The Imperfectionists

"WORLD'S OLDEST LIAR DIES AT 126"
OBITUARY WRITER-ARTHUR GOPAL

ARTHUR'S CUBICLE USED TO BE NEAR THE WATERCOOLER, BUT the bosses tired of having to chat with him each time they got thirsty. So the watercooler stayed and he was moved. Now his desk is in a distant corner, as far from the locus of power as possible but nearer the cupboard of pens, which is a consolation.

He arrives at work, flops into his rolling chair, and remains still. This persists until inertia and continued employment cease to be mutually tenable, at which point he wriggles off his overcoat, flicks on the computer, and checks the latest news reports.

No one has died. Or, rather, 107 people have in the previous minute, 154,000 in the past day, and 1,078,000 in the past week. But no one who matters. That's good-it has been nine days since his last obit, and he hopes to extend the streak. His overarching goal at the paper is indolence, to publish as infrequently as possible, and to sneak away when no one is looking. He is realizing these professional ambitions spectacularly.

He opens a manila folder so that, if anyone happens past, he can flutter sheets, peer up irascibly, and mutter "Preparedness!" which seems to put most people off. Not all people, sadly.

Clint Oakley appears behind him, and Arthur swivels around in his chair as if twisted by a garrote. "Clint. Hi. Morning. I've been over the wires. Nothing obvious. To me, at least. Not so far." He despises this tendency to justify himself so abjectly to his superiors. He should shut up.

"Didn't you see it?"

"See what?"

"Are you serious?" Clint is a specialist in queries that are at once hectoring and incomprehensible. "Don't you read email? Wake up, faggot." He raps Arthur's monitor as if it were a skull. "Anybody home?" Clint Oakley, Arthur's boss, is a dandruff-raining, baseball-obsessed, sexually resentful Alabamian with a toilet-brush mustache and an inability to maintain eye contact. He is also the culture editor, an ironic posting if considered. "Rectum," he says, apparently meaning Arthur, and struts back to his office.

If history has taught us anything, Arthur muses, it is that men with mustaches must never achieve positions of power. Sadly, the paper has not heeded this truism, because Clint has authority over all special sections, including obituaries. Lately, he has heaped endless chores upon Arthur, ordering him to collate This Day in History, Brain Teasers, Puzzle-Wuzzle, the Daily Ha-Ha, and World Weather, in addition to his regular necrological duties.

Arthur finds the e-mail Clint was referring to. It's from the editor-in-chief, Kathleen Solson, who wants preparedness-that is, an obituary prepared before the subject dies-on Gerda Erzberger. Who on earth is that? He checks the Internet. She turns out to be an Austrian intellectual, once lauded by feminists, then decried by them, then forgotten. Why should the paper care that she's about to die? Well, because Kathleen happens to have read Erzberger's memoirs while at college. And, as Arthur knows, "news" is often a polite way of saying "editor's whim."

Kathleen arrives to discuss the piece.

"I'm working on it right now," he says preemptively.

"On Gerda?"

"Gerda? Do you know her personally?" If the answer is yes, his assignment assumes fresh peril.

"Not well. Met her a couple of times at events."

"Not a friend, then," he suggests hopefully. "How urgent would you say this is?" Which is to say, When's she planning to die?

"Unclear," Kathleen responds. "She's not having treatment."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Well, it's not typically good with cancer. Listen, I'd like us to do this properly for once-give you enough time to get an interview with her, go up there and so on, rather than just working from clips."

"Go up where?"

"She lives outside Geneva. Have the secretaries work out travel arrangements."

Travel means effort and a night away from home. Bleak. And nothing is worse than obit interviews. He must never disclose to his subjects what he's researching because they tend to become distressed. So he claims to be working on "a profile." He draws out the moribund interviewee, confirms the facts he needs, then sits there, pretending to jot notes, stewing in guilt, remarking, "Extraordinary!" and "Did you really?" All the while, he knows how little will make it into print-decades of a person's life condensed into a few paragraphs, with a final resting place at the bottom of page nine, between Puzzle-Wuzzle and World Weather.

At this disheartening thought, he sneaks out of the office to fetch his daughter. Pickle, who is eight, emerges from the school gate, satchel strap around her throat, arms flat at her sides, potbelly distended, glasses scanning nothing in particular, her untied shoelaces flailing with each step. "Antiques?" he asks, and she slips her hand into his, squeezing it in affirmation. To Via dei Coronari they amble hand in hand. He observes her from above, her tangled black hair, tiny ears, the thick lenses that bend and swell the cobblestones. She babbles softly and snorts with amusement. She is a wonderful nerd, and he hopes this won't change. He'd be distressed if she were cool-it'd be as if his flesh and blood had grown up to be purple.

"Your aspect," he says, "recalls that of a chimpanzee."

She is humming softly and offers no response. After a minute, she says, "And you remind me of an orangutan."

"I can't argue with that. Nope, I cannot argue with that. By the way," he adds, "I have a new one for you: Tina Pachootnik."

"Say it again?"

"Pachootnik. Tina."

She shakes her head. "Impossible to say."

"Do you like Tina at least?"

"I'm willing to consider it."

She has been looking for a pseudonym, not for any purpose but because it took her fancy. "What about Zeus?" she asks.

"Taken, I'm afraid. Though he's been gone long enough that there'd be little room for confusion. Would you use it like that-Zeus, on its own-or would it be Zeus something?"

She opens her pudgy hand within his cool dry palm and he releases her. She drifts, stepping over her own feet, beside him but abstracted, apart. Then she swoops back, plunges her fingers into his, and looks up, nostrils swelling with mischief.

"What?"

"Frog."

"I forbid it," he says. "Frog is a boy's name."

She shrugs, an oddly adult gesture in such a little girl.

They enter one of the opulent antiques shops on Via dei Coronari. The clerks watch Arthur and Pickle closely. The two of them come here often, never buying, except once, when she knocked over a mantel clock and Arthur had to pay for it.

She prods a 1920s telephone.

"You hold that part to your ear," Arthur explains, "and you talk into the other bit."

"But how do you make a call?"

He sticks his fingers into the dial and cranks a rotation. "You've never seen a phone like this before? My God, when I was growing up this was all we had. Imagine the strife! Hard times, my dear, hard times."

She purses her lips and pivots to investigate a bust of Marcus Aurelius.

Back home, Arthur prepares her a Nutella sandwich. She eats one every afternoon, legs dangling from the kitchen chair, smudges of chocolate accruing on the underside of her nose.

He tears off the crust and pops it into his mouth. "Father tax," he explains, chewing. She does not object.

When Visantha's car pulls up outside, Pickle hurriedly swallows her last bite and Arthur hastens to rinse off the sticky plate-it is as if a teacher approached.

"How was work?" he asks his wife.

"Okay. What are you guys up to?"

"Nothing much."

Pickle ambles off to the television room, and Arthur absentmindedly follows. They chat in there and laugh at their TV show.

Visantha trails in. "What are you watching?"

"Just some junk," he replies.

Pickle hands him the remote and wanders off to her room. He watches her go down the hall, then turns to Visantha. "You know what she told me today? She doesn't remember the twentieth century. Isn't that terrifying?"

"Not particularly. What are we doing for dinner?"

"Pickle," he calls down the hall. "Any thoughts on dinner?"

The secretaries book Arthur from Rome to Geneva by rail, a ten-hour journey with connections in Milan and Brig. Supposedly this saves money on a short-notice flight but is a colossal nuisance for him. He boards the early train at Stazione Termini, buys pastries in the cafeteria carriage, and, squashed amid the second-class rabble, settles into the first volume of Erzberger's memoirs, which is called, modestly, In the Beginning. From the author photo, Erzberger is, or was, in her early thirties, pretty and gaunt, with shoulder-length dark hair and twisted, ironic lips. The picture is from 1965, when the book came out. She must be in her seventies by now.

As his train pulls into Geneva in the early evening, he lifts his nose from the book and stares at the seat-back before him. From the blurbs on the Internet, he had expected a weary, politically dated autobiography. Instead, her prose communicates courage and humanity. He studies her photo again and feels scandalously unprepared.

He passes customs, obtains Swiss francs, and finds a cabbie who will take him to her house, which is just across the French border. The taxi drops him on a wet country road; the red taillights disappear down the hill. He is sweaty, uncertain, late. He dislikes being late, yet invariably is. He rubs his hands together, huffs a breath cloud onto them. This is the place: the right number, the pines, as she described. After a little searching, he finds a gate within the pleached fence and enters. Her home is built of sturdy timber beams, with icicles hanging from the eaves like wizards' caps. He snaps one off-he can never resist-and turns around to survey the twilight sky. A crust of clouds overlays the Alps. The icicle drips down his wrist.

She opens the door behind him.

"Hi, hi, sorry I'm late," he says, then switches to German. "Sorry, I was just admiring the view."

"Come in," she says. "You can leave the icicle outside, please."

The living room is illuminated by potted lights that pick out columns of dust in the air. An ebony coffee table bears an overflowing ashtray and a moonscape of stain rings from hot mugs that spilled. On the walls, African war masks leer. The bookshelves are perfectly stocked from wing to wing, like a residence whose management has ceased accepting new applicants. The room smells of strong tobacco and of hospital, too.

Erzberger's hair is short and white, and when she passes under the lights her scalp is visible. A tall woman, she wears a hand-knitted sweater that hangs loosely around her throat, like a sock that has lost its elastic. For trousers, she has flannel pajama bottoms, and on her feet, sheepskin slippers. The sight reminds him that it is cold; he shivers.

"What would you like to drink? I'm having tea."

"Tea would be perfect."

"So can I assume," she asks, half turned toward the kitchen, "that you're writing my obituary?"

He is caught out. "Oh," he says. "Why? Why do you ask?"

"What are you writing, then? You said on the phone it was a profile." She disappears into the kitchen, returning a minute later with his steaming mug. She places it on the coffee table, motions him to a black leather armchair, and sits on the matching couch, which does not sink to accommodate her as he expects but holds its shape as if bearing her upon its palm. She reaches to the table for her cigarette pack and lighter.

"I mean, yes," he admits. "It is for that. For an obituary. Is that awful to hear?"

"No, no. I rather like it. This way, I'll know it's accurate-I won't have a chance to send a letter of complaint afterward, will I." She coughs, covering her mouth with the cigarette pack. She lights one. "You?"

He declines.

A lick of smoke slithers from her mouth, her chest rises, and the thread is yanked back inside. "Your German is excellent."

"I lived in Berlin for six years as a teenager. My father was a correspondent there."

"Yes, right-you're the son of R. P. Gopal, aren't you."

"I am."

"And you write obituaries?"

"Primarily, yes."

"Claw your way to the bottom, did you?"

He responds with a polite smile. Writing for an international newspaper in Rome normally earns him a degree of respect-until, that is, people learn of his beat.

She continues: "I liked your father's books. What was that one with 'Elephant' in the title?" She glances at her bookshelf.

"Yes," Arthur says. "He was an excellent writer."

"And do you write as well as he did?"

"Alas, no." He sips his tea and pulls out a notepad and a tape recorder.

She crushes her cigarette in the ashtray, picks at the stitches on her slippers. "More tea?"

"No, I'm fine, thank you." He turns on his tape recorder and inquires about the start of her career.

She answers impatiently, adding, "You should ask me other things."

"I know this is basic. I just need to confirm a few facts."

"It's all in my books."

"I know. I'm just-"

"Ask what you want."

He holds up his copy of her memoirs. "I enjoyed this, by the way."

"Really?" Her face lights up and she takes a quick drag of her cigarette. "I'm sorry you had to suffer through the boring thing."

"It wasn't boring."

"I'm bored by it. That's the problem, I suppose, with writing a book about your life. Once you're done, you never want to hear about it again. But it's hard to stop talking about your own life-especially if you're me!" She leans forward solicitously. "Parenthetically, Mr. Gopal, I do like obituaries. I didn't mean to sound as if I was denigrating your work. You didn't take it that way?"

"No, no."

"Good. That makes me feel better. Now listen, when do I get to read this piece?"

"You don't, I'm afraid. It's against our rules. Otherwise everyone would demand to edit this bit or that. I'm sorry."

"Pity. How entertaining it would be to know how I'll be remembered. The single article I'd most like to read is the one I never can! Ah, well." She weighs the cigarette pack in her hand. "People must grow terribly upset when you turn up with a notepad. No? Like the undertaker arriving to measure the dowager."

"I hope I'm not that bad. Although in truth, most people don't realize what I'm researching. Anyway, I'm relieved that I don't have to pretend tonight," he says. "It makes life a great deal easier for me."

"But does it make death a great deal easier for me?"

He attempts a laugh.

"Ignore me," she says. "I'm only playing with words. In any case, I'm not afraid of it. Not in the least. You can't dread what you can't experience. The only death we experience is that of other people. That's as bad as it gets. And that's bad enough, surely. I remember when for the first time a dear friend of mine died. Must have been, what, 1947? It was Walter-he's in the book, the one who's always wearing his waistcoat to bed, if you remember. He got sick, and I abandoned him in Vienna and he died. I had a terror of illness. I was petrified by-by what? Not of getting sick and dying. Even then, in an elementary way, I understood what death was at its worst: something that happens to other people. And that is hard to bear; that is what I couldn't face back then with Walter, what I've never been good at.

"But my point, you see, is that death is misunderstood. The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself. From one's own perspective, experience simply halts. From one's own perspective, there is no loss. You see? Yet maybe this is a game of words, too, because it doesn't make it any less frightening, does it." She sips her tea. "What I really fear is time. That's the devil: whipping us on when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp, and all is suddenly past, a past that won't hold still, that slides into these inauthentic tales. My past-it doesn't feel real in the slightest. The person who inhabited it is not me. It's as if the present me is constantly dissolving. There's that line of Heraclitus: 'No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.' That's quite right. We enjoy this illusion of continuity, and we call it memory. Which explains, perhaps, why our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories." She considers him searchingly. "Do I make sense? Does that seem reasonable? Mad?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way before," he says. "You probably have a point."

She reclines. "It's an extraordinary fact!" She leans forward again. "Don't you find it striking? The personality is constantly dying and it feels like continuity. Meanwhile, we panic about death, which we cannot ever experience. Yet it is this illogical fear that motivates our lives. We gore each other and mutilate ourselves for victory and fame, as if these might swindle mortality and extend us somehow. Then, as death bears down, we agonize over how little we have achieved. My own life, for example, has been so inadequately realized. I will scarcely be recorded anywhere. Except, of course, in your eccentric newspaper. I won't question why you've chosen me-thank God someone has! It extends the lease on my illusions."

"That's much too modest."

"Nothing to do with modesty," she retorts. "Who reads my books anymore? Who has heard of me at this stage?"

"Well, me for one," he lies.

"Oh dear-listen to me," she goes on. "I say that ambition is absurd, and yet I remain in its thrall. It's like being a slave all your life, then learning one day that you never had a master, and returning to work all the same. Can you imagine a force in the universe greater than this? Not in my universe. You know, even from earliest childhood it dominated me. I longed for achievements, to be influential-that, in particular. To sway people. This has been my religion: the belief that I deserve attention, that they are wrong not to listen, that those who dispute me are fools. Yet, no matter what I achieve, the world lives on, impertinent, indifferent-I know all this, but I can't get it through my head. It is why, I suppose, I agreed to talk to you. To this day, I'll pursue any folly to make the rest of you shut up and listen to me, as you should have from the start!" She coughs and reaches for a fresh cigarette. "Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshipped by man."

She leaves the room without explanation and her heaving coughs are audible, muted by a closed door. She returns. "Look at me," she says. "No children, never a husband. I reach this stage of my life, Mr. Gopal, with the most comical realization: that the only legacy is genetic material. I always disdained those who made children. It was the escape of the mediocre, to substitute their own botched lives with fresh ones. Yet today I rather wish I'd borne a life myself. All I have is one niece, an officious girl (I shouldn't call her a girl-she's going gray) who looks at me as if through the wrong end of a telescope. She comes in here every week with gallons of soup, soup, soup, and an entourage of doctors and nurses and husbands and children to look me over one last time. You know, there's that silly saying 'We're born alone and we die alone'-it's nonsense. We're surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we're alone."

Erzberger has veered so far off topic that Arthur is unsure how to lead her back without appearing rude. She herself, from the industry of her smoking, seems to sense that this is not what he came for.

"Can I use your bathroom?" He closes the door after himself, rolls his shoulders, consults his watch. It's already so much later than he'd wanted. He must get some usable quotes. Nothing she has said will work. But the task feels insurmountable. All he wants is another career, one that pays him to make Nutella sandwiches and cheat at Monopoly with Pickle.

He checks his cellphone, which is set on silent mode. It shows twenty-six missed calls. Twenty-six? That can't be right. Normally, he doesn't get twenty-six calls in a week. He checks again-but yes, twenty-six calls in the past hour. The first three are from home, the remainder are from Visantha's mobile.

He steps from the bathroom. "Sorry, I have to make a call. Excuse me." He goes out onto the porch. The air is freezing.

Erzberger smokes on the leather couch, hearing the murmur of his conversation but not the sense of it. His talking stops, but he does not come back in. She stubs out her cigarette, lights a new one. She swings open the front door. "What's going on? You're not even on the phone anymore. What are you doing out there? Are we finishing this interview or not?"

"Where's my bag?"

"What?"

He walks past her into the living room. "Do you know where my bag is?"

"No. Why? Are you leaving? What are you doing?" she shouts after him. He doesn't even close the front door after himself.

In the following days, Arthur does not return to the paper. Soon, everyone knows why. Kathleen telephones to offer her condolences. "Come back whenever you feel ready."

After a few weeks, his colleagues begin to grumble.

"Hardly makes a difference with him or without him," they say.

"We have interns doing Puzzle-Wuzzle now."

"And doing it better."

"He used to leave early every day. I mean, I do feel bad for the guy. But, you know? This is kind of-kind of pushing it. Don't you think? How long's he gonna be gone?"

The news editor, Craig Menzies, turns out to be Arthur's truest ally during this period. He lobbies on Arthur's behalf, arguing that the paper should leave him alone as long as he needs. But after two months Accounts Payable informs Arthur that he must return in the New Year or lose his job.

Menzies suggests that Arthur soften his reentry by attending the Christmas party-it'll be a relatively painless way to see everyone in one go. The party involves prodigious amounts of booze, posturing, and flirtation, which means the rest of the staff should be too occupied to pay much attention to him.

Menzies greets Arthur and Visantha outside the office and leads them up, where they immediately bump into a group of colleagues.

"Arthur. Hi."

"You're back."

"Arthur, man, good to see you."

None of them appear glad; they seem abruptly sobered.

Menzies intervenes. "Where are the free drinks kept?" He shepherds Arthur and Visantha away.

Intermittently, staff members approach Arthur, repeating how good it is to see him. The brave ones raise the topic of his absence, but he interrupts: "I can't discuss that. Sorry. And things here? Same as ever?"

In the far corner of the newsroom is a Christmas tree, its base surrounded by presents wrapped in brilliant red paper and tied with curled golden ribbons. Children rush over to collect theirs, shaking little boxes that mustn't be opened quite yet-the company has a tradition of giving gifts to employees' kids ahead of Christmas. Menzies and Arthur had forgotten that children would be at the party, but are keenly aware now. Menzies positions himself before Arthur and Visantha, standing erect and speaking loudly to block sight and sound of the young ones in the corner.

Clint Oakley circles Arthur, Visantha, and Menzies from a wide radius, throwing glances and touching his lips to an overfull glass of punch. When Visantha and Menzies step away to get a plate of hors d'oeuvres, Clint swoops. "Good to see you, buddy!" He slaps Arthur's shoulder, sloshing punch on the filthy carpeting. "Are you gracing us with your presence full-time now, or is this just a one-night stand? We miss you, man. You gotta come back. Puzzle-Wuzzle barely works without you. How long you been off now?" He continues to talk in this jackhammer fashion, never allowing Arthur to respond. "Nice of us to let you in here so you can drink our liquor. Eh? Good of us, ain't it. My kids got their free Christmas presents. Some nice shit this year-I made 'em show me. Just to see how cheap the Ott Group is. But it's some not-bad shit. Like, toy guns and Barbies and whatever. I shouldn't have peeked. Not supposed to before Daddy Claus comes down the chimney, right? But I never could hold out. You know, like when it was Christmas morning and, like, your parents were asleep and shit, and you snuck down and pulled open the wrapping paper? You know what I mean, right, my Hindu buddy? You did that when you were a kid, right? I know you did! Only, don't go stealing a Christmas present for the kiddies this year. You don't get one this year, buddy. I'm gonna get me some cake." He struts away.

When Menzies returns with the hors d'oeuvres, Arthur asks him, "Does Clint know?"

"Know what?"

"What happened."

"How do you mean? With Pickle? I'm sure he does. Why?"

"Doesn't matter. I just needed to check. Have you seen Visantha?"

On the cab ride home, he and his wife find nothing to talk about.

He digs into his pocket. "Not sure I have change. Do you?"

As arranged, he returns to the paper in the New Year. He drops by Kathleen's office to signal his arrival, but she is on the phone. She covers the receiver and mouths, "I'll come see you later."

He sits in his cubicle in the far reaches of the newsroom and turns on his computer. As it rumbles to life, he glances around, at the senior editors' offices along the walls, the horseshoe copydesk in the center of the newsroom, the spattered white carpeting that smells of stale coffee and dried microwave soup, its acrylic edges curling up but held down in places with silver gaffer's tape. Several cubicles are empty nowadays, the former occupants long retired but never replaced, their old Post-its fluttering whenever windows open. Under the abandoned desks, technicians have stashed broken dot-matrix printers and dead cathode-ray-tube monitors, while the corner of the room is a graveyard of crippled rolling chairs that flip backward when sat on. Nobody throws anything away here; nobody knows whose job that is.

Arthur returns to routine, preparing This Day in History, Brain Teasers, Puzzle-Wuzzle, the Daily Ha-Ha, World Weather. He listens to the demands of Clint and obeys. Apart from this, he talks to no one but Menzies. And he no longer leaves early; he leaves on time.

Eventually, Kathleen stops by his desk. "We haven't even had a coffee yet. I'm sorry-nonstop meetings. My life has become one long meeting. Believe it or not, I used to be a journalist."

They chat in this vein until Kathleen deems that enough time has been devoted to her bereaved subordinate. She'll leave and, ideally, they won't speak again for months. "One last thing," she adds. "Could you possibly call Gerda Erzberger's niece? She's rung me about a thousand times. It's nothing important-she's just venting about you not finishing the interview. But if you could get her off my back I'd really appreciate it."

"Actually," he says, "I'd like to go back up there and finish that piece."

"I don't know if the budget can afford a Geneva trip twice for one obit. Can't you finish it here?"

"If you give me a day off, I'll pay my own travel costs."

"Is that a ploy to get a day away from Clint? You've only been back a week. Can't say I blame you, though."

Arthur flies to Geneva this time and finds that Erzberger has been moved to a hospice in the city. She has no hair; her skin is jaundiced. She removes her oxygen mask. "I run out of breath, so take notes fast."

He places his tape recorder on her bedside table.

She turns it off. "Frankly, I don't know if I'm talking to you at all. You wasted my time."

He collects his tape recorder, his overcoat, and he stands.

"Where are you going now?" she asks.

"You agreed to this meeting. If you don't want to cooperate, I don't care. I'm not interested."

"Hang on. Wait," she says. "What happened exactly? My niece said you went away for 'personal reasons.' What does that mean?" She takes a breath from the oxygen mask.

"I don't intend to discuss that."

"You must give me some sort of answer. I don't know if I want to bare myself to you anymore. Maybe you'll just go to the toilet and not return again."

"I'm not discussing this issue."

"Sit down."

He does.

"If you won't tell me anything interesting about yourself," she says, "at least tell me something about your father. The famous R. P. Gopal. He was an interesting man, no?"

"He was."

"So?"

"What can I say? He's always remembered as very charismatic."

"I know that. But tell me something you yourself remember."

"I remember that my mother used to dress him-not choose his clothes, I mean literally dress him. I only realized in my teens that this wasn't normal or common. What else can I say? He was handsome, as you know. When I was younger, the girls I went out with were irritatingly impressed by family photos. He was always much cooler than I am. What else? His war writings, of course, from India. I remember him composing poetry: he used to do it while sitting in my old crib. He said it was comfortable in there. I don't remember much more. Except that he enjoyed his drink. Until it took him, of course."

"So all you do is obituaries? What did your father think of that?"

"I don't think he minded. He got me my first job in the business, on Fleet Street. After that, he didn't seem bothered one way or the other. But I never really had the journo bug. I just wanted a comfortable chair. Not an ambitious man, me."

"Meaning you're a bit of a dud."

"That's very kind of you."

"Compared with R. P. Gopal, anyway."

"Yes, you're right. I don't compare to him. He didn't leave me his mind, the bastard." He looks at her. "Since you're being scathing about me, I hope you won't mind my being direct. Actually, I'm not sure that I care. You really are at odds with your writing, you know. When I read your memoirs before our first meeting, I was nervous about interviewing you. But you're much less admirable in person."

"I'm starting to like this conversation. Is all this going in the obituary?" She coughs painfully, wheezes into the oxygen mask. When she speaks again, it is a rasp. "This is a quiet room," she says. "I was lucky to get my own. My niece comes to visit every day. Every single day. Did I tell you about her?"

"Yes, you complained about her. Said she tormented you with hot soup and cold comfort."

"No, no, no," she responds, "I never complained about her. You're remembering wrong. I adore my niece. She's the dearest woman. Gerasim-that's my nickname for her. Her real name is Julia. She's an angel. I'm devoted to her. You can't imagine her kindness in these past months." She coughs. "I'm running out of words. I'm losing my voice. I'll shut up. Though I've said nothing. Nothing useful." She produces a pad and writes, "I'm supposed to communicate with this thing." She sits at the ready, but he asks her nothing.

The only noises are medical machinery and her wheezing.

Until he speaks: "Here's something interesting. Actually, I'll tell you something. It doesn't matter but… This thing that happened." He stops short.

She nods and writes on the pad: "I know. An accident. Your daughter."

"Yes. My daughter. It was an accident."

She writes, "It is over now."

"I can't talk about it." He puts his tape recorder and pens in his pocket.

She takes off her mask. "I'm sorry," she says. "I had nothing to say to you in the end."

As he waits to board his flight back to Rome, he writes out all he can recall about Erzberger. He works on the plane and, once home, looks for a space where he will be undisturbed. Only one is free, Pickle's former room. He sits on her bed and taps away at his laptop until 4 A.M., sipping whiskey to keep himself going-an old trick of his father's. The next day, he stays late at the office, compiling background on Erzberger. He stacks her books on the edge of his desk, his efforts plain to all. Kathleen passes, noticing.

Erzberger, as she depicted herself in writing, is morally bold, uncompromised by her epoch, endearing, even inspiring. In person, she showed little of this. But when Arthur writes the obituary he adheres to the Erzberger of the memoirs, the fictional Gerda, overlooking the woman he met. This is the article they want. To add an air of authority, he inserts the phrase "in a series of interviews conducted shortly before her death." He revises the piece until he can imagine no further amendments. He reads it aloud to himself in Pickle's old room. He has made an effort this time. It's almost as good as something his father would have submitted. He emails it directly to Kathleen, bypassing Clint. This is irregular, and she points it out. In her office, Arthur explains: "I thought you'd have a better feel for this edit. I don't want to step on anybody's toes. But if you have a chance to glance at it, that'd be great. If not, or if it's inappropriate, of course no trouble."

She does read it, and is impressed. "When Gerda dies," she says, "we'll run this as it is. Full length, if possible. This is exactly the sort of writing we need more of. With a real voice. With something to say. Really terrific. You captured her perfectly. Make sure Clint gives you the proper space. Okay? And if there's any trouble, say I said so."

He takes the opportunity to propose a few more stories to Kathleen-not obits but general features. She doesn't object, so he pursues them in his own time. Maintaining precedent, he files directly to her, not ostensibly for her to edit but because, as he puts it, "I'd really appreciate your opinion, if you have a second." Once she has read each and enthused, he forwards it to Clint with a note stating, "KS edited." With that, Clint cannot touch a word.

Gradually, Arthur converts Pickle's old room into his study. That is, he calls it his study. Visantha won't.

One night, he looks up from his notes. "Hi. What's up?"

"You busy?" she asks.

"Fairly. What's going on?"

"I'll come back later. I don't want to interrupt."

"What's up?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to talk."

"About?" He turns off the desk light. He sits in darkness. She is silhouetted in the doorway. He says, "I can't talk about that."

"I haven't said what."

"I'm done here for the night."

"Age-wise," she says, "it's a rush. If we want to."

"I got a fair amount done tonight, I think."

"Because of my age. I'm just saying."

"No, no," he says, rising. "Not for me. No. Couldn't bear that. I'm done in here. Done for the night." He approaches and touches her shoulders. She responds, expecting an embrace. Instead, he shifts her gently aside and passes.

The next day, a Cuban man who claimed to be 126 years old dies. Nobody believes the claim, but the paper needs to fill out page nine. So Arthur is assigned to write eight hundred words. He steals the basics from the wires and adds a few clever flourishes. He reads it over a dozen times, emails it to Clint. "You have the fake Cuban," Arthur informs him, and does a last check of his email in-box before heading to the door. He finds a message from Erzberger's niece: Gerda has died.

Arthur checks the time to see if he can still make deadline. He calls the niece, offers his condolences, inquires about a few compulsory details: when exactly Gerda died, what the official cause was, when the funeral will be. He types these updates into the obit and walks into Clint's office. "We need to knock something off page nine."

"Not at this hour."

"An Austrian writer, Gerda Erzberger, just died. I have preparedness ready to go."

"Are you insane? We've got the fucking Cuban on nine."

"You need to kill him and put in Erzberger."

"I need to? Kathleen didn't say I need to do nothing."

"Kathleen wanted it in."

Each man cites Kathleen's name as if hoisting a club.

"Nuh-uh. Kathleen wanted the 126-year-old Cuban. She said so at the afternoon meeting."

"Well, I want Erzberger in. At full length."

"Who heard of this dumb-ass Austrian, anyway? Look, man, I think we can safely hold your masterpiece till tomorrow."

"Kathleen specifically said she wanted something in the paper as soon as Erzberger died. Obviously, we could tack a brief onto the bottom of the world's oldest liar and that might satisfy her. But I don't want to do that. This is my personal request, nothing to do with Kathleen: dump the Cuban and run Erzberger. And don't hack my piece. I don't want to open the paper tomorrow and read it as a brief at the end of the Cuban. Is that clear?"

Clint smiles. "I'll do whatever I got to do, man."

Arthur sleeps poorly that night-he's too impatient. When the paper arrives, he flips immediately to page nine. "Yes!" he declares. "Oh, Clint, dear, dear Clint!" Just as Arthur had hoped, Clint has destroyed the Erzberger article, condensing her life into one hundred words and making it a brief at the bottom of the dead Cuban. "Perfect," Arthur says.

He composes himself and phones Kathleen from his study. "Sorry to bug you this early at home, but did you see our obits today?"

"Obits plural?" He hears her flipping pages. Her voice turns metallic. "Why did we run this as a brief?"

"I know-I don't see why we couldn't have just held it for a day."

"You didn't know it was running like this?"

"Not a clue. I'm only seeing it now. The thing that bothers me is-well, a few things, I guess. First, there's all the money the paper spent sending me up there. Second, there's the effort I took in going back. Especially after everything that happened." He kicks the door of the study closed so Visantha won't hear.

"Exactly," Kathleen says.

"But more than anything else," he goes on, "it feels like a disservice to Gerda. An important twentieth-century writer, a serious thinker, in my view. Already she's way too overlooked. And what do we do? Clint turns her into a brief. At the bottom of some Cuban liar. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I find it offensive. And it makes the paper look bad. It makes us look like philistines, when all Clint needed to do was hold it for one day and then run it at full length, as I told him to. As I said you wanted. I told him, 'Don't run anything today. Kathleen would want you to hold it until tomorrow.' Anyway. I'm sorry-I'm bitching," he says. "I don't mean to slag off Clint. It's just-"

"No, you're right to be angry. I'm pretty annoyed myself."

"Could we run my piece at full length today?" He knows the answer.

"We can't report her death twice," she says.

"What stuns me is that I specifically brought up your name when Clint and I discussed this."

"Seriously?"

"I was crystal clear."

"You know what," she says, anger mounting, "I don't want your stuff under Clint anymore. This is ridiculous."

"But politically? I mean, I have to be under Clint. I'm. Which is his."

"Nothing is his."

"What about my fixtures: the puzzles and all that?"

"You shouldn't have to do that crap anyway. An intern could do that."

"Clint will give you a hard time about this."

"I'm not worried."

"I don't want to get ahead of myself here," he says, picking at the Scotch tape holding one of Pickle's old magazine clippings to the wall. "But I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

When Arthur is named the new culture editor, he moves into Clint's former office. It is deemed too blatant to make Clint sit in Arthur's old cubicle, so they find him one at the edge of the sports department, facing a pillar.

At home, the atmosphere between Arthur and Visantha is strained. She is openly hunting for a job back in the United States, and there is no talk of his returning with her. Indeed, he will be relieved when she leaves-the old Visantha is long gone anyway, just as the previous Arthur has perished.

These days, he prefers to stay late at work. After-hours, he admires his new office. True, it is smaller than those of the other section chiefs. And he is farther from the cupboard of pens. Then again, the watercooler is a good deal nearer. And this is a consolation.

1954. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

The paper was established on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a broad east-west thoroughfare lined with dirty-white travertine churches and blood-orange Renaissance palazzi. Many of the buildings in central Rome were colored as if from a crayon box: dagger red, trumpet yellow, rain-cloud blue. But the paper's dour seventeenth-century building seemed to have been colored with a lead pencil: it was scribble gray, set off by a towering oak door large enough to swallow a schooner, though human beings entered through a tiny portal hinged within.

A doorman sized up new arrivals from his glass booth, pointing down the long hallway, its brilliant burgundy runner halting just short of the elevator cage, the metal door ajar, its operator sitting on a velvet stool. "Che piano, signore? What floor, sir?"

For Cyrus Ott, it was the third, formerly the headquarters of a Fascist movie magazine that went bankrupt after the fall of Mussolini. Ott rid the place of its dusty furniture and had all the interior walls knocked down, creating a wide-open newsroom, rimmed with tidy offices that looked inward, like box seats directed toward the stage. He bought wooden swivel chairs, varnished desks, brass banker's lamps, a custom-built horseshoe table for the copy editors, shiny black phones for the reporters, thirty-eight Underwood typewriters imported from New York City, thick crystal ashtrays, and thick white carpeting, with a discreet cocktail bar in the east wall.

Six months later, any visitor stepping out of the elevator at the third floor landed directly in a vibrating newsroom, the secretary's desk ahead, a handful of typing reporters left and right, a half-dozen copy editors defacing proofs at the horseshoe table. In the offices along the walls, salesmen hocked ad space, a stenographer copied down classifieds, the accountant inked ledgers. In the northwest corner was Ott's office, with PUBLISHER etched on the frosted door; in the northeast corner were Leopold T. Marsh, editor-in-chief, and Betty Lieb, news editor. Ranged nearby were senior staffers specializing in business, sports, wire copy, photos, layout. Copyboys buzzed back and forth like pollinating bees.

Printing took place in the subbasement, but it could have been another land. Unionized Italian laborers ran the deafening press down there, yet few of them ever met anyone who wrote the paper just floors above. In the late afternoon, a truck arrived with a vast roll of newsprint, which the workers slid down the incline at the back, slamming it into the loading bay shuddering the building up to the third floor. Any journalists lazing around up there-joshing with one another, legs kicked up on desks, brimmed hats dangling on shoe tips, cigarettes smoldering in ashtrays-jerked upright in immediate panic. "Fuck, is it that time already?"

Miraculously, by the 10 P.M. deadline the paper had filled every line down every column, no matter the last-minute heart palpitations and blaspheming. Editors rose from their desks for the first time in hours, shrugging tortured shoulder muscles, attempting to exhale.

Most of the journalists were men, Americans chiefly, but with a few Britons, Canadians, and Australians, too. All had been based in Italy when hired, and all could speak the local language. But the paper's newsroom was strictly Anglophone. Someone hung a sign on the elevator door that read, LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA, VOI CH'USCITE-OUTSIDE IS ITALY.

And when staffers went downstairs for sandwiches they'd say, "I'm headed to Italy -anyone need anything?"

The first full year of operations, 1954, was packed with news: the McCarthy hearings, the Soviets testing a nuclear weapon, the Dow Jones closing at a record high of 382 points. Initially, the paper suffered under the suspicion that it was an international mouthpiece for Ott's business empire, but this was unfounded. The greatest influence over content was necessity-they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.

Betty and Leo ran the editorial operations jointly. He liked to say, "I handle the big picture." But it was Betty who wrote-or rewrote-most of the copy; she had an effortless way with prose. As for Ott, he handled the money side and offered advice when solicited, which was often. Betty and Leo speedwalked across the newsroom to his office, each trying to get in the door first. Solemnly, Ott listened, staring at the carpet. Then he looked up, pale blue eyes flitting between Betty and Leo, and issued his ruling.

The three of them got along splendidly. Indeed, the only awkward moments arose when Ott stepped away, at which point Betty and Leo spoke to each other as if newly introduced and watched the door for their publisher to return.

Normally, Ott was ruthless about profit. But the paper was an anomaly: financially, it stank. Back in the United States, his business rivals observed this Italian venture with suspicion. It must be a scheme of sorts, they figured.

If so, the aim was far from clear.

He never explained his business plans to Betty and Leo, and was even more opaque on personal matters. He had a wife, Jeanne, and a young son, Boyd, but had never explained why they remained in Atlanta. Leo sought to tease out details but failed-Ott had the ability to insert full stops in conversations, when and where he wished them.