Accusation Read Online Free Page A

were to each other. Yet there were far more straightforward ways than this to create a veil of privacy around themselves.
    In her living room, they’d folded themselves onto the old sofa, clasping their tumblers of Scotch, and debated why dictators and despots might decide to write poetry. Didn’t Gaddafi write poetry too, or just prose? Sara asked.
    Saddam Hussein wrote novels, David said, and poetry. Goebbels wrote plays.
    Lenin wrote poetry before he became a dictator, Sara said. Maybe there’s an impulse toward poetry not only as something potentially beautiful but also controlling, a way to give formal shape to experience, emotion, rhetoric, and so sway people. You think? There’s probably no way to generalize why dictators or sociopaths write poetry. It could be from some private, dissociative urge.
    A belief that words can sway, David said. Beautiful order brings power. Or there’s a desire to create a façade of the sensitive and artistic. With his large head and compact body, he threw himself almost physically into a consideration of the question, neck torqued, forehead furrowed. Copyright lawyer, avid and complicated man, who held on to his own forms of self-containment. All Sara’s attention, physical and mental, was drawn to him, and yet when he left the house she would be flooded with relief. Okay, David said, I’ve entertained that question long enough. But beautiful constraint. He clinked his crystal glass to hers, their thighs pressed together. Let’s drink to that. Or let’s put it this way, to the beauties of constraint.
    He was talking about them. In their case, constraint also meant secret. David was not just her private life but a secret one, as she was his. By now they’d shared nearly three years together, and Sara was supposed to keep this to herself as, generally, she did.
    No sooner had she swung herself back into her desk chair, the newsroom churning around her, more swirls of gelid air pouring from above, than her phone rang again, and when she reached to answer it, Juliet Levin said hello, then something like, Are you going to the Cirque de Lumière benefit on Thursday?
    Am I what?
    The Cirque’s doing a benefit performance for Cirkus Mirak, the Ethiopian children’s circus, and I wondered if you’re going.
    I don’t know anything about this. That night in Copenhagen wafted back into view, the air full of twisting and tumbling children.
    Oh. It was Juliet’s turn to sound surprised. I thought you’d have heard.
    I don’t always pay attention to things like this. I’m sure Anne in the arts section knows. Are you going?
    I’ll be filming. Sorry, sorry, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m shooting a documentary about the children’s circus.
    You are?
    I’m so busy. It’s been a total whirlwind. Breathlessly, Juliet filled Sara in: how, back in the spring, she’d contacted the circus founder and director, Raymond Renaud, through the phone number listed on the website, and reached him shortly after his return from Europe.
    I told him I’d heard about the circus through a friend. I said I was interested in doing something and asked if anyone had and he said there’d been a short documentary made for German television. But that was all. Nothing in North America, and since he’s interested in bringing the circus to North America, he really liked the idea. Originally I thought I’d approach funders and broadcasters first but he told me to come sooner than later, as soon as I could, because summer’s the rainy season and he said it didn’t make sense to come then, and then they’re touring again later in the summer and fall. And so I breathed deep and put the trip on my credit card and went in May, for two weeks, and brought along a Ryerson film student as my assistant and sound guy, and we shot on video, and I’ve decided it’s okay for it to look a little raw. And you were right, he’s been fabulous and generous, the whole story is amazing, the social circus angle, and