The Fury of Rachel Monette

by Peter Abrahams

  The hand that had been so gentle turned Calvi with surprising strength toward the end of the canyon. There in the shadow of the wall he thought he could make out the darker patch of a Bedouin tent. The hot red embers of the cigar end gave him comfort. He knew he would see the Captain tonight. It had been a long time.

  As they reached Jerusalem dawn was bringing out all the right colors in the limestone. The stones that lay on the ground were ready to be chipped and shaped and piled on top of each other in buildings and walls; the ones already in piles were falling down. The battle against rubble had been fought for three thousand years, but no one was winning.

  The blond man dropped him at the Jaffa Gate, under David’s Tower, and drove away without a word. Calvi gazed at the tower, making sure he had memorized the license number of the car. It wasn’t much of a tower—a stunted cylinder like a primitively sculpted rook. David had had nothing to do with it. It was a good place for the staging of sound and light shows in English, French, and Hebrew. David had nothing to do with them either.

  Calvi walked west, into the new town. An old man was hosing the part of the sidewalk that he borrowed from the city for his outdoor café. The chairs were stacked on the tables, upside down, and there were no customers. The water ran across the sidewalk and sluiced along the street, moving a cargo of torn wrappers, yesterday’s papers, used cinema tickets, banana skins, dust, and dirt. The water swept everything along its course, except a few mounds of donkey excrement which refused to budge. Calvi took a chair off one of the tables and sat down.

  The old man laid down the hose and went inside the café. In a few moments the water came out of the hose in one last gurgle, and stopped. The old man returned.

  “Yes?” he said. He had taken the trouble to wrap himself in a clean white apron.

  “Coffee, please,” Calvi said. “Black and strong.”

  “A little sugar, maybe?” the old man asked.

  Calvi looked up. The old man’s eyes were very clear and very blue. He was probably no older than Calvi himself.

  “Yes. Sugar.”

  The old man disappeared into the café, and Calvi heard the sucking sounds of the coffee machine. He came back carrying a tin tray. With hands that shook slightly he carefully arranged the cup and saucer, sugar, spoon, and paper napkin on the table. When he reached forward his white shirt sleeve slid up his forearm and Calvi saw the tattoo, bluer than any vein. S4106. Many people in this town could tell from that the name of the camp and the week he had arrived, but Calvi wasn’t one of them.

  He drank his coffee but he forgot about the sugar.

  As he felt in an inner pocket for his wallet he touched the folded sheets of paper. He hadn’t read them yet, but he knew they bore a letter from a girl named Marie to a man named Walter D.

  He also knew that after the letter had been translated into the language of Crime and Punishment it would become a speech calling on the Oriental Jews of Israel to stage a general two-hour work shut-down one afternoon in early April. In an age when workers set fire to their factories it sounded like kid stuff.

  Simon Calvi told himself that a few times but it didn’t help.

  7

  From the soft fragrant breezes that drifted lightly through the pine trees in the cemetery and the dirty crusted snow that lay melting slowly by the gravestones, Rachel knew that winter was ending. They stood around a hole in the wet ground—her father, Andy Monteith, the Dawkinses, the bearded Henry Gates from European history, the college chaplain, Rachel. The sun shone warmly, making up for lost time.

  The service was nonsectarian. There was little to say but the chaplain stretched it to a suitable ceremonial length. He wore a well-cut suit of thick black-and-gray tweed, and black wing-tip shoes of richly shining leather. He was perfectly turned out except that he had forgotten his rubbers, and the damp grass was getting the tops of his shoes wet. From time to time he rubbed them against the backs of his pant legs, standing like a stork while he gave his version of the meaning of life and death. He said something about contributions and something about loss, but Rachel wasn’t really listening. She was watching a robin sitting on a nearby gravestone watching her. At her side her father dabbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his vicuna coat. It was unlike him to forget a handkerchief. Perhaps he did not want to bother digging it out.

  After a while she heard a change in the tone of the chaplain’s voice and she sensed that things were winding up. Two men wearing down vests stepped forward and lowered the box into the hole with ropes. When they had it down one of the ropes would not come free, and the man had to tug at it carefully, the way one does with a snagged fishing line. An old New Englander with a runny nose tossed in a shovelful of earth. Because it was wet it landed on the wood with a heavy plop. That sound was what Rachel remembered best from the funeral.

  As they walked slowly, funereally she supposed, along the path that led to the cemetery gate, Rachel saw a tall man carrying a small suitcase. He was coming their way, striding quickly in a loose-jointed manner that was so close to Dan’s that it made her heart race. As he drew nearer she realized that he was a much older man. The skin of his thin face was a deeply weathered red-brown leather, and contrasted strangely with his hair, which was as white as chalk dust and fine as a baby’s. But the shape of the face resembled Dan’s—the long firm jaw line, the prominent cheekbones, the determined mouth. At the same time it was very different—more Gallic she thought, the nose more prominent, the whole structure not so used to what? To laughing? And the eyes, observant and clear walnut-brown like Dan’s, but far more experienced. Maybe that’s what aging does.

  “Ah, no,” he said, addressing his remarks to Tom Dawkins, oldest in the party, “I am not too late?” His faint French accent went well with his musical voice.

  “You’re Dan’s father?” Dawkins asked, and in his words, following directly on the other man’s, Rachel heard more of Arkansas than she had in the past.

  “Dan?” The tall man seemed puzzled. “Of course, yes. Daniel. He was called Dan in America?” He caught sight of the gravediggers and looked thoughtful for a moment.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Monette. It’s a bad time for all of us,” Tom Dawkins said.

  The tall man nodded his head. Dawkins held out his hand. Monette removed his from the pocket of his gray trench coat and clasped Dawkins’s lightly and briefly in the French style.

  Dawkins turned to Rachel. “I understand you never had a chance to meet Dan’s wife Rachel.” Rachel and Monette looked at each other. Rachel appreciated what a good organizer Dawkins was being, but she had no idea what to say. She wasn’t even sure what to call him. Were they expected to embrace, she wondered.

  Monette helped. “I hope I have not upset you by being late,” he said to her.

  “Oh, no.”

  “I found that this is not an easy place to reach,” Monette said. He looked slowly around, taking in the scenery. “It must be pleasant in the summer.”

  “It is very pleasant,” said the chaplain, perhaps a little stung. “In fact, in my opinion it much resembles the Vosges region of your own country.”

  Monette’s brown eyes moved without haste from Rachel to the chaplain.

  “Really?” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Where did you fly in? JFK?” Rachel’s father wanted to know.

  “Yes. I did.”

  “That’s a shame. If I’d known I could have given you a lift up.” He gestured to the long silver car outside the gate.

  “Bad luck,” said Monette.

  She decided on his full name. “Xavier Monette,” she said, “this is my father, Jack Bernstein.” Again the hand emerged from the coat pocket and did its duty. Her father took the opportunity to develop Tom Dawkins’s theme.

  “What an awful time. Awful. And the police are getting nowhere. Fast. I’m losing all my respect for the FBI.”

  The others were beginning to move away. Rachel, her father, and her father-in-law walked toward the gate.

>   “In your telegram you said that the little boy was missing. Is there any word?”

  “Not yet. I’m calling the police as soon as we get home.”

  “Then let us go, by all means.”

  The means they went by was Jack Bernstein’s silver Cadillac, Jack driving, Rachel in front and Monette in back.

  As they drove home Rachel saw that the whole town seemed to be shaking off its winter lethargy. People were shoveling the remaining snow off their lawns and onto the streets, and then poking doubtfully at the brown grass with various tools. She heard the sound of a baseball smacking into the deep pocket of a well-oiled glove. Baseball had been Dan’s favorite sport. She would try to keep away from thoughts like that.

  “What is the boy’s name?” Monette asked from the back seat.

  “Adam,” she told him.

  “That’s a good name. I like biblical names.”

  “Me, too,” said Jack Bernstein, twisting to look at Monette. “The Bible’s full of them. Both testaments,” he added. Rachel guessed that her father associated the name Xavier with Christianity but was not certain where it came from.

  There was a quiet buzz and Rachel’s father reached for the telephone receiver that hung below the dashboard.

  “Hello.” He listened for a few moments. “Listen, I can’t talk to you now. I don’t … No insurance? They must be crazy. Look. I’ll call you tonight. Where will you be?” He put his fingers over the mouthpiece. “Rachie sweetheart, could you take down a number for me? There’s paper and pencils in the glove compartment.” She wrote down the number that he gave to her. It reminded her of her childhood. Jack Bernstein replaced the receiver and turned again to the back seat.

  “I’m in frozen fish,” he said. “It never stops.”

  “That’s interesting,” Monette replied. “I don’t know very much about it.”

  “What line of work are you in, Mr. Monette, if I may ask?”

  “I am retired,” Monette said. “Before I was in the army.”

  “Dan told me Mr. Monette was with the Free French in North Africa,” Rachel explained to her father.

  “Is that so?” Jack Bernstein said. “You fought the Desert Fox?”

  “In a very minor capacity.”

  “Did you see any action?”

  “I was with General LeClerc,” Monette said quietly.

  “You’re kidding. Were you part of that march from Lake Chad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t tell me. January of forty-three. Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack Bernstein shook his head in wonder at his own power of memory. “I know that stuff backwards and forwards. God knows I had plenty of time for reading the papers in those days.” He glanced in the rearview mirror to see if Monette was paying attention. “I’m a navy man myself. Just for the war, of course. I volunteered for sub chaser duty, hoping to blow a few Nazis out of the water, but it didn’t work out that way. I spent most of the war in Honolulu. The worst thing that happened to me was a bad case of athlete’s foot. Spent a week in the hospital. That’s the military for you. I guess it’s the same all over.” In the back Monette said nothing.

  They were almost home when Rachel felt him lean forward and grip the top of the seat back.

  “Would it be possible to make a slight alteration in plan?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “That is very kind. I would like very much to see something of my son’s surroundings. You know that I last saw him when he was six years old. I really know little about him as an adult, how he lived and worked. Naturally his book has been much talked about at home, but that kind of thing is so … impersonal. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Rachel turned to look at him. He seemed very intense and serious. “I think I do, Mr. Monette. What would you like us to do?”

  He thought. “Perhaps he had an office that I could see?”

  “Of course. Would you like to go there now?”

  “If it is not too much trouble. You see, I haven’t much time. I must leave tomorrow.”

  “Back to New York?” her father asked.

  “Yes. I fly to Paris in the afternoon.”

  “Perfect. I can drive you down in the morning.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  Rachel directed her father to the old brick mansion that contained the European history offices. Dan had spent very little time there, but she didn’t think it necessary to tell him that. The father had a right to assemble his memories without her interference.

  Dan’s office was a large room on the third floor, overlooking a seedy tennis court that no one used. There was a wide bay window on one side. Dan had placed his desk in front of it. On it lay his pens, pencils, rulers, and erasers, neatly aligned and ready for action. The room seemed the same as she had seen it last, two, perhaps three weeks before. Along one wall were shelves of books, floor to ceiling. By another stood a line of gray metal file cabinets. On the third wall hung a large framed blown-up photograph of Chamberlain on his return from Munich. Monette looked at the photograph for a while and then turned to Rachel.

  “It’s a pretty room, isn’t it?” he said. It had never struck Rachel that way.

  “It’s quiet,” she said, choosing an aspect of the room she could approve with honesty.

  Monette walked over to the old pine desk and ran his hand over it softly. He gazed out the window.

  “You never know if you’ve done the right thing.”

  “No,” Rachel said. She saw that he was rubbing his hand back and forth over the surface of the worn pine. “Why did you decide to send Dan over here when his mother died?” Rachel asked him quietly.

  The hand stopped moving. Monette continued to face the window, his back to her. She heard him take a deep breath as though he would need extra oxygen to think about it.

  “It was the most difficult thing I have had to do in my life,” he said finally. “How can I explain it? It was only three years after the war when Margaret died. Daniel was a little boy. We lived in Paris then. We had no money. No one did, of course, but it meant I had to work all the time, and when I wasn’t working I was looking for work. I worked as a waiter in Les Halles, I sold shirts in Faubourg St. Honoré, I delivered messages on a bicycle.” He stopped talking and once more ran his hand along the desk.

  “But in America people had money,” he continued in a somewhat sharper tone. “When Margaret died, I assessed my potential for taking care of the little boy, and concluded that in the next few years at least it was very poor. I knew Margaret had a younger sister in America, of whom she was very fond. Angela.”

  “I know her.”

  Monette went on as if she had not spoken: “A married sister, husband a dentist, if I remember, no children. She was very happy to come and get him. In America he would have a better start, I thought. Then, when things were better …”

  His voice trailed away. He continued to stare out the window.

  “Stay here for a while if you like,” Rachel said gently. “Come back to the house whenever you want. You can sleep in Adam’s room.”

  “You are very considerate.”

  She gave him a key to the front door in case they went to bed before he arrived, and turned to leave.

  “Oh, you’ll need directions, won’t you?” And she told him the way.

  8

  “My dear,” said Dan’s Aunt Angela when Rachel came into the house, “you’ll just have to forgive me for skipping the funeral. I can’t stand them and that’s that.” Angela put her arms around Rachel and hugged her tightly, patting her on the back without losing grip of the cigarette wedged between her fingers. And Rachel suddenly felt tears coming to her eyes, tears she could do nothing about, so they ran down her face and onto Angela’s pink cashmere sweater. They didn’t bother Angela. She kept patting.

  Gradually Rachel became aware of the subtle scent of the perfume Angela wore: Angela always enveloped herself in her own atmosphere; she was a pl
anet where the air always smelled of sandalwood, or myrrh. For a long time they both breathed it.

  “Well, then, let’s have a look at you,” said Angela, and she pushed Rachel back to arm’s length. Rachel never knew what to do with her face when people said they’d like to have a look at it, so she looked at Angela’s. The same arched eyebrows, the same inquisitive blue eyes, the same rosy skin; the color of the hair changed, the jewelry changed, the clothes changed, but Angela didn’t.

  “You look god-awful,” Angela said. “If you’re going to be out of fashion at least do it aggressively. Come, I’ll make you a drink. I’ll bet you haven’t had one since it happened. I know, I was the same when Henry died. I remember thinking that if I had a drink it would prove I hadn’t loved him. Well, that’s hooey.”

  Rachel smiled. “Okay, but first I’ve got to call the police station.”

  “I’ve done it already. Nothing to report. What a plodder that chief is.” Angela saw the look in Rachel’s face. “Maybe it’s an asset in something like this.”

  They went into the living room and had a drink.

  “What I detest is the drivel at the cemetery,” Angela said. “Was it drivel?”

  “I think so.” The Scotch felt good, in the mouth, in the throat, in the chest. It was a plain fact.

  “It always is. Oh God: get that repulsive creature away from me.”

  “Garth,” Rachel called. He trotted over and sat at her feet. She stroked him between the ears; from his throat came a low growl which was unmistakably sensual.

  “Dan’s father was there,” Rachel said.

  Angela’s mouth opened in surprise, and when she spoke her cheeriness seemed brittle. Perhaps it had been brittle from the start.