CHAPTER FOUR
Still jet-lagged, Rizler was trying to snooze through Maya’s morning routine. She’d sprung out of bed at the crack of dawn. First, there was
the lengthy shower at full water pressure, followed by the deployment
of various heavily aromatic substances, the excruciating buzz of a
hair dryer with the decibel level of a chain saw, and, finally the
dreaded whirr of the electric toothbrush, cruelly designed to
imitate the pitch of a dentist’s drill (or so Rizler imagined). This
sequence lasted close to an hour. The routine also included
stretching exercises—unnerving motions that resembled the creeping
and crawling of a cat burglar.
She was scrubbed up, dressed and ready to go; it dawned on
Maya that she wouldn’t be able to reach Michaelman for at least
another hour.
Time was of the essence. The embassy was the key to saving
their visit (certainly they could get the media out for Rizler’s
guest appearance at that kid Irina’s book club). The local organizers
weren’t even worth bothering with. They could hardly manage
in English, and were out for themselves—on about whether Rizler
could endorse their books, or pay their way to America, or get
the Bland people to make a donation for a new literary review.
At least, she could leave a voicemail for Michaelman; it would
be the first thing he heard when he got in.
Carrie Michaelman, however, was a clock-watcher of the old
school. After five, and before ten in the morning, he forwarded
his line to the general embassy switchboard. The recorded message
began in Czech; Maya took that as an insult to the American
taxpayers who were footing the bill. Finally, in heavily accented
English, she was told the hours the embassy was open for consular
services and a number that Americans could use in an emergency.
Indignant, she had half a mind to ring that hot line, imagining
she would wrest Michaelman from bed and thus remind him
how she could make his life miserable. But Maya’s realist streak
reminded her that she needed Michaelman on her side; she’d
already blown up at him once, when they landed at Prague only
to find no welcome party awaiting them. She cooled down and
made herself useful (a favourite expression of her mother’s) by
tidying the suite.
How paper litter accumulated on the road! Foreign exchange
receipts, stubs from boarding passes, tourist flyers. Then of course
there was the fax traffic related to Rizler’s many other
commitments, which Maya had neglected for two days now to
file properly.
That chore accomplished, she rummaged through Rizler’s
shirts and ties, and made a pile for the dry cleaning service. (She
also used the occasion to discard a couple of items that she deemed
unfashionable or shabby but which Arthur—no doubt just from
inertia—had failed to weed out himself.)
This segued into straightening the vials, tubes, bottles and
appliances in the bathroom, repositioning the pillows on the
couch, and wiping the coffee table free of crumbs and dust. (These
last duties Rizler, neat as he was, would gladly have left to the
maids.)
Just as she was finishing up, her mother called. Mrs.
Svobodnik’s words leaked out from the defective handset at high
volume; Rizler, with his sensitive hearing, could track her side of
the conservation from the bedroom. Well, he had already given
up on sleep, more or less . . .
Her voice was so arch, so controlling, so full of presumption—
and so close (less than a thousand kilometers away, in Austria).
“The rental car was horrendously expensive . . . Miles was forced
to drive standard the first time since he was in medical school . . .
the food is awfully fattening, even in the better-rated places . . .
yes, humid, not really comfortable for sightseeing . . . we have
the tickets . . . Mozart, of course.” Then, “How is Arthur doing,
was he okay with the jet lag? We’re looking forward to seeing
both of you in Salzburg.”
Arthur. Rizler knew the pleasure that Mrs. Svobodnik took
in the use of his first name—the pretension of familiarity with a
cultural god. In protest, Rizler had stuck to “Mrs. Svobodnik.”
She had objected, “You must call me Midge—you’re senior to
me, after all!” “Old enough to believe in titles of respect,” Rizler
had shot back.
He brought up the usual excuses for ducking out of
Salzburg—he was tired, the visit in Prague was complicated (the
Stones and the problems with the embassy), the lack of direct
flights at convenient times. The truest explanation of his reluctance
was (as Thucydides said about the start of civil war in Greece) the
one least mentionable: To Rizler, Mrs. Midge Svobodnik was an
insufferable horse’s ass.
There were her rules about family gatherings. No topic of
conversation should overstay its welcome; none should provoke
a “debate” (a term that Mrs. Svobodnik uttered as if it were a
curse).
And she’d be looking out for “momentum.” This meant some
kind of novelty or innovation in each of their lives—taking up
Pilates or Spinning, the Atkins Diet or the South Beach, hiking
in a jungle or rain forest, hydroponic gardening, a reinvention of
gestalt therapy, Zen Judaism.
Last fall, in the French countryside, had been absurd.
As Rizler saw it, the Svobodniks had commandeered him
into their entourage. They were entering multiple-starred
restaurants like an occupying army. Prof. and Mrs. Woodbridge,
and young Dr. Glass and his wife Cindy Marsh were tagging
along. All of them happened to be in France in October. Such a
coincidence, living as they all did in a single subdistrict of
Toronto’s Forest Hill Village.
He was their special weapon (an exploited one, he felt, since,
most of the menu was off-limits for health reasons): Thanks to
him, they would avoid being seated in the section of the restaurant
reserved for the most vulgar Americans. Mrs. Svobodnik
announced the presence of Arthur Rizler, le grand écrivain
americain, which got them placed in a slightly better corner. The
restaurant probably inflated the bill—for who would argue about
the total, in front of le grand écrivain americain?
Certainly not Dr. Stuart Glass; he picked up the whole tab.
A hospital psychiatrist, Glass made a claim to letters. He had
bought out a failing left-wing poetry rag. Now the magazine
printed multi-page verses by Glass that ranted against
deconstruction and free love. Rizler was slightly spooked by this
Glass, a poet who administered electroshocks rather than receiving
them. Could one imagine Pound or Yeats running a mental
hospital?
Glass was on about epic. It had fallen victim to the smallness,
the lack of grandeur in modern life, to the triumph of
egalitarianism. But Rizler did not want to converse on literary
matters with Dr. Glass. “Poetry,” Rizler demurred, “I know
nothing of. Poets and novelists, it’s like dentists and doctors a
bit. You expect all sorts of things in common, but it doesn’t turn
out that way.”
Rizler switched the topic to psychiatry. He had just finished
a life of Hemingway. Might incompetent head shrinking have
hastened Papa’s demise? Could different treatments have saved
him? When he did pick up other people’s works, Rizler parsed
them closely (including the footnotes). Rizler managed to
bombard Dr. Glass with questions about medications, their doses
and side effects.
Glass had awarded the Hemingway medical team top
marks,”The best that could be done in their time, though of
course nowadays . . .” (Unlike poetry, where he was a declinist,
Glass worshipped progress when it came to headshrinking.)
As soon as Glass was finished, Rizler turned to Svobodnik
for a second opinion about the case, in the hope of a diverting
cockfight between the two medical gentlemen. He was amused
by the prospect of a showdown in these gastronomic
circumstances—Glass the drugs-and-shocks man and Svobodnik
the couch doctor duking it out over Papa’s illness amidst the
antique crystal, the vintage Bordeaux, the chariot of exquisite
runny cheeses.
Alas, Dr. Svobodnik would let down the side. He was too
wrapped up in the wine and Cindy Marsh to be bothered making
a run at Glass’s view of the Hemingway problem. So Rizler didn’t
even get his live entertainment.
Despite those memories of Provence, Rizler had little choice
but to cave on Salzburg. Mrs. Svobodnik had made it clear that
their festival tickets were already paid for; hundreds of dollars
added to Dr. Svobodnik’s credit card balance cemented an
obligation to attend. It would be stormy if he were to take the
hard line.
After getting his go-ahead, Maya retreated to the bedroom
for a nap; she was fagged out from all the tidying.
Yolanda Walden, the Prague bureau chief of the Washington
Standard, stumbled out from the Diplomatic Club. An immense
gym bag strained her shoulder, and she was half-blinded by her
own tangled wet hair.
Again this morning a line up for a shower, they were down
to a single functioning cubicle, at least if hot water were included
in the definition of function. And the fuses were blown in the
hairdryer—why had she not learned to bring her own device?
She’d been through the door of the gym at the crack of dawn,
but now was going to be late for work. And, worse still, in the
un-breakfasted, frazzled state that bespoke being single.
It might hardly seem to matter, since she was the boss. What
the interns thought didn’t matter. But then there were the locals,
her hardened, streetwise Czech employees. What they saw did
concern Yolanda. She had grown up with servants, in a Georgetown
mansion and her mother had been very particular as to how one
appeared before the help.
Rising so early meant that yet another of Yolanda’s
relationships was on the wane. Nothing as dramatic as a break up
had happened, but Carrie Michaelman had been sleeping over at
her place less often, pleading the usual excuses (press of government
business, early morning squash commitments), sort of sliding
away, as painlessly as possible. At least she hadn’t told him she
was in love.
He was a fungible male: midforties (like her), thinning hair
getting close to bald, French blue shirts with starch, ties just a
little more daring and colorful than he would wear back at Foggy
Bottom, presentably athletic, not overly hairy in the chest, polite
and a welcome member of any brunch party or hiking or sailing
expedition, with genitalia of normal size and no particular
distinguishing feature, and with little baggage (only one ex-wife).
He would do, for a while.
She could probably do without, as well.
Yolanda was in the bureau by half past nine. Having already
taken the first flurry of messages, the locals were now ready to sit
down for a coffee break, which meant forwarding the phone to
an answering machine during their fifteen minutes of gossip.
One of the interns, a senior from Smith, said she had left
two voice mails on Yolanda’s cell; she was keen to get the goahead
for a story idea on the telecom deal. She’d gotten a tip-off
that Russian gangsters were in on it.
Yolanda queried, “From whom you heard about Russians? . . .
Jeremy Stuart? Who? . . . Oh, I see, the Global Bank, sure.”
Why hadn’t she come forth with a word of congratulation or
encouragement for Rebecca? She just wasn’t any good as a mentor
figure for these kids, she chastised herself.
As for the locals, the youngest was ten years senior to Yolanda.
She sensed that these people looked on her as a sitcom character—
the unwed American career girl who never quite had her act
together. When men called, Ludmilla the receptionist would
unfailingly ask, “Business or social?” On the latter messages, which
would always be handed first to Yolanda so as to observe her
reaction, Ludmilla would write “social” in wide, florid script.
Today Yolanda had not one, but two, slips from Carrie
Michaelman. Ludmilla watched her carefully as she read. On the
earlier message, the habitual “social” was missing. What could
this mean? After a consultation with Vlad, the driver/
photographer, Ludmilla had concluded that Michaelman was
nervous; this was instantly fantasised into the notion that a
proposal of marriage must be on its way.
Yolanda was piqued. Two messages, that was awkward and
fodder for wagging tongues. Michaelman had been keeping his
distance from her, more and more; now he had to go and make
himself conspicuous among her staff.
Michaelman—as socially astute as they came—felt keenly
his clumsiness with Yolanda’s receptionist.
Ambassador Horvat had been on his case about Rizler. Something
needed to be done to raise the profile of the Mozart lecture. The
Standard could be his salvation. If the prestigious daily were to
cover Rizler’s presence in Prague, lack of local attention wouldn’t
matter so much. The telecom restructuring could be pushed back
into the business section. As for the Stones, embassy pressure on
Rizler’s local organizers could get his talk postponed until the
band was far out of middle Europe.
All he needed was one favour: Yolanda had to interview Rizler.
The trick was to coax that, while continuing the process of
dumping her.
Awaiting her callback, Michaelman stared blankly out of his
office window; he’d asked the receptionist to screen everything
incoming, to avoid another dunning from Maya Svobodnik. He
sipped his latte and savored a moment of peace—for now no
one was prevailing on him to drudge.
The framed artefacts on his walls told Michaelman’s story:
the diploma from Amherst sine laude; signed portraits of several
secretaries of state and one president, whose bags he had carried
on delegations and missions; most originally, an enlarged
childhood photo depicting Michaelman as a toddler on the lap of
Dean Acheson at a Christmas party in some Greenwich, Connecticut
manorhouse.
With nothing to propel him through adulthood but prep
school spit and polish and family influence, the state department
had been the logical option for Michaelman. Investment banking,
software, consulting, journalism all required at least a decade of
ambitious energy. But the most Michaelman could ever manage
for careerism was the “old college try.”
At State, the younger Michaelman was like the wooden trim
on a Rolls—not really that functional, but indisputably tony,
and you expected it to be there.
“A lecture on Mozart is newsworthy?” Yolanda asked rhetorically,
when she got Carrie on the line.
“Yolanda, you must have read some of his books in college—
Blumberg’s Predicament? And the first one, Washed Ashore, about
the young man discharged from the merchant navy at the end of
World War Two, trying to make a new life in the Midwest. Quite
good, actually . . .”
She interrupted, “Okay, fine for the Chronicle of Higher Learning.
But we’re a newspaper, Carrie, as in news.”
“He’s in thick now with the neocons. You could do something
like ‘America’s Culture Wars and Postcommunist Europe.’ The
Czech president is a major literary figure—contrast Rizler’s politics
with Havel’s. They could have met during the time of Charter
77. That might make a real story.”
“Okay, I’m going to dig around and see if I can find anything.”
“I’ll owe you big, really big.”
“Carrie, you left that second message—“social” I think. What
was that about?”
A hesitation. Then, “Squash, Yolanda, I was wondering about
squash—next Monday, the Dip’ Club?”
“Fine. And, if I go ahead with Rizler, I’ll feel free to contact
him directly.” He gave her Rizler’s whereabouts, and a warning
about Maya—Rizler’s “Alsatian guard dog,” as he called her.
“You see, faster than computer!” boasted Milan, the eldest of
Yolanda’s Czech helpers.
He had kept meticulous paper files through the decades of
service to the Standard. For most of that time, it was a privilege
just to have access to Western newspapers and magazines. (Milan
had started with the Standard in ’68; somehow the authorities
had overlooked the former sociology student; the paper had been
allowed to keep him, despite the crackdown.)
He seemed to have clipped out everything; as if the archive
itself was a hedge against darkness and oppression.
So Yolanda was now staring at a yellowed scrap of newsprint
from the early ‘80s. Rizler’s debate with Hans-Jürgen Roth, leading
German novelist of his generation, socialist, orphan of the war, child
of the Wirtschaftswunder, winner but refuser of the Nobel Prize—
refuser because of the munitions money whence the Prize originated.
The Reagan people thought the West Germans lacked backbone
in their dealings with Moscow. Roth was a pacifist, or at least, a
disarmer. He had signed a petition declaring America a dangerous
and decadent power, lacking a moral center, and moreover, he
was opposing on these grounds the placement of American missiles
on German soil.
Radio Free Europe had organized a debate in Berlin. Rizler had
defended America.
Or rather, he had decried the decadence of Europe. “Today West
Berlin is on a lower cultural level than Sao Paolo; Paris is pedestrian—
you could have a richer spiritual life in Denver or Santa Fe.”
Then a more recent item extracted by Milan from “Literature
and Dissent.” This was about Rizler standing up for Walter Knapp,
the Chicago professor charged with sexual harassment. Dissent?
What did sex abuse have to do with dissent? Perhaps Milan had
been noticing the file photo of Rizler with Andrei Sakharov next
to the article—that must be it. Or was it was the reference to
Rizler’s activism in PEN?
Yolanda couldn’t figure out why a famous writer would waste
his moral capital with a cause like Walter Knapp. If she were to
go ahead with the interview, much more digging would be needed.
In a busier week she’d have taken a pass on Rizler. But he was
a better bet for her than the other current stories. The telecom
sell-off bored her, as did all financial news. The Stones—she was
happy to leave that with the kids, her interns—they’d be thrilled
to hobnob with the glitterati. Apart from flirting and getting
drunk, Yolanda didn’t have much use for rock; she preferred
Mozart.
“Am I disturbing you? I tried earlier, but the line was busy.”
It was Michaelman; the idler had managed to catch her, Maya,
asleep and at midmorning yet.
“I’m afraid,” he told Maya, “the organizers of Dr. Rizler’s
talk have had some difficulties securing an appropriate audience
for Saturday night. They have proposed a postponement until
three days later. Such a date, I understand on good authority,
would be advantageous for press coverage; I can’t promise for
sure, but the Washington Standard has expressed a serious interest
in running a story early next week. Of course it is you who are in
charge of Dr. Rizler’s schedule.” Michaelman now shut up, and
listened closely for the tone that Maya would adopt in response.
“This turn of events will require us to get back to you,” said Maya.
Michaelman upped the ante. “In addition, I would think it
to be the case that the ambassador would welcome yourself and
Mr. Rizler to stay in her residence for these additional unexpected
days you would be in Prague.”
“Well, on that,” Maya answered, “the ambassador might want
to call Mr. Rizler privately, just to be able to talk on a one-onone
basis as it were about his personal accommodation needs.”
Maya suggested this as way of testing what Michaelman was about
with all these propositions—she didn’t exactly trust him.
Michaelman concluded, “So I leave it with you. You have
agreed in principle to the change of date. I can put you in touch
with the ambassador and the Washington Standard bureau.”
“You’ll hear from us before end of business. The embassy
voice message system seems unreliable. You don’t happen to have
a cell phone?” Maya asked.
“Not standard issue,” Michaelman prevaricated.
Maya was on the horns of a dilemma, a very uncomfortable
place for her. Rizler’s visit could be salvaged, but at the price of
altering the plans for Salzburg. A few years earlier, her parents
would have thought nothing of such a cancellation, determined
by Arthur’s professional needs. Yet, not unlike their Mercedes
four by four or their Jennair stove or any other fashionable and
expensive thing that they called their own, Arthur had come to
be taken for granted. He was expected to perform.
While Maya was thinking this through, Rizler was doing his
own plotting. The wily street kid was still there inside; mix-ups
and disruptions provided openings—windows for entering places
that might otherwise be off-limits, boarded up. Now could be
the time to bring up something he had been wanting from Maya
for ages, but was hesitant to propose—a few days on his own.
None of his earlier wives would have denied him that, but Maya
was much more clinging and protective.
Rizler opened on a positive note, “Well, at least the embassy
seems to be getting its head around the lecture.”
“Maya,” he went on, “I’m thinking of starting to write again.
I mean something big, ambitious. To do that, I need to find the
energy, the space. I’m going to need to be alone; I’ve always had
that before starting a new project, even when it was more difficult,
with kids and all. Now that we have to postpone my talk, I’ve
got the chance to leave Prague, and go some place quieter, lazier.
Why not see your parents in Salzburg, and let me fend for myself
around here?”
While saying this, Rizler adopted an air of high seriousness.
He tilted his head upward, his glance intense, that of a mind
projecting its beam far beyond the objects immediately present.
It was just such a pose that, appearance-wise, made Rizler so
plausible a savior of the West.
“Dear Arthur,” Maya inveighed (getting up from beside Rizler
on the sofa and now standing in front of him), “of course, in
principle, fine. But nothing of this sort has been set up. Transport,
lodging, how you would get your meals—that would take time
to arrange.”
“The embassy will deal with it. Horvat probably has a country
house not more than a couple of hours from Prague, on a lake.”
The scenario was losing some of its terror for Maya, just as
Rizler had hoped. “There would be personnel and amenities?”
“I would certainly assume so.”
Maya resumed her seat and nuzzled up to Rizler’s shoulder.
She threw him a smile, flashing her symmetrical, blanched teeth.
“Now, do tell—what is this new opus to be about?”
Rizler hadn’t worked that through. “Well,” he ad-libbed, “it
goes something like this. A type along the lines of that pushy
suitor of yours is named dean of a great undergraduate college. I
mean, someone young, liberal out of convenience, ingratiating, a
great fundraiser, a modern manager. And then there’s a noisy,
older professor, say Walter Knapp, the victim of those trumped
up sexually harassment charges years back in Chicago. A fellow
who is not ashamed of his own prejudices; a man of the old
school, who speaks his mind. The Stuart character, let’s call him
Dean Macklem, Harris Macklem, tries to get rid of Knapp, force
him out of the college. So there’s a great struggle—and we see
just what mettle each of these men is made of.”
“Arthur, you were very brave, I remember, standing up for
old Knapp. But in your plot, who wins, the Knapp character, or
Stuart?” Now Maya was completely engaged, and had almost
forgotten the context of the whole conversation: Rizler’s intention
to go off on his own.
“I’m not sure, Maya, about how it ends. Well, that’s exactly
why I need to get away. I have an idea, a concept, but it requires
the soil to grow in.”
He had no intention of being sequestered in a nearby chalet,
surrounded by nosey embassy underlings; he had to be at peace
and had set his heart on camping out in some lazy corner of the
former Austro-Hungarian empire, a town that he might have
passed through in his youth. He asked Maya to go fetch the
English-language papers from the gift shop. She could also find
something for the evenings when he would be away from her.
Poetry, ideally. “Select it yourself; that will mean a lot to me,”
Rizler emphasized.
Making a choice of verse would occupy Maya for at least a
half hour. Once she was out of the suite, he rang the ambassador.
Rizler told Her Excellency he had been counting on getting
medical treatment in Austria. There was a specialist in Graz whom
he had known on a personal basis for many years. “No, not in
Graz itself, but outside. Actually, mostly retired and living in
reclusion, but still seeing old patients.” Could he rely the
ambassador to understand this predicament, and kindly arrange
for his travel to Graz? Discreetly. No one was to know. Now
came the really tough part—“no one” included his wife, Maya.
“It’s a very sensitive condition, if you understand, Ambassador.”
Matilda Horvat didn’t have much time for Rizler. The
thought did go through her head for a millisecond (all she could
devote to such an issue) that it might not be kosher to conspire
with an American citizen abroad in keeping his whereabouts
unknown to his wife. But Horvat had not been in a relationship
for ages, and she was inclined to interpret Rizler’s behaviour in
light of her general absurdist view of man/woman relations.
She brought in Michaelman right away to handle the details
of Rizler’s escape to Graz. If there was an exception to
Michaelman’s general un-enthusiasm for toil, it was the
opportunity to plan this sort of duplicity—a little oldfashioned
cloak-and-dagger, a touch of commedia del arte.
There was the further bonus that he would be plotting the
deception of that shrew, Maya Svobodnik. He did not buy
the medical story for an instant. For Michaelman, it was as
clear as day that what Rizler was planning was a sexual liaison
in Graz. But with whom?
“I let that girl know the book club was off because you’re
going away,” Maya told Rizler when she returned from the gift
shop with his poetry reading.
In plotting his getaway to Graz, the promise to Irina had
completely slipped his mind. Now Rizler was angry with himself.
He should have got to her before Maya; hearing it from his wife,
she would probably take the cancellation as a rebuff.
The oversight struck Rizler as a foreboding: his Graz strategem
might not be foolproof. What else could he be neglecting to
consider? He felt his heart speeding up. “I’m going to lie down,”
he informed Maya.
Among the items Maya had put away when tidying was a
print out of the last communications from Jeremy Stuart. There
was the message saying he might be “overlapping” with her and
Arthur in Prague; and there were also translations of a poems by
Rilke that Jeremy had sent her but a few days before that; he had
been at loose ends on the flight to Cape Town and had done the
translation to while away a few hours on the plane.
Although Maya never answered Jeremy’s missives, she had
hoarded them, starting with the postcard from his Florence year
(when he had fled Toronto to get over his obsession with her).
The image on the front, she recalled, was a detail from a fresco in
the rival Tuscan city of Siena—Lorenzetti’s Effects of Good and
Bad Government. Jeremy had been reminding Maya about one
of his pet theories: Machiavelli had been inspired by the Lorenzetti
paintings in writing the Prince.
He had pitched that to their common mentor, Norman
Hancock; all psyched to detail Machiavelli’s use of painterly
imagery and analogy, Jeremy had barged into Hancock’s office.
Hancock was dismissive: Who did this pretentious young man
think he was, a freshman purporting to have discovered something
in Machiavelli that escaped Norman Hancock’s own notice?
Maya had thought to show the postcard to Rizler. She tried
to interest him in Jeremy, as material. “I’ve already put enough
chubbies in my plots,” Rizler had replied.
She glanced at Jeremy’s Rilke translation. “Love Song” was
one of the poems. She liked the musical imagery in that piece.
“Across what instrument are we stretched like this?” Not a bad
rendering.
She remembered what Arthur had said about his novel-tobe.
Finally, he had come around on Jeremy’s potential as fictional
antagonist. It had just been a matter of time. Arthur would thank
her when she told him about all the offerings from Jeremy that
she’d squirreled away; his research on the Stuart-based character
would be already half-done.