Another day passed and still Charlotte did not place a call to Warren. It was not possible to actually “call” Warren: it was necessary instead to “place a call” to Warren, to leave messages at various offices and apartments he frequented around New York and wait for him to call back. Usually he called back between one and three A.M. San Francisco time, or four and six A.M. New York time.
“Where’s your interesting Jew husband,” Warren would say if Charlotte did place the call and he did call back. He would say this if Charlotte had placed the call to say that Marin had a cold and he would say this if Charlotte had placed the call to say that Marin was going to tennis camp and he would also say this if Charlotte were to place a call to say that Marin was wanted by the FBI.
“I’m calling about something important,” she would say.
She knew what she would say because she knew what he would say.
“I said where’s your interesting Jew husband,” he would say.
“Leonard is not Jewish. As you know. I’m calling—”
“There’s nothing wrong with being ‘Jewish.’ As you say. Has he made an anti-Semite out of you along with everything else?”
“I have to tell you—”
“All you ‘have to tell’ me is where the well-known radical lawyer is. Come on. Admit it. He’s at Bohemian Grove, isn’t he. He’s … let me get it right, he’s making the revolution at Bohemian Grove.”
She would not place a call to Warren just yet.
In any case Warren could not learn about Marin from the FBI because the FBI would not know how to place a call to Warren.
In any case there was no need to place a call to Warren because Marin was skiing at Squaw Valley.
In any case Leonard would place the call to Warren.
Charlotte settled many problems this way.
Leonard flew home immediately but because of an airport strike at Beirut and a demonstration at Orly it took him thirty-six hours to arrive in San Francisco, and by then they had sifted the debris and identified Marin’s gold bracelet attached like a charm to the firing pin of the bomb. They had also received the tape, and released Marin’s name to the press. Charlotte learned about the tape when she opened the door of the house on California Street and found a television crew already filming. On the six o’clock news there was film that showed Charlotte opening the door, turning from the camera and running upstairs as a young Negro pursued her with a microphone. When this film was repeated at eleven it was followed for the first time by the picture of Marin, the famous picture of Marin Bogart, the two-year-old newspaper picture of Marin in her pink-and-white candy-striped Children’s Hospital volunteer’s pinafore. The newspaper had apparently lost the negative and simply cropped and enlarged a newsprint reproduction in which Marin was almost indistinguishable, clearly a complaisant young girl in a pinafore but enigmatically expressionless, her eyes only smudges on the gravure screen. In the weeks that followed the appearance of the picture those two photogravure smudges would eradicate every other image Charlotte had of Marin’s eyes. The day I finally saw Marin I was surprised by her eyes. She has Charlotte’s eyes. She has nothing else of Charlotte’s but she has Charlotte’s eyes.
5
YOU NO DOUBT HEARD THE TAPE.
“This is not an isolated action. We ask no one’s permission to make the revolution.”
I heard only part of it, on a Radio Jamaica relay, but I read excerpts from it in Time and in Prensa Latina and in the Caracas Daily Journal, excerpts always illustrated by the impenetrable picture of the child in the candy-striped pinafore. I heard only part of the Radio Jamaica relay because Gerardo was at the house the night it was played, and he had arranged the evening as usual to annoy and discomfit everyone involved. I used to think the design of such evenings Gerardo’s only true amusement.
Or more accurately his only true vocation.
Since he was only fitfully amused by anything at all.
In the first place Gerardo had asked Elena to come for dinner that night. That Elena came was a tribute to Gerardo’s sexual power over her, because Elena was not speaking to me. Elena was not speaking to me because I had that morning advised her that she and Gerardo would be better off exhibiting their tedious interest in each other’s bodies in the Caribe ballroom than at political meetings under surveillance by both Victor and the Americans. I did not like hearing about Elena and Gerardo from Tuck Bradley. I did not like Tuck Bradley hearing about Elena and Gerardo from Kasindorf and Riley. As a matter of fact I had already heard about Elena and Gerardo, from Victor, and I did not like that either.
Elena said that Gerardo was the only person in the entire family who understood dancing or “fun.”
I said that this might be true but in this case Gerardo’s “fun” lay not in dancing but in embarrassing the family by parading the widow of a family presidente at meetings of people opposed to the family. It made no difference if Gerardo went to these meetings, because Gerardo’s image in the community, deserved or not, was that of someone “worthless,” and “young.” It did make a difference if she, Elena, went to these meetings, because her image in the community, again deserved or not, was that of someone “virtuous,” and “older.”
A national treasure as it were.
But Elena had stopped speaking. Elena did not even know that these events to which Gerardo took her were “meetings.” She believed them to be “parties.” I think she still does.
In any case.
In the second place.
Just asking Elena to dinner had not quite sated Gerardo’s craving for social piquancy. He had asked Elena and then he had proceeded to ask an extremely sullen girl he had been seeing off and on for years, an ambitious mestiza who had once gone to Paris with him and left him first for a minor Thyssen and then for an English rock-and-roll singer and had recently returned to Boca Grande to redeploy her resources. The girl was the daughter of the cashier at the Jockey Club and her name was Carmen Arrellano but she called herself Camilla de Arrellano y Bolívar and did not visit the Jockey Club. On this particular evening she was sulking because Gerardo was listening to the radio, and possibly also because I had told the cook to ignore her demand to be served a separate dinner of three boiled shrimp on a white plate with half a lemon wrapped in gauze. The cook had found this demand particularly offensive because her son was married to Carmen Arrellano’s cousin.
“All class enemies must suffer exemplary punishment.”
The voice on Radio Jamaica was sweetly instructive.
“When the fascist police think we are near we will be far away. When the fascist police think we are far away we will be near.”
“She lisps,” Gerardo said.
“She sounds like those Cubans at the party,” Elena said. Elena had several times mentioned this “party” to which she and Gerardo had gone the night before, apparently thinking to annoy me and Carmen Arrellano in a single stroke. “Doesn’t she, Gerardo. Those dreadful Cubans who came with Bebe Chicago. I don’t mean the lisp, I mean the words.”
“I’m only listening for the lisp,” Gerardo said. “I wouldn’t mention Bebe Chicago in front of Grace if I were you, she’ll cut off your clothes allowance.”