I laughed out loud at that. “You really are an extraordinary human being,” I said. “If in fact you are a human being. That these two remarks can come out of your mouth consecutively is awe-inspiring. But not really indicative of your membership of the human race.”
“I understand that there is a trouble between us,” she said. “But Nero is innocent of that and it is for Nero that I ask. The grief in him as well as the decline of his mind. Which is slow, the medication helps, but it is also inevitable. The progression. I fear for him. He wanders off. I need someone to go with him. Even if he goes to that woman I want you to go there as well. He is looking for answers. Life has become an agony and he wants a solution to its mystery. I don’t want him to find it in her arms.”
“I can’t do it,” I told her. “I’m preparing a feature film. It’s a busy time.”
“You won’t do it,” she said. “That is what you’re saying. You have become a selfish man.”
“You have many resources,” I said. “People at your disposal. Use them. I’m not your employee.” I spoke sharply. I didn’t feel in the mood to be ordered around by her.
She was wearing a long white dress, tight in the bodice, loose below the waist, with a high lacy ruff of a collar. She leaned against a tree and I thought all at once about Elvira Madigan, eponymous heroine of Bo Widerberg’s beautiful film, the doomed lover walking a tightrope in a wood. She closed her eyes and spoke in a voice like a sigh. “It’s all such a charade,” she said. “The family name is not the name. Mlle. Loulou is not Loulou. Maybe I am not me and that lady playing the part of my mother is just somebody I hired to play the part. You know what I mean? Nothing is real.” These were scattered thoughts and I saw that beneath her self-control she was in a torment of her own. “Only my child is real,” she said. “And through him I will come into a real place in the end.” She shook her head. “Until then everyone is a kind of performance,” she said. “Maybe even you. You have become like a priest confessor to this family but you are no priest, who are you really, what do you want, maybe I should be suspicious, maybe you are the Judas.” Then she laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said, briskly, beginning to move away. “We are all on edge. Things will improve one day. And yes, go, be with your girl, who knows nothing of anything, and it’s better that way.”
That was another of her threats, of course, I thought, watching her as she retreated. She would not “have me killed” but she would, if necessary, destroy my happiness by telling Suchitra what I had done. I knew then that I had to be the first to tell Suchitra, whatever the cost. I had to find the courage for the truth and hope our love was strong enough to survive it.
And Elvira Madigan, I thought, another pseudonym. That was not the ill-fated Danish tightrope walker’s real identity. Hedvig Jensen; that’s who she really was. Bearer of the commonest of names.
Yes: I had been drawn into the Golden world of make-believe, and only the truth could set me free.
Leo the cat was to Petya what the magic feather had been to Dumbo. With the lynx in his arms he became again the brilliantly strange man we first met, walking in the Gardens, talking loudly to anyone who’d listen, and making the children laugh. It was a mild fall, beautiful weather in a crazy time, so his greatcoat remained in its closet, but there was a rainbow-striped scarf flung carelessly around his neck, and his gallery of outrageous suits was on parade, the broad-lapel cream suit in which he had first appeared among us, a leprechaun-green three-piece when he wanted to channel Oscar Wilde, a double-breasted chocolate outfit, dark chocolate with a broad milk chocolate check. The cocktail mixer was in one hand, and the martini glass in the other, and the olive jar sat on the bench as before. But now, beside the jar of olives there was an iPad and to this the children gravitated like planets around a sun, while Petya showed them, and encouraged them to play, the beta versions of his latest games. The games were his stories now, and the children plunged in eagerly, voyaging to the worlds inside his head. For a few beautiful days, thoughts of death were pushed aside, and the bright book of life stood open at a new page.
“You realize,” Suchitra said, “that this has become a movie about you, and all these Golden boys are aspects of your own nature.”
“No they’re not,” I protested.
“In a good way,” she said. “It makes the film a more personal testament. All the characters are the auteur. It’s like Flaubert. Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”
“But I’m not an artist,” I said, “not sexually conflicted, not autistic, not a Russian gold digger, not a powerful old man in decline.” I did not add, “not a baby,” because of course the baby was partly me. Fifty percent. A big part. A big part that was being kept out of my reach. A guilty secret to which I still had not found the courage to confess.
We were in the editing suite at DAW on West Twenty-Ninth Street and Batwoman, freeze-framed, was watching us from the Avid screen. Our fourth and last Bat-video was in its final stages. The Joker was trying to foment an insurrection that would destroy U.S. democracy. At a packed MetLife Stadium mobs of crazy clowns howled hatred at the sky. How much could one fierce female Bat do? Well, that depended on you. Vote for the first Bat president of the United States. Because this election is no joke.
“You carry their questions with you wherever you go. The question of Apu’s life, remember what his father said to you? Is it necessary to be profound, or can you remain permanently on the surface? You need to answer this question also. D Golden, as his father also said, was all about ambiguity and pain. I feel it in you also, some ambiguity. I feel that you are in pain. As for Petya, he’s hemmed in by himself, he can’t escape his nature, though he so much wants to be free. And maybe his games, the games he invents, are his freedom. That’s the place where he isn’t afraid. Maybe that’s a place you also need to find. You’ve been standing on the threshold for so long, maybe it’s time you finally went in through the door. And the old man…”
“You’re going to tell me I’m like him too? He’s kind of a monster, even in his fallen state….”
“He is enfolded in tragedy, and so are you. He has lost sons, you lost parents. Your grief defines you and shuts you off from other people. That’s what I think.”
“Are we having a fight?” I asked. Her words had packed quite a punch.
“No,” she said, wide-eyed, meaning it. “Why do you think that? I’m just saying what I see.”
“You’re being pretty hard on me.”
“I just see who you can be and I want you to see it too. Be profound. Own your tragedy. Find your freedom. Resolve your ambiguity, whatever it is. Maybe it’s about me.”
I have to tell her about the baby, I thought. That’s what’s shutting me off.
“No,” I said. “About you, I’m certain. Profoundly certain. Not ambiguous at all.”