Howard Norman - Next Life Might Be Kinder

I said, “Lizzy, you’re a little tipsy.”

She said, “You’ll appreciate it more when we get back home. Which I hope is soon.” She could not find the soul of the evening.

TODAY I WOKE at four A.M. Riffling through my own unorganized files, I found the catalogue for the exhibit of Robert Frank’s photographs where Elizabeth and I first met. I looked at the reproductions. Each one, of course, had Next Life Might Be Kinder written along the lower margin. About a month after attending the opening of the exhibit, we’d gone to Robert Frank’s lecture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

The auditorium was filled to the rafters and there was much excitement in the room. The moderator (a notable museum curator, Elizabeth told me) made the introduction and Robert Frank stepped to the podium. He was balding slightly, with dark, curly hair, and seemed at first reticent. He wore charcoal-gray trousers, a white shirt, and black socks and shoes. He talked without notes and was all sweetness and light about his students, and humorous. He spoke admiringly of his father and fondly of his boyhood in Zurich. He mentioned his admiration for Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He had a distinct accent. During the Q and A, he tended to rephrase the more mundane questions to better get at a subject of interest to him. He tried to make the session less like a formal lecture and more like a conversation. He referred four times to Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde album, which he said he’d been listening to a lot. “I like the song ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,’” he said.

The last question was posed by an art student sitting in the front row (“Her name’s Rebecca Culpepper,” Elizabeth whispered to me, “a painter”): “Mr. Frank, you’ve written Next Life Might Be Kinder on nearly every one of the photographs. Could you tell us if this is a religious belief, like in reincarnation or something? Or is it meant to be like a one-line poem, or what? It seems both pessimistic and optimistic. It’s like you’re saying this life hasn’t been so great, so the next one almost has to be better. Kinder, I meant to say. And you do use the word ‘might,’ so maybe your optimism is, well, qualified.”

“If there is a next life, yes, I have that hope, for it to be kinder,” Robert Frank replied. “But probably whatever notion you come up with will be better than anything I could come up with. I’m in a constant state of uncertainty.”

The moderator quickly stepped in to conclude the evening.

On the street afterward there was a dusting of snow. We were both excited by having seen Robert Frank, but far more so by the electric current of anticipation — sparks practically jumped between our hands when they touched — of making love later. Which we did as soon as we got back to Elizabeth’s small apartment. But despite the immediacy of “lovely intertwinings” (you see, I’m quoting Marghanita Laski!), I could tell that Elizabeth was preoccupied about something. As we sat in the bathtub at around one o’clock in the morning, she said, “You know, I felt a great sadness in Robert Frank. But also the questions were, most of them, pretty stupid, didn’t you think? Like, for instance, why he’d written Next Life Might Be Kinder across the bottom of those photographs in the exhibition. Of course, who else would do that but a sad sack? But it’s that old European sort of weariness, you know, where personal tragic events — I mean, his daughter died in a plane crash, for God’s sake. It’s what Marghanita Laski — remember? that’s who I’m writing my dissertation on — what she calls “the imprimatur of permanent melancholy.” Yeah, that’s what I felt from Mr. Frank, just exactly how Marghanita said it.”

THE WORLD TURNS upside down and doesn’t right itself completely. The movie has been temporarily shut down. Here’s the front-page headline from today’s Chronicle-Herald: MOVIE DIRECTOR DROWNS AT PORT MEDWAY.

Just after dawn this morning, Philip telephoned me. “There are police cars, and I mean right out back in the cove. Peter Istvakson drowned. What was he doing here in the first place?”

“I’m coming over.”

I telephoned Lily Svetgartot, and she said, “Michiko Zento will go on with the filming. Next Life will be completed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Later, you might consider that pretty cold, Mr. Lattimore. Well, there’s to be an investigation. An inquiry. And when that is over, they’ll send Mr. Istvakson home. By the way, there’s a private memorial service two days from now. Will you want to know the location? Probably a church.”

“I’ll grieve in private, thank you.”

“I can drive out and speak to you about all this. There are things I can tell you now that I couldn’t tell you before. I can drive out to see you in a few days.”

I hesitated a moment, then said, “See you then.”

Half an hour or so later, I walked over to Philip and Cynthia’s. There were two black sedans parked in front. Without knocking I stepped into the kitchen. Cynthia was setting out coffee and cake on a tray for the three detectives sent out from Halifax. One seemed to be in his late thirties, one in his late forties, the third at least sixty. They all wore suits and ties, and each held a small, flip-open notebook and pen. I was introduced and then went to the window, where I saw bright orange crime-scene tape stretched between stakes on the sand. The wind was fluttering the tape. About ten square meters of beach were cordoned off, apparently where Philip had discovered Istvakson’s body. Cynthia walked over and handed me a cup of coffee. “Come sit down,” she said. I sat on the sofa.

The men had been introduced as Detective Seshaw, Detective Paldimer, and Detective Van der Kloet. They were speaking in low tones among themselves and then to Philip and Cynthia, and I heard only one thing clearly: “No, we never met Mr. Istvakson,” Cynthia said. “Not in person, anyway. Like everyone, we saw his photograph in the newspaper. And his assistant, Lily Svetgartot, has become a friend. She’s stayed in our guest room. But no, we never met Peter Istvakson.”

Seshaw, the eldest detective, said, “Sir — Mr. Lattimore. For the record, I was one of the detectives assigned to the homicide at the Essex Hotel. Just for the record. My brother does some security on the movie set. Small world, eh? So you live out here now?”

“Just across the road,” I said.

“Our information has it that you and the deceased Mr. Istvakson were not on the best of terms.”

“Best of terms? No, probably not.”

“Newspaper articles about the deceased indicate this. Certain statements he made.”

“He wasn’t on good terms with me in private, by himself. I wasn’t on good terms with him in private, by myself. Before the movie started up, we met at Cyrano’s Last Night.”

“The bohemian café?”

“We spoke by telephone early on, a couple of times, too.”

“Was there communication after that?”

“Yes, through his assistant, Lily Svetgartot.”

“And you say you live across the road?” Seshaw was writing in his notebook.

“Yes, you can see my cottage from here.”

“In our experience — maybe ninety years between the three of us here — most likely this was a suicide. But in our experience, every so often a suicide turns out not to be one.”

“I heard about the drowning when Philip telephoned me. I’d say about six o’clock this morning.”

“I didn’t ask,” the detective said. He looked at Cynthia. “Can I trouble you for another cup of coffee, please?”