Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  “Sure,” said Natalie. “And Bob Jones University is up in Greenville, but my father wanted me to get as far away from what he called the Redneck Belt as I could. Washington University of St. Louis has an excellent graduate school of education . . . one of the best someone with a fine arts major could get into. Or at least get a scholarship for.”

  “You are an artist?”

  “Photographer,” said Natalie. “Some filmmaking. A little sketching and oil painting. I had a minor in English. I went to school at Oberlin, in Ohio. Ever hear of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyway, a friend of mine— good watercolorist named Diana Gold— convinced me last year that teaching would be fun. And why am I telling you all this?”

  Saul smiled. The waiter came with the check and Saul insisted on paying. He left a generous tip.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” asked Natalie. There was an undertone of pain in her voice.

  “On the contrary,” said Saul. “I will probably tell you more than I have ever told anyone. The question is . . . why?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . why are we trusting each other? You see a strange man breaking into a house and two hours later we are chatting here after a fine meal. I meet a young woman who immediately points a pistol at me and within a few hours I am willing to share things which have remained un-said for many years. Why is this, Ms. Preston?”

  “Miss Preston. Natalie. And I can only speak for myself.”

  “Do so, please.”

  “You have an honest face, Dr. Laski. Perhaps honest is not the right word. A caring face. You’ve known sadness . . .” Natalie stopped.

  “We have all known sadness,” Saul said softly.

  The black girl nodded. “But some people don’t learn from it. I think you have. It’s . . . it’s in your eyes. I don’t know how else to say it.”

  “So that is what we base our judgment and futures on?” asked Saul. “A person’s eyes?”

  Natalie looked up at him. “Why not? Do you have a better way?” It was not a challenge but a serious question.

  Saul slowly shook his head. “No. There may not be a better way. Not to begin with.”

  They drove southwest out of Historic Charleston, Saul following the girl’s green Nova in his rented Toyota. They crossed the Ashley River on Highway 17 and stopped a few minutes later in an area called St. Andrews. The homes there were white frame, the neighborhood neat but working class. Saul parked in the driveway behind Natalie Preston’s car.

  Inside, the house was clean and comfortable, a home. A wing chair and heavy sofa took up much of the small living room. The fireplace was ready for a fire; the white mantel was laden with a potted Swedish ivy and numerous family photographs in metal frames. There were more framed photographs on the wall, but these were works of art, not snapshots. Saul moved from picture to picture as Natalie turned on lights and hung up her coat.

  “Ansel Adams,” said Saul as he stared at a striking black and white photograph of a small, desert village and cemetery glowing in evening light under a pale moon. “I have heard of him.” In another print a heavy fog-bank was moving in over a city on a hill.

  “Minor White,” said Natalie. “Father knew him in the early fifties.” There were prints by Imogen Cunningham, Sebastian Milito, George Tice, André Kertész, and Robert Frank. The Frank picture caused Saul to pause. A man wearing a dark suit and holding a cane was standing on the porch of an ancient house or hotel. A flight of stairs to a second-story porch concealed the man’s face. It made Saul want to take two steps to the left to identify the man. Something about the photograph stirred a deep sadness in him. “I’m sorry I do not know these names,” said Saul. “Are they very well-known photographers?”

  “Some are,” said Natalie. “The prints are now worth a hundred times what Father paid for them, but he’ll never sell them.” The girl paused.

  Saul picked up a snapshot of a black family on a picnic. The wife had a warm smile and straight, black hair curled up in the style of the early sixties. “Your mother?”

  “Yes,” said Natalie. “She died in a freak accident in June of 1968. Two days after Robert Kennedy was killed. I was nine.”

  The little girl in the photograph was standing on the picnic table, smiling and squinting up at her father. There was another portrait of Natalie’s father nearby, a portrait of him as an older man, serious and rather handsome. The thin mustache and luminous eyes made Saul think of Martin Luther King without jowls. “This is a fine portrait,” he said.

  “Thank you. I took it last summer.”

  Saul looked around. “There are no framed prints by your father?”

  “In here,” said Natalie and led the way into the dining room. “Dad wouldn’t hang them in the same room as the others.” Over a spinet piano on a long wall opposite the dining room table, four black and white photographs were hung. Two were studies of light and shadow on the sides of old brick homes. One was an incredibly lit wide-angle shot of beach and sea stretching away to infinity. The final one was of a forest trail and was a study in planes, shadows, and composition.

  “These are wonderful,” said Saul, “but there are no people.”

  Natalie laughed softly. “That’s true. Dad did portrait photography for a living and he said that he’d be darned if he’d do it for a hobby. Also, he was a shy person. He never did like shooting candid photos of people . . . and he always insisted that I get a written release if I did. He hated the idea of invading anyone’s privacy. Also, Dad was just . . . you know . . . shy. If we called for a pizza to be delivered, he’d always ask me to make the phone call.” Natalie’s voice grew thick and she turned away for a second. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes,” said Saul. “That would be nice.” There was a darkroom off the kitchen. Originally it must have been a pantry or second bathroom. “This is where you and your father did your printing?” asked Saul. Natalie nodded and turned on a safe light. The small room was neatly organized: enlarger, trays, chemical bottles, everything shelved and labeled. Over the sink were eight or ten prints clipped on a nylon line. Saul studied them. They were all of the Fuller house, taken in different light, at different times of day, from different points of view.

  “Yours?”

  “Yes,” said Natalie. “I know it’s stupid, but it’s better than just sitting in the car all day waiting for something to happen.” She shrugged. “I’ve been to the police or sheriff’s office every day and they’re no help. Would you like cream or sugar?”

  Saul shook his head. They moved into the living room and sat near the fireplace, Natalie in the wing chair, Saul on the sofa. The coffee was in cups of china so thin as to be almost transparent. Natalie poked at the logs and kindling and lit a taper. The fire started readily and burned well. The two sat for several moments watching the flames.

  “I was Christmas shopping with friends in Clayton last Saturday,” Natalie said at last. “That’s a suburb of St. Louis. We went to a movie . . . Popeye, with Robin Williams. I got back to my apartment in University City at about eleven thirty that night. As soon as the phone rang I knew something was wrong. I don’t know why. I get a lot of late calls from friends. Frederick, he’s a very good friend of mine, usually doesn’t get out of the computer center ’til after eleven and he often wants to go out for a pizza or something. But this time I knew it was long distance and bad news. It was Mrs. Culver who lives next door here. She and Mother used to be good friends. Anyway, she just kept saying that there’s been an accident, that’s the word she kept using, ‘accident.’ It took a minute or two for me to understand that Dad was dead, that he’d been killed.

  “I got the earliest flight I could on Sunday. Everything was closed here. I called the mortuary from St. Louis, but when I got here the doors to the mortuary were locked and I had to go all around the place hunting for someone to let me in and they weren’t ready for me. Mrs. Culver met me at the airport, but she couldn’t
stop crying and stayed in the car.

  “It didn’t look like Dad. Even less so on Tuesday at the funeral, with all the cosmetics. I was pretty confused. No one at the police headquarters on Sunday knew what was going on. They promised that a Detective Holmann would call me back that evening, but he didn’t, not until Monday afternoon. Instead, the county sheriff— you said you met him— Mr. Gentry— he came over to the mortuary Sunday. He gave me a ride home later and tried to answer my questions. Everyone else just asked questions.

  “Anyway, on Monday my Aunt Leah and cousins all arrived and I was too busy to even think until Wednesday. A lot of people came to the funeral. I’d forgotten how well liked Dad had been. A lot of merchants and people from the Old Section were there. Sheriff Gentry came.

  “Leah wanted to stay a week or two, but her son, Floyd, had to get back to Montgomery. I told her I’d be all right. I said I might come out there for Christmas.” Natalie paused. Saul was leaning forward, hands clasped. She took a breath and made a vague gesture toward the window facing the street. “This is the weekend that Dad and I always put up the tree. It’s pretty late, but Dad always said that it was more fun if the tree wasn’t around for weeks and weeks. We usually get it at the Dairy Queen lot over on Savannah. You know, I’d just bought him a Pendleton shirt on Saturday, a red plaid. For some reason I brought it with me. I don’t know why I did that, I’ll just have to take it back now.” She stopped and lowered her face. “Excuse me a minute.” She went quickly into the kitchen.

  Saul sat for several minutes, watching the fire, fingers tightly clasped. Then he went out to join her. She was leaning on the kitchen counter, her arms rigid, a Kleenex grasped tightly in her left hand. Saul stood three feet from her.

  “It just makes me so goddamn mad,” she said, still looking away from Saul.

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, it’s like he didn’t even count. He wasn’t important. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I was little I used to watch cowboy shows on television,” she said. “And somebody would be killed— not the hero or villain, just some guy— and it’d be like he had never existed, you know? And it bothered me. I was only six or seven, but it bothered me. I always used to think about the person and how he must’ve had parents and all the years he’d taken to grow up and how he had to have got dressed that morning and then, bang, he doesn’t exist anymore because the writer wanted to show how fast the good guy was with a gun or something. Oh, shit, I’m not making any sense . . .” Natalie struck the counter with her right hand, palm down.

  Saul stepped forward and touched her left arm. “Yes,” he said, “you are.”

  “It just makes me so goddamn angry,” she said. “My father was real. He never hurt anyone. Not ever. He was the kindest man I’ll ever know and someone killed him and no one has any idea why. They just don’t know. Oh, damn, I’m sorry . . .” Saul took her in his arms and held her as she cried.

  Natalie had warmed their coffee. She sat in the wing chair. Saul stood by the fireplace, idly touching the leaves of the Swedish ivy. “There were three of them,” he said. “Melanie Fuller, Nina Drayton, and a man called Borden from California. They were killers, all three of them.”

  “Killers? But the police said that Miz Fuller was an older lady . . . quite old . . . and that Mrs. Drayton was a victim.”

  “Yes,” said Saul, “and all three were killers.”

  “No one mentioned Borden’s name,” said Natalie. “He was there,” said Saul. “And he was aboard the plane that blew up Friday night . . . early Saturday morning, actually. Or rather, he was supposed to be aboard.”

  “I don’t understand. That was hours before my father was killed. How could this Borden . . . or any of these other people— have had anything to do with my father’s murder?”

  “They used people,” said Saul. “They . . . controlled other people. Each had employees to use. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You mean they were associated with the Mafia or something?”

  Saul smiled. “I wish it were that simple.”

  Natalie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a very long story,” said Saul. “Much of it is quite fantastic, beyond belief, actually. It would be better if you did not hear it. You will either think me to be insane or you yourself will become involved in something with terrible implications.”

  “I’m already involved,” Natalie said firmly. “Yes.” Saul hesitated. “But there is no need for further involvement.”

  “I’m going to stay involved, at least until my father’s murderer is found. I’ll do it with you and your information or I’ll do it without you, Dr. Laski. I swear I will.”

  Saul looked at the young woman for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Yes, I believe you will. Although perhaps you will change your mind when you hear my story. I am afraid that in order to explain at all about the three old people— the three killers who were responsible for your father’s death— I will have to tell my own story as well. I have never told it before. It is a very long story.”

  “Go on,” said Natalie Preston. “I have all the time in the world.”

  “I was born in 1925, in Poland,” said Saul, “in the city of Lodz. My family was relatively well-to-do. My father was a doctor. We were Jews but not Orthodox Jews. My mother had considered converting to Catholicism when she was younger. My father considered himself a doctor first, a Pole second, a European citizen third, and a Jew fourth. Perhaps he did not rate his Jewishness even that high.

  “When I was a boy, Lodz was as good a place as any for a Jew to be. A third of the six hundred thousand residents were Jews. Many important citizens, businessmen, and artisans were Jews. Several of my mother’s friends were active in the arts. Her uncle played in the municipal symphony for years. By the time I was ten years old, much of that had changed. Local political parties had been elected after promising to eliminate Jews from the city. As if possessed of the anti-Semitic contagion raging in our neighbor, Germany, the country was turning against us. My father blamed it on the hard times which we had just come through. He never tired of pointing out that European Jews had become used to waves of pogroms followed by generations of progress. ‘We are all human beings,’ he used to say, ‘despite temporary differences which divide us.’ I am sure that my father went to his death believing this.”

  Saul stopped. He paced back and forth, resting his hands on the back of the sofa when he finally stopped. “You see, Natalie, I am not used to telling this thing. I do not know what is necessary and what is not. Perhaps we should wait for another time.”

  “No,” said Natalie, “now. Take your time. You say that it will help explain why my father died.”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on. Tell it all.”

  Saul nodded and came around to sit on the couch. He rested his elbows on his knees. His hands were large and they made gestures in the air as he spoke. “I was fourteen when the Germans entered our city. It was the September of 1939. At first it was not so bad. They arranged that a Jewish Council be set up to advise in the governing of this new outpost of the Reich. My father explained to me that it showed that anyone could be dealt with through civilized negotiations. He did not believe in devils. Despite my mother’s protests, my father offered to serve on the Council. It was not to be. Thirty-one prominent Jews had already been appointed. A month later, in early November, the Germans deported the Council members to a camp and burned our synagogue.

  “There was talk then of our family traveling to our Uncle Moshe’s farm near Cracow. Already there were severe food shortages in Lodz. We usually spent our summers on the farm and the idea of being there with the rest of our family was an attractive one. Through Uncle Moshe we heard from his daughter Rebecca who had married an American Jew and was planning to go to Palestine to farm. For years she had urged other young members of the family to join her. I, for one, would have gladly gone to the farm. I had already been expelled, a
s had the other Jews, from my school in Lodz. Uncle Moshe had once taught at Warsaw University and I knew that he would have been happy to tutor me. New laws restricted Father’s practice only to Jews— most of whom lived in distant, poorer parts of the city. There were few reasons to stay, many to go.

  “But we stayed. It was planned that we would visit Uncle Moshe in June, as we always had, and decide then whether to return to the city. How naive we were.

  “In March of 1940 the Gestapo drove us from our homes and created a Jewish ghetto in the city. By my birthday on April 5, the ghetto was completely sealed off. Travel for Jews was absolutely forbidden.

  “Again the Germans set up a council— the Judenrat— and this time my father was chosen to serve on it. One of the Elders, Chaim Rumkowski, used to come to our flat— one room in which eight of us slept— and spend the night talking to my father about the administration of the ghetto. Incredibly, in spite of the overcrowding and starvation, order prevailed. I returned to school. When my father was not meeting with the Council, he was working sixteen hours a day at one of the hospitals he and Rumkowski had created from nothing.

  “For a year we survived thus. I was small for my age, but I soon learned how to survive in the ghetto, even if it meant stealing, hoarding, or bartering with German soldiers for food and cigarettes. In the autumn of 1941 the Germans began bringing many thousands of western Jews into our ghetto. Some had been shipped from as far away as Luxembourg. Many were German Jews who looked down on the rest of us. I remember a fight I got into with an older boy, a Jew from Frankfurt. He was much taller than I was. I was sixteen by then but could have easily passed for thirteen. But I knocked him down. When he tried to get up, I struck him with a board and opened a large gash on his forehead. He had come in the week before on one of the sealed trains and was still very weak. I forget what the fight was about.

  “My sister Stefa died that winter of typhus. So did many thousands of others. We were all grateful to see spring arrive, despite news of renewed German advances on the eastern front. My father saw the imminent fall of Russia as a good sign. He thought the war would end by August. He expected many of the Jews to be relocated in new towns to the east. ‘We may have to be farmers to feed their new Reich,’ he would say. ‘But farming is not a bad life.’