Gryphon (62 page)

“Thanks,” Krumholtz said. “Thanks a lot. By the way, you’ve got a bit of chocolate, right there, on your chin.”

“That’s what I meant to do,” the kid said. He turned around and opened the till, counting the singles, giving his back to Krumholtz.

Once out of D——— and headed up Happy Valley Drive, Krumholtz had consulted his directions. He was supposed to turn off Happy Valley onto Eitel Avenue, which would take him to County Road M, and then to Valhalla Road, where Mallard lived. But now, having twisted and turned on the roads that seemed to have no destination at all in mind, that wandered through swampy areas and then back up to rocky plateaus before descending again, he had found himself in this post-wilderness spot that looked as if the first-growth trees had been cut years ago before the spruce and maples had replaced them. He had never been in northern Minnesota before, but the manufacturer’s rep on the airplane headed toward D——— had told him that there were still wolves up here. He could believe it. “Wolves,” his fellow passenger had said. “And moose.” The passenger sat back. “Oh, and the bears. I forgot to mention the bears. And they all eat things.”

How many places could you find in the world where a cell phone wouldn’t work? Krumholtz checked his watch again, a cheap drugstore brand, and noticed that it had stopped. The time was still two thirty and would be two thirty from now on. He was very late. Folding himself back into his car—he was a big man, and the top of his head had almost continual bruises and bumps from lintels and beams and overhead luggage racks and doorframes—he started the engine and edged forward back onto the road. Overhead, the hawk circled away.

Ahead of him the road began another series of indecisive twists and turns, heading into a forest so dense that a desolate canopy of branches blocked the sky and shielded the road from the sun. He felt as if he were drifting into a tunnel of vegetation where the usual norms had been reversed. Here the trees were permanent, but the route was temporary and subject to disappearance. At almost exactly the moment when Krumholtz thought he should turn the car around and head back, he came upon a long expanse of hurricane fencing with razor wire at its top. He saw a driveway on the right-hand side, and a high gated barrier with the word
MALLARDHOF
carved in wood at the top. The driveway, behind the fencing, angled up to a high bluff. A sign in front of the gate announced
VALHALLA DRIVE
. The hurricane fence stretched away in both directions, north and south.

An intercom with a white button stood in front of the gate. Krumholtz drove up in front of it and pressed the button.

“Yes?” A woman’s voice.

“It’s Jerry Krumholtz.” He waited. The silence continued for five seconds, ten seconds, almost half a minute. “From
Success
magazine. I have an appointment? With James Mallard?”

Now he might have a story: Mallard, perhaps emulating Howard Hughes, feared the world’s toxicity.

“It’s been arranged. I’m here
to interview James Mallard.
”

From the forest came an insucking breath of wind.

“This interview was set up
a long time ago
. And … and a photographer will be here in a few days for the artwork.”

He waited. The engine of the rental car hummed quietly.

“This
has all been arranged
. It’s been agreed to.”

“You don’t have to plead,” the voice on the intercom said. “Do you believe in angels?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“Well, it may be simple, but I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you believe in angels?” Just then, the gate lifted as if on invisible wires, and Krumholtz drove in. He had the impression that video surveillance cameras were trained on him as his car made its way up a switchback dirt road around the bowl of a valley to the crest of the bluff, where he saw the house splayed out lengthwise across the top.

The house, Mallardhof, built of concrete and glass, commanded a distant view of Lake Superior in one direction and the forest in another. A green Jeep speckled with dried mud sat in the driveway along with a car whose make Krumholtz didn’t recognize. A small perennial garden had been planted to the right of the garage. From where he had parked, Krumholtz could not quite see where the house ended; it just went on and on. It was in Martian Embassy style: ostentatiously inhuman. Near the front door was a display area consisting of a fragile-seeming pile of rocks, like a cairn, possibly a sculpture of some kind, encircled by bricks. The austere lavishness of the house presented the viewer with showy neutrality, as if the old styles of grandiose display—Italian palazzos,
Tudor palaces, and castles—had given way to a nondecorative fortress brutalism of glass and stone. How the floor-to-ceiling glass supported the concrete roof was a mystery, unless the glass was thicker than it appeared to be and was load-bearing, as required by law. Krumholtz did not feel like getting out of his rental car, but when he saw a woman emerging from the front door, he thought he had better get to work.

“Hello hello
hello
!” she said, smiling with what must have been forced cheer, but the smile was so dazzling that Krumholtz thought for a moment that she might actually be happy to see him. She wore beige capri pants and a simple gray blouse, and she looked, as the wives of the rich usually did, like a professional beauty. In fact she was terribly beautiful, so much so that he could hardly keep his eyes on her. Beautiful women had always made him shy, and gazing at this one was like looking at the sun. After a few seconds, he had to turn away. “Mr. Krumholtz,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Ellie Mallard.”

“Jerry,” he said. “Please call me Jerry.”

“I shall call you Mr. Krumholtz,” she said, holding her ground. “For the sake of your
dignity
.” Her skin, which at first he had assumed to be deeply tanned, he now saw had a permanent attractive darkness to it. Did she have an African-American mother or grandmother? Or was her family Persian? How to ask such a question? Her black tangled hair fell down to her shoulders, and gold hoop earrings sparkled against her skin in the fading light. “Please come in,” she said, holding the door open for him. “You must be tired out.”

“Well, I got lost,” he said.

“Everyone does. Absolutely
nobody
knows how to get here. I still get lost myself sometimes, when I’m not paying attention. But anyway you’re here now, and welcome to Mallardhof.”

“Why is it called Mallardhof?” he asked.

“No reason at all!” she said with a practiced dry humor. She moved fluidly, like the perfect beauty she was. “We just decided that it needed a name and that’s the name we gave it. Maybe we should find another name. It’s so German. What would
you
call it? Did you like the sculpture out in front? It’s a Rocco Steiner.”

“Very impressive,” Krumholtz said absentmindedly. He was looking down the front hallway into the depths of the house: the corridor disappeared in the distance as if replicating the geometry of infinity. “My goodness,” he said, under his breath.

“Goodness had nothing to do with it,” she said, quoting Mae West, “but it
is
rather stupendous, I’ll grant you that.” The diamond on her finger was the size of a grape. “Of course we love it, but sometimes it’s simply white-elephant time around here, especially on cleaning days and wash days.”

“Yes. I’ll bet. So. How many square feet
is
this house, anyway?” he asked, feeling her hand on his back as she guided him toward a living room—which he imagined to be the first of many—down the front hallway.

“No idea,” she said. “Quite a few, but we never counted them up. Would you like a drink? Something to eat?” From invisible speakers came the sound of music: Bach, or Handel. Baroque something, performed on the original instruments: court music, yes,
The Water Music
, that was it. “You must be starving.”

“No, thank you.” On the wall, a flat-panel video screen showed a man’s face contorting in agony, relaxing, smiling, then contorting in agony again. Hung next to it was another screen showing a woman who appeared to be shouting soundlessly for help. “What’s that?”

“Oh, that diptych? That’s an installation by Herb Cello, the video artist. He’s a wonderful guy, do you know him? He’s become
such
a good friend. It’s called
Agony #6
. It’s a poor title. I begged Herb to change it, but I do love his work, and after all Herb’s a thoughtful guy even with his irony, and he has the right to name his pieces, because he’s the artist. But, you know, there never was an
Agony #5
. Isn’t that odd? Maybe it was the wrong kind of agony.” The face on the video screen began to smile and then froze into that genial expression, as if shocked suddenly by open displays of sodomy. The effect was terrifying. “You see? It’s
not
agony at all. You have to think about it. You’re sure you wouldn’t like something to drink? The sun’s almost past the yardarm.”

“No, really. I should start my interview with Mr. Mallard.”

“Well, I could be mistaken, but I think Jimmy’s in the tub. Earlier today he was outside making furniture, and I think he probably worked up quite a sweat. He was expecting you, you know, and after waiting for a while for you, and you didn’t come, he went outside, and now he’s back. He didn’t expect you to be late.”

“Yes,” Krumholtz said. “I’m very sorry about that.” Had she really just touched him on the cheek with the tips of her fingers? Why would she do such a thing?

“Why don’t I show you around the house first?”

“All right. But if you don’t mind my asking, what did you do before you met Mr. Mallard?”

“Me? Oh, that.” She laughed humorlessly. “The past life. That’s over, that life. I was a model. And I did some acting. Some TV movies and whatnot.” The interior walls consisted of poured concrete, and now, when she touched part of the wall, it gave way under her hand—it was actually a door, invisibly hinged—and they stepped into another entryway, and then into a classroom, where two rather beautiful children were sitting at a long table, writing under the eye of a young Asian woman with straight black hair and reading glasses. Beyond them, the window, from floor to ceiling, gave a view of the woods. The young woman, the teacher, was also a great beauty. “That’s our hired tutor, Ping,” she said under her breath. “The children are homeschooled. Bonjour, Ping!”

“Bonjour, madame.”

“Ping is from Beijing by way of Paris,” Ellie Mallard said to Krumholtz. The children, Angus and Gretel, glanced up quickly at Krumholtz and, finding nothing in particular that interested them, turned back to their writing. They were dressed in identical shirts, trousers, and shoes. “All their classes are taught in French and Mandarin.”

“Except science,” Angus said sourly without looking up. “We do science in English. We just learned that when scientists split the atom, God got killed.”

“Do you have children, Mr. Krumholtz?” Ellie Mallard asked, gazing directly into his eyes. He forced himself not to look away. What a weapon beauty could be, and only the rich could own it.

“Yes,” he said. “I have two daughters.”

“Jimmy and I, we believe in public schooling,” Ellie Mallard said, waving her hand at the schoolroom and the overhead projector and maps of the world, “but the local school is
much
too far away, and the school bus doesn’t even come out here, as you can imagine. So there’s no way to get there. We’re just lucky to get the
mail
! Besides, I think children should learn foreign languages, don’t you? Given the world that they will be entering?”

“Maybe so,” Krumholtz said. “But French? I understand the need for Chinese, but French …”

“Mandarin for work, French for
play
!” Ellie Mallard said brightly. “Well, we mustn’t take up any more of the children’s time.” She closed
the concrete door behind her. Krumholtz heard Gretel saying good-bye as the door silently shut.

“I’d be teaching them Spanish, myself,” he said.

“Oh, Spanish is so easy, they can just pick it up along the way. And, what, they’re going to live in
Mexico
?” She threw her head back and laughed. “It’s just a
hobby
language, don’t you think? Or of servitude?” Krumholtz’s older daughter was learning Spanish and finding it difficult going. “Now here,” she said, returning to the main hallway, “is one of our Bento Schwartz photographs. Do you like it?” She gazed at it thoughtfully. “I think it’s
quite
marvelous.”

The photograph was large, three feet by about five feet. It appeared to be a photograph of a trash heap. “What is it?” Krumholtz asked.

“Well, it’s part of a series called
Disposed,
” she said. “This one, by coincidence, since we were just talking about Mexico, this one is of the Mexico City landfill. It’s a digital photograph, but Bento has
personally
colorized some of the objects in it, such as that bucket in the foreground. Isn’t it a beautiful blue? I think it’s ravishing. He paints over certain objects to give them, I don’t know, a
feeling
. I always find something new in the photograph to study every time I look at it. It has quite an aura. Because of the colors. And the detail. And the dynamic negative space. Do you know Bento’s photographs?”