by Robert Stone
“What’s this, sailor,” the hawk-faced man inquired, “the wine of astonishment?”
When the old man leaned down to take Pablo’s weapon from beneath his open shirt, Pablo realized how unsteady the man’s hand actually was. Had he not been thrown so off balance himself, he might have tried a move. But he had lost for the moment. The sclerotic nature of the old man’s movements both frightened and encouraged him.
“Come visit,” the man said to Pablo. “I been expecting you all night.”
“Not me,” Pablo said, blinking under the shaded light of the room. “We both got the wrong people. See, I was playing a joke on a friend of mine.”
“Aha,” the man with the gun said. “Funny.”
“Honest to Christ,” Pablo pleaded. “Now just take it easy!”
“Tell me something. How easy you want me to take it?” He motioned Pablo deeper into the room. It was a room that was clean and without character, unclaimed by its occupant, everything the management’s. “In my former organization when funny people poured water under our doors we would blow the door apart.”
“Hey, man … honest to Christ!”
“If I would have done that it would have been your blood I’d see coming under my door. But I’d wait before I put my head out, believe me.”
“It’s a mistake is all, see.”
The man carefully seated himself on the side of his bed; he was half turned away from Pablo.
“I saw you on the boat today. You stank all over the dock of petty thief.” Naftali was inspecting the serial number on the stock of Pablo’s service forty-five. “But a petty thief with problems. Right away I knew we’d meet again.”
He had put his own gun down on the bed to look at Pablo’s.
“This is U.S. government property, no?” Naftali asked. He removed the clip from Pablo’s gun, set it down and picked up his own automatic. Leaning back on the bolsters, he held the gun on his lap.
“That’s right,” Pablo said.
“And you … whose property are you?”
Pablo made him no answer.
“Well, you’re too late, thief.” Naftali took a piece of paper from his bathrobe pocket, wadded and threw it toward Pablo. What Pablo picked up and read was a bank receipt for the transfer of gulden three hundred eighty thousand to the Amsterdam branch of the Nederlandse Algemeen Bank. The account to which the money was consigned was held in the name of a M. Blanc, a resident of Brussels, Belgium.
“Know what it means, boychick?”
“I believe I know what it means,” Pablo said.
“It means you would die for nothing, thief. It means the money’s gone.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“You know what’s customary?” Naftali asked.
Pablo took a deep breath and glanced at the door. It looked very far away. When he turned back to face Naftali he noticed for the first time the night table beside the old man’s bed. The table was covered with bottles—one of Mexican brandy, another of liquid Nembutal, clearly labeled in English, yet another small one of insulin with a syringe beside it.
“I won’t ask you for a break,” Pablo said.
“It never hurts to ask.”
Pablo turned away from the sight of the barrel.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Nothing to say for yourself? A name?”
“Pablo,” Pablo said.
“Whose life is worth more, Pablo? Yours or mine?”
Tabor looked with hatred into the man’s cold gray eyes. He could not stand to be the object of games.
“I’m gonna walk outa here,” he told the man on the bed. “You can do what you like.”
“That’s right,” Naftali told him. “I’m entitled.”
Pablo stayed where he was.
“Tonight I indulge my every whim, why not?”
Confused and frightened, Pablo bared his teeth and tried to shrug. The man seemed extremely drunk. Or drugged. Yet his movements were deliberate. He was crazy, Pablo decided, and sick. His eyes were red-rimmed, he was pale and sweating. Sick to death, Pablo thought.
“Please,” Tabor said. He knew it was a terrible thing to say.
“I think I waited for you,” Naftali said. “The thief always comes.”
Pablo panicked, coiled himself to spring and almost lost his balance. He was too frightened.
“You embarrass me,” the old man said. Yet he was not so old, Pablo saw. Sickness and fatigue had drained him. “I’m dying.”
Tabor could only stand and stare, taking each breath as it came.
“Do you understand, Pablo?”
Pablo slowly shook his head.
Naftali smiled coldly.
“You are interrupting my suicide.”
Tabor’s mouth fell open.
“It’s terrible,” Naftali said. “A coarse intrusion at a solemn moment. What a rude fellow you are.”
“I … I … don’t know what to tell you,” Pablo stammered. “I made a mistake.”
“Definitely.”
“I made a big mistake,” Pablo Tabor admitted. “But I ain’t gonna crawl, mister. Whatever happens gonna happen.”
Naftali laughed and his eyes closed for a moment and Pablo considered a bolt for the door. The predatory eyes were on him before he could compose a move.
“You’re young, Pablo.”
Tabor swallowed.
“Have a drink,” Naftali said. He reached over, took the brandy bottle from his night table and tossed it to Pablo. Catching it, Pablo held it by his chest for a moment, then took it in his right hand. He licked his lips. He was preparing to throw it in the man’s face.
“Don’t even think about it,” Naftali warned him. “I want to see you drink.”
Pablo stared at the bottle.
“No,” he told Naftali. “No way.”
“Think it’s poisoned?” Naftali laughed again. “That would be funny, eh? I could go to eternity with a little thief at my feet. A Viking funeral. Don’t worry,” the old man said. “It’s not the best brandy but it won’t kill you.”
Pablo took a sip and gently put the bottle on the foot of the bed.
“Sit,” Naftali ordered him. He went across the room to a straight-backed chair and sat down with his head in his hands.
“We’ll tell the story of our lives,” Naftali said.
“I’m sorry,” Pablo said. “I’m awful sorry. Lemme go, will ya?”
Naftali shook his head solemnly.
“An extrovert to the last, that’s me, Pablo. But I’m a good listener too. Since you’re here, we’ll chat. But it must be about important things. Time is short.”
Pablo started to speak, to plead. The barrel of the pistol was still trained on him. He put his hand over his eyes.
“I’m a thief like you,” Naftali said. “An older and much better thief. Smarter. If I were not a thief—who knows what I’d be. A geologist. An opera singer maybe. A baritone. Scarpia.” Still pointing the gun at Pablo, he leaned forward and took the brandy from beside his slippered feet. “Truthfully,” he told Tabor, “I think I would be a pianist, strange as it seems. Now tell me—given your intelligence—if you were not a thief what would you be?”
“The thing is,” Pablo said, “I’m not a thief at all.”
“Answer seriously.”
“Shit, man, I don’t know. Look, if you’re gonna be easy about this, would you mind if I just left?”
“I would mind,” Naftali said. “Now answer.”
“I got no idea in hell.”
“Try harder.”
“I suppose I’d be a lifer in the Coast Guard.”
“Harder.”
“I’d do things different.” Then to his own surprise he said: “Maybe I’d be a better father.”
“Ah,” Naftali said. “Now you’re talking. Father to whom?”
“You want to know my story do you, mister?”
“I do. In your own words.”
“I got a little boy. Nine. I was just wishin’
he had a better father. It just come to me here.”
“Then why do you have to be a thief?”
“Because I got turned around. Just turned around and around.”
“Yes. Me also. What turned you around?”
“What did? Things did, is what. Things.”
Naftali took the bottle of liquid Nembutal in his hand and drank from it. He followed the drink with brandy, which he swallowed without blinking, his eyes still on Pablo’s.
“Things,” he said. “Life? History?”
“Sure,” Pablo said. “If you like.”
A small wind chime tinkled against the closed shutter on the window. Naftali turned toward it. Pablo saw that his hand was still around the pistol.
“The last time I saw my father,” the old man said, “he was standing on a piano stool. He was showing our visitors that there was no jewelry concealed in the light fixture. It was in a faraway country of which you know nothing. My father was wearing only pajamas and I had never—although I was already a graduate—I had never seen him in pajamas before. And my mother stood beside the stool and her hand was raised because she was afraid he would fall. I was there. I was also afraid. I wasn’t Naftali then.”
Pablo frowned. He could make no sense of it.
“Did they find any jewelry?” he asked after a moment.
“No jewelry. But in the stool there were some nocturnes of Chopin. Manuscripts in his hand. Right in the stool. So typical of my father.”
“Huh,” Pablo said. “Did they find them?”
“Oh yes, they found them. They came back for them. And for my parents and my sisters also. But I was gone.” He picked up the brandy bottle and tossed it to Pablo. Pablo took a long drink. Naftali was listening to the wind chime.
“Hey, that’s tough,” Pablo said.
“Tough,” Naftali repeated. “Happened a million times. Always has. Continues. History. History will turn you around every time, sailor.”
“Well,” Pablo said. “I hope you got your own back off the bastards.”
Propped on one elbow against the bolster, Naftali shrugged.
“I had revenge. It wasn’t enough.” He turned toward the shuttered window again and the breeze drifting through stirred his sparse hair. “You can’t get your own back.”
Naftali’s eyes were dulled. Pablo began to think he might come out all right.
“I keep remembering trains, Pablo. The last trains. Little gymnasia sweethearts waiting on platforms. Their parents waiting for them. And I alone am escaped to tell thee.”
“What I don’t understand,” Pablo said, “is how come when you got all that money you’re gonna throw it away.”
“If you lived long enough, you might understand,” Naftali said. “But you won’t.” He settled back beside the bolster; his hand, holding the pistol, rested at his side. “Know what Nietzsche tells us? He tells us that the thought of suicide helps bring a man through many a long hard night. Well, I’m grateful to Nietzsche for that observation—but, danke schön, no more nights.”
Another breeze licked at the wind chime.
“All that bread, man—that could buy you a couple of good ones.”
“You can buy lots of fancy nights. But you can’t buy morning. Try sometime and buy yourself a short night for money, you’ll see what I mean.”
Talking was the thing, Pablo thought. “I couldn’t be that negative,” he said. “The way I see it, if money don’t mean nothing then nothing does.”
“I know the value of everything,” Naftali said. “I’ve stolen it all and I’ve sold it all.”
“Life is life. You just don’t blow it off. Not me.”
“A little cinder in the wind, Pablo—that’s what you are. You’re telling me—who set such store on my survival—that life is life?”
“It’s me gonna be alive in the morning,” Pablo said. He hoped it had not been rash of him.
“What for?”
“What for? Well … to keep it rolling, I guess.”
“To keep it rolling,” Naftali repeated. “To make the world go round. Maybe it goes better without you—what about that?”
Pablo watched him warily. The man seemed balanced on the edge of consciousness but his falcon’s gaze was still sharp enough.
“I never thought of it that way,” Pablo said.
“Try it.”
“Are you gonna let me go?” Pablo asked.
“I had three wives,” Naftali said. “Each one was an idealist. All went to prison. And I, a thief, a murderer, have never seen the inside of a prison.”
“You been lucky.”
“Why should I let you go?” Naftali demanded. He pulled himself upright in a sudden spasm of passion. “What are you worth? Explain yourself.”
“Everybody’s worth something,” Pablo said. “I mean—everybody’s life got some meaning to it. You know—there’s a reason for people.”
“No kidding? A reason for you? What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Pablo confessed. “I ain’t found out yet. But I know there is one.”
“But you’re vicious and stupid, are you not?”
“No!” Pablo said hotly. He was shocked and enraged. “Of course not!”
Naftali’s eyes went out of focus for a moment. His gaze wandered. Pablo tensed.
“I could have put an end to everything with this,” the old man said, lifting his pistol. “But I thought—no. I want to go slow. I want to remember. Can you believe it? I wanted to remember everything.”
“I believe it,” Pablo said. He felt himself under Naftali’s cold scrutiny again.
“You’re a very stupid young man,” Naftali told him. “I tell you this for your own good because you need to know it.”
“Can I have a drink?” Pablo asked. Naftali let him come forward and take the bottle off the bed.
“When you’re dead in some gutter for a dime, what happens to your son? It was you with the son, yes?”
“Yeah,” Pablo said. “It was me.”
“What happens to him? He becomes a thief like his father? Or what?”
Pablo put the brandy back on Naftali’s bed.
“You really give a shit?”
“Tell me.”
“He won’t be nothing like me,” Pablo said. “He’ll be the total opposite of me.”
Naftali turned toward the breeze again. The wind chime sounded.
“You won’t get to sniff that wind where you’re going,” Pablo told him.
“I leave you the wind,” Naftali said.
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Of what should I be scared? Of devils?”
Pablo was impressed.
“You got a real heavy rep around this ocean, Naftali. I guess you know that.”
“I got a heavy rep all over,” Naftali agreed. “For my avarice and my readiness to kill.”
“Listen,” Pablo hastened to say, “I appreciate your bein’ easy about this. I wouldn’t blame you if …” Naftali’s smile stopped him. A hard, bad smile, he thought. A dead smile. He froze in his chair.
“Revenge is not enough,” Naftali said. “I know.” The smile faded and the hardness left his eyes. “Not revenge. Not money. Liquor. Opium. Women. All the things we like, Pablo, you and me. They’re not enough.”
“Easy for you to say, pal. You’ve had all those things.”
“Not enough.”
“Well, hell. What’s enough then?”
“I am not the man to ask, young sir. I can only tell you what is not.”
Pablo began to rise from the chair but Naftali raised the gun and waved him back down. He took more Nembutal, then brandy, and rolled the bottle to Pablo.
“Drink.”
Pablo had another pull and eased back in the chair.
“Trains,” Naftali and softly. Pablo saw with embarrassment that he was crying.
“I sure did come to rip you off, Naftali. Sorry I picked tonight.”
“Thank your lucky stars you picked tonight,” Naftali sa
id. He kept the gun pointed at Pablo; his left hand was groping under the bolster. It came up a clenched fist.
“If you’re asked—tell them I’m dead. Tell them you saw me. That there’s no mistake.”
Pablo nodded. Naftali extended his closed left hand and opened it under Pablo’s eyes. In the colorless palm was a small bright stone; it took Pablo a few seconds to realize that the stone was a diamond.
“Take it,” Naftali said. His voice was empty of intonation, running down. Pablo looked at the stone, then at Naftali.
“You’re giving me this?”
“I’m giving. Take it.”
It was the biggest diamond Pablo had ever seen, although he had not seen many. It appeared to be five times the size of the one in his wife’s wedding ring and he had still been paying for that one when he went over the hill.
“Goddamn,” he said.
“I don’t want them to get it here,” Naftali said.
“Goddamn,” Pablo said. “You’re all right, boss, no shit.”
“And,” Naftali said softly, “I don’t want you searching my room afterwards. It has … bad associations for me.”
Smiling like a child, Pablo feasted his eyes on the diamond.
“Since I was young,” Naftali told him, “I haven’t given anything to anyone. Now there’s no one but you and it costs me nothing. So take it, thief. Give it to the son you talk about and tell him …” He broke off in a massive yawn that seemed to exhaust him. “Or keep it and lie. Do what your nature compels.”
“What do you want me to tell him, boss?”
“There is a creature in another dimension whose jewelry is dead worlds. When this creature requires more of them it plants the seed of life on a tiny planet. After a while there are people and then nothing—a patina.”
“You want me to tell him that?”
The pistol fell from Naftali’s hand. At the sound Pablo jumped up in alarm.
“The thief always comes,” Naftali said. “Weren’t you told by your mother?”
“Not by my mother, no.”
“Yes,” Naftali said. “Always.”
The old man’s eyes began to roll backward in their sockets. He said something too faintly for Pablo to hear.