Palace Council (29 page)

He has a house in Hong Kong.

Is he there now? Or is he in Vietnam?

Those wide eyes that had seen too much darted around the room. “No idea,” she muttered, into her drink.

“I'm staying at the Duc,” said Eddie. “If you see him, will you tell him I'm looking for him?”

“I won't see him. Nobody sees him. He's the spooky kind of spook, man.”

“Will you tell him?”

Teri might have nodded. She might not have. But she remembered, very suddenly, that she had to make an urgent call. She said she would be right back. As Eddie watched her every move, she used the barman's phone. She seemed to wait a very long time for whoever was on the other end. The whispered conversation was short.

Teri was back. And more nervous than before. She tried to nibble at a fingernail, but they were all bitten to the quick. Now she was sure Perry was no longer in the country. Eddie should try Hong Kong. She had to get going. She had forgotten an appointment. Out on the street, she asked Eddie if she could take a couple of shots of the great writer. She posed him near a street market, then shook her head and said she wanted a better backdrop. She posed him beside a brightly colored funeral wagon with its fake pagoda. No good. She hurried off, waving at Eddie to follow. She took a sharp corner, then another, and left him behind. Or thought she did. Teri climbed into a dusty Chevy about a thousand years old and drove like a maniac. Eddie knew this because his cab driver was following her. She did not look in any shape to spot a tail. The center of town was an ultra-low-rent version of Times Square. Bars were crowded, although most of the outdoor patios were closed: you never knew when a grenade might roll out of the swarm of humanity and ruin your dinner. Teri's Chevy blew past delivery trucks and sidewalk stalls. A traffic policeman in his white gloves stared from beneath the golden canopy that marked his stand. He did not interfere with the weaving caravan. He knew Americans when he saw them.

The Chevy pulled up to a gate. She said something to the guard, and the gate was raised. Eddie got out of his cab. The sign said
LE CERCLE SPORTIF SAIGONNAIS
: the swankiest country club in the city. He watched Teri hand her key to the valet, who stared at the rusting car in disbelief.

Eddie waited until she had vanished within the walls. He walked up to the gate, waved his expired White House pass, and bluffed and boistered his way inside.

He had heard of the glamorous Cercle Sportif, he had passed it many times, but he had never been inside. The club stood in the shadow of the heavily fortified presidential compound, just past the American military dispensary. With its green lawns and jacketed waiters, the place was a breath of European luxury in the midst of war. Teri was heading for the clubhouse. Everybody stared. At Eddie, not Teri. Slender white women were a dime a dozen at the club, but Negroes were not generally seen on the grounds, even in service. Le Cercle was home to Saigon's remaining beautiful people, mostly Caucasian, some Eurasian, or, in a few cases of absurd wealth, full Vietnamese. All the beautiful people seemed present and accounted for this morning, sunning themselves by the shimmering pool. Everybody was excited, because earlier this morning a pair of well-heeled guests at another private club, Le Club Nautique, had rented a boat and motored up the Saigon River, only to be shot dead, probably by the NLF. Can you
imagine
? Really, you would think the police could protect
us.

Teri climbed the steps to the veranda with its gilded rails. Eddie lingered below, figuring there was no place for her to escape to. After a few minutes, he followed her up. The headwaiter stopped him, but Eddie smiled and said he was meeting a lady. He pointed to Teri, who had settled at a table in a shaded corner, between the pool and the tennis courts, partially shielded by a kiosk—not the most prestigious spot, but one of the least visible. Eddie wove his way past Saigon's beautiful people. When he was a half-dozen yards away, he realized that he had erred. It was only what she had reported, an urgent appointment, because the man sitting across from Teri was not Perry Mount. He was white, and thin, and wore a thick black beard. Eddie slowed. The man's superior way of inclining his head was somehow familiar. He looked prosperous, and Eddie thought he might be one of the European traders who flocked across Saigon like carrion eaters on a carcass. The man looked up. The haughty eyes met Eddie's.

And stared in terror.

Teri turned around.

The man rose to his feet. Not to run. To extend a hand, as if they were old friends. The stranger's natural hauteur, nurtured through years of performance in cavernous law-school classrooms, swallowed the evident fear. An instant before he spoke, Eddie recognized him.

And was too startled to shake back.

“Welcome to Saigon,” said the late Benjamin Mellor.

CHAPTER
42

Various Counselors

(I)

L
OCKE
G
ARLAND,
age nine, had been in another fight. His mother sat through a lecture from the friendly guidance counselor, who kept telling her how wonderfully sweet Zora was—the same Zora who had moved on, early, to junior-high school and no longer fell under the jurisdiction of the counselor, whose duties ended at sixth grade. If only Locke could be more like Zora, the counselor sighed, fingering the stems of the glasses she wore on a faux-gold chain round her beefy neck. No, no, no, she was not blaming the boy—of course not. Probably the other boys taunted him. He was scrawny, he was bookish, and he was a Negro—what would you expect? The other Negro kids were not on the honors track. Well, except Zora, and she was gone. Naturally they would make fun. They were good boys. The counselor wanted Aurelia to understand that. They were good boys, just as Locke was a good boy, and good boys got into fights sometimes. Part of learning to be a man.

Then why are we having this conversation?
Aurelia wanted to ask, but did not.

“I'm a liberal,” said the counselor, having decided to put the glasses back on. Behind the thick lenses her emerald eyes seemed kinder, or maybe just larger. “I believe in integration. And I'm so glad you moved to Ithaca, and we got your kids onto the honors track.”
We:
as if their mother had not been forced to do fierce battle over every inch of ground. “They're wonderful children, Mrs. Garland. You should be very proud of them.”

“I am.”

The smile wavered a bit. “But I believe what they may need is the firm hand of a father.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“A man, Mrs. Garland. Your children need a man in their lives.”

Her irritation boiled over. “Are you offering me one?”

The counselor wisely chose to take this as a joke, for she had been in the business thirty years and knew when a mother was about to declare war. In her way, she apologized.

“I know it can't have been easy for you, Mrs. Garland, losing your husband that way. I won't pretend to know what it's like. But I was divorced, and that wasn't so easy, either. I still found Mr. Right.”

“Thanks for your advice,” said Aurelia, and went out into the hall, where Locke sat on a bench. She was late to collect Zora from the gifted-children's program that had not wanted to take her either. All the way into town, Locke kept trying to tell his mother that the other boys had called him “Brillo,” because of his hair, and Aurelia kept lecturing him, the way she imagined her father would have lectured her brothers, if only she had grown up with a father and brothers:
If you let them know they can get to you, they'll never stop. You can bloody every one of their noses twice a day, and they'll never stop.
Then Zora tumbled into the station wagon, all legs and teeth and excitement, babbling about prime numbers, and Aurelia, at her wit's end, told her to please just hush for once. But when she looked in the mirror and saw her children's faces, she relented and stopped at the sweet shop for vanilla malts.

It was not their fault. She was worried about Eddie. She had one telegram from him since he left for Saigon, and that was three weeks ago. She had no right to take it out on her children. The thought of Eddie in the middle of the war appalled her more than she would have imagined. And so she was rude to the guidance counselor and snapped at her children for no good reason, and made up for these sins by cravenly offering ice cream and malts—bribes, fortunately, that her children were still willing to accept.

The kids were so happy, in fact, they even cajoled their mother into going off her diet and having a root-beer float, which she had once told them, teasingly, had been invented by her grandfather.

They seemed to believe it still.

(II)

W
HEN
A
URELIA PULLED
into the driveway an hour later, Tristan Hadley was waving like a madman from his metallic-blue Ford Galaxie convertible, parked across the street. Aurelia could not believe her eyes. She sent the kids into the playroom and served Tris coffee in the kitchen. He looked the way he always looked: tall and elegant and handsomely innocent. He carried a scuffed leather bookbag, the old-fashioned kind with clasps on top, and you had the impression that he had been a serious reader before he was born.

“You shouldn't be here,” she began, sharply, before he had the chance to get a real word out. “What's the matter with you, Tris? Are you on something? Because, just in case you haven't noticed, Ithaca is a very small town. You know better than this. I want you to stop dropping by my house. I want you to stop dropping by my office. I want you to stop calling me and leaving me cute little notes.”

“I'm glad you think they're cute,” he said, careful not to smile.

“You know what I mean.” Crunch, the beagle, slunk in to see if it was time to eat. Aurelia lectured her unwanted guest over her shoulder as she crouched, filling the dog's bowl.

“All I know is I miss you.”

“You can't miss me. Number one, you're a married man. Number two, we've never done anything worth missing.”

“We used to talk.”

“That was before you decided you were in love with me.”

“A realization,” he corrected her. “Not a decision.”

“You're out of your mind.”

Tristan's smile flashed, boyish and helpless, the man-child whom life has denied nothing. “Hey, I have something for you.” He was delving in the pocket of his jacket, and for a terrible instant Aurelia was afraid he would pull out a diamond ring, a divorce decree, or both. But he withdrew only a notebook. “Remember those phrases you showed me? The ones you couldn't track down?”

“Showed you? You were rifling my desk, Tristan. While your wife was in the other room. Or don't you remember that part?” Aurelia called him Tristan, not Tris, when he annoyed her, and he annoyed her often. “Megan sat there at the table and I had to go looking for you. In my own house, Tristan. Think about that for a minute. Think about Megan.”

“I am thinking about Megan.” He was flipping through his notes. “She'll be getting her doctorate this spring. After that, well, the availability of academic appointments being what it is, we could wind up at different schools—”

“Don't even dream it.”

But Tristan Hadley, an academic from a vast family of academics, had been raised in a world where the mark of intelligence was saying whatever you pleased. “The marriage,” he declared, right hand over his heart to prove sincerity, “was forced upon me.”

“With men it seems like it always is. If nobody forced marriage on men, none of you would ever get married.”

“Unless the right woman comes along.”

“What do you
want,
Tristan?”

The soft eyes went wounded. Tris could do hurt as brilliantly as he did most things. But when Aurelia refused the implicit invitation to apologize or embrace, he sighed, and surrendered. “I don't know if you remember, but Megan's field is the early moderns. She did her thesis on Aphra Behn. Anyway, Megan's the one who worked the whole thing out.”

“What whole thing is that?”

“Those phrases you didn't understand. Megan told me where they came from.”

Aurelia could not believe her ears. “You told your wife what you found snooping in my study? I'm right about you, Tristan. You've taken leave of your senses.”

“Love does that to people,” he said calmly. “I told her I came across them in a student paper. Why are you looking at me like that? There's no reason to think she suspects.”

“There's nothing to suspect.”

“That's right. Now, come around here so I can show you what she discovered.”
Around here
meaning over to his side of the kitchen island, which Aurelia had prudently kept between them.

“I can see fine from where I am.”

“The typeface is a little small,” he said, pulling from his bookbag a cracked leather-bound edition of
Paradise Lost
by John Milton. “This is where the phrases come from.”

“What?”

“‘The Author,' ‘shaking the throne,' everything. It's all here.”

(III)

I
T TOOK HER ANOTHER HOUR
to get Tristan out of the house. He did not get a kiss, but he did get a hug and a smile of thanks, and that was enough to persuade him to leave Milton behind. She fed the kids, graded a few student papers, then turned to
Paradise Lost.
Aurelia studied the yellowy pages of the book. Her dissertation topic had been the response of European writers to Negro abolitionists, with a special focus on Martin Delany and his novel,
Blake.
She had never read Milton. An undergraduate degree in English, a doctorate in literature, and she had never read Milton.

Her conversation with Tristan had been instructive. He had preened and pranced around the kitchen, proud to have proved himself, and Aurelia had let him do it. She rarely saw his pedagogical side, and saw why, years ago, a graduate student named Megan Feldman had found it so attractive.

“What do you know about
Paradise Lost
?” he had asked.

“Satan against God, right?”

Tris had furrowed his smooth brow, the way the learned do when confronting the Philistine. “Well, that's a start, Aurie, but you're oversimplifying a little.
Paradise Lost
is an epic poem about the danger of ambition and hubris, and the foolishness of obsession and revenge. Satan rebels against God out of pride. He rallies other angels to his cause, but he and his army are defeated and cast into the fiery pit, where Satan tells his troops they can still win. He refuses to believe that God is as omnipotent as the disillusioned rebels keep whining. Satan keeps fighting, keeps losing.”

“Because he's evil,” Aurelia murmured, wanting to slow Tristan down, because in his teaching mode he was too endearing. “Or because he's a fool.”

The anthropologist never paused. “Some authorities think that Milton, who for his time was considered a progressive sort of Christian, shows a sneaking admiration of Satan. Not what you might call Satan's politics. His perseverance. And, you know, when the poem is taught as literature—especially to undergraduate seminars—there are always a couple of fiery arguments about how Satan was right to rebel against the arbitrary authority represented by God. My own view is that this is a serious misreading of the poem, and also of Christianity, but—”

Aurelia finally had to walk around the counter after all, because the only way she could make him stop talking was to cover his mouth. He seemed delighted at the physical contact, but when he reached for her she stepped away. “The quotes,” she said, gently.

“Whatever you say.” But as they stood side by side, looking down at the yellowed pages, Tristan managed to ride his hip against hers, and not just once. Unwilling to offend, she let it happen. “Over here,” he said, pointing and pressing. “Here. Milton divides the poem into books. Now. Book I. As the story opens, Satan and his armies have just been defeated. He tries to rally the troops, to keep their spirits up, while he plots his revenge. Look, here's the quote about ‘We shall be free.' One of the most famous stanzas in the poem:

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

What matters where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less then he

Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th'Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.

Tris glanced her way, eyes shining. “Brilliant. Milton, I mean. A genius. You see it, right?” But he marched straight on, just in case she did not. “Satan is telling them that, even if they only get to rule Hell, at least they get to rule. He does not mind being damned, as long as he no longer has to serve God. Do you see?”

“I see,” said Aurelia, marveling. “What else?”

“Well, ‘Author' is easy. It's simply another name for Satan. It recurs throughout the book. For example, in Book VI, in the midst of one of the battles, the Archangel Michael refers to Satan as ‘Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt.' And there are others—”

He was flipping pages again. It occurred to her that Tristan had done a lot of work, trying to impress her. And she was, indeed, impressed. She had to remind herself that the presentation was mostly the fruit of Megan's research.

“Tris?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Don't call me honey. Listen. You said your wife told you all this?” Deliberately using her appellation, reminding them both. “After you showed her the quotes?”

“That's right,” he said, suddenly testy.

“And you told her they were from—where again?”

“A student. A student who came across them somewhere.”

Aurelia frowned. Thin. Tissue-thin. “And she did all this work? Just because one of your students was puzzled?”

“She's very conscientious,” he said, piously. Then he saw his error. “She didn't do all the work, Aurie. I did a lot of it myself.”

She turned a page. “Where did you get this book, anyway?”

“From Megan.”

“You borrowed your wife's book? You didn't think she might notice?”

“What if she does?” Drawing himself up. “A man can borrow books from his own wife, can't he?” He tapped the pages. “I came here to help you, Aurie, and instead I'm facing a cross-examination. I resent that.”

She sighed. “I'm sorry. You're right. This is all wonderful, and I'm grateful.”