The Sentinel

by Konvitz, Jeffrey;

“Guess?”

  “I didn’t see them, until I started to stumble out of the room”

  “Okay, show me.”

  She extended both hands: one to simulate the presence of a knife, the other the flashlight. She studied her approach, recalled her exact movements, and deliberately retraced her steps across the floor.

  “As I tapped him on the shoulder,” Allison said, “I jiggled the flashlight again and it went on. He turned, I saw who he was, and I panicked. I fell backward trying to get away and I landed there in the corner.”

  He walked to where she’d fallen among the cobwebs and dust. He ran his hand along the floor, leaving a trail of five fingers. “The police left so many footprints that any imprints made that night are indistinguishable,” he said thoughtfully. “Look, I want you to trace your every move from this spot, until you left the apartment.”

  “I’m not sure I remember.”

  “Try.”

  She nodded, unsure of her ability to re-enact the events. She walked to the corner, where he was standing, and sat on the floor.

  “I guess I was sprawled somewhat like this.” She extended one leg and tucked the other beneath her. “When I saw him move toward me, I pulled myself up and spun around. The flashlight was waving wildly and that’s when I saw the women in bed, I think.” She walked backward toward the hall. “When I finally straightened up, I ran as quickly as possible into the hall, colliding with the wall several times, and then I somehow made it into the living room.”

  He stopped halfway down the hall, turned, studied the walls and floor and joined her at the edge of the living room.

  “Nothing here,” he concluded. “Then what happened?”

  “I knew he was behind me, because I heard his footsteps. I stumbled and hit that armchair and fell over backward onto the floor. The chair toppled over on me. I heard the door slam…I had left it partially open…and I saw him standing there.” She pointed. “I pushed the chair off, jumped up, and ran for the door, but collided with him in the middle of the room.” She walked to the center of the rug and stopped. “Right here.”

  He stepped to the spot and assumed the position of the father.

  “He grabbed me by the hair and then by the crucifix. Choking me. I didn’t know what was going on or what I was doing. Everything was spinning.” She paused, lowered her head, and then murmured incredulously, “I was fighting to save my life.”

  He nodded, biting his nails.

  “I started stabbing him with the knife. I remember the blade going up and down and I remember the feeling of it going into something. And then there were the screams. I felt myself falling, but that’s it. Nothing else. The next thing I remember was the hospital.”

  He kneeled down over the point of contact and examined the floor with his hand. “If there’d been the slightest trace of blood here, the police technicians would have found it.”

  “Could it have been washed away?”

  “No. The chemical analyses would probably have detected even the residue.”

  He jumped to his feet, walked to the armchair, and sat down. Calculating the dimensions of the room, he attempted to find a missing key, if there was one. Then he rose again, went to the bedroom hallway, turned, and walked slowly from there to the apartment door, carefully counting his steps. He returned to the hall entrance and performed a similar maneuver, from there to the chair, where he sat down again.

  “One thing puzzles me. You say that he started moving toward you very slowly and that he had difficulty walking.”

  “Yes.”

  “His leg was partially paralyzed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me how he walked.”

  She stiffened, hesitated, then took three or four painful steps with her right leg dragging behind. “Very slow and awkward.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that by the time you’d fallen over the armchair, he’d limped into the room, crossed the entire floor…approximately twenty paces…and shut the door?”

  “I guess so.”

  “No, it doesn’t make any sense. First of all, why close the door in a deserted house, and secondly, he couldn’t have possibly gotten to the door that quickly, according to what you’ve told me. I’d have trouble and I’m not only pretty agile, but I’m not dead!”

  “That’s very funny, Michael. Hilarious.”

  “I don’t mean to be funny. Assuming you did kill someone, I think he came into the apartment during the melee. But remember, I said assuming. There’s no body and no blood. And if someone was in the other room, and again I say if, he wasn’t the person you stabbed.”

  She reflected, then nodded, accepting the possibility.

  “That still doesn’t solve anything,” she said, sitting down on the dusty sofa.

  “If that’s the way it happened, it might.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “If I did stab someone who came in, what about the figure in the bedroom and the women?”

  He shrugged, yet his expression indicated he was exploring a possible answer to the question.

  He stood up and began to pace the room. Then he walked to the mantel and ran his hand along the top. The grime was thick, evenly layered, and laced with spider webs. He looked at his palm, blew off most of the dust, and then finished the job by rubbing his hand against his pants.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “The facts! There’s no body, no blood, no evidence of struggle, no evidence of people in the room, no sign of the lesbians or Chazen. Ye,t we have an assumption: you stabbed someone who came through the door. Then where is the body? Reasoning logically? Someone removed it, cleaned up the blood by some meticulous means unknown to me, and covered all footprints with dust.” He glanced at Allison and smiled. She remained impassive. “Who removed the body? The imaginary people in the bedroom?”

  “They were real.”

  “Or the real people in the bedroom?”

  Allison sat forward on the couch.

  “If they were real, where did they go?”

  Allison stood and stared at him blankly.

  “Let’s see if we can get into Chazen’s apartment.” They walked to the door, which he opened; it creaked from years of disuse.

  They climbed the staircase to apartment 5B and tried the door. It was locked. He withdrew a set of keys from his pocket, inserted the skeleton, and opened the lock.

  “Opulent,” he declared without a note of humor in his voice. It was more a statement of frustration than anything else. He kicked at the dust, walked to the middle of the room, lifted the solitary chair, sat, and looked around him. “I wouldn’t call this a well-planned library. Plenty of books, one seat.”

  “The furniture is here somewhere,” she said, as she moved by him, looked out the window, and peeked into the kitchen. “Maybe even the people. The table was there.” She pointed. “The Gramophone was there. Plants everywhere. The bookcase –” Her eyes constricted. “The bookcase was here.” This time she remembered. “There were plants all over it, but it was here.”

  She walked to the shelves and blew the dust off the third row of titles, dust that had resettled since she and Miss Logan had inspected the room. She reached up and removed a blue-covered book. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal. An extremely old version published in 1839, an original edition, the book nearly in shreds. She weighed it gently in her hand, then she threw it on the floor next to Michael. “Enjoy.” Unmindful of their condition, she pulled other books off the shelves, inspected them briefly, then tossed them to the floor. Several fell by themselves.

  “Here’s the winner. Techniques of Torture by Alard.”

  He extended his hands; she tossed the book. He caught it and thumbed through the pages.

  She removed another vol
ume, examined the cover, and then, holding the binding securely to prevent the loose and detached pages from falling, opened the book. She sifted the pages quickly. “You’ll like this one for variety.”

  “Let me see.”

  She tossed the book.

  He examined the cover and then turned to the inside. “What do you mean by variety?” he asked.

  “All the pages are the same,” she replied.

  He looked again. The book seemed perfectly normal, normal to the extent that the pages were numbered consecutively and each page contained different words and sentences.

  “Well?” she asked.

  He looked at her, puzzled. “There’s nothing strange about this book.”

  She lashed out and grabbed it. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  She re-examined the pages; they were still identical. “They are all the same!” she cried, handing it back.

  He reviewed the volume, then closed the cover and placed it in his lap. “Very interesting,” he said, glancing at the crumbling shelves. “Obviously, one of us is seeing something that isn’t there, or just lying.”

  She felt the blood rush to her head. It would be just like him to admit what he was doing at the same time he was denying it. Perhaps her suspicions were justified. As of yet, he’d still not exonerated himself, though she had to admit that so far he’d been incriminated by what could be mere circumstance.

  “Still, this isn’t that surprising,” he said cautiously. “You saw the apartment listing when there was nothing in the paper. Perhaps what you see here is a different manifestation of the same phenomenon.”

  “I don’t like the word ‘phenomenon’,” she said. “It implies an unnatural occurrence.”

  “Call it what you will.” He took a pen from his shirt and ripped the front page from one of the discarded books. He handed both to her.

  “I want you to write down exactly what you see, word for word.”

  She continued to stare blankly, then crossed to the lone chair and sat. She looked over the first page, compared it to the following, and carefully began to transcribe each letter on the paper.

  Michel knocked.

  He waited and knocked again. There was no answer. The dark brown door bearing the lettering 5A remained closed.

  “I still have a feeling there might be a connection between the priest, our disappearing friends, and your hallucinations.” He raised his fist once again, hesitated, and let it fall meekly against the door. Allison listened to the faint tap, bowed her head, and leaned against the banister, certain that this final perfunctory summons would go unanswered.

  “Maybe he knows someone’s here, but can’t answer the door,” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I think he just prefers to remain undisturbed.” He took the skeleton key out of his pocket.

  “Michael,” whispered Allison nervously, indicating her disapproval.

  “Quiet,” he commanded.

  He slipped the key into the lock and twisted, but nothing happened. Shaking his head, he pulled out the key and returned it to his pocket.

  “Does anyone ever come to take care of him?” he asked.

  “No one,” she replied. “All I know is that the rent is paid by the Archdiocese of New York.”

  Nodding, he turned her around and led her to the staircase, which they descended slowly, acutely aware of the old paneled walls, the sturdy banister that guarded the worn and perilous staircase, and the empty, silent apartments on every floor that perhaps concealed a terrible truth. They walked hand in hand, eyes riveted on the steps before them and ears listening for any sound that might indicate an intrusion into the deafening silence in which they moved.

  Allison performed the various rituals she’d instituted in the weeks past. She stopped in front of the door to apartment 4A, stared nervously, then quickly scurried for the safety of the staircase to the third floor. Apartment 2A. She hesitated before going farther, repelled by the fear that the lesbians might appear at any moment. But Michael was there. Whether or not he’d been involved in the events, nothing would happen now. So the hesitation was momentary and she continued walking behind him down the main staircase where she stopped, as usual, and tested the still sturdy banister before stepping onto the tiled lobby floor.

  Outside, Michael pulled a monogrammed white handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew his nose. “I want you to go back to my apartment and wait,” he said. “I’m going to have this translated.” He held the piece she’d transcribed from the book. “Then I’m going to see if I can locate Miss Logan and the landlord.”

  “Can’t I go with you?”

  He shook his head. “Get some more rest. As soon as I’m done, I’ll come back to the apartment. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour or two.” He touched her cheek gently, supportively; she did not respond. “Let me get you a taxi.”

  They walked to the curb where they waited for several minutes and then hailed the first empty cab that turned down the street. He kissed her cheek as he opened the rear door. “Seventeen East Seventy-first Street.” The driver nodded; the cab lurched forward.

  She rolled down the rear window and watched Michael disappear into the distance. She blinked and turned her eyes to the windows on the fifth floor. Yes, there was something there. An outline. The old priest. Sitting as he had been for… she didn’t know how long. Father Matthew Halliran. He had to have had something to do with the events in the brownstone. What? She didn’t know. But something. She continued to stare out the window, as the sun angle changed. Something glistened…a metal object…but only momentarily. Then the cab turned the corner.

  20

  The drive to the Morningside campus of Columbia University was direct and short. Michael paid the driver and walked through the main gate onto the lower campus. He consulted a piece of paper and turned left, away from the Broadway side of the quadrangle toward a large building that bordered Amsterdam Avenue. He entered and read the glass-enclosed directory. Over a list of eminent names was the department title: LITERATURE AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES. He consulted the paper again and searched the list of faculty members. GREGOR RUZINSKY. The name was near the bottom. Probably Polish. An associate professor.

  He walked up the staircase, located room 217, opened the old wooden door, and entered a small unevenly lit office.

  Behind a desk was a man in his early thirties. Ivy-Leaguish. Incurably unkempt. “Come in,” Ruzinsky said belatedly.

  “Thank you,” Michael replied, turning to a chair.

  “I assume you are the gentleman, who phoned me before.”

  “Yes.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “What?”

  “You. I have a hobby at which I have grown quite proficient.”

  “And that is?”

  “Conceiving a predetermined image for an unknown voice. You are precisely as I pictured, most remarkably so, even your clothes. But…” He paused, thinking.

  “But?”

  “I detect an urgency in your expression that did not come through the phone. That is most peculiar.”

  “Are you sure there’s an urgency?” Michael asked, fascinated by the man’s intuitiveness.

  “Yes,” Ruzinsky said somberly.

  “What else can you see?”

  The man smiled, ignoring the question. “Would you like some tea? It’s almost ready.” He turned about in his swivel chair and reached for a teapot that sat on a small portable burner.

  “No, thank you,” said Michael.

  “You should try some. A very rare blend from southern China. Exquisite taste and aroma. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to try it?”

  “I’ve never been much of a tea drinker. Thank you anyway.”

  Ruzinsky motioned to the pot. “Then you wouldn’t mi
nd?”

  “Of course not,” said Michael, surprised that the man would ask for permission to drink tea in his own office. But then again, Europeans were very proper. He wondered what the man would have done, if he’d objected.

  Ruzinsky carefully drained the tea through a strainer. “It’s more difficult than using a samovar,” he declared. He lifted the steaming cup. “Absolutely delicious. There’s something in this tea that relaxes me and allows me to think more clearly.” He placed the cup on the desk, picked up a pack of Pall Malls, and offered them to Michael. “Smoke?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

  “No vice at all?”

  “Not quite. Let’s just say I don’t smoke.”

  Ruzinsky regarded the red pack, half empty, and threw it to the side. He opened the desk drawer, removed a hand-carved pipe, filled it with tobacco, lit it, and sat back in his chair. “Now, you mentioned something about a translation.”

  “And you said you could do it.”

  “I did, assuming that it is what you say it is. Might I see the material?”

  Michael reached into his pocket and removed Allison’s transcription. It was rumpled; he laid it on the desk, pressed out the wrinkles with the palm of his hand, and passed it to the curious professor, who moved the lamp slightly and perused the document.

  “Very interesting,” Ruzinsky said. “A form of early Latin, used well before the reigns of the Caesars, maybe three or four hundred years before. You only find it in very old and selective writings.”

  Now how had Allison come up with something like this? “Can you translate it?”

  Ruzinsky suffered the affront and replied indignantly, “Of course. It is simple compared to other extinct languages and idioms. In fact, if you have several minutes, I will work on it now. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “I have all the time in the world.”

  Ruzinsky removed a yellow legal-size pad from the desk drawer, sharpened his pencil, and attacked the task with enthusiasm. His attention was absolute; he huddled over the desk like a nearsighted monk, eyes only six or seven inches above the paper and hands held ready for execution. There was a preciseness about his manner that assured Michael that the man would do his best to make the translation as accurate as possible. Several times the scholar crossed out a word or phrase, studied the transcription and substituted a more appropriate English equivalent. Each time he would say, “No, no. that’s not right,” and then, after some study, would exult, “Ah, much better, much better.”