Philosophy Made Simple (21 page)

“And what about Paris?”

“Ah, Paris. I’ll be leaving for Paris shortly after the wedding. A
few things to take care of in New York—my sister Nandini is coming—and then…”

“Well then,” Rudy said, dotting a strip of waxed paper with butter and fastening it to the inside of a plastic ice-cream container.
“You’re the perfect person to take care of a couple of little problems.” He explained the grief he was getting from the avaricious manager of the Taj Mahal and from the crazy pandit. He poured a bit of chocolate mousse into the bottom of the container and arranged a series of meringues around the edge. “These are supposed to look like the ribbons on the hats worn by cadets at Saint-Cyr,” he said, “the French military academy.”

“My sister is much better at that sort of thing,” Siva said, laughing. “She’ll take care of everything. You’ll see. I’m hopeless at these domestic problems. Besides, I’m flying down to Oaxaca in the morning. Nietzsche, you know, wanted to visit the high plateaus of Oaxaca, where he could look down on the Pacific. In a way I shall be his surrogate.”

“You can’t see the ocean from Oaxaca,” Maria said. “Not from the city. You’d have to go to Puerto Angel or Santa Cruz Huautuico.”

“Oh.”

“Your sister…,” Rudy said, adding a layer of crumbled meringues over the chocolate in the bottom of the container. “My daughter says your sister chased away a rhinoceros with a broom.”

“Oh, yes, but it would have been a one-horned bush rhinoceros, not a savanna one. The bush rhino has very bad eyesight. A savanna rhino is a very different matter.”

“Still…”

“Don’t worry—she’s quite capable of dealing with restaurant managers and pandits. And she’s very fond of your daughter. You don’t have to worry on that score either. I spoke to her just last
week. She’s even teaching Molly to ride Champaa, her old elephant. It’s not impossible that she will move to the States herself,
now that our father has died—its been two years. Nothing would make me happier. She has two thousand coolies to manage, so it’s not an easy life for her. Life on a tea garden is very tedious. And there are
dacoits
and kidnappings, and there’s always trouble brewing with the native tribes. So it’s not only tedious, it’s quite dangerous,
rather like Schopenhauer’s vision of human life—boredom on the one hand, anxiety on the other. I’m here in the States, her son is here, and besides, she would like to remarry.”

“What are
dacoits?
” Rudy asked.

“Bandits. She can’t leave the garden at night without armed bodyguards.”

“Why can’t she remarry in India?” Maria asked.

“There’s almost no chance of that. For a widow…it’s almost impossible. Damaged goods. Especially for my sister. She married out of caste to begin with. What we call
prem,
a love match.”

“So your sister’s not happy in India?”

“Not entirely She has been not exactly ostracized—she’s a
zamindar,
a landowner, too wealthy to be ignored; too powerful—but…” He started to laugh. “I shall put in a good word for you, Rudy Maybe I can arrange something. My aunt has arranged several appointments with prospective suitors in Detroit, and I’ve turned up a couple of eligible bachelors in New York, but perhaps I’ll propose you instead.”

Rudy started to protest.

“Seriously, Rudy. My sister is an extraordinary woman. Not a great beauty, but something better—she enjoys the imperfections that make a work of art more striking. Like the extra limbs in some of Rembrandt’s drawings.”

“What kind of imperfections? You don’t mean she’s got an extra arm or leg?”

“Red hair, for one thing.”‘

“My wife had red hair,” he said.

“It is not really red, of course,” Siva said. “But there’s a hint of reddishness:
laal.
She could never live up to the ideal of the
pa-tivrata,
the wife who worships her husband like a god, but of course that doesn’t matter in the United States. And I can say that we would be in a position to promise a significant dowry. Think about it, Rudy. I believe in being straightforward in these matters. Also, I think she would like this place. Quite frankly, I think she would prefer it to New York or Detroit.”

The mousse in the bottom of the ice-cream container kept the meringue ribbons from slipping. Rudy added a layer of crumbled meringues, then more mousse. Then another layer of meringues. More mousse. Another layer of meringues. More mousse. Another layer of meringues, till the container was filled. Uncle Siva fell silent as Rudy poured in the last of the mousse and took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I get nervous when I do this. There’s not much that can go wrong. And I enjoy working in a kitchen full of people. It reminds me of home.”

“That’s because you’re concentrating fully,” Uncle Siva said. “Like a true artist.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Rudy said. “You see the ends of these meringues sticking up?” Everyone looked. “If I bent them now, they’d break; but once they’re frozen you can bend them right over. That’s what I’ll do. For now I’m going to have to cover it with a piece of tinfoil instead of putting the lid on it.”

“I had a slice of a
Saint-Cyr
in Paris once,” Uncle Siva said, “at the Grand Véfour in the Palais Royal; it was served with
crème Chantilly.
Quite extraordinary. I never expected to eat it again in Texas.”

“I made a small one earlier—for tonight,” Rudy said, putting the newly prepared mousse in the freezer. He didn’t know what
crème Chantilly
was, but he didn’t ask.

“I’ve got two bottles of good claret in the car,” Uncle Siva said suddenly. “I don’t want them to cook.”

Rudy sent Medardo out to the garden for some fresh tomatoes and put on the water for pasta while Uncle Siva went out to the car to rescue the wine. Maria went to freshen up.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Rudy said to Father Russell.

“I think this man is dangerous,” Father Russell said. “I think you need to be very, very careful.”

By the time Rudy served the pasta, they’d finished the first bottle of wine and started on the second. The wine was certainly better than what Rudy was used to drinking, though it didn’t really stand up to the puttanesca sauce, which he’d made with tomatoes from the garden. When Uncle Siva asked if there was any Parmesan cheese, Maria put her hand on his arm. “Be careful,
Uncle Siva. You don’t want to make
brutta figura.
You’ll upset Rudy.”

Siva looked at Rudy and then at Maria.

Maria explained: “You’re not allowed to put Parmesan cheese on pasta that has anchovies in it. Right, Rudy?”

“You don’t want the cheese to interfere with the flavor of the anchovies,” Rudy said. Siva gave a mock frown to cover his embarrassment. “Besides,” Rudy added, “this is a southern Italian dish. They didn’t even
have
Parmesan cheese in the south.”

Rudy got a small bowl of leftover Parmesan out of the refrigerator and put it on the table in front of Uncle Siva. Siva looked at the cheese but didn’t put any on his pasta.

“For heaven’s sake,” Rudy said. “Go ahead and use the cheese. It’s a silly rule anyway.”

Siva hesitated—Rudy could see he was tempted—but finally decided against it.

For dessert Rudy served four wedges of a frozen
Saint-Cyr
and a bottle of the Pol Roger that he’d bought in Brownsville to sample for the wedding.

“Have you ever eaten at the Grand Véfour?” Siva asked, looking up from his plate.

They all shook their heads.

“I had the
lamproie à la bordelaise
and my companion had
pigeon Prince Rainier III,
with cognac and some kind of meat glaze. It’s all coming back to me. This a very Proustian moment, really. An involuntary memory. Monsieur Oliver himself brought the
Saint-Cyr
to our table,” he said, refilling his glass. “I can see him now, I can see the back of his head reflected in the big mirror in the corner behind our table. And I can see the back of my companion’s head too, in the mirror, her long hair falling free.”
He paused. “Rudy,” he said.

Rudy started to say something, but Siva held up his hand. “In moments like this, moments of bliss, as in sexual congress,
the mind is steadied, focused on the present moment. Past and present converge, so to speak. The taste of this wonderful
Saint-Cyr,
for example, circumvents the senses and goes directly into the at-man. The Veil of Maya is lifted.’“

Rudy used his finger to wipe up the last bit of chocolate on his plate. He put his finger in his mouth and looked around at the others. They’d had so much to eat and drink that they were all looking around at each other in a trancelike state. After a moment of silence Rudy said, “I forgot to serve the salad. It’s in the refrigerator. Tomatoes and cucumbers and basil from the garden.” But no one wanted salad now, not after
le Saint-Cyr, glace.

Rudy put on a pot of espresso, but María had to leave to pick up her art dealer at the airport, and Medardo…It was not too late to put in an appearance at Estrella Princesa. Rudy showed Uncle Siva and Father Russell some of Norma Jeans paintings while they drank their coffee, and then took them out to the barn to see Norma Jean herself.

“My sister is going to be very pleased,” Siva said, putting his hand on Rudy’s shoulder as they walked across the gravel drive.
“She’s very fond of elephants. Very fond. When my grandfather was alive, we kept four elephants. The oldest one, Raja, a big tusker, helped clear the land for the Assam Railway and Trading Company But there is only one elephant now, Champaa, who’s like part of the family. She comes to the kitchen every morning and puts her trunk in at the window, and my sister gives her a banana. Her mahout can’t move her away until she’s had her banana.”

“Shhh,” Rudy whispered, “she may be asleep. Norma Jean.”

Rudy didn’t turn on the light when they entered the barn, and it took them a while for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.
What they could see, after a minute or two, was a large shadow, dark on dark, Norma Jean. She was awake. She stretched out her trunk to Rudy and kneaded his shoulder.

Siva put his hand on Rudy’s other shoulder. “Schopenhauer, you know,” he said, “says that the idea of the elephant is imperishable.”

“You mean like a Platonic form?”

“Very like a Platonic form.”

“Or the
Ding an sick?”
Father Russell asked.

Siva started to laugh. “Very like the
Ding an
sich,” he said.

“Every time the Russian goes to visit his sister,” Rudy said, “I’m
tempted to take her out for a spin, but I’ve never had the nerve. We could do it now. You know a little something about elephants.”

Siva sobered up immediately. “Not a good idea,” he said. “Definitely not a good idea. An elephant without its own mahout?
Believe me, I do know something about elephants, and I know this is not a good idea. Perhaps if my sister were here. Perhaps.
But none of my grandfathers elephants went anywhere without their own mahout.”

“I know a little something too,” Rudy said, opening the gate of Norma Jeans stall. He was feeling a little light-headed, but not out of control.

“I think Uncle Siva’s right,” Father Russell said, but Rudy was already giving the command: “
Agit, agit.”
And Norma Jean, as if by magic, began to glide forward slowly Rudy picked up the ankus, which was hanging on a nail, and touched her, and she turned toward the front door of the barn into the open area that separated the barn from the house and the garage.
Agit, agit. Chai ghoom, chai ghoom. Right, right.
Norma Jean turned to the right.
Chi, chi. Left, left.
Norma Jean veered to the left. Rudy wasn’t aware of Uncle Siva now, nor of the priest. His heart was pounding the way it had pounded when he’d driven his dad’s Packard for the first time alone. “
Dhuth, dhuth,”
he said firmly, but he still didn’t have the pronunciation quite right and Norma Jean ignored him.