violent exclamation points—and each one broke through her words like an axe.
When you go downstairs, she said, I want you to … make up with Karin … I don’t care if you have to get down on your knees … and beg for her forgiveness … Everyone’s talking about it … and if you don’t do this for me now, David … I’m never going to invite you to this house again.
I didn’t want to come in the first place, I answered. If you hadn’t twisted my arm, I never would have been here to insult your guests. You could have had the same dull and insipid party you always have.
You need help, David … I’m not forgetting what you’ve been through … but patience lasts just so long … Go and see a doctor before you ruin your life.
I live the life that’s possible for me. It doesn’t include going to parties at your house.
Mary threw the last coat onto the bed, and then, for no discernible reason, she abruptly sat down and began to cry.
Listen, fuckhead, she said in a quiet voice. I loved her, too. You might have been married to her, but Helen was my best friend.
No she wasn’t. She was my best friend. And I was hers. This has nothing to do with you, Mary.
That put an end to the conversation. I had been so hard on her, so absolute in my rejection of her feelings that she couldn’t think of anything more to say. When I left the room, she was sitting with her back to me, shaking her head back and forth and looking down at the coats.
T wo days after the party, word came from the University of Pennsylvania Press that they wanted to publish my book. I was almost a hundred pages into the Chateaubriand translation at that point, and when The Silent World of Hector Mann was released a year later, I had another twelve hundred pages behind me. If I kept working at that pace, I would have a completed draft in seven or eight more months. Add on some extra time for revisions and changes of heart, and in less than a year I would be delivering a finished manuscript to Alex.
As it turned out, that year lasted only three months. I pushed on for another two hundred fifty pages, reaching the chapter about the fall of Napoleon in the twenty-third book ( miseries and wonders are twins, they are born together ), and then, one damp and blustery afternoon at the beginning of summer, I found Frieda Spelling’s letter in my mailbox. I admit that I was thrown by it at first, but once I had sent off my response and given the matter a little thought, I managed to persuade myself that it was a hoax. That didn’t mean it had been wrong to answer her, but now that I had covered my bets, I assumed that our correspondence would end there.
Nine days later, I heard from her again. She used a full sheet of paper this time, and at the top of the page there was a block of blue embossed type that bore her name and address. I realized how simple it was to produce false personal stationery, but why would anyone go to the trouble of trying to impersonate someone I had never heard of? The name Frieda Spelling meant nothing to me. She might have been Hector Mann’s wife, and she might have been a crazy person who lived alone in a desert shack, but it no longer made sense to deny that she was real.
Dear Professor , she wrote. Your doubts are perfectly understandable, and I am not at all surprised that you are reluctant to believe me. The only way to learn the truth is to accept the invitation I made to you in my last letter. Fly to Tierra del Sueño and meet Hector. If I told you that he wrote and directed a number of feature films after leaving Hollywood in 1929—and that he is willing to screen them for you here at the ranch—perhaps that will entice you to come. Hector is almost ninety years old and in failing health. His will instructs me to destroy the films and the negatives of those films within twenty-four hours of his death, and I don’t know how much longer he will last. Please contact me soon. Looking forward to your reply, I
When you go downstairs, she said, I want you to … make up with Karin … I don’t care if you have to get down on your knees … and beg for her forgiveness … Everyone’s talking about it … and if you don’t do this for me now, David … I’m never going to invite you to this house again.
I didn’t want to come in the first place, I answered. If you hadn’t twisted my arm, I never would have been here to insult your guests. You could have had the same dull and insipid party you always have.
You need help, David … I’m not forgetting what you’ve been through … but patience lasts just so long … Go and see a doctor before you ruin your life.
I live the life that’s possible for me. It doesn’t include going to parties at your house.
Mary threw the last coat onto the bed, and then, for no discernible reason, she abruptly sat down and began to cry.
Listen, fuckhead, she said in a quiet voice. I loved her, too. You might have been married to her, but Helen was my best friend.
No she wasn’t. She was my best friend. And I was hers. This has nothing to do with you, Mary.
That put an end to the conversation. I had been so hard on her, so absolute in my rejection of her feelings that she couldn’t think of anything more to say. When I left the room, she was sitting with her back to me, shaking her head back and forth and looking down at the coats.
T wo days after the party, word came from the University of Pennsylvania Press that they wanted to publish my book. I was almost a hundred pages into the Chateaubriand translation at that point, and when The Silent World of Hector Mann was released a year later, I had another twelve hundred pages behind me. If I kept working at that pace, I would have a completed draft in seven or eight more months. Add on some extra time for revisions and changes of heart, and in less than a year I would be delivering a finished manuscript to Alex.
As it turned out, that year lasted only three months. I pushed on for another two hundred fifty pages, reaching the chapter about the fall of Napoleon in the twenty-third book ( miseries and wonders are twins, they are born together ), and then, one damp and blustery afternoon at the beginning of summer, I found Frieda Spelling’s letter in my mailbox. I admit that I was thrown by it at first, but once I had sent off my response and given the matter a little thought, I managed to persuade myself that it was a hoax. That didn’t mean it had been wrong to answer her, but now that I had covered my bets, I assumed that our correspondence would end there.
Nine days later, I heard from her again. She used a full sheet of paper this time, and at the top of the page there was a block of blue embossed type that bore her name and address. I realized how simple it was to produce false personal stationery, but why would anyone go to the trouble of trying to impersonate someone I had never heard of? The name Frieda Spelling meant nothing to me. She might have been Hector Mann’s wife, and she might have been a crazy person who lived alone in a desert shack, but it no longer made sense to deny that she was real.
Dear Professor , she wrote. Your doubts are perfectly understandable, and I am not at all surprised that you are reluctant to believe me. The only way to learn the truth is to accept the invitation I made to you in my last letter. Fly to Tierra del Sueño and meet Hector. If I told you that he wrote and directed a number of feature films after leaving Hollywood in 1929—and that he is willing to screen them for you here at the ranch—perhaps that will entice you to come. Hector is almost ninety years old and in failing health. His will instructs me to destroy the films and the negatives of those films within twenty-four hours of his death, and I don’t know how much longer he will last. Please contact me soon. Looking forward to your reply, I
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