Just as the merchant was ready to retire, Father Time would come into the store and ask momentously for a baking pan. Then the cycle would begin again, only to be ended and restarted once more, as Father Time requested various other items.
When the merchant prince of sleds, baking pans, and apple peelers had been irrevocably conditioned, Father Time would ask for a black horsehair pillow embroidered with a picture of a purple spider. Naturally, you aren't going to have such things made up one at a time if you plan to sell hundreds of thousands of them.
In the wholesale directories, for several years running, Constance would have placed a listing for a factory in New Bedford that specialized in embroidered horsehair pillows. The factory she created would be 'failing,' and would require a major capital infusion: coincidentally, the exact amount the merchant prince had managed to save. He would be highly reluctant to gamble his new wealth, but Father Time would appear again, demanding the pillow and offering an outrageous price. And then a thousand shills would leave immense sums to reserve these pillows, and call anxiously all day long.
When the pillows were completed, giving the declining economy of New Bedford a charitable boost (though not exactly preparing it for a future of high technology), and the merchant prince had warehouses packed full of them, Constance would dissolve her operations and command battalions of public relations flacks to fill the newspapers and magazines with stories about the Lexington Avenue storekeeper who was stuck with half a million black horsehair pillows with a picture of a spider embroidered upon them in purple thread.
Then, and only then, would she appear to this broken man, to ask for a strawberry tweezers. If he made the connection, she said, fine. If he didn't, he didn't.
"Do you think he will?" I asked.
"I have no idea," was her answer.
She could have done this. She might have done it. But she didn't. Instead, she donated $25 million to Albert Schweitzer's hospital in Lambaréné.
I tried to make the fact that I suddenly had several billion dollars immaterial. I didn't feel justified in using it, and I never did. I accompanied Constance to our houses in Paris, Rome, London, and Palm Beach, but as far as I was concerned these were nothing more than very lonely luxury hotels. With my salary from Stillman and Chase, indeed, on my swindle sheet alone, I could have afforded to stay at such places, and they would have been more cheerful because other people would have been there.
But the vast amount of money, like a looming cliff, was always present. Everything echoed off it. It blocked the light of the sun. Its great presence was inescapable. We were its curators, and it possessed us, not vice versa. I will never forget how, when I was a child, my father and I went to Virginia to tour the battlefields where his father had fought in the War of the Rebellion. It was 1913. We walked all day in some areas, and hired horses in others.
Near one of the more beautiful battlefields, in sight of the Blue Ridge, was a dilapidated estate through the woods and pastures of which we rode to get from the scene of one skirmish to another. We encountered the mistress of the house riding through a hollow, and she invited us for tea—I did not drink the tea itself—in a vast garden of boxwood.
The house was falling apart and the fields were insufficiently tended. The boxwood, however, was perfect. She put all her energy and resources into taking care of it. She had to do this, she explained, because it was 250 years old, and listed in the historical registers.
A chill went down my spine. There we were, surrounded by billions of leaves and an ancient, incorrigible tangle of roots that reached deep into the dark ground, and this grotesque maze that had been seated in the Virginia soil for a quarter of a millennium, and might live for a millennium more, had enslaved the woman who was sitting across from us. How many others had it appropriated to itself, and how many more would it in the future?
My father, who was directly spoken, shared my revulsion and took it upon himself to offend—and perhaps save—that woman, and as we left he said, "Madam, this disgusting root has made you its slave. You must kill it if only for the sake of the children not-yet-born who will be otherwise captured by it. Cut it down, sever the roots, burn them out, and salt the ground."
So it was with Constance and her fortune, and she was far too intelligent not to know it, but she did not have the courage to leave it. And I, though I had the courage to leave it—I ached to separate myself from its smothering weight—did not want to leave her.
We had no option but to lead the wasted lives of the very rich. The magic of money and capital rests in magnification. If you look at the George Washington Bridge, for example, only a little of what you see is technology. The rest is capital. The hundreds of thousands of tons of steel were strained and boiled from rocks in the ground, formed, transported, and erected by armies of men who never would have been so concentrated or coordinated were it not that dollars can be collected by the billion and brought together to one abstract point that even Euclid would not be able to find, there to be a power like some science-fiction death ray or a sorcerer's magic wand.
I have found that large concentrations of capital either make their owners into monsters of vanity and petulance or sadden them beyond redemption. Constance was saddened, which is what happens when you have everything you want.
She wanted me to be president. "Of what?" I inquired.
"The United States."
"Me?" I asked silently, my lips moving and my thumb pointing at my solar plexus.
"Yes," she said, and went on in one of her semirhythmic fusillades. "You're a good speaker. You're totally honest. You're an experienced analyst of international politics. You have a fairly good knowledge of economics. You're a war hero. You're handsome. You were born in the United States, and now you count your dollars by the billion. Why not?"
"But Constance...."
"You went to Harvard, like the Roosevelts and the Adamses, and Wall Street would back you, even though you would be a hypnotic populist."
"But Constance...."
"You could start with the Senate. I'll buy a few strategic newspapers and back you editorially. You have such a will to fight! What a marvelous idea! I hadn't thought of it!"
"Constance."
"What?"
"I could never be president, even if I wanted to be."
"Of course you can, if you want to be."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a convicted murderer who grew up in an insane asylum, that's why."
As she thought about this, I could see that she was sifting through encyclopedias of history. "I don't think it would be an impediment, dear, do you?"
Despite her historical analysis, I did. Besides, deep in my heart I really did not want to be president of the United States. If you pay a certain amount that varies according to his political fortunes, you get to stand next to the president and have your picture taken, and he has to smile. The only other being that I have known who is paid to stand next to you as your picture is taken was a chimpanzee on the Boardwalk at Coney Island. His name was Tony, and he smiled only if he liked you. Unfortunately, he liked me. I was twelve years old, and he must have thought I was a girl, because he kissed me on the lips. It was my first kiss....
It was, perhaps, a just punishment, for I and my friends had journeyed three hours to Coney Island for the express purpose of standing underneath the Boardwalk to peer upward, necks bent, into women's dresses. As our field of vision was narrowed to about one degree, and the average woman walked by at two or three miles an hour, what we saw we could seize upon for only about a fiftieth of a second. If you combine this with the odd perspective and the fact that we didn't know what we were looking for, we didn't see a thing—for which my punishment was being kissed on the lips by a chimpanzee (I brushed my teeth for an hour and a half). And yet we went back again and again, so potent is the power of continuing the species (granted, Tony was another species).
My real and abiding dilemma was brought home to me not on a boardwa
lk but on a dock. Constance's Grandfather Devereaux had constructed a retreat in the Adirondacks. Though they called it a camp, the main lodge encompassed eight thousand square feet, with a seaplane hangar, boat house, music room, hotel kitchen, heated towel racks, and wireless station.
One day up there in the summer, we went canoeing. The water was pure, the lake vast and blue, the forest empty and quiet. It had rained the night before and the dock was wet and steaming in the early morning sun. Constance was in the bow of the canoe and I was untying the stern painter when she remembered that she had left the suntan lotion in the house.
I ran to get it. Though I was forty-five, I had a fully equipped gymnasium and the time to use it. So I bounded up the hill, took the steps four at a time, burst into the house, rocketed up the stairs and around the landings, seized the plastic bottle that smelled like a piña colada, and decided to break all speed records in returning to my seat in the stern.
It was a dash worthy of Jesse Owens. I flew. The faster I went, the faster I went. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the dock was divided into two sections, the far section about five feet below the part that was closer to the shore. A ladder led from one level to another. Constance was in the canoe at the end of the dock, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she watched me burn up the track.
I sped down the first part, intending to jump the five feet at the drop, but I never got the chance. I had forgotten that the surface was slick, and when I tried to stop I was launched feetfirst into the air.
First I went up, and then I went down, about seven feet worth of down, and I landed, banana-peel-style, absolutely flat on my back. The force was such that we never saw where the ripples stopped. A little more, and the planks would have been broken as if by a karate chop. I felt the blow in every muscle of my body, including my head. Constance said the noise was like a bomb blast. She thought I might have broken my back, that I would die, or spend the rest of my life in a coma.
But the joy of falling through the air and then the shocking, sobering collision with the dock revived me in more ways than one. I was less hurt than tingling. My old self was awakened, and I knew that it was still alive, that what I had had once I still had—in muscle, and bone, and in the spark inside that is always alight, and that flares in fright and struggle.
My impact against the dock, and then the knowledge that I was unhurt, freed me from the yoke of my billions. No more runabouts, motorboats, yachts, and swimming pools. No more household staff, hospital wings to dedicate, or tables to buy at benefits for the library. No more sitting in vast, beautifully furnished rooms wondering if I were dead. No more yearning for childhood, when, because I had nothing, I had everything. No more appeals from escaped Polish harpsichordists to fund institutes of musical mechanics. No more Belgian chocolates and Dunhill leather. No more nothing.
I had decided to throw over the money, somehow, without leaving Constance—to start again, to be my own billionaire. I had to do this even though I knew in advance that I would throw that over too.
This may seem contrary to human nature, but my most glorious moments have been when I was close to the abyss, and the greatest power I have felt has been when I was at the mercy of the elements, for then I merged with them and every atom in my body became pure, painless, infinite lightning.
I think that when I was blown backward from my plane and my eyes were filled with the fireball of its explosion, as many opposites met in the same place—speed and stillness, sound and silence, wind and the vacuum of the upper atmosphere, consciousness and dreaming—I may have become, for just an instant, an angel.
What is an angel? An angel is a being that has seen God. An angel has passed through the veil of death to the infinite light on the other side, to the weightless and silvery brightness, to the end of gravity, the perpetual velocity, the lightness. Just for an instant, of course. I was astonished at first, totally motionless, and then, as I pulled my ripcord, I smiled.
How can I explain this when, even at the end of my life, I don't understand it myself?
I used to marvel at the recollections of old people. How is it, I wondered, that they so often combine the qualities of elegy, fluidity, and economy? And it hardly matters who they are. A diplomat faking his memoir, an Eskimo lost in the story of a whale hunt half a century past, an old woman in quiet reconstruction of a family löst to time.... They speak in elegies because they remember the dead, they are fluid because they have forgotten the static that slows a narrative, and they must be economical simply for lack of energy.
I myself make no claims in this regard. You already know me. Despite my age and my sometimes tender reflection, I'm bursting inside like the fuse in a rose, as barbaric as a seven-year-old, and now and then as impatient and sexed as a fourteen-year-old boy in heat. Why?
I can't say. I no longer heed the great things that are the guides of youth: I have no illusions of justice; and for me love is a cross between memory and dreaming.
Whence comes my energy, my appetite, my defiance, and my desire? There seems to be something stuck in the brain, not a branch or a clog, but something like a pulsing coal, a tiny furnace of beating blood, a hot diamond or emerald, something crazy, beautiful, and sweet. It drives me forward as if in my old age I am a young man on a horse, jumping walls and streams, my heart racing. It is as intoxicating as those beautiful women who seemed most of the time to have been just out of reach, as demanding as battle, as dear to me now as a religious vision. But what is it that I cling to, what abstract energy, what magic, what life?
The Sky Over Europe
(If you have not done so already,
please return the previous pages to the antproof case.)
WHAT KIND OF security clearance do you think is required for an instructor of English at the Brazilian Naval Academy, given that Brazil has no enemies other than sloth and coconut oil? And the navy is not very security conscious, though it and the other branches of the armed forces are far more methodical than the rest of the country.
I imagine that they never looked into my case other than to pass upon my original application, and that if they had, they would have found very little, as most of my existence has had the privilege of having played itself out prior to the advent of computers. And, besides, I am unsure of what charges were filed, if any. Some things are kept quiet to avoid political embarrassment. It is possible that I need never have sought out a country with no extradition treaty, that I might simply have hidden myself in London or Madrid.
Not long ago, the commandante became interested in my origins, and he has embarked upon a languid investigation that I hope he will abandon as soon as he encounters frustration, which is what he does with everything else.
The Brazilian air force has decided to acquire some better planes and form the best older ones into a counterinsurgency group. This makes sense, as the propeller-driven AT-26's are no match for modern fighters or air defenses, while their slow speed makes them ideal for jungle air support.
The new pilots of this group are being trained on the T-27, the Tucano, a lesser vehicle but not that much different from the AT-26. As the object is counterinsurgency, many of these men are being shipped to the United States to learn the subject from us. I myself would send them to query the North Vietnamese.
All the pilots speak English, but were given to me for some polish—not Polish, polish. Rather than teach them the diplomatic niceties they wanted for their sojourn in the North—I fuck your sister?—I strengthened their aeronautical vocabulary, and in doing so I found that I could not restrain myself from offering them a few pointers about flying.
What could I know about flying? They knew just by looking that I was born before the era of flight, and that to get me into the cockpit of one of their planes they would have had to use a crane. What would I know about a metal-shelled monoplane with machine guns at the wings and streamlined bomb racks? What would I know, indeed.
Over the course of three weeks, I taught them not only the language
of flight, but enough hard-learned lessons about guiding planes and using weapons to give them an edge in combat relative not to the Paraguayan air force or the aces of Surinam but to the Luftwaffe, which, admittedly, they were not likely to fight, although their Argentine cousins had recently and foolishly set themselves against the RAF.
I introduced them to maneuvers their instructors had never dreamed of, half of which they refused to believe were possible, except that I was forced into them many times and I always burst out on the other side.
"How do you know about this?" they would ask, dumbfounded.
"I just know," I would reply.
"But how?"
"When you get older, your brain chemistry changes," I told them, "and you become wise. One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you've learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning."
Their mouths were still hanging open when one of them said, "You mean, you know about how to deal with a loss of hydraulic fluid in a dogfight, and the tricks of feathering a propeller in a dive, from heredity?"
I was trapped, but so what? I nodded with absolute certainty.
A week before that batch of students left, the commandante called me in. After reflexively asking if I wanted a cup of coffee, he winced and held his breath. I let it pass.
You see how powerful this wretched substance is? People need it to make a connection with another person, to wake up, to keep awake, to go to sleep, to work, to play, to eat, to embark upon a journey, to disembark from a conveyance.
How many times have I entered a room and been asked, from completely out of the blue, "Would you like some coffee?"
Of course I wouldn't like some coffee. What makes them think I want coffee? And the waitresses! They say, "Would you like your coffee now?"
It isn't my coffee, and how dare they assume that the only question is when I will drink it? Even after I told them no, they would come around again and ask, "Have you changed your mind about coffee?" "Of course I haven't changed my mind about coffee," I would say. "I'll never change my mind about coffee. I'd rather die."