Three Balconies Page 5

  Perhaps it was a cycle. He had heard that such losses came in threes. But that theory was blasted out of the water when he received a call from his psychiatrist’s wife saying that Dr. Werner had been taken by pneumonia – and as a result, Dugan’s Wednesday afternoon session had been canceled. Dugan expressed his condolences – no finer man had ever walked the earth, etc – but in truth, he was angry at Werner. At their last session, the doctor had produced a reference work of distinguished historians that failed to list Dugan’s name. Thoughtlessly, and perhaps because of his advancing years, Werner, in referring to Dugan’s work, had used the term “intermediate.” Dugan was crushed. At the end of the hour, he had raced to the library and searched out reference books in which his name was listed – but now he would never get to brandish them at Werner. The widow gave Dugan the name of another man he could see, but although Dugan dutifully scribbled down the phone number, he knew he would never use it. Werner was the second psychiatrist who had dropped dead on him; he had lost faith in the profession.

  Dugan hoped for a let-up in the parade of grim developments, but none came. Soon after, he was notified by fax that Smiley, the owner of his favorite saloon, had died in the back room of the popular watering place. In this case, the news came as no surprise. Not only was Smiley a heavy drinker, there was also a drug habit that was supposed to be a secret but that everyone in the world knew about. In Dugan’s dwindling circle, the concern was not so much for poor Smiley – but whether the saloon could function without him. And before Dugan knew what hit him, he lost his accountant, who was barely fifty – although he did smoke a great many cigars. Dugan had given some thought to firing Esposito – who never really understood the peculiarities of artists – but fortunately the accountant died before Dugan could let him go.

  He looked on with dismay as friend after friend bit the dust. And if that wasn’t bad enough, even his enemies started to go under. Chief among them was Toileau who had accused him in print of shoddy research on his massive Bismarck biography – an attack so vicious and unfair it took Dugan a decade to regain his confidence. He had hated Toileau – how could he not? – but the man was, after all, a contemporary – and it was only small consolation that the nit-picking critic was safely in his grave.

  Despite the circling ring of doom, Dugan saw no other course than to press on. After all, wasn’t his favorite hero Marshall Joseph Joffre, whose answer to every battlefield situation, no matter how dire, was “J’attaque.”

  Dugan lived in the country where he had carefully surrounded himself with youth – a wife who was twenty years his junior, an adopted son of twelve, and young dogs. In truth, his wife took fourteen kinds of pills to make sure her disposition was cheery. But his son excelled in ice hockey and could lift Dugan off the ground. Dugan was not particularly hypochondriacal, although an occasional twinge in his chest got him nervous. But to be on the safe side, he wolfed down fresh vegetables and made sure not to eat anything he enjoyed too much. His one exception was the large pair of greasy egg rolls he treated himself to on his occasional forays into Manhattan. The hell with it, he told himself, as he took a seat at the bar of Ho’s. I’ve got to have something.

  At the moment, he was working on a DeGaulle biography (the youthful DeGaulle, of course). It troubled him that Lieberman hadn’t trained a skilled underling to take over as Dugan’s editor. But he forged ahead all the same. His routine was to lose himself in the book for two weeks, then come up for air with a drive to the city and lunch with a friend. But even his surviving friends weren’t setting the world on fire. His choice of lunch companions included Burke, a poet who had been fitted up with a pig’s bladder, Karen Armstrong, a brilliant copywriter whose leg had been chopped off to stem a circulatory ailment, and Ellis, the healthiest of them all, a jade collector who wore a pacemaker and had a penile implant. Another candidate was Grebs, his former attorney, who had been in and out of mental institutions. In this case, he could imagine the repartee: “They’ve suggested volts, Dugan. How shall I instruct them?”

  His friends were all fine, upstanding individuals, each one a credit to his or her profession – but Dugan lacked the courage to meet them for lunch. Considering the circumstances, how could he be expected to concentrate on food. So on his trips to the city, he ate alone, checked a few bookstores and drove home in cowardice.

  An argument could be made that the condition of his friends had nothing to do with Dugan – there were healthy people all over the place. A case in point was his brother Kevin, the picture of wood-cutting vigor in far-off Maine. But Dugan didn’t buy the argument. The numbers were against him. The wagons were circling. Even Kevin had begun to send him childhood mementoes, explaining that at sixty-five, it was time to “pare down his life a bit.”

  Dugan’s one consolation was that of all the friends he had lost, there wasn’t one who had a claim on his heart – someone he could call in the middle of the night for a discussion of his darkest fears – of death, for example. Could he survive the loss of such an individual? And then one day he found out, when he learned that Enzo Cavalucci had lost a secret and uncomplaining battle with Mehlman’s Syndrome, something new, a spin-off of Alzheimer’s. (Cavalucci had once joked that it was unwise to catch a disease that had someone’s name attached to it.) When Dugan received the news from Cavalucci’s mistress, he wept into the phone without shame. And when Cavalucci’s widow called later to confirm, he wept again. He had loved his friend, but hadn’t realized to what extent – until it was too late. A rival historian, Cavalucci had enjoyed far greater eminence than Dugan and had even sold his Boer War trilogy to the movies. Cavalucci had gotten rich, but such was Dugan’s love for the man that he hadn’t begrudged him a dime. At a troubled time of his life, Dugan had set out with a lead pipe to kill his first wife’s lover; it was Cavalucci who had gently stayed his hand, saying “You don’t want to do that.” Actually, Dugan did want to do it, but that wasn’t the point. Cavalucci had rescued him from a potential shitstorm. On another occasion, sensing Dugan was in financial difficulty, Cavalucci had wired him $l0,000, along with a note saying there was no rush to pay it back. And if he needed another ten, that could be arranged, too. Dugan barely slept until he had settled the debt, but he never forgot his friend’s kindness. And when Dugan’s Bismarck bio had been raked over the coals, it was Cavalucci who stood up bravely at a gathering of historians and recited selections from the work – focusing on the ones that had suffered the greatest abuse. Cavalucci lived in St. Louis. The two men rarely saw each other, but they spoke regularly on the phone, each conversation picking up seamlessly from the last. Of late, Dugan had noticed a tendency on Cavalucci’s part to lose his focus on the phone, but he attributed that to a preoccupation with his planned Cardinal Richelieu masterwork.

  In the weeks that followed Cavalucci’s passing, Dugan was inconsolable, and could think of nothing else. Acquaintances were one thing – but the loss of this wise and friendly bear of a man – a rock he could always cling to – was more than he could stand. Dugan’s wife, an independent woman who dabbled in the sale of waterfront property, barely noticed his extended grief. For the time being, Dugan slept in the guest room, which she didn’t notice either. His son trailed him around, hoping his father’s melancholy would pass, then gave up and went outdoors to jump up and down on a lonely trampoline. Work was no longer Dugan’s salvation. How was he supposed to get excited about DeGaulle’s childhood? He sat at his desk, mindlessly reciting the phone number of his boyhood apartment in Jackson Heights, reflecting on his parents, his brothers and sisters, all of them gone except Kevin who was making preparations to join them.

  One day, unaccountably, his spirits came awake. Momentarily cheerful, he reached into his pocket to pay for gas at a service station and pulled out an expensive goatskin credit card holder – a gift from Cavalucci. The sight of it put him right back where he started. At the fish store, the following morning, a woman he barely knew gave him an update on her husband’s condition in a nursi
ng home. “Mel’s incontinent,” she shouted across the shellfish counter. He returned home with his flounder fillets in time to receive a call from the representative of a family of blind Hispanics who had all been fired from their basket-weaving jobs on the eve of Thanksgiving. Before the man could ask for financial assistance, Dugan, to his everlasting shame, shouted into the phone.

  “I can’t take any more of this. Speak to my wife.”

  On that note, he packed an over-the-shoulder carry-all bag with pajamas, underwear, toiletries and a Helmuth Von Moltke memoir he planned to finish reading, no matter what. Then he drove to the hospital, although in truth, it was so close to his house that he could have walked. Of late, his wife had hinted that she’d had her fill of small town intrigue and wouldn’t mind moving back to the city. Normally, Dugan gave in to her every whim. But on this occasion, he stalled and failed to list the house with a broker. He loved his spacious Colonial which was in such sharp contrast to the cramped apartment he had lived in as a boy. Also, he enjoyed the proximity of the hospital. In the winter months particularly, when the chic vacationers were partying in the city, he had the facility virtually to himself.

  Dugan took a seat in the waiting room and was alone, except for a bartender who had suffered a clamming injury on his day off. When Dugan’s name was called, he flashed a Fast-Track card and was whisked right through to a preliminary examining room where a nurse silently recorded his temperature and blood pressure.

  As luck would have it, the doctor on call was Alvin Murdoch, Dugan’s own physician, who had recently moved to the community, quickly attracting a strong following among the locals. Murdoch had once stopped Dugan outside the post office and gotten him to sign a petition having to do with encroaching health providers. It probably made sense, but Dugan felt he had been bullied into putting his name on it and had mistrusted Murdoch ever since. But the doctor had a reputation for thoroughness and it was difficult to get an appointment with him – so Dugan stayed on as a patient.

  Murdoch checked the nurse’s findings, then called up the results of Dugan’s recent physical on the computer. He made some notes, then crossed his legs daintily, folded his hands on his knees and flashed the boyish smile that everyone except Dugan had found engaging.

  “You look great. What’s wrong?”

  “Not a thing,” said Dugan. “Actually, I’m fit as a fiddle. But as we both know, it’s just a matter of time. So I thought I might as well check in and get an early start.”

  Neck and Neck

  ALBERT P. WIENER. The mention of his name hadn’t always made Baum sick with envy. Weiner was a few years his senior, but the two had started out neck and neck in the literary world. Wiener had published a bildungsroman which was praised for its intellectual reach, although several critics found it “bloated.” Baum agreed, but felt that Wiener’s skills were undeniable. Baum himself had written a book of stories – fables, really – that were admired by reviewers for their inventiveness and concision. Both Wiener and Baum were cited by the Frederick Buchner Foundation as two of the most promising artists of the Post-World War Two era.

  Baum met Wiener for the first time at a literary cocktail party in Cologne. The tall and hawk-nosed Wiener told Baum: “You are on the cusp of something.”

  “As you are, too,” said the shorter and more compactly built Baum, somewhat awkwardly.

  For the next decade, both artists followed a similar path – publishing books and stories and essays that, for the most part, were warmly received. Wiener was shortlisted for the distinguished Gechwisterlein Award. Baum actually won the only slightly less esteemed Frankel/Sagner Prize for yet another volume of his finely crafted fables.

  At this point, their careers – or literary lives – took divergent paths. Weiner, known to be a ladies man, moved from Cologne to Paris where he dated film stars who were slightly below the top tier. He wrote a racy account of his affair with one of them. She fired back with a scandalous version of her own that focused on Wiener’s sexual inadequacies. Both accounts sold well.

  Baum moved his family – his wife and two daughters – to Rome. No sooner had they arrived than Elmira Krantz Baum fell in love with a distributor of spaghetti westerns. She asked for and was granted a divorce. Though one of his daughters remained loyal to him, Baum was shattered by the breakup and turned to drugs and alcohol. Somehow he gathered his resources to write what many considered his best work – an unmistakably autobiographical novel about the breakup of his marriage. Following this small triumph, Baum, in a literary sense, began to tread water. He fell into an easy life as a translator of American film scripts for the Italian audience. His career took a surprising turn when he showed some skill as a director of screwball comedies, also designed for the Italian market. The money – always cash – was substantial – and the work was far from strenuous. His furnished apartment was luxurious. He enticed women with fast cars and cocaine. A few of his lovers may have found him appealing. He would never know. Apart from his dark and unsettled spirits at dawn, he led a comfortable, somewhat pampered life, one he felt he deserved after a harrowing and bitter marriage. It was his plan to return, at some distant point, to more “serious” pursuits. And he kept Wiener in his sights. His competitor – and that’s how Baum thought of him – had written two huge essayistic novels, both of which grappled with eternal questions – who are we? – why are we here? Both works met with respect in small literary journals – though some felt that the books were little more than homages to Thomas Mann. Still, Baum admired Wiener for sticking to his last, while he, Baum, worked below his capabilities. Or so he thought. Nonetheless, Baum felt confident that he could “overtake” the man he thought of as his rival – or at least draw even with him in terms of literary achievement. All he had to do was close the door on his sybaritic life and step on the gas.

  The two men had a single exchange by mail. Baum’s letter was innocuous. He congratulated Wiener on one of his ponderous novels, which he had only skimmed. Wiener’s response was to chastise Baum for falling into a trap of easy money.

  “Why do you waste your time on movies? All that counts is the novel. Nothing else. Nada, Nada, Nada.”

  Baum’s reaction was dismissive. He told a colleague: “One Nada would have been sufficient.”

  The two men met once again, by chance, on the Piazza della Republica. Wiener was in Rome to attend a literary seminar. Baum, who hadn’t been invited, was walking off a night of strenuous carousing. He wore dark glasses and a Stetson to cover the evidence of his dissolute behavior.

  The sharp-eyed Wiener saw through the disguise. Full of good cheer, he called out: “Baum! Why are you hiding?”

  Wiener then reached out and tipped Baum’s hat backward. Baum was offended and clenched his fists as if to strike a blow. But he had no strength. The debauched night had stolen his energy. He clamped the hat back on his head, waved a disgusted arm and slouched away. Wiener, who missed nothing, had sensed Baum’s weakness and jumped on the chance to assert his superiority, to treat the other man with contempt. Baum took note of the offensive gesture and vowed never to be caught again in a depleted and whorish state. He quickly forgot the vow.

  In the years that followed, both men stayed below the literary waves, while young lions fought to take their place. Wiener traveled far afield with two books on modern architecture. Neither was a threat to Baum who felt, along with at least one distinguished critic, that Wiener had gotten in over his head.

  Along with his lowly cinematic function, Baum became an unofficial “greeter” in Rome, taking visiting luminaries on a tour of the city’s fleshpots. He kept a toe in the literary waters, although just barely, with an amusing tourist guidebook to the Eternal City. One visitor to Rome was a distinguished film director from Sweden. He told Baum that he had worked with Wiener on a screenplay.

  “It was in Stockholm. We were together in a hotel for four long months. We almost drove each other crazy, but we couldn’t pull it off.”

  “That’s hard
to believe,” said Baum. “Wiener ridiculed such work and swore he’d have nothing to do with it.

  “Still,” said Baum, on reflection. “I always knew he’d attempt a screenplay, if only in stealth.”

  Shortly before his sixtieth birthday Baum said goodbye to the film colony and left Rome. He moved back to Cologne, determined finally to address his “serious” work. In truth, he was no longer quite clear as to what it was. He thought he’d begin with God and the Universe and take it from there. No sooner had he arrived than he met a young and pretty sociologist. Within a year, they were married and Magda had given birth to twin girls. Baum was delighted with this development. For the moment he thought little of the added financial strain.

  He tried, unsuccessfully, to get up some traction on a novel, but he’d taken too long a vacation from literature and had no feel for it. He’d heard that Tennessee Williams, in his late years, had scribbled notes in Gaelic to bartenders, saying “I have lost my way.”

  If the great playwright could lose his way, why not Baum?

  In search of safe ground, Baum tried a few plays of his own. Theatre owners seduced him, then turned away without explanation. What began as an innocent dalliance with the stage cost him the better part of a decade.

  Baum was approaching seventy now. All he had to show for his recent efforts was an article on hormones in a Swedish health magazine. He consoled himself with the knowledge that great men such as Goethe and Cervantes had produced important work in their late years. He began to regret the wastrel time in Rome, but not entirely. Though he was beginning to drown in debt, his excellent wife, Magda, was supportive. “Those years you spent in Rome – they weren’t wasted – they all went into the soup.”