An American Dream (29 page)

“Nothing at all. I help Mr. Kelly.”

“But Deborah was dabbling with spies—was she really?”

“An absolute amateur.”

“You don’t expect me to believe you?”

“She had no real standing,” Ruta repeated with pride.

“Nonetheless,” I said, “Deborah must have caused some worry.”

“Oodles of worry,” Ruta said. “Last night there must have been electricity burning in government offices all over the world.” She was talking of a fine meal—gluttony in her voice at all that electricity. “Yes, they had to let you go. Since nobody can know if you know a little or a lot, a real investigation would be ending
der Teufel
knows where.” She could not avoid a small smile. “But you are the
Teufel
,” she went on, “you take what you want.”

“Ruta, you haven’t told me a thing.”

“And if I told you, then would you help me on something?”

“I would try to answer your questions as well as you answer mine.”

“Yes, that may be good.”

“What was Deborah up to?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Now, what do you mean?”

“Nobody knows for certain. It’s always like that. Believe me, Mr. Rojack, the more you learn the more you know there are never any answers, just more questions.”

“I’m curious to hear a fact or two.”

“Facts.” She shrugged. “You may know them already.”

“She had three lovers—that I know.”

“You don’t know who they were?”

“No.”

“Well, good. Let me tell you. One of them is an American who’s more or less special.”

“In the government?”

“Pretend I didn’t hear the question, Mr. Rojack.”

“And another?”

“Another is a Russian who’s attached to the embassy at Park Avenue. The third is an Englishman who is a liquor representative for some Scotch firm and used to be in British intelligence during the war.”

“Still is, you may be certain,” I said.

“Of course,” said Ruta.

“That’s the lot?”

“She may have had something to do with a fellow named Tony who was up to see her once or twice.”

“Did she like Tony?”

“Not too much, I would say.”

“What was Deborah actually up to?” I asked.

“If you want my real opinion,” said Ruta.

“I do.”

“She was out to embarrass her father profoundly. She wanted him to come to her, to beg her to stop all her amateur espionage before all the important people in the world decided Barney Kelly was up to something bad, or could not control his daughter.”

“But what was Deborah interested in?”

“Lots. Too much. Believe me, everything and nothing. She was a gossip center and she pretended to be important. If you really desire my personal opinion, I think it gave her tremendous sexual excitement. Some women like horseback riders, some go for ski jumpers, there are women who are interested in nothing but Polish brutes, and Deborah had a
petite faiblesse
for the best agents. Whatever it was, it was very bad for her father. He suffered very much over this.”

“All right, Ruta, thank you,” I said. Despite three separate spasms of jealousy for three lovers, there had been a small intoxication in the center of the pain to be learning something at last.

“Still,” said Ruta, “I have not asked you what I wanted to ask.”

“Please do.”

“Mr. Rojack, why do you think I work for Mr. Kelly? What do you think I look for?”

“Marrying him.”

“Is it so obvious?”

“No. But I trust Mrs. Trelawne.”

“It stands out then—my ambition?”

“A little, perhaps. Of course you’re very smart.”

“I am obviously not smart enough to hide it. That is, I am smart enough, but I have not had sufficient advantages. So I would like assistance.”

“An assistant?”

“A partner. To advise me.”

“Bess is right, my dear. He’s not going to marry you.”

“You’re talking like a fool, Mr. Rojack, and you are not a fool. I’m not such an egomaniac that I don’t think Mr. Kelly can’t buy
and sell a girl like me ten thousand times. But I know something.” Her eyes now protruded slightly—Germanically—as if the pressure of her idea was back of them.

“Do you really know something?” I asked.

“A great deal. I have a chance he will marry me. If I can play the cards.”

“What do you propose to pay your consultant?”

“You told me you were hard as nails. I believe you. I would not try to trick a man like you. Besides,” she said, “you can trust me.”

I was enjoying this. “The trick,” I said, “is to keep a sense of proportion. Why should I ever trust you? I certainly couldn’t trust you with the bulls.”

Bulls? Bulls? Her lack of this word irritated her like the search for a missing tool.

“The police.”

“Oh,” she said, “last night! You half-promised to make me a baby. I didn’t necessarily want a baby, but you promised, and then you didn’t. That is a very little thing, but it does not create undying loyalty in a woman.”

It did, however, create a recollection of our evening together. “There was a second time,” I said.

A sneer went to Ruta’s mouth. “Yes, the second time,” she said. “It burned.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Usually it burns.”

“Perhaps you have an infection,” I said.

“Ha, ha,” said Ruta, “that is just what I need.”

“Isn’t Kelly taking his time?” I said suddenly. But suddenly I had felt his absence.

“He went to look in on Deirdre, I would suppose.”

I was tempted to ask if there was any way he could be listening. The room did not have that stricken air which recording devices brought to a mood, but then … “Is there any equipment?” I asked.

“He had it taken out.”

“He did? Why?”

“Because one day I had the rare good fortune to find his private cabinet in the bathroom unlocked and so was able to listen to him while he was having a conversation in the library. And I was enough impressed to turn on the tape recorder in the private cabinet.”

“That was the day when you learned what you learned?”

“Yes, that was the day.”

“It’s good enough to get you to marry him?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“It’s probably good enough to get you hurt.”

“Oh,” she said, “I have copies of the tape well secured.”

“One wants to treat you well,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “But that does not produce my assistant.”

“Tell me your information. Who knows what that will produce?”

She laughed. “Who knows? It is so good you must trust me.”

I laughed. “Perhaps I don’t have to trust you. Perhaps I have an idea of your information.”

“Perhaps you do.”

A bolt. I did not know what she was talking about; yet I had an intimation that I did, as if once again, somewhere deep within, a messenger was setting out. But now I did not want to talk. Which is to say there was some injunction in my brain not to proceed. It was as if I had spent my life living in a cellar, and now lights were being installed. But I had lived too long without them. The desire to go outside and walk on the parapet came again.

“Let’s put brandy on the curse,” I said. Something had certainly happened. Quietly, mildly, without a backward look at Deirdre, I had decided to drink.

We were drinking thus quietly—each waiting for the other to speak first—when Kelly came back.

“Is Deirdre still restless?” asked Ruta.

“Very much so.”

“I will see if I can get her to sleep,” Ruta offered.

Now Kelly and I were alone. He reared back his head as if to search my face. “Have a talk?”

“All right.”

“You can’t imagine this day.” He rubbed his eyes. “I suppose you’ve had your moments, too.” I did not answer.

Kelly nodded once. “Carloads of people here. Friends, enemies, the lot. I’ve just left word downstairs—no one is to be let up. But then it’s probably too late anyway. What time do you have?”

“After two.”

“Thought it was close to dawn. Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t really either. I’ve hardly felt a thing all day. Bust into tears once. What with all the people here, I was somehow expecting Deborah to pop up for a drink, when wham!” he said softly, “it hit me—no more Deborah.” He nodded. “You’re still numb, aren’t you, Rojack?”

“There was bad blood between Deborah and me, I can’t pretend.”

“To your credit to admit it, I suppose. I always thought you were mad about her.”

“I was for a long while.”

“Hard not to.”

“Yes.”

“All the world’s certain you did her in. I spent the day telling people you didn’t.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“I wasn’t sure myself.”

“No, I didn’t kill her.”

“That’s good. That’s just as well.”

“Yes, it is, considering the favor you did me.”

“Let’s enjoy our drink,” Kelly said. “I’m numb, too.”

In the silence, I helped myself to another brandy. I had been
dragging sobriety after me; with the first taste of the new drink, I topped a hill: all the weight of my psyche was pulling me down the slope. I was suddenly drunk again, drunk clear through my mind—I wanted to tell him the truth.

“In fact,” he said, “it wouldn’t matter so much if you
had
killed her. I’m just as guilty, after all.” He rubbed his nose vigorously. “I was a brute to her. She visited that brutishness back on you. So it comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it?”

I could not think of an answer to this. Indeed, I had no idea what Kelly was up to.

“You haven’t said a word about the funeral,” he said.

“No.”

“Well, let me tell you. It’s going to be a small funeral, and we’ll bury Deborah in a nice place I’ve picked—you were nowhere around this morning so I had to decide on it. It won’t be hallowed ground of course, but it will be peaceable.”

We exchanged a stare. When the silence which came off from me did not falter, he added, “You’re going of course.”

“No.”

“Is that what Deirdre was upset about?”

“I would think that’s what it was.”

“Well, I want you to be there. I can’t conceive of an explanation otherwise.”

“You can tell people I’m too broken to show.”

“I don’t intend to tell them anything. I want you to stop being a bloody fool. You and me are going to stand side by side at the funeral. Otherwise, it’s hopeless. Everyone will be convinced you’re a murderer.”

“Can’t you understand,” I said, “that I really don’t care what people say. It’s gone a little too deep for that.” My hand was trembling. To steady myself, I said, “Besides, even if I go, they’ll still say I did it.”

“Bother them all, there’s a critical difference in the way it’ll be
said.” He was altogether calm as he spoke, but a vein in his forehead gave a jump and began to pulse. “I never thought I’d have to explain to you,” said Kelly, “that it doesn’t matter what is done in private. What is important is the public show—it must be flawless. Because public show is the language we use to tell our friends and enemies that we still have order enough to make a good display. That’s not so easy if you consider the general insanity of everything. You see, it doesn’t matter whether people think you killed Deborah, it matters only whether people are given the opportunity to recognize it’s been swept under the carpet, and you and I together are in control of the situation. If you don’t show, it will cause so much talk that you and me will never be able to get to the real thing.”

“Which is?”

“That we become friends.”

“Kelly, I realize this has been quite a day for you …”

“I have confidence. We’re closer than you expect.” He looked about. “Come, let’s go into the library.” It was the largest chamber in the suite and served as an omnibus bedroom, sitting room and antique gallery for Kelly. “Come on,” he said, “we can talk better there. It’s a better place for what I have to say. You see, I want to tell you a long story. A long Godawful story. And the library is the place for it. It may not be your favorite room, but it certainly is mine. It’s the only thing still belongs to me in New York.” He had in fact a town house in the East Sixties but never entered it. The house was occupied as a sort of hospital by Deborah’s mother who was bedridden, profoundly separated from Kelly, and had not spoken to Deborah since we were married.

“Very well. We might as well go in,” I said. But I did not want to. The library was a poor room for tonight.

In there, was a turn of mood as precise as the instant of entering a royal chapel, some dark chamber with reliquaries and monstrances; indeed, just as one went in, there was a silver monstrance before a screen, silver-gilt, set with stones, the screen a tapestry of women in
Elizabethan dress talking to a deer while a squire was in the act of encountering a nude maid who grew out of the trunk of a tree. That was late sixteenth century. (Kelly, on one half-genial occasion, had spent an evening cataloguing the items for me—“Who knows, you may own them someday,” he had said. “Mustn’t sell them for too little.”) There was a harpsichord giving off the high patina of a snake; a carved and gilt side-table with four golden alligators for legs; a rug covered the floor with a purple-red landscape of trees and garden which glowed like a fire of permanganate. There was a looking-glass frame: ormolu cupids, scallop shells, wreaths, and pearls of flesh climbed up the sides of a pondlike mirror and formed a crest at the top. It was eight feet high. So might a mouse begin to study the privates of a queen.

There was more: a Lucchese bed with a canopy encrusted in blood-velvet and gold; next to it, a Venetian throne. Golden mermaids twined up the arms to the shield at the head. The sculpture was delicate, but the throne seemed to grow as one regarded it for the sirens and cupids slithered from one to another like lizards on the vines of a tree: in the high silence of this room there was all but the sound of vegetation working in the night. Kelly sat down on the throne, leaving me to sit in some uncomfortable but exceptional antique of a chair, a small inlay table of Chinese ivory between us, and since there was almost no light in the room, just the small glow from the fire, and the illumination of a small lamp, I could see very little, the room was suspended about us like the interior of a cave. I was feeling wretched, twice wretched, in some rack of exhaustion between apathy and overstimulation. Nothing seemed here and present, not Deborah’s death, nor guilt, nor his suffering—if he felt any—nor mine: I did not know if I was real any longer, which is to say I did not feel connected to myself. My mind brought too much fever to each possibility. I felt once again as I had felt on entering the Waldorf, that I was in some antechamber of Hell where objects came alive and communicated with one another while
I sank with each drink into a condition closer to the objects. There was a presence in the room like the command of a dead pharaoh. Aristocrats, slave owners, manufacturers and popes had coveted these furnishings until the beseechments of prayer had passed into their gold. Even as a magnet directs every iron particle in a crowd of filings, so a field of force was on me here, an air rich with surfeit and the long whisper of corridors, the echo of a banquet hall where red burgundy and wild boar went down. That same field of force had come on me as I left Deborah’s body on the floor and started down the stairs to the room where Ruta was waiting.