Exiles (29 page)

“How long will you be gone?”

Monika said she didn’t know for sure.

“Maybe I should go down there, too?”

“Hmm. But what about Tracy?”

“I could leave her a note.”

Monika laughed. “I think you should wait there for Tracy,” she said. “Maybe she went to the Uppsala student union. They could be working on some plans or some ideas.”

“Yes,” Spiegel said, cautiously. He was unsure how much to reveal over the telephone. “I’ve heard a few things, today, about Tracy.” He paused, but Monika was silent, waiting for him to proceed. “There’s a bank account, which had been set up for ARMS. I think it’s possible that she might have been ripping off that account.”

“Why would she need to do that?”

“I can’t really say,” Spiegel said. “Maybe she was planning to travel.”

“I don’t think so,” Monika said. “She wouldn’t do anything like that without talking to you.”

“Maybe things came up all of a sudden. Maybe there are things she doesn’t want me to know.”

“Everybody has secrets,” Monika said.

“She may have her reasons for hitting on the ARMS treasury, but I’m the one taking the heat. So I think she ought to clue me in on what’s been going down.”

“Maybe sometimes it’s safer to be, how do you say it, in the dark?”

“Ignorance is bliss?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“We also have another saying: Knowledge is power. Is that what’s going on here? Are you holding out on me?”

Monika paused and sucked in a little puff of air. “
Nej
. I don’t know anything about a bank account or about what Tracy has done or even where she is tonight.”

“I think what I’m saying is, I have to leave Uppsala. Too many people are closing in too tight,” Spiegel said. “I don’t think I can hang on here much longer.”

“You mean, you’re thinking you have to leave the country?” Monika sounded incredulous. “You can’t do that.”

“I know,” Spiegel said. “There’s nowhere I could land safely. I’d need to apply for a new passport, for an entry visa. And I can’t risk stepping right into the hands of the American authorities: Here I am, the guy you’ve been looking for. Give me a new passport and I’ll quietly go away. I think they’d have their own ideas about how to help me leave—in chains.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Monika said. “I could find a place for you. My family has a small house in the north where you could stay until the danger has passed.”

“It may never pass.”

“You should stay with us until Tracy can get you the documents and visas that you will need to travel. She could send them to you or meet you at a site that would be secure. We have done things like this before, for other political refugees. It’s no problem.”

“That might be what we have to do,” Spiegel agreed.

Monika had been planning to drive north to visit her family at the end of the spring term. She could bring Spiegel with her, and he could wait while Tracy, back in Uppsala, worked out the final arrangements for him to stay at a new refuge in Sweden, or else for his flight.

“If you’re still in danger, I will talk to Tracy when I get back,” Monika said. “I’m sure she’ll be cool with the plan.”

Despite the horrible events of the day and the demoralizing developments in the faraway war, Spiegel felt as if he had settled into a strange, Zen-like state of composure, a willingness to accept his fate. Talking with Monika seemed to have that effect on him, soothing his nerves and helping him to understand that political engagement can grow out of something greater than self-interest and self-preservation. It was easy to see why people like Zeke, Hyde, Aaronson, even he himself had joined the antiwar movement at home or the resistance movement abroad. The specter of war had set its bony hands upon their throats, and they were struggling to get free. But Monika had become involved in the movement out of her sense of missionary zeal, her saintly devotion to what increasingly seemed like a hopeless, quixotic cause. Until he had met Monika, Spiegel had felt a spiteful contempt for the Swedes and other foreigners who picketed the embassies and denounced American imperialism. They should mind their own business, he thought. Let them get their own houses in order. But he had changed. He could not help but recognize and admire the pure and altruistic nature of Monika’s commitment, the authenticity of her spirit, in the way that even an untutored novice can distinguish a fine varietal wine from a harsh blend or a genuine Ming vase from a cheap, factory-made export.

Following the skein of these thoughts, trying to sort through the many images he had of Monika—fired up in righteous anger that night in the television studio, sitting cross-legged in her cottage sipping vodka and herbal tea, standing in her doorway with her lovely face back-lit by candles as he and Tracy walked through the botanical garden to find their way home—Spiegel’s mind became snarled. He kept stumbling across the tangle of his relationship with Tracy. What had she done? Despite all that he had heard at the meeting and all that had been implied by Monika’s evasive answers to his inquiries, he refused to believe that Tracy had betrayed him. How could he believe that she had turned against him without a word, without a touch of guilt or remorse? But how could he explain the bank account? Could she have withdrawn funds to divert to some private purpose of her own? What expenses did she have? The rent? The upkeep on the VW? She seemed, to Spiegel, totally unaffected by material needs and by the drive to accumulate capital, a living refutation of all the theories of Marx and Engels.

During the fateful ARMS meeting, Spiegel had assumed that Reston had been lying about the bank account in order to tighten the knot around “Spiegel’s” neck. As he sat at the kitchen table, sipping the dregs of his coffee, enjoying some momentary soli- tude during the few hours of darkness, anticipating the sound of Tracy’s key turning the door lock, Spiegel began to realize that Reston might have been telling the truth. Beneath the surface of his public attack, Reston might have been trying to slip Spiegel a private message. He might have been trying to let Spiegel know that Aaronson had returned to Uppsala. But if that were so, where was Aaronson hiding? How much had he observed? How much had Tracy revealed?

What will I say to him, Spiegel asked himself, when he learns that I have broken my word? What will he say when he finds out that he has been driven out of ARMS in disgrace, that the whole movement has been blown apart, scorched to the earth, like a jungle village strafed by firebombs? How can I account for all the rubble and the ruin, all the damage I have done?

14

“I found you!” Melissa
was standing in the vestibule, at Tracy’s doorway. She looked white as paper, but with a ghostly glow, like a TV screen with the brightness turned up too high. Her eyes had a wet and glassy look, as if she had been awake for many hours through pharmaceutical aid. “I’ve been looking for you, for, shit, I don’t know. I’ve been in rehearsals all week, and we opened last night. I think it was last night. Did you read about it?”

“I heard it was a smash,” Spiegel said.

“Oh, yeah, the play. What a scream. You should’ve come to the opening, joined us at the cast party.” The memory of the cast party seemed to make her shudder a little, like the thought of a stiff drink after a night of far too many. She put her hand to her forehead, as if to wipe off a thin residue of perspiration.

“Are you okay?” Spiegel asked. “Do you want to come in?”

Melissa wanted a cigarette. It would calm her, she said. She had, in fact, been up pretty much straight through for two days, since the show, the all-night party, the anticipatory hours before the first reviews, the full day of meeting the press. Mick’s take on Strindberg, now called
Ms. Julie,
had become his latest
suc-cès
de scandale
. He costumed Julie—Melissa—in a low-cut black cocktail dress, and Jean, the valet, had become a Black Power revolutionary, with a bandana wrapped around his head and an ammunition belt strapped across his chest. The men in the cast, Strindberg’s peasants, wore U.S. Army fatigues, and the women were dressed as Vietnamese bar girls. A crowd of pickets, claiming that Julie represented “American imperialist hegemony,” had marched in front of the theater and stormed the stage during the “peasant chorus” at the end of act one, throwing the theater into turmoil until the Uppsala police arrived to restore order and to establish a “military occupation” to keep the peace during act two. It was later revealed that the pickets had been aspiring actors and the police had been hired for the occasion, uncredited extras working on a per diem.

After the reviews came out, Melissa, still in costume, accompanied Mick on his rounds. She was supposed to give the photographers something to focus on other than Mick’s sunken eyes and waxy skin, maybe to get a chance to answer some questions about the show and get her own name in the papers. But any chance she’d had, she totally fucked, she said. She sat beside Mick in a TV studio, trembling from the aftershock of a long night of Finnish vodka laced with meth. Maybe the reporters had asked her stuff, but she had no idea what she’d said although she was sure that none of it was quotable. So much for advancing her acting career.

Mick, she reported, was on a high, totally psyched about the
Ms. Julie
reception, talking about putting the show on the road, taking it to Paris, London, New York. Melissa wasn’t so sure. Once the audience learned that the demonstrations were part of the production, the element of surprise would be eliminated. Mick, though, said he could make it work. “We can pack this show in a box and sell it like waffle mix,” he said.

“Come on in. Sit down,” Spiegel said. He led Melissa in from the doorway where she would stand and talk forever, if he let her.

Tracy was sitting on the floor, legs folded, working on some meditations. She raised her hand, Buddha-like, a silent gesture of welcome.

“I didn’t mean to bust in or anything,” Melissa said, “but I had to find you guys to talk, and, the phone . . .”

“You’re right about that. I wouldn’t trust it.”

“Can we go somewhere where we won’t bother her?” Melissa said, nodding toward Tracy.

“We won’t bother her. She has maximum powers of concentration.” Spiegel led Melissa into the kitchen. Coffee would be a really bad idea, he thought, looking at her shaking hands. He offered to cook up some eggs, and she said okay. He wondered how long it had been since Melissa had eaten.

“It wasn’t easy to find you guys,” Melissa said. “I went to the ARMS office and asked where to find Aaronson. And some dude said he had no fucking idea, that Aaronson was no longer a part of the American movement, that he had been exposed as an agent of the forces of imperial aggression and he had probably gone home to wallow in the muck of his pigsty.”

“So they gave you the impression they’re no longer fond of him,” Spiegel said. “They think he betrayed the movement, stole money from the treasury.” He had a feeling that Melissa knew this already and had known for some time.

“So I asked,” Melissa went on, hardly noticing anything Spiegel said to her, “about Tracy. Where I could find her digs. Nobody knew a thing about Tracy, either. So they said. But I knew that was bull. The whole friggin’ bunch of them’s been to Tracy’s at one time or another. Hell, every American in Sweden came here for the party she threw after the, what was it, Byrds concert?”

“Traffic.”

“Yeah. But they wouldn’t say where she lived. Then I remember Jorge telling me something about a . . . what do you call it?” Her speech processes seemed to be deteriorating, as if her mind were a machine on tightly wound coil springs that had begun slowing toward a dead stop.

“I don’t know.”

Melissa pointed out the window, then gestured with her hand, waving her cigarette.

“
Tobak.
”

“Yeah, tobacco shop. So I knew pretty much the neighborhood, and when I got here I asked around about cigarettes and shit, where I could get them. And then I saw Tracy’s Volkswagen and everything. And I’m here.”

“Yes.” Spiegel put the plate of fried eggs in front of her, along with some bread and butter on a small wooden board.

“Go ahead, eat it, Melissa. You’ll feel better.” Tracy was standing in the doorway. She had finished her meditations and was wiping her face with a kitchen towel. She looked at Melissa with contempt. Even Tracy, Spiegel thought, whose mission in life seemed to be to rescue strays, would not reach out to Melissa. There was something about Melissa that put off other women. She was a threat to them and a challenge, and they didn’t mind seeing her suffer.

“I don’t know,” Melissa said, shaking her head. “I’m not all that hungry.” She poked the eggs around on the plate with the tines of her fork.

“Suit yourself.” Tracy went to the stove to fix coffee.

“So,” Melissa said. “I can see, by looking around here. That . . .” Her face seemed to crumple like paper as she broke into tears. She opened her palms and lay her head in her hands and cried. Her blond hair fell forward to the tabletop, surrounding her sobbing figure like a curtain and giving her the illusion of privacy.

Spiegel and Tracy looked at each other. It was obvious that the girl was having a breakdown. Whatever drugs she had been riding had just given out.

“Do you want to go to sleep?” Spiegel asked. “Do you need a place to crash?”

“It’s not me,” she said. “It’s him. I was hoping I’d find him here. But no. You haven’t seen him, then, have you?”

“You mean Mick?”

She shook her head “No,” she said. “I’m worried about Jorge.”

Melissa had stayed as long as she could at the cast party. Mick had rented a hip boutique for the bash, and the party was just screaming far-out, she said. All the extras showed up, the guys in their fatigues and the chicks still in their kabuki makeup. The cops that Mick hired to stage the bust showed up, too, but they hung at the edges, drinking cheap Australian wine. Everyone else tried to stay out of their line of sight by hiding, like, behind the mannequins and stuff to pop their pills or sniff their—whatever. Then they’d step out from the clothes racks and make like they were just having a cool time, drinking wine and eating little smoked-fish sandwiches on rye crisps. The models who worked at the store walked around with trays, wearing skirts about as short as a snakeskin belt. Way past midnight one of the cops got real drunk and made a move on an Asian chick, and she whacked him with her tray. There were bits of canapé everywhere, even on some of the clothes racks. Guys started stuffing their appetizers into the pockets of the jackets on the mannequins in the windows and even inside of the cuffs of the pants draped on the racks. The same cop, by dawn, was so out of it, he made a pass at a mannequin, Melissa said.

It was already morning when they left the party, but she was still so high on the show that she forgot she had been kicking it all night. Mick ran out and got a couple of morning papers and one of the kabuki ladies translated all the reviews for him and he thought that they were pretty cool. So he said, come on, let’s go celebrate. Melissa said, Let’s crash. But Mick said, No, he’s got to do a TV show and some other interviews and he wants to go home and get changed, so Melissa thought, Okay, how often am I going to get a chance to be on TV, even if it is TV2 that nobody ever watches? At least it’s a credit.

They walked back to the theater, where Melissa left her car. Melissa was hoping he’d drive, but not sure she should let him. He had no license and drove by Australian rules, he said, which had something to do with rugby or water polo. Goal, goal, he’d shout. He went to the driver’s side and opened the door and who popped out?

“Jorge,” Spiegel said.

Absolutely, Melissa said. He had found her car behind the theater and hid there all night, waiting. At first, maybe he’d just been looking for a place to rest, or maybe he wanted a ride back home and some sort of reconciliation. But as the night went on he’d gotten angrier, obsessed, blaming all his troubles on Melissa. When she showed up, hungover, maybe still a little drunk, alongside Mick, who was so high he could suck lightbulbs from a street lamp, Jorge went nuts. He took Mick by surprise and smacked him hard, knocking him to the ground, but Mick, his courage stoked by the chemicals racing through his veins, popped back like a toy on a spring and started beating the shit out of Jorge.

“How’s Jorge now?” Spiegel said.

Well, that’s the point, Melissa continued. She’d gotten between Jorge and Mick, taken a few body blows doing it, but got Mick to back off, draw a breath, dust off his jeans, while Jorge slumped to the ground. There was blood coming from a gash above his eye. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” she had said, but Mick said, “Like hell.”

Melissa went on. “And I said, like, we’re gonna just leave him here? He could have a concussion. He could be dying! And Mick goes, well, that’s the fucking point, that’s why we’re leaving, and I said we can’t do that, and he says—so why don’t I just go to the bobbies and sign a bloody confession, why don’t I? He starts talking about how the publicity would be sure to bolster his career: ‘Director booked on murder rap; It’s curtains.’ So I tell him I’m taking care of Jorge no matter what you say, and Mick storms off down the street.”

Melissa leaned over Jorge, who was slumped against the side of the car, sitting in a puddle of water. She could see a large bump rising on the side of his head and a crease or indentation across his cheek where Mick had smashed his face against one of the ridges of the door frame. She touched his forehead, wiping a dollop of blood away from his left eyebrow. Jorge opened his eyes and looked at her. His eyelids fluttered. He had a glassy, faraway look. It seemed to take him a few seconds to recognize Melissa, to focus on her face, and when he did it was as if his eyes sharpened like pencil points and he screwed up his mouth into a tight little knot of contempt and said to her, “Whore.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Melissa said. “Here I am, literally lifting him out of the gutter, and he’s accusing me of all sorts of crazy shit.”

“You mean he got up and started talking?” Tracy asked.

“Oh, definitely. You can beat the crap out of his little popsicle stick of a body, but you can’t shut up his mouth unless you’ve got a fistful of epoxy. He can barely stand up, he’s wobbly like a drunk or a two-year-old, and he’s shoving some papers at me, talking about love notes, says he’s been on to me all along, that I’ve been fucking all night with that kangaroo, that he’s through with me, I’m dead, worse than dead.”

“So at least he’s okay, right?” Tracy said, her interest in Melissa’s story now kindled by her sympathy for Jorge. “Mick didn’t kill him.”

“No, but this is the thing,” Melissa said. “I made a huge mistake.”

Melissa had told Jorge, right there on the street, that he was right, she had been seeing Mick, that things got out of hand a little, stuff like that happens in the theater all the time, the lines between the stage and reality tend to blur and you confuse your life with your character’s life and before you know it you’re fuck-ing someone your character’s in love with for no reason other than that it’s in the script.

“But the show is over and it’s over between me and Mick and I never should have done it and let’s just go home and patch you up and patch us up,” Melissa had concluded.

Jorge slowly stood. He was silent during the ride back to Flogsta, and Melissa was concerned. Maybe he was just spent, or maybe he was gathering his thoughts, because God knows his thoughts—if you could call them that—were by now scattered all over the city. Or maybe he had really been injured by the beating and Melissa wondered if she should take him to the
sjukhus
instead of back to Flogsta. And looking back, she said, that’s what she ought to have done. But she’d thought it would be better to get Jorge home and let him rest. And also, she admitted, she’d been thinking of Mick, because if she showed up at a clinic with Jorge bashed about, bruised and pulpy like a piece of old fruit, someone was sure to ask her, “What happened to your friend?” And Jorge would tell them, “A guy beat the hell out of me.” And the cops would come for Mick, probably right in the middle of the TV2 interview. They would yank him out of the studio, cameras rolling.

“So I thought I’d take a chance and see if I could get him back to his room and let him sleep it off, you know, keeping his head cool and level, watching his pupils, that kind of stuff.”

Spiegel looked at Tracy. She shook her head as if to say, This lady’s crazy.

“Mel, are you a nurse or something?” Spiegel said. “Because a head injury is like something not to fool around with.”

“No, but I’ve watched that stuff a lot on TV.”