The Aquitaine Progression - Couverture souple

1

Geneva. City of sunlight and bright reflections. Of billowing white sails on the lake—sturdy, irregular buildings above, their rippling images on the water below. Of myriad flowers surrounding blue-green pools of fountains—duets of exploding colors. Of small quaint bridges arching over the glassy surfaces of man-made ponds to tiny man-made islands, sanctuaries for lovers and friends and quiet negotiators. Reflections.

Geneva, the old and the new. City of high medieval walls and glistening tinted glass, of sacred cathedrals and less holy institutions. Of sidewalk cafés and lakeside concerts, of miniature piers and gaily painted boats that chug around the vast shoreline, the guides extolling the virtues—and the estimated value—of the lakefront estates that surely belong to another time.

Geneva. City of purpose, dedicated to the necessity of dedication, frivolity tolerated only when intrinsic to the agenda or the deal. Laughter is measured, controlled—glances conveying approval of sufficiency or admonishing excess. The canton by the lake knows its soul. Its beauty coexists with industry, the balance not only accepted but jealously guarded.

Geneva. City also of the unexpected, of predictability in conflict with sudden unwanted revelation, the violence of the mind struck by bolts of personal lightning.

Cracks of thunder follow; the skies grow dark and the rains come. A deluge, pounding the angry waters taken by surprise, distorting vision, crashing down on the giant spray, Geneva’s trademark on the lake, the jet d’eau, that geyser designed by man to dazzle man. When sudden revelations come, the gigantic fountain dies. All the fountains die and without the sunlight the flowers wither. The bright reflections are gone and the mind is frozen.

Geneva. City of inconstancy.

Joel Converse, attorney-at-law, walked out of the hotel Richemond into the blinding morning sunlight on the Jardin Brunswick. Squinting, he turned left, shifting his attaché case to his right hand, conscious of the value of its contents but thinking primarily about the man he was to meet for coffee and croissants at Le Chat Botté, a sidewalk café across from the waterfront. “Re-meet” was more accurate, thought Converse, if the man had not confused him with someone else.

A. Preston Halliday was Joel’s American adversary in the current negotiations, the finalizing of last-minute details for a Swiss-American merger that had brought both men to Geneva. Although the remaining work was minimal—formalities, really, research having established that the agreements were in accord with the laws of both countries and acceptable to the International Court in The Hague—Halliday was an odd choice. He had not been part of the American legal team fielded by the Swiss to keep tabs on Joel’s firm. That in itself would not have excluded him—fresh observation was frequently an asset—but to elevate him to the position of point, or chief spokesman, was, to say the least, unorthodox. It was also unsettling.

Halliday’s reputation—what little Converse knew of it—was as a troubleshooter, a legal mechanic from San Francisco who could spot a loose wire, rip it out and short an engine. Negotiations covering months and costing hundreds of thousands had been aborted by his presence, that much Converse recalled about A. Preston Halliday. But that was all he recalled. Yet Halliday said they knew each other.

“It’s Press Halliday,” the voice had announced over the hotel phone. “I’m pointing for Rosen in the Comm Tech–Bern merger.”

“What happened?” Joel had asked, a muted electric razor in his left hand, his mind trying to locate the name; it had come to him by the time Halliday replied.

“The poor bastard had a stroke, so his partners called me in.” The lawyer had paused. “You must have been mean, counselor.”

“We rarely argued, counselor. Christ, I’m sorry, I like Aaron. How is he?”

“He’ll make it. They’ve got him in bed and on a dozen versions of chicken soup. He told me to tell you he’s going to check your finals for invisible ink.”

“Which means you’re going to check because I don’t have any and neither did Aaron. This marriage is based on pure greed, and if you’ve studied the papers you know that as well as I do.”

“The larceny of investment write-offs,” agreed Halliday, “combined with a large chunk of a technological market. No invisible ink. But since I’m the new boy on the block, I’ve got a couple of questions. Let’s have breakfast.”

“I was about to order room service.”

“It’s a nice morning, why not get some air? I’m at the President, so let’s split the distance. Do you know the Chat Botté?”

“American coffee and croissants. Quai du Mont Blanc.”

“You know it. How about twenty minutes?”

“Make it a half hour, okay?”

“Sure.” Halliday had paused again. “It’ll be good to see you again, Joel.”

“Oh? Again?”

“You may not remember. A lot’s happened since those days . . . more to you than to me, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Well, there was Vietnam and you were a prisoner for a pretty long time.”

“That’s not what I meant, and it was years ago. How do we know each other? What case?”

“No case, no business. We were classmates.”

“Duke? It’s a large law school.”

“Further back. Maybe you’ll remember when we see each other. If you don’t, I’ll remind you.”

“You must like games. . . . Half an hour. Chat Botté.”

As Converse walked toward the Quai du Mont Blanc, the vibrant boulevard fronting the lake, he tried to fit Halliday’s name into a time frame, the years to a school, a forgotten face to match an unremembered classmate. None came, and Halliday was not a common name, the short form “Press” even less so . . . unique, actually. If he had known someone named Press Halliday, he could not imagine forgetting it. Yet the tone of voice had implied familiarity, even closeness.

It’ll be good to see you again, Joel. He had spoken the words warmly, as he had the gratuitous reference to Joel’s POW status. But then, those words were always spoken softly to imply sympathy if not to express it overtly. Too, Converse understood why under the circumstances Halliday felt he had to bring up the subject of Vietnam, even fleetingly. The uninitiated assumed that all men imprisoned in the North Vietnamese camps for any length of time had been mentally damaged, per se, that a part of their minds had been altered by the experience, their recollections muddled. To a degree, some of these assumptions were undeniable, but not with respect to memory. Memories were sharpened because they were searched compulsively, often mercilessly. The accumulated years, the layers of experience . . . faces with eyes and voices, bodies of all sizes and shapes; scenes flashing across the inner screen, the sights and sounds, images and smells—touching and the desire to touch . . . nothing of the past was too inconsequential to peel away and explore. Frequently it was all they had, especially at night—always at night, with the cold, penetrating dampness stiffening the body and the infinitely colder fear paralyzing the mind—memories were everything. They helped mute the sharp reports of small-arms fire, which were gratuitously explained in the mornings as necessary executions of the uncooperative and unrepentant. Or they blocked out the distant screams in the dark, of even more unfortunate prisoners forced to play games, too obscene to describe, demanded by their captors in search of amusement.

Like most men kept isolated for the greater part of their imprisonment, Converse had examined and reexamined every stage of his life, trying to understand . . . to like . . . the cohesive whole. There was much that he did not understand—or like—but he could live with the product of those intensive investigations. Die with it, if he had to; that was the peace he had to reach for himself. Without it the fear was intolerable.

And because these self-examinations went on night after night and required the discipline of accuracy, Converse found it easier than most men to remember whole segments of his life. Like a spinning disk attached to a computer that suddenly stops, his mind, given only basic information, could isolate a place or a person or a name. Repetition had simplified and accelerated the process, and that was what bewildered him now. Unless Halliday was referring to a time so far back as to have been only a brief, forgotten childhood acquaintance, no one of that name belonged to his past.

It’ll be good to see you again, Joel. Were the words a ruse, a lawyer’s trick?

Converse rounded the corner, the brass railing of Le Chat Botté glistening, hurling back tiny explosions of sunlight. The boulevard was alive with gleaming small cars and spotless buses; the pavements were washed clean, the strollers in various stages of hurried but orderly progress. Morning was a time for benign energy in Geneva. Even the newspapers above the tables in the sidewalk cafés were snapped with precision, not crushed or mutilated into legible positions. And vehicles and pedestrians were not at war; combat was supplanted by looks and nods, stops and gestures of acknowledgment. As Joel walked through the open brass gate of Le Chat Botté he wondered briefly if Geneva could export its mornings to New York. But then the City Council would vote the import down, he concluded—the citizens of New York could not stand the civility.

A newspaper was snapped directly below him on his left, and when it was lowered Converse saw a face he knew. It was a coordinated face, not unlike his own, the features compatible and in place. The hair was straight and dark, neatly parted and brushed, the nose sharp, above well-defined lips. The face belonged to his past, thought Joel, but the name he remembered did not belong to the face.

The familiar-looking man raised his head; their eyes met and A. Preston Halliday rose, his short compact body obviously muscular under the expensive suit.

“Joel, how are you?” said the now familiar voice, a hand outstretched above the table.

“Hello . . . Avery,” replied Converse, staring, awkwardly shifting his attaché case to grip the hand. “It is Avery, isn’t it? Avery Fowler. Taft, early sixties. You never came back for the senior year, and no one knew why; we all talked about it. You were a wrestler.”

“Twice All New England,” said the attorney, laughing, gesturing at the chair across from his own. “Sit down and we’ll catch up. I guess it’s sort of a surprise for you. That’s why I wanted us to meet before the conference this morning. I mean, it’d be a hell of a note for you to get up and scream ‘Impostor!’ when I walked in, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m still not sure I won’t.” Converse sat down, attaché case at his feet, studying his legal opponent. “What’s this Halliday routine? Why didn’t you say something on the phone?”

“Oh, come on, what was I going to say? ‘By the way, old sport, you used to know me as Tinkerbell Jones.’ You never would have showed up.”

“Is Fowler in jail somewhere?”

“He would have been if he hadn’t blown his head off,” answered Halliday, not laughing.

“You’re full of surprises. Are you a clone?”

“No, the son.”

Converse paused. “Maybe I should apologize.”

“No need to, you couldn’t have known. It’s why I never came back for the senior year . . . and, goddamn it, I wanted that trophy. I would have been the only mat jock to win it three years in a row.”

“I’m sorry. What happened . . . or is it privileged information, counselor? I’ll accept that.”

“Not for you, counselor. Remember when you and I broke out to New Haven and picked up those pigs at the bus station?”

“We said we were Yalies—”

“And only got taken, never got laid.”

“Our eyebrows were working overtime.”

“Preppies,” said Halliday. “They wrote a book about us. Are we really that emasculated?”

“Reduced in stature, but we’ll come back. We’re the last minority, so we’ll end up getting sympathy. . . . What happened, Avery?”

A waiter approached; the moment was broken. Both men ordered American coffee and croissants, no deviation from the accepted norm. The waiter folded two red napkins into cones and placed one in front of each.

“What happened?” said Halliday quietly, rhetorically, after the waiter left. “The beautiful son of a bitch who was my father embezzled four hundred thousand from the Chase Manhattan while he was a trust officer, and when he was caught, went bang. Who was to know a respected, if transplanted, commuter from Greenwich, Connecticut, had two women in the city, one on the Upper East Side, the other on Bank Street? He was beautiful.”

“He was busy. I still don’t understand the Halliday.”

“After it happened—the suicide was covered up—Mother raced back to San Francisco with a vengeance. We were from California, you know . . . but then, why would you? With even more vengeance she married my stepfather, John Halliday, and all traces of Fowler were assiduously removed during the next few months.”

“Even to your first name?”

“No, I was always ‘Press’ back in San Francisco. We Californians come up with catchy names. Tab, Troy, Crotch—the 1950’s Beverly Hills syndrome. At Taft, my student ID read ‘Avery Preston Fowler,’ so you all just started calling me Avery or that awful ‘Ave.’ Being a transfer student, I never bothered to say anything. When in Connecticut, follow the gospel according to Holden Caulfield.”

“That’s all well and good,” said Converse, “but what happens when you run into someone like me? It’s bound to happen.”

“You’d be surprised how rarely. After all, it was a long time ago, and the people I grew up with in California understood. Kids out there have their names changed according to matrimonial whim, and I was in the East for only a couple of years, just long enough for the fourth and fifth forms at school. I didn’t know anyone in Greenwich to speak of, and I was hardly part of the old Taft crowd.”

“You had friends there. We were friends.”

“I didn’t have many. Let’s face it, I was an outsider and you weren’t particular. I kept a pretty low profile.”

“Not on the mats, you didn’t.”

Halliday laughed. “Not very many wrestlers become lawyers, something about mat bur...