A Multitude of Sins

  “Someday you’ll have to tell me what’s the strangest thing you ever saw and then wrote about. I’d like to know about that.”

  “Someday I will,” Wales said. “I promise.”

  Making love was eventful. At first she was almost dalliant, though selective, vaguely theatrical, practiced. And then after time—though all at once, really—engrossed, specific, unstinting, exactly as if it was all unscripted, all new ground, whatever they did. She could find the new with great naturalness, and he was moved by the sensation that something new could occur with someone: that self-awareness could take you on to immersion and then continue for a long while. He resisted nothing, abjured nothing, never lost touch with her in all of it. It was what he wanted.

  And when it was over he was for a long time lost from words. She had turned on the lamp by the bed and slept with her hand covering her eyes. And he’d thought: where had this gone in my life? How would I keep this? And then: you don’t. This doesn’t keep. You take it when it’s given.

  The clock beneath the lamp said 9:19. Wales could smell the solvent and the hyacinths on her painter’s table, sharp, murky aromas afloat in the warm room. Outside, voices spoke in the hall. Twice the phone rang. He showered, then walked to the window while she slept, and looked at the painted photograph, the two people, their smiling midwestern features distorted. She must hate them. Then he remembered the Bacons in the Tate. The apes in agony.

  What he wanted to think about then was the funeral day in London. It was a relief to think about it. The balmy Saturday with summer lasting on. He’d taken the train from some friends’ outside of Oxford. The station—Paddington— had been empty, its long, echoing platforms hushed in the watery light, the streets outside the same. Though the tabloids had their tombstone headlines up. WE MOURN! WE GRIEVE! THEY WEEP! GOODBYE.

  At the Russell Hotel, he’d stayed in and watched it all on TV. It was an event for TV anyway—his reactions were the story. Passing on the screen were the cortège, the acre of memorials, the soldiers, the bier, the Queen, the Prince. The awful brother. The boys with their perfect large teeth and the whites of their eyes too white. Through the open window, in with a breeze, he’d heard someone say—a woman, possibly in the next room, watching it all just as he was—“This’ll never happen again, will it?” she’d said. “Ya can’t say that about much, can ya? Completely unique, ya know? Well, not her, of course. She wasn’t unique. She was a whoor. Well, sure, maybe not a whoor. But you know.”

  In America it was five a.m. He wondered if anyone would be up watching.

  And to all of it his reactions were: How strange to have a royal family. She was never a beauty. What did it all cost? Death by automobile is always slightly trivial. People applauded the hearse. What does one write in a condolence book? It’s really themselves they’re pitying. How will they feel in a month? In a year? We magnify everything to learn if we’re right. Someone—and this is what he wrote finally, the crux of it, the literature of the failed actuality—someone has to tell us what’s important, because we no longer know.

  The next day he’d learned that his friend’s wife had died in Oxford. An aneurysm. Very sudden. Very brief and painless. Only, no one could send flowers. All the flowers were spoken for, which seemed to point everything up badly. “The English. We’ve learned something about ourselves, haven’t we, James?” his friend said bitterly as they sat in his car outside the Oxford station, waiting for other friends to arrive. For the other funeral. The real-er one.

  “What is it?” Wales said.

  “That we’re as stupid as the next bunch. As stupid as you are. That’s all new to us, you see. We’ve never exactly known that until now.”

  Why that all came back to him he couldn’t say. Stories he wrote usually didn’t. Though later, it had been easy to write a lecture whose theme was “Failed Actuality: How We Discover the Meaning of the Things We See.” In it he’d retold the story of his friend’s wife’s death as a point of contrast. Which was when Jena had come into the picture, and they’d begun to hurry.

  From the window, he watched onto the little wedge of public park between the hotel’s back entrance and the Drive, still solid with cars this late. Taxis cruised past, their yellow roof-lights signaling at liberty. A jogger in bright orange bounced alone along the concrete beach that curved up to Lincoln Park. A man with two Weimaraners had stopped to sprinkle breadcrumbs on the park benches. All expelled soundless breaths into the night.

  Outside on the cold Avenue they walked to the restaurant she preferred. Not far—Walton Street. She liked going to one place over and over until she tired of it and then would never go back. The wind was gusting. Lights up Michigan glittered. Traffic hummed but was thinner. The canyon of buildings seemed festive, a white background of night light and the startling half moon nearly lost in hazy distance. A skiff of snow had blown against the curbs. Heavy coats a must. Wales felt good, at ease with things. Unburdened. Not at all unstrung.

  In the hotel lobby there’d been a wedding party with a bride, but no sign of Jim with the tickets. No sign of a detective when they passed out the main doors.

  On the brisk walk, Jena’s mind was loosened after making love, as if she couldn’t match things right. She mentioned her husband and their therapy—all his idea, she said, her face hidden in a sable parka her husband had certainly paid for. She’d been fine with things, she said. But he’d wanted something more, something he couldn’t quite describe but could feel vividly the lack of. A sense of locatedness was absent— his words—something she should somehow contribute to. “I thought a therapist would at least tell me something important, right?” Jena said. “‘Forget marriage.’ Or, ‘Here’s a better way to do it.’ Why else go? Except that’s not in the package. And the package gets expensive.”

  Wales thought about Jena’s husband, about conversations he and the husband could have. How they might like each other. The husband would no doubt think Jena was out of her head just for being the way she was—so different, she would seem, from real estate. It made him happy that Jena had someone to feel certain about; someone willing to be complicit in his own deception; that there were these children. Her circle of affection. What else was marriage if not a circle of affection?

  “It really seems so hopeless, doesn’t it?” She laughed, too loud.

  “Maybe no one could … ” He started to say something extremely banal but stopped. He shook his head “no.” It made her smile. Her face was softened, so appealing even in the blasted air, her lips slightly bruised. She took his hand, which he found to be trembling. Again, the vigor of lovemaking, he thought. He had an urge, a strong one just then, to tell her he loved her—here on the street. But by stopping midsentence he once again curtailed revealing himself. She preferred that. A pledge of love was inappropriate, even if he’d felt it.

  He wished, though, that his hands wouldn’t tremble, since now was the best time, the moment after making love, when everything seemed possible, easy, when they could surprise each other with a look, change almost anything with an offhand remark. It had nothing to do with revealing yourself.

  “When you leave Chicago, where’re you going?” Jena said. She took his arm as she had the first night, and they stepped out into Michigan Avenue at the light. The air was colder in the wide street. A group of young nuns hurried past, bound for The Drake in their bright blue habits. They were laughing about the cold. Jena smiled at them.

  “London,” Wales said, the wind biting in under his collar. He’d been thinking about London again, about his widowed friend in Oxford. He preferred returning to Europe through England. The easy entry.

  “Do you still keep your flat in Berlin?” She was just talking still, not paying attention, light-headed after being with him. They were on the street in Chicago, in winter, going for supper late. Saying “keep your flat” must feel good. He’d felt that way. It was like saying, “We live in the Sixth.” Or, “It’s just off the King’s Road.” Or, “We took rooms behind the Prado.??
? Simple, harmless things.

  “Yes. It’s in Uhlandstrasse,” he said.

  “Is that in the East?”

  “No. It’s in the rich quarter. Near the Zoo and the Paris Bar. Kudamm. Savignyplatz.” She didn’t know what these words meant, which was fine. She could hear them.

  They were in sight of her restaurant. People were walking out the door, struggling into overcoats. Off the Avenue, the wind suddenly vanished, making the air feel almost spring-like. They passed the windows of a large, radiantly lit bookstore. People were having coffee and talking at high, round tables. All those books, Wales thought. It would be nice—he could suddenly feel it—to ride the train in from Gatwick, to have a morning to himself, read a book. There was a pure thought.

  “If I asked you something important,” Jena said, “would you not be shocked?” She held his arm, but slowed on the sidewalk, still beside the bookstore.

  “I’d try not to be,” Wales said, and looked at her with affection. This was not like her, to make a plea. But it was good. New.

  “If I asked you to kill my husband, would you do it?” Jena looked up at him and blinked. Her hazel eyes were wide, swimming but dry. Two dark discs in white that seemed to grow larger. Her face was intent on him. “For me? If I’d love you? If I’d go away with you? At least for a while?”

  Wales thought for just that instant about how they looked. A handsome, tall man dressed in a heavy camel hair coat. Hatless, with gray in his hair. Highly shined black shoes from Germany. And Jena, in a sable parka and wool trousers, expensive, heavy gloves. Expensive boots. They looked good together, even on the cold street. They made a pair. They could be in love.

  “No, I guess I wouldn’t,” Wales said.

  Jena turned and looked quickly back at the Avenue, where a driver had slammed on brakes and skidded over the frozen pavement. Two policemen in a white and blue cruiser waited at the curb, watching the car as it stopped sideways in the middle of the intersection. Perhaps she felt someone was following her. “We’re doing exactly what we want to now, aren’t we?” she said, distracted by the commotion.

  “I am,” Wales said.

  She looked at him and smiled tightly. He never knew what she thought. Possibly she was more like her parents than she realized. “It was just something to say,” she said and cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t take me so seriously.”

  “Wonderful,” Wales said, and smiled.

  “Believe it, then,” Jena said stiffly. “Everybody comes before somebody. Somebody always comes after.” She paused as if she wanted to say something more about that but then didn’t. “Why don’t we eat,” she said, and began to move along toward the restaurant’s glass doors, which were just at that moment opening again onto the street.

  At dinner she talked about everything that came in her head. She said they should go dancing tonight, that she knew a place only a cab ride away. A black neighborhood. She asked if Wales liked dancing at all. He did, he said. She asked if he liked blues, and he said he did, though he didn’t much. She looked pale now in her black turtleneck with a strand of small pearls. She was wearing her wedding ring and a great square emerald ring he’d never seen before. They drank red wine and ate squab and touched hands like lovers across the small window table. Someone would know her here, but she didn’t mind. She was feeling reckless. What did it hurt?

  She talked about a novel she was reading, which interested her. It was all about an English girl who’d once been an ingénue. There had been an influential film in France, and for a time the girl was famous. Then one thing and another went wrong. Eventually she came to live in Prague, alone, older, a former addict. Jena felt identification with her, she said, thought her story could be set in America. Somehow her parents could be in it, too.

  After that she talked about her little girls, whom she loved, and then more about her husband, whom she’d asked him to kill and who, she said, was at his best a mild but considerate lover. She talked about scratching her cornea in Munich once, about what a bad experience that’d been—finding an ophthalmologist with American training, one who spoke English, one who sterilized things properly, one whose assistants weren’t heroin addicts or hemophiliacs. He realized that nothing he could do or say would have any effect on her now. Yet what kind of person would she be if he could so easily affect her. And being with her was such a pleasure. It made him feel wonderful, insulated. He wanted to see her again. Next week. Arrange something for then.

  Only, he recognized, she was just now talking herself out of the last parts of being interested in him. Something must’ve seemed weak. Not being willing to kill someone, or at least say he would. She was raising the stakes, making it up as she went along until he failed.

  “Tell me something that happened to you, Jimmy,” she said. “You really haven’t talked much tonight. I’ve just chattered on.” She hadn’t used the name “Jimmy” before. She was pale, but her dark eyes were sparkling.

  “I was robbed tonight,” Wales said. “On the way out to my car at school. A black man stopped me in the parking lot and asked to borrow a dollar, and when I brought my billfold out he grabbed at it. Knocked it out of my hand. Scattered money all around.”

  “My God,” Jena said. “What happened then?”

  “We scuffled. He tried to pick up the money, but I hit him, and then he just ran off. He got a few dollars. Not much.” He stared at her across the table full of empty plates.

  “You didn’t tell me any of this before, did you?”

  “No,” Wales said. “I was happy to be with you and not to think about it.”

  “But weren’t you hurt?” She extended one hand across the table’s width and gently touched his.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Wales said. “Not at all.”

  “Did it scare you?” she said. Interest rekindled in her eyes. She liked it that he was a man who withheld facts, who could make love, eat dinner, consider dancing and still keep all this to himself. She liked it that he would fight another man. Come to blows.

  “It did scare me,” Wales said. “But the thing I remember, and I don’t remember very much, is how his hand felt when it hit my hand. There was terrible force in it. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt. It was need and desperation at one time. It was attractive. I’m sure I won’t ever forget it.”

  Wales took a sip of his wine and stared at her. All of this had happened to him two months ago, when he first came back to America. Not tonight. He hadn’t fought such a man at all, but had been hit as he’d said and felt about it the way he’d just told her. Only, not now. He wished, for an instant, that he could feel that force again. How satisfying that had been. The certainty. She liked this story. Perhaps it would fix something.

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Jena said, folding her napkin, her eyes lowered.

  “Oh no,” Wales said. “I’m not hurt. I’m perfectly fine.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive, is what you are,” she said, and glanced at him as her eyes sought the waiter.

  “I know,” Wales said. “I’ll add it to my list of lucky things.”

  On the street, in front of The Drake, they stopped near the busy corner at Michigan, where taxis turned and idled past. It was after midnight, and seemed warmer. The wind had settled. In the curb gutters, ice was turning to murky water. The hotel glowed golden in the night above them.

  They simply stood. Wales looked up the side street toward the lake as if he planned to hail a taxi.

  “I’ll be going home in the morning,” she said and smiled at him, pulled her hair back on one side and held it there.

  “Home, home,” Wales said. “I’ll be going too, then.” He wished he could stay longer. He felt her room key card still in his pocket. That was over.

  A man almost directly beside them on the street was talking into a pay phone. He had on a tuxedo jacket and a pair of nice patent leather shoes. He’d been to a party in The Drake, but now seemed desperate about something.

  Wales had expected to tel
l her about the woman he had seen killed, about the astonishment of that, to retell it—the slowing of time, the stateliness of events, the sensation that the worst could be avoided, the future improved by a more gradual unfolding. But he had no wish now to reveal the things he could be made to think, how his mind worked, or what he could feel in response to events. Better to be a spy, to be close to her now, satisfied with her, think exclusively about her. He knew he was not yet distinguishing things perfectly, wasn’t confident which feelings were his real ones, or how he would think about events later. It was not, perhaps, so easy to reveal yourself.

  “Are you happy with these days?” he heard her say. She was smiling at him out on the cold sidewalk. “These were wonderful days, weren’t they? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a thousand of them?”

  “I’m sorry they’re over,” Wales said. The man in the tuxedo jacket slammed the phone down and walked quickly away, toward the hotel’s lighted marquee. “Could I ask you something,” he said. He felt like he was shouting.

  “Yes,” she said. “Do ask me.”

  “Did this give you anything?” Wales said. “Did I give you anything you cared about? It seemed like you wanted there to be an outcome.”

  “What an odd thing to ask,” Jena said, her eyes shining, growing large again. She seemed about to laugh, but then suddenly moved to him, stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth, hard, put her cold cheek to his cheek and said, “Yes. You gave me so much. You gave me all there was. Didn’t you? That’s what I wanted.”

  “Yes,” Wales said. “I did. That’s right.” He smiled at her.

  “Good,” she said. “Good.” Then she turned away, and hurried toward the revolving doors as the man in the tuxedo had done, and quickly disappeared. Though he waited then for a time, just outside the yellow marquee—a man standing alone in a brown coat; waited until whatever disordered feelings he had about their moment of departure could be fully experienced and then diminish and become less a barrier. They were not bad feelings, not an unfamiliar moment, not the opening onto desolation. They were simply the outcome. And in a short while, possibly at some instant during his drive back up the lake, he would feel a small release, an unburdening, the sensation of events being completed, so that over time he would think less and less about it until it all seemed, upon reflection, to be almost perfect.