The Same River Twice (35 page)

“Let me guess,” Rachel said. “The man she sees here is married.”

“Not married, but in essence you are correct. There was already a woman in his life, a small-business owner of some kind who had recently lost her husband in a car accident. In all likelihood this woman, even today, has no inkling whatsoever of this girl from Strasbourg.”

Allegra turned to Rachel. “How did you know that, Rachel?”

“Car accident?” Max repeated.

“Feminine intuition,” Rachel said.

“At any rate,” said Eddie, “this whole precarious state of affairs came to a sudden halt a short time ago when the other man, the Parisian, died unexpectedly, I don’t know how. Realizing, no doubt, that it was time to secure her future, the girl right away gave my brother to understand that, were he to propose to her now, she might look upon his offer with an open mind, or at least not humiliate him completely. Naturally, against my advice, he proposed to her.”

“And naturally,” said Odile, “she turned him down.”

“I’m afraid not.” Eddie cut himself a bite of lamb and chewed thoughtfully, then, at precisely the same moment, Dominique’s and Allegra’s cell phones rang in chiming synchrony. Stricken, the girls hastened to silence the devices, though they didn’t actually answer them. “And yet Gaspard is my brother,” Eddie went on, impaling a potato on his fork. “I cannot be indifferent to his happiness.”

“So you intervened,” Rachel suggested. “You saved him from himself, right? And from her, too, I bet.”

Dominique again nudged Allegra under the table, but this time her eyes were wide and serious. “Tell them what you did, Papa.”

“I hired a detective,” said Eddie, “someone to follow this girl, research her, assemble the facts.” He looked at each of the adults in turn, as though to forestall their disapproval or merriment. “True, my brother’s besotted with her, but even he would reconsider if something serious came to light. And if nothing does, then what harm? She can still play Biber like no one else.”

“Wow, that’s
so
prudent,” said Rachel, although anyone could see she was thoroughly shocked. “You two must be very close.”

“Or competitive,” said Dominique under her breath.

“How did you choose your detective?” Odile asked quickly, hostess first, but also curious.

“I hardly need tell you,” Eddie said, “that the film profession, from time to time, brings one into contact with an element that can only be described as criminal in nature. So it is anything but a mystery that I know a few detectives.” He raised an eyebrow in belated feint toward irony. “Nonetheless, since we’re speaking here without benefit of lawyers, entirely among ourselves, at dinner, I must ask your discretion in this small personal matter.”

“Cool!” said Allegra.

“You don’t think that—” Max looked at Eddie in anguished surmise. “I mean, it would be a gigantic coincidence, but—”

“What are you saying?” said Eddie. “For once I don’t follow.”

“Never mind. Forget it, I’m hallucinating.”

“This is your brain,” Allegra said to Dominique, holding up a fist. Abruptly, she splayed her fingers and wiggled them wildly. “This is your brain on drugs.” A portentous pause. “The choice is yours.”

The girls slumped against each other in helpless laughter.

“Max, perhaps our guests would like some more lamb,” said Odile. “And I’m almost certain I put another bottle of mineral water in the fridge.”

Max got up, shaking his head, and went inside.

“The point is,” Rachel said, “I mean, isn’t the point really that marriage is a doomed but noble gesture, quaint and powerful like, I don’t know, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’? You throw your fate to the winds, right? Because you have no choice.”

“‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred,’” Eddie recited pensively. “Yes, in effect.” He poured Rachel more wine. “Not bad at all, that.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Odile said. “He’s been married three times, yet not once has he died, at least to our knowledge.”

“All I’m saying,” Rachel offered, “is that I don’t think this detective will have much effect on your brother, one way or the other.” She drank deeply of her wine. “But what do I know? I’ve also been proposed to quite recently, I myself.”

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “And you answered how, if I may ask?”

“I declined to answer on such short notice. I gave the answer of no answer.” Her eye fell on the girls, who were regarding her with renewed interest bordering on awe. “How about you two? Boyfriends?”

They shook their heads.

Rachel smiled. “That’s also the answer of no answer. Don’t think I can’t remember how that goes.”

“But if you really love the guy,” Allegra said.

“Oh, I do really love him, I certainly do. It’s just that—well, love, you know, sometimes it can end up creating more problems than it solves. Right, Odile?”

“Frequently,” Odile agreed. “Often.”

“But we’ll see. Because he’s coming back tomorrow. From the old and aptly named town of Rotterdam.” Rachel finished her wine.

“How’s his mother?” Odile asked.

“She’s better,” Rachel said. “She was sick, and now she’s better.”

“But certainly this is good news,” said Eddie.

“Oh, for sure.” Rachel stared at her glass as he refilled it once more. “But then again, Dutch mothers—that’s a whole subject unto itself.”

The sound of a motorcycle turning onto rue Leon Maurice Nordmann created a brief lull in the conversation. When the engine cut out and the gate to the mews swung open a moment later, only Odile and Allegra were still paying attention. Jacques, wearing a crash helmet and a small beat-up leather backpack, dismounted, leaned the bike up against the wall, and let himself into Max’s studio. He didn’t appear to notice anyone at the other end of the courtyard.

“He’s really kind of cute for an older guy,” Allegra observed.

“There’s more lamb,” Max announced, emerging from the apartment with a platter in one hand, a bowl in the other, “and, for those of you who object to eating flesh, or even if you don’t, there’s salad.” Once everyone was served, he said, “Odile, you got a phone call just now. Male voice, nobody I know, youngish. But he wouldn’t leave a message.”

“Strange.” She glanced down to check her watch before she remembered she was without it. “French?”

“Definitely. A little high-strung, maybe.”

Eddie laughed and bit his lip. “It’s only that we have so much to be high-strung about,” he added apologetically.

“He’ll call back if it’s important,” said Odile.

Max thought she seemed relieved that her caller was French, but an instant later he could no longer be sure. Like her father, she had scant patience for the phone.

Midway down the mews, the anarchists’ door opened. A young man stuck his head out and peered peevishly skyward, surveyed the heavens, then ducked back inside, closing the door behind him. His observations had been carried out against a backdrop of strange music emanating from the apartment, something dusky-voiced that seemed to promise eventualities both sweet and spiteful.

“British, I think,” said Eddie.

“East London,” Dominique confirmed. “Leytonstone and that whole scene.” They were speaking of the music.

“Dad?” said Allegra, laying her fork across her empty plate.

“Yes, my sweet.”

“How come you didn’t, like,
tell
me there was a high-security nineteenth-century
prison
practically next door to where you live?”

“Actually,” he said, “I did. Last time you were here.”

“Really? I think I would’ve remembered that.”

“Well, maybe your sense of social concern hadn’t fully blossomed yet.” He smiled at her unthinkingly; she had been eleven at the time. “Why, do you want a tour?”

“A
tour?”

“I just meant that—” A glance at Odile, whose lips had composed themselves into a lopsided smile, confirmed the delicacy of his position. He made at once for firmer ground. “People do go to prison,” he told Allegra, “and prisons have to exist somewhere. That one exists here. That’s all I meant.”

“Right.” Allegra sighed, her worst suspicions evidently confirmed. “I mean, did you even
know
, Dad, that almost three-quarters of that prison’s inmates aren’t even French
citizens?
Or that most of them have been convicted of no crime at all; they’re just waiting to be charged with something, anything, sometimes for years? And that the
suicide
rate—”

“She’s quite right, of course,” said Eddie, hurriedly dabbing his mouth with his napkin. “An appalling scandal for which no excuse can suffice.” He threw a quick glance at Max, who nodded minutely in response. “But,” Eddie added, now addressing Allegra, “La Santé, among French prisons, is a special case.”

“Tell us,” said Dominique with a note of mischief in her voice. She raised her water glass to her lips, and Max saw again the bluebird tattooed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

“Right, like special in what way?” Allegra said.

Max made no move to interfere.

“First,” said Eddie, “it is the rule in Paris and environs that detainees are assigned to a particular prison alphabetically by name. La Santé receives, with certain exceptions, those whose last names begin with the letters T through Z, which means, in practice, that it receives all illegal immigrants, since these individuals are always, by convention, given the last name of X by the state. Okay?”

“But they actually do have names,” Allegra said, her chin jutting militantly.

“Obviously, but since these men are without documents there’s no way of knowing if they are who they say they are, so officially they are X. Not a perfect solution, of course, but that’s why La Santé’s population has so many noncitizens.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Rachel observed to her glass.

“What else makes La Santé different?” Dominique asked.

Eddie began to look a bit uncomfortable. “Of course it
is
a prison, so naturally the men inside it can only be unhappy, one must expect this.”

“But?” Odile prompted, fixing Eddie with a level gaze.

He took a swallow of wine and pressed on. “Although it isn’t widely known, there exists at La Santé a program, very sophisticated and well regarded, that tries to match willing inmates with some of the world’s finest medical researchers. Participation is strictly voluntary, of course, but this program allows inmates access to experimental treatments that would otherwise be completely beyond their reach. In many cases, lives are saved. Sometimes, when, in due course, a successful technique is introduced to the world at large, many thousands of lives are saved. Anyway,” he concluded, “this is why I say that La Santé, despite its undoubted shortcomings, must be considered a special case.”

By way of response there was a shocked silence.

“So really these inmates are, like, human
guinea pigs?”
Allegra said.

“No, no, not at all. As I explained, they are volunteers.”

“That’s so disgusting. I mean, how can a prisoner be a volunteer
anything?”
She turned to Dominique. “I wonder if Chantal and the black team know about this.”

“Chantal?” said Max, who felt that there were just a few too many things going on right now for him to process. “Black team?”

“Girls,” Odile said firmly, “would you help me clear the table for dessert?”

Allegra and Dominique hastened to their feet, and Rachel along with them.

“Not you,” Odile told her, laughing gently.

She sat back down.

When Odile and the girls had gone inside with the plates, leaving Rachel alone with Max and Eddie, who yet again was filling her glass, the three of them became aware almost simultaneously of a soft battering sound just above their heads, a kind of drubbing, at once senseless and urgent. They looked up.

Around each of the Chinese lanterns in the overhanging tree, perhaps a dozen moths fluttered, hurling themselves repeatedly against the illuminated rice-paper globes, drawn beyond all resistance by the candle flames that burned within. For the better part of a minute, everyone watched, neither able nor willing to look away.

“‘Theirs not to reason why,’” Rachel said.

TURNER GLANCED one last time at his watch. The press conference, which he’d called for eleven that morning, was already twenty minutes late getting started—the most he dared push it. He stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone twice with his forefinger.

Crowded into the auction house’s second-floor galleries, along with the freshly installed Soviet flags, were perhaps two dozen members of the working press, including three video crews—a gratifyingly strong turnout for a Monday in June. When he had his audience’s attention, Turner introduced himself, then told them what he thought they needed to know about the flags. He explained their origin in the May Day competitions among Soviet factories. He mentioned dates and places, collectives and historical figures, but he devoted most of his comments to the banners’ status as art objects. They were slated for auction that Thursday evening.

After speaking for about thirty minutes, he took questions for another twenty. Interest seemed to be running high, and the curiosity was both informed and sympathetic. Only once was he invited to comment on the political ironies of selling communist artifacts in a venue so aggressively market oriented, but he’d rehearsed his answer, which was that history had prepared it for him, and this provoked general amusement. Finally, an Italian journalist, elegantly shod and dressed, surprised him completely by remarking upon the similarities between the flags and Warhol’s portrait
paintings of the 1970s and ’80s. Did he, she wondered, expect comparable prices? He politely declined to speculate, and the event came to an end.

Climbing the stairs to the third floor, Turner encountered the director, a fastidious horse-faced man who sometimes pretended to disapprove of Turner’s freewheeling methods. Today, though, he congratulated him on the press conference with a collegiality that struck Turner as a bit smug. Maybe, he thought, he’d been too hasty in declaring the ironies of the Cold War defunct.