“Not at all.”
She stood for another moment regarding him, and suddenly he felt self-conscious and a little embarrassed, as if something more were expected of him.
“Do you know,” she said, “you look a little bit like someone I knew once, many years ago.”
“Really?” Howard said. “I have a common face, I guess.”
“On the contrary, it’s … remarkable.” For a moment Mrs. Lamey’s features betrayed a look of profound longing and remorse, and it struck Howard, sadly, that this was the only honest expression that had crossed her face during their conversation. The rest was veneer. Even the gardening enthusiasm had sounded false, nearly demented. This wasn’t false, though, even Uncle Roy would agree to that.
She smiled abruptly, dissolving the sorrow by an act of will, and said, “Tuesday night, then.”
‘Tuesday night.”
She held her hand out, limp-wristed and palm down, as if she expected him to be gallant and to kiss it. He gave it a small shake instead and hurriedly crossed the street, climbed into his truck, and turned the key, letting the engine idle for a moment. This last exchange had unsettled him, and although he didn’t want to hobnob with anyone’s “little circle,” he felt as if he had made a solemn and necessary promise to her, and he told himself that on Tuesday he would pay her a visit. He wouldn’t have to stay long, and it would give him an opportunity to be a sort of spy for Uncle Roy.
Except that she was something more of a mystery to him now, and it seemed less likely that she and her salon were the “enemy” that Uncle Roy had talked about at breakfast. His uncle was full of exaggeration and wild metaphor, a habit which made jumping to conclusions a dangerous thing.
Sitting alone in the car, free of persuasions, it seemed entirely possible to him that all this north coast plotting might have a very simple and mundane explanation—greed, likely as not, or a consequence of a lot of backwater types nursing grudges over the long years.
Then he remembered the shrine in the woods and old Graham hiding out in the cabin, and his own truck having been ransacked, and the talk about the attempt to burn down Bennet’s house. After a moment he admitted to himself that what he really knew was nothing at all yet. Just to keep things smooth, as he drove away he waved out the window to Mrs. Lamey, who was crouched in front of the hydrangea bush now, burying rusty nails. The Humpty Dumpty on Bennet’s roof waved, too, as if in sarcastic imitation.
IT was still early afternoon when they bumped down the drive toward Graham’s house on the bluffs. Sylvia had taken two hours off and had sent Howard out to buy sandwich makings so as to supply poor Jimmers with a decent meal. They had a picnic basket full of food and drink in the back of the truck. Howard meant to beard Mr. Jimmers on the subject of the Hoku-sai sketch. Either Jimmers had it or he didn’t, and if he had it, then he ought to be willing to discuss Howard’s claim on it. He was free to refuse to hand it over, after all; there was nothing that could be done to force him. Graham’s properties were tied up by law for who knows how long from the date of his death—except that he wasn’t dead, anyway, and so Jimmers had no business meddling with the old man’s property. He no doubt thought he was protecting it somehow, which you had to admire.
Howard went round and round in his head, arguing all this out with an imaginary Mr. Jimmers. The wind off the ocean drove right through his sweater when he stepped out of the truck, and there wasn’t much heat in the noonday sun floating orange and cool in the sky. They could see Mr. Jimmers out on the bluffs, hoeing in a little garden that was sheltered from the sea wind by a long lean-to of wavy squares of yellow fiberglass. They had clumped nearly up to him before he caught sight of them and stood up straight, resting against the hoe, still dressed in the shabby tweed coat but wearing a pair of heavy rubber boots now.
Off by itself stood the tin shed, locked and mysterious. Howard purposefully avoided looking at it so as not to arouse suspicion. Above them in the wall of the house, facing the meadow, was the mysterious door-that-led-nowhere, and the broken-off stairway built of stones that went two thirds of the way up the wall toward it.
“Swiss chard,” Mr. Jimmers said, nodding down at the meager-looking greens poking up through the soil.
“Good, are they?” asked Howard.
“Wretched, actually, but easy to grow if you don’t let the wind blow them to bits. Not enough sun, though, so you’ve got to grow a lot of them if you want to harvest enough to eat. You should have seen the garden in the old days, before Mr. Graham declined.” He shook his head sadly, hacking at a weed with the comer of the hoe blade. “Now it’s reduced to these few rows of Swiss chard. It’s a disgrace is what it is. But a man can stay healthy on a diet of greens. Taken in sufficient quantity, with eggs, they’ll provide a human being with a full range of nutrients, a complete diet. Postum is made entirely of vegetable matter. Did you know that?”
“No,” said Howard. “Really? Vegetable matter?”
“Wheat, mostly.”
“Speaking of eating,” Sylvia said, “we’ve brought along this basket.”
Mr. Jimmers dropped his hoe and set off toward the house, rubbing his hands together as if he hadn’t eaten anything except Postum and Swiss chard in days. “I’ll just put on a tablecloth,” he said, prying off his rubber boots on the front porch. Sylvia slipped her shoes off, and Howard did, too, realizing too late that his socks had holes in the toes. Maybe it would make him look vulnerable, he thought, and would be a good ploy. He’d have to suffer cold feet again, though.
It was at lunch that he brought up the topic of the sketch. Awkwardly, and pretending not to care very much, he said, “About the Hoku-sai, Mr. Jimmers.”
“That would be the sketch on rice paper?” Mr. Jimmers said.
“That’s correct.”
“It’s damned rare, you know.”
“I do know that. That’s what explains my interest in it in the first place.”
“I mean to say that Hoku-sai woodcuts abound, but original sketches, especially from the Mangkwa, are rare as hen’s teeth. And items with this history, I should think, are rarer still.”
“What Howard wants to know,” Sylvia said bluntly, “is whether you’ve got the thing, Mr. Jimmers, and whether you’re willing to fork it over.”
Jimmers smiled hugely and raised his eyebrows at Sylvia. “Have another slice of this wonderful cheese, my dear,” he said. “I’m in a precarious position, of course. Mr. Graham was never found, was he? Who’s to say he’s dead? He’s assumed dead, of course, but the lack of a body rather complicates the dispersal of his property.” He winked at Sylvia before going on. “And if I’m not really certain he’s dead, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I can hardly go about giving his things away, regardless of quite possibly spurious letters.” He held his hand up in order to put a stop to Howard’s protests. “There are no end of awful people in the world, who would be entirely happy to think they’ve fooled Mr. Jimmers and gotten their hands on this curious—ah, sketch, as you put it. What makes you think it’s a Hoku-sai?”
“Isn’t it?” Howard asked.
“Of course it’s not. You see the problem, then. You’re blundering around, aren’t you? You haven’t any idea what you want. All you know is that you want it. Should you have it, though? That’s the question.”
“So my letter of acquisition, signed by Graham, means nothing to you?”
“On the contrary, my boy. It means ever so much. It means you might easily be the man who now or very shortly will own this valuable object that we’ve been discussing. For the moment, I mean to say, you are not the man. What we would like is not always what is, but it might be what will be, if I make myself clear.”
Mr. Jimmers nibbled a piece of bread contentedly, as if it didn’t take more than a good crumb or two to satisfy him. “I wish I could find something here to offer you two by way of dessert,” he said regretfully. “I had a paper bag full of horehound drops somewhere. I can’t remember quite where. I haven’t seen them for
the better part of a year. Wild horehound, put together by the Sunberry people.”
“That’s all right,” Howard said quickly.
“It’s not all right, not entirely. I’ve become a regular Mother Hubbard. Nothing to offer guests. You’re the first I’ve had, though, in years. I promise that next time I see you I’ll have something nice. I’ve developed a taste for canned-spaghetti sandwiches on a superior-quality white bread. Nothing fancy, just bread, margarine, and spaghetti—canned spaghetti. Doesn’t really matter what brand.”
So the subject of the sketch had been brought up and abandoned in the space of a single minute, buried beneath Mr. Jimmers’ spaghetti sandwich. He had half promised something, but Howard couldn’t be sure what. What was it he had said? That Howard might well be “the man”—as if Mr. Jimmers were waiting not simply for someone with a letter of requisition, but for someone who knew the answer to a riddle, or would know the riddle itself, or would have the secret password.
“About the sketch, then,” Howard said. “I understand your hesitation, and I hate to keep bothering you with it. That’s the problem. I don’t want to make a pest of myself, but I’ve got the letter from Mr. Graham, which I believe to be perfectly authentic, and—”
“I’m certain of it,” Mr. Jimmers said, interrupting. “Perfectly authentic. May I see the letter again?”
“Absolutely,” Howard said, pulling it out of his coat and handing it across.
Mr. Jimmers studied it, nodding and squinting, and then abruptly tore it into fragments and threw the pieces over his shoulder.
“Wait!” Howard shouted, getting up out of his chair. It was too late, though: the pieces lay on the floor. He sat back down, his mouth open. Sylvia was smiling faintly, as if she thought the whole production was funny, but didn’t dare laugh out loud.
“Now you’ve got one fewer scrap of paper to worry about,” Mr. Jimmers said to him. “Avoid focusing your energies on trash. That wasn’t worth anything to you. It was meant to draw you up here, that’s all. This isn’t a matter of museums. This is something more. You don’t need letters of ‘requisition,’ as you put it. The whole world is tired of your letter of requisition. It makes them sick. Remember the promise in the adage—everything will be revealed in the fullness of time.” Then he held his hand up again, as if he would prevent Howard from commenting. “The fullness of time.”
He touched his mouth with his napkin and said, “Come along. I’ll show you something noteworthy—something that will relieve your mind immensely.” He tipped Howard a wink now, as if he were going to let the both of them in on a secret, and they followed him into the parlor with the fireplace, which was lit but had died down into a pool of embers. He threw in a handful of brown pine needles and blew on them and then laid a half dozen cedar sticks on top, which flared up immediately and began to pop and crackle, lighting up the little area around the hearth.
Mr. Jimmers stood very still, listening, and then tiptoed to one, then the other doorway, and stood listening at each for a moment. Then, putting a finger to his lips, he eased a stone out of the face of the fireplace, reached back into the recess, and pulled out a carefully folded bit of paper.
Howard caught his breath. Here it was, still in its hidey-hole but no longer in its case. Mr. Jimmers nodded at him and unfolded it with steady hands. “Not another of this quality in the world,” he whispered. “Never again will be.” Howard could see inked images through the paper.
“What do you think?” Mr. Jimmers asked, holding the sketch up so that the firelight glowed through it. The confusion of folds in the paper appeared almost to be Xerox reproductions—the shadows of folds—and not authentic folds at all. It was very fine work, the rice paper yellowed with age and frayed along the edges. “This,” said Jimmers, gesturing at one of the images, “is the flowering staff. And these are meant to represent secret keys. This one is a cup and this is a coin and this is a tree by a river. And if you fold the thing in half twice, what you get is …” He folded it in half twice and said, “A broken egg. Now watch.”
He folded the sketch again, warping it first and then shoving his hands together so that the center third of the paper disappeared behind the outside thirds, and then he turned it around diamond-wise and folded the top corner down. As if by magic the broken sections of eggshell became whole, and random spots and lines and shadings on the sketch formed a face on the patched-together egg. It sat now on the limb of the tree by the river and held the staff in its hand, its thin arms stretched out along smaller limbs on either side, almost as if it were crucified to the tree.
An electric thrill ran through Howard, and he was surprised to find that Sylvia had taken his hand, as if she felt that something was pending, some revelation. The firelight behind the rice paper made the images waver and jump as if they were seen through ocean water. Mr. Jimmers let go of one of the corners of the sketch, snapped his fingers, and the fire flared in the fireplace, throwing out a great wash of greenish-blue flame that seemed to consume the rice paper sketch even as he held it.
Looking dumbstruck with surprise, Jimmers shouted and waved the burning scrap dramatically, as if it were scorching his hand but he couldn’t manage to let go of it, and then with a wild flourish he threw it onto the stones of the floor and trod on it until the flames were out and there was nothing but a few black fragments left, smudging the gray stones.
“Damn it,” Mr. Jimmers said, looking morosely at the bottom of his stockinged feet. “It’s that damned cedar—throws God’s own amount of sparks.”
Howard realized that his own mouth was open. He had meant to shout, but there hadn’t been time, it had all happened so fast.
“What a tragedy,” Mr. Jimmers said. “What an unbearable loss.”
“You’re joking,” Howard managed to say. He was certain suddenly that Mr. Jimmers had pulled a fast one, with all the finger snapping and the whoosh of flame. He had pitched something into the fire to cause the flare-up and had pocketed the sketch and burned up a dummy of some sort. He bent over and picked up a fragment—one that still had a bit of unburned paper clinging to the black ash. There was a slash of brown ink on it—easily identifiable as the top of the flowering staff. So Jimmers had burned a copy. It couldn’t have been the real one. Still, it had looked to be the real one. Howard waited for Jimmers to snatch it back out of his coat and laugh.
Instead he sat down heavily in a stuffed chair and buried his forehead in his hands. “Alas,” he said.
“You can’t really have burned it up …” Howard looked to Sylvia for support. She shrugged and shook her head, as if to tell him to drop it entirely.
“Not a word of this leaks out!” Mr. Jimmers said, almost frantically, jerking his head up and staring at the two of them. He wore a hunted look, the look of a man whose life was suddenly threatened by an unseen foe. He reached into his coat, hesitated, cocking his head. Howard nodded inwardly. Here it came …
But Mr. Jimmers merely pulled out a ragged old handkerchief and mopped his brow. “I believe a drink is called for under the circumstances. A strong one.”
Howard couldn’t disagree. He and Sylvia followed Mr. Jimmers back out toward the kitchen, where Jimmers pulled the cork out of the bottle of Sunberry wine that Howard had tasted two nights back. He poured out two tumblers full, nearly killing off the bottle and announcing that he never touched the stuff. Sylvia sipped at hers, but Howard couldn’t bring himself to it and set his glass down untouched, pretending to be distracted for a moment by something out the window. Then Mr. Jimmers wandered off, seeming lost and depressed, and left the two of them alone.
“What about a walk along the bluffs?” Howard asked loudly, catching Sylvia’s eye and jerking his head.
“You children go along without me,” Mr. Jimmers said from the next room. “I’ve got to think this through. I’ve betrayed my trust. I …” He fell silent, and they heard him slump heavily into a chair. Sylvia folded up the tablecloth and repacked the dishes, leaving the remainder of the f
ood for Mr. Jimmers. When they peeked into the parlor a moment later, he was nodding in his chair, asleep.
Howard still half expected him to spring up and laugh, but that didn’t happen; instead he began to snore, his head lolling forward over his chest.
13
“WHERE are you going?” Sylvia asked when they’d gone outside.
“For a walk on the bluffs, like I said.”
“Now?”
“Of course now. What’s the hurry? You don’t have to be back for another forty-five minutes. We just got had, that’s what I think.”
Sylvia was silent, walking next to him with her arms folded across her chest. “It looked like a trick.”
“Sure it was. He’s got the damned thing in his coat. He’s no more asleep than I am. What he’s doing now is hiding the thing again, and I’ll bet you a shiny new dime that it’s not going back behind the rock, either.” Howard looked over his shoulder, back toward the house. They had gotten around toward the rear now. A trail led away through the berry vines, down along the edge of the bluffs where someone had long ago erected a picket fence, to keep people well back away from the edge, maybe. Howard walked down the path until they were hidden from the house by wild shrubbery. He pulled a key out of his pocket.
“What’s that?” Sylvia asked.
“A key.”
“I can see that. What’s it for?”
“Jimmers’ shed. I’m going to see what’s inside it. There were a half dozen keys on strings inside the back door. I slipped it off of the hook when he fell asleep in the chair. You were cleaning up the lunch stuff.”
“How do you know it’s the right one?”
“I looked at the lock. It’s a regular antique. This key is old enough and cut right. It’s the only one of the bunch that’s anywhere near working. The way I see it, the padlocks on all these outbuildings are probably keyed the same. It wouldn’t make sense to carry a dozen keys.”
The Paper Grail Page 17