Exiles in America

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Zachary Knowles and Daniel Wexler had been together for twenty-

one years. They did not describe themselves as “married.” Their gener-

ation distrusted the word.

Zack was forty-eight, Daniel forty-seven. They lived in Williamsburg,

Virginia, in a 1930s colonial brick house on Indian Springs Road, a quiet

residential street near the College of William and Mary. Daniel taught stu-

dio classes in painting at the school. Zack was a psychiatrist, Dr. Zachary

Knowles, with a small practice in town and an office at home, just off their

living room.

Nothing much ever happened in Williamsburg, and people at the college

tended to become set in their routines. When an Iranian painter, Abbas Ro-

hani, came to town to be artist in residence in September 2002, nobody

thought to invite him and his wife to dinner. Daniel persuaded Zack that they

should have them over.

“What if they don’t like homosexuals?” said Zack.

“Hey, they’re Muslims,” said Daniel. “What if they hate Jews?”

Only Daniel was Jewish, born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island.

Zack was a native Virginian, a lapsed Methodist who had escaped to New

York after med school to finish his training in the city of psychoanalysis. He

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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m

had met Daniel in New York. They had moved south to Zack’s home turf ten

years ago, when Daniel took a teaching job at this small state college.

Daniel left a message in Rohani’s voice mail inviting him and his wife to

dinner. It was the wife who called back.

“This is Elena Rohani. We shall be delighted to come. Do we need to bring

anything? Is it—how do you say?—potluck?”

Daniel assured her that all they needed was their appetite.

And so, late one afternoon early in September, the Friday before classes

started, Daniel stood in the kitchen, slicing fresh tomatoes and squash from

Zack’s garden to grill on the hibachi while he talked to their good friend Ross

Hubbard, who stood by the back door with a glass of red wine. The door was

wide open—the weather remained warm and humid—and looked out on a

narrow concrete terrace with an iron railing. A small wooded ravine sloped

behind the house, its curtain of trees level with the railing. The last cicadas of

the summer chirred in the leafy branches. Zack was at the other end of the

house, seeing his last patient of the day.

“An artist who paints paintings?” asked Ross in his deep, leisurely drawl.

“Isn’t that kind of old-fashioned? I thought you said painting was what the di-

nosaurs did.”

“He’s Iranian. Maybe he doesn’t know any better,” said Daniel.

“You joke, but you may have hit on something. He could be in a time

warp. Fundamentalist Islam forbids graven images. Figurative painting could

be very avant-garde.”

Ross was a courtly Southerner of the old school, handsome and hetero, al-

most sixty, much married and much divorced. He owned and managed the

movie theater on Merchants Square, an art house that showed foreign and in-

dependent films and occasional classics. Zack and Daniel were among his hand-

ful of regulars. Ross was a rare kind of straight man. He loved books, art, music,

and old movies. He had served in Vietnam but broke the stereotypes there, too.

He loved to travel—he’d visited the Middle East twice. He might have been

happy if he didn’t fall in love with a new woman every five or six years. Cur-

rently between marriages, he seemed like the perfect extra guest for tonight.

“What’re the paintings like?” he asked. “Have you seen any?”

“I’ve seen slides and a catalog from a show in Paris. They’re figurative, but

E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a

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in an abstract way. Like Picasso or Klee. But not pastiche. Kind of neo-

Expressionist, like Francesco Clemente from a few years back. But I like his

stuff.” Daniel liked it very much, in fact.

“So it’s not ethnic or primitive?”

“Hardly. He studied in Paris and Berlin. He’s probably better trained than

I am.”

They could hear Zack out front, bidding goodbye to his patient, an elderly

woman who responded with a deliberate, end-of-the-session cheerfulness.

Daniel knew that chirpy tone all too well.

“It must make you glad,” said Ross. “To have a real painter in town, some-

one you can talk shop with.”

Daniel frowned. “Not really. I don’t especially like other artists. I just want

to be friendly. I remember what it was like when we first came here and no-

body gave us the time of day.” Daniel wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to

know the man. “It’s not like I’m an artist myself anymore. I’m a teacher now.