Less(56)

It is entirely possible that Less is in one of those Russian-doll dreams in which one awakens and yawns and gets out of one’s childhood bunk bed, and pets one’s long-dead dog, and greets one’s long-dead mother, only to realize it is yet another layer of dreaming, yet another wooden nightmare, and one must go through the heroic task of awakening all over again.

Because standing in the doorway can only be an image from a dream.

“Hello, Arthur. I’m here to take care of you.”

Or no, he must be dead. He is being taken from this drab-green purgatory to the special pit they have waiting for him. A little cottage above a flaming sea: the Artist Residency in Hell. The face retains its smile. And Arthur slowly, sadly, with growing acceptance of the divine comedy of his life, says the name you can by now well guess.



The driver works the horn like an outlaw at a gunfight. Stray dogs and goats leap from the road wearing guilty expressions, and people leap aside wearing innocent ones. Children stand by the roadside by the dozens, in matching red-checkered uniforms, some of them hanging from the limbs of banyan trees; school must have just gotten out. They stare at the sight of Less passing by. And all the time, he is listening to the constant bleating of the horn, the English pop music oozing like treacle from the speakers, and the soft voice of Carlos Pelu:

“…should have called me when you got here, lucky they found my note, and I said of course I’d take you in…”

Arthur Less, entranced by destiny, finds himself staring at that face he has known so well over the years. The particular Roman rudder of that nose, which used to be seen turning and turning in parties as it sought out this scrap of conversation, that eye across the room, those people leaving for a better party, the nose of Carlos Pelu, so striking in youth, unforgettable, and here in the car still holding up as perfectly as the carved teak figurehead of a ship that has been otherwise overhauled. His body has gone from sturdy youth to ample, august middle age. Not plump or chubby, not fat in the way Zohra proposed to grow fat, the carefree body that has at last been allowed to breathe; not happily, sexily, fuck-the-world fat. But majestically, powerfully, Pantagruelianally fat. A giant, a colossus: Carlos the Great.

Arthur, you know my son was never right for you.

“God, it’s good to see you!” Carlos squeezes his arm and gives him a grin full of childish mischief: “I hear you had a young man singing beneath your window in Berlin.”

“Where are we going?” Less asks.

“And did you have an affair? With a prince? Did you flee Italy under the cover of darkness? Tell me you were the Casanova of the Sahara.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Maybe it was Turin, where a boy sang under your balcony. Hopelessly in love with you.”

“No one has ever been hopelessly in love with me.”

“No,” Carlos says. “You always gave them hope, didn’t you?” The bulky frame of their car vanishes momentarily, and they are standing with glasses of white wine on somebody’s lawn, young again. Wanting to dance with somebody. “I’ll tell you where we’re going. We’re headed to the resort. I told you it was close by.”

Of all the gin joints in all the world. “That’s kind of you, but maybe I should check into an Ayurvedic—”

“Don’t be silly. It’s an entire staffed resort, totally empty. We’re not opening for a month. You’ll love it—there’s an elephant!” Arthur thinks he means at the resort, but he follows Carlos’s gaze, and his heart stops. There, just ahead of them, so age spotted and dusty it seems at first to be a cartload of white rubber made from local trees, until they lift up, the ears, like the unfolding of feathers or membranes for flight, and it is unmistakably an elephant, sauntering down the street with a bushel of green bamboo in its trunk, tail lashing, turning now to stare, with its small unfathomable eyes, at those who are staring at it—Less recognizes the stare—as if to say: I’m not so strange as you.

“Oh my God!”

“Bigger temples keep one. We can get around him,” Carlos says, and, honking noisily, they do. Less turns his head to see the creature disappearing through the rear window, turning its head back and forth, lifting its burden, clearly aware of the commotion it is making and taking not a little joy in it. Then a crowd of men with limp Communist flags comes out of a building, smoking, and the unearthly vision is blocked.

“Listen, Arthur, I have an idea—ah, we’ve arrived,” Carlos says abruptly, and Less can feel more than see their sharp descent toward the ocean. “Before we say good-bye, I have two quick questions. Easy questions.” They pass through a gate; Less finds it hard to believe the driver is still honking.

“We’re saying good-bye?”

“Arthur, stop being so sentimental. At our age! I’ll be back in a few weeks, and we’ll celebrate your recovery. I have business. It’s a miracle we get this time together. The first is, you still have your letters from Robert?”

“My letters?” The honking stops, and the car comes to a halt. A young man in a green uniform approaches Less’s side.

“Come on, Arthur, do you or don’t you? I have a plane to catch.”

“I think so.”

“Bravo. And the other question is, have you heard from Freddy?”

Less feels the rush of hot air as the car door opens beside him. He looks and sees a handsome porter standing there, holding his aluminum crutches. He turns back to Carlos.