False Flag

For a moment he forgot the Marian who charmed him and saw only Marian Crowley, the author and reporter. He had a little question for her. How tolerant would she be of the intelligent Nswada if his tyranny depended on American dollars rather than on rubles? But there was no point in starting that kind of thing. On the way in, her crisp chatter slowed to a halt and she did go to sleep, not on his shoulder but leaning back against the window on her side of the car, arms crossed a bit sternly. The traffic was already beginning, trucks and cars and green buses piling up on both sides of the Rue Lafayette long before the Boulevard Haussmann. While he was deciding how best to navigate around the clogged center of town, she suddenly resumed the conversation, as if she wanted to show that she hadn’t dosed off for a moment. “Ambassador Love is doing a good job,” she said. “Who?” “Our ambassador, Freddie Love. In Sigirim. He’s making good changes in our AID program. We’re not very important down there any more, compared to the other aid they’re getting, but it’s a good program. Calls it ‘farm to farm.’” “I’m all for Love,” he said. Then, perhaps just to cover the bad pun with some other line, he asked her to dinner that same evening, after she'd had some sleep. “Sleep! I’ll be lucky if I get in a couple of hours. I’ve got to be at work by eleven at the latest!” She consented to come to dinner the next day, after she’d caught up on her sleep. She could have put him off, but she did not. And Ben, who should have let well enough alone instead of giving her the rush, felt so pleased at her consenting that it seemed worth it, even when the evening conversation started off with more about Sigirim. Anyway, whatever she said, what did it matter? She had on a long-skirted, gypsy-like brocade, her eyes and her earrings sparkled in the light of the candle between them, and her hands, slender and strong, illustrated to him what she said. That little country of Sigirim was finding its way. All right, the Soviets were in there solidly. Why not? Let the Soviets spend some money and help out too, in some of these places. He peered at her, half-closing one eye, seeing how the candle-lighted tones of her skin might appear on canvas against the busy, moving chiaroscuro of the restaurant. For right behind her a couple of tail-coated waiters were serving something flambé, the meat enveloped in a crown of blue fire; and other waiters hovered and departed and returned; and new parties of people were being seated; and behind this movement were big windows that gave on a sparkling sea of night-time Paris, with the towers of the Notre Dame bathed in white floodlights, right there across the channel of the Seine. She startled him a little when she said: “You don’t really get terribly hepped up about politics, do you? I mean you seem to know what’s going on, but you can sort of take it or leave it.” “You know us artists,” he said. “We’re above all that. We abstract human experience. We do not sit in judgment.” “Seriously.” “If I get serious,” he said, propping his chin on his fist and gazing at her, “it won't be about politics.” “I can tell you don’t really agree with some things I say. But you won’t come out and fight.” “Too much of a gentleman,” he admitted. “I resent that. Just because I'm a woman!” “Not just any woman,” he said, looking at her with such earnestness, such limpid honesty, that for a second she obviously wasn’t sure whether or not he was clowning. Then she strove to mimic an amused annoyance, under which there was no doubt some of the real thing. He made a normal, non-clowning Ben-Ingram face. “You insist on an argument? You'd like that better?” “I’m having a fine time,” Marian said, smiling at him. “It’s just that I’m curious about you.” “What could be better?” “The mystery man, huh?” But playing mystery man is a poor policy when you own a real mystery. He backed off toward abstraction. “Truth is unperceivable without its wrappings,” he said. He knew he had achieved a rather interesting, restrainedly poetic expression, complete with distant gaze in the direction of the Notre Dame. “Come to the truth too quickly and singe the eyebrows,” he added in a neutral tone. “We reporters have to go straight for it. Life’s too short.” “I know.” “To me,” she said, “the mature mind is one that goes directly for the answer. The idea is to get past all the wrappings, not play peekaboo.” “The mature mind, maybe. The creative mind, no.” “Why?” “The mature mind that I think you’re talking about is incapable of accepting the unbelievable,” he said. “It’s too serious, too honest. See? Whereas the creative mind . . .” “Is dishonest?” “No, but wily enough, suspicious enough to suspend disbelief, to follow up the unbelievable. At considerable risk, of course.” “Unbelievable like what?” “Oh, I don’t know. Like you, let’s say.” He must have said this in some special way, because suddenly she looked at him seriously, almost guiltily. “No,” she said. “I’m very believable.” “Meaning what?” “Meaning that maybe the unbelievable is merely in the eye of the creative beholder.” “There’s really nothing to you?” But she smiled. “Just don’t want you to be disappointed.” Then she looked away and there was a silence between them. “I mean,” she said, trying to be her usual bright self, “I think you're a person who looks for enigmas. Aren’t you? And what if there isn’t any enigma?”