translate into arbic:"bevel had a severe head cold next time I saw him. Still, he kept our
appointment. Since he was sick, he wouldn’t feel so bad for wasting
his time on “this thing” instead of doing real work, he said. It was
the worst day for a cold—a hot, humid New York summer afternoon.
I handed him my typed transcript of our first session. I thought I had
whittled his words down to hard, incisive sentences. The text sounded, I
believed, manly. It conveyed an impatience with style, and this was intended
as a tacit yet vehement denunciation of Vanner’s novel. At no point had I
departed from the facts he had presented in his narrative.
He read the pages right there and then. It seemed to me that he was going
too fast to appreciate my subtle severity.
“Right,” he said and blew his nose. He was sweating. Perhaps annoyed.
“You do take faithful notes. The facts are, in essence, there. A few things
ought to be emended. We’ll get to that. The problem is that this doesn’t
reflect me.”
“I can assure you that I stayed close to . . .”
“As I just said, you do take faithful notes. But if I wanted someone to
merely transcribe my words, I would use a Dictaphone. Too much is lost in
your transcription. This is flat. And full of doubt. Do you truly understand
what my job is about?”
“No.”
“Thank you for not attempting a response. My job is about being right.
Always. If I’m ever wrong, I must make use of all my means and resources to
bend and align reality according to my mistake so that it ceases to be a
mistake.”“I should be taking this down for your book.”
“I can’t tell whether you’re being sarcastic or naïve. Either way, don’t
make me regret hiring you.” He blew his nose again and picked up a phone.
“Tea.” He hung up. “Your pages are too hesitant.”
“I’ll rewrite them.”
“Good. I don’t know for how long I’ll be able to do this today, with this
cold. But there’s one thing about my parents. No, no need to get your notepad
yet. I don’t want to dignify the outrageous allegations in that novel with a
response. But I do want you to know it’s all false. To imagine that my father
would have a double life in Cuba. He did indeed have a tobacco concern—as
he had many other businesses. But to ever conceive that he would even think
of setting foot south of the border.” He came close to laughing at this point.
“And my mother . . .”
There was a knock on the door. The unpleasant butler came in with tea for
one. Gravely, soundlessly, he poured Bevel a cup and left.
“My mother,” Bevel resumed after the door was closed. “A smoker?
Cigars? With those . . . friends? For that alone Vanner deserves what he’s
getting.” Cough. “Again, this is not something I wish to address directly.
We’ll find a way, though.” The heat, his cough and the tea had made him
break into a full sweat. “Let’s go back to my charities.”
I took my notepad and sat on a different sofa. Somehow, I found it
important to show that my seat was my choice.
“Why don’t you tell me a bit more about your parents first.”
The exasperation absent from his face was all in the force with which he
put the cup back on the saucer. I had made a mistake. But being decisive had
served me well in the past. Perhaps I could exonerate myself by insisting on
my error.
“Maybe your loss could explain how you relied on your ancestors for
inspiration. And it could be a good backdrop for all your charitable work.
Show what drew you to that kind of work in the first place.”
“The feminine touch.” Had he softened a bit? “You don’t seem to have
been paying attention. I want decisive pages, not mush.”He wiped his brow and suddenly looked drained and empty. He might
have had a fever.
“I suppose I see your point, though. What would you like to know?”
“Why don’t you tell me about some early memories. A few paragraphs
with childhood scenes would be good to break the ice. Show how you
became the man you are today. What do you think your first picture of your
mother is?”
There was a pause. He coughed and wiped his brow. I was starting to
sweat, too. The long silence was uncomfortable. But I refused to break it.
“When she died.”
Another pause.
“When she died, I asked myself that. An Easter egg hunt, I think.”
The silence started to rebuild itself.
“She was a very loving woman. Which made her absence difficult. And
brilliant. She was brilliant. She discovered my precocious talent for
mathematics. Oftentimes she would stay for my lessons and correct the
tutors. In this she resembled Mildred. Both brilliant women.” He laughed, in
his habitual way, through his nostrils. “Legions of tutors fired. One after the
other. None of them was a match for my talents, she said. At one point she
started to tell me to dismiss them. I had to inform them they were fired and
explain why—what they had failed to teach me and so on. I must have been
six or seven years old the first time I had to do it.” He either laughed darkly
or cleared his congested nose. “The confused look on that man’s face.”
He seemed exhausted.
“This is a pointless exercise. And I’m sick. I fear I have a temperature.
Bring back those rewritten pages on Wednesday. And we’ll talk about my
charities.”"