'No,' I said. 'I would not be inclined.'
'An excellent answer,' he said. 'I don't see how it could be done without putting someone on your trail. On our trail. There must be a limit to wanton curiosity. Has there been any indication that people have been searching for you?'
'Only what happened to Drusack.'
'I would take that as fair warning.' Fabian made a little grimace. 'Have you ever had anything to do with criminals before this?'
No.'
'Neither have I. That might be an advantage. We don't know how they think, so we won't fall into the dangerous pattern of trying to outwit them. Still, I feel that so far you've done the right thing. Keeping constantly on the move, I mean. For a while, it would be wise to continue. You don't mind traveling, do you?'
'I love it,' I said. 'Especially now that I can afford it.'
'Did it ever occur to you that the people involved might not have been criminals?'
No.'
'I read in the newspapers some time back about a man who was killed in an airplane crash and was found with sixty thousand dollars on him. He was a prominent Republican and he was on his way to Republican headquarters in California. It was during Elsenhower's second campaign. The money you found might have been a campaign contribution that had to be kept secret.'
'Possibly,' I said. 'Only I don't see any prominent Republican coming into the Hotel St Augustine for any reason whatsoever.'
'Well...' Fabian shrugged. 'Let's hope that we never find out whose money it was, or who was supposed to get it. Do you think you'll ever see the twenty-five thousand dollars you loaned your brother?'
'No.'
'You're a generous man. I approve of that. That's one of the nicest things about wealth. It leads to generosity.' We were entering the grounds of the museum now. 'For example, this,' Fabian said. 'Superb building. Glorious collection, marvelously displayed. What a satisfactory gesture it must have been to sign the check that made it all possible.'
He parked the car and we got out and started walking up toward the severely beautiful building set on the crest of a hill, surrounded by a green park in which huge angular statues were set, the rustling foliage of the trees and bushes all around them making them seem somehow light and almost on the verge of moving themselves.
Inside the museum, which was nearly deserted, I was more puzzled than anything else by the collection. I had never been much of a museum-goer, and what taste I had in art was for traditional painters and sculptors. Here I was confronted
with shapes that existed only in the minds of the artists, with splotches on canvas, distortions of everyday objects and the human form that made very little sense to me. Fabian, on the other hand, went slowly from one work to another, not speaking, his face studious, engrossed. When we finally went out and started toward our car, he sighed deeply, as though recovering from some tremendous effort. 'What a treasure-house,' he said. 'All that energy, that struggle, that reaching out, that demented humor, all collected in one place. How did you like it?'
'I'm afraid I didn't understand most of it.'
He laughed. The last honest man,' he said. 'Well, I see that you and I are going to put in a lot of museum time. You eventually cross a threshold of emotion - mostly just by looking. But it's like almost any valuable accomplishment - it has to be learned.'
'Is it worth it?' I knew I sounded like a Philistine, but I resented his assumption that it was my duty to be taught and his to teach. After all, if it hadn't been for my money, he wouldn't have been on the coast of the Mediterranean that morning, but back in St Moritz, scrambling at the bridge table and the backgammon board for enough money to pay his hotel bill.
To me it's worth it,' be said. He put his hand on my arm gently. 'Don't underestimate the joys of the spirit, Douglas. Man does not live by caviar alone.'
We stopped at a cafe on the side of the square of St-Paul-de-Vence and sat at a table outside and had a bottle of white wine and watched some old men playing boules under the trees in the square, moving in and out of sunlight, their voices echoing hoarsely off the old, rust-colored wall behind them that had been part of the fortifications of the town in the Middle Ages. We sipped the cold wine slowly, rejoicing in idleness, in no hurry to go anywhere or do anything, watching a game whose outcome would bring no profit or pain to anyone.
'Do not dilute the pleasure,' I said. 'Do you remember who said that?'
Fabian laughed. 'I do indeed.' Then, after a moment, 'On that subject - let me ask you a question. What is your conception of money?'
I shrugged. 'I guess I never really thought about it. I don't think I have a conception. That's peculiar, isn't it?'
'A little,' Fabian said.
'If I asked you the same question, what would your answer be?'
'A conception of money,' Fabian said, 'doesn't exist in a pure state. I mean you have to know what you think of the world in general before you can hope to have a clear notion about money. For example, your view of the world, from what you've told me, changed in one day. Am I right?'
The day in the doctor's office,' I said. 'Yes.' 'Wouldn't you say that before that day you had one conception of what money meant to you and after it another?'
Yes.'
'I haven't had any dramatic changes of outlook like that,' Fabian said. 'A long time ago I decided that the world was a place of infinite injustice. What have I seen and lived through? Wars in which millions of the innocent perished, holocausts, droughts, failures of all kinds, corruption in high places, the enrichment of thieves, the geometric multiplication of victims. And nothing I could possibly do to alter or alleviate any of it. I am not a pain-seeker or reformer, and, even if I were, no conceivable good would come out of my suffering or preaching. So - my intention has always been to try to avoid joining the ranks of the victims. As far as I could ever see, the people who avoided being victims had at least one thing in common. Money. So my conception of money began with that one thing - freedom. Freedom to move. To be one's own man. Freedom to say, screw you. Jack, at the appropriate moment. A poor man is a rat in a maze. His choices are made for him by a power beyond himself. He becomes a machine whose fuel is hunger. His satisfactions are pitifully restricted. Of course there is always the exceptional rat who breaks out of the maze, driven most often by an exceptional and uncommon hunger. Or by accident. Or luck. Like you and me. Well, I don't pretend that the entire human race is - or should be - satisfied with the same things. There are men who want power and who will abase themselves, betray their mothers, kill for it. Regard certain of our presidents and the colonels who rule most of the world today. There are saints who will commit themselves to the fire rather than deny some truth that they believe has been vouchsafed them. There are men who wear themselves out with ulcers and heart attacks before the age of sixty for the ludicrous distinction of running an assembly line, an advertising agency, a brokerage house. I'll say nothing about the women who allow themselves to become drudges for love, or whores out of pure laziness. When you were earning your living as a pilot, I imagine you believed yourself happy.'
'Very,' I said.
'I dislike flying,' Fabian said. I am either bored in the air or frightened. Everyone to his own satisfactions. Mine, I'm afraid, are banal and selfish. I hate to work; I like the company of elegant women; I enjoy traveling, with a certain emphasis on fine, old-fashioned hotels; I have a collector's instinct, which up to now I have had to suppress. None of this is particularly admirable, but I'm not running as an admirable entry. Actually, since we're partners, I'd prefer it if we could share the same tastes. It would reduce the probability of friction between us.' He looked at me speculatively. 'Do you consider yourself admirable?'