The Boiling Season (2 page)

My parents' lives were thus a strange mixture of success and failure. Despite coming at things from different directions, they wound up at more or less the same place: well respected but poor, living the same desperate existence as everyone around them.

While my father aspired for me to receive the education he had never gotten—and that many of our neighbors considered useless to the practical affairs of their lives—he had no wish for me to join the ranks of the hill people. He wanted me to become a doctor, not in a hospital, of course, but in a muddy tent in the countryside, administering shots to tubercular peasants. Or I was to become a lawyer, but only so that I might fight to preserve the land rights of rural farmers. Unlike many people—the majority of our neighbors included—my father did not see these professions as stepping stones to a career in politics, for it was toward politicians that he felt the greatest contempt. It was axiomatic for him that no politician had ever brought the country anything but ruin, and as evidence he pointed to every man he had ever been foolish enough to help elect. It did not matter if he picked a liberal or a conservative, they all turned out to be crooks and despots. When I was still a child, he had given up voting once and for all, disposed of his radio, stopped reading the newspaper, and ceased to allow conversations on political topics in his presence. He made it a practice to mutter profanities at every government vehicle that crossed his path, daring the police to try to stop him.

Throughout my childhood, my father had done what he could to pass his values on to me, but in the end I had proven a disappointment, unable to emulate his bitter passions. Since politics in every form was banned in his presence, I had little occasion to learn what it was that I was supposed to reject. To me, as to every boy my age, the president was just another name in a textbook full of names we dutifully memorized, each one as irrelevant to us as the next. As each successive general or minister completed his coup, he replaced the songs and poems we had recited for his predecessor with compositions in his own honor. Not infrequently was the school itself christened anew. We could not have told the men apart if we had tried. They rarely lasted long enough in office to leave an impression.

When, years later, I leaped at the job Paul had passed up, it was not because I was trying to disobey my father, but because work of any kind was scarce, and this, at least, was not manual labor. And when, during the course of the interview that led to my hiring, Mme Marcus told me that her husband would soon become a senator, I never stopped to think about how my father might react. I merely thought about how exciting it would be to work for someone so important.

Coming back down the hill afterward, I was so pleased with having gotten the job that it was not until I ran into Paul on the street in front of my house that I realized what I had done.

“You think your father's going to let you work for the hill people?” he said with a smirk, gleefully anticipating the trouble to come.

“He'll understand,” I said.

Paul laughed joyously. “He'd sooner kill you.”

I had never lied to my father before, and what I told him, standing in his shop a few minutes later, was not exactly a lie. I simply told him I had gotten a job assisting a lawyer. Senator Marcus was, after all, still a lawyer.

“Assisting how?” my father said. For a shopkeeper, he was a huge man. As a child, he had worked in his father's bean fields, and he still bore the broad chest and shoulders of a farmer. The sun had wrinkled his mouth into a permanent frown.

“Just helping,” I said. “I'll be living with him and helping him with whatever he needs. What better way could there be to learn to be a lawyer?”

“I see.” But whatever it was my father thought he saw, it clearly left him dubious. “Where does he live?”

“He works downtown,” I said. “Near the palace.”

“I asked where he
lives
.” I watched my father clench his fists, even the muscles grown soft in the years since he moved to the capital tensing and turning to stone.

I pointed up the hill.

Just then the shop door scraped open and an old woman hobbled inside, an old battered basket rocking under her arm like a pendulum.

“Can't you see we're closed?” my father shouted, not even taking the time to see who was there.

The old woman's stooped back nearly straightened in surprise. The only sound was the creaking of the straw handle as she pulled the basket closer to her chest. She looked over at me, and then at my father, and then at me again, a curse bubbling under her lips. She knew it was my fault she was getting turned away, and she wanted me to know that she knew.

“This is only temporary,” I told him as the old woman struggled to slam the door behind her. “While I study for the exams.”

“I won't allow it.”

“But you want me to become a lawyer,” I said. “How many lawyers do you think there are outside of Lyonville?”

“Then you'll be a doctor.”

I said, “But the doctors live there too.”

He knew I was right. And he knew we needed the money. What he understood less clearly was that my future as either a doctor or a lawyer was far from certain. Not only was I merely an average student, I had no aptitude for being a champion of the people. Nor the energy or ambition. What the peasants of the countryside needed was someone like Paul, albeit a Paul with a clearer conscience and purer motives.

But until I had a better idea of what I might more reasonably accomplish, I let my father continue to dream.

Chapter Two

I
n my four years as Senator Marcus's footman, I learned everything I could about running a household. I watched the way Mme Marcus supervised the staff, sternly but never unkindly. She was not afraid to punish insubordination, yet she did so in a way that inspired respect, not fear. She would never dismiss a servant without cause, and she was willing to reward ambition. By the end of those four years I was helping her to maintain the household accounts.

The more the Marcuses grew to rely upon me, the more responsibility I felt, not just for myself but for the rest of the staff as well. If one of us was neglecting his duties, it reflected badly on the rest. Of course, it often seemed I was the only one burdened with this concern. For the others, a job well done was a far lesser priority than a job done quickly—or better yet, a job done not at all, if they thought they could get away with it. As much as I could, I avoided them, but there were times when they simply had to be confronted.

One afternoon, as I was carrying some small packages in from the car, I happened to come upon the gardener engaged in an assault upon one of Madame's prized hibiscus hedges. From behind—his legs spread for leverage and his arms quivering with strain—he appeared to be trying to choke it to death.

“Look at what you've done,” I said, setting down the paper-wrapped boxes and ripping the shears from his hands. The blades were so thick with rust they could not be closed even without a branch caught between them.

He looked at me dully. “What business is it of yours?”

“I don't want to see these again until you've had them sharpened,” I said.

He grabbed them back. “If you don't want to see them, go back in the house where you belong.”

“What do you think Madame will say when she sees this?”

He came closer, pointing the blades at my chest. “Do you want to find out how sharp they really are?”

I pushed them away. “You're as ignorant as you are lazy.”

“And you,” he said, scissoring the blades together with a metallic hiss, “had better remember your place.”

T
hat evening before supper I was pulled aside by Mme Marcus. Like a woman mustering gratitude for a gift she found distasteful, Madame offered me a smile that was tight and uncomfortable.

“Of course you were right to have said what you did,” she admitted, sitting me down in one of the upholstered chairs in the sunroom. “They're like children, always trying to get away with something. But it would be best if you left such things to me. No one enjoys being disciplined by an equal.”

An equal what? I wanted to say, but I knew she was speaking only in terms of our employment.

“Of course,” I said wretchedly. “I was only trying to help.”

Without another word, without a glance in my direction, Mme Marcus rose, and I felt ill as I listened to her footsteps fade. Her disappointment was punishment enough.

Before going up to my room, I went to the kitchen to tell the cook not to set a place for me.

With what little daylight remained, I lay down on the floor and stared out my porthole. I tried to imagine what Paul would have done in my place. But of course, Paul would never have been in my place. Paul would never have confronted the gardener, because Paul could not have cared less about the hedge. Nor would Paul be hiding in an attic. No, Paul would at that very moment be lying on his back in the gardener's shed, holding the dregs of a rum bottle up to the fading light and boasting about the depravities he intended to perform upon the Marcuses' new maid. And as for Madame, Paul would sooner have quit than say he was sorry. That was why he felt so at home in the moldy, queasying docks, surrounded by gun-toting thugs who did not believe in regret. That was also why I knew it was only a matter of time before his mother would find herself in the city morgue, futilely attempting to identify his remains.

Darkness came down like a curtain, and I found relief in no longer being able to see the things down below that filled me with disgust. But then a new mire of dread accumulated in my stomach as I contemplated another sunrise and the continuation of Mme Marcus's disappointment.

T
he gardener, when he arrived in the morning, looked at me smugly. The cook burned my breakfast. All day it seemed that even the Marcuses were avoiding me. Otherwise, why would they have sent the maid, of all people, to deliver the message that the Senator wanted to see me—a message she delivered with a smirk?

The first thing I saw when the door to the Senator's office swung open was the pipe dancing on his lips as he mumbled for me to sit—or so I gathered when he followed the words with a finger aimed at one of his hard leather chairs.

When I was settled, he came around and lowered himself onto the corner of the desk. He was so close we could not avoid brushing knees.

He extracted the pipe with an inadvertent pop. “I think it's time we discussed your future,” he said with a solemnity that suggested such a talk would not take long.

I could barely swallow.

“Madame Marcus and I have been talking,” he continued, “and we feel you're ready for a more demanding position.”

The pipe lay nestled in his hand like a small, contented pet.

I was speechless.

“We're going to be expanding the staff.”

Although his first announcement came to me as a shock, this last bit of news was no surprise. After less than one term in the legislature, Senator Marcus had already established himself as one of the preeminent political figures in the country. Dinner parties, formerly once-a-month affairs, had recently begun happening weekly. Several days before I had overheard Madame telling one of her friends during tea that she was contemplating hiring a cook's assistant and a second footman. But I did not see how either one would be an improvement over my current position.

“Perhaps you've noticed,” the Senator added, lifting a crystal decanter from the sideboard, “that I've been traveling a great deal.”

I nodded.

He splashed some amber liquid in a glass, and with his finger he chased an errant drop down the side, disciplining it with an efficient swipe. “I'm in need of a valet,” he said, pressing the wet finger between his lips. “And a driver. What do you say?”

“To which?”

“To both.”

I crossed and then uncrossed my legs, trying to control my excitement. “It's my wish to serve in whatever way is of the greatest use to you and Mme Marcus.”

He raised his glass in the air.

“Your father would be proud of the fine young man you've become.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “It's very kind of you to give me this opportunity.”

“If only there were more like you.” The Senator took a puff from his pipe. “So many young people these days are content to do nothing. They complain about how hard their lives are, but they don't do anything to change them.”

“That's very true, sir,” I said, feeling another surge of exhilaration. I wanted to tell him the exact same thoughts had occupied me all night. “Where I grew up, it was exactly like that.”

“But your father showed you the value of hard work.”

“My father was very stern.”

“He would be very proud.”

I said, “It would be wonderful to think so.”

T
he next day Senator Marcus took away my nondescript footman's coat and slacks and replaced them with an only slightly used gray woolen suit. It was the first suit I had ever owned.

Of the two roles I had been given, the latter was the most difficult, for I had never driven before—had never even sat in the front seat of a car—and the steep, twisting roads of Lyonville were a less than ideal place to learn.

From the day I turned in my footman's uniform to the day I finally left Senator Marcus's service, five years later, I accompanied him virtually everywhere he went. Each morning I drove him to his office in the Legislative Palace. While he worked, I tended to errands downtown, always returning in time to take him to lunch. If I came back early, or if he had no errands for me to run, I waited in the anteroom. The wait was often long and dull, but there was a soft leather wing chair reserved for me, and I could sit there and watch cabinet ministers and ambassadors I recognized from the Marcuses' parties come and go.

And it was here, too, that I first saw President Mailodet.

That morning had been otherwise uneventful. I had just returned to the Senator's office after picking up some items at the market for Mme Marcus. Scarcely had I taken my seat when two enormous men in black mirrored sunglasses only a shade darker than their skin pushed through the door behind me. Instinctively I knew to lower my eyes. One of them was wearing mismatched socks, brown on the left, and on the right, deep burgundy with a grid of small gold diamonds. The diamonds above his outer heel were split where the sock had begun to run.

The men's arrival seemed to catch everyone by surprise. In my memory there was a collective, instantaneous intake of air as Senator Marcus's secretary and his clerks came to a sudden, speechless halt.

If the staff were trying to make themselves invisible, they apparently succeeded, for the only person the two men took note of upon entering was me. Seeing me sitting there, the one in mismatched socks came forward and ordered me to stand. When I hesitated, he reached down and lifted me by my lapel. While his partner watched, the man ran his hands roughly over my suit, pausing only when he felt the sharp edge of the car keys in my pocket. And then he was done, and again I must have been too slow to comprehend what he wanted, for he stabbed two fingers into my chest and I toppled back down into the chair.

That was the moment President Mailodet entered. He looked precisely as he always did in the newspaper: a slight, older man with a soft, mild face upon which perched a pair of black-framed eyeglasses so thick and unwieldy I wondered fleetingly if they alone might be responsible for the stoop in his posture. A crushed felt derby at least one size too small sat precariously atop his head. Whether it was his shabby clothes or his milky expression I do not know, but just as in the paper he looked not the least bit presidential.

By that point, M. Mailodet had been in power for only ten months. At this early stage of his term he still had the bearing of someone used to being hushed in the presence of more important people. Compared to many of the presidents who had served before him, however, M. Mailodet was in fact already well established. In the twelve months prior to his election, four different men had occupied the palace. There had been six in all since M. Marcus joined the Senate. In his own quiet way, President Mailodet so far seemed determined not to follow in his predecessors' footsteps.

We were not unaccustomed to tempestuous political seasons, but these recent ones had been extreme even by our standards. The first president in the latest string had been a provisional replacement—a judge—chosen to fill the vacuum left by the resignation of his predecessor, who had been exiled at the persuasive urging of the military. Following the judge's appointment, a brutal campaign had commenced among the four main candidates vying for votes in the upcoming elections. When the judge proved incapable of quelling the rioting among the various partisans, the legislature chose to remove him, selecting one of the four candidates to take his place. As for the second provisional president, his term ended less than two months later, when he was placed under house arrest for allegedly plotting to assassinate his rivals. The resulting vacancy led to two separate failed coups by competing factions of the military, following which the two camps settled on naming one of the remaining three candidates as the third provisional president of the year. Less than three weeks later, another group of army officers ushered him away.

Making a rare appearance on the radio the evening president number four was swept away, M. Mailodet summed up the frustration of the populace, declaring, “They have all gone mad.”

By the time the elections finally arrived, most of the original candidates had either been removed or discredited. M. Mailodet's victory thus brought about a reassuring calm.

Though he was always invited, the president had never attended one of the Marcuses' parties. President Mailodet had been a doctor, and I had come to understand he was a very private man, nevertheless thought of as friendly. He was generally well liked, even behind his back. After all the time I had spent within earshot of conversations about him between Senator Marcus and his colleagues and friends, I often felt as though I knew the president as well as they did.

As he made his unhurried way to Senator Marcus's office the afternoon of our first encounter, President Mailodet glanced over at me, his eyes small and sleepy. He smiled slightly and removed his hat, revealing a brush cut with a halo of white around the edges. His was a genuinely warm smile. Not calculated—not the empty gesture one might expect from a polished statesman. I wondered if he meant the smile as an apology for his bodyguards' bad manners. But his face was so placid, it seemed to me impossible that he could have any inclination of what they had done on his behalf. And I liked the way the president closed Senator Marcus's office door behind him, so that I only just barely heard the latch click. He was a man with nothing to prove.

T
he president and his bodyguards made several similar appearances over the next few months, and in truth I thought it odd that it was always the president who visited Senator Marcus, and not the other way around. But I took it as a sign of the Senator's growing importance. For his part, Senator Marcus never mentioned the meetings. Not to Mme Marcus—at least not where I could overhear—and never at any of their dinner parties. He trusted me to do the same.

“You know how people gossip,” he said.

Why raise suspicions when there was no need?

At the time I had little notion of what it meant to be a senator. What Senator Marcus did all day in his office, and what transpired on the Senate floor when they were in session, were mysteries I had no hope of unraveling. I understood, of course, that Senator Marcus was responsible for passing laws. But in my ignorance I imagined the process being like what I occasionally witnessed in his study, four or five dignified men discussing a subject over cigars and cognac and then shaking hands, donning their coats and hats, and parting as friends. It is a testament to the peacefulness of those years—and to my own naïveté—that I could assume something so quaint.