“Wish I had. She wasn’t the youngest but without question was one of the brightest, aside from being an aesthetic and colloquial treat. Seeing and speaking to Helene here is the second entry I’ll put on my list of things to be thankful for this time of the year. But you haven’t said what you do, Mr. Krin. It could be your work was sent to me last spring and I voted on your colony stay.”
“I translate.”
“I only get fiction in the original. One of the Slavics?”
“Japanese, and if I have some help from a sinologist, a bit of Chinese.”
“An admirable underpaid profession and if you could excel in the latter language you’ll be in the coming wave. Well. Seems the line to Gurygenin has declined so mind if I say goodbye for the time being to attend to the amenity of shaking the great man’s hand?”
“Is it?”
“Surely the shaking one is if that’s the hand he writes with. If I were a speculator in men’s fortunes and careers I’d say he’ll receive a Nobel in the next ten years if his country can keep its nose relatively clean.”
“Then I’d say someone a lot more deserving would be out about two hundred thousand dollars for better world politics.”
“I doubt you’d think that if you translated Russian. Much success to you, Mr. Krin.”
Gurygenin sighs when he sees him and kisses his cheeks and says what seems like a ribald remark in Russian in Smith’s ear. They laugh. Some people near them laugh when Gurygenin repeats the remark in English, which I don’t wholly hear. Something about old appetites and young women and the time it takes to complete the feast and how when a man is young and just as hungry he would pass up a steaming savory-smelling four-course supper for a cold snack. I look around, no one I know, see my glass, dump the vodka into a large glass and add tomato juice to the top, see a woman Helene had said hello to spreading caviar on a cracker. I go over, slice a piece of brie, hold it up between two fingers and say “Ah, just as I like it: boiled for two and three-quarter minutes and then quickly rolled over ice and rushed to the diner’s plate,” and she says “Leave it to Dee.”
“For Diana? And Helene. Is she H?”
“You know Helene? I was in the bathroom scrubbing my ugly face and looking forward to a chat with her when all of a sudden she disappeared.”
“Went to a wedding. Had a previous commitment to it for months.”
“Anybody I might know? And listen, stop me if you see my arm reaching for another chunk of food. Anything here but the lettuce garnish — clip me on the wrist, even, okay?”
“I will. And I’ve been sworn not to say whose wedding it is. The bride doesn’t want any gate crashers or some reason like that Helene said. Or any gates crashing. That was it. Too much noise. She doesn’t want the ceremony disturbed. Because suppose the groom later contends that the wedding should be nullified because he didn’t hear all the nuptial words being said. Because at the precise moment the bride was saying ‘I do’ or whatever they say today that legitimates the marriage contract, the gates were crashing away. No, that can’t be, since the wedding was this summer. Helene never said anything to me except that she was going to the reception.”
“Is that so.”
“Of course she said a few other things. ‘How come fall’s falling so fast?’ ‘If you’re going to the bar, could you take back my glass?’ But you seem dubious of my even saying why Helene’s not here.”
“I shouldn’t be, and for several good reasons, the best of them being that you didn’t stop me from stuffing myself with more food?”
“Actually, I only met Helene tonight. Right here. No, over there where that man and woman smoking black cigarettes are standing, though our positions by sex reversed. I came over and said. She looked at me and said. Later I said and she said and then she mentioned the reception. Didn’t the crashing. Did the bride, though would a bride after so many months still be a bride if the reception’s her wedding’s? Never said a word about gates. Yeats, yes. Maybe also mates. Traits and fates only just conceivably when we got into a hot conversation about weddings and receptions, but about beddings and conceptions, nothing. You know, I never till now realized how effortlessly so many words come to mind that rhyme with gates and also relate to it. Sates. Straits. Grates and greats, the last with an e-a-t because of Yeats, and even that e-a-t now I see relates to the ate in plates and pates if you want to pronounce and spell pâté that way, besides the past tense of eat and so on. But yes, let’s. No, you won’t allow me to allow you to, though I’ll have some more.” I hold a knife over the brie and my expression says “Would you, despite your not wanting to, like me to slice you a piece?” She shakes her head, squeezes what doesn’t seem like a lot of flab on her waist.
“May I ask your name?” she says.
“It’s one I’d like to forget tonight.”
