“Watch now, you son of a bitch.”
The officer sharply gave an order and one of the soldiers stood over Sylvie and began unbuckling his belt.
It was then that Benjamin began screaming again. He was screaming bloody murder, all the names of his compatriots, screaming them in a litany, most loudly his own.
NINE
AT THE END OF HER WRITTEN STATEMENT to the local constabulary relating her dealings with Nicholas, the antiquities dealer in London added a coda to her testimony: “Mr. De Nicole, or whoever he may turn out to be, was by every measure a charming, delightfully assured, extremely knowledgeable young man. Aside from the value of the stolen pieces, his departure will certainly prove a considerable loss to our firm.”
So, June thought, someone else was missing him, too.
That the sentiment was barely a month old was a cause for special heartache, and as June peered out the window glass from the back of the sedan Clines had rented for them, she realized that what she was feeling, despite the circumstance, was a deep flush of motherly pride.
Delightfully assured.
The clean type of those words was a sudden salve to her flesh, for otherwise she could hardly keep from crying out from the frightfully sharp pains in her joints and limbs. For the moment they seemed to be far-off alarums, urgent enough and real, though happening to some other unfortunate, dying woman. This dying woman, on the other hand, this one wearing a woolen skullcap and a green silk shawl wrapped snugly about her shoulders on a warm autumn evening, was in fact enjoying the first good day of the end of her life, and not even the jarring, potholed drive up the West Side Highway could call her back to her miserable bones. For she could believe that Nicholas was basically all right; that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with him; that no matter what crimes he’d committed he was essentially a promising, capable young man; that he needed, ironically, only to come back in from the world in order to thrive.
This was the mad logic of her illness, of course, and even as she understood it to be so, she took the same comfort and refuge in her thoughts of Nicholas as with the palliatives from her doctor, these new warm blankets of her life. Something had begun to happen to her body in the last weeks, and she recalled now what her doctor had warned of a month ago when she told him she was not going to see him anymore, that she was going away. Dr. Koenig said the pain would change and evolve, grow worse, much worse, and that eventually it would overwhelm her. She liked his frankness, even before she’d quit as his patient. When Dr. Koenig first informed her of the diagnosis of the stomach tumor she’d felt that horrid bleat arise in her throat, for she could tell by the grip of his unwavering stare that there was little hope for her. He wouldn’t say that, of course, Dr. Koenig being famous for his aggressive, innovative techniques, but also for his utter refusal to relent, no matter the circumstance.
June’s case was compelling, she was told by a resident, because the tumor in her stomach had insinuated itself in a manner rarely seen. She asked how and the young doctor told her, with unintended poetry, Like fingers in a jar. Eventually the cancer would spread to the other organs, but during the initial examination Dr. Koenig told her they would succeed, that they would first excise certain sections and then use other experimental regimens, some brand-new, and despite what she’d first seen in his eyes she very quickly came to believe him.
“You will realize I’m very greedy about life,” he said to her, in his stripped, weary baritone. “It’s life or nothing.”
For a time June was a model patient, and though not trying to be she became perhaps his “favorite,” a special case even among his special cases, a status she sensed whenever she had to stay a few days in the hospital, by how frequently his residents dropped in on her and wished to hear of her condition and even any complaints, none of which she ever expressed. She placed herself at his disposal, completely, never declining or even hesitating when he would request that she undergo yet another uncomfortable or painful procedure or submit to a new battery of tests. They drew blood from her as if from a tap. Of course she was encouraged by his doggedness, his decision to operate even when others believed it was no use, his aggressive regimens of radiation and then his constant calibrations of medicines, until one day, during a weeklong hospital stay, by then every strand of her lustrous black hair gone and her bones droning with a pain that was insidiously alive and the veins in her arms as brittle and ruined as Roman aqueducts and the right half of her back angrily stippled with an outbreak of shingles, June at last said no to a minor request by a resident to have an umpteenth CAT scan, for which she would have to drink a foul, metallic-tasting shake. The resident, a very smooth-shaven and bespectacled Pakistani fellow, had not quite heard her, or else believed that he had heard her assent, and ordered the nurse to prepare the concoction, to which June again said no, this time louder, and the young doctor paused for a moment before leaving her room without another word. Soon Dr. Koenig appeared at the foot of her bed with his hands splayed out as if he were a wounded suitor. His eyebrows, bushy and graying, were wilted with strain. He seemed already to know what she was going to say. Still, he quietly asked her what was the matter. “Has something gone wrong?” June shook her head. “Are you terribly uncomfortable? Are you suffering? We can address this.”
“That isn’t it.”
She was in fact suffering, but as yet still only in the corporeal sense. Her mind, she felt, was still sharp, and steely. It could still see each moment from every side. “Then I don’t understand, June. Why must you do this? Why thwart our efforts? You must appreciate how far we’ve come already.”
“Of course I do. You’re magnificent. Everyone here has been magnificent.”
“Then let’s keep on!” he said. She could tell he’d registered her appreciation by his rolling over it. More than anything else, she liked Koenig for this feature of his character.
“You should have a patient who wants to be here fully. There are dozens waiting, I know.”
“We’ll care for them in time. We are focusing on you now. We choose our patients carefully and we give everything we have and we don’t let go from day one.”
“But you knew then.”
“What? What did I know?” Koenig gasped, waving his hands.
“That I was already dead.”
“So aren’t we all!” he shouted angrily. The sudden flash of his feeling animated her and deliciously, if only momentarily, suspended the pain. “We cheat time, June, all of us, whether we’re ill or not. Most of us only realize it when we’re not well. But I don’t believe we have a certain allotment at birth or one fixed by fate or anything else. We can extend time for anyone who wants it. And I don’t want to hear about ‘quality of life’ or some such. Life is quality of life. If you can take nourishment and communicate and conceive of tomorrow, then another day is riches enough.”
He spoke as he always did, with the ample authority and startling egoism of a celebrated healer, and yet through his conviction and bombast June could discern the doctor as a less than invincible figure, perhaps a boy whose mother died young, or whose sibling grew up chronically sick, someone who had witnessed a wretched dwindling and instead of abiding the measured response or swift act of mercy had become an unceasing forge of the realm.
“I won’t disagree with you,” she said to him. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t give up now!”
“I’m not giving up.”
“You will be if you leave. We’re at a critical moment. We’re on the cusp of succeeding, but it’s perilous, and there’s no room at all for hesitation. Even the short time we’ve wasted this afternoon can make a difference. I believe this. Now, I’m going to call my resident back in here and you’re going to allow him to do his work. Do you agree that this should happen? I know you do. You do, yes? Today and tomorrow and the next day.”
He had held her by the points of her shoulders and his gaze was not so much searching as it was rallying her. Or attempting to. But even the gentle
cupping of his hands felt as if he were abrading her skin, this wildfire skittering over her back and neck, and she could barely keep from grimacing. It was not that she meant to deceive him, though she knew she would be doing so. After he had gone and before the young resident could return, she dressed herself quickly and wrote Koenig a note:
My whole life I cheated days. Please give the rest of mine to someone else.
How she wished that she could take that note back. Somehow her condition improved dramatically after she left the hospital, her body lithe and loose and vigorous, but since the day she met Clines her condition had deteriorated. She was now more and more dependent on the painkillers Koenig had had his resident deliver to her, her mind feeling sharpest when she was counting up the pills and vials (which was a way of counting time), as well as the stack of forward-dated prescriptions he’d insisted on giving her. The last few reached well into the following year, and sometimes she shuffled through them with gratitude like they were unanticipated greeting cards, salutations from a future telling of a very different longevity.
As the car crossed the bridge to New Jersey, the southerly view of the evening lights of the metropolis glinted beckoningly, showing a path to the harbor and then the open sea. She was always somewhat fearful of the water, having never learned how to swim, yet now she imagined pulling herself through the black river, her limbs motoring in purposeful rhythm, every muscle singing with heat, her body once again bristling. She saw a young Nicholas swimming beside her, instinctively trusting her to lead them and staying close, keeping up when she pushed the pace, then tucking himself against her belly to rest. She placed her hand on her stomach now and it was as if she felt him there instead of the huge dense egg of the tumor that had taken her over and had spread itself in every part. When she was pregnant with him she was terribly sick, not just in the first weeks or in the morning but constantly and nearly right up to the birthing, a welling, tormenting nausea that reached high in her throat and kept her from eating much and nurtured the horrid idea that if she were to fall so ill as to have to terminate, then let it be. When the nurse placed him on her chest after she awoke from the emergency Caesarean (he wouldn’t come out, his head too large) she’d actually gagged through her tears of wonderment-she only found out later that sickness often came after anesthesia-and the first words she said to him were, I’m sorry.
She was sorry, was she not?
They sometimes took the ride over like this to Palisades Park when he was in elementary school; they lived in Morningside Heights then and it was easier to cross the bridge than go downtown to Thirty-second Street for an early-Sunday dinner at a Korean restaurant. They would take a taxi because she never learned how to drive, and on the rides home with a small bag of groceries between them Nicholas would fall asleep while half-holding his nose because of the sewer-smelling radish kimchee and dried cuttlefish beside him. They had gone only because he kept asking about where she was from and what other Korean people were like and she figured the ready setting of an eatery would do the trick. But once there her own spirit would gradually dampen and sour and Nicholas would hardly say anything and would pick at his quarter-eaten bowl of bibim bap. She’d harangue him to finish and maybe snap at a waitress and then they’d buy some foodstuffs she’d mostly let rot before getting around to preparing. Still, they went a half-dozen times, and then no more, June herself accepting that whatever nostalgia she was hoping to conjure for him had long been obliterated and that there was nothing she wished to latch on to. Nicholas didn’t complain, but on their last time going over he asked if he could stay in the taxi while she shopped and even ate. She told him of course he couldn’t and asked him why he would want to do such a thing and he replied, Because you get so angry when we’re there. As the taxi approached the restaurant where they usually ate, June instructed the driver to take them back to Morningside Heights. At home she made them peanut butter sandwiches and after they ate he went to his room to read, as if nothing at all had happened. He was a sensitive boy but every once in a while he could exercise a remarkable composure: that perfect distance he could keep, an exquisite self-balance and suspension.
Was the letter from the antiquities dealer in London evidence that during his years away he had moderated the extremes of his person? Or was it proof of a more frightening mastery? That he had decided to work in the antiques business, of all things, made her think she hadn’t damaged him. He certainly enjoyed the shop. After school Nicholas would contentedly spend the hours until dinner polishing up the inventory with an oiled rag, or else fix things, like replacing the drawer slides of a desk. He was naturally handy without really trying, merely needing to inspect the mechanism quickly to understand what was missing, or see how an operation was going wrong. Besides furniture he could also fix mantel clocks and music boxes and really anything that wasn’t too far gone or required a special tool or parts. He possessed a certain empathy for machines that in a different circumstance could have found him engineering bridges or as some gifted mechanic; but she never encouraged him and sometimes even playfully taunted him for his old jeweler’s posture as he crouched beneath the spotlight of a work lamp, saying a boy should take in the fresh air (even of New York City) and run and leap and stomp on things, live with his feet and legs more than his head and hands. That she could ever utter such a thing seemed monstrous to her now, but back then it was just the two of them in the world and her focus on him alternated between being unrelentingly sharp and then dialed so wide that the boy was but a ripple in the broad field of her vision, a mark of pale, this faint smudge of her blood.
He kept mostly to the back of the shop, and whenever a customer entered he would say hello with warmth but then discreetly vanish to the tiny back workroom or the basement. The customers would invariably comment on what an attractive, well-mannered boy he was, and June could then engage in a conversation about children or parenting that would elide nicely into a talk of objects for the home. She was not a natural saleswoman or a person given to charming others, but she could sense an opening instantly and couldn’t help but lodge herself in any breach. She was dogged and opportunistic, and commerce was mere play compared to what she could resolve herself to do. Perhaps it was pure coincidence that the shop did well on the days Nicholas chose to hang out, but she knew for certain that his presence helped her, that it was a necessary preface to a story she could never begin telling on her own, and for this reason she was always slightly cruel and tried to compel him to be elsewhere, not wanting to feel guilty about using him to good advantage, which she often did.
But Nicholas had not appeared to mind-he certainly never said so-though June now thought that through those early years of her shop on Lexington he must have learned something about the unhappy patterns a son and mother could fall into. When the last customer had departed and she shut off the lights of the display window, Nicholas would emerge from wherever he was working and she would say, “The mole-boy appears,” sweetly enough but with an edge more aptly directed at a peer or friend than a reticent boy of nine. He would answer her with his eyes closed and a wide, exaggerated smile, freeze in his position as if stricken with palsy, and then fitfully hop away. They played at it together, but it was a strained comedy. Back at the apartment he would do his homework or make drawings while she fixed dinner (always something simple, something basic enough that it was hardly real cooking, like rice and steamed fish, or elbow macaroni with jarred sauce) and nothing would be off, but sometimes in the middle of the night she awoke to the sounds of gasping coming from his room; the first time she nearly tripped while getting up too fast, afraid that he was choking, but it turned out, then and other times, that he was crying in his sleep. He wasn’t deeply distressed-it was the softest crying, self-muffled, if that was possible-and although it would have been the simplest thing to wake and comfort him, she inexplicably stood over him in the dark, staring at his racked mouth and the tight, quivering shrug of his shoulders, and it took everything in her to renounce the though
t that here was a boy she would have to carry about forever.
How very different things had come to be.
“I must advise you again, Mrs. Singer,” Clines said to her now, not looking at her in the mirror. He had put on glasses for driving. “You should not be bothering anymore with this man Brennan.”
“Yes.”
“We should be in Rome by now, looking for your son instead.”
“We will fly out tomorrow night. There won’t be any more changes.”
“I’m sorry to be so frank, Mrs. Singer, but you’re in no condition to delay.”
“Then you can always drive a little faster, Mr. Clines.”
She could see his lips tightening in the rearview mirror. He didn’t want to drive back over to New Jersey, saying it was a waste of time, but in fact she could see it was because he was also fearful of Hector. But he did as she acidly suggested, accelerating slightly for a stretch before eventually easing back to his unusually slow driving style; he was indeed an older man than he wished to let on, and she could see him straining in the twilight to see the road. He had asked that she sit in the back because of a chest cold that he said he didn’t want to transmit to her. But this was primarily an excuse. Clines, she had come to see, was a terribly formal sort; he was someone who liked the comfort of having a designated station for himself, a place. This was fine by her, for she knew exactly where she stood with him without much discussion. Discussion for her had become a hardship. She had a purpose and Clines was aiding her and there was little else to talk about.
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