There’s Constanza’s solo now. Love subsumes conflict, conflict subsumes love. She’ll walk in soon. She’ll wear a white dress. One strap will slip off her bare shoulder. She’ll hitch it up repeatedly. She’s perfected the move.
Dudley chain-smoked. He wore his summer uniform and brown gun belt. Harbor craft bobbed a few feet away. A sea breeze hit open windows and cooled the place off.
Constanza walked up. She wore the white dress. He stood and bowed. Constanza laughed.
“I heard my third recapitulation, all the way out on the dock. I will reinterpret the composer’s intent if I record the piece again.”
Dudley smiled. “Don’t spoil my interpretation. The piece infatuated me.”
“You succumb to infatuation, as long as it serves you. It’s a ruthless trait that I admire in men.”
A waiter snapped to. He brought Cointreau on ice and Dudley’s third scotch. Cointreau was her drink. The Wolf told him so. Constanza tucked her dress pleats and slid into the booth. Dudley sat across from her. Constanza sipped Cointreau and lit a cigarette.
“My impolitic maid warned me about you. She said, ‘There’s a strange man prowling the house, and looking at things that he shouldn’t see.’ ”
“I saw you posed with beautiful animals and quite notable men. I was smitten at the airfield, and conquered when I saw you with the jaguar and your German friends.”
Constanza twirled her ashtray. A dress strap slipped off her shoulder. She hitched it back up.
“My brother forewarned me. He said, ‘Captain Smith is a voyeur who misses nothing. Poor boys confronted with affluence always love to look and touch. If there’s anything you don’t want him to see, you should hide it in advance of your party.’ ”
“And what did you hide?”
Constanza said, “I hid nothing.”
Dudley lit a cigarette and twirled his ashtray. Their fingers brushed.
“You brother intercedes in your life in a manner that some might find unseemly. My friend Salvy Abascal told me that.”
“Did Salvy tell you that I am his occasional lover? He has his child bride, who will supply him with children, and the women he ruts with and talks to.”
The cantina was built on a barge. Waves tapped loose pilings. Constanza swayed in time with them.
“It’s the war, you see. You are the U.S. Army captain and certified foreign devil. My brother only trusts people who want things from him, once he has vetted their most pressing common concerns. He has had you surveilled and knows of the British soldiers you killed in your homeland. He knows of your rich puta lover Claire, and her odious beliefs. He knows of Claire’s young charge Joan Klein, and has verified her outré stories of leftist intrigue. Would it surprise you to know that Joan’s New York comrades are acquainted with the Koenigs, Ruth Szigeti, and Sandor Abromowitz? My brother interceded for me because he distrusts wartime alliances and knows more than I do. He considers you to be a voyeur and quite the rank amateur. He intercedes and looks out for me by accommodating my own voyeuristic impulse.”
Dudley crushed his cigarette. “It’s all alliance, is it not? Once again, we come back to the war and those we might learn to trust or distrust.”
Constanza crushed her cigarette. “Alliances overlap. That is because spheres of interest and influence are ever mutating. In wartime, the only true common interests are profit and ultimate survival. Take the musical underground. In it, the musical Left and Right clash and just as often collude. It is all toward the end of profit and survival assured.”
Dudley said, “I saw that at your party. Your photographs of Herr Kempff and Herr Böhm, and your exiles so bravely and disingenuously repatriated.”
Constanza said, “You are perceptive. However amateurish, you compel me to report what my brother reports to me. There are mock traitors in the Führer’s high command, you see. They are strategically saving volubly articulate Jews from extermination. It is all part of an exoneration ruse, to be put into effect should Germany lose the war. An identical plan has been implemented in Russia. The Russians fear that the U.S. will invade their country should Germany lose the war. It is all about establishing moral credentials now, and paving the way for the appearance of redemption in what will surely be a bitter and rancorous postwar era. It also asserts the need for a mutual accommodation of Communist and fascist beliefs in the present, so that both sides will be couched to prove themselves indispensible to the ultimate victors.”
Dudley stirred his drink. Constanza’s strap slipped down her arm. He reached over and pulled it up. Constanza touched his hand.
“Let’s see if I can extrapolate off the point you just made. I would guess that our current exile friends and all others that may follow will be put to use as informants. They’ve served the cause of Communist-fascist amity. But their efficacy should not stop there.”
Constanza said, “My brother allows that you are quick. You confirm it by keeping up with me.”
“You keep bringing up your brother’s intercessions. His influence daunts me. I’ve begun to think of him as a rival and romantic impediment.”
Constanza smiled. “We will get to the topic of the two of us in good time.”
“Pray forgive my great haste.”
Constanza smiled and lit a cigarette. Her hair was brown more than black. She was pale more than tan. She wore a man’s wristwatch.
“My brother knows a comunista named Meyer Gelb. Comrade Gelb is working on the Russian end of the exoneration scheme I described to you. Russian émigrés, badly used by Stalin, will be approached by my brother and suborned as informants, wherever they are resettled. Meyer will approach the Koenigs, Mr. Abromowitz, and Miss Szigeti in Los Angeles.”
Red Meyer. The Griffith Park Fire. Gelb’s ’33 cell. Brother and sister know Kyoho Hanamaka. The intersections failed to surprise him.
“Let me extrapolate. Your brother knows high-ups in the Fatherland. Comrade Gelb knows high-ups in Mother Russia. You’re describing a blackmail racket.”
Strolling musicians dipped by. They jiggled jangly maracas. Constanza went Shoo.
“Yes, and I should add that Comrade Gelb has marvelous dirt on the Koenigs, old Abromowitz, and Miss Szigeti. They sold three hundred Jewish musicians into the Führer’s death camps in order to save their own skins.”
Dudley lit a cigarette. “You are telling me quite a great deal. I find it as disconcerting as your brother’s unseen presence at our table.”
Constanza laughed outright. She covered her mouth, double quick. She had pronounced buck teeth.
“I was Kyoho Hanamaka’s lover. He showed me the gold bayonet you later found at his hideaway. Like you, I had heard of a companion piece, adorned with Soviet symbols.”
“I mentioned the Communist bayonet to your brother. Let me hazard a guess here. You had his living room bugged.”
“Yes. Again, I’ll state that you are very perceptive.”
Their hands were close. Dudley touched her fingers.
“Again, I’ll state that you are telling me quite a great deal.”
Constanza squeezed his hand. “You want the gold. Men like you deem such treasures irresistible. I share your desire, body and soul.”
The barge lurched. Dudley lurched. The room went double hot. He saw gold bars that weren’t really there.
“Do you know where it is, or who has it? As much as it pains me to ask, does your brother know?”
Constanza said, “I don’t know, nor does my brother. Kyoho most likely knows — but he is hiding somewhere undisclosed in the U.S.”