They killed Zachariassen and that was on the evening news and Riya calmed down, at once, as if a switch had been thrown, she just let out a great sigh and breathed out all her craziness and there she was again, restored to her old self, “real” Riya rescued from the counterfeit of her fear, apologizing to everyone for her temporary insanity, normal service had been resumed, she assured everyone, don’t worry about me. And soon enough, sure enough, we didn’t. And so all of us, except D Golden, forgot about the gun.
[He] arrived at the Golden House in splendor, emerging from the back of a Daimler limousine deliberately chosen to echo the vehicle in which all the Goldens had arrived on Macdougal Street to take possession of their new home. A liveried chauffeur held the door open and lowered a little flight of steps so that D’s feet in their curvy-heeled Walter Steiger shoes could find their way down to street level without a misstep. [He]—no!—Now it had become appropriate to change her pronouns and say simply she, her, herself!—very well then, she was wearing a long scarlet Ala?a evening dress, over which her cascade of hair shone alluringly in the sun, and she carried a small jewel-encrusted Mouawad bag. So, dressed to kill, handing her key to the chauffeur so that he might open the front door for her, D Golden for the last time entered her father’s house—for the first time, perhaps, as herself—her true self, the self she had always feared she might be, and whom she had had such difficulty in setting free.
Nero stood on the landing at the head of the stairs, flanked by Mss. Blather and Fuss, with a fire in his eye. “The children of kings are born to kill their fathers,” he said. “Also, those garments are the possessions of my wife.”
Vasilisa Golden emerged to stand beside her husband. “Then this is the thief I’ve been searching for,” she said.
D neither looked up nor replied. She moved gracefully through the house to the French windows, and out into the Gardens. Well, what a fluttering of curtains at windows then ensued! Seemed everyone living on the Gardens wanted a look. D, she paid no attention to any of that, she walked over to the bench where once, years earlier, her brother Petya had sat and made children laugh with his stories. There she sat down with the stolen pocketbook in her lap and her hands folded over it—Riya’s pocketbook!—and she closed her eyes. There were children playing up and down the Gardens and their shrieks and laughter were the soundtrack of her silence. She wasn’t in a rush. She waited.
Vito Tagliabue, the abandoned and cuckolded husband, came out to offer her his solidarity, saluting her courage and congratulating her on her fashion sense and then not knowing what else to say. She inclined her head graciously, accepting both salute and congratulations, and indicating that he was now dismissed. The Baron of Selinunte backed away, as if in the presence of royalty, as if turning his back on her would be a breach of protocol, and when he fell over a toddler’s abandoned and multicolored plastic tricycle it introduced a happy note of slapstick into the otherwise sober moment. D’s lips twitched in a small but definite smile and then, calm, unhurried, she resumed her meditation.
In the film I would intercut her stillness with a scene of rapid movement, RIYA coming home, finding her clothes closet open and untidy and the pocketbook containing the weapon missing, and a note left on her dressing table, a single sheet of paper folded in half; and then RIYA sprinting into the street, hailing a cab, there isn’t one, then there’s one that doesn’t stop, and then finally she gets one.
Once the children had gone indoors to eat or rest or whatever children did these days in front of whichever screens, D Golden in the Gardens opened his eyes and rose to his feet, and began to walk.
And RIYA in the taxi, urging the driver to hurry, and he arguing back, sit still, lady, you’re the passenger and I’m the driver, let me drive my cab. She slumps back into her seat and closes her eyes (intercut, in the Gardens, a reprise of D opening her eyes) and on the soundtrack we hear D’s voice reading the suicide note.
D GOLDEN (V/O)
It isn’t because of the difficulties of my own life that I do this. It’s because there’s something wrong with the world which makes it unbearable to me. I can’t put my finger on it, but the world of human beings doesn’t function well. The indifference of people to one another. The unkindness of people. It is disenchanting. I am a passionate human being but I don’t know how to reach out to anyone anymore. I don’t know how to touch you, Riya, though you are the kindest person I know. In the Old Testament God destroyed the city of Sodom but I am not God and can’t destroy Sodom. I can only remove myself from its precincts. If Adam and Eve came into the world in the Garden of Eden then it’s appropriate that I, who am both Eve and Adam, take my leave from the world in a Garden too.
I think of Maurice Ronet in Louis Malle’s Le feu follet (1963), also moving around his city, Paris, carrying a gun, saddened by the human race, and closing in on suicide.
She walked the length of the Gardens, slowly, formally, one end to the other end, and then, at the far end from Nero’s property, her former home, and outside what had been my own family’s home, she turned, and her grandeur was that of a queen. Then she walked back, halfway back, and stopped, and opened her purse.
And because it’s a movie, at this point it’s necessary for RIYA to burst through the French windows of the Golden house and cry out.
RIYA
Don’t.
Now there were faces at every window. The residents of the Gardens, abandoning all discretion, stood behind glass transfixed by the approaching horror. After Riya Z’s cry, nobody spoke, and Riya, too, ran out of words to say. There was something of the gladiator about D Golden at this moment, she had the air of a warrior waiting for the verdict of the emperor’s thumb. But she was her own emperor now, and had already delivered her verdict. Slowly, deliberately, wrapped in the solitude of her decision, and with the peacefulness of her ultimate clarity, she took the pearl-handled Colt out of the jewel-encrusted handbag, placed the tip of the barrel against her right temple, and fired.