The Wolf Gift (39 page)

“Now, Reuben,” said Simon.

“—that I couldn’t protect her,” Reuben went on. “Well, that’s something I’ll live with till my dying day.”

The man nodded. There was almost a doting quality to his expression. Then he said in a soft voice, “You’re a beautiful young man.”

Reuben was startled.
If this guy means to kill me, he’s the devil in hell
. And the man went on.

“Oh, forgive me,” he said with obvious sincerity and a little concern. “I take the license of an older man in making such a remark. I’m sorry. I am not perhaps old enough to take that license but there are times when I feel considerably older than I am. I meant only that your photographs don’t do you justice. You appear conventionally beautiful in your photographs, a little remote, but in person, you’re much more remarkable.” He went on with a beguiling simplicity. “I see now the writer of the articles you’ve published in the
Observer
. Poetic, substantive, I would say.”

The lawyers sat there in rigid and obviously uncomfortable silence. But Reuben was charmed, hopeful, yet cautious.
Does that mean you’re not going to kill me?
—was on the tip of his tongue.
Or does all this just mean you will be talking softly and beguilingly when you try to do it like that loathsome Marrok?

But this was Felix sitting here, Felix across a table from him. He had to get a grip.

“You want your father’s personal effects,” Reuben said, struggling not to stammer. “His diaries, you mean? And the tablets, the ancient cuneiform tablets—.”

“Reuben,” said Simon immediately, hand up to cut him off. “Let’s not discuss the details of the personal effects until Mr. Nideck has made his intentions a little more clear.”

“Ancient tablets?” murmured Arthur Hammermill, shifting in his chair. “What sort of ancient tablets? This is the first I’ve heard of ancient tablets.”

“Yes, my father collected many ancient cuneiform tablets during his years in the Middle East,” said the man. “And indeed, these are my primary interest, I confess, and his diaries of course. His diaries are very important to me.”

“Then you can read his secret writing?” Reuben asked.

He sensed a quiver in the man’s gaze.

“There’s so much of the secret writing in the house,” said Reuben.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I can read the secret writing,” said the man.

Reuben drew the letter to Marrok out of his pocket and pushed it across the table. “Did you perhaps write this?” he asked. “It appears to be in your father’s secret hand.”

The man stared at the letter with a sober expression, but the expression wasn’t cold. He was clearly surprised.

He reached out and picked up the letter.

“How did you come by this, if I may ask?”

“If you wrote it, well, now it belongs to you.”

“Would you tell me how you came by it?” he asked again with humble courtesy. “You’d be doing me a great service if you would let me know.”

“It was left in the Inn in the town of Nideck for a man who thought of himself as something of a guardian for the house, and the things in the house,” Reuben explained. “Not a very pleasant man. He never received it, by the way. I collected it after he’d disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yes, he’s gone, he’s completely disappeared.”

The man registered this in silence. Then:

“You’ve met this person?” Again, the eyes became soft, probing, and the voice was warmly polite.

“Oh, yes,” said Reuben. “It was quite a challenging meeting.” Here we go, Reuben thought. Get it all out. Go to the very edge of the cliff. “Very challenging indeed, for me and for my companion, my friend who’s sharing the house with me. It was, well, you might say, a disastrous meeting, but not disastrous, as it turned out, for us.”

The man appeared to weigh this carefully, with little change of expression. But clearly he was taken aback.

“Reuben, I think we had better tend to the business at hand here,” Simon suggested. “We can always arrange a time in the future to discuss other matters, if we agree here—.”

“ ‘Disastrous,’ ” the man repeated, ignoring Simon. The man seemed genuinely concerned. “I’m so sorry to hear it,” said the man. Again, his tone was humble, gracious, and concerned.

“Well, let’s just say this person, Marrok, he objected rather strongly to my presence in the house, to my relationship with Marchent Nideck; he was offended by other things as well.” “Things,” it was such a weak word. Why couldn’t he choose another word? He looked to the man for understanding. “In fact, I’d say he was pretty angry about the way things
had … developed. He regarded me as a bit of a blunderer. He was very angry. But he’s gone, this man. Gone. He won’t ever be collecting that letter.”

Simon made a series of little throat-clearing noises and was about to interrupt again when Reuben gestured for patience.

The man was studying Reuben, not saying a word. Plainly, he was shocked.

“I thought that perhaps you’d written this letter to him,” said Reuben. “That maybe he came at your behest.”

“Perhaps we should see that letter—,” said Simon.

Very carefully, the man removed the folded pages of the letter from the envelope, his finger running over the place where the envelope had been torn open.

“Yes,” he said. “I wrote this letter. But I don’t see how it could have prompted an unpleasant meeting. That certainly was not my intention. The message is simple, actually. I hadn’t written to Marrok in ages. I told him that I’d heard of Marchent’s death, and I’d be arriving soon.”

This was said with such conviction and persuasion that Reuben believed it. But his heart would not stop beating in his ears and in the palms of his hands.

“Now regarding this man,” said Arthur.

“Please,” said Reuben. He kept his eyes on Nideck. “What was I to figure, except that you’d written to him earlier,” he asked, “and that maybe his disapproval was your disapproval, that he was acting on your authority when he appeared in the house?”

“By no means,” said the man softly. His eyebrows drew together in a tense little frown for a moment and then relaxed. “I assure you,” he said, “whatever happened, he was not acting in my stead.”

“Well, that’s quite a relief,” said Reuben. He realized he had begun to tremble a little, and to sweat. “Because this man, Marrok, he wasn’t amenable to reason. He pushed things to a head.”

The man absorbed this quietly.

Simon clasped Reuben’s right wrist very hard, but Reuben ignored this.

How can I make it clearer, Reuben was thinking.

“And you say he’s gone now,” the man asked.

“Without a trace, as they say,” Reuben answered. “Just gone.” He made a gesture with his two hands to suggest the rising of smoke.

He knew this must be utterly incomprehensible to the two lawyers, but he was slamming it home. He had to.

The man was as placid and seemingly trusting as before.

“I felt under attack, you understand,” said Reuben. “The woman with me was under attack. I love this woman very much. It was unfair for her to have been threatened under my roof. I did what I had to do.”

Again Simon tried to protest. Arthur Hammermill was plainly stunned.

The man was the one who raised his hand for Simon to remain quiet.

“I understand,” he said, looking into Reuben’s eyes. “I am so sorry—so very sorry for this completely unexpected turn of events.”

Suddenly, Reuben took the gold watch out of his pocket, and moved it across the table to the man. “This was left behind,” he said in a small voice.

The man looked at the watch for a long moment before he reached for it and held it reverently in both hands. He looked at the face of it and then at the back. He sighed. His expression was somber for the first time, a marked departure, and perhaps even a little disappointed.

“Ah, poor reckling,” he said under his breath as he looked again at the face of the watch. “Your wandering is at an end.”

“What is a reckling?” asked Arthur Hammermill. He was pale with frustration and annoyance.

“A runt,” said Reuben. “It’s an old English word for ‘runt.’ ”

The man’s eyes flashed with pleasure as he smiled at Reuben, but he remained grieved, grieved as he turned the watch again in his hand.

“Yes, so sorry,” he whispered. He put the watch in his pocket. He took the letter carefully and slipped it inside his jacket. “Forgive me my eccentric vocabulary. I know too many languages, too many ancient books.”

The lawyers were clearly flustered, exchanging glances.

Reuben forged ahead.

“Well, perhaps it’s easy for one in my situation to offend others,” said Reuben. He put his right hand in his lap because it was trembling. “After all, it’s a magnificent house,” he said. “A magnificent property, a magnificent responsibility, some might say a Chrism of sorts …” His face was burning.

There was a tiny shift in the man’s gaze.

They regarded one another for a long moment.

The man looked as though he was about to say something momentous, but he sat silent for a while longer and then said only, “And we do not always ask for a Chrism.”

“A Chrism?” Simon whispered with exasperation, and Arthur Hammermill nodded and mumbled something under his breath.

“No, quite the opposite,” said Reuben. “But a man would be a fool who didn’t cherish a Chrism for what it is.”

The man smiled. It was a sad smile, what the world calls a philosophical smile.

“Then I haven’t offended you?” Reuben asked. His voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”

“No, not at all,” said the man. His voice grew softer, and eloquent with feeling. “The young are the only hope we have.”

Reuben swallowed. He was now trembling all over. The sweat had broken out on his upper lip. He felt wobbly but exhilarated.

“I’ve never faced such challenges,” said Reuben. “I think you can well imagine that. I want to face these challenges with resolve and strength.”

“Obviously,” said the man. “We call it fortitude, do we not?”

“Now, that’s a good English word I understand,” said Simon with Arthur Hammermill nodding vigorously in support.

“Thank you.” Reuben blushed. “I think I fell in love with the house, I know I fell in love with Marchent. And I became enamored of Felix Nideck, with the idea of him, the explorer, the scholar—the teacher perhaps.” He paused, then: “Those diaries written in that mysterious script. The house is full of treasures, and those tablets, those tiny fragile tablets. Even the name Nideck is a mystery. I found the name in an old short story. So many names in the house seem connected to old stories—Sperver, Gorlagon, even Marrok. There’s a poetry and romance to that, isn’t there—finding names that resonate with mysteries in lore and legend, finding names that promise revelations in a world where the questions multiply every day—.”

“Reuben, please!” said Simon, raising his voice.

“You have a flair for the poetic,” murmured Arthur Hammermill, rolling his eyes. “Your father would be justly proud.”

Simon Oliver visibly bristled.

The man’s smile was easy and again almost doting. He pressed his lips together and gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

“I’m enthralled,” said Reuben. “I’ve been overwhelmed. I’m glad to see you’re more sanguine on the matter, because your friend was pessimistic, grim.”

“Well, we can forget about him now, can’t we?” the man whispered. He appeared to be marveling in his own way.

“I imagined Felix Nideck to be a fount of knowledge, maybe secret knowledge,” Reuben said. “You know, someone who would know the answers to so many questions, what my father calls cosmic questions, someone who could shed some light into the darkest corners of this life.”

Simon shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and so did Arthur Hammermill, as if they were signaling one another. Reuben ignored them.

The man was simply staring at him with those large compassionate eyes.

“It must be marvelous for you,” said Reuben, “to read that secret writing. Just last night, I found ledgers filled with that secret writing, very old. Very old indeed.”

“Did you?” asked the man gently.

“Yes, they go way back. Years back. Years before Felix Nideck can have been alive. Your ancestors must have known the secret writing. Unless of course Felix had some great secret of longevity that no one knows. One could almost believe it in that house. That house is a labyrinth. Did you know, it has secret stairways, actually, and a large secret room?”

The lawyers were both clearing their throats at the same time.

The man’s face registered only quiet understanding.

“Seems there were scientists once working in that house, doctors perhaps. It’s impossible to know now of course unless one can read that secret writing. Marchent tried long ago to have it decoded—.”

“Did she?”

“But no one could crack it. You’re in possession of a rather valuable skill.”

Simon again tried to interrupt. Reuben rode over him.

“The house prompts me to imagine things,” said Reuben, “that Felix Nideck is still somehow alive, that he’s going to come and somehow explain things which on my own I can’t grasp, may never grasp.”

“Reuben, please, if you will, I think perhaps—,” said Simon who actually started to rise to his feet.

“Sit down, Simon,” said Reuben.

“It never entered my mind that you knew so much of Felix Nideck,” said the man gently. “I didn’t realize that you knew anything of him at all.”

“Oh, I know many little things about him,” said Reuben. “He was a lover of Hawthorne, Keats, those old European gothic stories, and he even loved theology. He was a lover of Teilhard de Chardin. I found a little book in the house, Teilhard’s
How I Believe
. I should have brought it to you. I forgot to bring it. I’ve been treating it rather like a sacred relic. It was inscribed to Felix by one of his good friends.”

The man’s face underwent another subtle shift, but the openness, the generosity, remained. “Teilhard,” he said. “Such a brilliant and original thinker.” He dropped his voice just a little. “ ‘Our doubts, like our misfortunes, are the price we have to pay for the fulfillment of the universe.…’ ”