Peaceable Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page B

Wayne, expecting this from America: instant cowboy justice.”
    Everyone laughed and Jerry said, “That’s the difference right there. We all grew up thinking that John Wayne was a right-wing fascist. You know,” he went on, “I used to feel hesitant talking politics to Europeans, I thought you’d had so much sad history, what could I possibly know? But now in terms of suffering I think we’re pulling way out ahead of you guys.”
    After that there was a silence. A lunch break was announced.
    In the lobby the morning’s speakers were being congratulated and invited to repeat their presentations in glamorous-sounding cities. Susanna and Jerry stood all alone in a circle of dread. No one would make eye contact with them, people went out of their way to avoid them, so that when at last someone approached, Jerry and Susanna turned away and had to turn back awkwardly when the person started talking.
    The tall young man before them was someone Susanna had noticed; it would have been hard not to, he stood out from the crowd. He was dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, with greasy shoulder-length blond hair and an earring; he looked like a movie villain’s psycho right-hand man. Perhaps he was an ecoterrorist—there had to be some of them here—and Susanna braced herself for his righteous attack on Jerry.
    Instead, in a heavy accent he said, “I think you are very brave man. We all know your Pentagon and C.I.A. are vicious crazy killers. I am Gabor Szekaly. Greenpeace. From Hungaria. Forgive my English is not good.”
    “Your English is great,” said Susanna. “I mean, compared to our Hungarian.”
    “You speak Hungarian?” said Gabor.
    “No,” said Susanna. “I just meant—”
    “I don’t know about brave ,” Jerry said. “But from time to time it does get hairy. My office gets broken into more often than Zsa Zsa Gabor’s hotel room.”
    “Gabor?” said Gabor.
    “An actress,” Jerry explained. “With lots of heavily insured diamond jewelry that keeps getting ripped off in Las Vegas.”
    “Hungarian?” said Gabor.
    “Originally,” said Susanna. “But no one you’d want to know.”
    Gabor smiled and lowered his head and kissed Susanna’s hand. She noticed that his earring was a tiny Coptic cross, and felt guilty for finding his kiss so pleasurable and disturbing.
    “Welcome to the conference,” Gabor said. “We will be seeing each other, okay?” He turned on his heel and headed across the lobby, a funny walk with elements of a swagger and a scurry.
    “Great,” said Jerry. “Terrific. Wouldn’t you know Count Dracula would be the one guy who liked my speech?”
    The conference became like the mother ship, feeding and sustaining them. After one day Susanna and Jerry stopped leaving the hotel. The ecologists warmed up to Jerry and flirted with Susanna. There were lots of internal politics which Susanna didn’t get but which lent the panels a buzz of tension; you felt you might be missing something if you didn’t go.
    Susanna was acutely aware of where Gabor sat in the room. Already he seemed to have bonded with many conference members with whom he talked volubly, pounding their shoulders and arms. He’d brought a girl who appeared only at meals and sat with him, alone in a corner, always in total silence. The girl wore jeans and a denim jacket and smoked like a chimney. She was tragic and spectacular-looking with a mop of black curly hair, but she stayed on the edge of things and didn’t flash it, like Susanna.
    Three days into the conference Gabor’s turn came to speak, and he ran up to the microphone like a boxer jogging into the ring. Susanna half expected him to vault the seminar table. Angrily he seized the mike and began shouting in Hungarian, rattling off the difficult sounds at the speed of Spanish. All the translation channels went dead; you could almost hear the translators wondering how to proceed—wondering did they have to shout to convey Gabor’s meaning? At last they