State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [107]
“Tell me,” Alan said.
“Well, first, your poor father. Why must he always be made the drudge in opposition to the free spirit of Martin Rapp? He didn’t want his son who still had occasional relapses of malaria to return to the jungle where he’d gotten it in the first place? That doesn’t seem so criminal to me.”
Alan Saturn considered his wife thoughtfully for some time, chewing over her criticism. He brushed some sort of leggy cricket out of his hair. “You have a valid point,” he said finally. “But this is the story of my life, the story of how I related to my father and then later to my mentor, who, it is obvious enough, was a father figure to me. I’m not misrepresenting my father. I say he’s a hard worker, a provider. But if I lean towards Dr. Rapp as a role model then that’s my choice to make.”
Nancy waited a long time before shrugging her shoulders. The shrug appeared to cost her something. “I can see that.”
“I hear you, though,” he said. “And I appreciate what you’re saying.”
Marina wondered if they had been through a great deal of marriage counseling or if it was possible that this was the way they had spoken to each other all along. It was such a long time ago that she had been married. She couldn’t imagine she and Josh Su had, in their twenties, ever had such an exchange.
“You said there were two things,” Alan said.
“Annick Swenson.”
“She isn’t in the story.”
“She is implicit in every story about Dr. Rapp. Your story tells as much by what you leave out as what you put in.”
“I leave out what was private in his life. Those matters didn’t concern me and they didn’t concern science.”
“Listen to him,” the second Dr. Saturn said, turning to Marina. “What is this, Meet the Press?” She pivoted back to her husband. “It absolutely did concern you. When one’s role model brings his mistress along trip after trip with a dozen boys and you are one of those boys then it concerns you. It concerns you when you later go to his house and have dinner with your mentor and his wife.”
“Dr. Swenson was his mistress?” Marina said. Just saying it brought a sour taste to her mouth. It was, she thought, a terrible word, and in no way representative. A mistress was a woman who waited in a hotel room.
“This is what I meant by private,” Alan said pointedly to his wife.
“Mrs. Rapp lives in Cambridge and has three daughters. She is ninety-two. We send her grapefruit at Christmas. I’m not saying people don’t have affairs, even very decent people, let us be so lucky as to fall into that category. But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do. He was a great scientist, I will grant you that, and by all accounts a true charismatic, but he was also deeply unfaithful to two women and frankly that bothers me. It bothers me that the man you say you wanted to become was a lifelong philanderer.”
“When did this start?” Marina asked.
“We can take the life apart. We do it all the time.” The veins on Alan Saturn’s temples were pressing forward with their new influx of blood. “Picasso put his cigarettes out on his girlfriends and we don’t love the paintings any less for it. Wagner was a fascist and I can hum you every bar in the opening of Die Walküre.”
“I don’t know Picasso and I don’t know Wagner!”
“And you didn’t know Dr. Rapp!”
The shouting caused Benoit to raise his eyes from the field guide he was studying. He pointed to the top of a tree and said in English, “Look!” But neither of the Drs. Saturn looked, nor did Marina, and of course Easter missed it completely.
“I know his wife!” Nancy said, her voice high. “I know his mistress! If I didn’t know those two women I feel certain you’d be right. It would be just another bit of gossip from the annals of history, but that isn’t the case. You can’t separate it out when it’s someone you know. I can tell you he wasn’t a good man.”
“He was the greatest man I ever knew.”
“He left you with a tribe of Indians in Peru when you had a fever of a