The Golden House

What would it mean if the Joker became the King and the she-bat went to jail. Outside the Gardens the giggles were becoming louder, sounding more like shrieks, and I didn’t know if they were screams of rage or joy. I was simultaneously exhausted and scared. Maybe I was wrong about my country. Maybe a life lived in the bubble had made me believe things that were not so, or not enough so to carry the day. What did anything mean if the worst happened, if brightness fell from the air, if the lies, the slanders, the ugliness, the ugliness, became the face of America. What would my story mean, my life, my work, the stories of Americans old and new, Mayflower families and Americans proudly sworn in just in time to share in the unmasking—the unmaking—of America. Why even try to understand the human condition if humanity revealed itself as grotesque, dark, not worth it. What was the point of poetry, cinema, art. Let goodness wither on the vine. Let Paradise be lost. The America I loved, gone with the wind.

I didn’t sleep well that last weekend before the vote because my mind ran on thoughts like these. Riya called me at 5 A.M. and I was wide-eyed and staring at the ceiling. You have to come, she said. Something’s going to happen and I don’t know what it is but I can’t be here alone. The old man had fallen asleep at his desk, slumped forward in his chair with his forehead against the wood. Her night had been as sleepless as mine. But she was not a Catholic priest in a Hitchcock movie and she needed to share with somebody the burden of what she had been told, of the secrets that were now also hers. I went to meet her and we sat in the Gardens before dawn and she talked. What should I do, she said. What is there to do, I replied. But I already knew the answer because I was bursting with creative excitement; the story had rescued me from the depths of my nocturnal despair. It was the missing piece I’d needed, and it gave me the dark heart of my movie, the big reveal, the point of it. Art is what it is and artists are thieves and whores but we know when the juices are flowing, when the unknown muse is whispering in our ear, talking fast, get this down, I’m only going to say it once; and then we know the answer to all the doubting whys that plague us in our night terrors. I thought of Joseph Fiennes as the young Bard in Shakespeare in Love, jumping up from the desk at which he’s writing—what? Romeo and Juliet?—and doing a little private pirouette and telling himself without vanity or shame, “God, I’m good.”

(This raises an interesting question: did Shakespeare know he was Shakespeare? But that’s for another day.)

(There is no muse of cinema, nor of fiction, neither. In this case the muses-most-likely would probably be Calliope—if what I was doing could be considered an epic—or Thalia, if comedy, or Melpomene, if I could rise to the heights required for tragedy. Not very important. Never mind.)

Let it play out, I said. Let’s see what the retired policeman has to say.

Drama has a way of bushwhacking the dramatist. Something’s going to happen and I don’t know what it is, Riya said, and called on me for support, but what neither of us guessed was that the something that was going to happen was me.

We made our way back into the Golden house and found ourselves, in the large family room that gave onto the Gardens, confronted by Vasilisa holding her young son—my young son—my son!—in one hand and a gun in the other. Small, pearl-handled, golden barrel. The girl with the golden gun. She looked like an Italian movie star in her pinkish silk nightgown over which there floated a floor-length lace peignoir—Monica Vitti, or Virna Lisi, I wasn’t sure which. The gun, however, was definitely a Godard touch. I thought of his murderer heroine in Pierrot leaving the dwarf dead with her scissors through his neck. I had no desire to become a version of that dwarf. I actually raised my hands. Play the scene, I thought. Riya looked at me as if I was mad.

Good morning, Vasilisa, Riya said in a normal, non-filmic voice. Put that thing down, please.

What are you people doing in my house? Vasilisa said, not lowering the weapon. (She, at least, was sticking to the script.)

Nero called me, Riya said. He wanted to talk.

He wanted to talk to you?

He talked for a long time. There’s a man coming to see him soon.

Who is coming? Why have I not been informed?

I came because Riya is worried, I said. About the man.

We will all meet this man, said Vasilisa. This mystery will be solved. She put the pistol back in her pocketbook, where it lived.

Cut. Then a sequence of quick shots, bridging the passage of time, intended to show Nero’s poor condition. He is unsteady on his feet and in his voice and gestures.

When she woke up her husband Nero was not in good shape. The lucidity of the long night’s oratory had vanished. He was fuzzy and indistinct, as if the effort of remembering had worn him out. Vasilisa helped him into the bedroom and said, “Shower.” After he had showered she said, “Dress.” After he had dressed she said, “Shoes.” He looked piteous. “I can’t tie the laces,” he said. “They are loafers,” she told him. “Shoes.” After the shoes were on his feet she held out a handful of pills. “Swallow,” she said. After he had swallowed she commanded, “Tell me.” He shook his head. “A man from yesterday,” he said.

The only reason I know anything about Borsalino hats is that my parents used to argue in their friendly way, enjoying the argument more than the outcome, about whether the celebrated fedoras should be included in their collection of famous Belgians. The Borsalino hat company is not located within Belgian borders. It is to be found in the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont, Italy, which sits on the alluvial plain between the Tanaro and Bormida rivers, about fifty-six miles from Torino. I know three things about Borsalino hats: that they are very popular among Orthodox Jews; that they became cool when Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo wore them in the 1970 French gangster movie named after them; and that they are felt hats, and the felt is made from Belgian (aha!) rabbit fur.

The man Mastan, the retired police officer, sat on the same upright chair in the living room of the Golden house formerly occupied by the murderer Kinski, looking a little alarmed to be confronted by a grim-faced Vasilisa and Riya and myself as well as Nero. It was the weekend, so many of the household staff were away. No Blather, no Fuss. The handyman Gonzalo was absent, as well as the majordomo Michael McNally and Sandro “Cookie” Cucchi the chef. I answered the door myself and showed the inspector in. A handsome man! Silver-haired, a septuagenarian like Nero, maybe not quite as far through his seventies, he looked in profile like he could have been the model for the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota. Except that his cream suit was straight out of a Peter O’Toole movie and his tie with its slanting red and gold stripes was a tie any British gentleman would have been proud to wear. (I only found out later, with the help of research, just how proud. The tie of the Marylebone Cricket Club was a thing greatly desired in cricket-playing circles.) He sat very straight, very upright, but very ill at ease, playing with the Borsalino hat upon his knee. There was a moment of awkward silence. Then he spoke.

I came to the United States for three reasons, he said. In the first place, to visit my sister in Philadelphia. Her husband is successful in the recycling of plastic bottles. This is how one makes one’s fortune in America. Get one good idea and stick to it. Professor Einstein used to say he only had one good idea. But in his case it was the nature of the universe.

Nero was at his goofiest, unfocused, his eyes wandering, humming a little private tune.

The second reason was to visit the grave of P. G. Wodehouse, he said. (That got my attention. Wodehouse, so beloved of my parents and myself. Wodehouse, who had also come to mind when Kinski sat in that chair.) Mr. Wodehouse is very popular back home, Mastan said. His tombstone is a marble book engraved with the names of his characters. My favorite is not there however. Miss Madeline Bassett who thought the stars were God’s daisy chain. But she is a minor character. I, also, myself. The same. Mine has always been a strictly supporting role.

My husband is not well, Vasilisa stiffly said. If there is a point to this visit, please arrive at it promptly.

Oh, the point, madam, yes. Bear with me. There is the point ostensible and the point actual. The point ostensible is what I have said to him telephonically. A word of warning. But the gentleman has been a worldly man. Perhaps it is not necessary to warn him of what he already knows. The community of our people in America has grown, madam, it boasts now recyclers of plastic bottles, madam, also new technology geniuses, garlanded actors, campaigning attorneys, politicians across the spectrum, fashion designers, and also, madam, criminal gangs. I’m sorry to say. In America the word mafia has specific Italian connotations so it is better to avoid it and call our people’s gangs by other names. Let us concede that they are still small, there are only the beginnings of what the Italians call families and what our people call gharaney, households, or, nowadays, companies, a term presently popular in the mother country. However there is much enthusiasm among these American companies, these new households, much potential for rapid growth. There is also a degree of outreach to the mother country, an interest in globalization, in shared activities. Our people in the USA are willing to help the people in the mother country, to facilitate actions here, in return for parallel facilitations back home. Things change, madam. Time passes. Things formerly impossible become possible. I wished to discuss these matters with the gentleman but now that I am face to face with him I find it redundant to do so. He may be aware, he may not. It may be a concern to him, or not. His intelligence may retain the capacity for analysis of threat and risk, or it may have lost that capacity. It is not my business. I see this now.

So we come to the point actual, madam, thanking you for your patience. The point actual was to take a look at the gentleman and to see what taking such a look inspired in myself. It is a man who has escaped judgment for many wrongs. For his part in desperate deeds, madam. It is a man who has expertly covered his tracks, who has used tradecraft and money to erase all links between himself and many things that are beyond words. I promised to tell him the names of his son’s murderers but of course he knows them already, he dealt with them for years on cordial terms, until they turned against him. It is possible the security forces of this great country would have been interested in these matters and perhaps I could have interested them, but I fear that without evidence I would look to them like a fond and foolish man even though I was once their colleague in a distant land. It is possible that having taken a look at this man I would have wished to take matters into my own hands although we are both old men. It is possible I would have wished to hit this man in the face, absurd as a fistfight between two old duffers would be. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that I would have wished to shoot him dead. I am still a crack shot, madam, and a weapon in America is easily acquired. But now that I look upon this man, a man whom I have hated for the larger part of my life, this man who was a strong man, I see that I have found him in his time of weakness, and he is not worthy of my bullet. Let him face his God. Let him receive judgment when he is standing before the judgment seat. Let hell receive him and let him burn in hellfire for all eternity. Thus my point is made and I will take my leave.

Riya’s hand was on Vasilisa’s shoulder, warning her, leave your pistol where it is.

Mr. Mastan rose and bowed his head. Then as he turned for the door Nero hauled himself up from the depths of the sofa where he sat and shockingly, awfully, shouted at the very top of his voice.

You come into my house and speak like this to me in front of my wife?

The retired policeman stopped in his tracks, his back to Nero, his hat still in his hand.

Bastard! Nero screamed. Run! It is you who are a dead man now.