Omar opened the door and stepped into the room. It was not at all how he had expected: it was large and full of light. Caroline was sitting near the windows, in a dilapidated wicker chair. A large book of paintings was open on her lap. “Hello,” she said. “Come and sit down.”
Omar sat in the chair she indicated.
“I'm sorry I've got nothing to offer you up here. Unless you'd like some scotch?”
“No, thank you,” said Omar.
“Yes, it is a bit early for that, isn't it?”
Omar agreed it was.
Caroline closed the book:
The Drawings of Alberto Giacometti.
“Do you know anything about painting?” she asked, after a moment.
“No,” said Omar. “I'm afraid I don't. I like paintings, very much, but I don't know a lot about art.”
“What sorts of paintings do you like?” asked Caroline.
Omar looked around the room, as if he might see one that fit
into this category. All he saw were a lot of canvases turned to the wall, and one displayed on an easel: a blue-shrouded Mary holding a baby Jesus. It's odd, he thought, you never see a painting like that and think, Oh, there's a mother with a child on her lap; you always know it's Mary and Jesus. He looked at Caroline. “Well, I like the ImpressionistsâMonet and Cézanne and van Gogh. Perhaps they weren't all Impressionists, however.”
“What is it you like about Monet and Cézanne and van Gogh?”
“Well, I think their paintings are beautiful,” said Omar. “I think they found something that painting could do, that nothing else could do.”
“And what is that? What can painting do that nothing else can do?”
“I don't know,” said Omar. “Capture a place and time, a moment, but capture it personally, subjectively, evocatively. They are about paint but not just about paint. I don't really understand abstract art.”
“And that is what you think painting does: captures a place and time?”
“No,” said Omar. “I mean, I don't really know. I think the Impressionistsâif they were Impressionistsâdid that. But painting can do many things, I'm sure. I can't really speak intelligently about it; I'm sorry. It isn't my field.”
“No,” said Caroline. “You speak intelligently. Of course you can speak about it. I have noticed this: this hesitation to speak about anything outside of one's field. This caution. How boring it makes everything. It didn't used to be like that. People used to talk about whatever they liked.”
“One gets a bit scared, in academia,” said Omar. “You can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing, for being wrong.”
“Well, I like what you had to say about Monet and Cézanne and van Gogh. I agree with you: they did get something right, each in his own way.”
“Were they Impressionists?” asked Omar.
“As far as you need be concerned, they were,” said Caroline.
She stood up, put the large book on the floor, walked over to, and looked out, the windows. They were high up, Omar noticed: the windows looked out onto the treetops, the green, sloping, glossy shoulders of the firs.
Looking out the window Caroline said, “What do you know about me?”
“What?”
She turned toward him. “What do you know about me? I feel I am at a disadvantage. I want to deal with you, but I want to do it equitably. What do you know about me?”
“Very little,” said Omar. “I know you were married to Jules Gund. That you are French. That you paint. I have just learned that.” He looked at her. She was looking back out the window. He could not see her face.
“I am more than that,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course you are.”
“Your coming here,” she said, “your wanting to write a biography of Jules, makes me think of that.”
“Of what?” asked Omar.
“Of who I am.” She turned away from the window. “Of who I would seem to be if a biography were written of Jules. If, let us say, you were to write a biography of Jules. Who would I be? A mad Frenchwoman. Who had been married to Jules Gund. Painting in an attic.”
“You are not mad,” said Omar, although at that moment she did look a bit mad to him: her body was tense in some potentially mad way, and the light around seemed to be bursting. But perhaps it was he. He could feel himself sweating. For the first time since he arrived in Uruguay, he felt actually, vitally there. Last night seemed like a dream.
“Am I not?” she asked, with a wild, potentially mad laugh. “What am I doing here, if I am not mad?”
“I'm not sure I follow you,” said Omar.
“You don't follow me?”
“No,” said Omar. “I don't think I do.”
“What are your thoughts on marriage?”
“On marriage?” said Omar. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think of marriage? As an institution? Do you believe in fidelity? Monogamy? Divorce? Do you think men are naturally promiscuous?”
“I haven't given any of that much thought,” said Omar. “I'm not sure what I think.”
“How I hate that!” said Caroline. “No one is sure what he thinks. You are just afraid to say what you think.”
“Yes,” said Omar. “Perhaps.”
“Don't be afraid. I need to know what you think.”
“Why?” asked Omar.
“Because if you are to write a biography of my husband, I must know what you think about certain things.”
“Like marriage?”
“Yes,” said Caroline.
Omar said nothing.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“No,” said Omar.
“Are you a homosexual?”
“No,” said Omar.
“So we may conclude that you are an unmarried heterosexual?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “We may conclude that.”
“Are you romantically engaged?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “I suppose I am.”
“You suppose? You're not sure? How unromantic.”
“No, I am sure. But why do you want to know that?”
“Because I would not want the person who writes the biography of Jules Gund to be a person who had never been in love. Or, worse yet, a person who would not admit to being, or having been, in love.”
“But I thought I wasn't going to write the biography.”
“Yes. You were not.”
What would Deirdre do, Omar wondered, if faced with this type of lunatic interrogation? He had a vision of Deirdre pushing, or slapping, Caroline. Not that Deirdre was given to violence: it was just a vision he had. Perhaps because he wanted to push or slap Caroline? No. But he felt odd.
They were both silent for a moment.
Then Caroline said, “I ask you again: are you romantically engaged?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “I am.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Caroline.
“Well, I'm glad to have done something that pleases you.”
Caroline smiled. “It is a woman, I assume, with whom you are romantically engaged?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “It is a woman.”
“For how long have you known her?”
“A little more than two years,” said Omar.
“Am I making you feel uncomfortable?”
“Yes,” said Omar.
“Why?”
“I don't know. It's personal, I supposeâ”
“I see. You are to come here and ask us all innumerable personal questionsâpardon me if I am wrong, but I assume that's how a biography gets writtenâand we are to ask you none? Is that how this works?”
“I didn't say you couldn't ask me questions. I just said it makes me uncomfortable. And if I don't have authorization I won't be asking you any questions anyway.”
Caroline looked at him. “It is a little difficult for me to believe you.”
“Believe what?”
“That you are, or have been, in love.”
“I have a girlfriend,” said Omar. “Her name is Deirdre. We've been together two years. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here now.”
“What do you mean: here, as in the man you now are, or here, as in Uruguay?”
“I wouldn't be here in Uruguay.” Both, he thought.
“Why not?”
“I would have given up,” said Omar. “I would have accepted your decision.”
“So Deirdre convinced you to come here. She urged you to come here and change our minds?”
“Yes,” said Omar.
“And if you fail to change our minds, if you return without authorization, what will she think?”
“I don't know,” said Omar.
“Will she think you have failed?” asked Caroline.
“I don't know,” said Omar.
“I know you don't know!” exclaimed Caroline. “Of course you don't know. You are clearly not a mind reader. I asked you, what do you think? What do you think she will think?”
“I think she will think I have failed,” said Omar. “I will have failed.”
“Sometimes it is good to fail at things,” said Caroline. “To try, but to fail. There is nothing ignoble in that.”
“I suppose not,” said Omar, “but it is failure nonetheless. And Deirdre regards these matters less philosophically than you.”
“Ah. She is a practical woman?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “She is, among other things, a very practical woman.”
“And you are not? Or perhaps you are?”
“A practical woman? No, I am not.”
“Are you a practical man? I would think, in order to write a biography, one would need to be practical.”
“I'm sure it helps,” said Omar. “I've resolved to become practical.”
“How dreary it sounds: to aspire to practicality.”
“I am resolved to become it; I don't aspire to it.”
“To what then do you aspire?”
“I aspire to write a biography of Jules Gund,” he said. “I aspire to write a new kind of biography.”
“How new?”
Omar took a deep breath. He had a feeling this was his moment. “I intend to abandon the notion of objectivity,” he declared, as if he knew what he was talking about. “The objective biography is a myth. I want to write a biography that celebrates its subjectivity. In terms of biography, there was no Jules Gund. No one, real, intact Jules Gund. Certainly no âauthorized' Jules Gund. There is your Jules Gund. There is Miss Langdon's. There is mine.”
“And your biography would present them all?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “At least it is to that that I aspire. A truer account by virtue of, rather than despite, its subjectivity. Biography is a hoax.”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “I see your point.”
“I'm sorry,” said Omar.
“Sorry? Sorry for what?”
“For lecturing you. It's odd; it's not something I normally do. Not even when I'm supposed to be doing it. It's just that I thought if you knew what kind of book I intended to write, or at least hoped to write with your cooperation, you might reconsider your decision. I have no intention of usurping, exploiting, or hijacking the life of Jules Gund for my own purposes.”
“It's interesting, what you propose to do. Yet it doesn't sound very academic. Will your university support such a project?”
“Oh yes,” Omar hastened to assure her. “The weirder you are, the more they like it. You've got to do something no one else understandsâthen they can't attack you. If they don't understand it, they
think there's a chance it might be brilliant and keep their mouths shut.”
“And has this always been your approach to biography? I don't remember it expressed this way in your letter to us. You seemed to advocate a more traditional approach then.”
“Yes,” said Omar. “You're right. It is only since I've been here, and met you, and Miss Langdonâ”
“Stop calling her Miss Langdon! Her name is Arden. And mine is Caroline. Miss Langdon: it sounds like an amanuensis.”
“Yes,” said Omar. “Well, it's only been since I've met you, and Arden, that I've understood things.”
“So we are speaking of a recent realization?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “Very recent. I came here thinking I would write the standard academic biography, but I see now that that is impossible, even distasteful.”