Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (2 page)

—Why not? That's the way it is.

—What you don't understand is how hard it is to renounce everything, to face the loss of all that we are, not just our possessions but our physical and intellectual powers as well, to leave everything behind like a suitcase and begin anew.

—I hope that everyone who comes to our country feels that we want to give them, in our own way, the strength to make a new beginning.

—And also a grace period?

—Pardon, Mr. Plotnikov?

—Yes, I'm not talking about starting over but of earning a reprieve, do you understand? I'm talking about someday receiving, as a gift, an extra hour of life. Yes, exactly that: don't we deserve it?

—Yes, of course—I agreed emphatically—of course.

—Ah, that's good. —Mr. Plotnikov wiped his lips with a paper napkin. —Yes, that's good. You know, after a while one lives only through the lives of others, when one's own life has run out.

He put the photos in his jacket pocket.

That was not the first or the last time, over many years, when an unexpected snowfall would cover the red earth of the cemetery or when thunderstorms would turn its paths to mud, that I chanced upon my neighbor the actor Plotnikov walking along the cemetery paths, repeating a sort of litany of names that I sometimes caught snatches of, as he passed near me … Dmitrovich Osip Emilievich Isaac Emmanuelovich Mikhail Afanasievich Sergei Alexandrovich Kazimir Serafimovich Vsevelod Emilievich Vladimir Vladimiro …

3

Now it was August and Mr. Plotnikov (Monsieur Plotnikov, I sometimes call him; whether out of respect, a sense of difference, or mere affectation I know not) came (I remember: it was an unannounced visit) to tell me of his death, but neither the heat of summer outside nor the heat of the hell that according to popular legend awaits actors, who are denied burial in consecrated ground, neither of those seemed to oppress that gentleman, white as a transparent host—white skin, white hair, white lips, pale eyes—but dressed entirely in black, in a turn-of-the-century-style three-piece black suit, a Russian overcoat too big for him, as if another actor had given it to him, with the hem dragging through the dust, the Coca-Cola cans, and the chocolate Mars Bars wrappers. He managed all this with dignity. Making a unique concession to the climate, he carried an open umbrella, black also, as he proceeded with slow and dusty tread: I noticed his sharp patent-leather shoes with little bows on their tips, a detail that gave Mr. Plotnikov the air of a perverse ballerina.

—Gospodin Hull—he greeted me, pointing his umbrella in my direction like a bullfighter taking off his hat to salute the fatal act that will follow the formula courtesy. —Gospodin Hull, I have come to say goodbye.

—Ah, Monsieur Plotnikov—I replied, half asleep—you're going on a trip.

—You are always joking—. He shook his head disapprovingly. —I have never understood why Americans are always making jokes. This would be very badly received in St. Petersburg, or in Paris.

—Pardon us, sir. Blame all our failings on our being a country of pioneers.

—Bah, so is Russia, but we don't spend our time guffawing. Bah, you act like hyenas.

I decided not to respond to this last allusion. Mr. Plotnikov snapped his parasol shut, very theatrically, so that the mid-afternoon sun shone straight down on him, accentuating the cavities of his narrow, transparent skull, barely covered by skin growing ever thinner, like a worn-out envelope, finally to reveal the contents of the letter within.

—No, Gospodin Hull, I have come to say goodbye because I am going to die, and I feel it is a basic courtesy to say goodbye to you, who have been a courteous and polite neighbor, in spite of everything.

—I'm sorry that, living right next door, we never …

He interrupted me without smiling: —That is what I am thanking you for. You never imposed unwanted formulas of neighborliness on me.

—Well, thank you, then, Mr. Plotnikov, but I'm sure, to paraphrase a more famous American humorist than me, that you greatly exaggerate the news of your death.

—You can never tell, Gospodin Hull, because my condition is the following …

I had stopped rocking and fanning. I didn't know whether to give in to my first inclination, which was to laugh, or surrender to the deeper feeling engendered by the sight of this man—so protected by his clothes and yet so mercilessly exposed by a sun that allowed him no more shade than the bony ridges over his eyes and the wrinkles of his aged skin—which was to take his words seriously indeed.

—Yes, sir?

—Gospodin Hull: you will come to visit me only on the day of your own death, to let me know, as I have done today with mine. That is my condition.

—But you will be dead then—I began, logically, almost happily, although I quickly abandoned that tack—I mean, the day I die you will no longer be living …

—Don't be so sure of that—now he opened the umbrella with nervous haste and shaded himself with it—and respect my last wish. Please. I am so tired.

As I relate this, I recall many of our chance meetings at the corner of Drayton Street and Wright Square, in the cemetery, or in the mall. We never exchanged many words (except the afternoon of the pistachio ice cream), but we were neighbors, and without ever paying each other a formal visit, we passed along snatches of information, like the pieces of a puzzle. What did I know about him, really, on that day when he predicted his death in such a strange manner? What did I know about him? Two or three vague facts: he was a theater actor in Russia, although he really wanted to be a set designer and stop acting. It was the era of Stalinist terror, life was difficult for everyone, as bad for those who submitted as for those who resisted the madness of personal power posing as collective power. Who didn't suffer? Even the executioners, Mr. Plotnikov said one day, they, too, breathe, and their breath was like a forest felled. He left Russia and found asylum in the United States, which offered it to so many refugees from a Europe convulsed by ideology, in those generous years when America was America; he smiled at me, recalling some Jews, some Spaniards, who couldn't get through the doors of our democratic refuge. But what could you do; we received so many more, Germans, Poles, Russians, Czechs, French … Politics is the art of limits. Art is the limit of politics.

—Respect my last wish. Do not come to my wake tonight or accompany my funeral procession tomorrow. No. Visit me in my house on the day of your death, Gospodin Hull. Our well-being depends on it. Please. I am very tired.

What could I say, seeing him there on that street-scene stage, with the garbage beginning to distract us from the colonial grandeur of Savannah; what could I tell him, that the day of his funeral I was going to be in Atlanta taking care of patients less lucid, more impatient than he? What could I tell him, to show my respect for something that I understood, I appreciated, I was grateful for, that this was perhaps his final performance, the final act of a career brutally interrupted—I deduced—by political adversity and never taken up again outside Russia.

—I needed—he explained to me one day, or I imagined or dreamed, I'm no longer sure of the truth—the Russian language, Russian applause, to read the reviews in Russian, but above all I needed the test of the Russian heart in order to present myself in public, acting; I couldn't communicate as an actor apart from the Russian language, space, applause, time, testimony, intent. Did I understand that, in my country of wild syncretisms, of political pastiche and migratory melting pots and maps stuck up with chewing gum, could I possibly understand?

What could I tell him, I ask again, except, yes, Mr. Plotnikov, I agree, I will do what you say.

—Very good. I thank you. I am too tired.

With that, he bowed and walked stiffly away in the blazing sun to his house next to mine, near Wright Square.

4

Almost in spite of myself, I went into the house. I wanted to tell my wife what had happened. I wanted to tell her how deeply Monsieur Plotnikov had disturbed me, enough to make me take the unusual step of interrupting Constancia's nap. I was beyond observing that tacit prohibition, so great was the turmoil my Russian neighbor had caused in me. But my astonishment grew when I realized that Constancia was not in her bed, that it had not even been slept in. The shutters were closed, but that was normal. And it would have been normal, too, if Constancia, finding she had to leave the house—I looked for her on all three floors and even in the unused cellar—had wanted to tell me she was leaving, but saw me in the rocking chair and, giving me a fond smile, went out without waking me. In that case, a note would have been enough, a few scribbled words, saying:

—Don't worry, Whitby. Be back soon.

And, on returning, what pretext would she give me?

—I don't know. I decided to lose myself in the plazas. This is the most beautiful and mysterious aspect of the city—the way one plaza always opens onto another, like a Russian doll.

And other times: —Remember, Whitby, your wife is Andalusian and we Andalusians don't accept age, we fight it. Look, who dances
peteneras
better than an old lady, have you noticed?—she said, laughing, imitating a sexagenarian flamenco dancer.

I imagined her lying down, nude, in the shade, telling me these things: Sometimes, on dog days like these—understand, love?—I go out looking for water, shade, plazas, a maze of streets, ah, if you knew what it was to be a child in Seville, Whitby, that other city of plazas and mazes and water and shadows … You know, I walk through the streets seeking my past in a different place, do you think that's madness?

—You've never tried to make friends here, you haven't even learned English … Even my name gives you trouble— I smiled—

—Hweetbee Howl— She smiled in turn, and then said to me:

—I haven't criticized your Savannah, we've made our life here, but leave me my Seville, at least in my imagination, my love, and tell yourself: It's a good thing Constancia knows how to find the light and water she needs here in my own American South.

I would laugh then, pleased to think that the South, the South with its names full of vowels—Virginia, Georgia, the Carolinas—is the Andalusia of America. And Spain, I tell her, as an old reader of Coustine and Gautier, is the Russia of the West, just as Russia is the Spain of the East. Again I laughed, observing to Constancia that only Russia and Spain had come up with the idea of changing the width of their train tracks to forestall foreign invasion; that is to say, the aggression of other Europeans. What paranoia—I laughed in mock amazement—what love of barriers, whether the steppes or a mountain chain: to be
the others,
Russians and Spaniards, unassimilatable to Western normality! But, after all—I defended myself against Constancia—perhaps normality is mediocrity.

I think, naturally, of our neighbor, the Russian actor, when the conversation takes this turn. With the skilled touch of the bibliophile, I run my hands over the dark spines and gilded, dusty edges of the books in my library, the coolest and darkest place in the house on Drayton Street, and I secretly pride myself that the flexibility of my hand is a perfect reflection of the quickness of my sexagenarian mind. I was—I am—a man of letters, part of an inheritance that does not flourish in the United States and is kept alive mainly in the South, the land of William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren, and its Dulcineas with a pen, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, and Shirley Ann Grau. I often think that even self-exiled Southerners—I'm talking about diabolically self-destructive gnomes like Truman Capote as well as painfully creative giants like William Styron—are like the carriers of a literary aristocracy that is unwanted in a country that craves proof that its Declaration of Independence is right, that all men are created equal, but what this equality (proposed by a group of exceptionally learned aristocrats, Hamilton, Jefferson, Jay, Adams—the golden youth of the colonies) really means is the triumph of the lowest common denominator. Why do we elect retarded presidents like Reagan if not to prove that all men are equal? We prefer to recognize ourselves in this idiot who talks like us, looks like us, makes our jokes, shares our mental lapses, amnesias, prejudices, obsessions, and confusions, justifying our own mental vulgarity: how consoling! A new Roosevelt a new Kennedy would force us to admire them for what we
are not,
and that's an unsettling feeling. Still, I'm a quiet American who sticks pretty close to his library, almost to the point of neglecting my practice, doesn't need many friends, has chosen to exercise his profession in a modern and impersonal city that shuts down at five, the blacks given over to lassitude and nocturnal violence and the whites locked away in their mansions surrounded by savage dogs and electric fences. And I spend three nights of the week in a hospital room so as to perform heart operations early on Wednesdays and Thursdays. In our time, it is impossible to be a surgeon without the support of a great medical center.

Yes, for all this, I'm a quiet old American who votes Democratic, of course, and lives in a secret city where he sees no one, is married to an Andalusian woman, talks about death with a Russian, and goes into his library to confirm, within its shadows, the Hispano-Russian eccentricity of the American South: countries with non-standard railway gages.

—Did you know, Constancia—I say, appealing to her marvelous sense of popular culture, magical and mythic—did you know that Franz Kafka's uncle was director of Spain's national railroad in 1909? He was a Mr. Levy, Franz's mother's brother, and he heard that his nephew was unhappy in the insurance company in Prague and invited him to come to Madrid to work for the Spanish railways. What do you think, Constancia, of a man who imagines himself awakening one morning transformed into an insect, working for the Spanish railways? Would it have been literature's loss or the railway's gain?