Jacques was obviously trying to help him. And obviously Nina had let Jacques know about his trouble with the encomium for tomorrow. It wasn’t Jacques’s fault that he got his information from a stream, the internet, that ran alongside a membrane that only let bits of it through into the mainstream media flow. There was truth on both sides of the membrane.
Jacques had done some work on the internet, for him. Jacques was all right. He had printed out a poem, “Men on Earth,” by Robert Desnos. Nina would know who Robert Desnos was. He read the poem.
Men on Earth
There were four of us at a table
Drinking red wine and singing
When we felt like it.
A wallflower fades in a garden gone to seed
The memory of a dress at the bend of an avenue
Venetian blinds beating against a sash.
The first man says: “The world is wide and the wine is fine
Wide is my heart and fine my blood
Why are my hands and my heart so empty?”
A summer evening the chant of rowers on a river
The reflection of huge poplars
And the foghorn from a tug requesting passage.
The second man says: “I discovered a fountain
The water was fresh and sweet-smelling
I no longer know where it is and all four of us are dying.”
How beautiful are the streams in small towns
On an April morning
When they carry rainbows along
The third man says: “We were born a short time ago
And already we have more than a few memories
Though I want to forget them.”
A stairway full of shadow
A door left ajar
A woman surprised naked.
The fourth man says: “What memories?
This moment we are camped
And my friends we are going to leave one another.”
Night falls on a crossroad
The first light in the fields
The odor of burning grass.
We left each other, all four of us
Which one was I and what did I say?
It was a long time ago.
The glistening rump of a horse
The cry of a bird in the night
The rippling of water under a bridge.
One of the four is dead
This was a poem he wasn’t going to finish. He dropped the pages.
48
Nina woke up and saw that Ned was getting dressed. She watched. It would be more accurate to say that he was getting dressed and re-dressed. She didn’t know if it was a mania, exactly, but he was in some state completely new to her regarding the way he looked. He had collected and laid out different elements to choose from for the outfit he was going to present himself in today. It was very strange. He had assembled a collection of shirts gotten presumably from Joris and Elliot, maybe some of Douglas’s, from Iva — Gruen’s shirts wouldn’t fit Ned — and one shirt that he needn’t have bothered with, a pale floral print. He must have been out scouring the world for shirts since sunrise.
The radio was on, low. She concentrated. It was the local news.
She said, “Me oh my, another pedophile running a summer camp, apparently the woods are full of them.”
She thought, There is no handbook on the subject of how you help people who are acting crazy.
It was only seven and Ned had showered and shaved. Ned was someone who needed to wash his hair every day and he hadn’t been doing that. His curly hair looked vital when it had just been washed, not electrical exactly, but springing up and lively and nice. He had shaved hard, which is what he called shaving scrupulously and not in his usual nominal way. He was turning his head from side to side in front of the mirror over the chest of drawers, so he could check his gleaming cheeks.
The tie he was holding up against the front of an unfamiliar tan shirt was one she had seen Joris wear. It was purple. He would never wear it.
The house was full of nuts, by which she meant that somebody kept refilling the little bowls of cashews and almonds etcetera distributed around the common rooms. Men loved nuts. Ned was munching them all day there. He’s gained a little weight, she thought, in this house. Ma had given her a piece of advice she had paid attention to, but she could only put it into effect when she was in control of the eating environment. It was: restrict the kinds of nuts you keep in your house to the kind in shells so they can’t be consumed by the fistful, because cracking them constitutes an obstacle that keeps consumption down and makes noise so you can always rush in from someplace else in the house when you hear it and distract your husband with a stick of celery.
Ned said, “I like this.”
Nina said, “It shits. You are not going to appear in a purple tie! The black one is perfect. It’s perfect for a funeral. You like the purple one because it’s matte, and you think the black one is too shiny for a proletarian like you, but this is a funeral, Mister Bakunin.”
He said, “Okay, then. This is going to be it.” He had gotten into the black jeans he’d brought with him. Someone on the staff had pressed them to a fare-thee-well. He slipped his borrowed black suit jacket on and for some reason draped the black tie in an X across his chest, signifying that it was provisional. He inhaled and held his breath while she graded him. Men always do that, she thought.
“You look marvelous,” she said, realizing just after the fact that she was resurrecting a tag line from Saturday Night Live and her long durance vile with Bob. She thanked whatever gods may be that she hadn’t said it with the ellipses between the three words that made the phrase comical, or pronounced the “mar” in marvelous as “mah.”
“Okay then,” he said again.
She didn’t really like the way he was sounding. It was tight. Or it was going from tight to less tight through sheer self-control. It was her opinion that life should feel like something other than falling down an endless flight of stairs. Maybe a solid breakfast would help him. He’d only eaten a little rice and eggplant for dinner.
She said, “In my role as warden of your public self, I want to see your nails.”
He came toward her, the backs of his hands held out. His nails were clipped. She liked his hands.
“How am I?” he asked.
“You’re darling.”
“No, you know what I mean.”
“You are completely fine. But you need to relax. In fact, why don’t you do the breathing exercise you’re always, well not always, occasionally, telling me to do, in and out, out and hold, that one.”
She threw the covers back while Ned performed the breathing exercise.
When he spoke to her he sounded worse. He said, “By the way, just so you know, the celebrities are all eating their meals separately, not with us in the mess hall.”
“They are?”
“Yes, and there’s a Nazi hunter in the house. Not Wiesenthal but his deputy or somebody. Gruen will want to talk to him, but won’t be in the same room, malheureusement. Jacques is affecting my life.”
Nina said, “What about that poem. Was the poem any good?”