That year we were all engaged in deflecting the subject. No doubt Nero had ambiguous feelings about the son he had been bullied into having. No question that I, as the actual author of the new storyline, had deeply ambiguous feelings about being, so to speak, the uncredited ghostwriter of the new life. Of Vasilisa’s feelings I can say nothing. At times she was as enigmatic as the sphinx. And of the reactions of the existing Golden men, more must now be said. This was the year, for example, that Apu Golden began smashing objects to make his increasingly political art, exhibiting broken things to represent a broken society and the anger of the people at its brokenness. “People’s lives are smashed up,” he said, “and they are ready to smash everything up because why the fuck not.”
And everywhere I went that year, it seemed, I ran into the ranter from the park. In Vasilisa’s second trimester, he walked across the shot on Twenty-Third Street outside the SVA Theatre, where Suchitra and I were filming a street interview with Werner Herzog for my classic-movie-moments video series. At the very moment that I uttered the words “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” the old tramp crossed behind Herzog and myself, looking exactly, exactly, like the great wild-eyed madman, the Zorn Gottes Klaus Kinski himself, muttering about the accelerating speed of evil, about the growing mountain of evil right in the middle of the city, and who cared? Did anyone in America even care? Children were shooting their fathers’ dicks off in the bedroom. Did anyone even notice? It was like global warming, the fires of Hell were melting the great ice sheets of evil and the levels of evil were rising all over the world, no flood barriers could keep them out. Blam! Blam! he cried, reverting to an earlier theme. The gun monsters are coming to get you, the Decepticons, the Terminators, look out for your children’s toys, look out in your squares and malls and palaces, look out on your beaches and churches and schools, they’re on the march, blam! blam!—those things can kill.
“That guy is fabulous,” Herzog said with genuine admiration. “We should put him in the movie and maybe I will interview him.”
“Here is what I will readily confess to you, you handsome devil,” said Petya Golden, gravely. “I no longer possess a scrap of brotherly love. What is more, I believe that the widely held view that deep affection between siblings is inborn and inevitable, and that its absence reflects poorly upon the individual who lacks it, is incorrect. It is not genetically driven; rather, it is a form of social blackmail.” It was not often that visitors were invited into Petya’s lair but he had made an exception for me, perhaps because I remained, in his unique opinion, the most good-looking man on earth, and so I sat in the blue light of his room among the computers and the Anglepoise lamps, accepted his offer of grilled Double Gloucester cheese on toast, and said as little as possible, understanding that he wanted to talk, and his talk was always worth listening to, even when he was more than usually off-kilter. “In ancient Rome,” he said, “in fact in all great empires across the world and in every age, your siblings were people to be feared. At the time of the succession it was usually kill or be killed. Love? Those princes would have laughed at the word if you had brought it up.”
I asked him how he might answer William Penn, what he had to say about the idea enshrined in the name of the city of Philadelphia, which had prospered in its early years because its reputation for tolerance attracted people of many faiths and talents and had led to better than average relationships with the local Native American tribes. “The idea that all men are brothers is ingrained in much philosophy and most religion,” I ventured.
“Maybe one should seek to love mankind in general,” he retorted in accents that denoted extreme boredom. “But in general is far too general for me. I’m being specific about my dislikes here. Two persons born and one as yet unborn: these are the targets of my hostility, which may be limitless, I don’t know. I’m talking about untying the ties of blood here, not un-hugging the whole goddamned species, and do not speak to me, please, of African Eve or LUCA, the three-and-a-half-billion-year-old blob of goo that was our Last Universal Common Ancestor. I am aware of the family tree of the human race and of pre–Homo sap life on earth and to insist upon those genealogies now would be willfully to miss my point. You know what I’m saying to you. It’s only my siblings I loathe. This has become clear as I consider the baby we will soon be obliged to greet.”
I could not speak, though I felt a tide of paternal rage rising in my breast. Apparently, while my son—my secret Golden son—was blossoming in his mother’s womb, his future brother Petya had already formed a poor opinion of him. I wanted to expostulate, to defend the child and attack his foe, but in this matter silence was my doom. And Petya’s talk had already moved on. He wanted me to know that he was making a momentous decision, that he had resolved to cure his fear of the outdoors and then leave the house on Macdougal Street forever, thus becoming the last of the three sons of Nero Golden to strike out on his own. He was the one for whom the difficulties of doing so were greatest, but he now revealed unsuspected reserves of willpower. There was a force driving him, and as he spoke I understood that it was hatred, aimed at Apu Golden in particular: hatred born on the banks of the Hudson River on the night of his brother’s seduction of, or perhaps by, the metal-cutting Somali beauty Ubah, nurtured during those long solitudes bathed in blue light, and leading, finally, to action. He would cure himself of agoraphobia and leave home. He indicated the plaque above the door of his lair. Leave thy home, O youth, and seek out alien shores. “I used to think it was about moving to America,” he said, “but here in this house we are still at home, as if we brought it with us. Now, finally, I’m ready to follow my great namesake’s instructions. If not exactly to alien shores, then at least away from here, to an apartment of my own.”
I simply received the information. We both knew that agoraphobia was the lesser of Petya’s difficulties. Of the greater difficulty, he did not, on that occasion, choose to speak. But I saw a great resolve in his face. Plainly he had decided to overcome the challenges of that greater difficulty as well.
A new visitor appeared at the Golden house the next day, and after that daily and promptly at three o’clock in the afternoon, a sturdily built person sporting a bouffant blond hairstyle, Converse sneakers, a smile that insisted on its deep sincerity, an Australian accent, and—as Nero Golden pointed out—more than a passing resemblance to the retired Wimbledon champion Pat Cash. This was the individual charged with the task of rescuing Petya from his fear of open spaces: Petya’s hypnotherapist. His name was Murray Lett. “If you call me, it’s not a fault,” he liked to say; a tennis joke that only served (ouch) to increase his resemblance to the former Australian star.