Where the Dark Streets Go (15 page)

McMahon was a moment realizing that the last words were addressed to him. “No, thank you, Mr. Rosenberg.”

“What else?” He looked again at the notebook. “The picture Hitler wanted. He told me about a painter he knew who had won a prize in Austria and how one of the German collectors so admired it he ordered the gallery to send it to the Fuehrer for his private collection. The artist himself went into the gallery that night and slashed it into a hundred shreds. ‘Why did he do that, do you think?’ Gust asked me. ‘It is obvious,’ I said. ‘He did not want Hitler to have it.’ ‘Or was it this, Rosenberg? If the picture was good enough for Hitler, it was no longer good enough for him? That is why I would have destroyed it.’ Something like that, he said.”

McMahon said: “Do you think that’s what he did? Destroy his own painting?”

“The same thought has come into my head, Father. And I think it is possible that he did that.”

“This changing of identity, dropping out and starting over.”

“A pursuit of absolute beauty,” Rosenberg said.

“That’s enough to destroy a man in itself,” McMahon said, and thought again of Muller’s words, I took the knife away from him. Had he wanted to die? Had his killer done him a kindness in those terms? Was that the meaning of his silence, his refusal to name the man? “No,” he said aloud, getting up with Rosenberg because someone had come into the shop. “I don’t believe he wanted to die.”

“It was the opposite, Father. He was destroying himself because he wanted to live.”

“I found the girl, by the way—Nana Marie. You will like her. I think she’ll come to the funeral.”

“Then I will come also, and you will play Bach and Mahler after all.”

That night, after confessions were over and the church emptied of people, he took the score for “Song of Earth” which he had borrowed from the library, and his own copy of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” to the choir loft and practiced them on the organ. When he came downstairs he found the monsignor sitting in the back pew. The old man got up, steadying himself on the bench.

“That was beautiful, Joseph. I am sorry for what I said last night about your diddling on the piano.”

McMahon said, “Give me your blessing, Monsignor.”

He knelt and the old man touched his forehead, crossing it with his thumb and said the words in the Latin beloved to both of them. McMahon kissed his hand.

O
NLY A FEW PEOPLE
came to the funeral, Mrs. Morales with Carlos, the boy in his first communion suit, Mrs. Phelan came with two other women of the building. McMahon realized he had not seen her during his recent visits to the hospital. He said the obvious by way of greeting, “Dan is much better.”

“You saved him, Father,” she said, a little curl of irony at the corners of her mouth.

Rosenberg came, but Nim had not when it was time to begin the service. The newspapers were represented. A photographer snapped a picture of Traynor and Brogan when they entered the chapel with a woman McMahon assumed to be Muller-Chase’s aunt. She was large—not stout, but big-boned—fairly on in her sixties and well-dressed in a way that fashion would not interfere with. Traynor introduced her to the priest whom she acknowledged as “Reverend.” Neither cordial nor aloof, she was, McMahon felt, as cautious with her commitments to people as her nephew had been casual with his. Out of the numerous available chairs—the casket was discreetly out of sight behind curtains in the apse of the room—she chose to sit next to Rosenberg, and McMahon mused on what other circumstance under the sun would have brought two people of such disparate backgrounds together. Rosenberg got to his feet at her approach and then sat down again when she did.

McMahon read from the Psalms and then from the Book of Ruth, the passage including the words, “And thy people shall be my people.” He thought of Nim, but that was not why he had selected it: it led him into what he knew of this man who was loved by the strangers whom he chose time and again as his people. He spoke briefly and then said that at the request of a friend he was going to play some music. Before he had reached the organ at the back of the chapel Brogan and Traynor left. As he started to play, Nim came in and sat down.

Miss Chase turned in her chair to look at the girl. McMahon was reminded of all the matron ladies who turned purposefully in church to show their disapproval of latecomers, and there flashed through his mind the picture of this woman in some Fundamentalist congregation where, for a lifetime, she would have sat in the same pew every Sunday and after every service complimented the minister at the door on the excellence of his sermon.

Mrs. Phelan, Mrs. Morales and the other women of the building fled the chapel as soon as McMahon got up from the organ—like Catholics at the
Ita, Missa est,
Go, the Mass is finished. And he remembered the impish glee with which, among all altar boys, he too had sung out the Thanks be to God. In the presence of the dead he almost always thought of childhood. There came back to his mind then that last picture of Muller, turning his head in on his wounded self.

He moved quickly to Nim and took her to meet Miss Chase who was introducing herself to Rosenberg as they went up.

“Only a friend,” Rosenberg said of himself.

“Miss Chase,” McMahon said, “may I present Miss Lavery, another friend of your nephew’s?”

She appraised the girl with one swift glance, wise eyes; not unkind, just satisfying herself. She murmured the amenity and turned to McMahon. “It was a lovely service, Reverend McMahon, but I had thought my nephew to be an atheist.”

“He may have been, but I don’t know any prayers in that language.”

Nim and Rosenberg were amused, but Miss Chase followed in her own train of thought. “The Chases have been Congregationalists for generations. But Tom made his own choices from the cradle—if not to the grave.” Her expression showed the turning off of futile memories. “There were very few I approved of and I see no reason to be hypocritical about it now.”

“How long has it been since you saw him?” McMahon asked.

“Over twenty years. He came home briefly after the war. But he wanted to live in Paris. So, I let him go. Not that I could have stopped him. But it was painful letting go—the last of the Chase name.” She stood a moment, making up her mind whether to go on. Another quick glance at Nim seemed to decide her. “I was his guardian and I consented to give him the money left in my trust. We had argued it at some length. I borrowed on the securities rather than sell them, and finally I was able to put the check for the full inheritance in his hands. Whereupon he tore it up and put it back in mine. And left with an army knapsack on his back, although he had been an officer. But I was thinking, Reverend McMahon, while you spoke: does he have an heir? Will one now show up, or several perhaps? Is there someone who will come some day to see me and call me Aunt Chase—as he did—never Aunt Muriel?”

“I don’t know,” McMahon said.

She looked at Nim for whom the question had been intended in the first place.

“I know of none, Miss Chase,” Nim said, “but then I only knew him for a year or so.”

“Did you really know him, child?”

“I knew…someone,” Nim said.

“We all knew someone,” Rosenberg said, “but who did we know?”

“A kind man in any case,” McMahon said.

“You have a peculiar notion of kindness, Reverend McMahon, if I may say so.” And reaching out the gloved hand, she put one finger under Nim’s chin and lifted it. “Look at this girl’s face and tell me if it was a kind man she knew.”

“He was,” Nim said although her eyes filled with tears. “It was just that he went away—and he wasn’t coming back.”

“I said that twenty years ago, but I didn’t believe it either. Now it is so. I’ll give you my address if you would like to write to me, Miss Lavery…”

Nim shook her head.

“I think I understand,” the older woman said. “Now I suppose I must speak to these newspaper people. I said I would after the service.” She drew a deep breath. “Tom was a painter—but what did he paint?”

“He
was
a painter,” Nim said. “You must believe that, Miss Chase.”

“I do believe it. One of his few communications in all these years was a note saying he thought I would approve his present situation: he was teaching in the art department at Columbia University….Which is why I mistook you, Mr. Rosenberg…”

“Just a friend,” Rosenberg said again.

“I have decided to offer a reward,” she said, “after discussing it with the police. I would like very much to have something painted by Thomas Stuart Chase. I do not like publicity. But in this case, I like the lack of it even less.” She shook hands with Nim and Rosenberg, and then taking off her glove, she gave her hand to McMahon. But first she slipped a folded bill out from the other glove and put it in his hand. “You will have many charities. I have few.”

McMahon murmured his thanks and put the money in his coat pocket without looking at it. His mother had always tucked something into that pocket when they parted. He tried to think of that and not of the fives and tens pressed upon him by strangers who were so moved by his participation in an intimate moment of their lives. It always nicely separated participation from sharing.

McMahon went to the chapel door with her and then returned to where Rosenberg was telling Nim of the art books left in his keeping. McMahon realized they had had to introduce themselves.

“Rightly they belong to Miss Chase,” Nim said.

“Rightly? What is rightly? Young lady, he would not have approved that kind of shillyshally. I wish you to have them.”

“Thank you,” Nim said. “I want them very much.”

McMahon both dreaded and looked forward to this moment, just the meeting of eyes with Nim, but it passed with a kind of glancing off. “So now we know something we didn’t know before, Columbia University.”

“Crazily, I know someone there,” Nim said. “Or did. Remember my telling Mr. Wallenstein about my father taking me to see Professor Broglio? That was at Columbia. And if that old man isn’t dead, he might still be there.”

“I would suppose, Miss Nim,” Rosenberg said, “you think people to be a lot older than they are. I know I did at your age. May I offer you both a cognac? My brother-in-law is in the shop, but it will be time to close soon. Then you can take some of the books home with you.”

McMahon consulted his datebook on the rest of the day’s schedule. He had been going to see Phelan, but he had nothing more to tell him and he was now in Dr. Connelly’s care. McMahon hoped that it was so. In the parish hall it was bingo night, and that could go on very nicely without his blessing. “I think it’s exactly what we need,” he said.

There was something in walking into the back of that shop with its old-fashioned desk, the chairs with their seats hollowed by a thousand sittings, the brass-knobbed cupboards, the green lamps, the orchestra of musical instruments temporarily put by, something that sent him back in history, that in truth released him from the tensions of his own place and time.

When Rosenberg had brought the cognac bottle and the glasses and took his place in the swivel chair, his white hair fairly shone beneath the glow of the lamp. McMahon said to Nim: “Our friend thought of Rembrandt, sitting here where we are. What was it he said, Mr. Rosenberg?”

“That Rembrandt would have painted me one of his famous Jews.”

“I’m part Jewish,” Nim said.

Rosenberg looked at her gravely. “So who would he have painted you? What was the name of the woman at the half door?”

Nim shook her head. “No half doors for me.”

She would not look at McMahon but the color rose to her face.

Rosenberg said, “So we drink again to our strange and lovable friend.” He sipped and smacked his lips. “Our friend who got faces all mixed up in the roots of things. I have made another note or two. Rooting among the roots. He would like that, to play with words. He did not like nature, and I would make a bet with you: the aunt is an outdoors woman. A grower of roses maybe.”

“The faces mixed up in the roots of things,” Nim said. “That’s Tchelitchew again.”

“Tchelitchew,” Rosenberg repeated. “That’s the name. You will laugh at me like he did. I have written down Charlie Chan. Rembrandt I know, but Tchelitchew is a foreigner—to Abel Rosenberg. He went to see this Tchelitchew and he said it was a terrible mistake. He said a man should not try to run from the devil. He should open his arms.”

McMahon and Nim looked at each other. “So there it is,” she said, “but what is it?”

“That’s police work, Nim. They’ll go over that list with a fine-tooth comb.”

Nim nodded. “I don’t know why, but I don’t feel revengeful. I just want to know about him, Stu…Mr. Rosenberg is right on how he felt about nature. It troubled him. It hurt too much. Something.” She put her glass down carefully and folded her hands beneath her chin. She almost always sat in that hunched position. “I’m going to try to say something the way he said it to me once. You see, when I knew him it was this whole thing about the young people in the East Village he was trying to dig, the flower children, the nonviolent, the dropout. He started this way: I am an artist because I am a violent man. Most artists are. But the violence is inside them. They go among their brothers, crying ‘Peace! Peace!’ because they don’t know peace themselves. They keep digging at their own souls. They draw the world’s infections into themselves, and in the furnace of their genius they try to burn it out, to get at the essence of man.”

Rosenberg said, “You got him down perfect. It is me in the concentration camp all over again.”

Nim said, “There’s one more line, the one about nature: Walden Pond! I would rather look in the toilet bowl.”

“Oh, my, my, my,” Rosenberg said and bowed his head.

Finally McMahon said: “If we could reach this Professor Broglio, Nim, would you want to talk to him—just to find out?”

“If he’d remember me,” Nim said.

“Any man would remember you, Miss Nim,” Rosenberg said. “Just keep this in mind, young lady: our friend remembered you or we would not be sitting here together now.”

Nim smiled at him flashingly.