The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [84]
He bowed and invited me in.
“So—you’re all right?” I asked, still stammering.
“Yes, of course.” He smiled. Was it a smirk? I didn’t care, I was so relieved. “Would you like a drink?” he asked, though it was just twelve noon.
“Sure,” I said. A drink sounded good.
He was already heading toward the kitchen. I looked around. Even his house seemed dear to me in this moment. It had been tidied, everything in its place.
He returned with a bottle of grappa, two small glasses. He poured us each a glass and sat down at his desk chair.
“How’s your research project going?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m actually just writing up my report.”
I took a sip of grappa. I couldn’t tell if it was the drink or just relief, this feeling of pleasure infusing my limbs.
“And your book?” I asked. He was at work on a new book.
“Fine, fine.”
“Will you be traveling to the States soon?” I knew that he’d been invited to appear on a panel at the University of Texas, Austin.
“In a month’s time.”
“How long will you stay?”
“Not so long. Two and a half weeks.”
He served us each another finger of grappa.
We talked about American writers, their propensity to drink, the tradition of alcohol in American letters. We talked about newspapers.
“I only read The New York Times for the sports,” he said.
It was the conversation we might have had in the beginning, if we’d met under different circumstances.
As he sat there sipping his drink, almost ostentatiously dignified, he had a kind of melancholy about him that made me think of death. Not imminent death—that had been mercifully avoided—but eventual, inevitable death. The creature dies in the end. The anxiety of this is what makes him behave in any kind of crazy way, to make himself forget, avoid the thought.
It hadn’t been there at first, but now I caught a vague whiff of the strange, rotten smell. My horror must have exaggerated it the night before. Still it was there. The creature dies in the end. But this was not the end. Far from it. In fact, more than anything, he seemed amused.
I’m amusing him, I thought. And, gradually, as my relief wore off, I began to feel ridiculous.
From the start, it had been clear that I lacked their sophistication, their grandiose imagination. But now I felt confronted even more blatantly by my American earnestness. I had actually thought that we had killed him. I’d pictured being on trial, locked up for murder. I remembered the other times I’d gotten frightened or outraged in the course of our encounters, like that day I’d stood up and left in a panic. All at once, everything seemed clear to me. My credulity had been essential to their amusement. After the last incident, Leonarda had probably just returned and untied him. They’d had a drink, laughed.
Suddenly, I felt the need to leave. Again, we engaged in our peculiar bowing ritual at the door.
“I’m glad to see you looking so well,” I said.
“Likewise,” he answered.
A s soon as I was back on the street again, I called Leonarda. She picked up.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“On a secret journey,” she said. “To the heart of the U.S. security system.”
I didn’t care what she was talking about. “Listen, I have to talk to you. Where are you?”
“In a car.” This was also new. She was never in a car. “I can be dropped off wherever you are. Where are you?”
“By the zoo.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you in ten minutes in front of the zoo.”
I waited. The zoo entrance was on a large roundabout. The car, whoever’s car it was, must have dropped her off on the far side. She came running across the street, an iPod in her ears.
“Listen,” I said,“I want you to tell me clearly. What the fuck was that whole thing with Miguel?”
“What whole thing?” she asked, pulling the iPod out of her ears.
“That whole . . . thing. I just had a total freak-out. I thought we’d killed him, left him to die, tied up there.”
“Oh—” She was covering her mouth with her hand, laughing. “You’re adorable.”
“Okay, Leonarda, stop with that.” I looked away. The elephants behind us were making noises.
“Should we go take a