André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His previous books include Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid and the Wolf, Pastoral, which was also nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and Fifteen Dogs, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2017, he was named a winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize for his body of work.
Praise for The Hidden Keys
‘This gorgeously written, funny adventure tale will keep readers up finishing it while also quietly breaking their hearts with Alexis’s keen observations of people, kindness, and cruelty’ Publishers Weekly, starred review
‘Even though the book is an old-fashioned quest yarn, Alexis’s immense talent gives it an archetypal patina, glossing characters with shades of honor and subtlety that might have been missed in lesser hands’ Kirkus Reviews
‘A witty, punchy, loquacious novel … Fun, propulsive reading that really is about the hunt, not the treasure’ Library Journal
‘The mystery itself does not disappoint, though the events that lead up to the reveal are as much of a gift as the endpoint itself. This unique adventure is a joyful and intelligent undertaking’ Foreword Reviews
‘Alexis is a literary cartographer of the highest calibre and The Hidden Keys should be book-marked on everyone’s map’ Hamilton Review of Books
‘Though Tancred contains multitudes, one of Alexis’s best tricks involves diverging from his hero’s point of view to introduce a whole host of peripheral figures … Nobody is a mere archetype in Alexis’s universe, and far from digressions (or generic concessions), these subplots suggest the humane, egalitarian sensibility of a writer who’s reluctant to simply instrumentalize his characters’ Quill & Quire
‘Alexis shapes his mash-up of ancient tropes and ironic flicks into a wonderful story about fate and family, mainly by peopling it with characters who are simultaneously archetypes and believable individuals. And the puzzle is pretty good, too’ Maclean’s
‘It is difficult to convey how gracefully Alexis is able to conjure such baroque minutiae without slipping into mannered excess. Just as it is difficult to convey Alexis’s way of avoiding the trappings of genre while offering, in this case, all the essential pleasures of a crime novel: The Hidden Keys is somewhat akin to Elmore Leonard in its attention to idiosyncratic personal style and providing even minor players with active inner lives’ The Globe and Mail
Praise for Fifteen Dogs
‘Alexis excels at sparking drama from collisions between the canine and the human. He is also well versed in Greek myth and legend, yet where Fifteen Dogs really succeeds is on an allegorical level. There are superficial similarities in approach to Animal Farm, but Alexis’s dogs are drawn with greater depth than Orwell’s menagerie and he goes beyond politics, using them to look at human issues of fulfilment, happiness, and love. These sensitive explorations help to make this startlingly original novel as thought-provoking as it is enjoyable. In sum, this is the dog’s bollocks’ Peter Carty, Independent
‘Spry … Impressive … I loved this smart, exuberant fantasy from start to finish’ Jonathan Gibbs, Guardian
‘An elegant cross-breed of magical realism, moral fable, owner’s handbook and philosophical treatise’ Frances Wilson, New Statesman Books of the Year
‘Thought-provoking and moving … a canine version of Lord of the Flies’ Good Housekeeping
‘Intensely moving and heartbreaking in turn … An original idea brilliantly executed’ The Lady
‘An elegant cross-breed of magical realism, moral fable, owner’s manual and philosophical treatise … This is a wonderfully weird and spare reflection on the nature of dogs and poetry’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Alexis manages to encapsulate an astonishing range of metaphysical questions in a simple tale about dogs that came to know too much. The result is a delightful juxtaposition of the human and canine conditions, and a narrative that, like just one of the dogs, delights in the twists and turns of the gods’ linguistic gift’ Publishers Weekly
‘What does it mean to be alive? To think, to feel, to love and to envy? André Alexis explores all of this and more in the extraordinary Fifteen Dogs, an insightful and philosophical meditation on the nature of consciousness. It’s a novel filled with balancing acts: humour juxtaposed with savagery, solitude with the desperate need to be part of a pack, perceptive prose interspersed with playful poetry. A wonderful and original piece of writing that challenges the reader to examine their own existence and recall the age old question, what’s the meaning of life?’ Scotiabank Giller Prize jury citation
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Serpent’s Tail,
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
3 Holford Yard
Bevin Way
London
WC1X 9HD
www.serpentstail.com
First published in Canada in 2016 by Coach House Books
Copyright © 2016 by André Alexis
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author
A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library
eISBN 978 1 78283 354 3
For Nicola Alexis-Brooks
In a dream, the caliph al-Ma’mun saw a pale man with a ruddy complexion, a broad forehead and joined eyebrows. The man was bald, his eyes deep blue. He seemed approachable sitting on his dais. But I was directly in front of him, said al-Ma’mun, and I was afraid. I asked him: Who are you? He answered: I am Aristotle. I was delighted and I said: O, Sage, may I question you? He said: Go ahead. I asked: What is the good? He answered: That which is good according to reason. I asked: What else? He answered: That which is good according to revelation. I asked: What else? He answered: That which is good in the eyes of all men. I asked: What else? He answered: There is nothing else.
– Ibn al-Nadîm, Kitab al-fihrist
Tancred Palmieri was sitting in the Green Dolphin thinking about how best to dispose of a black diamond he’d stolen from a house on the Bridle Path. He was twenty-five years old and he’d been a thief from the age of eleven, but this was the first time he’d had difficulty deciding what to do with a stone. It was as if the diamond had a personality.
Tancred was a tall and physically imposing black man, but he was also approachable. He could not sit anywhere for long without someone starting a conversation. This was, his friends liked to say, because his blue eyes were startling and his voice deep and avuncular. So, when he wanted to be alone without necessarily being alone, Tancred answered in French – his maternal tongue – when spoken to by strangers. Few who came into the Dolphin knew the language. But Willow Azarian did, and she took the fact that Tancred spoke it as a portent. They would be friends. She knew it and, touching his arm, she blithely began to tell him about her family.
Tancred interrupted her. In French, he said
– You know, I’m not really one for family stories.
In French, Willow answered
– What have you got against them?
– I just don’t like them, said Tancred.
Willow nodded in sympathy and patted his leg. Then she carried on from where she’d left off, speaking about her family as if its story were something Tancred had to know. Willow was in her fifties, more than twice his age. As he was chivalrous by nature, he listened to her, skeptical but polite.
To be fair, there were a number of things that made Willow’s story implausible. To begin with, she was a junkie. Tancred himself had seen her, either high or strung out, stumbling around Parkdale like an outpatient from Queen Street Mental.
Then there was what she told him. Though they were meeting for the first time, Willow expatiated on her family’s wealth. The Azarians – about whom Tancred had heard – owned property all over the world. Her father had been brilliant, generous, wonderful! He had always treated her – his youngest – as if she were a princess. She had millions, thanks to him. A fortune. Enough to last a hundred years.
– Of course, he didn’t leave as much as he could have, she said.
It all sounded to Tancred like the daydreams of an orphan.
Then, too, there was her appearance. Willow was thin and pale. She was in her fifties but his impression was of someone older. Her hair was greying. There were crow’s feet at her eyes and her lips were those of a smoker, puckering when she spoke. Her clothes were out of style: a green-and-white floral dress with padded shoulders, a felt hat with wilted green plumes curling around to the side, a white sweater and clunky black shoes. It was not a getup you’d associate with wealth.
Finally, there was the place itself. Why would a rich woman hang around the Dolphin? Tancred came to the Dolphin in the afternoons to think things through, to stand at the bar and withdraw. At night, the Dolphin was a different story: noisy, filled with regulars or stragglers or cops. He went then to be with people he knew – thieves, dealers, users and prostitutes. Seeking company, he would stand at the bar and talk to whoever was there. One night, for instance, he spoke to a Salvadorean refugee whose family had been wiped out by death squads. On another night, not long after, he’d listened to a Salvadorean refugee who’d been a member of a death squad. Neither had looked like victim or executioner.
Though he did not often drink alcohol, Tancred had been going to the Dolphin since he was eighteen. In all that time, he could not remember meeting anyone posh. The place was too rough for it. Even Willow’s dealer – ‘Nigger’ Colby by name, though he was albino – preferred to drink across the street, at Jimmy’s. As far as Tancred knew, the most common reason for strangers to choose the Dolphin was the price of beer: it was twenty-five cents cheaper there than it was anywhere else. But Willow did not drink beer. She drank vodka and orange juice, and it seemed to Tancred that if she had really been wealthy, she’d have frequented better places, junkie or not.
Then again, who could tell about the rich? In ’03 or ’04, there’d been a politician caught trawling for prostitutes on Queen Street, not three blocks west of the Dolphin. In those days, the most unfortunate women worked Queen between Lansdowne and Triller. The wealthy men who came around looking for sex must have been attracted to something in Parkdale: the lawless, the sordid, the unlike-liness of being recognized. For all Tancred knew, the streetwalkers’ desperation was itself what turned these men on. It may have been something similar that brought Willow.
He found her difficult to credit, but she was also amusing and surprisingly sympathetic. He listened to her for an hour, listened until she spoke again about her father and then faltered and then stopped.
– I’m sorry, he said, but I’ve got to go. It was nice to meet you.
– You speak English, said Willow.
– Yes, said Tancred, but I prefer French.
– So do I, she said, but Japanese is my favourite.
She held up a hand, limp-wristed. Unsure what he was meant to do, he held it. He felt faintly ridiculous, but that was part of what made the encounter memorable.
Their second meeting was more memorable still.
One night, Tancred was at Close and Queen, walking home. Behind him, toward Parkdale Collegiate, he heard a cry. Turning, he saw three young men pulling at a woman. His adrenalin immediately spiked. He walked toward them. The woman called for help, as two of the men tried to keep her quiet.
The third and most imposing came forward. Tancred calmly said the first thing that came to his mind
– Are you guys holding?
before running at him, catching the man by surprise, punching him (accidentally) in the throat and then (somewhat purposely) in the face. The man growled and hit out but lost his balance, ending up on his hands and knees. Tancred kicked him, very hard – not in the ribs (where he was aiming) but only in the arse. The man swore and tried to get up but, as he did, Tancred kicked him (accidentally but with a physically pleasing thuck) in the face, breaking his nose.
The man stayed down, loudly cursing and holding his face.
Thirty seconds of close-quarter chaos that might have gone either way. But Tancred was fortunate. Fortunate, not only because he was unhurt (though his foot had hit the man’s arse at a bad angle and would later swell slightly from the sprain) but also because the other two, seeing their friend incapacitated, backed away, forgetting about the woman – Willow Azarian! – as they prepared for Tancred’s onslaught.
It was an onslaught that never came. It seemed to Tancred that a beating would have done them good – high school students, they looked like, five or six years younger than he was, thin as whippets. It would have given him pleasure to hurt them, but instead he helped Willow up and led her past the one who was groaning and complaining as he tried to stand up.
They reached Dunn, a block away, when Willow stopped. She could not go on. She stood shaking, her hat almost falling off.
– We should keep going, said Tancred. Where do you live?
It was a while before she could answer. Tancred waited, looking warily west to where they’d left her assailants and east at all the lights along Queen Street, the city stretching from the small desolation of Parkdale to the tall buildings and illuminations in the distance.
– I can’t go home, Willow said.
What she meant was that she did not want to be alone, and Tancred understood. The problem was, he knew nothing reliable about her and nothing about what had happened. What had the three men been after? Were they after her still? Who could he trust to take care of her? All he knew for certain was the reality of the human being beside him: thin, a foot or so shorter than he was, her lipstick smudged so that it looked like a reddish cloud on her cheek, streaks of grey in her bottle-blond hair. Seeing her like this, by street light, it added up only to distress and need.
– I don’t live far, he said. We can wait at my place while you decide what to do.
They made their way to King Street, then past old apartment buildings, rooming houses, big homes and corner stores to Temple, where Tancred rented an apartment. A fifteen-minute walk during which neither of them spoke.
There was a moment, as they climbed the stairs to his place, when Tancred questioned the wisdom of what he was doing. He allowed few strangers into his home. It was his sanctuary. He took pains to keep it as he wished it to be: four rooms (living room, bedroom, small kitchen, bathroom), white walls with ocean-blue trim. There was little furniture. He had a bed from iKea, a table with four chairs, a blue sofa his mother had insisted on buying for him, above which hung a painting she had made for his home: a portrait of the goddess Oshun in the shade of a tall tree, the goddess – breasts bared – wearing a bright yellow skirt and an ankle bracelet, the whole scene set under a cloudless blue sky. He had lived in this apartment since moving out of his mother’s home on St. Clarens. Though he could have afforded something bigger in a better neigh-bourhood, it had never occurred to him to move, the simplicity and warmth of his rooms being a tonic to the complications of his life.
On the landing, Tancred looked back at Willow, forlorn as she stood on the step, her hand on the banister shaking, blood on her knuckles. What was this person to him? Nothing, really, but that she needed help. He opened his door for her.
He made her tea, after helping to clean the blood and dirt from her hands, knees, elbows and cheek – the places scraped when she’d fallen. Her clothes – flimsy-looking – had not torn, despite being pulled about. Somewhere between Dunn and his apartment, she had lost her hat. Two or three of the hairpins she’d used to keep her hair tucked in dangled like clots.
Willow was in shock. The only words she managed – insistently repeated – were
– I won’t forget your kindness.
Somewhere around two in the morning, after they’d spent hours quietly speaking of personal things, her words of gratitude gently met by his assurances that he’d been pleased to help, he asked if she wanted to sleep.
– I think I should, she answered.
So, Tancred gave up his bed and slept on the sofa.
He came to think of this as a second first encounter with Willow. This time, his impression was of a woman in distress. But there was more to it than that. As she recovered from the indignity she’d suffered, there were also moments when he sensed strength in her, a resolve. These were unusual things to sense in an older, frail junkie, but they struck Tancred the way the integrity of her clothes had: flimsy-looking was not always flimsy. The glimpses he had of her resolve and determination were what interested him most. He was not moved by weakness, though he felt bound by vulnerability.
This was a precept Tancred had taken from his closest friend, Daniel Mandelshtam, one of two friends he’d had since his childhood in Alexandra Park. As Daniel put it, weakness was a habit, one that led to a kind of contented incapacity. It made no sense to help the weak, because that was what people called ‘enabling.’ But as to the vulnerable – there was a different story. Anyone might, given the circumstances, find themselves in above their heads. And it was dishonourable, Daniel thought, to let such people sink. Tancred had agreed. But the distinction was neither clear nor absolute to the young men since, as Daniel said, the weak, too, could be vulnerable. A further twist: Daniel was now a policeman, paid to protect the weak and the vulnerable indiscriminately.
Early the following morning, Willow emerged from his room and thanked him. She would not hear of his accompanying her. She was not afraid of the boys who’d attacked her. It had all been a misunderstanding, she said, an accident for which she blamed herself. She’d spoken of her wealth to the wrong people, that’s all. Tancred was not to worry about her safety. She would be grateful if he forgot the night they’d just passed. It was too humiliating for words.
Which was not to say she would forget what he’d done. How could she? He’d proven her right. They were destined to be close, and she never questioned destiny, whatever else she might dispute.
A long time passed before Tancred saw Willow Azarian again. Almost three full years. Nor was the time insignificant. His mother died.
Clémentine Fassinou, a non-smoker, died of lung cancer on a bright day in June, her soul leaving earth from her apartment on St. Clarens. She had been suffering for months, and her dark, African face had grown meagre and grey. Before she died, Tancred, her only child, had wished for her release from discomfort and exhaustion. After her death, he was contrite that he’d wished such a thing, though he had wished it out of love.
Then again, he and his mother had always had a complex relationship. From his childhood, they’d been as much friends as they’d been mother and son. This was just as well, because Clémentine had been a somewhat inattentive mother – unavoidably inattentive. Over the years, she had taken on any number of low-paying or temporary jobs to support them. And when she came home, exhausted from a day’s – or night’s – work, it was he who comforted her – keeping the house clean, preparing her meals once he was old enough to do so, washing the dishes. It was a role he had liked, one that he had jealously guarded against the occasional intrusion from men who stayed over from time to time before disappearing from their lives.
As it happened, his mother’s absence brought great good to Tancred’s childhood. When he and Clémentine lived in government housing near Alexandra Park, Tancred spent most of his time at the home of the Mandelshtams, who lived on Denison, and the Mallays, who lived around the corner on Carr. Baruch Mandelshtam, Daniel’s father, had been like a father to Tancred as well. Daniel and Tancred, both born of African mothers, looked like siblings. The Mallays’ son, Olivier – pale as winter – was almost as close to him as Daniel. The three boys had been inseparable from kindergarten until the end of high school, and they were close still.
Tancred had long forgiven his mother for any supposed damage his childhood had done to him. But it seemed that she hadn’t entirely forgiven herself, that she blamed herself for his way of life. Before she died, Clémentine had made him promise to read the Bible in her memory. Tancred had agreed, because it would not have been possible to refuse her anything as she lay dying. And although he was not much of a reader, reading mostly to please others, it was an easy promise to keep. His mother had asked Daniel and Olivier, who’d been on death watch with him, to help her son change his life. A more difficult proposition. Daniel had said he would, when Tancred was ready to change. But Ollie said that he would not.
– I wouldn’t know how to do that, he said.
Ollie being Ollie, he could not have answered otherwise.
But Clémentine had asked in earnest. She’d wanted to believe, before dying, that her son would find the right path. And Tancred had been hurt, not because his mother wished him to live a better life but, rather, because she knew he was living a life in the shadows. That she knew this, moreover, had been his fault. He had decided, at nineteen, to be honest with her, whatever the consequences. So, when she’d asked him where he got his money, he had defiantly admitted that he stole things for a living. At her death, he cringed at the brashness of it. She’d loathed thievery. He had put her in the position of having to choose, day after day, between her conscience and her son. That she had steadfastly chosen her son was no credit to him, and he knew it.
After his mother’s death, it was as if Parkdale had turned away from him, all the familiar places seeming drab and pointless. This was not the worst of his bereavement, but it was unexpected. The worst was the feeling of irreality, like living in a state just before waking. Parkdale had been home to him since he’d moved there at eighteen, his first home as an adult. It was unbearable to feel as if he were suddenly estranged from the world.
For a while, nothing mattered to him. He went on as he had, stealing what was wanted by those who paid him to steal. But something was working its way out. He had become strange to himself as well and he began to question his way of life and his motives. Ironically, this was also the time when he most needed his skill – the planning, the cold carrying out, the algebra of thieving. It seemed to be the only thing to distract him from grief.
For three years following his mother’s death, Tancred did not see Willow at all. The idea that they were destined to be close faded to grey, along with any number of assumptions and ideas that had preceded the death of his mother.
And then Willow walked back into his life.
It was a Sunday and it had rained. Tancred was wet and cold as he sat in one of the half-booths at the Skyline: orange leatherette seats on both sides of a white laminate tabletop. Sunday was now the day he spent alone. He would wake at seven, eat eggs and brown toast at the diner, return home, read from the King James Bible, make plans for the week to come, clear his mind and go to sleep early.
By now, he’d spent Sundays this way for years, and even some who knew him assumed there was a religious tinge to his discipline. But there was not. What there was was devotion to his mother. For the hour or so it took for him to read twenty pages, Tancred felt her presence. Or at least he thought of her. His reading of the Bible did not lead him to God or prayer or worship. It did not lead him to a new life. Though it was no doubt less than what his mother had hoped for, he simply grew more and more familiar with what was, for him, a mostly tiresome but sometimes entertaining repository of catalogues, tales and poetry.
He had ordered his eggs and toast, when Willow came in off the street. She saw him and, speaking to the waiter, asked that her coffee be brought to Tancred’s table. She was neither spaced out nor flagrantly high. She was thinner than she had been, however, and she wore more makeup. She greeted him, took off her raincoat and sat down.
– I’ve been looking for you, said Willow. Freud Luxemberg told me you come here on Sundays. And Nigger told me you’re a thief. Is that true?
– Why do you want to know? asked Tancred.
– You think I’m a foolish old woman, said Willow. And I am. I know it. But I’m more than that, Tancred. If you’ll listen to me, I have a proposition. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll do the talking. But first, I want you to know how I ended up here.
– Where? asked Tancred. The Skyline?
– No, no, said Willow. Here. In this life.
She began to rummage in a purse that was black, cumbersome and capacious, with a clip that looked like two brass moths meeting, their entangled antennae keeping the purse closed.
– My name is Willow Azarian, she said. My family is well-known.
– You told me all this, said Tancred, when we met.
– Yes, she said, and you may have got the impression that I worship money and status. But I don’t. I just wanted you to know who I am.
She took a bank statement from her purse and said
– This is from my expense account.
She pushed the statement to his side of the table. Tancred looked at it. Yes, it belonged to ‘Willow Azarian.’ Willow reached across and put her finger beside a number at the bottom of the page. For a moment, looking down, Tancred assumed he was mistaken about the figure he saw there:
$15,011,957.07
– It’s only my mad money, said Willow. I have much more.
– Why are you showing me this? asked Tancred.
– I want your help, she answered.
Her eyes were blue, not big or round, but set off by her thick eyebrows. Her face was pleasantly oval, her lips thin but expressive. Her ancestry would have been difficult to guess. Her clothes, on the other hand, suggested ideas of elegance whose time had long passed. She was wearing a black dress with padded shoulders, the dress’s collar cascading from one shoulder like three dark ripples and coming to a point on the other.
Willow was out of place in Parkdale. It would have been difficult to say where she’d have fit in. But she was not weak.
– What can I do for you? he asked.
By her own account, Willow had had a wonderful childhood. It had been everything she might have wished for. Her parents had been loving. Her siblings had helped to take care of her, changing her diapers and feeding her when her mother was tired. They had all doted on her.
For her first eight years, she felt loved and precious. The world itself was marvellous. The Azarians lived in Toronto for most of the year but in winter they moved to Key West where Nicole, their mother, had lived as a child. Willow had had, she believed, the best of north and south: the dry quiet of Rosedale (wealthy, its big houses politely distant from the street) and the sea-shush of Old Town (thirty degrees Celsius in the morning, houses modest and close); the soft rain along streets with tall trees and torrential storms so vivid she was certain their house in the Keys would shake apart.
Though she would not have changed a moment of her early childhood, it was not without its shadows, shadows that lengthened until they blotted out her adolescence. The worst of them was her mother’s illness: Creutzfeldt-Jakob. The eight-year-old Willow watched as the mother she loved was slowly taken from her, slowly becoming a woman Willow did not know. It took a year for Nicole Azarian to die.
This being the first and most frightening death in Willow’s life, it would be fair to say that she never recovered from it. For one thing, her mother’s death was the beginning of an anxiety about her father. For years she had nightmares in which her father succumbed to the same disease as her mother. Awake, the young Willow watched for symptoms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob in her father: dementia, changes in personality, the shakes.
Her father, for his part, had nothing but sympathy for his youngest. She was, maybe even to her detriment, the one child he indulged, the only one whose presence he always welcomed. Over the years, their bond was precious to both of them. She kept watch over him whenever he was home, while he came to think of her as a confidante.
This was a point Willow wanted to impress on Tancred: she was convinced that she’d known her father best – his personality, his deepest thoughts, his sense of humour, his playfulness, his strange ideas, his follies. Although she’d loved her father unconditionally, love had not blinded her to his flaws. That is to say, she had a realistic idea of who the man named Robert Azarian had been. It was crucial that Tancred take Willow’s word for this, if he was to grasp a second point she wanted to make.
At her mother’s death, Willow’s father had been forty-three and extremely wealthy. He had inherited millions and worked to make countless millions more. When he died of cancer in 2005, he died a multi-billionaire whose main company, Azarian Holdings, was involved in any number of enterprises in any number of countries.
At her father’s death, the last thing on Willow’s mind was the state of Azarian Holdings or her father’s will or her inheritance or anything of the sort. Her grief was such that her siblings were, rightly, troubled by her state of mind. Three years after her father’s death, however, financial matters did begin to impinge on Willow’s mind. Her grief gave way to an obsession with her father’s legacy. Robert Azarian had left each of his children two hundred million dollars and a one-fifth share of his businesses and assets. He had made his eldest son, Alton, head of Azarian Holdings, but his five children were equally served by his will. In effect, each inherited almost a billion dollars.
Along with the money and assets, he also bequeathed to each a memento mori, each memento holding special significance for the one who received it.
Alton inherited a mounted and framed poem,
Gretchen, a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater,
Simone, a painting of the Emperor Nero beside a man with a raven on his shoulder,
Michael, a bottle of Linie Aquavit,
and Willow inherited a near-faithful imitation of a six-panelled, Momoyama-period Japanese screen known as Willows by the Uji Bridge. Willow’s screen had had its last panel replaced by a blank, lacquered, willow-wood panel. Toward the bottom of this last panel – on the same side of the screen as the reproduction – was a lozenge-shaped brass tag, two inches high and four inches long. Engraved on the tag were the words
Salix Babylonica
(Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon …)
The screen was such a perfect memento of her father that it added to Willow’s grief. She could not see it or even think about it without remembering him.
She’d studied languages at a number of universities. She could fluently speak English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Japanese. But she had taken Japanese, thanks to her father. Robert Azarian, knowing that Willow wanted to add an Asian language to her arsenal, had suggested it himself. He’d had a covert motive, it’s true. Azarian Holdings – whose chief interest then was in cellphones – was opening an office in Osaka and he could not avoid spending time in Japan. So, he and Willow had travelled to the country together, Robert extending his stay so his daughter could complete her first course in Japanese.
During their months in Japan, they had – when both were free – travelled around the country together, taking trains to Kyoto, Nara, Kobe and Tokyo. She could still recall the small towns along the way, the baseball diamonds, the fields and houses, the tall buildings and neon lights. It was on these travels that Willow discovered her love for the painted screens of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japan: gesso, gold leaf, a season coming to life panel by panel as the screen is opened. Leave it to her father to remember her enchantment and remind her of the works she’d loved, to recreate a screen on which there were weeping willows, Salix babylonica, her symbol.
Three years after her father’s passing, when she was again able to think of things other than his death or at least to think beyond her next fix, she remembered words he’d spoken in his final days. She’d been holding his hand as he lay on his bed. He had awakened briefly from his chemically induced sleep and, seeing her beside him, he’d said
– Willow, you, your brothers and sisters … you’ll all have more than I’ve left, if you want it. But you’ll have to work for it. Promise me you will … promise me you’ll work for it …
He’d repeated the word promise, more and more faintly as he was drawn back into his opiate antechamber. She had, of course, promised. But later, thinking about her promise to him, the words work for it struck her. At his death, her father had made each of his children near-billionaires. They would make millions more from their shares in Azarian Holdings. It was more than enough. What, then, was there to work for?
When she’d conveyed their father’s words to her brothers and sisters, none had found them particularly significant. To her siblings, the words were banal, their meaning clear: they were all meant to help Alton run Azarian Holdings. It was their duty to work together as a family.
But that made no sense! Where Azarian Holdings was concerned, Alton was the authority. What’s more, Alton was as prescient and talented as their father had been. And why not? Robert had taught Alton everything he knew about business, as his father, Avram, had taught him. The company was thriving. There was no work for the other siblings, save for staying out of Alton’s way. This could not have been the work their father had in mind.
The third Christmas after her father’s death, when she and her siblings had gathered at Gretchen’s, Willow asked
– Is all of Dad’s money accounted for?
The young children were in the playroom with their toys, watched over by their nannies. The teenagers were with boyfriends or girlfriends or they were in the den watching television. Willow, her brothers and sisters (and their spouses) were at the dining room table, a plate of freshly baked keta, still warm, before them.
– All Dad’s money? said Alton. A lot of it went to charity. He donated hundreds of millions to causes all over the world. The rest he put back into the company.
– I know Dad was generous, Willow had said, but something doesn’t add up. Why did he leave us so little?
The others had guffawed in unison – a strange sound, as if something were suddenly caught in a number of throats. How could she say that he’d left them ‘little’? None in her family accepted that it was in any way ‘little’ to be left almost a billion in cash and assets. The conversation had almost immediately turned to other matters.
That was where things stood, as far as her siblings were concerned. Yes, perhaps, in theory, their father had been worth more than was disbursed in his will. But once you took his charitable donations into account, it was all above board and, frankly, not worth the bother.
But between bouts of heroin-brought stupor, Willow thought about her father’s words. She was convinced that she and her siblings were meant to be doing something other than gathering money from their inheritance. The maddening thing is that there were clues this was the case, clues that her intoxication shrouded. For one thing, every one of the mementos her father left them was, in its own way, provocative. Take hers, for instance: the screen with its painting of willows by the Uji bridge was a message of some sort. It had to be. If her father had simply wanted to remind her of their precious time together in Japan, a reproduction of Willows by the Uji Bridge would have been more than enough. It would have been perfect. But her father, or whoever made the reproduction, had removed part of the screen – had removed a willow – when they’d replaced the final image with a blank panel of wood. Why ruin the work? To what purpose? To let her know that the trees painted were weeping willows? But that was obvious. Although Psalm 137 was lovely, it simply did not jibe with seventeenth-century Japanese art. And on the back of the willow-wood panel, the letters
a(ա)
had been imprinted toward the bottom in indelible black ink.
The most provocative thing was: all this was so like her father. Robert Azarian had loved to devise the clues – difficult clues – for his children’s treasure hunts. As far as Willow was concerned, her screen – and each of the mementos – was a clue to something. And the work they had to do was in the uncovering of that thing.
Had she told her siblings her thoughts about their mementos?
Yes, she had.
Had she asked if they, too, had found anything ‘playful’ about the mementos their father had left?
Yes, and of her siblings, only Michael would admit his memento (the bottle of aquavit) was ‘suggestive.’ Well, why would their father leave someone who was teetotal – that is, Michael – a full bottle of alcohol? Then again, Michael had added that their father had no doubt been old when he’d chosen (or commissioned) the mementos he’d left them. So, one might have expected these incongruities. The other three – Gretchen, Alton and Simone – would not even admit that much, though their mementos were just as suggestive.
Had she examined their pieces for herself?
No. Willow had seen the other mementos, but none of her siblings would allow her time with their piece. In fact, it was as if they were colluding against her. Just as maddening: each one had privately encouraged her to keep on looking for answers. It was as if, in private, her siblings became reasonable, admitting the obvious, though none would help her.
The situation was bedevilling. It was almost enough to make her go cold turkey so she could think straight for longer stretches. She hadn’t kicked, though. Instead, she lived with two things constantly at the edge of her mind: her father, his mementos.
Her story finished, Willow took a sip of coffee. She’d put a napkin beneath her cup – the mark of those who do a lot of sitting over coffee in restaurants. From her moth-clips purse, she took a chocolate doughnut from a Coffee Time bag and, putting her hand before her mouth, took a bite. Then, as if ashamed, she put the doughnut back in the bag and the bag into her purse.
– What does any of this have to do with me? asked Tancred.
– I want you to steal my father’s mementos for me.
– From your brothers and sisters?
– Yes, from my brothers and sisters. But I don’t want to keep them. I’ll give them back. No one else has the right to have them, but I need to examine them and I know they won’t lend them to me. I’ve asked all of them.
– So, if I’ve got you straight, said Tancred, you think your father left you something but he hid it. How much could this whatever be worth, if it exists?
– I don’t know. I suppose it’s valuable. But this isn’t about money or wealth or anything like that. It’s about finding what my father hid. If I had time with the other mementos, I know I could figure this whole thing out. I was always good at treasure hunts.
Tancred wasn’t sure what to think. It had been impressive to see the fifteen million in her account, but difficult to think of so much as ‘mad money.’
– Listen, he said, I’ll think about it, but first I want to see the screen your father left you.
– Why? asked Willow.
– Put yourself in my place, he answered. You’re an addict, Willow. You don’t always make sense. I’d like to see the screen, just so we’re on the same page.
– That’s fair, said Willow. I’ll see to it.
With that, she got up, pulled on her raincoat and thanked him for listening. She left a twenty on the table.
– I’m sorry, she said. I don’t have anything smaller.
Tancred was about to say
– You don’t have to leave anything
but Willow had turned away and the image that came to Tancred’s mind was of a woman pulling up her skirt as she fords a river.
There were a number of things Tancred found disconcerting about Errol ‘Nigger’ Colby. To begin with, there was his nickname. It was unpleasant for Tancred to hear, as he sat in the Green Dolphin,
– How you doin’, Nigger? or
– What’s up, Nigger?
Adding to the strangeness was that, although Errol Colby was albino (white hair, white skin), he was of Jamaican descent. He was ‘black under the white,’ as he himself liked to say, so that calling him ‘Nigger’ seemed both offensive and