Heathern Page 16

  "Whichever one was in charge, I don't remember. Around here one's as good or bad as the next."

  After hooking up one final cord she paused, and wiped the perspiration from her forehead with the side of her hand. "Well, I'd think he's had about as much visiting'11 be good for him. Never can tell how the outside's affecting the inside."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Got to keep him fresh. You know."

  "Fresh for what?" Avi asked.

  "Recycling."

  "What are you talking about?" I asked. "Recycling what?"

  "What he's got," she said. "You said you're with the company, you ought to know. Word passed along this morning gave the okay. Next week, he's part and parceled." She nodded that we should follow her as she left the room. "Maybe you all don't understand how it works up here," she said. "Some of the folks up here, are best kept like they are. Others, though, there's not that much they can find out from 'em no matter how long they're around, and there's new ones coming in all the time. Only so much space up here."

  "What are you getting at?" Avi asked.

  "When they're young and healthy like he is, and have no relatives, and once we flush the poisons or the drugs out of their systems, well, they cut off the machines and then-"

  "Distribute the parts to worthy recipients," I said.

  "Within the company, as I understand it," she said. "Cost-effective, I imagine."

  "Then he's to be put up for auction?" Avi asked.

  "First come, first served, long as you can afford it," she said. "That's why I was so rough on you at first, didn't know what you were fiddling with. He's in perfect shape at the moment."

  "And you wanted to keep him that way," I said.

  "You understand," she said, and looked him over as he lay there. "They always take the best-looking ones."

  After she let us out, closing the door behind us, we stood in the hall for several moments, saying nothing.

  "Come along to his apartment with me," Avi said. "Let's see what we find over there."

  "How long has Dryco owned the building?" I asked as we stepped from the car onto the Grand Concourse at 167th Street. We crossed the broad sidewalk to the building's entrance, crushing beneath our feet glass vials as empty as the boulevard.

  "Over a year," Avi said. "It belonged to one of the realty companies he obtained." With little effort he forced open the building's broken door. "Jensen moved in when his grandmother died. I think he was the only one still living here. Dryco kept the utilities running."

  The lobby was only large enough to be called unassuming. Ocher paint peeled away from the lower reaches of the walls; above that watermark were graffiti surely scrawled on while I was still at college. In making our way to his apartment we passed the elevators; none was working. Someone had pried the doors from their frames and left them lying on the cold, stained tile.

  "This one's his," Avi said, drawing from his jacket a bracelet ringed with keys, and beginning to unlock the door's seven locks. Jensen's flat was in the rear of the building, on the ground floor; I gathered that it faced the smaller street running just to the east of the Concourse.

  "They never let on they'd be putting him up for sale," I said, attempting to judge Avi's reaction, to see if he'd already known.

  "It's understandable," he said.

  "And convenient," I said. "Did Bernard have anything particularly in mind that you should be looking for?" I leaned against the wall, having certified beforehand that no roaches scurried nearby that could take advantage of my proximity. There were no roaches, which was something other than unusual.

  "Evidence," said Avi, shoving his way in. As we entered I knew a sudden notion that I'd been there before; remembered visiting, as a child, an elderly aunt who lived on the Concourse some twenty blocks to the north. Her apartment had been no different from Jensen's, speaking only of layout: within was a small foyer, a kitchen and bath, two bedrooms and a living room sunk two steps below the level of the other rooms.

  "Do you think he was here much?" Avi asked, looking around.

  "Why do you ask?" At once I realized why, when my eyes adjusted to the dim. Brown curtains hid casement windows, dyeing all in sepia. If the Metropolitan Museum's curators ever chose to admit into its collection of period rooms one representing the Eisenhower era, they could never have found one more perfect than Jensen's; his grandmother's, I should say. An armless sofa stretched along the right side of the living room, its boomerang-shaped legs lifting its sections no more than a foot from the floor; the drawers of a Danish Modern cabinet bore no matching blond-wood handles, none that were visible. A floor-to-ceiling pole lamp appeared braced in such a way as to support the ceiling; what appeared as an artist's oversized palette bore stubby legs, that it might be used as a table. A wall clock resembled a splattered melon thrown against the plasterwork. Black aluminum bookcases contained scores of old paperbacks; along their top shelves were photographs in faux-brass frames.

  "No disputing taste," said Avi. A film of dust coated everything, as if it had been applied in careful layers to serve as protection. Walking across the room to one of the bookcases, coughing as I drew in breaths thick with unsettled dust, I took from the shelves several volumes. Pride and Prejudice's cover showed a busty Regency wench wielding a whip, and I hesitated to imagine the workings of the art director's mind. When I opened The Flying Saucers Are Real, the cover's cellophane epidermis scaled loose beneath my fingers, and the pages crumbled into flakes of brown snow.

  "Who's pictured?" Avi asked, coming over, puffs of dust rising with his every footstep. Within moments we were all coughing.

  "It must be his family. Her family. He's in this one-"

  "The kid?"

  "Look at the ears. That's him."

  There were no other shots of Jensen; in this single image he sat on the lap of an older woman; she sat on the living room's sofa. He looked too young for elementary school. She wore a simple flowered frock; one arm was thrown over him, to keep him from sliding away. At first I thought she hadn't washed before having her picture taken. "Must be his grandmother," Avi said.

  "What's that on her arm?" As I stared into the photo, attempting to raise its image into life, I found myself unable to distinguish smudge from shadow.

  "Numbers," Avi said. Looking again, I saw them.

  "They didn't do that everywhere, did they?" I asked. "Maybe she even knew your father-"

  "No."

  The other, older photographs were taken a world away, and preserved seconds of years long lost. Though I was no photographer I knew at once that their earthen tones had been weathered in, and not painted on. In the largest shot, a man with mustache, bowler, and boutonniere stood with a woman wearing a cloche, and a long coat; judging from her waist I imagined she'd had several children. They'd been captured in the midst of a square cobbled over with stones no larger than a young girl's breast; piercing the sky behind their heads were ornate spires, eight-gabled roofs, filigreed stone and the statue of an angel hewn into a facade.

  "I think that's Prague," I said.

  "They'd have been hidden somewhere," Avi said.

  "The pictures?" I asked, looking over the rest; there were twenty-odd photos, and different people in each. Only the shot of Jensen and his grandmother appeared to have been taken in America.

  "Buried, maybe. Stuffed behind bricks in a chimney. That's how my father saved a couple of things."

  "And come back for them later."

  "If they could." Avi sighed, and turned away. "I'll be quick," he said. "I feel like a thief."

  He walked up the two steps and disappeared behind the bedroom doors. Lester sat on the edge of the sofa; I sat down beside him. The yellow-brown light strained through the curtains made the room seem sealed within amber.

  "What's in his head?" I asked.

  "It's easier to say what isn't there," said Lester.

  "Say it, then."

  "Nothing involving Japan, or that fellow Otsuka. Nothing about Gus, e
xcept an impression of surprise. Nothing about his family or anyone who might once have been close to him. He did want to tell Thatcher something. I coul=4,'(?'t tell what, exactly. Something he saw. There was a hatred there that didn't leave room for much else. That sort of thing tends to linger."

  "Hatred toward whom?"

  "A general rage," he said. "Toward Bernard, to some degree."

  "What was it that he saw?" I asked; Lester sat within a faint cloud, seeming to stir up dust by the act of remembering. "You acted like you were burned when you were in there."

  "Some memories hurt more than others."

  "Did you see what he saw?"

  The rumble of a truck, or of some heavy vehicle, pulling up and coming to a stop sounded through the window, seeming some distance away. Doors slammed as its riders climbed out.

  "I saw what remained," Lester said. "I gathered it was a recent memory, it lay too close to the surface, probably he'd been trying to dig a hole for it, and hadn't dug deep enough. He stood on a dock, or a pier. There was water, and boats. He looked down on a boat. Someone lifted a hatch cover-" He paused.

  "What else?" I asked. "Lester, tell me-"

  "In dredging another's memories you haul up a lot of mud," he said. "There was a disconnection, and then another picture. There were people. They seemed to be dead. Then I think he must have changed the channel, as it were."

  Whoever had parked outside wasn't coming in, I didn't believe, or they would have already broken in the door the rest of the way; I heard truck doors open once more, and murmurs of conversation too distant to make out. Children were laughing, as if leaving school.

  "This has something to do with all of this?"

  "Without question."

  "Was there anything else?"

  "The soul remains trapped for only so long," Lester said. "Afterward, it's like digging up a bone and then trying to imagine its animal."

  Bile rose from my belly up my throat as I heard a crash in the other room; leaping up, I realized it was only Avi, emptying drawers that he might rifle Jensen's more disposable fragments. Lester sat as before, moving no muscles but those that allowed him breath. At that moment he looked as beyond any attentions I might offer as had Jensen. A child shouted, out on the street; I walked over to the window, curious to see. Spiders dropped onto my fingers as I drew back the musty curtains and pulled apart the dustblackened blinds. A white van bearing on its side a red cross made a U-turn in the middle of the back street. No one who might have made noise was visible. As the van drove away, heading southeast, I eyed the cross more closely; where red nave met red transept a small yellow circle fit neatly into the interstice.

  "Lester?" I asked; he didn't answer. "What's wrong?"

  "It's the time," he said. "Nothing more. Is Avi all right? He looked so uncomfortable when you mentioned his father."

  "They're just like this," I said, holding up two fingers in a sign of victory, or of peace. "They're from different worlds, that's all."

  "His father was in a concentration camp?"

  "His father," I said, "and his father's first wife, and their children and families. He married Avi's mother after the war. He told me they met in a displaced persons' zone-"

  "Most people do, I suppose," he said. Avi stepped out of the bedroom just then, his hands smeared with dust and dirt. He held several sheets of paper, folded in such a way as to hide the writing. When he looked at us he appeared oddly calm, for the first time since we'd encountered Lester: as if, having been at first frightened by a shape in his room at night, and unable to cry for his mother, he'd strengthened his will enough that he might look more closely and, having allowed his eyes to readjust to the dark, saw at second glance that the shape was nothing that could bear harm; found at last, upon rising, that his terror came solely from misperception, a trick played on the eye by his soul.

  "What were you talking about?" he asked.

  "Your father," Lester said; For an instant Avi appeared as if upon rising he'd discovered that sometimes something does lurk in rooms at night. When he recovered he proceeded as if he'd been told nothing more than the time.

  "What happened to him, you mean?" Avi asked. "He lived."

  "Where was he?"

  "They put him in Auschwitz first," Avi said. "Then he was sent to Maidanek."

  "And then?"

  Avi said nothing for a moment; stared at the papers in his hand. "There's no purpose in the telling."

  "There was a purpose in its occurring," said Lester.

  "The Allies were closing in," Avi said, his face holding no expression, his voice carrying no inflection as he told Lester; once he'd told me, using similar phrasing, and like tone, and I could only think that he recounted it as he'd heard his father tell it to him. "The Germans moved a thousand prisoners from Maidanek, deeper into Germany. The prisoners were all men and my father was one of them. They reached a small town on a cloudless day. The soldiers had orders to get rid of the prisoners. They locked them in a big brick barn and set fire to it. The prisoners screamed. My father said they screamed so loud that finally even God heard their prayers. It rained. The fire went out. Most of them were already dead. My father, a few others, they lived."

  He had nothing more to add, not immediately; we sat in the room, watching the light fade around us as the afternoon drew to a close. After a short time more Avi spoke again, directing his words toward Lester, as if I wasn't even there. " I know there must be a purpose to everything," he said. "But where's the purpose in that?"

  "Would you be standing here telling the story to me if there'd been no purpose?" Lester asked.

  "Where's the purpose?" Avi repeated. "What was God's intent? Can you say?"

  "Only God could say," Lester said. "Godness draws what good She can from evil. So Her tears saved enough for a minyan."

  Avi closed his eyes; forgetting for the moment what he was, he seemed to remember, for an instant, what he had been. Lester crossed the room, that he could stand beside him.

  "Do what you must," he said. "It's your job, Avi. You know that."

  Avi opened his eyes, and nodded his head; started to close his hand, as if to crumple the papers he held. When he saw Lester demurring he stopped, and folded them over one more time, and slipped them into his jacket.

  "Lester," I said, "What is it?" I don't know why I asked; I knew.

  "Mister Dryden will have to see these, Joanna," Avi said, patting his pocket. "He has to. I'm sorry. Lester's right."

  I followed them out of the apartment, down the hall, and into the street. Avi held Lester close to him as he guided him into the car, into the back seat; for the only time during the years I worked for Dryco I sat up front where the guards always sat, protecting us without cease until the time came to take us away. I wanted to hold Lester; feared I would never recall the feel of his touch, years later, though I knew it was foolish of me to have such fears. The sunset was so beautiful that it hurt to see. God favors details, truly; Godness appears only in absences, and I saw no sign of rain.

  ELEVEN

  Three hours later Jake and Bernard hustled me into the car; Thatcher was already inside. When we went back to Dryco I'd been locked in my office, as if I'd try to get away. Thatcher had come in to sit with me awhile; after so long he departed, leaving neither explanation nor conclusion behind.

  "What are you doing to him? Where is he?"

  "You've got to let us handle this, hon," Thatcher said. "You're taking this more seriously than you ought to-"

  "I don't want to hear it," I said. "What were those papers Avi had? Will you please tell me something other than lies?"

  "What else can we offer, sweetness?" said Bernard. "I prefer to give you truth if you seem capable of dealing with it. You know that."

  "The papers show Lester was approached by Otsuka's boys earlier this year," Thatcher said, staring through the windshield at the narrow street before us. "He's admitted it. Told us it went no further than that. We have no reason to think otherwise. Said he didn't eve
n realize until the other day that they might even have been connected to Otsuka. Says the ones who did the contacting weren't Japanese. It's not a pretty tale."

  "It appears Otsuka heard the same stories as we did," said Bernard, "and proposed similar options through his agents. He simply didn't woo with such intensity as did we, and certainly he hadn't such good bait. Call it a hunch, but I doubt that theology played much of a part in their actions. I'd think driving messianic delusions into Shintoism could prove problematic."

  "I still think it's funny none of the Europeans got into the act-" said Thatcher.

  "They probably tried," said Bernard. "When all these lovers come calling, what's a boy to do?"

  "If he had nothing to do with them what difference does it make?" I asked. "Why are you doing this?"

  "He could have gone along," said Thatcher, by way of explanation. "He just didn't. But he could have."

  "Macaffrey is rather too intent on keeping secrets," said Bernard. "Not necessarily a useful trait if he's to attain the sort of position some around here would have him attain. It's a matter he should have found appropriate at some time to mention to us, and he didn't. He said nothing to you, I'm sure-"

  "This is insane," I said. "Nobody keeps more secrets than you two."

  "A number of which he's discovered since signing on with us. And he is uncannily adept at making inferences regarding situations best left alone. There's no way around it, Joanna, the teacher needs a lesson of his own."

  "Even a messiah can't think he can get away with anything he wants to do," said Thatcher. "We hear anything from Susie yet? Shouldn't she be there by now?"

  "She's only just landing, Thatcher. Give it until nine or nine-thirty. Let her get there, why don't you?"

  "I just asked--

  "What are you doing to Lester?" I repeated. "Where is he?"

  "Please calm down, hon," Thatcher said. "We're going to see him now. We had him taken over to the Tombs. They got some new techniques in development over there Bernard thought could be productively applied. I gave the go-ahead."