The Lacuna
Page 63
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His happiness, when it comes to him, is so pure. He has a ridiculous old straw hat he wears only for these outings. No one could remember when they’d seen it last, or his smile. Or the camera. For a change, here was a day worth remembering, and Lev wanted to record everything: Natalya and Marguerite on a blanket at the feet of pines, setting out plates of batter-fried chicken. Natalya in her little brimmed hat, seated on a rock by the water, smiling at the camera. The bodyguards clowning. Seva in his swim trunk posing on the cliff for a high dive he did not—under a hail of alarmed Russian from Natalya—actually execute. Sheldon took the camera and made Lev get in most of the photographs. Of the many vicissitudes to be recorded that day, most important was Lev’s joy.
An hour before sundown the party elected an Executive Committee of Packing Up, and everything went into the cars. A white egret picked through the minor leavings of lunch strewed on the ground. This bird had spent the afternoon stalking snails along the riverbank, ignoring the acrobatics of bodyguards leaping off rocks, shaking water from their ears, and complaining of frozen cojones. It looked like the same bird that strangely appeared in the courtyard of the Blue House, the day Lev left it. That day had felt like a sad, terrible pageant: the Children of God cast from Eden. But it was not Eden; that leavetaking was a good one for Lev and Natalya. And of course the egret today looked like that other one. All egrets look the same.
Of all things, a letter has come from Father. Dated in April but arrived today in May, on Mother’s birthday, by strange coincidence. Its arrival at all is a miracle; it was addressed to the house in San Angel, care of Diego, and anything that falls to the care of Diego could well be shoved under the leg of a wobbling table, or put in a sandwich. That address must have been sent him by Mother years ago, when she was still living.
Father didn’t have a great deal to say. He was ill last year, and has bought a car. He mustered two paragraphs describing the car, and none of the illness. Synchromesh in the lower gears, floor-mounted shift lever and clutch on the floor. A Chevrolet Roadster like Diego’s, apparently, but a later model, and white. He closed with the hope that Mother’s passing might provide occasion for a closer rapport between father and son. Rather than use his own address, because he said he intended to be leaving his apartment shortly, he gave the address of his solicitor, located on I Street in Washington, D.C.
“A closer rapport” could mean, for example, one letter in every year divisible by four. It’s worth considering.
24 May
They must have parked somewhere down Viena Street and crept toward the house, two hours before dawn. The men wore city police uniforms, Lorenzo swears, so he was confused when they approached in the usual friendly way and then forced his arms behind his back, tying and gagging him. Alejandro was near the gate on the other side, taken at the same time in the same way. They held a pistol to his head and asked about locations of the telephone lines. He told them nothing, but the men still found and cut them quickly, along with the new electric alarm. They knocked on the gate, and Sheldon opened it, not understanding Alejandro’s distress when he gave the password at gunpoint, or perhaps failing to ask for it. Alejandro can’t clearly remember.
The gunmen rushed through into the courtyard, opening fire on the guardhouse where the thunder of machine guns woke everybody at once. Round after round also went through the windows of the main house into Lev and Natalya’s bedroom. The tat-tat-tat kept going, for as long as it took to scramble under a bed in the blackness, feel the cold floor, and consider the end of life. Outside in the courtyard was a peculiar glow, not the moon or the streetlight. The air smelled of gunpowder, and then came the scent of riot gas—a bizarre memory. Incendiary bombs, thrown into the house.
Natalya and Lev had rolled onto the floor beside their bed and lay flat. Natalya says she kept her hand on Lev’s chest the whole time, to know if his heart was beating. The doorway from their room to Seva’s filled with flames. A black silhouette of a man appeared there for a few seconds. They watched him raise a pistol and fire, four times, into the blankets that lay in a jumbled pile on their bed.
Seva, Seva, she said when the phantom had gone, Seva must be dead or they’ve taken him. It was the most horrible sound, and also a terrible relief, when she heard her grandson scream. She crawled to the doorway and found him bleeding from his foot, under his bed. He was already there, he said, when he’d seen the man’s feet come in. The gunman had fired into Seva’s bed too. One bullet went through, striking Seva’s foot.
One at a time, the bodies in the guard house stood up from the floor, put their hands on their own heartbeats, and struggled to put life back on like a suit of clothes ripped away. Every body alive. We have survived. Only Sheldon is missing. Alejandro believes he might have been shot—he thinks he saw him collapsed by the gate, maybe dragged away by the assailants. Seva won’t stop asking where he is. If we are alive, he insists, then Sheldon is alive.
Lorenzo says the man who nearly broke his arms out on the street was a person he recognized. Wearing a false moustache, but it was the muralist, Diego’s old friend who became his enemy: Alfaro Siqueiros. No one quite believes it. But Lorenzo is not a fanciful man, and he is sure.
The police came today and used kitchen knives to dig the lead slugs from the walls of Lev’s bedroom. Seventy-six bullets. The pocked, crumbling wall, what’s left of it, looks like the face of a leper. Bullet holes only centimeters from Lev’s pillow. The officers worked all day, collecting evidence. The survivors stood in the ruined courtyard blinking at the light, with eyes unprepared to see the life that is spared into their custody.
Survival, by itself, is not reason enough to rejoice. If life was a suit of clothes momentarily ripped away and put back on, the tearing has ruined it. Today seems harder than yesterday. Night is worse than day, and day is bad. No one has slept. The whistle of a teakettle causes every heart to lurch. Natalya’s arms are bandaged, she burned them putting out the fire in Seva’s bed. She sits in a chair with tears in her eyes, holding her arms forward as if to embrace a ghost. Lev paces, his thoughts scrambled. With so many others already dead, he must see this assault as a rehearsal for the inevitable. Everyone else in the house must surely harbor secret thoughts of leaving here. Those thoughts layer the misery of guilt upon the misery of terror.
Lorenzo is furious over the breach, and now tediously repeats the security drills everyone knows too well already. “When the horse is gone, it’s too late to shut up the barn,” Lev warns gloomily. “They won’t come by the front gate next time.” But Lorenzo can’t stop himself, driven by anger or embarrassment at his failure. “When the bell rings for changing the night guard, the man inside is to pull one bolt only. Are you listening? One bolt only! The bolt that opens the grille. Ask the pass word. If correct, the entrant may pass only into the vestibule.” But the vestibule is controlled by an electric button, and the electricity was cut. Alejandro was blind with panic. And whatever Sheldon’s excuse for opening the gate, he can’t defend it.
An hour before sundown the party elected an Executive Committee of Packing Up, and everything went into the cars. A white egret picked through the minor leavings of lunch strewed on the ground. This bird had spent the afternoon stalking snails along the riverbank, ignoring the acrobatics of bodyguards leaping off rocks, shaking water from their ears, and complaining of frozen cojones. It looked like the same bird that strangely appeared in the courtyard of the Blue House, the day Lev left it. That day had felt like a sad, terrible pageant: the Children of God cast from Eden. But it was not Eden; that leavetaking was a good one for Lev and Natalya. And of course the egret today looked like that other one. All egrets look the same.
Of all things, a letter has come from Father. Dated in April but arrived today in May, on Mother’s birthday, by strange coincidence. Its arrival at all is a miracle; it was addressed to the house in San Angel, care of Diego, and anything that falls to the care of Diego could well be shoved under the leg of a wobbling table, or put in a sandwich. That address must have been sent him by Mother years ago, when she was still living.
Father didn’t have a great deal to say. He was ill last year, and has bought a car. He mustered two paragraphs describing the car, and none of the illness. Synchromesh in the lower gears, floor-mounted shift lever and clutch on the floor. A Chevrolet Roadster like Diego’s, apparently, but a later model, and white. He closed with the hope that Mother’s passing might provide occasion for a closer rapport between father and son. Rather than use his own address, because he said he intended to be leaving his apartment shortly, he gave the address of his solicitor, located on I Street in Washington, D.C.
“A closer rapport” could mean, for example, one letter in every year divisible by four. It’s worth considering.
24 May
They must have parked somewhere down Viena Street and crept toward the house, two hours before dawn. The men wore city police uniforms, Lorenzo swears, so he was confused when they approached in the usual friendly way and then forced his arms behind his back, tying and gagging him. Alejandro was near the gate on the other side, taken at the same time in the same way. They held a pistol to his head and asked about locations of the telephone lines. He told them nothing, but the men still found and cut them quickly, along with the new electric alarm. They knocked on the gate, and Sheldon opened it, not understanding Alejandro’s distress when he gave the password at gunpoint, or perhaps failing to ask for it. Alejandro can’t clearly remember.
The gunmen rushed through into the courtyard, opening fire on the guardhouse where the thunder of machine guns woke everybody at once. Round after round also went through the windows of the main house into Lev and Natalya’s bedroom. The tat-tat-tat kept going, for as long as it took to scramble under a bed in the blackness, feel the cold floor, and consider the end of life. Outside in the courtyard was a peculiar glow, not the moon or the streetlight. The air smelled of gunpowder, and then came the scent of riot gas—a bizarre memory. Incendiary bombs, thrown into the house.
Natalya and Lev had rolled onto the floor beside their bed and lay flat. Natalya says she kept her hand on Lev’s chest the whole time, to know if his heart was beating. The doorway from their room to Seva’s filled with flames. A black silhouette of a man appeared there for a few seconds. They watched him raise a pistol and fire, four times, into the blankets that lay in a jumbled pile on their bed.
Seva, Seva, she said when the phantom had gone, Seva must be dead or they’ve taken him. It was the most horrible sound, and also a terrible relief, when she heard her grandson scream. She crawled to the doorway and found him bleeding from his foot, under his bed. He was already there, he said, when he’d seen the man’s feet come in. The gunman had fired into Seva’s bed too. One bullet went through, striking Seva’s foot.
One at a time, the bodies in the guard house stood up from the floor, put their hands on their own heartbeats, and struggled to put life back on like a suit of clothes ripped away. Every body alive. We have survived. Only Sheldon is missing. Alejandro believes he might have been shot—he thinks he saw him collapsed by the gate, maybe dragged away by the assailants. Seva won’t stop asking where he is. If we are alive, he insists, then Sheldon is alive.
Lorenzo says the man who nearly broke his arms out on the street was a person he recognized. Wearing a false moustache, but it was the muralist, Diego’s old friend who became his enemy: Alfaro Siqueiros. No one quite believes it. But Lorenzo is not a fanciful man, and he is sure.
The police came today and used kitchen knives to dig the lead slugs from the walls of Lev’s bedroom. Seventy-six bullets. The pocked, crumbling wall, what’s left of it, looks like the face of a leper. Bullet holes only centimeters from Lev’s pillow. The officers worked all day, collecting evidence. The survivors stood in the ruined courtyard blinking at the light, with eyes unprepared to see the life that is spared into their custody.
Survival, by itself, is not reason enough to rejoice. If life was a suit of clothes momentarily ripped away and put back on, the tearing has ruined it. Today seems harder than yesterday. Night is worse than day, and day is bad. No one has slept. The whistle of a teakettle causes every heart to lurch. Natalya’s arms are bandaged, she burned them putting out the fire in Seva’s bed. She sits in a chair with tears in her eyes, holding her arms forward as if to embrace a ghost. Lev paces, his thoughts scrambled. With so many others already dead, he must see this assault as a rehearsal for the inevitable. Everyone else in the house must surely harbor secret thoughts of leaving here. Those thoughts layer the misery of guilt upon the misery of terror.
Lorenzo is furious over the breach, and now tediously repeats the security drills everyone knows too well already. “When the horse is gone, it’s too late to shut up the barn,” Lev warns gloomily. “They won’t come by the front gate next time.” But Lorenzo can’t stop himself, driven by anger or embarrassment at his failure. “When the bell rings for changing the night guard, the man inside is to pull one bolt only. Are you listening? One bolt only! The bolt that opens the grille. Ask the pass word. If correct, the entrant may pass only into the vestibule.” But the vestibule is controlled by an electric button, and the electricity was cut. Alejandro was blind with panic. And whatever Sheldon’s excuse for opening the gate, he can’t defend it.
