even though he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he did not move, fearing he wouldn’t be able to meet her eyes in the way he wanted.

“I am ready,” she said finally, having grown tired of waiting.

He closed the book and looked at her.

“You sure are,” he said.

He didn’t believe what he saw, but that very fact was the most reliable reality check he could have. In a mere hour, Eleanor had transformed herself from a housewife forced to deal with an uninvited guest into a heroine of a suspense thriller which had to end in at least one horrific death. Judging by how much sharper her facial features shined, she must have put on a lot of makeup, but, had it not been for his sister’s words that suddenly surfaced in his head, it would not even occur to him to seek the roots of Eleanor’s stupendous beauty in
artificiality. She looked like an empress preparing to step into the center of attention, her every move showing that she was ready to rule anyone and anything, with or without mercy, and the sphere that duly stirred inside, this time around the solar plexus, reminded him there was only one man who could match this unconquerable image of hers.

“Excellent choice, darling, but isn’t this blue shot with violet?” he asked in mock urgency.

She gave her dress a quick look.

“Is there something wrong?”

“Of course not. Everything is just perfect,” he assured, admiring and adoring both her courage and composure.

“Okay, look, I need to ask you something.” Eleanor’s face became very serious. “My family still has no idea about what’s going
on, and…”

“Great. Keep it that way, at least until tomorrow,” he said, getting up and returning the book to the shelf he took it from.

“Do you understand what a daughter’s wedding means for a mother?”

“Whatever that is, yours has already had her share of it with your older sisters. Besides, you’ll divorce me on Monday anyway, won’t you?”

“I haven’t decided yet.’

“You haven’t decided yet! Well, you still have some time.”

Suddenly he realized that he was blinking slower than usually, trying to imprint her image on the backs of his eyelids. Even disappointed, she still looked royal and, much as he tried out of his irresistible perfectionism, he couldn’t spot a single blemish in her appearance, seeing only Perfection incarnated in female flesh and outlined by the smooth contour of blue satin. The dim shine of its glossy surface seemed electrified and, surrendering to the maddening impulse, he stepped toward her, put his palms on her waist and slid them down the sleek slopes of her hips, feeling the heat of her body under the fabric. She stopped his hands at once with hers, but as she did so he leaned forward and, having moved aside a lock of her hair with his nose, kissed her on the lips as gently as if it were a rose bud with petals still bearing drops of morning dew.

“Not now.” She took a step backwards and pushed him away with a palm of her hand. “We’ll be late.”

“I had to do it,” he said with a reconciling smile. “I never saw you this perfect. And we wouldn’t be. Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss and not an invitation to bed.”

“Not when it comes from you.”

He was still standing close enough to her to smell her perfume, feeling every breath saturate the insatiable sphere that began travelling around his lungs again, until he realized this was the first time he ever kissed her. Baffled by this epiphany, he took an involuntary step backwards, trying to restore his disarrayed thinking, and Eleanor, having caught on to his dismay and possibly sensing its reason, ran her palms over her hips, as if ridding herself of the memory of his touch, and said:

“Can we go please?”

“Give me a moment,” he whispered coarsely and walked to the kitchen.

“Are we taking them with us?” Eleanor asked when he returned with the valises in his hands.

“Yes. Could you do me a favor and grab the green cup? It’s still on the table.”

“What for?” she asked suspiciously.

“I want to get rid of it. That monster is loathsome; I cannot let you have it, you are too exquisite for that.” Eleanor was about to object but he continued. “It’s for your own aesthetic good. Not to mention it is unethical to hang on to a token from your ex if you intend to get married. I will replace it, I promise.”

“You’re so immature,” Eleanor announced.

“No. It’s just that details invite interpretations, and some of them are annoying. Do I really need to grab it myself, though?”

Hesitantly, she obliged his request and they both advanced into the hallway. She paused for a minute, putting on a pair of high-heeled shoes almost matching the shade of her dress and checking
herself in the mirror.

“You still can’t accept that your future wife has a bad taste?” Eleanor said, having caught his discontented reflection.

“I’m just irritated with the unfortunate changes that it has undergone. They must have come from your former lovers: those always leave imprints on our lives.”

“So if we’re married long enough I might go for cocaine?”

“I don’t think you’ll get a chance. Besides, you’re too good for that.”

“What do you mean?”
Eleanor said, looking almost offended.

“You can’t dismiss the eternal “
what if?”
question. You prohibit yourself from doing things you consider bad because you’re afraid that, at the end of it all, someone will weigh all your sins and virtues to determine where to send your soul. And you sure don’t want to go to hell.”

“Aren’t you worried about that yourself?”

“No. Religion is a man-made game, and I prefer games whose rules I make myself.”

“And what are the rules of the game you are playing now?” she said, turning to him.

“Mirrors are a great invention,” he remarked. “Regardless of how you stand I will simultaneously see both your front and back. Both look great, by the way. My rules are simple. Accept responsibility for your life and the actions you take in it, and be ready to face whatever comes at you as a result.”

“Still trying to understand how that extends into the metaphysical.”

“It doesn’t need to. The metaphysical extends into it on its own. See, everyone raised in the good old Christian tradition believes we need a list of commandments to know what’s what. Based on that, religion tells us that punishment and reward will find us in afterlife, which is a trick, a lump of sugar dangling in front of a donkey that pulls the cart. All we have is reality, and that’s what we should work with. You see this person is bad? Not because you don’t like his looks, but because he’s a fiend? Take a gun and shoot him dead, if you can: you won’t punish him, because the dead don’t suffer, but at least you’ll cleanse the world a little. If it’s a rare fiend, he should be
tortured
to death, not just killed. And those who aren’t fiends but simple criminals should be sent to work in places like uranium mines.”

“Well, I can understand the mine part,” Eleanor said pensively. “But why torture? It’s not going to change what has been done.”

“First, as an example for others, and second, to punish the guilty. To hope a criminal will suffer in afterlife is irresponsible: we have to take care of it ourselves. Any action must be followed by an adequate reaction: it’s the famous “
treat others as you would like to be treated yourself”
principle put on an obligatory basis. This world is anything but fair, and to change the status quo humans need to be taught to behave: it must become a reflex grown into evolution. And the most effective method of taming is stick and carrot.”

“No questions about the stick. What about the carrot?”

“The clever, the gifted, the honest, those that are most useful to society, must have everything they need. Such people don’t tend to need much anyway. That’s on the individual basis. The overall carrot will come automatically if the world is properly lashed first.”

“But who will decide who deserves punishment, and who deserves reward?” Eleanor insisted. “How you do tell a regular fiend from a rare criminal?”

“That’s not what you’re really asking.You want to know how to tell if someone is a fiend at all. It’s simple. Imagine an action. Any action of a human being, anything that comes to mind. Ready?”

“Sure.”

“Now, imagine that
every
human in the world takes that action at the same time. No more doubts about its value, right?”

“All right,” Eleanor said reluctantly. “I see how this logic could be used to justify the death penalty. But what about things you did? What if everyone in the world sells cocaine? Will they be regular criminals, or simple fiends?”

“It depends on
how
you do it. If you shoot innocent people who are in your way, you’re a fiend. If you shoot dealers whom you catch selling stuff to children, you are not. Why are you even asking me these questions?” he added with annoyance. “Do you still refuse to admit that humans are not created equal? This thought must have been sitting in your head for your whole life, and yet you’re still afraid to accept it.”

“Why do you think so?” Eleanor asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

“Because I’m sure you’ve noticed how few people are as beautiful or clever as you. It must be the same “
What if
?” dilemma. This plague ruined too many gifted people; I can’t let the same happen to you.” He put the valises down and began pacing back and forth. “You like people, don’t you? You must: they give you what you like most: admiration. So, people are precious to you, right?”

“Of course,” she said cautiously, waiting for him to continue.

“Let’s compare people to diamonds, then. What happens to the price of diamonds if their quantity increases?”

“It drops.”

“Correct. Imagine there is a mountain of seven billion diamonds in front of you, and your task is to sort it out. Soon you will notice that most of them are tiny, dull, crooked and blemished, while some are so bright, clean and iridescent they already resemble brilliants. Why diminish their cost by keeping all the blemished ones if you can get rid of those and let the remaining ones shine as much as they should?”

“But who will remain, Richard?” Eleanor cried, almost indignantly.

He stopped at once and looked at her.

“Artists,” he said as if this word had to be his last.
“Those who make the world beautiful. Do you know why I loved selling cocaine? Not only because it was making me rich. I knew that, among all the worthless scumbags who’d waste it on nonsense, there would be people who’d turn it into creativity. Poetry, prose, music, paintings, discoveries:
life
. I wanted cocaine to become art because the desire to create is the only thing that distinguishes us from animals.”

“I had a different idea of what cocaine does to people,” Eleanor said.

“Depends on who it gets into, though I agree it’s not the most creative drug. But let’s come back to our mountain. Let’s say that after the sifting we are left with only seventy million gems, but their glare is undiluted. It’s the people the world stands upon. They are honest and unselfish, and they know that power must benefit the common, not the individual. They don’t resort to violence, and they value artistic self-expression above anything else. Poverty and hunger are unknown to them because there are plenty of resources to satisfy their needs and they are prudent to maintain their population on the same level. Won’t you call their world perfect?”

“Sure. But don’t you think those that got sifted out will do everything to prove you wrong and prevail simply because of their number?”

“Who said there’d be democracy for them? It must be deserved, and humans don’t. Would you consider election results valid if you knew that ninety nine percent of the voters were thieves, rapists and murderers? A similar thing happens in our world where the electorate members care only for their pettiness. That’s why nothing will change. And it grieves me deeply to acknowledge my inability to make this world what I want it to be.”

“Well, I’m sure ninety nine percent of people would have said “Thank God” here,” Eleanor said with a smile. “But I see another problem. Do you really think you would earn a place among the sifted diamonds yourself?”