Forgetfulness (35 page)

And has it met your expectations?

Thomas said, Entirely.

So you're settled down.

Probably not. This afternoon's news changes things. I have to think about them again, Yussef and the boy and the other two who murdered my wife. They were locked up. But now they're back in the world. One of the things that appealed to me about Maine was the quiet, and now it's not quiet.

It will be again, Antoine said.

Don't think for one minute that the dead don't have voice, Thomas replied.

They heard an unfamiliar sound and looked up. Antoine was on his feet at once, pitching his cigarette away, crouching, peering into the fog. They heard a rattle of shingle, then silence, and once again a heavy step close by, alarming in its force. Two men, Thomas thought, perhaps three, incautious in their approach. So they had arrived at last, a final rendezvous, and as acceptable now as later. Thomas rose from his chair. From the fog a fantastic shape materialized, very tall and broad, two-headed, now at the water's edge and moving in their direction. Antoine crept away and was lost in the fog. Thomas remained standing, waiting for the fog to part. The horse and its rider arrived from the fog, Lund's young daughter astride her creamy palomino. The body of the horse, its color identical to the fog surrounding it, seemed to disappear, leaving only its head and the girl's visible. When Tina Lund saw Thomas she gave a little cry and reined up, frightened. Her horse raised its great head, quartering, its hooves slipping on the shingle. When the animal was under control, Tina grinned and waved at Thomas, and in a moment she was gone, lost again in the fog. Only then did Thomas notice Leon lumbering toward him over the stones and soft sand. Leon
paused to listen to the retreating hoofbeats, then holstered the pistol he held in his hand.

He said, Who was that?

Thomas said, The neighbor's daughter.

She should be careful, Leon said.

She likes to ride her horse on the beach. She's just a kid.

She was unexpected, Leon said. She could've gotten hurt.

No harm done, Thomas said.

She was lucky, Leon said with a cold smile. Is Mr. Sindelar all right?

Thomas had forgotten about Bernhard, who continued to sleep. He was motionless except for a tic in his cheek.

Antoine stood off to one side, a disgusted expression on his face.

Leon said to Antoine, We must leave now. The ferry.

Antoine looked at his watch. We have a minute.

It will take time getting the car up the hill.

Thomas put his hand on Bernhard's shoulder and shook him. Bernhard opened one eye and looked at him blankly.

Your boat, Bernhard.

Leon reached down for Bernhard's hand and slowly hauled him to his feet. The big man stood, swaying a little, looking like a drunk trying to get his bearings. His face was still full of sleep. He said, Where are we going?

To the mainland, Antoine said.

Thomas said, You're welcome to spend the night. I have room. Bernhard looked left and right, angry at the unfamiliar surroundings. He said, Where are we again? Maine, Thomas said. Christ, I don't know where I am. You're in Maine, Thomas said. What am I doing here? You missed the horse and rider, Thomas said. What horse and rider?

A girl on a horse, Antoine said. Surprised us. Looked at first like a desert mirage when they came out of the fog. I don't know anything about it, Bernhard said.

Leon collected the beach chairs and the hamper and began to move across the beach to the dune and the parking lot beyond. Antoine offered his arm to Bernhard, who waved it aside.

Really, Thomas said. There's room here.

We have to go sometime, Antoine said.

We have important interviews in Bangor, Bernhard put in. Good lads for the team in Baghdad.

Antoine looked at Thomas and shook his head: no interviews in Bangor, no lads for the team in Baghdad.

All right then, Thomas said.

Did you find out all you needed to know? Bernhard asked. Thanks for coming all this way, Thomas said. I knew Antoine would deliver. Let's go, Bernhard, Antoine said.

This is important, Bernhard said. Listen closely. If we can help, let us know. We have resources. We have the damnedest resources you can imagine. We're full-service. You have only to ask.

I know, Thomas said.

You bet, Bernhard replied.

Then Leon was back with a flashlight and a car blanket for Bernhard. He draped the blanket over Bernhard's shoulders and the three began the slow march across the rocks and sand. It was almost dark. Fog was all around them now and there were no lights visible on Hall's Hill or anywhere else. Thomas worried about Tina Lund navigating her horse in the darkness but she was a resourceful girl and the horse knew the way. Thomas gathered up his camp stool and beach bag and followed behind them, Bernhard now holding on to Antoine's arm. When Leon reached the parking lot he switched on the car's headlights and opened the rear door. When Thomas looked inside he saw a bed with a reading light fixed to the headboard. The windows were smoked for privacy. Leon helped Bernhard onto the bed, where he gave a jaunty wave to Thomas and closed his eyes. His body went slack at once, a collapsed balloon. Antoine covered his legs with the blanket. Then Leon climbed in behind the wheel and impatiently gunned the engine.

Let me know how he's doing, Thomas said to Antoine.

He'll be all right. You should have seen him a week ago. He tires easily, that's all. Antoine got into the front seat of the car beside Leon, who was busy unstrapping his hip holster and stowing it in the glove compartment.

The horse scared you, Thomas said.

I have always been frightened of horses, Antoine said.

That one's tame enough.

Antoine grunted. Leon gunned the engine once more. I wish you very good luck, Thomas said. And you, Antoine said. Perhaps we can meet sometime in Brittany. Antoine smiled broadly. Inshallah, he said, and closed the car door.

Thomas rapped the roof of the car, bruising his knuckles on the armor plate. The Mercedes eased forward and back again and stalled. The parking lot was too small for a stretch limousine. Leon restarted the engine and cranked the steering wheel but ran the car into the dune. Thomas walked around the front of the car and stood in the headlights to give hand signals, forward, left, back, left again, forward. At last the car was free and moving slowly to the road. Presently it began to climb, heeling now to starboard, now to port as it slipped in the ruts. The taillights winked on and off as the car dipped in the shallows of the road. Thomas watched it rise up the hill, the headlights aglow in the underbrush until it reached the top, turned the corner, and was lost to view, leaving Thomas alone in the parking lot. He stood quietly listening to the owl and the faint splash of waves breaking on the beach. There were no other sounds. The wind had died. Then somewhere in the distance he heard faint hoofbeats, a horse in a slow trot, and Tina Lund whistling softly.

Thomas collected his things and left the parking lot in the direction of the path over the rocks to his house. The night was very dark but he had made this passage many times before and knew it from the contours of the rocks and the bluff beyond. The path wound through sea grass and bramble thickets, spiny fingers that tore at his sweater. His house, somewhere ahead, not far, was dark. He had expected to be home well before nightfall. He had certainly not expected Bernhard and Antoine, though the Bernhard he saw was not the Bernhard he knew. Thomas thought he saw the roof's silhouette on the near horizon and stopped to take stock. He was winded, the way up was very difficult, the path slippery, the light a memory. The beach bag was heavy in his hand. It seemed to him that the fog was lifting but he could not be sure. His face was damp with it. Then he heard the engine of a boat close in to shore where the rocks were, evidence that the fog was dispersing; but it was also true that Maine skippers could navigate with their eyes closed, a useful skill at end of day. Thomas listened for the owl but the owl was silent. The boat's engine receded. He wondered if there were sea gods as well as mountain gods and if the sea gods were similarly capricious, spiteful, and cunning. Sure they were. Why wouldn't they be? He thought that tonight was a good night for a fire. Autumn was in the air.

He began to hum, then parlando one of Holiday's standards. When he hesitated, smiling at the droll notion of Billie Holiday's getting some fun out of life, it was as if the world had fallen silent, everything forgotten. It was with that thought that he struggled up the path and mounted the steps to his house, dropped the beach bag and the camp stool on the porch, and stepped inside into the familiar smell of oil paint, turpentine, and weathered wood. The chill was inside, too. He made out the silhouette of the easel and his work in progress, he and Florette seated at their table in old Bardèche's café, Florette's face turned toward the light. The day was fine. They were in shirtsleeves. She was laughing at something he had said. Thomas had proposed an alternate destiny for the boyfriend who wanted to become a gangster: instead, he had gone into politics and was now minister of the interior. Thomas had been working on the portrait for a month and would continue to work until he had what he wanted. When he knew precisely what that was, the portrait would be finished. He shivered in the chill. The single light came from the radio dial, the evening news reporting casualties from Iraq. He listened to the details, unchanging from one evening to the next, a monotonous weather report from a region where the temperature
was constant. The dead were never named because their families had not been notified; and each evening he imagined the knock on the door that would precede such notification. And how many families refused to come to the door when an army major was on the other side of it, a briefcase under his arm, his face grave, the worst possible news brought to you by a stranger. Go away, this is the wrong house. No one is at home here. In that way the distant became intimate and the chaotic quite routine. Meanwhile, you waited for the stranger's knock on the door. Thomas switched off the radio, the room in sudden darkness, its silence unsettling. Then he heard the creak of the rafters and, far away, the splash of waves. He set a match to the kindling in the fireplace and watched as the wood caught, smoldering at first, then a flame, low but steady.

Thomas stepped to the window and stood there listening, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the night. He thought that might take some time, the island was dark by nature, the green of the firs, the deep blue of the sea, the autumn days short and getting shorter. In any case there was more in front of him than he could possibly discern or even imagine. Outside, the fog was lifting, assuming fantastic shapes, swirling, aimless, unstable, suggestive. Far off he heard the bleat of the ferry's horn. It was the last boat, and a calm night for a sail. He touched the windowpane, thinking—Wasn't it something, that child riding out of the fog on her white horse, reining up, and vanishing as quickly as she had come, a moment that approached the miraculous, a moment worth remembering. They were always unexpected.

Patience, he thought. Wait it out. Wait for the light that arrives ages later, light even from a dead star. Thomas looked back at the silhouette of the canvas on the easel, then resumed his watch of the night.