All this time Eloise was working up her courage. K loved to say of the Greeks that they experienced their subjectivity as a trajectory through a nexus of social interstices, linguistic artifacts cast in or broken by the machinery of legal systems. To hear K discourse on the character of Odysseus in Sophocles’ Ajax was to have a memory to save up for one’s grandchildren. Surely K, then, would not be blind to the predicament of one required to engage with the modern machinery of the law?
Eloise’s situation was that she had written a new book, one which required the legal muscle enjoyed by K if its characters were not to find themselves in a witness protection programme. K was so grand that his contracts were negotiated by someone very grand indeed. Eloise’s lawyer, who was not at all grand, claimed that the boilerplate was non-negotiable. Eloise had the true hacker’s love of economy of effort; K had a perfectly good contract negotiated by a master of the art, on which her unloved lawyer was unlikely to improve; why could this unimprovable document not be redeployed? When they were all very drunk (they had fasted, after all, for a night and a day) Eloise put this ingenious suggestion to K, who said he was not comfortable mixing business with friendship.
The formulaic reply made it clear that K was not new to ingenious suggestions.
K had more serious matters to contend with. He was in the midst of protracted negotiations of a delicate nature. The mother of his bride would not brook kosher catering for the wedding. His sister, who had joined the Lubavitch after a turbulent youth, would not permit her seven children to eat cake if it were not kosher. It would be cruel and inhumane to invite children to a party at which they could not eat cake; K’s soft heart melted. The points at issue were whether, on the one hand, a kosher cake from an approved purveyor might pass muster with his sister, provided the cake were kept strictly segregated from all other comestibles, and whether, on the other hand, such cake might be acceptable to a non-religious fanatic.
Eloise’s editor left for another job. The new editor was unenthusiastic with the legacy. No contract had been signed. The characters were given an unexpected reprieve from the witness protection programme.
Eloise was introduced to an agent who sold her book in a week. The book had been in a mixture of first, second and third persons; the editor thought it would work much better if it were all in first.
K and his bride found an apartment on Central Park West, easy walking distance to Lincoln Center and a shul with an intelligent rabbi.
K published to acclaim a book which alternated between first, second and third persons.
K was not at all sporting about the thing with the Cathedral. He shared it genially with his friends at shul, mischievously at dinner parties. Americans naturally like to hear that the British are stuck in the mud; the story was passed round to the point where Nigel, an ambitious young Canon at Bath and Wells, heard it three times in a single day on a trip to New York.
Eloise’s new editor left for another job. The replacement examined the legacy and saw at once that the book would work better in third person.
K won a prize for the new book, thus becoming much grander.
Nigel had been keeping his ear to the ground. He saw at once that the thing, used properly, might just do for his Bishop, who was quietly pining for a shot at Canterbury. It would be the most terrific coup if Bath and Wells could persuade the now indisputably distinguished K to accept carte blanche.
By the most extraordinary piece of luck, Boulez agreed to come to London to revive his production of Moses und Aron.
Nigel whispered in the ear of a very dear friend at Covent Garden: it would be quite wonderful if Boulez and K were to appear in conversation before the great event. Boulez was, in fact, an admirer of K; K agreed to the treat (with the promise of accommodation at Claridge’s and a box for opening night).
Nigel was then able quite naturally to reply to K’s benevolent thanks for his efforts.
The Bishop and Mrs Bishop trusted him implicitly; if an invitation to the Glyndebourne Arabella would lure the Nobel laureate in posse, to Glyndebourne they would go. Mrs Bishop handsomely undertook to lay on hampers from Fortnum’s, strictly kosher in case of need — one could always count on Mrs B.
K was all amiability in agreeing to join the episcopal party. He was not, in fact, at all particular in matters of kashrut, but he very much liked to be asked.
At supper he displayed his broadmindedness by consuming lobster patties with evident enjoyment.
Nigel was assiduous in filling his glass with champagne.
At the second interval K agreed affably to contribute to a service apiece at Bath and at Wells. He knew printers at Golders Green who could sort out the Hebrew. Mrs B. (bless her) made all the right noises.
Gerald’s Bishop remained thankfully unapprised.
Climbers
“The thing you have to understand is that I really don’t understand people.”
Gil sat on a squashy old sofa, legs akimbo, forearms on thighs. He was wearing a dark green polo shirt with a small red turtle in the place where a more fashionable polo shirt sports a crocodile. It had the trusting incomprehension of a Presidential dog.
“I mean for instance. Peter Dijkstra. There are these people, they totally say Dude, Peter Dijkstra, I love Peter Dijkstra, what a genius, but then they say, Oh, but he’s impossible, we met him for drinks in Amsterdam and he spent the whole night talking to the bartender’s dog! And then he walked off with Jason’s brand new Moleskine!!!!”
It is not new information that he wore a dark green polo shirt with a turtle on the left breast, but sometimes we can’t be rational. If a garment quietly clothes its owner while he speaks, this cannot be uncomplaining loyalty, it cannot be touching, because this is what garments do. (What else would it do? Walk off in a huff?) And yet there was a touching loyalty in the quiet uncomplaining persistence of the turtle on the dark green breast. It had been there and it was still there.
“But see, this is what I don’t understand. Because see. Say Peter Dijkstra comes to New York and needs a place to stay, he can come to my place and stay as long as he wants and I’ll just go off and couch surf with friends to get out of his way.”
The friendly crowd let him talk uninterruptedly on. They filled the loft that would be placed so gladhandedly at the disposal of Peter Dijkstra.
“Okay, now let’s say I’m off the premises and Peter Dijkstra rents a van and loads it up with everything I own. I go back and everything is gone. Books, CDs, DVDs, TV, computer, baseball cards. Gone. And it’s not just the stuff, Peter Dijkstra went through my papers, my personal papers, and he took my diaries, and my notebooks, and my photo albums, all this incredibly personal, irreplaceable paraphernalia, he just took it. The place is empty. All I’ve got is the clothes I’m standing in, my laptop, and my iPhone. So I’m standing in this empty apartment, and I’m looking around, and the point is, I’m happy. I’m ecstatic. Peter Dijkstra — Peter Dijkstra!!!! — has appropriated this stuff, in some mysterious way my stuff is going to contribute to a book by Peter Dijkstra! I feel honored. I mean, the stuff is not contributing to a work of genius just sitting there in my apartment.”