“I’m sure neither of us believes in such a thing.”

  “Certain truths are very pure,” I said.

  “All of us live our own truths, Mr. Fields.”

  “Doesn’t it make you feel dirty to repeat that shit?”

  For the first time, she seemed genuinely angry.

  “Are you bothered that I don’t have more interesting things to say? Do you believe that cynicism and anger and skepticism and pessimism and fury and disenchantment and mistrust are any better? Are you under some illusion that you’re not a breathing cliché? Aren’t you your own little refrigerator magnet?”

  “You’re right,” I said, now turning, smiling, meeting her eyes. “You’re right. I am a cliché. I confess and it breaks my heart.”

  “But why is it so important to be original? You must know that we were born far too late for all that.”

  “Because of my former life. Because I hate jargon, cant, sloganeering. Lifeless language. I want surprise. I want shock. I don’t want to give in to the kinds of people I used to work for. Or lived with.”

  “First of all, there is no former life. There is only the one, Sol. But tell me, what would surprise you here?”

  “Something out of place. Screaming and yelling and broken glass would surprise me. Jesus, a single misspoken phrase.”

  She nodded. “Is that why you’re looking for trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Is that why you’re running off at night?”

  “You talk as if I’m your teenage son.”

  She laughed at this.

  “Maybe we think of you that way.”

  “There’s that we again. I wonder who you mean exactly. The fatherland? Our glorious leader? Whatever, I’ll be very disappointed to learn you think of me as your son, teenage or otherwise.”

  “My advice,” she said, “is to stop looking for trouble.”

  “That’s terrible advice,” I said. “Are you really going to get rid of Theo?”

  “His time here has ended.”

  “Just like that? You’ll what? Send him to the airport tomorrow?”

  “He’s already at the airport.”

  “Incredible. Punishment is swift on fantasy island.”

  She stood up. “It’s not a fantasy, Mr. Fields.”

  “Who drove him?”

  She ignored my question.

  “Sleep well. Or as well as you do.”

  “As well as I do?”

  “We learn a great deal from the way a man sleeps, Mr. Fields. Someone who kicks and moans and calls out, who gnashes his teeth, is not a happy man, does not have peace in his heart.”

  I was left sitting on the porch trying to work out just how frightening, how dangerous they were, his army of acolytes who followed me, who watched me sleep, who cast out dissenters. But it was all too campy, too silly. I tried to imagine Sebastian Light as David Koresh, the apprentice hordes as Moonies, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gaters. Were they planning to commit group suicide? A subway sarin attack? A virgin sacrifice? No. At best, it was an elaborate piece of performance art, all a riff on the violence of unrelenting hope, on the corruption of language, on the deadening effect of caution, of groupthink, cults of uplift, empowerment and peppy art-world citizenship, on the sanitizing of culture, the sterilizing of art. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To find that soon, one way or another, they would line up and take a bow, tear off their smooth masks, their colored contact lenses, their dental veneers, to reveal wrinkled skin, brilliant bloodshot eyes, cracked yellow teeth.

  How much sadder it would be to find all The Coded Gardeners sincere.

  As I lay naked in my bed, I imagined Plume watching over me while I kicked and moaned and clicked my worn teeth.

  A storm woke me in the morning and for hours I lay listening to rain thrashing the tin roof.

  My breakfast was there as ever and, ignoring today’s card, I took it back to bed and ate it for lunch and drowsed beneath the white muslin like some grieving viceroy.

  When I woke again there were three papaya seeds stuck to my cheek and it was late afternoon.

  19

  At some point in the night, I woke to the hope that when the sun rose Theo would be at his easel trying to paint, counting his slights, searching for a name. But later, I went up to his studio and found no sign of him. All the brushes, the cups, the bottles, the cans, all gone. His chair was pushed square to the table. I don’t know how they could have done it so quickly, but the boy had been erased. In his place was an empty canvas propped on a clean easel, like some interior designer’s idea of a room where art is made.

  I sat on the floor looking out the glass for a while. I liked being there in the quiet, with the door closed. Even the simulacrum of art held the power to move me.

  Frankel said that when he first began working, everything he did was a response to death. Every idea, every sketch, every sculpture was, in some way or another, a form of memorial, which was to say that everything he did was a reference to what no longer existed.

  “In those days, I demanded a silent, isolated studio. I was obsessive about it. Unless I was working alone behind a locked door, I was paralyzed.”

  “What changed?”

  “I became a revolutionary,” he said, patting my knee.

  We were on a bench in Washington Square Park drinking coffee from paper cups.

  “What were you revolting against?”

  “Death,” he said, in a quiet voice, as if revealing a secret. “It had never occurred to me before. But then, all at once, I saw that I had more interest in the living, that as long as I always knew I could die, would die, the new sculptures could never be empty of death, but they could become driven by, and evidence of, my futile, joyful war against it.”

  While I was working on the profile, Frankel gave me free access to the studio. I could come and go as I pleased. Speak with whomever I liked. I drank with them. I got high with them. I tried to separate the artists from the stragglers. I stayed into the early morning and sometimes slept on a couch. I was happy either way. I loved waking to see the nests they’d made and I loved walking home with a cup of coffee just before dawn, still a little drunk, always writing. There was less litter in the space between my mind and my work then, the lines more direct. Really, I couldn’t make it stop. I’d unlock the door and go straight to work for hours at the table by the window without even taking my coat off and in my last years at Pale, I came to see that it was the absence of those moments of singular focus, of possession, of gleeful obsession, that made my life unbearable. Every day they seemed to drift further and further from me and at the end I knew that if I didn’t jump, I’d never have them back again.

  That evening Plume arrived toward the end of dinner to announce, in uncharacteristically casual style, “Mr. Light would love to have everyone to The Library for a brief celebration.”

  I followed them down and halfway there, Crystalline, who hadn’t been at dinner, was suddenly at my side.

  “Hello, Solomon,” she said, bumping my hip with hers. “Going to do some reporting?”

  “You’re awfully cheerful.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Your sidekick was exiled.”

  “Yes, well,” she said, without any indication of regret.

  “That’s it?”

  “He was an angry, stunted little man who had no sense of himself.”

  “May I quote you?”

  “So, you are going to write about this place?”

  “What do you care?”

  We were nearly to The Library now.

  “Why don’t you come and see my work?”

  I laughed. “Everyone thinks I’m going to make them famous.”

  “See you later,” she said, and walked through the door before me.

  All the light was dimmed except, conspicuously, Sebastian, who stood before a bookshelf, his teeth bright in a single spot cranked to ten. Next to him stood an easel. A white cloth covered what one could only assume was another masterwork. But whose? Would Maestro Light reveal, at long last, his own creation? This seemed unlikely, for if the man knew anything at all, it was that the seat of power is made of shadows.

  He began to speak, and I braced myself for another onslaught.

  “All of you here have proven yourselves to be serious and determined. Not only do you have talent but you’re willing to fight, to take off your shirts, pull out your shovels and dig. Just as important, you have an appreciation, a passion, for this land, for its beauty, for the effort that has gone into nurturing it. Those of us here tonight love this soil and the blood and the tears that have fertilized it. You love the buildings and walls, its gardens and orchards. It is you who make this place what it is, who believe in its greatness, you who reject defeat and cynicism, who respect our origins, our culture, our shared values, who understand what it means to take an empty, godforsaken chunk of dirt and turn it to sanctuary, an Eden. You who fervently believe in this experiment, our Garden, our homeland, our haven. You and those who came before, who are willing to defend it at all costs. Thank you.”

  The guests stirred. Even Crystalline appeared rapt. Her coconut flesh glowed. With a childlike smile, Saber cracked his tragic artist mask. The powerful blond woman with the teeth whose name was either Citrus or Duckling pressed a rosy hand to her breast and looked upon our leader with desirous devotion. They all appeared roused by this spirited call for unity, by an idea of identity that did not begin with their arrival in The Garden and surely would not end there. Now they were trading in the eternal. They had toiled to build and plant and paint their way toward this utopic present and right on through in the direction of a celestial future.

  I studied him and it was difficult not to believe that he was sincere, that his heart swelled when he spoke, his chest full of pride. And yet it had to be theater. It had to be art. It must be. Because if not, what then? The alternative was too sad to contemplate.

  He turned to Plume, Sebastian Light’s own Vanna White, who pulled the sheet away.

  It was an intricate map of The Coded Garden as if drawn by Long John Silver, the lettering twisted and curled, the paper dipped in black tea. Antiqued, in the patois of New York City’s gentleman farmers, the edges uneven and carefully charred. There was the whole of the property detailed down to each sculpture and palm. Beyond those walls the whimsy began. Here was the ocean, a snarling sea creature rising from its depths, tail lashing at the waves just beneath an old-timey compass. There were green mountains, sharp as shark teeth, rising into the golden sky. Our narrow road descended to the coast and there in each direction, a highway dissolved into nothingness. There were no other signs of a history predating our own, no towns, no buildings, no Sunny’s Bar, nothing but mythical beasts and threatening terrain.

  “My friends, here is your world, your sanctuary, your home. It is where you live, where your names, and hearts, belong and begin. Gem?”

  The wiry-haired woman stepped forward, arranging her dour mouth into an unpersuasive smile.

  “I made this map,” she said before she faltered and looked down at the floor. “It was, it is important for me, to do honor. It is. I wanted to celebrate this land, this whole universe that I’ve been, that we’ve been handed. Given. Gifted. I owe so much for it and I will, I want to repay that debt. Happily, I mean.”

  The audience waited for more, but the sour expression returned, and it was evident that there would be nothing else. It was excruciating to watch her bumbling through that speech not because it was a failure, but because she was so nakedly desperate for Light’s love.

  “Thank you, Gem,” Light said. “I had thought to begin our Biennale this way, but in light of last night’s sad events, I thought it best to give you this gift now. As you leave, Plume will offer you a small reproduction of the map.”

  Reverently they stood in line, each passing before the map, touching, smelling, feeling, communing. I stayed where I was, watching him provide abbreviated bows to the artists as they left The Library, rolled scrolls like batons in their fists. Life or theater, I saw in him a new fatigue, a rounding of the shoulders as he gazed upon his subjects, a slackening of his chin, a papery quality to his skin. He is weakening, I thought. He might be unwell. Had he been granted only a month left to live? Was this the story? After all, performance is grueling. Beauty is brutal.

  I waited until the last player had left the stage and when Sebastian Light turned from the open door to look at me, I was sure he saw the change in my eyes. But did he see pity or possibility? He gave me an odd look, which I couldn’t quite parse—pleading, sad, defiant—but whatever it was, in that instant I found him touching.

  He raised his hand so that I could see his wide palm as if he were saying farewell from across a great train station. Then he turned and left.

  I stood before his collection, reading the spines—Drawing in the Kingdom of God, Painting in Paradise, etc.—trying to figure out what he did and did not mean. Soon, I took my map and went out into the night where I found Siddhartha waiting for me, looking handsome and crisp in a white t-shirt and jeans.

  “Go for a walk?”

  “You people are always showing up, pretending not to want anything.”

  “You people?”

  “Denizens of this insane place.”

  “You meant Indians, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You’re all the same.”

  He smiled. “What do you think I want?”

  “Who knows.”

  “Who else shows up?”

  “Crystalline most recently.”

  “Crystalline,” he said, and I noted the same disdain as before. “Did you like her little performance last night? You looked impressed.”

  “You don’t like her.”

  “She’s a good painter, but she’s ambitious.”

  “Are you not both of those things?”

  “Not like her.”

  “You’re not as good or not as ambitious?”

  “Both. Neither.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me something.” I nodded at the scroll in his fist. “What am I supposed to make of that map? Are we calling it art?”

  Up until then, we had been standing in the soft light above The Library door. Now he started walking and I went along.

  “No comment?” I said.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  “Are we not walking now?”

  “Well, yes, we’re walking, but we’re not on a walk.”

  “You fucking people,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Pedants, all of us. Tomorrow after dinner, if you like, we could go for a walk.”

  “A formal date?”

  “A formal walk. There’s a place I’d like to show you.”

  “No end to the mysteries.”

  “No,” he said, “none. That’s what art is for.”

  Then he kissed me on the cheek and strode off.

  They were always appearing and disappearing. Always punctuating their arrivals and departures with dramatic gestures, poignant moments, final words of wisdom. Excellent exits at The Coded Garden.

  20

  The following evening, I waited on my porch. I found that I was nervous and a little nauseated by the same anxiety I’d always felt in all the schools I’d ever attended—the anticipatory dread of rejection, of violence, deception, humiliation. I worried Sid was very wealthy. Despite his claims of having nowhere else to go, no one to catch him, he had a certain unhurried aspect which recalled so many wealthy people I had known. An inbred confidence, a nonchalance. Factory set. Whether they were those who pretended to be poor, or those who flaunted their wealth, the aspect was always the same, the calm could never be broken, and I could never quite grant them the benefits of doubt. I’d been suckled on suspicion—of money, of state, of men—wary since the first memory of memory.

  When I came home from college repeating the lines I’d learned there, my mother clicked her tongue and said what she always did, “Evil comes from money. The issue is class. Hatred is born of imbalance. It is never more complicated. It will never be more complicated.”

  “Are you denying racism exists? Sexism? Homophobia? Antisemitism?” I screamed, doing a little late-adolescent pearl-clutch jig.

  “Symptoms,” my mother said, unimpressed. “Too much in the hands of too few.”

  This was, of course, in her days of Das Kapital. Days before she replaced Marx with Israel, when workers became Jews, before the sweet comforts of an even more rigid politics, but by then I had already been formed by her early lectures, my vanished father’s legacy of debt, and constant questions of whether and how we might pay our rent. Days before Lina Klein’s California arrival, before she became a landlord (much to her daughter’s white-hot ire), before the barbarians invaded my grandmother’s beloved Lower East Side allowing the three of us a theretofore unknown security.

  I have begun to see a line between my mother’s conversion from one orthodoxy to another and my own transfiguration from downtown chronicler of bohemia to whatever ugly thing I became at Pale. Both were driven by fear. But also, some pathetic, latent instinct to rebellion. These theories are incomplete and underexamined, and I can’t say precisely what it was that so frightened Charlotte Klein. She despised disorder, that’s certain. Do not arrive at noon when you promised 11:45. Do not put the milk where the orange juice belongs. Unless she was in command of it, even music unsettled her. A car racing past, its stereo blaring, would practically debilitate her with rage. I know she loved how deep under the skin her rightward drift burrowed into her mother’s flesh. Finally, though, I think she found real comfort there in the simple fictions and furies of Tucker Carlson and the Likud. And maybe I wasn’t so different when I went to Pale. I couldn’t shake the fear I’d absorbed from my mother—of instability, of poverty, of eviction. My degree, the apartment, even Lina Klein did little to obliterate my early education. And there was my father, that charming deadbeat. He, too, left his marks. And loath as I am to admit it maybe I wanted to throw a few jabs at my grandmother, as well. So certain of herself, so easy in her philosophies, so appalled by “dead lives,” maybe I wanted to show her I wasn’t hers.