“I have never heard of it” was all I could say into the stunned silence.

“You’ve never heard of most of them. It’s not your ignorance. There were more than anyone knows — thousands and thousands of them.”

I fell quiet, thinking of how she must have wanted to protect him from knowing, from carrying her burden. “I always thought of the Holocaust as people’s grandparents” was the only thing I managed to say.

“The past is never as far away as you think,” he returned, implacable to the point of nonchalance. “Her real point, or part of her point I think, was to understand the difference between passing emotions and situations, and the steadiness of what lies behind them.”

“What is that?”

“Every day Zuigan called to himself, ‘Master.’ And he would answer, ‘Yes, Master.’ ‘Become sober.’ ‘Yes, Master.’ ‘And after that do not be deceived by yourself or others.’ ‘Yes, Master.’”

“It is beautiful. What is it?”

“It is my koan, since I was a boy.”

“Do you follow it?”

“We both know I am too vain to go all the way with it. Still, I like to remember it is there.”

“Why not follow it all the way, if you have followed it so long?”

“Once you begin to grasp it there will come the question of how sober you wish to be.”

“How did you and Elsa meet?” I asked, changing the subject, as I tried to parse whether it was only something he had read, or Davidson actually knew something serious and true.

“Ingo,” he answered breezily.

“Seems right.” Ingo was one of Davidson’s aristocratic investors. “What does she do?”

“Give away money.”

“To whom?”

“Orphans. Museums. Needy politicians.” He lowered his voice. “You know, she’s the tenth wealthiest woman in Paris. She has a title, too.”

“She won’t anymore if she marries you,” I whispered back.

Davidson continued undaunted. He was never daunted. Even in the throes of a nervous breakdown he had greater magnetism and power than most people in their primes. Not just worldly power to work his will, power from faith in his abilities and himself as a man, no matter the company. In his own personhood. That was his security and his charm. “Can you imagine keeping a fortune that size intact that long?” he asked.

“Where did the fortune come from?”

“I believe it marched its way from the frigid, ungiving North Sea into the open-hearted embrace of her Monaco bank.”

“How so?”

“Why don’t you ask her, if it worries you?”

“It is not my business.”

“Then why ask me?”

“You brought it up.”

“There was a reason.”

“Which was?”

“You still have the didact in you.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Sure you do. Not five minutes ago you liked her. Now here you are sitting in judgment, wanting to know if her grandfather was the Antichrist. What if he were? Would you then be curious to know what is available to her besides shame, denial, or capitulation, and how she obtains it? So long as she is fully within herself, it does not matter.”

“It matters.”

“To what? To her character, or to your own particular hypocrisy that you do not see.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” I said.

“As I said, it is not your fault, but whatever politics they whipped up for you as a boy do not describe the human world, just a momentary politics of relative power. But kings give way to presidents. Priests to painters. Painters to entertainers. Presidents to industry. Paupers to billionaires. All in their turn. The money and power only project whatever picture show is already playing inside the people. Vanity, deceit, insecurity, greatness.”

“That is the same as to say what we do does not matter.”

“That is to say what matters is exactly what we ourselves do. When you come to Hollywood you will see it everywhere, people who think when the world knows who they are, they will be happy. Only to reach their aim, and turn to see themselves unhappy all over the newspapers every morning. The green-hearted ones look and see partway what’s going on, and turn gleeful to keep pulling them down, because they refuse any kind of world but their own misery. They look and all they see is imperfection, and they hate it, which is the same as hating beauty. But they do not know that. No one does. We all just sit sharpening up our different hates and hurts until we can point it all back at the world, thinking it is a sword, while calling it virtue. But tell me what you judge and I will tell you what you fear.”

“I was talking about discernment of meaning, which is a high thing.”

“It certainly is a high thing.” He poured us more wine. “It ain’t the highest. Sometimes discerning shows what’s there; sometimes it veils it from you.”

“What’s the highest?”

“You know what it is.”

“Do I?”

“Of course you do. At least you have the ear to hear it. The question is, do you have the faith to trust what you hear?

“If you like, I will find out who her fathers were, back as far as I can, because fortune like that is not a single instance of luck, but a second and a third; refigured each time history shifted to obliterate them, but did not because of the sheer refusal to die. If they did something in the past I dislike, or that threatens me, should I break with her? Before I have given her a chance? Somebody went to bed one night and decided there in the dark to try for a dynasty, and did not figure she would be on the other side of it all. Maybe she has a mind and will of her own. This play is for the living. Those who do not grasp that are puppets of the past, and the strings are whatever they have been told; and whoever it was who told them that’s the way it is, aims to be puppet master. If you wish to live in that mirage, fine, stick to the didactic. But, if you want to be in the present, it will keep you from the brass ring.”

“Sorry I brought it up,” I said in the face of his argument. “I didn’t mean to make anything of it. She is lovely.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know. Can I ask you something?” He scanned the room to see whether the women were in sight.

“Yes.”

“Would you date a poor girl?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I would not.”

“I thought you just said it did not matter.”

“That’s not what I said. I said, politics do not describe people. There is nothing the matter with poor girls, but one could never understand my worries.”

“What worries do you have, Davidson, other than the ones you invite?”

“You will find out one day. Before they make you a boss, you think how fine it would be to be top dog. You wait and wait your turn. You pine all night, and you pine all day. Until at last your day arrives, all gleaming and new. They pick you up by the scruff, and carry you along to the limousine, with all your anticipation, only to find it is for nothing more than to be thrown into the pit, where now, instead of pining, you get to fight. So you claw for the staff, and you bite for the crown, like you do not have good sense; or, if you do, you run from it all, until, exactly one day before you are ready, they catch up to you, or come pull you up from the pit. Next, the barber comes to you, and the tailor comes to you, and all the old king’s men, too, everybody come to you now. You are top dog in charge of it all. Boss bitch running the show. You do not sleep much anymore, but that is fine, because you might miss something if you did. So now they get you good and polished, and they put you up in front of whatever little tribe they give you for your own, where you see all your friends, who love you no matter what you do, and you see all your enemies, who hate you no matter what, and all the what-can-you-do-for-me-people, and the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-folks. Behind them you see all the smile-in-your-face-people, and all the knife-in-your-back-kinds. Know-nothings and know-it-alls. Born-again-people and the won’t-never-be-saveds, plus all your good backsliding brothers and sisters in between. Them you beat for the crown. All who want it from you and, way in back, all them you never really saw before. Apart from that, you got all those dogs, and all those bitches who do not keep faith with you at all. You realize then they are all your people now. You own stock and title to a whole restless tribe’s worth of problems no one ever told you about, and you did not know before. It is then you figure out if you have it to be boss dog, or just sit in the chair until the king returns.”