The Path Of All That Falls

by Franz Neumann

  He sat in the dark for a few minutes, then clicked on his desk lamp and ran a finger down the spines of the books stacked before him. Two keys provided by Wrest sat atop the books, one age-smoothed brass and the other grooved and ridge-edged to match the necessities of thwarting modern crime. The books were mostly novels, fairly new, and bore names he didn’t recognize: Callios, Megis, Draper, Young. If anything, these names sounded like upstart Asian piano manufacturers. This much he’d found: within each book was printed the name of Wrest’s son. Why Regi’s father believed the books important, Gaudin couldn’t yet fathom. But the years had taught him that it was better to be left out of the confidence of certain people, especially when the alternative was to risk being in the know. Some bits of unsavory knowledge could take months or years to dispel or box away from immediate recollection. He’d rather be paid to leaf through several thousand pages of prose and thumb through photographs. He wasn’t going to complain. Nor ask too many questions. He didn’t need any new intimate ties with the family. He opened a desk drawer, lifted a sheaf of papers and took out a photograph Wrest’s wife had given to him a year ago.

  In it, she’s got her mouth open in surprise as a stream of milk pours down her breasts. He can feel the cold, just looking at her. She’s supposed to be a farm girl or something. Gaudin’s not quite sure why she thought he liked farm girls. In the darkness beneath her raised skirt he can see the white of her inner thighs and the hair at their intersection. He didn’t love her when he’d opened his mail and found the photos. And after his refusal, she had not spoken to him again. He wasn’t so much a fool as to mess with Wrest’s wife, however open their marriage and however knowledgeable he was to Wrest’s own pool of young women. It was still Wrest’s wife. But he was still a man and he set the photo against the books, unzipped his pants and pretended that things were different.

  When Gaudin left his study, he went through his coat pockets until he found his cassette recorder. The tape inside held his conversation with Chase at the cafe earlier in the day. He took the player with him to the bathroom, the tape groaning as it rewound. Balanced on the rim of his bathtub lay a thin red sweater he’d never seen before. He held it up, but did not have to extend his arm’s reach much to stretch the sleeves to full length. The sweater was soft, but smelled harshly of a cocktail of perfume and cigarettes when he brought it to his nose. He hoped his life never sank to Wrest’s level, dropping all responsibility and spending his life fondling young women young enough to have never used a typewriter or played an LP or grown up—like Wrest, and to some extent Gaudin as well—knowing what it is to experience the lowness of depravity and the work to climb out from it. This girl was probably attached to Wrest for easy money and probably didn’t even know who he really was. Maybe what joined Wrest and his latest girl was that they had begun at opposite ends of time and circumstance and met now in the need to escape dissatisfaction and boredom, twin evils of any income bracket. It was no excuse, of course. Gaudin neatly folded the sweater and placed it outside the door on the credenza. He couldn’t imagine himself having a girl of the kind and age that this sweater belonged to. Then a twang of envy ran through him briefly, one hand yet on the sweater, the other on the envelope of pictures placed on the credenza. He felt there was some choice to be made here, but what both hands touched were, deep down, of the same genre of corruption. He picked up the photos and thought how he just needed to go through the motions of investigating Regi’s accident, come upon some plausible cause, then use the hours of billable work—because it would take hours and hours—to pay off his debt to Wrest, both his employer and creditor. He needed the sovereignty of his apartment restored. If he ate in and took the metro, he figured he could cover the rest of the down payment for his retirement home by the end of the year. Then, one way or another, he would leave the city to the murder of crows, the tourists, even if it meant living in a trailer on his property in the south. The retirement parcel that didn’t yet have a road leading to it, nor electricity, sewer or water.

  The tape recorder screeched as it finished rewinding. Gaudin set it down on the closed toilet, beside the envelope of pictures. He ran the bathtub’s tap until it hurt to hold his hand in the water, and then he set the plunger in and let the tub fill, watching the silver band of aerated water edge up the porcelain sides. He stripped, began the tape, and settled slowly into the hot water.

  The hand-held player’s speaker filled the tightness of the bathroom with the hiss of distant traffic and summer air. Gaudin reached for the envelope, folded back the brads and opened the flap. He pulled out the finger-thick stack of photos and began flipping through them as the tape replayed the clink of glasses and laughter. Other background noises were picked up by the tape recorder that hadn’t registered to him at the time: a car’s honk and the ever-present drone of distant airplanes, played on urban frequencies to which he’d gone deaf.

  — So what are you really? Chase was asking, his voice nervously upbeat. An inquisitive tone.—An assassin? Going to provide a little revenge for Regi and his father?

  Gaudin remembered his little spurt of amusement at hearing that, but then a quick, unsettling sadness knowing that his outsides could gave credence to the idea.

  — No, though I met one once. An assassin. At a bar. He was showing money he’d been given as an advance.

  — Who did he–?

  — No one. He took the advance and moved away, spent it. But when he came back from wherever he’d been, they roughed him up, showed him a hired man can’t treat his employers that way.

  — What happened to him?

  — What happened to him? They took him back.

  — Oh, Chase said.

  — So why were you following Regi around all the time? Gaudin asked.—On the metro, for instance.

  — I was hired by Ostrich.

  — Who?

  — The man who hired me.

  — We’ve established that, Gaudin said.

  — Well, you know, Regi’s father.

  — You mean Wrest.

  — That’s right, Chase said.

  — You don’t know who you work for?

  — Of course. He never wanted me to call him Wrest. Just Ostrich.

  — He looks a little like an Ostrich, doesn’t he.

  — The big black suit, the small head.

  — He’s fast, too, for his age.

  Gaudin lay in the tub, his belly and knees protruding from the steaming water. He could feel the border on his skin between the warm water and the breeze of early evening. In his hand he held the blurry, middle-of-the-night, black and white close-up of Regi on the metro. Regi was pale and thin, with black hair. From other photos, Gaudin knew he had black eyes. In this photo, he had a hint of emaciation about him, like a man being eaten inside by heartache or cancer. His eyelids were pale, like newly minted coins.

  — Back to this one, Gaudin said on the tape. Another plane droned overhead.

  — Yes, these two as well.

  — Okay, back to these three.

  Gaudin shuffled to find the photos to which their earlier conversation referred. It was a series of shots, the time of day not rightfully called afternoon, but hanging on to just enough of the atmosphere to make it seem plausible that evening was still a way off. The photos were taken some thirty meters from the spot on the bridge where Regi had been standing. It was possible to see the rear edge of the tourist boat and another bridge in the distance. The shot was taken against the sun, every particle in the air sparkling.

  — There, Chase said.

  — I don’t see it.

  — That.

  — The black thing?

  — Yes, Chase said.

  The tape was silent while Gaudin then, as now, examined the photograph more closely. He could make out Regi’s black jacket. It almost seemed like the sleeve of another man’s coat, for it bent down at an odd angle like the arm of a man finished pointing at something. In Gaudin’s eyes, the photo’s revelation flickered between this pers
pective and the real event, Regi’s upper body several feet off the rim of the bridge, not yet falling, but in a position of irrecoverable imbalance. Only a sliver, only a black sleeve. The blurred torsos of passersby obscured the rest of the view. Gaudin noticed that it was impossible to see if Regi had climbed over the short stone railing and jumped, or if, concealed behind the shapes of pedestrians, there was a hand yet outstretched in the finishing act of deliberate push. Gaudin rubbed his knee, then examined the other two photos. One before, one after. He held them in a row. The first showed what Chase said was Regi. The second was the one he’d been scrutinizing, and the third showed no trace of Regi. Gaudin could see the movement of other pedestrians, some entering on one frame and leaving on the third, others still standing, caught in conversation or a gait-stalling thought.

  — But you haven’t told me why you were there, said Gaudin’s tape-recorded voice.—Wrest wanted you to take a picture of his son jumping from the bridge, or being pushed from the bridge, or?

  — He’d hired me weeks before. Told me to keep an eye on his son. I guess to make sure the son didn’t do anything to tarnish the father’s image. The elections, you know.

  — What did Wrest say when you called to tell him his son had been pushed?

  — I didn’t. Wrest had told me Regi would be elsewhere that evening, but I’d been following Regi all day and knew otherwise. I felt misled by Wrest. As though I wasn’t supposed to be on the bridge when I was.

  — So you didn’t report the fall?

  — I hailed a passing police car. He took my name.

  Gaudin heard himself order two more beers. A woman’s voice came on the tape, shouting, “That’s wonderful!” A car horn honked once. Then again, sustained.

  — So.

  — So, Chase said.

  — Tell me.

  — What?

  — Everything.

  In the tub, Gaudin put the three photos to the side and closed his eyes. He found his face cloth, soaked it, rung it out slightly, and placed it over his eyes. He rolled up a towel, placed it in the hollow of his neck, and rested more comfortably. The water was already cooling, his face feeling like it was daubed in aftershave of the kind without scent, for men who believed it was more important for their own natural musk to come through, the kind of aftershave Gaudin had stopped using.

  — He’s an interpreter. French into German, Dutch, English, Danish, Spanish. The other way around, too. He signs his letters The Polyglot, Chase said.

  — The Polyglot?

  — He’s good.

  — He should work for the E.U.?

  — He did. Lived in Brussels for two months, then quit. Dissatisfied with the job, or just generally dissatisfied.

  — How do you know all this?

  — I used to work for Le Monde, Chase said.

  — So why does a dissatisfied linguist jump or get pushed off a bridge? Any ideas who could be after him?

  — I was told that’s your business. I just take pictures.

  — Who told you that?

  — Wrest. He said I should leave the thinking to you.

  — From the photos, it seems to me he jumped.

  — That’s not what Regi’s told him, Chase answered. He says he was pushed.

  — Well, that’s Regi. Besides, how could anyone get away with pushing someone from a bridge in the middle of so much traffic? It would be an astounding feat. Truly remarkable.

  Gaudin heard himself exhaling from a cigarillo and, in the bath, he was filled with the desire for a smoke. The one he’d lit for incense in the other room was probably out and had a few minutes left on it. He pulled off the face towel, stood up in the bath water and dried himself off. He slung on a towel and went for the ashtray. He relit the cigarillo, held it in his lips and stood at the window. From the darkness of the kitchen he could see out to the street below, the slow, short forms of people coming home from long days.

  From the tape player in the bathroom came the sound of photos being shuffled. Gaudin remembered that the photos held images of Regi, cell phone held to his ear like a conch shell, his other hand around a beer or coffee, his gaze fixed across the street, through a park, or even at the next-door cafe. Regi’s clients never saw him, Chase explained, so he could get as close as the border of ear-shot. Chase had circled Regi’s clients with a red wax pencil, guilty loops that held a woman in a carpet shop, a man at a table strewn with papers and trying to explain something to a companion, a window behind which a business transaction was falling into place at the speed of Regi’s translations.

  — Engaged in conversation and flipping the grammar from one side to the other as easily as a translucently thin crepe, Gaudin said to Chase.—The polyglot drawn to the natural inclination to know one’s clients, the desire to match the timbre of a voice with the instrument of the mouth and face. Or something like that.

  — Yes, Chase said. A neighbor upstairs flushed a toilet and the sound of water echoed down the pipes for a few moments.—That’s him.

  — Those are lines from a book he translated. A novel. By Draper, I think. I can’t remember. Ever heard of him?

  — No.

  — Neither have I. Maybe Regi likes role-playing.

  There was a pause from the bathroom, a long hiatus that broke Gaudin away from his momentary transfixion on the streets below. He walked to the bedroom, grabbed a pair of pants, a T-shirt and a stretched tan cotton sweater that made his stomach less noticeable.

  — But why would he act out a character from a book he’s already translated? Chase asked.—I could understand it if it was something in progress.

  “Maybe he’s a little crazy,” Gaudin said aloud as he stepped into his underwear.

  — Maybe he’s a little crazy, his recorded voice said.

  Gaudin laughed. Recording on tape made him realize the strangeness of memory. Asked to write down a conversation from the day, Gaudin would leave gaping holes. But listening to a magnetically aligned conversation, his memory would jump in a split second before the spoken words and form them, completely unconscious that the words lay there on the tape. The phrases might not even come from memory, but from the same reaction to the same set of arguments in the conversation, as though, like twins who live apart yet act, buy, and live the same way, his thoughts now were a twin of his thoughts then, no matter the distance of time that lay between. He wondered if Regi’s apparently strange behavior was not something similarly related. The original recording, the subject matter of the books he’d translated, having been made, but the repetition of it still wanting uttering.

  There was the sound of coins.—Merci, Chase said. The afternoon cut out, replaced by the squeal of tape tightening on its spindles.

  Gaudin walked into the bathroom and started the tape on its other side. He reached his hand into the water and pulled out the bathtub plunger, watching as the water receded peacefully until it was ankle deep. A miniature twister formed over the drain, spinning wildly and sucking at the air like something deep down was struggling against asphyxiation, the drain tubercular dark. He ran the tap again, if only to hear the light-hearted gurgle of fresh cold water. The tape ran silently and then the recording continued, the sound of the city more muffled now. They were in Regi’s apartment, across the street from Le Coin. The entrance to the building was through an arch of interlocking stone wide enough for a small horse-drawn carriage. The side walls were a striation of scars. Inside lay a courtyard of parked cars with their side mirrors folded in or missing. Regi’s apartment was on the two top floors.

  — Look around, Gaudin said, as they entered Regi’s apartment with the two keys Wrest had left him.

  Gaudin remembered the apartment, but wished he had a record of photos to aid his recollection, like Chase’s record of Regi’s movements. In a week, a month, his memory would be hazy, the perspective and proportions skewed. Even now, he wondered if he was leaving out any furniture, any places of concealment from his memory of the rooms. The tape made a scraping noise, the sound of
the microphone rubbing against the fabric of his jacket as they searched. The apartment was wide, the shallow rooms stretching nearly to the category of hallways. In some rooms, Gaudin could see through windows that opened onto parallel streets.

  Gaudin walked out of his own bathroom as the tape played. He felt cramped and claustrophobic in his own apartment.

  — Chase.

  — What?

  — Here. Young, Young, Megis, Callios, Megis, Draper. Another Young. And a Draper. He’s translated all of these.

  Gaudin remembered Chase taking one of the books and cracking it open. Written inside was, Thanks for all your talents. Draper.

  Chase pressed a button to listen to Regi’s answering machine.—Nichts, he said. They continued on through the apartment. There was a living area with a wall consisting of bookshelves filled to the high ceiling with a colorful palette of CDs. Another bookshelf lived up to its name. The ceiling had a plaster oval perimeter of fronds and cherubs. Centered below the ceiling lay a fat leather couch, like an animal exhausted from heat and travel, collapsed on a sand-colored carpet. Gaudin recognized the leather as being water buffalo. He wondered whether the leather came from some giant slaughterhouse in Africa, or from poachers thinning out the veldt.

  The walls were white, like the ceiling, but hung with carpets and African art. Masks stared down at them, ebony mouths pursed in whistles of surprise, or grinning broadly, like gods free of the worry of accidents or death. The floor was original, wood. In places, finger-wide gaps ran between the sanded-down slats. The wood floor continued until it hit the tile floor of the new-looking kitchen. There, a massive array of empty wine bottles lined the backsplash like the setting for a carnival game of ring toss.