“But they never mentioned anything about resurrections or Russia. It was just a bunch of people having fun.”
“Fun,” he scoffs. “I've seen more refinement in the lot outside a Phish show.” He reaches for his cigarettes. “Still, and I am quite sure of this, the membership includes the most ridiculous members of the Russian avant-garde here in New York. To name a few, there's Dmitri Kondrashov, Antonia Kashcheev, Yuri Podgornov, Feodor Zolotov-Khomutov, Yevgeny Pominov…” I look to him with a very stupid countenance — I can feel it, see myself looking like an utter buffoon. Some of the names are instantly familiar; others summon faint recollections of voices and faces. “You obviously know Daphne — Daphne Karev.”
“She didn't seem Russian to me.”
“She's first generation. I think her mother's French or Italian. I forget.” Caesura. “French.”
“Regardless; you've met all of these people?”
“Yes and no. I've only really talked to Daphne and Keen's grandson, Mongo Blageaux. My guess is that the rest of them aren't all that different. Mongo comes from extreme wealth, as I'm sure you already know. Daphne went to Dartmouth, so I can imagine her background is essentially the same. They're no different than the rest of the idiots running around Williamsburg thinking they're revolutionaries just because they reject the posterity of the Manhattan elite. A bunch of fucking bobos if you ask me.”
“Bobos?”
“Bourgeois bohemians,” almost spitefully. There are lines in his face that I swear I have never seen before. Their design is baroque, a ferocious calligraphy.
It dawns on me that this is the first time I have ever looked to Sean as an equal. The realization does not strike me as a fully conscious thought — at least not initially. Yet this is his face, his face with all its imperfections. I've never looked to it as I would to a friend's face. I've always been too busy concentrating on his eyes — the indifference, fatigue, confidence — to notice the small print.
“I enjoyed their company,” I respond. “I even liked Patrick.”
“You don't mean Patrick Shaheen, do you?”
“Yes,” I respond. “What's the big deal?”
“Nothing. I just heard that he was being deported.” Caesura. “I don't remember the exact reason. France would have probably described him as a 'serene fanatic'.”
“France?”
“Anatole France. Yes, from the Gods Will Have Blood.”
“Is he some type of criminal?”
“Anatole France? No—”
“I know who Anatole France is, Sean.”
“Oh, Patrick. Not really. A lot of governments don't particularly like him. I'm sure there are dossiers on him in a variety of languages.”
“What does he do exactly?”
“He's a ghost writer. And I know you've read something he's written — most people in college have.” Before I begin, he interrupts with, “I don't know. Even if I did, I wouldn't be at liberty to say.”
“So he's a ghost writer for what?”
“Academics. Left-wing demagogues.”
“So he writes anti-establishment literature for famous people? He's like living samizdat?”
“If you want to be horribly pretentious about it. Again, it's not as though there are cross hairs on him or anything. It's more that he has connections. I'm surprised he used his real name during your interaction.” He pauses. “Unless someone else used his name as an alias. An old friend of mine in L.A. likes to tell strangers that he's Thomas Pynchon.”
“Well, that's who he said he was,” slowly. “He's the one who took me and Tomas to the party.”
“And what did he tell you of the group?”
“He told us that it was founded by Dick Keens, that Keens wanted to spread happiness and laughter throughout the world, and, to be honest that's about it — unless, of course, you would like to hear the entire history of the Keens and Balaguez families.”
“He didn't explain the group's goal to you guys?”
“Laughter. And you mentioned something about The Joke.”
“It's a form of atonement,” he says bluntly. My cigarette has gone out. He lights another before sliding his Zippo across the table. “He felt guilty about the source of his money, his life. It haunted him.” He drags from his cigarette slowly. “I'm guessing Patrick didn't mention how Keens died.”
“No; never came up.”
“He shot himself.”
There is a long silence at the table. In this time I notice that the couple next to us, who have been getting the majority of the smoke from Sean's cigarette blown in their face, are conversing about how rude smokers are just loud enough so that Sean and I can hear them. The music from inside the café sounds like late George Benson. The centerpiece of the concrete garden, a massive oak rising from a five by five plot of soil, makes shifting shadow-lattices on the walls that surround us. I remove my sunglasses.
“He what?”
“Shot himself.” It comes out plainly, not stoically or gravely; he recites this information as if telling me the time. “He couldn't live with the guilt, so he shot himself.”
“But why? I mean, the money only paid for his education; it's not like—”
“And what of Abram & Keens? Did his mother promote happiness and laughter with that Leviathan? Don't you think he felt that the money from that company was contaminated, that it contaminated him, too. Didn't you question why he never worked again? He could have given it all away, lived by his labor, and rid himself of the insidious wealth that came from the blood and the toil of untold millions, from a scarred landscape where ore was withdrawn, brutalized bodies deposited.” He ashes his cigarette carefully, slowly. “It became his legacy, too. He did not erase it or rectify it; he only denied it.”
“I thought he gave away most of that money. I thought he only kept enough to tool around the world, and that, with the rest of it, he bought a house down in Park Slope.”
“He gave some of it away. But denial is a poor surrogate for innocence,” he adds in an aphoristic tone. “You see, he formed that cult to run away from the reality of the situation. But it was always there, a great cynosure that infected every thread of his clothing, every brick of that house, every thought in his head: there was not one thing in his life that could not be traced back to the privilege he inherited by means of rape or plunder.” He brandishes what I hope is a wince. “And it was this realization, this inability to escape from the imperious guilt, that led him to suicide. Isn't that all suicide really is — the desire to escape from the ego?”
Maybe it is. He was not only his mother's son; he was a constant reminder of the crime, a byproduct of that insatiable lust and that need for power over a woman, a woman for whom the perpetrator felt no love, no tenderness, no sympathy. Yes, he was the unwanted result of a crime, the crime that stole away his mother's youth. And as much as she may have loved him, as much as she may have cared for him and nurtured him and taught him, there was always that element in him that she could not fully trust, and, therefore, could not fully love. And so maybe there are some crimes that are atavistic, even if the father is disowned by the son, the son by the father. But that was not fully the case with Keens. He may have returned each night to the apartment he and his mother shared, he may have never met the eyes of his father, but the boys with whom he socialized and the environment to which he was subjected were befitting of a Balaguez, a Rockefeller, a Vanderbilt. And maybe he realized it early on, too. Because he must have known. He must have been able to see in it in the mirror. Even if he looked nothing like his father, even if he had his mother's eyes or her nose or her mouth or her cheeks or whatever, it didn't matter. Because the guilt was generational, indelible: He could have renounced everything, he could have given away all of his possessions, thrown them away, immolated them upon a pyre and called the whole ordeal a purification ritual; he could have reduced himself to poverty, assumed the likeness of Job and taken to prostrating himself upon the earth, digging at his blistering skin with the shards of his former life; he could have become a doctor, a holy man, a saint — it would not have erased that legacy he inherited (unwillingly, true; but are not all legacies imposed upon their inheritors, benefactor and victim alike?); he still would have been part Balaguez, part aristocrat, part rapist, capitalist, exploiter, parasite, demon.