Montaro Caine (11 page)

Slowly Hattie led Elsen Mozelle up the hill. She could remember just about every tree, every stone, every twig. At the summit, they stopped in front of the adobe hut with its thatched palm leaf roof.

They stood there breathing hard, but before they could catch their breath, the door opened and Matthew Perch stepped out. He was a tall black man of about sixty, with stern, serious eyes in a lean, granite-like face. He had full lips, set jaw, and a short, salt-and-pepper beard that matched his eyebrows. His trousers were faded and worn, patched with different fabrics. His jacket had seen more wear than his trousers or the rumpled denim shirt. The women were startled speechless by the man’s sudden appearance.

Hattie Sinclair had never gotten used to Perch’s imposing presence. Now she couldn’t find her tongue. Perch stared back unblinkingly until Hattie blurted out, “I’m sorry, Matthew, I had to come. She’s not
like the others, I swear to you. She’s just like I was—very, very sick. All she wants is to live, like I did. You know I’ll always be grateful to you, and I’m sorry to disturb your peace again. But this lady broke my heart, Matthew. Forgive me, Matthew. Please don’t be angry.”

Perch continued to stare silently at the two women who waited for a response. None came. Hattie was apprehensive. Perch was an explosive, complex man. During the course of her treatment, he could take her head off one minute and comfort her the next with a reassuring touch of his hand.

Finally, Hattie filled the void. “This lady is …” she began.

“I know who she is,” interrupted Perch.

Elsen felt a jolt travel through her body. She was too afraid to ask Perch what he might mean.

After a long pause, Perch spoke again. “Where is the man?” he asked.

“My—my husband?” asked Elsen.

“Three of you came,” said Matthew.

“He’s at the hotel,” said Elsen.

Matthew turned to Hattie. “Why did you not bring him?”

Elsen spoke instead. “We didn’t want to risk upsetting you with too many people. Also, my husband is a doctor. He cannot help me, and none of the doctors that he knows can help me. He thinks that maybe you can. He will not interfere, I promise.”

Matthew looked intently at Elsen Mozelle, shifting his gaze from her eyes to her lips, her ears, her hair, and finally to her hands.

“Go away,” he said to them. Then he turned and started toward the door of his hut. “Come tomorrow. Bring the man,” he continued without turning back. “Not you, Hattie. Good-bye.” Then, he closed the door.

The women stood frozen in place. Then, smiling cautiously, they turned to each other. Hattie took Elsen by the arm and slowly guided her back down the hill and around the bend, where the driver and his taxi were still waiting by the sapodilla tree.

“What do you think, Hattie?” Elsen asked when they were back in the car.

Hattie Sinclair was certain of only one thing. The way in which
Matthew Perch had examined the sick woman was exactly the way he had looked at her when they had first met. She knew that he had diagnosed the frail white woman and that he knew all he needed to know about her condition. But Hattie believed it would be wise for her to keep that thought to herself. “I don’t want to speak too soon about what I think. I’m just gonna pray hard for you for tomorrow,” she said, putting her arm around Elsen.

Elsen reached up and patted Hattie’s hand while their taxi rumbled on.

The next morning, when Matthew Perch opened his door, a perspiring white couple was breathing deeply before him. Holding each other, they squinted through the blazing sunlight at the silhouetted figure of the black man standing in the darkened hut.

“Hello,” said Elsen, managing to smile through her exhaustion. “This is my husband, Dr. Howard Mozelle.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Perch, and thank you for seeing us.” Howard Mozelle extended his hand.

Perch remained silent but stepped to one side of the door, clearing the entrance while ignoring the doctor’s gesture. The Mozelles hesitated, not sure that they had received an invitation to enter. Perch waited. Finally, Howard Mozelle led his wife into the hut.

Perch closed the door and remained standing by it like a sentry. Moments passed before the Mozelles’ eyes adjusted to the semidarkness. The large one-room interior was plain and sparse: There was a bed, two chairs, one table, all handmade from native wood, and in one corner a chest of drawers from which most of the varnish had long since peeled away. In another corner stood an old, battered steamship trunk. Beneath a window at the southern end of the hut was an open fireplace with piles of wood neatly stacked beside it. On the other side were several rows of shelves on which could be found tin plates, spoons, a few tin cups, clay jars, and a box of matches. Underneath the shelves were a variety of inexpensive cooking utensils. But what caught Howard Mozelle’s attention most were the two-foot-square pieces of artwork that were suspended on the hut’s east and west walls. Each piece was attached to the wall by a string that hung on a nail driven into the mud plaster.

Dr. Mozelle guessed that Perch had made the hangings; though he himself was a man trained in the science of medicine, for years he had relieved the stress of his profession through sculpting and painting. How intriguing, he thought—their worlds seemed to be light-years apart from each other’s, and yet he may not have been all that different from Matthew Perch; they were both physicians of one kind or another, healing themselves through art. He was trying to determine whether he was looking at abstract carvings or sculptures when Perch spoke again and interrupted his thoughts.

“She must eat here, sleep here, live here with me in this room night and day. You cannot,” Perch said directly to Howard Mozelle. “She will relieve herself in the woods. She will wash herself in the stream. If she is unable to wash herself, I will wash her. You may come in the afternoons at three and leave at four. No one else must ever come; and you may bring only clothing, toothpaste, and soap as she needs them. You may leave now. Tomorrow, bring her sleeping clothes, toothpaste, and soap. Good day.”

T
HE HIGH-PITCHED WAIL OF FIRE ENGINE SIRENS ALONG
67
TH
Street invaded Dr. Mozelle’s office, forcing him to pause while the monster machines rumbled past. Rising from the couch where she sat with Anna Hilburn, Elsen Mozelle stepped toward Caine. “Mr. Caine, would you care for some coffee or some water?”

“No, thank you.”

“Coke? Diet Coke?”

“Thank you, no.”

When the sound of the sirens had faded, Dr. Mozelle directed his attention back to Montaro, who waited eagerly for the doctor’s story to continue.

“As I was saying,” Mozelle began. “Matthew Perch, from what we can gather, treated my wife in much the same manner as he did Hattie Sinclair,” Mozelle said. “She drank all sorts of different brews. Sometimes they were thick and pulpy. Sometimes they were thin and clear. Sometimes they were in between. They were all pitch-black in color, like ink, and at first, all of them were equally revolting.”

After about four weeks of treatment, according to Dr. Mozelle, his wife became accustomed to the treatment. Still, there was no discernible sign of improvement in her condition. In fact, by the end of the second month, she took a turn for the worse.

“I must tell you, it was a dramatic turn,” Dr. Mozelle told Caine. “She couldn’t hold anything in her stomach. She retched for days on end, couldn’t lift her head. She was so weak, and she remained that way for fifteen days. I didn’t think she could lose any more weight, but she did. I was afraid that dehydration and malnutrition would kill her. Her pain seemed so terrible that I finally asked if she wanted to stop. She said no. I begged Matthew Perch to allow me to stay with her at night. He refused. I began to think we had made a mistake.”

During the eleventh week of Elsen Mozelle’s treatment, however, her condition stabilized and she began to show slight signs of improvement. By the end of the twelfth week, she was able to leave her bed and walk around Perch’s hut. Four weeks later, she felt well enough that her husband began taking trips to New York so he could begin reviving his dormant medical practice. Still, when he was in New York, he never discussed his wife’s progress with anyone, partly because he had no way of knowing the extent of Elsen’s recovery, and partly because he felt that he owed Matthew Perch his absolute discretion.

And then, one day, during the fifth month of treatment, as Howard Mozelle was leaving the hut after one of his afternoon visits, Perch, who had not said much more than hello or good day to him in all that time, told the doctor in a most matter-of-fact way, “You can have her back tomorrow.” Then he walked off abruptly toward the rear of his hut.

“The next day, when I arrived, Perch was sitting under a tree a short distance from the hut,” Mozelle told Caine. “I waved to him; he didn’t wave back. But I didn’t mind because I had grown quite used to his ways. I entered the hut with the overnight bag I had brought to pack Elsen’s things. I had a camera with me and when Elsen saw it, she asked me to take some shots of her in the hut so that she could always remember it. I snapped about half a dozen pictures, and then, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I stepped over to the artwork on the west wall and took a picture of it. I did the same with the piece on the east wall. Then, I took out an envelope from my jacket pocket with ten thousand dollars in it and laid it on the table. Perch had never mentioned money, but we wanted him to have it.”

When the Mozelles stepped out of the hut into the sunlight, Matthew
Perch got up from the shade of the calico tree and walked toward them. The doctor thanked Perch. Elsen asked if she might visit him again sometime. Perch just shook his head. Then, Elsen reached up and kissed him on the cheek. He looked down at her, first into her eyes, then, in turn, at her ears, her hair, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. Knowing what he was doing, she smiled, raised her hands in front of her face to show him her palms first, then the backs of both hands. Perch smiled and nodded his head slightly. It was at that particular moment that Elsen knew he understood that she had been completely cured.

Dr. Mozelle held out his hand to Perch, and this time the man took it. As they said good-bye, the strong, calloused hand of Matthew Perch gave Dr. Mozelle’s hand an extra squeeze before he disengaged his grip, turned away, entered his hut, and closed the door behind him. Mozelle and his wife started down the hill, but a few moments later, they heard a shout—Perch was rushing down the hill toward them with the envelope of money in his hands. He stopped when he reached the Mozelles.

“Take this,” he said quietly.

Mozelle took the envelope, feeling deeply sorry that they might have offended him. “We just wanted to do something to thank you,” Mozelle said apologetically. Perch didn’t respond directly; he stared intently into Dr. Mozelle’s eyes, then into Elsen’s, then into the doctor’s again.

“To thank me?” Perch asked.

Howard Mozelle nodded, whereupon Perch made a statement that was as intriguing as it was baffling, a statement that both Elsen and Howard Mozelle had been puzzling over ever since.

“Then remember this,” Perch told them, speaking each word slowly and carefully.

“After the two have been joined together, the son shall hold the coins, and he will bring them to their destination.”

Howard and Elsen tried to ask Matthew Perch what he meant, but the man only repeated what he had already said—
After the two have been joined together, the son shall hold the coins, and he will bring them to their destination
. Then, he turned and walked away.

Back in New York, Elsen was examined and pronounced cured by Dr. Kempler, who agreed to respect the promise they had made to Matthew Perch not to disturb his peace.

“After that, I went back to my practice,” Mozelle told Caine now. “Elsen went back to teaching history at Columbia, a new person in many ways. Life was wonderful again.”

Dr. Mozelle paused and took a deep breath before looking over to his wife and the elderly nurse; the doctor seemed to be seeking their permission to continue. The two women gazed back at the doctor, who curled his lips between his teeth and nodded to the women before turning back to face Caine.

“Mr. Caine, during that same year, I delivered a baby to one of my patients, a healthy baby girl. The baby’s left hand was folded like this”—Mozelle made his left hand into a ball. “Anna and I were the only ones present. We opened those tiny fingers, and in them was an object. I want you to understand what I’m saying. In the baby’s left hand was an object that looked like a coin. It was not attached to the hand. We picked it up. It was firm and had the consistency of a stone. I walked to an overhead light to examine it more closely. The first side I looked at was smooth and blank, but then I turned it over. It was at that moment, Mr. Caine, that I realized that the configuration on the face of the object seemed to be an exact miniaturized replica of the artwork on one of the walls of Matthew Perch’s hut. I was dumbfounded. Anna did not understand its significance; she was simply bowled over by the fact that we had discovered an object in the baby’s hand. She couldn’t believe it, and neither could I.

“I asked Anna not to tell the mother about what we had found until we had a chance to have the object examined, to find out what it was made of, and to check it against the photographs I had taken of the objects on Perch’s walls. I discovered that I was correct; one side of the object was exactly like the piece of artwork that hung on the east wall of the hut. I did not tell the child’s mother what I had found in her baby’s hand. I have wrestled with the ethics of that decision from time to time over the years. Later, I justified my actions with ‘Science should come first,’ and with Perch’s strange prophecy to me, which seemed to justify my role in the coins’ fate.

“And now, Mr. Caine, here is where you came in. The configuration on that artwork in Matthew Perch’s hut resembled a portion of the night sky: a sprinkling of stars. That was my impression the very first time I saw them on his walls. I wondered about the significance of such a sprinkling of stars. The next day, I flew to Boston to see an astronomer friend of mine.”