Sustenance

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “That depends on him. He still has options, and a couple of them would advance him if he keeps his wits about him. I’ll see to whom he assigns the next level of the case, and then I’ll have a better idea. The good thing is that he may actually turn up something worthwhile if he goes about it right.” He rolled his chair out from under the desk. “Either way, neither of us is in danger.”

  “And Alice? She’s taking a risk signing on with you,” Pierce reminded him.

  “When we’re done here, you can let Alice know what’s been happening,” he promised her as he unzipped his fly.

  TEXT OF A LETTER FROM HAPGOOD NUGENT, BETWEEN UPPSALA AND PARIS, TO CHRISTOPHER “KIT” MORGENSTERN IN PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, USA, AN AIR-LETTER DELIVERED THREE DAYS AFTER IT WAS SENT.

  July 18 th, 1950

  Dear Kit;

  God! I can’t understand how those Scandinavians can stand it. It’s light all day and most of the night. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you can’t get any chance to sit and think. I know it’s the opposite in winter, which I wouldn’t like any better. Horrible things they do with fish, too, and present them as pate or something equally inedible.

  All right, I’ve finished my ghastly bit and will try not to carry on too much more vociferously. I saw the head of Math here, and I’ll say he has an ambitious program. There’s plenty of opportunity to do new work without creating worries about Communists. He—the head of the Math Department—says he would be willing to take any flack that may come from having me teaching there—something new for a change—and could, in fact, turn my present problems to advantage: “Hounded out of his own country, this young mathematician,… etc. etc. etc.” You know the drill. He’s promised me a tutor so I can learn Swedish, and a translator so I can lecture until I do learn Swedish. I’ve accepted, of course, and I’ll arrange to move before the new semester starts. At least that’s my plan; I didn’t actually ask what day they begin classes. As soon as I have a new address, I’ll send it along to you, and you may pass it on—discreetly. Nothing specific said on any trans-Atlantic telephone calls, nothing spread too openly. I don’t want the CIA appearing on my doorstep if I can avoid it.

  Bethune has been saying that he’s of the opinion that we have another mole in the Coven. I really hope Bethune is wrong. McCall has made an effort to find out, but there’s nothing conclusive. McCall would like it to be Win Pomeroy—it would make a good movie that way—but there’s nothing to point that way, and a lot of evidence against it, including that we might not have a mole at all. The whole thing is ridiculous. Wash Young is one of the few no one thinks is the mole, being colored and in the trades. Probably there are Negro Communists, but who knows if Wash is one of them? He seems content to keep up the work that Szent-Germain has offered him at his Paris printing plant. He does The Grimoire, as you might recall.

  Boris King sends his regards to your father. He and Wilhelmina may be moving on to Tel Aviv as soon as things settle down there. His offer is a good one, not as remunerative as the old situation, but much more rewarding. There is a group of people in Israel who are eager to keep all things Russian out of that coutnry, and Boris is not inclined to go where he isn’t wanted. If all goes well, he’ll be in charge of their Russian music archives, which will be as close to heaven as he’s ever likely to come. He and Wilhelmina are planning to spend a month there in the autumn, looking for places to live, signing contracts, the whole kaboodle. He’s had a raw deal all around if you ask me. I’ve promised to visit them in the winter, when everything is sere and dark—not this year, next year, we hope. Wilhelmina is being careful, in case something interferes in this encouraging development. I think she’s being overcautious, but I can’t dispute her concerns.

  By the way, have you heard anything from George? I haven’t, not even while Mimi was with me, in the south of France. That’s puzzled me, it seeming to be unlike him. But how many of us are as we used to be? If you happen to get a line on him, pass on the new contact information; I’ll thank you now. You’re a good egg, Kit, and I hope Princeton knows it. They need more men like you working on their Maths programs.

  We’re going through some rough weather, and writing isn’t easy. I’ll try to send you another note in the next week, and catch you up with as much as I can. I hope our irregular correspondence doesn’t get you into hot water.

  Happy

  4

  THEY HAD tumbled into his bed more than an hour ago, and now her face was rosy, alight with her fading orgasm, and her lips still slightly swollen as she languorously half-sat-up in bed and turned her puzzled eyes on him. She disliked the sense that she was losing his total attention, a realization which caused her some embarrassment since she was the one committing adultery, not he. “Why do you do that?” she asked without any emotion beyond curiosity; she had not known there were so many ways to climax, nor had she felt so wholly content with herself as she was now—contented, and for the first time in four years, safe.

  “Do what?” he asked, looking up at her from a mound of pillows.

  “You know,” she said, a dreamy note in her voice. “Everything short of … you know. Inside.” She could feel the blush in her neck and face; she chided herself for prissiness, reminding herself that she was no child, not even a young maiden, but a woman with two sons, and a divorced woman at that. She knew about sex, she knew the words to use, and there was no reason not to use them. Yet she could not bring herself to say them. Her blush intensified and she remained tongue-tied.

  He was enjoying the growing strength of night—in summer, they were all too brief—the return to full capabilities now that the sun was below the horizon, and he let himself smile as he answered, “What troubles you, Charis? That I am impotent? That you cannot change it? Or is it that my impotence does not restrict me from anything but the obvious?” The first time he had made such a direct admission, he had been in Egypt, a slave at the Temple of Imhotep; then, he had felt ashamed and abashed, but those emotions had faded over the centuries and now there was no distress left to color his statement. “I have discussed this with you. You assured me you understood.”

  “And I do,” she said, trying not to be flustered. “It doesn’t trouble me, actually, but”—she struggled to find the right word—“perplexes me.”

  “Why are you perplexed?” His faint smile had no suggestion of mockery in it. Touching her hand gently, he smoothed the sheet with the other and angled a large, overstuffed pillow against the headboard. “Lie back, and tell me what you want to know. I’ll explain to the limits of my abilities.”

  She tossed the duvet back and stretched out beside him, her skin burnished by the last afterglow of sunset. What had been a sultry day was giving way to a warm, delightful night; Paris was beginning to sparkle, the City of Light showing off in grand style. “Why won’t you…” She knew this was dangerous territory, and chose her words as carefully as her still-rapturous perceptions would bear “… undress for me? I do for you. Or let me undress you. What would be wrong in that, if you have undressed me? You say you want intimacy, and so leaving on your clothes is a … an apparent contradiction.”

  “The precision of the academic mind,” he murmured, stroking her shoulder affectionately.

  She would not allow his remark or his expert ministrations to distract her purpose. “It’s … weird for me to be naked and you to be almost completely dressed.” Now that the difficult part was over, she said the rest more quickly. “I mean, a silk shirt and summer-weight wool slacks! You see me naked. I haven’t seen you naked. We could have more together if you—”

  “We could,” he agreed amiably, “but it brings us back to the four contacts again, and the fifth and sixth; you have said you think what little I’ve told you is illusion and lies. There is more to consider than this wonderful pleasure.”

  “I didn’t use those words,” she protested, her face going a bit pale.

  “No, you didn’t,” he said, his gaze steady and affectionate. “But I know when someone is callin
g me a liar even when I do not speak their language. You are being most polite, and I appreciate that, but it means that I haven’t your full trust, which saddens me for both our sakes.” Szent-Germain ran his hand down from her shoulder to her hip, a light touch that made her skin tingle. “I do what I do within the restriction of my condition, so that you may cross the threshold of your fulfillment, and both of us be filled with gratification; yours is the only gratification I can have, and so I am joyous when you are willing to accept me. If we are very fortunate, there is a touching that goes beyond skin, a delicious transport that nourishes the soul,” he went on gently, leaning over and kissing her shoulder where his fingers had been seconds ago. “Because you like your body so well, and that in itself is satisfying to me, though there is more—” His smile was quick and authentic. “Your satisfaction fulfills me as it does you.”

  “Don’t dodge the question, Grof,” she warned, almost as if he were a recalcitrant student; she struck at him affectionately with a small pillow. “Yes, what you do for me is … astonishing. But that’s not the point: you’ve told me before it would trouble me to see you naked.”

  “I recall telling you that,” he said without much emotion of any kind, thinking back to the many, many times he had told others the same thing. “Past experience has shown me that my scars are upsetting.”

  “Scars, is it?”

  “Severe,” he confirmed. “They’re distressing to many who see them.” He had seen strong men flinch at the sight of them, and women become nauseated.

  “Do you still think I would be put off by them?” She was startled and saddened by the notion. “After all this? Whatever your scars are”—she privately thought it would turn out to be some kind of ritual scars or tattoos: she had heard that all manner of old noble families used to do things like that, and that perhaps some of them still did—“I don’t think it would extinguish the torch I’m carrying for you.”

  “That does not perturb me; I am prepared to accept that if I must.” To her surprise, he sighed. “No, I’m bothered by the sense that your curiosity is not likely to be satisfied with one or two simple explanations, and that could lead to more questions and more hazardous answers,” he said.

  “My curiosity is at the heart of me, Grof; I am an academic and the daughter of an academic, and I have cultivated skepticism most of my life,” she said, pulling as far away from him as the bed would allow. “If that’s a stumbling block, it is a major one.”

  “I like your curiosity, I like your capacity for thought, and I admire your academic work,” he told her.

  “Really? Doesn’t my intelligence worry you? Don’t you find it intimidating?” She had had that experience in the past, and had found it disquieting that so many men became defensive when dealing with a clever, well-educated woman. “I hadn’t thought you had such a problem, but I am beginning to wonder.”

  “I hope I do not. Over the years I have found intelligent women wonderful companions.” He thought of Olivia and Demetrice, of Hero and Padmiri, of Heugenet and Madelaine …

  “You mean lovers?” There was a challenge in her question; her chin was raised and her face became more angular.

  “In some instances,” he said, “but not in all of them. When there is a … an allurement, shall I call it? then perhaps I will venture into amorous association, but only so long as it is welcome, and the hazards are understood.”

  “And you felt such an allurement from me?” she demanded. “Well?”

  “Yes, I did. As did you.”

  The realization that he had been aware of her attraction from the first was disturbing for her. “So this ally talk was simply a device to get me here? A kind of lure?” She slapped the bedding with the flat of her hand. Suddenly she shook her head. “If I’ve overstepped the mark, just say so. I know I can get carried away with questions.”

  “Of course I didn’t scheme to draw you in,” he answered. “I am your ally whether you share my bed—”

  “Your guest bed,” she interjected.

  “Yes. My guest bed: whether you shared it with me or not. It’s not my practice to make my female authors show their appreciation by engaging in a dalliance as part of the publication process.” He held out his hand to her. “One has very little to do with the other: believe this. I would have responded to you if we shared a compartment on a train or attended the same lecture. And had there been no direct contact, I would not have sought you out.”

  “Not worth the trouble?” she asked.

  “You wear a wedding ring,” he answered. “I would prefer not to suborn infidelity. That does no one any good.” His compelling gaze rested on her, his sincerity apparent in every aspect of his demeanor. “Please, Charis. If you have doubts, tell me and I will try to my utmost to answer your questions as fully as I can. I’d rather answer questions than have you come to your own conclusions.”

  She sat still, thinking for more than a minute, then straightened up and crossed her legs tailor-fashion and looked directly at him. “What I really like about you is that you don’t try to jolly or … or belittle me out of my inquiry, no matter how much it annoys you. You discuss these things very well, as if we were both rational adults. You haven’t called me silly—that’s something.” She touched his cheek. “Thank you for that.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “Thank you for welcoming me in spite of all the questions you have, and the doubts. That’s very brave of you; after all the coercion you have endured already, it must be doubly difficult to confront me about something so private.” He saw her nod, and he felt a pang of grief for her. “I am not seeking to exploit you, not even in print. I am not interested in seducing you; I am interested in loving you. By the same token, I will not trivialize your work or your achievements, or claim credit for the work through publishing it. You’ve had to accept certain restrictions on your ambitions and your attainments well before the witch-hunt phase began. Unless you come across the lost books of the Etruscans or the fifth volume of the Athenian registry of plants, you will have few chances for advancement in the American academic world, more’s the pity. Not that the Europeans are any better than the Americans in that context, and in some instances, worse.” He shook his head. “And yet things are improved: since the turn of the century, women have had more opportunities than they have had in the Occident for almost two millennia. The most disheartening thing is not that it happened, but that it took so long to come about.”

  This basic summing up of the state of women’s issues worried Charis, who drew away from him and no longer felt his presence in the same intense fascination she had experienced at first. She had not known any of her colleagues to discuss women’s role in social developments beyond the Suffragettes, as if the vote were all that was needed. “You’re right: there is still a long way to go.” Her voice was subdued, and she rolled onto her side, drawing her legs upward against her chest as a barrier between her and Szent-Germain. “I want to tell you about my mother. My mother was a Flapper when she was young; she loved jazz and weekend parties in the country. She did sculpting in wood, and she was part of a show at a gallery in Chicago when she was in college. College was rare for women then, and still not common now. She had a little money from her grandmother so that she could wait to marry, and so she had a job decorating manikins in store windows for three years. She was good at it, I’m told. She was also good at designing games. But once she married—she was twenty-five when she did, and half her family had given up on her ever finding a man—the only enterprising thing she did was make bathtub gin. Once in a while, she would carve something in wood; she always gave the works away, but before she did, my father always displayed her work on the mantelpiece, and boasted of her talent to his friends. He stopped at that; he would not take a booth at the county fair to show her work, or suggest she visit an art gallery to find an exhibitor. That was too public an exhibit for him. By the time I went to college, my mother spent the afternoons playing mah-jongg and drinking tropical cocktails with thre
e businessmen’s wives, all in circumstances like her own.” She was silent for almost three minutes, then shook herself. “Why are we talking about this? I accept that your interests are liberal. I believe you have my best interests at heart. I have realized that you are not a religious man. And you have a vast knowledge of history. All granted. All things I admire. I give you credit for taking on my books. But I am not without reservations. I might be more trusting if I were not in the process of getting divorced, but perhaps not. My ambivalence troubles me as much as I suspect it troubles you, but I cannot deny it. I may have too many questions about you. That remains to be seen. I apologize for my behavior, but I cannot give it up.” She swung around to face him, speaking quickly so she would not run out of nerve before she had finished telling him what she wanted. “Will you, or will you not, let me see you naked?”

  “I would prefer not, but if you insist, I will.” He rose to his feet.

  “I do insist.” She stared directly into his dark, dark eyes that flickered with what looked like tangles of blue filaments. “You’ve warned me, and my reaction will be my concern.” There was a slight qualm behind this assertion, but she overcame it.

  “Since you are so determined, I’ll ask Rogers to heat up the main bath. It’s at the back of the flat, at right angles to the kitchen. In an hour and a half, it should be ready, and while we’re waiting, I’ll explain about the number of exposures you can have without risk, and why, and what that risk entails.” He got out of bed. “I’ll be back as soon as this is arranged; it’ll take five minutes, no longer.”

  “You’ll work something out with him—with Rogers—so that you won’t have all your clothes off, won’t you?” she began, only to have him interrupt her quietly.

  “I gave you my Word, Charis. If that is insufficient—”