Bread Upon the Waters (59 page)

Romero was dressed in a bright green oversized parka, faded jeans and a red wool ski cap and pointed scuffed boots. He had started to grow a moustache, a thin black line over his lip that made him look like a child made up for Halloween. At Dunberry he had always dressed carefully in his Brooks Brothers clothes.

“Romero,” Strand said, “what are you doing here?” He knew there was no welcome in his voice.

“I told Caroline I would come,” Romero said, unsmiling. “Is she here?”

“She’s upstairs. I’ll call her. Come in.” Strand held the door open.

“Will you tell her I’m waiting for her?”

“Come in and get warm.”

“I’m warm enough. I’d rather not come in. I’ll wait here.”

“I’d rather you didn’t see her, Romero,” Strand said.

“She invited me.”

“I still would prefer that you didn’t see her.”

Romero put his head back and shouted, loudly, “Caroline! Caroline!”

Strand closed the door. He heard Romero still shouting over and over again, “Caroline!” Strand went slowly up the stairs and knocked on Caroline’s door. It opened immediately. Caroline had her coat on and a scarf tied around her head.

“Please, Caroline,” Strand said, “stay where you are.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” Caroline brushed past him and ran swiftly down the stairs. From an upstairs window in the hallway Strand looked down. Romero was holding the door of the taxi open and Caroline was getting in. Romero followed her. The door slammed shut and the taxi drove off, making wet tire marks in the new snow.

Strand went downstairs and sat down again in front of the window that gave onto the dunes and the sea and watched the snow falling from the gray skies into the gray Atlantic. He remembered what Caroline had said over breakfast the day before. “This is an unlucky house. We ought to get away before it’s too late.”

When Leslie got back he told her about Romero. Her face was pale and strained. She was having her period, always a painful time for her. “Did she take a bag with her?” Leslie asked.

“No.”

“What time will she be back?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Do you know where they’ve gone?”

“No.”

“It’s not much of a day for sightseeing,” she said. “I’m sorry, Allen, do you mind having lunch by yourself? I’ve got to go up and lie down.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Shoot Romero. Forgive me.”

He watched her slowly mount the stairs, gripping the banister.

It was already dark, although it was just past four o’clock, when he heard the car drive up. He went to the door and threw it open. The snow was coming down more thickly than ever. He saw the taxi door swing open and Romero get out. Then Caroline jumped out and ran through the snow toward the door. She pushed past Strand without saying anything, her head bent so that he couldn’t see her face, and ran up the stairs. Romero stood near the taxi looking at Strand. He started to get back into the cab, then stopped, slowly closed the door and came toward Strand.

“I delivered her safely, Mr. Strand,” he said. “In case you were worried.” His tone was polite, but his dark eyes were sardonic under the bright red wool ski cap.

“I wasn’t worried.”

“You should have been,” Romero said. “She wanted to go back to Waterbury with me. Tonight. I hope you’re happy that I said no.”

“I’m very happy.”

“I don’t take charity from people like you,” Romero said. “Any kind of charity. And I don’t hire myself out to be a stud to flighty little rich white girls.”

Strand laughed mirthlessly. “Rich,” he said. “There’s a description of the Strand family.”

“From where I stand,” Romero said, “that’s exactly the word. I took one look at this house this morning and I decided I wouldn’t touch anybody who even spent one night of her life in a house like this. You’ve got a problem on your hands with that little girl of yours, but it ain’t my problem. I won’t bother you anymore. If you ever hear of me again it will be because my name’s in the papers.” He started to turn away.

“Romero,” Strand said, “you’re a lost soul.”

“I was born a lost soul,” Romero said, stopping. “At least I didn’t go out and lose mine on purpose. I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Strand—I like you. Only we got nothing to say to each other that makes any sense anymore. Not one word. You better go in now. I wouldn’t want you to stand out here and catch a cold on my account, Professor.” He wheeled and jumped into the cab.

Strand watched as the lights of the cab disappeared in the flurries of snow. Then he went in and closed the door behind him, shivering a little and grateful for the warmth of the house. He thought of going up and knocking on Caroline’s door, but decided against it. This was a night, he was sure, that his daughter would want to be alone.

“Is there anything more you’ll be wanting tonight, Mr. Strand?” Mr. Ketley was saying.

“No, thank you.” He was sitting alone in the living room. He had had an early dinner by himself. Before dinner he had gone upstairs to see how Leslie was. She had taken some pills and was drowsing and didn’t want to move. She had asked if Caroline was in yet and then didn’t ask any more questions when Strand had said that Caroline had come in shortly after four o’clock. He had tried Caroline’s door, but it was locked. When he knocked Caroline had called, “Please leave me alone, Daddy.”

He wished he was someplace else. A wave of homesickness overtook him. Not for Dunberry, never for Dunberry. For the apartment in New York, with Leslie’s paintings on the walls, the sound of Leslie’s piano, Jimmy’s guitar, Eleanor’s bright voice as she talked to one of her beaux over the telephone, Caroline murmuring as she tried to memorize a speech from
A Winter’s Tale
for an English course the next day. He missed sitting in the kitchen watching Leslie prepare a meal, missed the quiet dinners on the kitchen table when the children were out, missed the Friday nights when they were all together, missed Alexander Curtis, in his old combat jacket, glaring at the city from his post next to the front door of the building, missed walking down to Lincoln Center, missed Central Park. What changes a year, not even a year, had made, what uprootings, blows, sad discoveries, defections.

The rumble of the ocean oppressed him, the waves rolling in implacably, eroding beaches, undermining foundations, menacing, changing the contours of the land with each new season. Old harbors silted over, once thriving seaports lay deserted, the cries of gulls over the shifting waters plaintive, melancholy, complaining harshly of hunger and flight and the wreckage of time.

An unlucky house.
Tomorrow he would tell Leslie and Caroline to pack, the holiday which had been no holiday was over, it was time to leave.

He tried to read, but the words on the page made no sense to him. He went into the library and tried to choose another book, but none of the titles on the shelves appealed to him. He sat down in front of the television set and turned it on. He pushed button after button at random. As the screen brightened he saw Russell Hazen’s image on the tube and heard a voice saying, “We regret that Senator Blackstone, who was to be on this panel tonight, was unable to leave Washington. We have been fortunate in finding Mr. Russell Hazen, the distinguished lawyer, well known for his expertise on tonight’s subject, international law, who has graciously agreed to take the senator’s place on our program.”

Hazen, impeccably dressed and imperially grave, bowed his head slightly in the direction of the camera. Then the camera switched to a full shot of the table, with three other middle-aged, professorial-looking men and the gray-haired moderator seated in a circle.

Strand wondered if Hazen’s story about having to go to New York to see his wife had been a lie and if the call he had answered in the library had actually been from the broadcasting studio. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to let Strand know that he was abandoning his guests for what Strand might think was a frivolous reason.

Strand listened without interest as the other three participants gave their intelligent, well modulated, reasonable views on foreign affairs and international law. There was nothing in what they said that Strand hadn’t heard a hundred times before. If he hadn’t been waiting to hear what Hazen was going to say he would have gone back into the living room and tried his book again.

But Hazen’s first words made him listen very carefully. “Gentlemen,” Hazen said, his voice strong and confident, “I’m afraid we’re confusing two entirely separate things—foreign affairs and international law. True, whether we like it or not, we do have foreign affairs. But international law has become a fiction. We have international piracy, international assassination, international terrorism, international bribery and bartering, international drama, international anarchy. Our
national
law perhaps is not quite fiction, but the most generous description of it that we can accept is that it is at best semi-fiction. With our legal codes, under our adversary system, in any important matter, he who can afford to hire the most expensive counsel is the one who walks out of the courtroom with the decision. Of course, there are occasional exceptions which only go to prove the rule.

“When I first went into the practice of law I believed that at least generally, justice was served. Unhappily, after many years of service, I can no longer cling to this belief…”

Good Lord, Strand thought, what does he think he’s doing?

“The corruption of the judiciary, the regional and racial prejudices of the men who sit on the bench have too often been exposed on the front pages of our newspapers to warrant further comment here; the buying of posts through political contributions is a time-honored custom; the suborning of testimony, the coaching of witnesses, the concealment of evidence has even reached into the highest office in the land; the venality of the police has entered our folklore and legal evasion by men in my own profession who have sworn to act as officers of the law is taught in all our universities.”

The moderator of the program, who had been shifting uncomfortably in his chair, tried to break in. “Mr. Hazen…” he said, “I don’t think that…”

Hazen stopped him with a magisterial wave of the hand and went on. “To get back to the international conception of law…on certain small matters, like fishing rights and overflights by airlines, agreements can be reached and observed. But on crucial concerns, such as human rights, the inviolability of the frontiers of sovereign states, the safeguarding or destruction of nations, we have progressed no farther than in the period of warring and nomadic tribes. We have instituted theft and calumny in the United Nations, where on the territory of the United States, in a forum supported in great part by our own taxes, a cabal of all but a few of our so-called and infinitely fickle friends daily mocks and insults us and with impunity does all it can to damage us. I am a so-called expert on international law, but I tell you, gentlemen, there is no such thing and the sooner we realize that and remove ourselves from that parliament of enemies on the bank of the East River, the healthier it will be for us in years to come. Thank you for listening to me and forgive me for not being able to stay for the end of this interesting discussion. I have an appointment elsewhere.”

Hazen nodded, almost genially, to the other men at the table, who were sitting there woodenly, and stood up and left.

Strand reached over and turned the set off. He sat, staring at the blank screen, feeling dazed, as though he had just witnessed a grotesque accident.

Then he stood up and went over to the little desk in front of the window. He had not brought along the copy book in which he made the occasional entries in his journal and so he took some notepaper out of the drawer and began to write.

I am alone downstairs in the East Hampton house and I have just seen a man destroy himself on television. The man is Russell Hazen. In what can only have been a valedictory speech, he was saying good-bye to his career. What his reasons were I do not know, but he has denounced himself, his profession, the rules we all live by and which have enriched him and brought him honor. I can only consider it an aberration, but an aberration for which he will not be forgiven. Since I met him I knew there was a dark side to his character, an all-pervading cynicism about men’s motives and behavior, a melancholy streak that was present even in his lightest moments, but I never suspected that he was tormented enough by it to allow himself to be overwhelmed by it. Where he will go from here it is impossible to foresee…

Suddenly he felt terribly tired and even the effort of writing was too much for him. He put his arm across the sheet of paper and leaned over, his head resting on his wrist, and fell instantly asleep.

He awoke with a start. He had no idea of how long he had slept. There was the sound of a key in a lock and a door opening, then closing. He stood up and went into the living room just as Hazen came in.

Strand stared at him wordlessly as Hazen smiled at him and stamped his feet vigorously to shake the snow off his shoes. He looked the same as always, calm, robust. The expression on Strand’s face made Hazen scowl.

“You look peculiar, Allen,” he said. “Is anything wrong?”

“I saw the television program.”

“Oh, that,” Hazen said lightly. “I thought those dreary men needed a little excitement. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. And I got a few things off my chest that I’ve been thinking for a long time.”

“Do you know what you’ve done to yourself tonight, Russell?”

“Don’t worry about me. Nobody takes television seriously, anyway. Let’s not talk about it, please. The whole thing bores me.” He came over to Strand and put an arm around him and gave him a brief hug. “I was hoping you’d still be up. I wanted to talk to someone who was not a lawyer.” He took off his coat and threw it, with his hat, over a chair. “What a miserable night. The drive out in this snow was grim.”

Strand shook his head as if to clear it. He felt confused, uncertain of himself. If Hazen was so debonair about the evening, perhaps he had overreacted to the television program. He watched television so rarely that it was possible he misjudged its capacity to make or break a man. Maybe, he thought, he had been wrong in despairing for his friend. If Hazen had no fears of the consequences of his speech, he wouldn’t disturb him by voicing his own. “You drove yourself?” he asked.