Echo House (43 page)

And then the Man smiled, the one-hundred-watt smile that took your breath away with its whole-souled ardor; and Red knew he'd reached down deep and found the elusive key. The President's voice caught, as it had a way of doing at moments of high improvisation. At that exact moment Red knew why this Man was President—in the absence of a great war or a mighty depression he could give the people a sense of who they were and the splendid destiny that beckoned. The President picked up his cadence, his voice throbbing with the vibrato of a cello. He wanted to give them a brief sermon.

Let us praise the character of Americans who choose a life in the arena. Let us praise the passion for politics and government despite its many disadvantages, the slanders, the misrepresentations, the pettifoggery and the condescension, the unwholesome cynicism of the critics. You need the hide of a rhinoceros and the mind of Copernicus! So Axel Behl was a man very much like himself and the many other fine men and women who served the government—and here it seemed to occur to the President that Axel had always shied from the arena, preferring work in the shadows, the master craftsman who sharpened the swords and prepared the bulls but did not remain for the cutting. The President heard the anticipation in the foyer and lowered his voice another half-octave.

"A patriot, an exemplary Washingtonian, a Washingtonian of principle, honor, and vision, one of us through and through, a true man of state. On behalf of our grateful nation—"

The President put out his hand like a relay runner awaiting the baton, and Red Lambirdo slapped a long blue box into it. The President eased off its cover and raised the golden medal high above his head.

"The Presidential Medal of Freedom to you, Axel Behl!"

The President's voice echoed in the foyer while the old man waited, expressionless, his hands still folded in his lap. There were cries of approval, then a crash of applause. The photographer was maneuvering behind the President, shooting upward to pose him and the old man in the same frame. Red Lambardo had retreated, saying something now to the President's wife, knowing that his Man had lost his way in the beginning but had recovered in fine style; and standing behind the chief of staff was Sylvia Behl, a horrified look on her face. Axel looked like death itself. She leaned heavily on Agent Block's arm, and then Harold Grendall was at her side.

Alec moved to the foot of the staircase, motioning to the nurse to turn the wheelchair in the direction of the elevator. But she was watching the old man and did not notice his son and could have done nothing if she had, for Axel was deep in thought and would move only when he was ready. Alec started toward the stairs. His father was staring at the President, who was nodding and accepting congratulations. Everyone agreed that his remarks had struck just the right note, modest yet assertive; they boosted everyone's morale. He stood now with the medal in his hand, wondering if he should follow Alec. Then he decided against it. Conversation rose again amid the merry crush around the bar.

Alec had paused at the bottom step, allowing the drama to build a little. The waiters commenced to pass Champagne and the pianist to play
Happy Birthday,
everyone singing with full throat. Sentiment was never wholly absent from the capital, so there were a few moist eyes watching the old man at the summit of the staircase, bathed in the yellow light of the chandeliers.

Alec gave his father a little wry salute, but the old man's half-lidded eyes never moved. He seemed not to hear the music and the applause and perhaps he was in another place altogether, his eyes fixed on a point just over Red Lambardo's shoulder and widening as if he had seen an apparition or some half-remembered figure from the distant and irrecoverable past, unwelcome from the expression on his face, which seemed to be one of unambiguous astonishment, as if the events of his life had returned in one appalling spasm and he was now reliving each one. He made an abrupt motion with his hand, the push-pull of putting a car in gear; and then he slowly pressed both palms over his eyes and waited. The applause and singing died, replaced by a nervous rustle—and then he shuddered, his head snapping forward, eyes still covered, his body swaying.

The wheelchair glided forward on its own motion, the front wheels slipping over the top step of the staircase. The chair leaned slowly sideways and fell with a crash. The old man was thrown into the banister. Someone cried out and the nurse made a frantic lunge, too late. The empty chair hit the second step with a bang as loud as a pistol shot, and then another and a third as it tumbled violently end over end, Axel rolling behind it. There was a series of brittle snaps, the noise a dry stick makes when it is broken, and Alec knew these were the sounds of his father's bones. Still, Axel Behl fell cautiously, as if he knew there was no urgency in his descent.

A woman screamed, the scream echoing and joined by others in the stampede to avoid the chair, entirely out of control as it careened from one step to the next and finally to the floor, where it broke apart, the pieces sliding wildly across the marble, people scrambling to avoid their path. The old man followed at a distance, his body dropping tactfully from one step to the next, his limbs flapping like a rag doll's, his head bloody and tormented as if beaten; and still he had uttered no sound or given any sign that he was aware of the disaster, except his obvious discipline in remaining sightless, his palms over his eyes until the very end. At last he came to rest near the foot of the stairs.

A waiter dropped his tray with a terrible crash. There was uncontrolled movement everywhere inside the noise. Alec had waited on the bottorr step, at first shocked and immobile but finally beginning to move to intercept his father, when suddenly he was on his back, knocked down by a Secret Service agent who was rushing to the President's side. Now three agents surrounded the frightened President and hustled him from the foyer to the safety of the garden room. The agents were shouting to one another and waving their ugly weapons, telling people to stand clear or to lie down, the President's life was in danger.

Alec did not understand why this should be so. The President had nothing to do with this catastrophe. When he looked closely at his father at last, Alec knew he was dead. He could not be otherwise; there was something terribly out of place with the body and its position on the stairs, one leg bent at an impossible angle, the other curled under him. Blood was on his face and shirt, and that too was unnatural. Alec felt violent movement all around him. The President's wife was surrounded and carried away struggling, roughly handled by the young women in basic black. She was followed by the photographer and Red Lambardo, both crouching as if under fire, covered by Secret Service agents, their guns poked like pikestaffs at the terrified company. The presidential party was hustled out the front door and then to the driveway, where presently were heard sirens and the squeal of tires. Two agents remained at the door, kneeling, with weapons in their hands. One of them was the attractive agent who had spoken to Alec. Her skirt was hiked up around her thighs and she was looking wildly left and right, talking nonstop into the tiny microphone on her lapel.

Alec struggled to rise and to bring himself to the present moment. He had no idea how many minutes had passed. He saw his father lying on the third step, his foot caught grotesquely in the balustrade. Both legs were broken and blood was still leaking from the wounds on his skull, the blood thin and pink as a child's watercolor, leaking down his face and staining his wing-collared shirt. Blood oozed from his eyes and collected on his cheeks. His eyes were half-lidded so that you could not see the irises.

Alec raised himself on one arm. The nurse was creeping down the stairs, sidestepping pieces of the wheelchair. Two older men were at Axel's side, gesturing helplessly, their faces horrified. They were holding glasses of Champagne. The nurse roughly pushed them aside and bent to press the old man's neck. With a brusque motion she closed his eyelids, then wiped her fingers on her skirt.

Alec heaved himself to his feet with difficulty and went to his father. The moment when the wheels paused at the top step was still in his mind, a still photograph that would not vanish. Axel had the look of a man who had seen his accuser, Nemesis herself. Defiance gave way to something like contrition, and he bowed his head. Alec saw the rubber wheels moving forward and back and forward again, and the chair falling and his father falling with it, his hands over his eyes and his bones breaking.

He took Axel's hand, the skin stretched and wrinkled as fine paper, warm to the touch, dry and manicured as it had been moments earlier, when he was talking about Marlene Dietrich. "A doctor," Alec said.

But the nurse looked at him blankly.

"A doctor!" Alec roared, furious at the semicircle of faces above him, yet knowing at once that there was no doctor. Doctors were not part of the Behl circle, except for an amiable psychiatrist with a special practice. There were writers and editors and diplomats and politicians and bankers and lawyers and industrialists enough to administer a small nation. But there were no doctors.

Avril Raye had come up behind him now and put a hand on his shoulder. She said, "Alec, dear."

"It was a stroke," the nurse said authoritatively.

Alec said to Avril, ' Did you see the way he dipped his head and raised his hand as if he was surrendering?" Avril nodded. She had been standing next to Sylvia.

The nurse said, "He was talking strangely after you left."

"He was talking about the war," Alec said.

"He was talking to his photographs," she said.

"Same thing," Alec said, pointing at the broken body, looking for all the world like a battlefield casualty, even the tuxedo with its red rose and ribbor of the Légion d'Honneur. He removed his own jacket and covered his father's torso and face, knowing this would be the last time he would see it.

People had begun to gather around him, murmuring expressions of sympathy. Someone asked if he wanted a drink. The old man's death had been so violent and so unexpected that people were confused in their reactions, uncertain what to do or say. A few of them were still holding drinks and others were already slipping out the front door, wanting no more to do with this evil. Alec could see the television lights illuminating the street and the elm trees. He could hear raised voices, reporters demanding admission to Echo House to see the disaster for themselves. The two Secret Service agents were still at the door, but they had holstered their guns and were conferring earnestly with a District policeman. Suddenly the three turned to look at him, their expressions apologetic.

Then Harold Grendall and Lloyd Fisher were at his side. They were perspiring heavily Bud Weinberg was behind them. Harold laid his heavy arm on alec's back and murmured how sorry he was, what a dreadful affair. He began an involved anecdote about a premonition he had had years ago but did not finish. Well, Axel had had a good life. They all had. We've had the best of it, Harold said bitterly, and now maybe it was time for all of them to go.

"They thought there was an attack on the President's life," Harold added sourly. "They thought they heard shots."

"Gunshots?"

"Axel's wheelchair banging into the wall and on the stairs. I don't know what they thought, Alec. It was just an accident. I don't think they understand accidents. The look on Lambardo's face was something to see, all right. He probably saw himself an also-ran in the obits."

"Morons," Bud Weinberg said.

"Let's get some air in here." Alec turned to a waiter standing nearby and asked him to open the doors, but he refused. The Secret Service had given orders. The doors stayed closed until the President was safely inside the White House. Alec looked outside. The rifleman was standing on the croquet court, smoking a cigarette.

"Alec," Harold said. "Sylvia's here." He pointed at her sitting quietly on a chair in the dining room, glaring at Constance's portrait. Alec had to look twice, she seemed so very composed, even the glare. He rose painfully and limped to the bar to pour two glasses of Champagne. They sat together sipping Champagne. When Alec said that Axel apparently had had a stroke and was unconscious when he fell and therefore had no pain, Sylvia glanced at him sideways and said that he had been in terrible pain for half his lifetime and would not know what life was like without it and that therefore what Axel felt or thought or believed in his last moments could only be imagined. He was not interested in pain, his own or others'. He was forever alone. What he felt or thought or believed generally could only be imagined, because he lived in a world that did not value confession, and he trusted no one. Axel was the last aristocrat. He was always brave, Sylvia added, when it suited him.

"I don't think he had much of a life," she said.

"You'd get some disagreement there," Alec said. He saw that she had been crying, but her voice was steady now.

"Probably," she said. "I don't care."

"He had a magnificent life," Alec said.

"At least I had Willy," she murmured. "Poor Axel. He never wrestled with angels."

"A wonderful life," Alec said stubbornly. Then, "How did you get in?"

"Agent Block let me in," she replied. "He said you approved it, as if I needed your approval to enter Echo House."

They sat a few more moments in strained silence, staring across the dining room through the foyer to the staircase, where the dead man was. Alec looked at his watch, realizing suddenly that Echo House was now his alone; and he was head of the family. He swallowed some Champagne, but it tasted like salt. He helped his mother to her feet and they walked slowly from the dining room into the foyer.

Sylvia said, "Do you mind if I keep this?" She held the Presidential Medal of Freedom by its ribbon, swinging it back and forth. "The President dropped it. And I picked it up."

Alec caught the medal in midair. "It belongs to Echo House."

She let it go, smiling her wry smile. "I suppose it would, wouldn't it?"

"Definitely," Alec said and put the medal in his pocket.