Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“I didn’t,” Victor said. “I’m appalled you think I did. Appalled. Shocked. Hurt. It’s an obscene accusation.” I said nothing.

“If you think I did it,” Victor said after a while, “then you know why I did it. You’re aware of what Antonio’s trying to do.”

I said nothing.

“I suppose your son told you,” Victor said.

“Actually no.”

“I suppose you prefer Antonio to me,” Victor said.

“Not particularly.”

Victor sat in silence for a while. He had come to visit in the middle of the afternoon. He never used to visit in the middle of the afternoon. Victor did not seem to know what to do with his afternoons that summer.

“Then why aren’t you helping me,” he said finally. “You know what Antonio’s doing, you—”

“I don’t know. I just suppose.”

“—You suppose you know what Antonio’s doing, why don’t you discuss it with me? Why aren’t you with me?”

“Because it doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said.

Victor sat slumped in a chair.

I have liked Victor on some occasions and pitied him on many. Edgar called him stupid. Luis laughed at him. Even Antonio was making a fool of him.

I took his ridiculous manicured hand.

“Because it’s going to happen,” I said. “Just let it happen. With grace.”

“I can’t do that,” Victor said after a while.

I knew he couldn’t do that.

Within the next two weeks three more explosions occurred in locations where Antonio might normally have been, killing six and injuring fourteen, and then there was the usual odd calm.

“ ‘The outlook is not all bright.’ ” Charlotte was reading me the draft of an unfinished Letter from Central America. “ ‘Nor is the outlook all black.’ Paragraph. ‘Nonetheless—’ ”

She broke off.

“That’s where I seem to be blocked.”

“I don’t wonder,” I said.

“What do you mean.”

“ ‘Nevertheless’ what? I mean, Charlotte. If you say ‘the outlook is not all bright’ and then you say ‘nor is the outlook all black,’ then you can’t start the next sentence with ‘nevertheless.’ It can’t possibly mean anything.”

“I didn’t start the next sentence with ‘nevertheless,’ ” Charlotte said. “I started it with ‘nonetheless.’ ”

I said nothing.

“Anyway.” Charlotte folded the pages of her unfinished Letter with a neat vertical crease as children fold their weekly themes. “It’s not just a new sentence. It’s a new paragraph.”

It occurred to me that I had never before had so graphic an illustration of how the consciousness of the human organism is carried in its grammar.

Or the unconsciousness of the human organism.

If the organism under scrutiny is Charlotte.

“In any case,” Charlotte said after a while. “It’ll all fall together when I’m away.”

“You’re going away, then.”

“Of course I’m going away. I mean I don’t live here, do I.”

“When?”

“I’m not quite sure when.”

“Where?”

“I have to see someone.”

I did not ask who.

“Or rather I want to see someone. My husband.”

I did not ask which one.

“But I mean there’s no immediate rush about it. Is there.”

“I think there is, Charlotte.” I was suddenly tired. “As a matter of fact I think it’s imperative that you go very soon.”

“No.” She seemed abruptly agitated. “It is not imperative. At all. He is not dying. ”

I sat without speaking awhile.

The tissue around Charlotte’s eyes was reddening but she did not cry.

Tell Charlotte she was wrong .

“I didn’t mean that it’s imperative you go anywhere in particular,” I said finally. “I don’t care where you go. Go to Caracas, go to Managua. Just get out of here.”

She put on her dark glasses and tried to smile.

“Just leave,” I said.

“I don’t believe I can quite manage this display of hospitality.” There was in Charlotte’s voice an inflection of which she seemed entirely unaware, an inflection I had heard before only in the Garden District of New Orleans. “Here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry, seems about the size of it.”

Here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry.

Mrs. Fayard’s been learning West Texas manners.

Tell Charlotte she was wrong .

“Charlotte.” I felt as if I were talking to a child. “I’ve told you before, there is trouble here. There is going to be more trouble here. You are going to find yourself in the middle of this trouble which is not your business.”

“I don’t know anything about any trouble. So how could I possibly be in the middle of it.”

“Because Gerardo is. ”

She looked at me as if I had mentioned someone she had met a long time before and did not quite remember.

I think I fucked you one Easter .

I think I did that and forgot it .

I think she did forget it.

“In any case I’m not affected,” she said after a while. “Because I’m simply not interested in any causes or issues.”

“ Neither is anyone here. ”

Charlotte said nothing.

“Charlotte.” I tried again. “What do you think all those people were doing at your dining-room table?”

Charlotte looked at me.

“You were there too,” she said finally.

That was July.

Boca Grande is.

I RECALL IT NOW AS A YEAR WHEN WE ACTUALLY HAD “seasons.”

Definite “changes.”

Changes not in the weather but in the caliber of the harmonic tremor.

I am not sure when everyone else realized that Antonio had diverted enough “secret” support from Victor’s army to be finally immune from Victor but I know when I realized it. I realized it the evening Gerardo and Charlotte came back from Progreso and Charlotte began to cry at dinner.

“What upset her?” I said to Gerardo when Charlotte had left the table.

Gerardo was picking the meat from a crab and did not look at me.

“I suppose she didn’t like Progreso,” he said after a while. “I suppose she got tired. A day’s outing. Very tiring.”

“I said what upset her.”

“I suppose she didn’t find Progreso as peaceful as you claim to.” Gerardo placed the crabmeat as he picked it on Charlotte’s plate. “I suppose it’s a special taste.”

“I want to know what upset her out there.”

“M–3’s,” Charlotte said from the doorway.

She had washed her face clean of makeup and she seemed entirely composed.

“I grew up with shotguns but I can’t stand carbines.” She sat down and picked up her napkin. “Why are you staring at me?”

There was a silence.

“Whose carbines?” I said.

Gerardo avoided my eyes. “Grace hasn’t been out to Progreso lately, Charlotte. Grace hasn’t seen — what did you call it? Did you call it ‘the machinery’?”

“I called it the hardware,” Charlotte said.

“She calls it the hardware,” Gerardo said.

“I don’t have cancer of the ear,” I said. “Whose hardware is it?”

“Antonio’s got some of the army with him. Of course.” Gerardo shrugged. The only clear evidence I have of Gerardo’s intelligence is that he has always known how to cut his losses, yield the position, supply the information. Gerardo differs in that respect from Victor. “Actually it wasn’t the guns that upset Charlotte. It was Antonio. Antonio and Carmen. Antonio gave Carmen an M–3 and let her shoot up the place.”

Charlotte picked up her fork and laid it down again.

“You have a rather bizarre idea of a day’s outing,” I said to Gerardo.