Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (5 page)

           
Grigor frowned at this document. “I
don’t understand.”

           
“They sent it to me,” the man said,
with a sad smile, “because of what I used to do.”

           
Ah. Everyone here at the clinic used
to do something, of course, all different kinds of somethings; not all were
former firemen. And not all had found a new career, like Grigor’s joke-writing,
to take the place of the old. Because so many of the residents found it painful
to be reminded that they could no longer do whatever it was that used to occupy
their minds and their days, the subject was informally agreed to be taboo. No
one would ever ask a fellow resident about his or her former occupation. So
Grigor couldn’t pursue that topic, but had to say instead, “Then why don’t you
go yourself?”

           
“I’ve been a little low lately,”
the man said.

           
Another forbidden subject. Every
resident of the clinic was doomed to die, and soon rather than late, but not
all of them at the same pace or in the same way or to the same final date.
Complaining about one’s lot or describing one’s horrible symptoms to other
residents would be the height of insensitivity; the person you’re talking to
could very easily be in worse shape than you. So euphemisms had developed, and
were generally understood, and they served to make conversation more palatable,
even more possible. “I’ve been a little low lately,” was universally taken to
mean that one’s particular illness had just moved into a further and more
debilitating phase, that another step on one’s own staircase down into the dark
had just been reached, and that the victim had not yet adapted.

           
So once again Grigor couldn’t pursue
a topic. Frowning at the invitation—the International Society for Cultural
Preservation—he said, “Who are these people?”

           
“They try to raise money,” the man
said, “to restore and preserve great works of art. Around the world, you know,
the accomplishments of civilization are being destroyed, mosdy by man. Acid
rain, deliberate destruction by builders, changes in the quality of our
sunlight, in many ways human art is being made to disappear. Stone statues melt
in this air, motion pictures fade, paintings rot, books crumble, archaeological
sites are plundered for trinkets to sell to the nouveau riche—” Grigor laughed;
he couldn’t help himself. “All right, all right, I get the idea. These are
do-gooders.”

           
“They try.” The man shrugged.

           
Grigor looked again at the
invitation. “Raise money,” he echoed. “From me?”

           
“Oh, no, no. This is a promotional
party, that’s all. These people are trying to get our government interested in
their work”

           
‘They’re Americans?”

           
“English, I think, at first. They
have members all over the world now.” Again the man shrugged. “For what good it
does.”

           
Surprised, Grigor said, “You don’t
believe they’re doing any good?”

           
“Oh, some,” the man said. “Some
small victories, here and there. But you know it’s said, ‘Rust never sleeps.’”
Then, more forcefully, he said, “And why try at all to save anything? It’s
coming to an end, anyway, isn’t it?”

           
“Is it?”

           
“Of course! We’re doing our best to
destroy ourselves and our history and even our planet! Grigor, look at all of
us in here. Why are we
here
?”

           
Now it was Grigor’s turn to shrug.
He’d gone past that question a long time ago. “Mistakes were made,” he said.

           
“We’re moving into a world of
mistakes,” the man told him, then waved his hand in a dismissing gesture. “Let
it all go. It’s spoiled anyway.”

           
Ah, well; Grigor knew that attitude
intimately. Why should the rest of the world go on as though nothing had
happened, when
I
am in
here,
with
this
? The ones like Grigor without strong family ties were the most
subject to this sort of feeling, but it reached everyone from time to time.
There was no answering that attitude, of course, no particular reason why life
should
go on without Grigor, or any of
the other residents; one simply waited for the feeling to go away, and it
almost always did. But no one
talked
about it; that this man expressed it in words showed just how badly he’d been
affected by the “low” he’d mentioned.

           
In any event, the issue was this
invitation. Shaking his head, Grigor said “I don’t see what this has to do with
me. Why should
I
go to this thing?”

           
“Because you’d enjoy it,” the man
said. “And you’d get ideas for jokes there, I know you would. And you speak
English.”

           
“Oh, well, not really.” Grigor
dismissed that by waving the hand with the invitation in it. “I studied English
in school, I can read it, but to talk.. .”

           
“Then this is a chance to improve
your English,” the man said.

           
“For what?” Grigor smiled at the
thought. “To make up jokes for Americans?”

           
“For its own sake,” the man said,
and gestured at the invitation. “Take it, Grigor. Go or don’t go, it’s up to
you. Excuse me, I don’t like to stand this long.”

           
“Yes, of course,” Grigor said,
awkward as they all were when brought face-to-face with each other’s
infirmities. Grigor was still much stronger than this man, which was a source
of embarrassment. He nodded, and the man shuffled away down the hall, and
Grigor shut the door.

           
Sitting on his bed, putting the
invitation on the bedside table, Grigor suddenly yawned, massive and
uncontrollable. The clock read four-fourteen, and Grigor was all at once so
sleepy that the first time he reached for the button to switch off the light he
missed. But then he got it, and in the darkness lay back on his pillow, his
mind swirling with thoughts, none of them truly coherent.

           
Would he go to the do-gooders’
party? Which one of his fellow residents
was
that guy? And, since the rooms were deliberately soundproofed, how had he heard
Grigor’s quiet alarm?

           
Grigor slept, and when he next
awoke, for his
eight
A.M.
pill, he remembered all those questions
except the last one.

           
Approaching the broad steps leading
up to the entrance to the Savoy Hotel, Grigor was almost painfully aware of how
he looked. A thin man in his early thirties, with a gaunt face made even more
lean by the loss of a few back teeth (they’d become too loose in their gums to
be saved), with dry brown hair that had grown back more spottily than before,
and with a measured slowness to his pace caused by the steady draining away of
his vigor, he knew his appearance was gloomy and boring, like some sort of
country bumpkin. The good suit, the silk tie, the heavy expensive well-shined
shoes, all bought with Boris Boris’s money, were like a hasty disguise, as
though he were a prisoner on the run. But above all, approaching the
refurbished and highly polished Savoy entrance, aware of the cool calculation
in the eyes of the doorman up there watching him slowly mount the steps, above
all else Grigor knew he looked Russian. And the wrong sort of Russian to be
coming to the Savoy Hotel.

           
The doorman knew it also. Proud
inside his overly ornate uniform, like a comic opera admiral, he moved just
enough to block Grigor’s path, saying “What can I do for you?”

           
“You can go back to your fleet,”
Grigor told him, reasonably sure the doorman would have no idea what he was
talking about, and then, before the process of hurrying him along could begin,
he produced the invitation. “You can direct me,” he said smoothly, “to the
International Room.”

           
The doorman didn’t like having to
change his evaluation. “You’re late,” he said grumpily.

           
“It’s still going on,” Grigor said,
with assurance. The invitation had specified “
five until eight
,” and it was now just after seven. It was
only at the last possible minute that Grigor had decided he might come to the
damn thing after all, reserving the right to change his mind at any step along
the way, and it wasn’t until this snobbish doorman had looked down his Slavic
nose as though at a peasant or worse that Grigor had finally decided he
definitely
would
attend the soiree
(“cocktail party”), that he
did
indeed belong here.

           
Was he not, after all, the power
behind a television throne? Was he not the author of half the words to come out
of Boris Boris’s mouth? Wasn’t he the next best thing to a celebrity; which is
to say, a celebrity’s ventriloquist?
Be
off with you
,
my man
, Grigor
thought,
I have Romanov blood in my
veins.
(Hardly.)

           
Conviction is all. The doorman saw
the cold look in Grigor’s deep-set eyes, the firmness of his fleshless jaw, the
set of his narrow shoulders, and recognized the prince within the pauper.
Returning the invitation, gesturing with a (small) flourish, “Straight through
the lobby,” he said, “and second on the right.” “Thank you.” And Grigor was
amused to notice the doorman’s heels come together—silendy, it’s true, but
nevertheless—as he passed the man and went on into the plush-and-marble lobby.

           
Sound billowed from the
International Room like pungent steam from a country inn’s kitchen. Cocktail
party chitchat is the same the world over, bright and encompassing, creating
its own environment, separating the world into participants and non-invitees.
Cheered suddenly at the idea of being among the blessed this time around,
Grigor moved forward into that cloud of noise, which for him was not rejecting
but welcoming, and was barely aware of the person at the door who took his
invitation and ushered him through the wide archway into a large,
high-ceilinged room that had been deliberately restored to remind people as
much as possible of the pomp and privilege of the tsars. Gold and white were
everywhere, with pouter pigeons of color in the Empire chairs discreedy placed
against the walls. Two chandeliers signaled to one another across the room,
above the heads of the partygoers in their drab mufti; not a red uniform in the
place. It was as though, Grigor thought, the nobles had permitted the villagers
one annual event of their own in the chateau’s grand ballroom.

           
Was there a joke in that? Well,
there was, of course, but was it usable? Now that the proletariat had been
shown to have made a mess of things, there was a great embarrassed ambivalence
about the aristocratic baby that had been thrown out with 1917’s bathwater.
Both Grigor and Boris Boris had been trying for months to fit references to the
tsars and their families and their world into the stand-up routines, but
everything they’d come up with was too flat, too wishy-washy.

           
The trouble was, they had no clear
attitude to express. Surely no one wanted to go back to rule by a class of
people who sincerely believed that peasants and catde were at parity, and
yet... And yet, there was something about the
style.
Not the substance, the style.

           
The
tsars are still in our throats. We can’t swallow them, and we can’t spit them
out.

           
That isn’t funny. That’s merely
true.

           
Looking around for the bar—he was
permitted to drink, but not to excess, not yet, that would come later—his eye
passed over a pretty girl in the middle of the crowded room, talking in an
animated fashion with a tall, burly, thick-faced man who could be nothing but
some sort of policeman, perhaps even KGB. The girl was tall and slender, with
darkish blond hair and bright eyes and a beautiful nose and great
self-assurance. Her clothing seemed to have been made specifically and
precisely for her. An American, Grigor thought, and moved toward the vodka.

*
 
*
 
*

           
The Russian with whom Susan Carrigan
was speaking was highly amused that she was here in
Moscow
because she’d won a contest in a magazine.
His name was Mikhail, and he was a teacher of economics at Moscow University, a
tall, thin, urbane man with a narrow and pleasantly craggy face and a burry
baritone voice with which he spoke perfect English, faintly Oxford-accented.
“The idea of value in a capitalist society,” he said, “is something my
generation will perhaps never understand. A company ferments potatoes into
vodka. In order to sell that vodka, they choose at random one citizen—you, as
it happens—to send on an expense-paid trip to
Moscow
. You yourself, with the best will in the
world, not to mention the strongest liver, would never be able to drink enough
vodka to repay the distiller's expenses in this venture, and in fact,” he said,
laughing, pointing at the glass in her hand, “you don't even
drink
vodka. You drink white wine ”

           
“Yes,” she agreed. “I know it seems
silly, but—”

           
“Not at all, not at all.” Mikhail's
amusement with her was so unfeigned and so friendly that she couldn't possibly
object. “It's very refreshing to be in the company of a white-wine drinker,” he
assured her. “Besides which, you will undoubtedly be the last person on your
feet in this room. But to return to the question. The distiller can't get his
money back from
you.
Is he assuming
that
other
citizens, viewing his
generosity toward you, will be encouraged to feel warmly toward him and buy his
product in sufficient quantities—in sufficient
extra
quantities, beyond what they would already buy—to make up his
expenses?”

           
“I have no idea,” Susan admitted.
‘Whatever they think they're getting, I'm having a wonderful time.
Russia
is so
beautiful
”

           
“You think so?” he said, smiling at
her enthusiasm.

           
‘The museums,” she said. “The
paintings, the icons. And the river is beautiful, you know. I hope the Semionov
company
does
get their money back,
twice.”

           
“Oh, they already have,” said an
American-accented voice to her left. She and Mikhail both turned, and a middle-aged
fortyish bearded man was standing there in rumpled sports jacket and white
shirt and maroon bow tie, smiling his apology at having horned in on their
conversation. “Forgive me,” he said, “but I overheard you, and I knew you
were—it's Susan Carrigan, isn't it?”

           
“That’s right.”

           
“Jack Fielding,” he announced
himself. “I’m with the embassy here. We processed some of the paperwork on you.
Now, the way I think it works—I’m not an economist, I—” Turning to Mikhail, he
said, “I take it you are.”

           
“Yes, I am.” Mikhail introduced
himself again, with the impossibly long last name, and the two men shook hands.
Then Mikhail said, “You understand the value process of this gift to Miss
Carrigan?”

           
“I think so,” Jack Fielding said.
“The principal idea is advertising and publicity. If you offer a prize that a
lot of people want, then people will be thinking about your brand name, so when
they visit their neighborhood liquor shop they’re more likely to buy your
product. So if the plan worked, the company saw a rise in sales while the
contest was on, meaning they already made their money out of it before they had
to spend any on Miss Carrigan.”

           
“But,” Mikhail asked, “if the plan
doesn’t
work? If they don’t see the rise
in sales?”

           
Jack Fielding grinned and shrugged.
“Then they have to grit their teeth and pay up anyway, and Miss Carrigan still
gets her trip to
Moscow
.”

           
“Good,” said Susan.

           
“Which is one reason,” Jack Fielding
went on, “why I’m a free marketeer. It’s so much harder for a private company
to renege on a deal than it is for a government.”

           
“Ah, well,” Mikhail said, looking
alarmed, “if we are going to talk free markets, I will need another drink.
Susan? Your glass is empty.”

           
“Thank you,” she said, handing it
over.

           
Mikhail raised an eyebrow at Jack
Fielding. “And you, Mr. Fielding?”

           
“I’m fine, thanks.”

           
“I’ll be right back, then,” Mikhail
promised, and turned away toward the bar.

           
Jack Fielding looked around the
room, smiling faintly, saying, “This is a true grab bag here.”

           
“I have no idea why
I
was asked,” Susan admitted, “unless
it’s simply because I’m staying in this hotel.”

           
“I think the preservation people did
want to get as many English speakers here as possible,” Fielding told her,
“which is why
I
was sent. It’s all to
give the Russkies an inflated idea of the organization’s importance in the
West. But the guest list at any promotional cocktail party you can name is a
lot
harder to figure out than the idea
behind the contest that brought you here and that’s got your Russian friend so
bewildered.”

           
My Russian friend, Susan thought.
But not really, worse luck. Early in their conversation, Mikhail had mentioned
that he was married—“Unfortunately, my wife could not be with me this
evening”—but still she had enjoyed his company. She was here, after all, to experience
Russia
, not to wind up chatting with Jack
Fielding, a man exacdy like half a dozen guys at any cocktail party in
Manhattan
.

           
Would Mikhail come back? Iflad
Fielding chased him away? Through a break in the crush of people, Susan could
see him across the room, over at the bar, talking with another Russian man.

*
 
*
 
*

           
Grigor had just reached the head of
the bar line and received his vodka when a heavily accented voice said in
English, “Do you speak English?”

           
Grigor turned, surprised, and it was
the heavy-faced burly policeman or KGB man he’d noticed talking to the American
girl. In Russian, he answered, “I can understand it a litde. I don’t really
speak it.”

           
“Try,” ordered the man. Again in
that thick-tongued English, he said, “Answer my first question, but in
English.”

           
Slowly, spacing the words as he
hunted for the English equivalents, Grigor said, “I understand some English. I
read English more... better than I speak.”