American Romantic (27 page)

I think I'll go back to trekking. Want to come along?

God, no, she said.

You'd like it. We could go away on horseback.

Not on your life, she said, wondering what there was about the men she knew that led them far afield, into regions scarcely inhabited, and even when inhabited, a wilderness. She thought this Andres a lonely soul and said so.

I don't mind my own company, if that's what you mean. I can look after myself, always have done. I have money of my own. I can do what I want. I am unleashed. Also, I am irresponsible. Do you see the irresponsibility, May? You have only to look. I do not hide my irresponsibility. What would be the point?

She said, I didn't know irresponsibility had a look.

He said, The eyes are a giveaway.

She said, They are? What exactly do they give away?

He said, They give away the future. I sense you are irresponsible too, except you don't like to admit it. There's nothing wrong with it—it's only a way of life like any other. The trick is not to let irresponsibility slide into the unreliable. Unreliable is no good. Unreliable brings you grief along with excitement. Andres went on to elaborate the irresponsibility-as-a-way-of-life-like-any-other but May wasn't listening. She had gone off into one of her many dream worlds, this one voluptuous, a dream world of the moment. A dream world such as Renoir might render it. Andres's chatter did not interest her enough to go on listening to it, though she did like his voice, somewhat hoarse, French-inflected, seductive. By then she had removed her clothes and eased herself into the pool's tepid water. The vast African night enclosed them, a velvet cap, the stars and half-moon giving them as much light as they needed. She felt she had a continent-sized oasis to do with as she pleased. The night shadows on their bodies were erotic. Andres said something funny and she laughed. They stood in the water, kissing in a pool of starlight, and then drifted away toward the deep end, submerging themselves for a long minute. May closed her eyes, they were both so slippery, slippery as she imagined eels were slippery. She stayed underwater until she thought her lungs would burst and then remained a while longer, rising finally to find a handhold at the edge of the pool, submerging once more and remaining. He never let go of her hand until they surfaced for keeps and by then the present moment was what she had, all else of no account, out of sight and unremembered. The force of the moment carried her away.

They were together later in his study, and later still in his bedroom off the study, until morning came and they found the pool once more, the sun rising as red as an apple. They ate breakfast together, both of them ravenous. They returned to the study and his bedroom off the study and then he drove her home. He did not linger. May fell into a dreamless sleep that lasted until late afternoon. She awoke in a state of confused lethargy, the residue of desire. She lay there awhile in a state of incoherence until she heard the front door slam, Harry downstairs, Harry returned from wherever he had been. May left her bed for the shower, as hot as she could stand it, and the hours with Andres were with her still, as was the residue of desire and a thin mist of forgetfulness.

Are you here? Harry called.

I'm here, she said.

Come down, he said. We'll have a swim.

Right away, she said. How was your trip?

Uneventful, Harry said.

W
ITHOUT
regrets Harry and May left Africa for two years in Washington, the Africa desk. They rented a row house in Georgetown and a cottage out near Middleburg where May could ride. Life was pleasant enough in Washington, the restaurants good and the company congenial. Nearly every weekend they went to Middleburg. May later described the tour as routine, which it certainly was. Harry was bored and eager to return abroad, any country would do. In good time, and thanks, he believed, to Basso Earle, Harry was sent as ambassador to the eastern Mediterranean, to an island nation that had horses galore and an atmosphere of violence. Harry earned a commendation from the Department. All in all, a successful adventure for Harry, and for May too, who liked the horses and beaches. They returned to Washington for three years and in due course arrived in chilly Oslo. Wherever they went May looked for a retirement villa, somewhere quiet, a place where they could unpack for good. A friend suggested North Carolina, perhaps the Outer Banks or the golf country around Asheville. Harry said he was a Northerner and did not care for the comforts of the South. Someone else suggested Seattle, the city of the future. Providence, Rhode Island, earned a mention, as did Burlington, Vermont, at which both Harry and May laughed.

Harry was unenthusiastic about settling in America, so somehow they never got to North Carolina or the rainy state of Washington but toured again and again in Tuscany and Provence, the Low Countries, the Frisian Islands, Scandinavia, and the south of Spain. Once to Sardinia, twice to Tunisia. May thought they ought to take a look at Cambodia, but Harry said alas no, not Southeast Asia if she didn't mind. He added, Cambodia did not have amenities. Instead, it had an appalling history of violence. To which May replied, So did the Northeast Kingdom. She did see possibilities wherever they went. Wasn't Lucca lovely? Ronda was a jewel. But the possibilities never quite added up. What May wanted was to be free of embassies, the bodyguards and the protocol, a fresh language for each tour; and that was Harry's life, the one he had chosen long before he met her. To Harry, the embassy was a world of its own, its own face, its own secrets, unique complexities, unique personalities. May wanted to be rid of traveling because she had come from a long line of people who stayed put. She wanted to stay put and she didn't much care where, except she did prefer America. She asked Harry once if he wanted to return to Connecticut, near his family's house in the hills around Salisbury. Oh, no, he said, I don't know anyone there, not anymore. I like to stay in touch. A man is not in touch in Connecticut. I am not a gardener. I do not play golf. What would I do in Connecticut? To which she replied that if he rode horses he would find Connecticut congenial, a paradise. And if not Connecticut or Tuscany or Andalusia or Provence or Sardinia, well then, where? We'll know it when we see it, Harry replied. That answer did not satisfy May and she went away in a snit. The truth was, Harry refused to think about retirement and May could think of little else. She had come to think of the foreign service as a bespoke penitentiary.

Many in their community said that May was filled with grievance and self-pity, a most unsuitable, perhaps unstable personality for the work she was called upon to do and the places she was obliged to do it in. Entertaining was a chore, the conversation always swirling around government and politics. She had a fixed idea that Harry could not forget the war, as she could not forget the English hospital. Wasn't it tragic to see a woman so out of her depth, so unsettled in her own skin? Yes, she had lost a child owing to a simple mistake. No one would wish that on any woman. But when her friends suggested adoption, May shook her head and refused to discuss the matter except to say, I wanted my own child, not someone else's child. The more exotic procedures, just then coming into practice, did not appeal to her either. She believed that fate had taken a hand and voguish procedures would not stay the hand. And yes, the diplomatic life was strenuous and not to everyone's taste, but wasn't the essence of service an appreciation of complexity and compromise and simply soldiering on? What did Harry see in her? She was a pretty woman, yes, but pretty women were a dime a carload and this one was eternally discontented whereas Harry was cheerful, an optimist, good-humored and determined to make the best of things. He was very good with staff. A superior diplomat in all respects, the country was lucky to have him. Wasn't that the point after all? The foreign service rewarded savoir faire, and savoir faire was not May's long suit. One caveat: No one ever criticized May to Harry's face. If asked, he would have said he loved her from the moment he saw her. They were destined to be together forever. How were such things explained? Answer: They were not explained, at least not explained to anyone's satisfaction. Still, May was kind. She was courageous in her own way and resourceful. She felt things deeply, hence her moments of near-crippling melancholy. That she had survived her harsh Vermont family was a miracle. What others saw as restiveness and indecision, Harry saw as thoughtfulness and grit. Not that the grit did not, from time to time, turn to putty. Not that she wasn't, now and again, overwhelmed. A life inside the government had its own special demands. A foreign service officer felt he owed best efforts at all times. He took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States no less than the president. Harry believed that May was included in the oath, and if the situation were reversed, the same would apply. May said to him once that she was living half a life, and when he asked her what that meant she said she wasn't sure, only that what she said was true. Then she thought a moment and said that half her life was missing, gone away somewhere out of reach. She was driven to take refuge beyond the government's reach. Twice she left him, twice she returned.

I'll always come back to you, she said.

Who else would I come back to?

 

Then one time she didn't. Harry was alone in his office on a Sunday afternoon drafting a cable to Washington, a tiresome economic matter. He wrote two drafts, neither one satisfactory, and then gave it up, deciding instead to write his father a birthday note. The old man had lived to great age, long a widower. Harry wrote a letter describing conditions in the Balkans, his present post, an impossible post because he was dealing with impossible people whose sense of grievance was seemingly limitless. He proposed a Christmas visit, perhaps a Sunday lunch to go with it, a reminder of the old days. When the telephone rang he almost didn't answer it, then in a fit of irritation he picked up the receiver and said only, Where are you? It had to be May. But the voice, hesitant, almost timid, most un-Balkan, belonged to an inspector of police.

May was dead in her car at the bottom of a ravine only one hour distant from the capital. The guardrail had snapped like a matchstick. Police at the scene speculated that she had suffered some sort of seizure at the wheel, perhaps a cardiac event. There were no skid marks. The weather was clear. There were no witnesses to the accident, at least no one had come forward. She might have been in the ravine for a day, possibly longer. The area was desolate but the road was in good repair, perhaps madame was speeding . . . Wait one moment, Inspector, Harry said and put the phone down. He sat quietly a moment staring at the telephone. He was trying to understand fully what he had been told. Yes, he said finally, go on. Tell me what you know.

We are most sorry, Excellency, the official said. Was your wife in good health? Harry did not reply, wondering if this was a case of mistaken identity. The car was a common model, but it did have diplomatic license plates. So it was not a case of mistaken identity. He was so shaken he did not hang up the telephone but sat in a lethargic state until he heard another voice, heavily accented, gruff, explaining something about the fine condition of the road and the rescue efforts. Rescue of the car. May would be taken to the hospital in the capital. What sort of funeral arrangements would the ambassador prefer? Of course an autopsy would be undertaken at once, that was the law. And then Harry said an automatic goodbye, and still he did not move from his chair, becalmed like a vessel at sea, the only sound the creaking of rigging, in actual fact the tick-tick of his desk clock. He reread every word of his longhand letter to his father and then folded it twice and threw it into the burn bag. His eyes filled with tears. His strength drained away, leaving him limp as string. He was breathing heavily. How had this come to pass? The telephone receiver was still in his hand. He stared at it, willing it to ring once more with different news. A ghastly mistake. He stared at May's photograph, imagining her little red Honda crumpled like discarded tissue paper. He had not asked where she was precisely and the official had not said. Surely it was the mountain road heading south, a treacherous passage under the best of conditions. The official said something about returning to the capital with “the remains.” The ambassador thought to hang up the telephone and then stood and stepped to the window that gave out onto the square, the one with the iron sundial next to the general on horseback. The square was filled with people, couples, families with children. There were fewer of them than usual on a Sunday. When he heard a knock on the door he said, Go away, probably not loud enough to be heard. He looked at the cable on his computer screen and could not remember its subject. He was appreciating a situation, no doubt important because Sunday afternoons were reserved for May.

An hour later, the ambassador left his office and took the back stairs to the embassy lobby. He said good evening to the marine guard, who looked up from his paperback, startled. Will you take the car, sir? Harry shook his head and walked out into the night, chilly, with a stiff wind. The square was almost deserted now. He walked slowly, leaning on his cane, indifferent to his surroundings, one more foreign boulevard in a lifetime of foreign boulevards. A taxi passed slowly by and he wondered if he should take it, then thought no. The walk would do him—not good, but something else. He would have time to think. Alone, he would not be obliged to speak. He reached with his right hand to scratch his ankle and the image of the boy enemy came to his mind, remaining a moment before he vanished, an occurrence so common he did not dwell on it. The wind picked up and he drew a scarf from his overcoat pocket and wrapped it around his neck. Hard little snowflakes brushed his skin. One more miserable night in the Balkans. She was gone, that was the fact of it. There were arrangements to be made. They had never discussed arrangements, where the funerals were to be held and where the bodies were to be buried. They had agreed on cremation. Harry tried to think where they had been happiest. Not Africa. Perhaps the Mediterranean island. Norway had been all right. They had been very happy in anonymous Colorado. Harry put the arrangements problem out of his head. She drove too fast. She had always driven too fast. She rode horses at a gallop and drove the same way. That was what they learned in Vermont, exceed the speed limit and dare the Highway Patrol to catch them. In Vermont drinking and driving was a way of life. Harry pulled his hat down around his ears because the wind had picked up again. He was alone on the sidewalk listening to the click-click of his whalebone cane, May's gift. He was almost home. To his right was the residence of the French ambassador, a former admiral with an admiral's bearing and an admiral's voice; he gave the impression he was forever standing on a bridge ordering flank speed. The house was brightly lit, a Sunday soiree. Harry paused to hear the sound of violins, and behind the violins laughter and the buzz of conversation. Perhaps he was imagining that. His own residence was just ahead, the porch light on, the house itself in darkness. He had given the servants the night off because he expected May and planned to go out somewhere to dinner after the reception at the French embassy. Harry's hands were numb when he reached the front door. He walked through the house turning on lights. His study was chilly but he noticed that Ramon had laid wood for a fire. He opened the liquor cabinet and rummaged among the bottles for the scotch and made himself a drink. His hands were steady. He did not feel steady but his hands were all right. His feet hurt. He was cold all the way through. Ramon had left a plate of lemon peels and a dish of peanuts.