Mysteries of Motion (47 page)

“Did he now. Whatever for?”

“Wish I knew. And he’ll only send me something else. For better or worse. As a valedictory bequest. I wish I knew what.” Wert’s neck felt cold; the dress muffler he wore was too thin. “The ladies know, I fancy. Over there, they usually know everything.”

“And never say a word?” Smiley sighed.

“Never used to.” Wert paused, hand on the car door. “Funny. I can almost feel—what it’s going to be. But not quite. Some bloody complication I’d be very wise to—forestall. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t name it. It’s even in my own day-to-day actions somewhere. Something quite simple maybe, that other people might even be able to see.” He thought of Nosy. “Are able. Knowing me.”

“Ma-an. Maybe
you
better go to a movie.”

They shook hands lengthily, grinning at each other.

“Maybe your Nancy and I’ll talk you over,” Smiley said. “If we see anything, let you know.”

Both laughed, and kept standing there.

“Going to snow,” Wert said, staring up.

“Yeah.” Smiley probed the gray sky carefully. “Going to snow.”

Watching him go, Wert thought he looked jauntier. Starting up the car, he slapped its dashboard as if it were the rump of a horse. Nancy would be answering the telephone within say—half an hour. At least he’d done a destiny job as neatly as a machine.

Going around the block to change directions, he found Smiley on the corner, just hailing a cab. The traffic light held them fast. “Have fun in
your
village,” Smiley said.

S
NOW COMING IN
gray and fine; it meant business. Each car traveled the eclipsed morning in its own shroud. In his three-sided bay window he piloted a satellite lost on Queens Boulevard, in light spectrally broader than any in London. Through the swirl, high-rise apartment buildings lofted up into the mists, dull palaces all with the same portico, occasionally a delicatessen or drugstore alongside. They had no addresses out front; they were ashamed of having only these six-digit numerals. No doorman knew the number of the adjacent hive. Only one could tell him in which direction on his side the numerals went higher; across the avenue was an unknown continent. He had by now inquired of four, each a sorrier grenadier as one got closer, all with blank eyes and coffin-chins. Each portico gaped forward, an old alligator’s upper jaw, its quartzy hide and gilt sawteeth chipped. Each man stood in the throat, the snow fogging all to an old movie frame. This was a foreigner’s bad dream of America, but a cheaper surreal than it ought to be; what were the Bakhtiarys doing out here? Once, Middle-Eastern United Nations functionaries had crowded into nearby Queens before they found its Third Avenue equivalent, or the even newer galleries and black basalts of mid-Manhattan. But that would have been years ago, about the same time as when he and Iranians like these had first met. They were dragging each other back, maybe. “Afraid I’m lost,” Wert said over the drugstore phone. “Sorry.”

“Ah, of course. Where are you?” A high male voice, squeaky, elegant. A papal nuncio, met once in that Rome hotel where all the priests went, had had a voice like that. Since those traveled in pairs, he half expected two men to enter the drugstore.

Only one hatless elder came toward him, a fan of salt-and-pepper curls high above his head, the handsome face unknown to him, but not its nose curl, these black-silk brows, the cheeklines drawn with a stroke of the pen downward, the nostrils that moved. In it he saw all of them again.

“Fereydoun. Cousin. Come in my car, Mr. Wert.” A 450 SL Mercedes, glowworm in the dim. He led the way, in that sloppy gait of theirs. Wert, transferring the package, couldn’t see the backs of his shoes. Inside the car, the snow seemed scarcely to have wetted that morning coat and striped pants. It was all coming back to Wert, the way they took the current atmosphere deeply into themselves—flowers, heat, oases, rain—but not like Westerners, into the boredom of conversation. “I was not in Venice when you were there, Mr. Wert.” He meant Wert to know he knew what had happened there. “I am with Madame. Always.” He pushed that forward, for a reason. I am not with Bakh. But the voice was what astonished. One flute-step beyond mere homosexuality, or age, where among Wert’s travels did it belong? Baloooch? No, not that. Rather, that remote flute which people played in mountain regions, anywhere. “But I have met your cousin. Your family house in Athens, Georgia—beautiful.”

“You brought the ring home. My wife’s ring.”

Fereydoun’s nod started the car.

Yes, they were dragging Wert back.

He won’t dig in his heels, he wants to be. Already. “You’re Madame’s cousin?”

“Oh yes. But I am also Bakhtiar.” He doesn’t add the
y
or
i
that some do; there are variations. It’s after all a tribe, a locale, as well as a name. And a force in their history.

“But Madame wasn’t with you. In Georgia.” Wert’s cousin would have said. She’d gone on for pages as it was.

“No. Someone else take my place with her.” The French had a name for such flutes—the
mirliton.
The car drew up a circular driveway and under a portico. They’d merely crossed the boulevard, to the high-rise opposite.

“She doesn’t travel alone.” Fereydoun turned off the ignition. He sighed. “But Bakh”—he paused—“he wanted to know what your house is like.” His mouth went roguish, as if it talked out of school. As if it often did.

“That far back? I can’t—” Believe it. But he could.

They got out of the car, Wert trundling the package. He’s the family equerry, I suppose, his cousin had written, in her spritely imp-lady style. He waddled rather, but was wonderful with the muffin stand, and compliments to suit. I shouldn’t mind having one of him for my very own. And he knew the ring for what it was.

Their grandmother’s sherry-wine ruby. She’d been enraged at the idea of its going into a grave.

Fereydoun’s gait wasn’t due to shoes, his sleeker than Wert’s own, which the hotel’s hamper hadn’t improved. But I won’t gossip about Bakh with him; I don’t know quite why. At that moment Fereydoun turned—just inside the maw of the entrance, where again a uniformed man stood in diminishing perspective—and made a low bow of welcome, his hips drawing him back—Coppelia, a sorcerer’s bow, a wheedling. Wert had seen old Prince Chumpot shuffle on his knees to and from the then young king of Thailand, but that was protocol. This came from the man himself, deeper than style. Fereydoun wasn’t fat exactly, but pear-shaped, as the striped trousers made plain. Like that castrato tone of voice?

Among the Bagirmi, in north-central Africa, such men were said to still exist; a retired colleague had so described their voices. Above Fereydoun’s wing collar and bow tie the neck lapped in a girdle-of-Venus fold. A chill hit Wert’s stomach. No, his cousin wouldn’t mind. Ladies from his heath, of her era, could still strangle a chicken because it tasted better after, or shoot a stoat. Or make fretful moan when the best chorister at Christ Episcopal lost his voice, due to virility. Once informed of what a Fereydoun might be, she’d never condescend to think of it further, and continue to enjoy her muffins. Like Madame? Because this would have been the bargain under which she could leave? Had been allowed to leave—Bakh?

They were now on the twelfth floor, in front of one of a long corridor of doors. Fereydoun had rung. “I have key. But ladies want to be warned.” A laugh like a squeaked grass-blade. In the mountains of France they used onionskin for those flutes.

“I’m not dressed for a wedding.”

Fereydoun sighed, tremolo. “The other side of the water—won’t see.” He’s Bakh’s era, if not quite his age. A fine-grained eighty-odd. Those glandular eyelids, not born to that face? It could have happened, within the boyhood history of those two. Their country’s history was full of sporadic reversions to its ancient practices. Hermias the tyrant of Atarnea—and patron of Aristotle—was one; they’re not always tabby cats. Narses, the general under Justinian. Smart, and faithful beyond other—men.

Wert’s hands were chilled. He rubbed them. Just that I’ve never knowingly seen one. His own genitals felt cold. Fool—it wasn’t catching.

Fereydoun was scrutinizing him, his suit. Footsteps padded to the door.

“I’m—a bequest,” Wert said. “Aren’t I.”

Fereydoun put up a plump hand. Not a hermaphrodite face, but of a special antiquity. The eyes mild with retrospect. Altered to it? The mouth went roguish again, tittered, and bit itself. “So—am I.”

As the door opened and was held for them by a woman in
chador,
Fereydoun bent and transferred the flower in his own buttonhole to Wert’s.

They followed the
chador,
a stolid gray servant-shape, unchanged. Ahead, down one of those lemon-pale hallways which promised one of the typical “living spaces” these modern buildings provided, all floor-lacquer and cream-colored slats and lozenge design, he heard a fountain of female giggling. Smoke drifted, underlined with perfume; was there ever any smell more enticing?—promising frivolity and a light session of human politics, nothing to do with government. At the head of the hall he stopped, in a waft of wheat-smell. But not wheat.
“Polo?”
he whispered. Not accurate, but the way he remembered their saying it. Their long-grain rice, cooking somewhere. Fereydoun’s teeth glistened. Wert felt his own backbone melting. Oh my God, I’m going to be happy, he thought, dismayed. From the next room he could already sense that clan energy of people to whom roses were important, but who in their time had also lopped heads, grown opium, with a girlish smile for this when challenged, and two kings back had had a ruler who munched kebab while poets were hanged—and whose last Shah had once publicly bowed the knee to one. At Wert’s side, Fereydoun cluttered nervously. Wert remembered the other name for a
mirliton.
Eunuch-flute.

The serving-maid was beckoning. Amazing, how they’d used to do this from within that garment—and to see it still done, here in Queens—with the man next to him watching. Wert was made to put his present in a small room off the hall. As he set the box down in relieved good riddance, the name for what it had represented returned to him.
Pishkesh
—the prefavor or sweetening. Or bribe. By which you are warned.

Ahead, the chattering has stopped. His own Farsi’s already rushing back to him, clamoring a word for every object he sees, and all the old phrases he’d always been glib and good at orally, able to float in the give-and-take from street to embassy, though nearly unable to write or transcribe. Today, why appear to know any of it? Little advantage enough.

“Alors
—” Fereydoun says, as if from now on they must expect any language—and they’re in.

The first thing he sees is Bakh. The long walls of this triple-sized room are hung with rugs: the two end walls are huge movie screens, one blank. On the other, slide-projected larger than in life, Bakh’s sitting in his garden, a girl at his side, facing the real-life family photograph below. Fifty to a hundred people must be in the room, lined up there, below the screen. Above them, Bakhtiary is in a black suit, on which Wert can sense the baking sun, a hand on each pommel of his high-backed chair.

“Bakh—” Wert says. It’s much the same face, except for the sunglasses, which are on a table to Bakhtiary’s right. He had wanted the people here to be looking at him. They’ll be able to search his face for hours on end; he has the advantage of being a photograph. Any secrets are jewels inside him, safe. All the girl’s jewels are on the outside—hung between her eyes from a headband, in her ears, at her bare wrists and throat. She’s in Western dress, one of those wisps for summer, but grasps a shawl awkwardly round her shoulders. The small nose has the downward-curving septum, just right for a ring, but it too is bare. Her eyes are cast down though, on Bakh.

“She is first time out of
chador,”
Fereydoun says, falsetto. Perhaps he can’t whisper. “Ah. Madame.”

They must have lined themselves up under the screen just before Wert entered. In the center is a long row of women of all ages, brilliantly dressed. In front of these are the children, party-dressed also. Behind the women, garbed in their black-white as if for a graduation day, as if they haven’t moved since he last saw their country, stand the men. All bow formally. When Madame moves, the lines break up. In spite of the men’s Swiss watches and Italian silk suits and the women’s spicy French aura, it flashes on him what this group is. Perhaps it’s the two young women with babies on their hips. Or that screen, high above them like a colored sail. They are immigrants.

Madame comes forward, robin-breasted in her purple sweater set, on the pouty legs which for Wert link all European women from Finisterre to Leningrad, except for the Swedes. Wert knows when a hand is extended royally. The hand he kisses is boneless in that peculiar way. Incurved, almost vestigial, it must never have done more than fold a napkin or slip on a ring; it may never have buttoned for itself or forced on a boot. Its exercise? Perhaps holding a sheaf of playing cards. He avoids the big pearl on it as he would a royal mouth.

An hour later, still seated at Madame’s side, after as many innuendos as there are nuts in the dishes scattered everywhere, he’s exhausted but has learned a good deal, though not yet what’s in store for him. All this is surely intended. At first he’d wanted to drink only Coca-Cola out of sentiment for what used to be, but has been persuaded, though by swift gesture only, that they may not be as they were—so is now drinking scotch. Some of them may be. Wherever possible they convict themselves of nothing. Does the
jube,
the water ditch, still run through Teheran, even on the main drag, Pahlevi? He hasn’t been able to get anyone to say. Perhaps they no longer want to say the former Shah’s name. Madame, as he was surely told long ago, is family-connected. Or perhaps because they have moved on.

He knows now why they’re in Queens. The place belongs ostensibly to Fereydoun, who was once years ago at the UN. Each time apartments adjacent or on floors above or below have been vacated, he’s acquired them; he now has two floors, and after brief difficulty with the fire laws—a sweep of Madame’s pearled hand—has built a staircase to suit. Though he is single—had her eyelids leveled for a moment?—he was brought up in a palace, used to space. He’s of an in-between generation; though younger than Bakh, his father was a general with Reza Shah. The former Shah’s father can be mentioned by name; he is history. Fereydoun is her cousin, all here being at the very least cousins, of near or far degree. He’s actually the son of her mother’s oldest half-brother, and as a young man wheeled Madame in her carriage. “Because of our mothers being so young, much is different with us,” she says, again with a leveling. Wert can’t detect whether or not she ever looks up at the screen; he’s still waiting for her to mention Bakh. But a queen bee, if ever he’s seen one.