We crossed the garden, I walked alongside him, deeply touched. I said: “I know what you mean, Vasily, I understand perfectly: you’d like to invite Larissa to the party but can’t.” He shot me the glance of a king hidden in a cart (in Varennes). Infinite sadness in his appearance, his bad eye gone out entirely or like a dying ember. He got into the car, leaned toward the dashboard, started the engine. The way the front wheels of expensive cars bolt forward, dig into the turn, rear back, and take off in a single impulse — your father, the king, at the steering wheel.
6
And in the same flash of insight that accompanied my recovered dignity I knew what heraldic device would best suit our House. A frank and pithy vindication of imposture: Esse est percipi. Meaning: if you perceive a king, if a man with the bearing of a king, the august gaze of a king, the eloquent reserve of a king appears before you, then do not doubt that you are in the presence of a King, a Prince. Who also, in the bargain, God willing, will float without sinking, Fluctuat nec murgitur, like Paris.
In the first quadrant: the sea, the happy days, or days we would remember as happy, by the sea. A wavy field of azure and upon it, floating, the Castle, Miramar, the many-dollared mansion. A simple escutcheon, the scant furniture of a new dynasty: rising sun in splendor over illuminated diamond … Forgetting the attributes of the old Russian families, the Orlovs’ falcon, the double-headed eagle of the Paleologos. Just as Napoleon himself once wisely abandoned the fleur-de-lis for bees of gold on field of azure. The blazon of a new dynasty, that of the Pool, upon which I would reserve for myself the modest role of supporter: a moor or savage, a natural man, a long-haired American, one foot forward, my tutor’s quill poised at the ready. And reading from dexter to sinister, facing me, an animal with human face, a monster. Not a unicorn, not a lion rampant, not a mermaid in her vanity: the head facing two directions, in symbol of its duality, jaws gaping, viscous tongue hanging out.
7
I had stopped speaking to him — for how truly the Writer affirms: the earth is full of people who don’t deserve to be spoken to! To Batyk, that is, whom I ran into after having said good-bye to your father, having heard his tremendous confession. Stretched out next to the water, in the full light of the sun, his falsity all the more visible for that, like an ordinary lizard and not one from the island of Komodo. He saw me coming toward him across the grass, crossing the garden and about to pass him by. He stuck out his forked tongue and spoke.
“They move me.” He was addressing Astoriadis, who was eating grapes (bought with my money) from a plate. “What we have here is two charming friends who have never failed to amuse me. A pair of innocents who imagine that someone, some time, will take their plan seriously, the absurd idea of an emperor … I’ve said as much to Nelly, I’ve insisted on smaller diamonds, for engagement rings: flood the market with them, sell them as real …”
It was something like that, what he said, Petya. Bragging, essentially, about his unbridled passion for lying. At a moment when we’d all decided to turn our backs on him, had understood that his was a false solution. But not Batyk. He returned over and over again to the same point: Lie, lie! he shouted. Never tell the truth, on the contrary: always lie. Never affirm or cite or even allude to the line about fooling some of the people some of the time but not all the people, an entire country, all the time, a piece of sheer nonsense to which no sentient adult would ever subscribe. A phrase which, correctly glossed (he was openly mocking my method, Petya), says — and he raised his finger, as I was supposedly in the habit of doing — but I don’t do that, do I? I don’t assume false scholarly airs? — quite the opposite: “Swear and perjure yourself, but don’t ever reveal your secret.” Here he laughed odiously, rubbing his thighs hard and looking me up and down in amusement.
To what a striking degree was Batyk’s taste bad! How vulgar and plebeian of him to have replaced the eye he lost in a fight with that diamond! The dendrites of his lies, the metallic iridescence of their tangled web glittering hatefully on his chest, Petya, a very thin thread, almost invisible, which until that instant I hadn’t noticed and finally perceived then only because of a reflection that shimmered across him as if he were a puddle of oil.
8
I didn’t open my mouth for a second or unclench the fist in which I was hiding the Pool. I moved away without turning my back on him and went into the kitchen, still with enough time before the guests’ arrival to implement the second half of my plan: something simpler but with no less impact (the description and operative principles of a bubble machine there in the Book). I built it quickly and effortlessly before Lifa’s astonished eyes. I had only to assemble the parts and dip the perforated disk in the soap solution and the machine’s blower produced a bubble in every orifice, the smaller bubbles rising more easily through the air, clearing the wall with greater agility, falling without hurting themselves on the rough asphalt, wisely adapting themselves to the sharp protrusions of this new situation, transforming myself into a different young man, a new me in the dark street. I would cast a final gaze over my shoulder: there’s only one city in the world whose name corresponds to this condition, to a lighter, more buoyant souclass="underline" Los Angeles. Wasn’t that a lovely name to dream of here in Miramar, knowing that all of us were heading toward the inevitable bursting of this bubble?
I went back to the living room, took one of the elephant tusks from its base and put the Pool there. I assessed the thickness of the glass with my eyes, and out of the usual fear of robbery and renewed disgust with Batyk, I thought, without taking my eyes from the stone, about how the Writer introduces an ostrich into the party in Kimberley, for, strangely, his characters travel down to Kimberley, to a drawing room in Kimberley (South Africa), where the ostrich swallows a stone that is on display, a diamond of incalculable worth.
I don’t believe I need comment at any length on that passage for you, only this: in the ostrich’s warm craw, the stone, mingled with the other stones the bird uses to grind up the grains it eats, survives intact, due to the thin film of grease covering it. Then months later, after being extracted and cleaned, the diamond explodes.
But before that, on the night of the party, the Writer’s characters, gathered in the drawing room, don’t realize that the diamond has disappeared, nor does the Writer himself, waiting in the library where he’d been ushered as the music played and as the ostrich, unremarked by the other visitors, was crashing the party, moving one leg forward — its thick ostrich thigh (they sell them in the supermarkets now) as yet unfrozen — in the direction of the stone’s flickering brilliance.
Here in Marbella we ran no risk of an ostrich coming in; not one family here keeps ostriches.
My plan would work. We had successfully eluded the danger.
9
Whatever you want, I’d told her, whatever you want: the idiotic and absurd notion of a King, an Empire. As long as it made her bend her waist more supplely, arching her back in my arms like a tango dancer, the two of us on the dance floor at Ishtar while her husband dealt with the ambassador from Martinique. Myself seen in profile in far more photographs than were necessary, my head rising above the feather boa around her neck. The most beautiful woman, I must say that: despite Larissa’s splendid, cloudless complexion and Claudia’s pink-tinged skin, the most beautiful. Beauties that were similar though resolved in different color schemes: gold and turquoise for Larissa, ruby and violet for Claudia, and marble and onyx for my girl. The way her hair fell between her beautiful shoulder blades, the soft curve of her neck, the most beautiful woman, Petya, and the most sensual, your mother.