Part 6 (2/2)
Janet looked from Jack Lovett to Inez.
Inez thought that Janet would tell her story about the coconut milk punches but Janet did not. ”Don't you dare run off together and leave me in Jakarta with Frances,” Janet said.
That was 1969. Inez Victor saw Jack Lovett only twice again between 1969 and 1975, once at a large party in Was.h.i.+ngton and once at Cissy Christian's funeral in Honolulu. For some months after the evening on the porch of the bungalow at Puncak it had seemed to Inez that she might actually leave Harry Victor, might at least separate herself from him in a provisional way-rent a small studio, say, or make a discreet point of not going down to Was.h.i.+ngton, and of being at Amagansett when he was in New York-and for a while she did, but only between campaigns.
Surely you remember Inez Victor campaigning.
Inez Victor smiling at a lunch counter in Manchester, New Hamps.h.i.+re, her fork poised over a plate of scrambled eggs and toast.
Inez Victor smiling at the dedication of a community center in Madison, Wisconsin, her eyes tearing in the bright sun because it had been decided that she looked insufficiently congenial in sungla.s.ses.
Inez Victor speaking her famous Spanish at a street festival in East Harlem. Buenos dias, Inez Victor said on this and other such occasions. Yo estoy muy contenta a estar aqui hoy con mi esposo. In twenty-eight states and at least four languages Inez Victor said that she was very happy to be here today with her husband. In twenty-eight states she also said, usually in English but in Spanish for La Opinion in Los Angeles and for La Prensa in Miami, that the period during which she and her husband were separated had been an important time of renewal and rededication for each of them (vida nueva, she said for La Opinion, which was not quite right but since the reporter was only humoring Inez by conducting the interview in Spanish he got the drift) and had left their marriage stronger than ever. Oh s.h.i.+t, Inez, Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor in Wahiawa on the thirtieth of March, 1975. Harry Victor's wife.
3.
AERIALISTS know that to look down is to fall.
Writers know it too.
Look down and that prolonged spell of suspended judgment in which a novel is written snaps, and recovery requires that we practice magic. We keep our attention fixed on the wire, plan long walks, solitary evenings, measured drinks at sundown and careful meals at careful hours. We avoid addressing the thing directly during the less propitious times of day. We straighten our offices, arrange and rearrange certain objects, talismans, props. Here are a few of the props I have rearranged this morning.
Object (1): An old copy of Who's Who, open to Harry Victor's entry.
Object (2): A framed cover from the April 21, 1975, issue of Newsweek, a black-and-white photograph showing the American amba.s.sador to Cambodia, John Gunther Dean, leaving Phnom Penh with the flag under his arm. The cover legend reads ”GETTING OUT.” There are several men visible in the background of this photograph, one of whom I believe to be (the background is indistinct) Jack Lovett. This photograph would have been taken during the period when Inez Victor was waiting for Jack Lovett in Hong Kong.
Objects (3) and (4): two faded Kodacolor snapshots, taken by me, both showing broken rainbows on the lawn of the house I was renting in Honolulu the year I began making notes about this situation.
Other totems: a crystal paperweight to throw color on the wall, not unlike the broken rainbows on the lawn (dense, springy Bermuda gra.s.s, I remember it spiky under my bare feet) outside that rented house in Honolulu. A map of Oahu, with an X marking the general location of the same house, in the Kahala district, and red push-pins to indicate the locations of Dwight and Ruthie Christian's house on Manoa Road and Janet and d.i.c.k Ziegler's house on Kahala Avenue. A postcard I bought the morning I flew up from Singapore to see Inez Victor in Kuala Lumpur, showing what was then the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport at Subang. In this view of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport there are no airplanes visible but there is, suspended from the observation deck of the terminal, a banner reading ”WELCOME PARTIc.i.p.aNTS OF THE THIRD WORLD CUP HOCKEY.” The morning I bought this postcard was one of several mornings, not too many, four or five mornings over a period of some years, when I believed I held this novel in my hand.
A few notes about those years.
The year I rented the house in Honolulu was 1975, in the summer, when everyone except Janet was still alive and the thing had not yet congealed into a story on which the princ.i.p.als could decline comment. In the summer of 1975 each of the major and minor players still had a stake in his or her own version of recent events, and I spent the summer collecting and collating these versions, many of them conflicting, most of them self-serving; an essentially reportorial technique. The year I flew up to Kuala Lumpur to see Inez Victor was also 1975, after Christmas. I remember specifically that it was after Christmas because Inez devoted much of our first meeting to removing the silver tinsel from an artificial Christmas tree in the administrative office of the refugee camp where she then worked. She removed the tinsel one strand at a time, smoothing the silver foil with her thumbnail and laying the strands one by one in a shallow box, and as she did this she talked, in a low and largely uninflected voice, about certain problems Harry Victor was then having with the Alliance for Democratic Inst.i.tutions. The Alliance for Democratic Inst.i.tutions had originally been funded, Inez said, by people who wanted to keep current the particular framework of ideas, the particular political dynamic, that Harry Victor had come to represent (she said ”Harry Victor,” not ”Harry,” as if the public persona were an ent.i.ty distinct from the ”Harry” she later described as having telephoned her every night for the past week), but there had recently been an ideological rift between certain of the major donors, and this internal dissension was threatening the survival of the Alliance per se.
Inez smoothed another strand of tinsel and laid it in the box. The walls of the office were covered with charts showing the flow of refugees through the camp (or rather the flow of refugees into the camp, since many came but few left) and through an open door I could see an Indian doctor in the next room preparing to examine one of several small children. All of the children had bright rashes on their cheeks, and the little boy on the examining table, a child about four wearing an oversized sweats.h.i.+rt printed OHIO WESLEYAN, intermittently cried and coughed, a harsh tubercular hack that cut through the sound of Inez's voice.
The Alliance qua Alliance.
Add to that the predictable difficulties of mobilizing broad-based support in the absence of the war.
Add further the usual IRS attempts to reverse the Alliance's tax-exempt status.
Add finally a definite perception that the idea of Harry Victor as once and future candidate had lost a certain momentum. Momentum was all in the perception of momentum. Any perception of momentum would naturally have suffered because of everything that happened.
I recall seizing on ”everything that happened,” thinking to guide Inez away from the Alliance for Democratic Inst.i.tutions, but Inez could not, that first afternoon, be deflected. When the momentum goes, she said, by then plucking the last broken bits of tinsel from the artificial needles, the money goes with it.
The child on the examining table let out a piercing wail.
The Indian doctor spoke sharply in French and withdrew a hypodermic syringe.
Inez never looked up, and it struck me that I had been watching a virtually impenetrable performance. It was possible to construe this performance as not quite attached, but it was equally possible to construe it as deliberate, a studied attempt to deflect any idea I might have that Inez Victor would ever talk about how she left Honolulu with Jack Lovett.
4.
I AM resisting narrative here.
Two doc.u.ments that apply.
I was given a copy of the first by Billy Dillon in August of 1975, not in Honolulu but in New York, during the several days I spent there and on Martha's Vineyard talking to him and to Harry Victor.
UNIT ARRIVED AT LOCATION 7:32 AM 25 MARCH 1975. AT LOCATION BUT EXTERIOR TO RESIDENCE, OFFICERS NOTED AUTOMATIC GATE IN ”OPEN” POSITION, AUTOMATIC SPRINKLERS IN OPERATION, AUTOMATIC POOL CLEANER IN OPERATION. OFFICERS NOTED TWO VEHICLES IN DRIVEWAY: ONE 1975 FORD LTD SEDAN (COLOR BLACK) BEARING HDMV PLATE ”OYL-644” WITH US GOVERNMENT STICKER AND ONE 1974 MERCEDES 230-SL (COLOR LT. TAN) BEARING HDMV PLATE ”JANET.”
OFFICERS ENTERED RESIDENCE VIA OPEN DOOR, NOTED NO EVIDENCE OF DISARRAY OR STRUGGLE, AND PROCEEDED ONTO LANAI, THEREBY LOCATING FEMALE VICTIM LATER IDENTIFIED AS JANET CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER LYING FACE-DOWN ON CARPET. FEMALE VICTIM WAS POSITIONED ON CARPET NEAR LAVA-ROCK WALL LEADING TO SHALLOW POOL IN WHICH OFFICERS OBSERVED a.s.sORTED PLANTINGS AND KOI-TYPE FISH. FEMALE VICTIM WAS CLOTHED IN LT. TAN SLACKS, WHITE BLOUSE, LT. TAN WIND-BREAKER TYPE JACKET, NO STOCKINGS AND LOAFER STYLE SHOES. A LEATHER SHOULDER STYLE PURSE POSITIONED ON LEDGE OF LAVA-ROCK POOL CONTAINED FEMALE VICTIM'S IDENTIFICATION, a.s.sORTED CREDIT CARDS, a.s.sORTED PERSONAL ITEMS, AND $94 CASH AND WAS APPARENTLY UNDISTURBED.
OFFICERS NOTED MALE VICTIM LATER IDENTIFIED AS WENDELL JUSTICE OMURA LYING ON BACK NEAR SOFA WITH APPARENT GUNSHOT WOUND UPPER ABDOMEN. MALE VICTIM WAS CLOTHED IN LT. TAN SLACKS, ALOHA TYPE s.h.i.+RT, COTTON SPORTS JACKET, WHITE SOCKS AND SNEAKER STYLE SHOES.
MALE VICTIM EXHIBITED NO PULSE RATE OR RESPIRATORY ACTIVITY.
FEMALE VICTIM EXHIBITED LOW PULSE RATE AND UNEVEN RESPIRATORY ACTIVITY.
AMBULANCE UNIT AND FIRE DEPARTMENT INHALATOR SQUAD ARRIVED CONCURRENTLY AT 7:56 AM, ALSO CONCURRENT WITH ARRIVAL OF MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA, 1173 21ST AVENUE, WHO IDENTIFIED SELF AS REGULAR PARTTIME HOUSEKEEPER AND STATED SHE LAST SAW FEMALE VICTIM PRECEDING DAY AT 1 PM WHEN FEMALE VICTIM APPEARED IN GOOD HEALTH AND SPIRITS. MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA STATED THAT SHE WAS FAMILIAR WITH MALE VICTIM ONLY AS SPEAKER AT RECENT NISEI DAY BANQUET HONORING ALL-OAHU HIGH-SCHOOL ATHLETES OF j.a.pANESE DESCENT INCLUDING INFORMANT'S SON DANIEL M. HAYAKAWA, SAME ADDRESS (NOT PRESENT AT LOCATION).
AMBULANCE CARRYING FEMALE VICTIM DISPATCHED TO QUEEN'S MEDICAL CENTER AT 8:04 AM.
APPARENT BLOODSTAINS REVEALED BY REMOVAL FEMALE VICTIM ALTERED SIGNIFICANTLY WHEN MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA ATTEMPTED TO APPLY COLD WATER TO CARPET. OFFICERS PERSUADED MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA TO TERMINATE THIS ATTEMPT.
MALE VICTIM p.r.o.nOUNCED DEAD AT LOCATION AND RESUSCITATION ATTEMPT TERMINATED AFTER ARRIVAL DEPUTY MEDICAL EXAMINER FLOYD LIU, M.D., AT 8:25 AM. REMOVAL OF BODY PENDING ARRIVAL INVESTIGATING OFFICERS AND OTHER MEDICAL EXAMINERS AT APPROXIMATELY 9 AM.
COPY TO: CORONER.
COPY TO: HOMICIDE.
I was shown the second doc.u.ment, a cable transmitted from Honolulu on October 2, 1975, by its recipient, Inez Victor, when I saw her that December in Kuala Lumpur.
VICTORY STOP THINKING OF YOU IN OUR HOUR OF TRIUMPH STOP (SIGNATURE) DWIGHT.
Despite the signature this cable had been sent, Inez said, not by Dwight Christian but by her father, Paul Christian, on the morning he was formally committed in Honolulu to a state facility for the care and treatment of the insane.
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