It was yet another building in which the windows didn’t open. Whatever the aerodynamical requirements of structures so high that winds aloft flew past them at hurricane speeds, Jules hated that huge, complex, and expensive systems were required to ventilate these lifeless boxes built in such a way as to keep out the oceans of air all around them. Better not to build such buildings than to shut out the noise of the wind in the trees, the crack of thunder or sound of rain, birdsong, the murmur of distant conversation, the sound of water in a stream or merely a gutter, and, of course, the many fresh and lively breezes.
Even worse was to be in an elevator. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but he did object to being encased in a steel box that played awful music. Time was running out and he was in the midst of a complication such as one in which half a dozen things – appliances, vehicles, plumbing – break at once and each must be fixed in a series of multiple steps, appointments, and waiting for parts. This had always shattered his concentration upon music. Some people like incessant busyness, distractions, games, a million things happening simultaneously, which blocks their awareness of oblivion. But Jules had been profoundly aware of oblivion since the retreat of the Wehrmacht and the SS through Reims in the summer of 1944.
Oblivion and grief, the darkness that gave meaning to light and life, had turned him away from games, respect for status, and the desire for position, influence, power, or even a good name in the eyes of others. These he rejected in favor of his family and the honor of doing what was right – all conveyed and confirmed by the beauty and flow of the world in transient flashes, in faces, and in the way things came together rightly when seen in tranquility and from on high.
He didn’t want to play the kind of games that had transformed people like Rich Panda into spiritless husks. He didn’t want to embark upon a lawsuit to get money. He was a failed composer, a musician with performance anxiety. To take on a giant corporation run by insanely aggressive, acquisitive, semi-human ciphers was hardly promising of success or pleasure. And yet, as bankrupt as it seemed, it was the only thing he could think to do. He wondered if in fact the semi-human ciphers had once been forced, as he was now, to enter upon this game, if they knew or regretted it, and if even at this late stage he would become like them.
Sammi Montmirail had the patience and fortitude to sit at a desk all day and do legal puzzles under high pressure, but when Jules walked into his office he had been thinking about how his children would like the hat he had made for their dog, a timid and self-effacing beagle who was the baby of the family. It was a surprise for them. When the beagle was naughty, which she was on occasion, she would be sent to her bed and made to wear the hat, a baseball cap with holes for her ears and the word Cat embroidered on the front. So much for the United States Code. Nor was Sammi Montmirail the lawyer’s original name. Jules knew this upon seeing his face, a wonderful face to which Jules took instantly. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“The Gironde, fifteen minutes from Bordeaux.”
“And before that?”
Sammi hesitated. Jules had made him, but he hadn’t made Jules. “Israel,” he said.
“And before that?” Jules asked in Hebrew.
Sammi relaxed. “Iran.”
Jules looked past him all the way to the Atlantic, where enormous ships in great number seemed no bigger than bright little seeds. New York was a water city, close to the ocean, hard by bays, riven by inlets, surrounded by rivers. Just as Paris was surrounded by hills and forests to which many Parisians did not give a thought, probably many New Yorkers never realized how, in their city, land and water intermingled like clasped fingers. “So, a Jew, an Iranian, an Israeli, a Frenchman, and an American. Of the five, which is your favorite?”
“I would say husband and father, definitely. And you?”
“The same, although for me that’s largely over.”
“How old are you?” Sammi asked.
“Seventy-four.”
“And where were you during the war?”
“In France.”
“Then we both started rough. How can I help you?” Ready to take careful notes, he picked up a fountain pen and opened a portfolio.
Jules told him the whole story and laid before him copies of the emails promising acceptance. Sammi was slight and dark, his face gentle and sympathetic. He read the documents carefully. When he finished, he thought in silence.
This hesitation impressed Jules, who wanted to trust his thinking, whatever conclusions might issue. But nonetheless, before the lawyer could utter even a word, Jules said, “Apart from whatever the facts or legalities of the case, I have a question.”
“Which is?” The lawyer was expecting a query about cost.
“Does the law,” Jules asked, “have within it, like music, secrets and keys that unlock it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Things that, though in the open, remain hidden to most, but if discovered clarify and increase the power of effect – patterns, repeated proportions, and rhythms that when taken as a whole and with sufficient detachment melt into a coherence that can’t be properly perceived without them.”
Who was this person? At a thousand dollars an hour, the conversations Sammi had in his office were dense with information rapidly communicated, and never philosophical or discursive. “Can you give me an example?”
“Verdi and waveforms.”
“Okay,” he said, in the way it can be said meaning, Go ahead.
“Almost all of Verdi’s music comports with the timing and amplitude of ocean waves. Or sea waves: after all, he knew the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Though this is complex and subtle in an analytical frame, it’s easy to perceive in the sound, and if you’ve realized what it is and how he does it you can ride on those waves instead of letting them wash over you.”
“You’re a musicologist?”
“No. They would protest what I’ve just said. I’m a musician. Musicians work in waves. Musicologists work in shards.”
“You realize,” Sammi said, “that these speculations cost a thousand dollars an hour, or – I like to remind my clients – sixteen dollars and sixty-seven cents a minute, or twenty-eight cents a second?”
“What the hell,” Jules said, in for a dime, in for a thousand dollars an hour. “Does the law have waves?”
“Yes, but I don’t think waves are as relevant to the law as they would be to Verdi, especially to contract law, which is all about the definition and legitimacy of specifics – what you would call shards.
“And the shard picture, upon cursory examination, is not encouraging. To be blunt, Acorn has a thousand lawyers floating on a lake of several trillion dollars. In suing Acorn, few individuals could withstand the intense combat that would occur entirely apart from the merits of the case. It would cost you, not including appeals, upwards of a million dollars and at least two years. Bring in French law, and you might not have to double those figures but you’d certainly be in for a lot more than a million, and three or possibly more years.”