by Donn Kushner
“You’d like to buy this book?” Rachel asked doubtfully.
“That’s the one.”
Rachel bit her lip slightly but pulled out a sales slip from beneath the cash register, “what is your name, please?”
“Huberman,” the fat man said.
Rachel wrote it down. “This is an unusual choice, Mr. Huberman,” she observed.
“Isn’t it for sale? It was on the shelf.”
“Oh yes, it’s for sale.”
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“So, I’ve bought it.” Then the fat man smiled, showing discolored teeth. Rachel stepped back. “But not for myself.” “A present?” Rachel asked hopefully. • “For my employer,” Huberman explained. “He has wide tastes. He said to tell you he was interested in the wars of religion. When he has an interest, any interest, he satisfies it. Did something hiss?”
Nonesuch, furious, backed away to the depths of the shelf. “It must have been the wind,” Rachel said. ‘ ‘You should get it fixed,” Huberman told her. As he left the shop. Nonesuch left by his own route to follow him. Huberman drove away in an old black Buick, down the hill to the throughway along the coast. As Nonesuch watched from high in the air, he saw Mr. Abercrombie again. standing by two automobiles on a lookout point beside a smaller road. With him was another man who was examining the bookshop terrace with field-glasses. The dragon let Huberman go in order to watch this new pair. In a short while they separated; the man with the field-glasses, a jolly, balding fellow in a plaid coat, drove to the restaurant beside the bookshop, drank a soft drink on the terrace, then walked up and down carefully studying the hffl behind the three buildings.
Two days later the bookseller received a call from a real estate agent asking him if he was interested in selling his building. No thank you, Mr. Gotdieb replied. A pity, the agent said: he had a client who was very interested in that part of the city and who would pay quite a good price. I like it here too, Mr. Gotdieb told the agent. Perhaps you’ll be more interested in selling at a later time, the agent said politely.
Mr. Gotflieb would hardly have remembered the call, though it was the first such he had ever received, but he learned that on the two following days his neighbors had received similar
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calls: Mr. Sacco, the shoemaker, hearing from another real estate agent; and the owners of the restaurant, two widowed sisters who had married two brothers, from a lawyer. None of them were interested, they agreed. They were sitting, as was, their custom on Friday evenings, en the restaurant terrace overlooking the harbor. Nonesuch had been out flying and, shortly before the humans came, had descended to the deep green leaves of a lilac tree that hung over the table. He was no more than a yard from Mr. Gottlieb’s nose and was able t,? hear everything that was said.
“The very idea!” said Mrs. Amanda Pickersgill, the olde sister. ‘ ‘Why should we move? This is just like home.”
“It is, almost,” Mrs. Eliza Pickersgill agreed. “Though i do find the winters hard to bear.”
“It’s only a question of determination,” Mrs. Amanda told her.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Mrs. Eliza replied. A short time afterwards, Mrs. Amanda had to return to the restaurant by the back door, to keep an eye on the chef, whom she suspected of secret drinking. Mrs. Eliza shook her head. “She’ll never admit it,” she told the two men, “but the cold puts a strain on her heart. This hill, too. She insists on walking up to the supermarket.” In a moment she followed her sister inside the restaurant.
The shoemaker had been thinking of other things.’ “There’s a conspiracy in the air; all these offers at the same time. I think I’ll ask a few questions.”
For someone who considered himself a socialist, Bartholomew Sacco had many lines of information in the political establishment. He had run for city council a few years before, in a comfortable district where no one was interested in politics, and had won by default. In the brief period he had held office, he had almost lowered property values by his efforts to
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have a disused school turned into a haven for the unemployed. At the next election, of course, his opponents had got together and, at great expense, mounted a successful campaign against him. But in his time in office he had become friendly with many policemen, taxi drivers, reporters, and others who could search for information.’ ‘I’ll find out about this,” he told Mr. Gottlieb.
Two days later he entered the bookshop. “It’s a man named Abercrombie,” he told Mr. Gottlieb.
“Ah,” the bookseller said, with little surprise. His wife remained silent. Nonesuch, who had been watching from the bookcase nearest the door, grinned with his needle-sharp teeth. The shoemaker explained. “He wants to put up a big hotel here. The plans are all drawn up, and there are even some bids on them. All he needs is the land.”
“That’s too bad,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “It’s our land.”
“We’d better be careful,” Bartholomew Sacco told him.
“Why?”
“He’s new to the city, but he has quite a reputation. He came with a lot of money and bought a big house, a regular country estate. He seems to be a whiz at putting together real estate deals, often with more of other people’s money than his own. He’s also very adept at getting out of deals before they fold, with his own money intact.”
‘ ‘He seemed a well-read man,” Mr. Gottlieb remarked.’ ‘I wouldn’t expect we have anything to fear from him.”
” You can say that?” his wife put in.’ ‘Haven’t you known enough well-read men in your own time?” Mr. Gottlieb smiled in a guilty fashion.
“He didn’t become rich by being a nice guy,” the shoemaker insisted.
‘ ‘Whatever he is, he can’t drive us out of our homes and businesses.”
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“No. But he might try,” the shoemaker said.
In the next few days, all of the owners received further telephone calls from the real estate agents and the lawyer. The prices offered went up, by the same amounts, they noticed. “Did he think we wouldn’t talk to each other?” the shoemaker commented.
The Pickersgill sisters received another telephone call that night, though fortunately Mrs. Eliza picked up the receiver. ‘ ‘Don’t you find the climate unhealthy?” a young man’s voice asked.
“What?”
“It’s much more healthy elsewhere. I don’t understand how you can stay here.”
“Who is this? What do you want?”
“You are living in a very unhealthy location,” the voice said.’ ‘You really should decide to change it.” The caller hung up.
“Who was that?” Mrs. Amanda called.
“A wrong number, dear,” her sister replied.
But she could not sleep. Past midnight, two motorcycles roared past the terrace, turned, and passed again and yet again, pausing to gun their motors before the restaurant each time.
Mrs. Eliza told of the call only after the next incident, two days later. Samson was carrying a number of parcels to the post office after school. As he walked along a hidden part of the road, by a high fence, two young men came up on either side, knocked his feet from under him, and scattered the parcels in the gutter. When Samson tried to stop them, they knocked him down again and rubbed his face in the mud. Then they ran off, giggling.
Fortunately the boy was able to rescue most of the books in the parcels before the water could get through the wrappings. He dried them off on his pants and carried them back to the
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bookshop. He had also been carrying a book he had just bought for himself, an old geology text. As he had told Mr. Gotdieb, “I think it’s time I really learned something.” This book had fared much worse. It was completely soaked, and a fold-out chart that showed the different ages of the earth, with dinosaurs here and there, was ripped half across. Mrs. Gotdieb spread the chart on the table to dry, where it stayed all day long. • ‘But it’s ruined, really,” Mr. Gottlieb said. • ‘It suffered in the line of duty. I’ll fin
d you another one.”
Over Samson’s and her father’s protest, Rachel took the newly wrapped parcels to the post office to be mailed in the little green Volkswagen, of which she had the use today. When she came out of the post office, she found a tire half deflated and heard the sound of a commotion further down the street. A blond young man in a blue windbreaker was running, his hands over both ears, cursing loudly, though without imagination. “I saw them letting the air out of your tire,” the grandmother on the comer, who controlled traffic at this time for the schoolchfldren, told Rachel. “I would have stopped them, but I had to watch the comer. Then, when I could look again, I saw that one begin to jump up and down and swat at his ears. There seemed to be some kind of big green insect buzzing around him. I never saw one like it before. At first I thought it might be a bird, but a bird that size surely wouldn’t attack people. Anyway, his friend, the bald one, tried to swat it with a piece of lumber and hit blondie on his head instead. I called out, ‘Police!’ and they both began to run, with the insect, or whatever it was, following them. His friend took off down the alley with the creature buzzing around his head too.”
“Who are they?”
“Trouble makers. They dropped out of school last year;
now they hold up little children for their lunch money. They’re
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the ones who roughed up your boy earlier. I was really going to call the police, but maybe I won’t have to.”
Nonesuch kept watch along the route to the post office for the next few days. Samson had insisted on carrying the parcels again, in order to be able to pay for^more advanced texts on geology. He was not disturbed during this time. However, the dragon was sleeping inside when the next attack came.
Very early one morning, a few days later, several cans of garbage - well-ripened old restaurant refuse - were emptied out before all three buildings. Mrs. Eliza Pickersgill was fortunately out early enough to clear most of it up before her sister saw it. “I dread to think what it might have done to her heart, coming on it all like that,” she told Mr. Gottlieb, who was shovelling up his own sidewalk. “She was furious at the little she saw.”
Professor Ash watched them from the terrace. Shortly, he walked across, beside the shoemaker, who was hosing down his part of the sidewalk and waiting until the bookseller had finished shovelling so that he could wash his sidewalk as well. Professor Ash spoke to the shoemaker, who nodded briefly in agreement.
That evening, all the owners received telephone calls, with still better offers for their property. Mrs. Amanda said dryly that she wasn’t interested. Mr. Gottlieb said, ‘ “What is all this? Are you threatening us?”
‘ ‘A threat?” the agent asked.’ ‘Have you heard a threat? Our firm is the most respected in the city. We don’t do business that way.”
“Who wants to buy the property?” Mr. Gottlieb asked. ‘ ‘A confidential client.” rs^^ ‘ ‘You should watch such clients.” ffb^^ ‘ ‘I can assure you our client’s financial position is sound.”
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“I’m sure it is.” Mr. Gottlieb hung up.
Bartholomew Sacco simply hung up without any discussion. “Why waste the effort?” he said. He began to make some telephone calls, in Italian.
‘ ‘He’s talking to some of his friends in the longshoremen’s union,” the parrot told Nonesuch, who was keeping his own watch outdoors and who had perched on the shoemaker’s sign. “They owe him favors from the time he fixed their mimeograph machine during the strike, when none of the regular printers would handle their leaflets.”
“What will they do for him?” Nonesuch asked.
‘ ‘Who knows? They unload ships; maybe he wants them to do some loading for him.”
Two nights later a pickup truck driven by a blond young man drove by the three buildings. At each, a young man with a shaved, polished head, riding in the back, emptied out the ftill contents of a very large garbage can. Neither of them noticed Professor Ash, who sat at a table on the terrace, wrapped in an old gray blanket. In the darkness he could easily have been mistaken for a bundle of laundry. The professor, who often had difficulty sleeping at night, had volunteered to keep a lookout instead of reading in his own room. Now he tossed some pebbles at the window above Mr. Sacco’s sign. Instantly a light went on and the shoemaker picked up the telephone.
They learned what had happened the next day. The truck had stopped halfway down the hill, just long enough for the unloader to jump down and into the cab. At the bottom of the hill, the pickup found its way almost blocked by an old panel truck that had skidded across the road. As it stopped to nego-tiate around this obstacle, two large longshoremen opened the doors on either side and pulled the occupants out. They held them silent with hands over their mouths while a third long-168
shoreman very quietly set down two empty garbage cans from the truck. He helped the others load the young men into the cans, which they then pushed down the sloping street. The cans rolled quite a way before crashing over a low curb and into a ditch. Two of the longshoremen drove’away in the panel truck, following the third in the pickup. It was driven past the harbor to a soft stretch of beach, where it was parked so that the incoming tide would cover the motor. Someone sent a tow-truck to haul the pickup to the scrap-yard next day.
“We might have a little peace now,” the shoemaker remarked.
However, the lawyer who had called the Pickersgill sisters now called them all the following evening with another offer. All refused. “He’s not pretending any longer that different buyers are interested,” the shoemaker remarked. “I wonder what will happen next.”
What happened next was partly due to the physical nature of their hill. One side rose so steeply that at its peak it almost overhung the restaurant. From this point, two nights later, someone tossed a small bomb with a timing device that made it explode at four in the morning. The small greenhouse behind the restaurant was shattered; its side was blown over into Eliza Pickersgill’s herb garden. The kitchen window was blown out as well. The cook, who slept beside the kitchen and dreamed of atomic bombs, rose up shouting that one had come at last. Mrs. Amanda ran out with a baseball bat in her hand, cutting her feet on the broken glass. Her sister, talking in a soothing voice, finally persuaded her to come inside.
The police arrived almost immediately, but they were never able to discover the culprit. In another half-hour an ambulance came to the door. Mrs. Amanda had suffered a heart attack, fortunately a mild one, as Mrs. Eliza told her neighbors the
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next day.’ ‘I was so afraid this might happen. She can’t stand such excitement,” she said. She had to leave immediately for the hospital. Mr. Gottlieb promised to keep an eye on the workmen who were starting to repair the kitchen.
The damage was not so great after all. The restaurant opened again for business two days later, with an unusually large number of customers because of all the excitement. The cook and the waitresses handled them valiantly. Mrs. Eliza had to keep leaving to see her sister in the hospital. When the bookseller and the shoemaker called to her, she answered briefly, averting her eyes.
Three days later they learned from the same lawyer who had called before that Mrs. Eliza had agreed to sell the restaurant.’ ‘She’s thinking of her sister, of course,” the lawyer remarked, very sympathetically. “I understand Mrs. Amanda Pickersgill really needs a less active life. There are wonderful quiet places in Florida, with no hills and no conflict.”
“They are joint owners,” Mr. Gottlieb pointed out. “Has Mrs. Amanda agreed to sell too?”
“I’m not sure if she has,” the lawyer said, ‘ ‘but she will decide to, out of consideration for her sister if not for reasons of prudence and health.” He did not repeat his offer for the bookshop, but urged Mr. Gottlieb to contact him if he wanted to sell.
CHAPTER XIV
IN A FOREST GROVE
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IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS,Tir NONESUCH HARDLY LEFT
the bookshop. This was not
only on account of his own special treasure, the Book of Hours. From time to time he crawled into the cupboard in Mr. Gottlieb’s study to look at it-for the bookseller was too worried to take it out. But mostly, Nonesuch realized, he spent his time watching over the other books in the shop.
Why was he so concerned with these books? They didn’t even stay in the shop. They were sold; people took them away, often with eager faces, and sometimes brought others to take their place. It was like the old days in the Abbey of Oddfields, he finally realized, when he had set himself to guard the crops which, he knew, would be harvested and eaten, and replaced with fresh plantings. These books were the crops of the bookshop, Nonesuch thought. Curiously, this idea pleased him. My friends have good crops, he said to himself.
Friends! How he had come to be involved in the ways of humans! Sometimes he wondered if his grandmother would approve. Then, he thought, this must be an aspect of human life that even she had never really known. If we must be involved with
humans, he told her in his mind, these are the kind of humans we should choose.
The next message from Mr. Abercrombie was delivered personally. Nonesuch was there to see it arrive. He had found a convenient upper molding that gave him a good view of the shop - and from which he could surprise the occasional black-beetle, for he knew he must keep up his strength these days. From there, he heard the bell on the door announce Huberman, the fat man who had taken away his Booke of Martyrs. He stood in his blue suit, his side pockets bulging, drawing pink gumdrops out of one pocket and yellow ones out of the other.
The little dragon left his molding, flew down, hoping Mr. Gottlieb would take his time to enter, and crossed between the free-standing shelves to the one closest to the fat man. As Mr. Gottlieb came into the room, Huberman bumped against the table of paperbacks, knocking a dozen to the floor.