Читать книгу A Book of Common Prayer - Joan Didion - Страница 13

“CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS IS ILL,” I SAID AFTER CHRISTMAS lunch in the courtyard at Victor and Bianca’s.

No one had spoken for twenty minutes. I had timed it. I had counted the minutes while I watched two mating flies try to extricate themselves from a melting chocolate shaving on the untouched Bûche de Noël. The children had already been trundled off quarreling to distribute nut cups to veterans, Gerardo had already made his filial call from St. Moritz, Elena had already been photographed in her Red Cross uniform and had changed back into magenta crepe de chine pajamas. Isabel had drunk enough champagne to begin crying softly. Antonio had grown irritable enough with Isabel’s mournful hiccups to borrow a pistol from the guard at the gate and take aim at a lizard in the creche behind Bianca’s fountain. Antonio was always handling guns, or smashing plates. As a gesture toward the spirit of Christmas he had refrained from smashing any plates at lunch, but the effort seemed to have exhausted his capacity for congeniality. Had Antonio been born in other circumstances he would have been put away early as a sociopath.

Bianca remained oblivious.

Bianca remained immersed in the floor plan for an apartment she wanted Victor to take for her in the Residencia Vista del Palacio. Bianca had never been apprised of the fact that Victor already had an apartment in the Residencia Vista del Palacio. For five of these twenty minutes it had seemed to me up in the air whether Antonio was about to shoot up Bianca’s creche or tell Bianca about the Residencia Vista del Palacio.

“I said la norteamericana is sick.”

“Send her to Dr. Schiff,” Antonio muttered. Dr. Schiff was Isabel’s doctor in Arizona. “Let the great healer tell la norteamericana who’s making her sick.”

Victor only gazed at the sky. I did not know whether Victor had seen Charlotte Douglas since the night he took her from the Embassy to the Residencia but I did know that a Ministry courier had delivered twenty-four white roses to the Caribe on Christmas Eve.

“So is Jackie Onassis sick,” Elena said. Elena was leafing fretfully through a back issue of Paris-Match. “Or she was in September.”

“So am I sick,” Isabel said. “I need complete quiet.”

“I should think that’s what you have,” Elena said.

“Not like Arizona,” Isabel said. “I should have stayed through December, Dr. Schiff begged me. The air. The solitude. The long walks, the simple meals. Yoghurt at sunset. You can’t imagine the sunsets.”

“Sounds very lively,” Elena said without looking up. “I wonder if Gerardo knows Jackie Onassis.”

“If that’s the norteamericana Grace is talking about I think she had every right to marry the Greek,” Bianca said. “Not that I would ever care to live in Athens. I wonder about the view from the Residencia.”

“Grace was talking about a different norteamericana, Bianca.” Victor leaned back and clipped a cigar. “Of no interest to you. Or Grace.”

“This norteamericana is of interest only to Victor.” Antonio seemed to be having trouble drawing a bead on the lizard. “But she could tell you about the view from the Residencia. She’s an expert on the view from the Residencia. Victor should introduce you to her.”

“I don’t meet strangers,” Bianca said. “As you know. I take no interest. Look here, the plan for the eleventh floor. If we lived up that high we’d have clear air. No fevers.”

“Almost like Arizona,” Elena said. “I wonder if Gerardo knows Jacqueline de Ribes.”

“Arizona,” Isabel said. “I wonder what Dr. Schiff is doing today.”

Antonio fired twice at the lizard.

The lizard darted away.

Two porcelain wise men shattered.

“Eating yoghurt in the sunset I presume,” Elena said.

“Dr. Schiff doesn’t believe in guns,” Isabel said.

“What do you mean exactly, Isabel, ‘Dr. Schiff doesn’t believe in guns’?” Antonio thrust the pistol into Isabel’s line of sight. “Does Dr. Schiff not believe in the ‘existence’ of guns? Look at it. Touch it. It’s there. What does Dr. Schiff mean exactly?”

Isabel closed her eyes.

Elena closed the copy of Paris-Match.

Bianca began to gather up the fragments of porcelain.

Victor looked at me and spoke very deliberately. “There’s no longer any need for you to see the norteamericana, Grace. An extremely silly woman.”

“But then so is your manicurist,” Elena murmured.

“If I could live on the eleventh floor I think I’d take an interest again,” Bianca said.

“Quite frankly it’s better when you don’t,” Isabel said, abruptly and unsettlingly lucid, and in the silence that followed she stood up and put her arms around Bianca.

For a moment two of my three sisters-in-law stood there in the courtyard with the guard at the gate on Christmas afternoon and buried their faces in each other’s shoulders and stroked each other’s hair. Only their silence suggested their tears. They were little sisters crying.

Elena rubbed at a drop of champagne on her magenta crepe de chine pajamas.

Antonio drummed his nails on the table.

“It might be better if you left,” Victor said to Antonio.

“Maybe I’ll go get your norteamericana to sit on my face,” Antonio said to Victor.

Victor smoked his cigar and looked at me. “Feliz Navidad,” he said after a while.

Here is what Charlotte Douglas was said by Elena to have done with the twenty-four white roses Victor sent her on Christmas Eve: left them untouched in their box and laid the box in the hallway for the night maid.