Station Eleven

“I know,” Clark said. “I’m sorry.” Arthur’s third wife had recently served him with divorce papers, and her predecessor had taken their son to Jerusalem.

“Why Israel?” Arthur said miserably. “That’s the part I don’t understand. Of all places.”

“Wasn’t she a history major in college? Maybe that’s what she likes about it, all the history in the place.”

“I think I’ll have the duck,” Arthur said, and this was the last they spoke of Elizabeth, actually the last they spoke of anything of substance. “I’ve been indecently lucky,” Arthur said later that night, on his fourth martini. It was a line he’d been using a great deal lately. Clark wouldn’t have been bothered by it if he hadn’t seen Arthur use it on Entertainment Weekly a month or two earlier. The restaurant was one of those large, under-lit places that seemed to recede into shadow at the periphery, and in the murky middle distance Clark saw a pinpoint of green light that meant someone was recording Arthur on a cell phone. Clark felt increasingly stiff. He was aware of the whispers that had sprung up, the glances from other tables. Arthur was talking about an endorsement deal of some kind, men’s watches, his gestures loose. He was telling an animated story about his meeting with the watch executives, some kind of humorous misunderstanding in the boardroom. He was performing. Clark had thought he was meeting his oldest friend for dinner, but Arthur wasn’t having dinner with a friend, Clark realized, so much as having dinner with an audience. He felt sick with disgust. When he left a short time later he found himself wandering, even though by now he’d oriented himself and knew how to get back to the Tube station. Cold rain, the sidewalk shining, the shhh of car tires on the wet street. Thinking about the terrible gulf of years between eighteen and fifty.

18

DIALLO: I’ll ask you more about Arthur Leander and the comics in a moment. Perhaps I could ask you a few questions about your life first?

RAYMONDE: You know me, François. We’ve been coming through this town for years.

DIALLO: Yes, yes, of course, but some of our readers might not know you, or the Symphony. I’ve been giving copies of the paper to traders, asking them to distribute it along their routes. You’ve been acting since you were very young, isn’t that right?

RAYMONDE: Very young. I was in a commercial when I was three. Do you remember commercials?

DIALLO: I do, regrettably. What were you selling?

RAYMONDE: I don’t actually remember the thing itself, the commercial, but I remember my brother telling me it was for arrowroot biscuits.

DIALLO: I remember those too. What came after the biscuits?

RAYMONDE: I actually don’t remember, but my brother told me a little. He said I did more commercials, and when I was six or seven I had a recurring role on a televised … on a televised show.

DIALLO: Do you remember which show?

RAYMONDE: I wish I did. I can’t remember anything about it. I think I’ve mentioned before, I have some problems with memory. I can’t remember very much from before the collapse.

DIALLO: It’s not uncommon among people who were children when it happened. And the Symphony? You’ve been with them for a while, haven’t you?

RAYMONDE: Since I was fourteen.

DIALLO: Where did they find you?

RAYMONDE: Ohio. The town where we ended up after we left Toronto, my brother and I, and then after he died I was there by myself.

DIALLO: I didn’t know they went that far south.

RAYMONDE: They only went down there once. It was a failed experiment. They wanted to expand the territory, so that spring they followed the Maumee River down past the ruins of Toledo, and then the Auglaize River into Ohio, and they eventually walked into the town where I lived.

DIALLO: Why do you say it was a failed experiment?

RAYMONDE: I’ll always be grateful that they passed through my town, but the expedition was a disaster for them. By the time they reached Ohio they’d lost an actor to some illness on the road, something that looked like malaria, and they got shot at three times in various places. One of the flautists got hit and almost died of a gunshot wound. They—we—the Symphony never left their usual territory again.

DIALLO: It seems like a very dangerous life.

RAYMONDE: No, that was years ago. It’s much less dangerous than it used to be.

DIALLO: The other towns you pass through, are they very different from here?