Heathern (23 page)

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, except 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.