American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [70]
What does it mean for a soldier to take his own life after he has survived the war? It depends on the meaning of survival. It depends on the meaning of war. He had nearly given his life for a story about his country, but he didn’t believe in that story anymore. Then he had come home and he had kept on fighting and had fought for another story: Honor’s. Now he felt that his job was done. To live a life with no story, this was not survival. To begin again, that felt like another war. He had fought. He had lost. He had won. He had loved. He was done. It was over.
•
Parvin did not die. When she finally reached the other side, Hyacinth was waiting for her on the shore. He was holding a bag filled with the coins that Kaya had gathered from the base of the potted plant. He had more of the string that Avedis had invented. “In case of emergency,” Hyacinth said. And he had with him a blanket to wrap her up in, he knew she would be shivering and blue, and he carried her to a waiting carriage. Where it was going, Parvin didn’t know, and she didn’t care.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Vivian
The photographs were never recovered. Vivian worked with the police and the case remained open for many years, but there were so few clues, so little evidence. And what could possibly have been the motive? The negatives were valuable, but not worth that much, and would have quickly been discovered had they been in circulation. Perhaps there was a mad collector out there who would purchase them, but it seemed unlikely. It appeared that the theft was personal. When the police questioned Vivian about her various relationships and asked her if there was anyone who might wish her harm, she was reminded of all of the mysteries she had ever read and how she had always thought that was a ridiculous question. Of course there must be someone out there who wished her ill, there were any number of random people one slighted in the course of a lifetime, and any number of intimates one would inevitably hurt as well. But she had kept to herself for so long now that unless it was some insanely rivalrous colleague, of which there were too many to count, she could think of no one who would do something like this, and even her fellow photographers were not really capable of stealing. Stealing her ideas, yes, that happened all the time, but her actual pictures? What good would it do? She could always take more.
That’s what the director of the museum said to her and that’s what she did, over several years. She took hundreds of new pictures, all color now, still of children, still of their moody, mysterious selves and their faces and bodies that continually protected and betrayed them. She finally did have her show, it was not her last, and it was received with great critical acclaim, even helped, perhaps, by the scandal of the stolen photographs. The art world turned out for the opening. It was the early Seventies now. Women’s long legs outlined by flowing pants strode across the stone floor of the sculpture garden. Men wore their hair to their shoulders and smiled more than they would a decade later. Older patrons of the museum still dressed in pearls, suits, pumps, handbags, and they mingled with the artists and fashionable younger set like antique ceramic animals mixed in with essential oils and incense on the top of a dresser.
Vivian was surrounded by groups who gathered around her and dispersed. In other words, she was alone. Her hair was slightly shorter these days, still brown, and for the occasion she was wearing a floor-length off-white Indian-style heavy cotton dress with a V-neck bordered with lace. She still looked pretty in a lined but delicate way and much younger than her years, which were approaching sixty. She beamed. She was proud of her work, and gladly accepted compliments. She nodded thoughtfully at