“Oh, yes. Anyone can see that. We’re all here, and you’re way over there. Obviously the community got up and walked away from you. That explains your isolation.”
John didn’t let the sarcasm get to him. His sister was suffering from the same opposing forces he had suffered from: a magnetism to the church and community, and a need to explore the outside world. The difference between the two siblings was that she wouldn’t admit the latter. He knew she admired him for his voyage of discovery but couldn’t bring herself to pursue one of her own. The only possible resolution, in her mind, was John’s return home.
Rebecca was a plain Jane in her early twenties. She seldom let her auburn hair down, but when she did, it was long and lustrous and a real asset to her looks. She was waiting for the right man and the opportunity to have his babies. Forks in the road only spelled trouble: she preferred the road to be straight, narrow, and well illuminated. Her only real dilemma was having a choice at all.
“My isolation wasn’t my decision,” John said. “A house doesn’t have to get up and move to lock out one of its occupants.”
Rebecca finally turned to face him. “The doors aren’t locked, John. All you have to do is knock.”
“And change who I am, or else no one will answer.”
“Not at all. Change back to what you were, to what you really are.”
“Is that what you want? For me to give up the work I love, come back here, and sing the Lob Lied every Sunday? Wash my neighbor’s feet every fall and spring?”
“It’s what Father wants. And I think, deep inside, it’s what you want too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“But what do you want?”
She turned away again and faced the wall. “I want this never to have happened. And I know that can’t be.”
John circled around to the front of the chair and stood before her. He put his finger beneath her chin and tried to lift it, to make her look at him. But she resisted and stared down at her feet instead.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” he said. “I want you to come with me.”
“No.”
“It’s a big, exciting world, and not nearly as wicked as they make it out to be.”
“How would you know? You haven’t ventured very far into it. Even when you went off to college, as you like to say, you didn’t go any farther than F & M.”
She’s right, John thought. He had only moved from Bird-in-Hand to Lancaster, from farm labor to craft labor. He still acted like an Amishman, living as he did on the fringes of Amish country and lifestyle. And the further away from the church he got—especially in his pursuit of the lost Tavernier stones—the more the church tugged at him to return. The tension was increasing like a rubber band slowly stretching.
His desire to hunt for the stones was, on the surface at least, an expression of greed. He had to admit that. The hunt was disrupting the precarious order in his life, his carefully balanced arrangement of compromises. As such, it had a price. He looked at his little sister looking at her feet. He wondered if the price was too high.
“Why do you come here, John?” she asked. “We have the same argument every time you do. Why do you keep coming back, dressed like that?”
He bent over and hugged her. “To tell you the truth, I guess I want it both ways.”
“So do I, believe it or not. But we can’t have it both ways. Neither of us. I walk past jewelry stores too, you know. I see beautiful objects I have no right to even dream about.”
“Please tell father I came by.”
She looked up quickly, realizing he was about to leave. “I’ll tell him, but he won’t say anything.”
“But he’ll hear you.” He kissed her on the forehead. She neither resisted nor returned the affection. “I love you, Schatz.”
In the yard, John paused briefly and watched a gravity-fed water wheel turn a crank that ran a pump. He smelled pungent and familiar odors drifting over from the barn.
He drove past his old one-room schoolhouse, where at any given time three dozen or so pupils in all grades from one to eight studied arithmetic, science, history, and geography. It was here he had first learned English. He could remember his teacher, herself a distinguished graduate of the eighth grade, pronouncing words for the class to mimic.
School had been mostly about learning how to add and subtract and do practical things like tell time and tie shoes. It had been little more than an extended kindergarten, and he hadn’t really learned anything.
Why, then, was he so fond of the memory?
While John was stepping into the Graf family kitchen, David was parking his VW Beetle on Nouveau Street in Lancaster, a couple hundred yards away from John’s row house. He had circled the block several times to get comfortable in the neighborhood and to make sure John’s car was nowhere around.
After climbing out of the Beetle, he pointed at its front left hubcap and said, “Stay.”
No one answered when he knocked on John’s front door. He was grateful for the small entry porch sheltering the door, because he didn’t want anyone to see him breaking in. If someone should wander by, he would merely knock again and pretend to be waiting for an answer. And if John should suddenly appear at the door, he would pretend to want a meeting.
David already knew from his first break-in that the lock was a common pin tumbler. He unfolded his leather tool wallet and selected a diamond-shaped pick and a torque wrench. He was about to go to work when a wild idea suddenly occurred to him.
He turned the knob. The door opened.
All of John’s work on the lost Tavernier stones was spread out on his coffee table or stacked on the floor nearby. David went through it methodically, separating documents and notes that invited additional scrutiny. John had clearly made more progress than he was willing to admit. The jackpot was a hand-written analysis of the grid pattern on Cellarius’s last map—the very clue he claimed not to have resolved.
Hills on the Palatinate map seemed to have been placed arbitrarily. This was routine among cartographers of the time, according to John’s notes, but not characteristic of Cellarius. As it turned out, terrain peaks appeared only in the center of certain grid squares and did not correspond in any way to the actual terrain.
And the pattern was suspicious. If one counted grid squares starting in the upper left corner of the map, and began with 1006, one greater than the number of Solomon’s songs, the peaks appeared only in prime-numbered squares: 1009, 1013, 1019 …
The twenty-by-twenty array consisted of 400 congruent squares. There were 54 prime numbers between 1006 and 1406, therefore terrain peaks appeared 54 times in the array.
The pattern served as a guide to constructing a locator grille.
David copied all the information into a notebook. By the time he was finished, his stomach was lodging complaints with audible growls. He searched the kitchen for something to eat but found only microwave meals.
“How can the guy eat this shit?” he wondered aloud.
He got himself a drink of water, placed the unwashed glass back in the cupboard, and left the house after making sure the piles in the living room looked more or less the same as he had found them. When he returned to his car, its hubcaps were gone.
TWENTY-SIX
THE NEXT DAY, TAKING a walk in Lancaster Cemetery, John stood over the graves of the Winterbottoms, wishing they were still among the living. Wishing they—someone—could tell him how to travel two divergent paths at once. Or whether it was even possible.
But Ramsey and Rosalie were silent, as always. That was the problem with having dead friends: they didn’t give a lot of advice.
As uncomfortable as it was to think about, he knew he would be joining them before too long. In the context of history—in the grand scheme of the universe—the time remaining to him was painfully short. And then, when his life was over and it was his turn to go into the ground, what legacy would he leave by having hunted for treasure?
Searching for the lost Tavernier stones w
as not the most noble of undertakings. Making maps was noble. Working with his hands was noble.
Farming was noble.
On his way home, an idea occurred to him. He rejected it instantly on the grounds it was impractical and unnecessary. But it kept creeping back into his consciousness, demanding fair consideration.
Burn the maps. Burn the notes. Burn everything.
He laughed out loud. It would solve most of his problems.
Although he felt he was close to finding the lost Tavernier stones, possibly even closer than anyone else, he was sure he would not be any happier with them in his pocket than he had been before he was aware of their existence. In fact, searching for them had made him unhappier than ever before.
When he arrived home, he found a counseling letter from Harry Tokuhisa. The man hadn’t wasted any time. It wasn’t enough merely to give a verbal warning; Harry had to cover his ass in writing. The letter warned John that if his performance didn’t improve, he would be subjected to disciplinary action. It further noted that his appearance had become disheveled and that he sometimes mumbled incoherently when addressed. Perhaps, it suggested, he should seek professional help.
No wonder Harry had put his comments in writing. Their friendship was too strong for him to say them to John’s face.
He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Disheveled? Well, maybe a little. But how could Harry say anything about him, when several of the English working in the building were—how could one put it politely—unkempt? But then, their appearances hadn’t been changing. And they weren’t going anywhere in the organization, either.
He found a book of matches in the kitchen. He wished he had a fireplace, but a metal trash can would have to do. He filled it with his notes, his work on the cipher, his sketches of the stones, everything.
He was about to shove all the Cellarius maps in as well, but changed his mind at the last second and condemned only the Palatinate map. The rest he held back for his collection. He carried the trash can to the patio behind the house.
Making maps was noble. Working with his hands was noble.
Farming was noble.
He lit a match.
The phone rang.
He hesitated. If he ignited the contents of the trash can and left to answer the phone, a fire would rage unattended on his patio. He blew out the match and went back inside.
“Hello, John.” It was Annette. “I just wanted you to know we’re all thinking about you.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“Seriously. Some of us feel Harry’s treating you a little harshly under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“You know. Your … condition.”
“Oh, yeah. My condition.”
“And we hope you can make good use of this vacation.”
“It’s not a vacation if it’s involuntary.”
“Regardless. Make good use of it, John. Your situation might be a little more serious than you realize. I know about the counseling letter. It’s only the beginning.”
After a pause John said, “You mean things are going to get worse?”
“If you don’t … turn it around.”
“The condition.”
“Right. Listen, the real reason I’m calling is to ask you out to dinner.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you, Annette, but I don’t know if this is such a good time. I have so much to do.”
“Hear me out. I’ve invited you to dinner at least a dozen times before. You always say you’re too busy. Now that you’re suspended—let’s go ahead and use the word—you certainly have time for a meal. So if you’re going to turn me down again, at least come up with a different excuse. Or, preferably, the real reason.”
John mulled it over. He wished Sarah were coming by tonight. She was the only person he wanted to talk to, the only one he was sure would listen. But given the circumstances—the other circumstances in his disintegrating life—no such visit was remotely likely.
“Okay,” he said. Plenty of time to burn stuff later.
“Meet you at the Oasis in half an hour.”
The restaurant was full. So was the bar, where John and Annette waited for a table. The noise in the bar obliterated all subtle inflections of speech and allowed only short, high-energy bursts of conversation.
John had been there once before, to attend an office party. He remembered tasting excruciatingly hot salsa and grinning at all the silly oriental fans poking out of cocktails.
He ordered a mineral water.
“Change that to a Long Island iced tea,” Annette told the bar-tender. “And make it two.”
“Iced tea, good idea,” John said, raising his voice to carry over the din. “The caffeine will keep me alert.”
Annette smiled. “You are truly precious.”
They were awkwardly silent over their drinks. It was the first time they had ever socialized together outside the office, and John didn’t know how to proceed. The look on Annette’s face suggested she was eager to share something.
“You’re going to be fired, you know.”
“I am?”
“Harry’s had a counseling session with you, and now the first letter. Company policy requires two letters be given. He’s probably already drafted the second. I’ve seen this pattern before.”
“I didn’t know I was screwing up that bad.”
“You’re not. Not really.”
“Harry and I have been friends a long time.”
“It isn’t Harry. It’s someone higher. Someone who doesn’t like you, maybe because of who you are. Your recent behavior has provided that person an excuse.”
John stared into his drink. Annette wetted her lips and cleared her throat.
“I, on the other hand, have always been fond of you.”
Misery loved company, and alcohol was no third wheel in the party, either. Three Long Island iced teas later, John was willing to admit the affection was mutual.
It was shortly before dawn in Mainz, and Frieda Blumenfeld had woken to the sound of dogs barking. She rolled over in bed to check on her husband: his steady breathing told her he was still sound asleep.
The dogs were howling as though they had treed a fox and wanted all the world to know of their accomplishment. Blumenfeld figured she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, so she might as well get some work done. She put on a robe, boiled water for coffee, and selected a few pieces of classical music.
The barking grew louder. She turned up the music to drown it out.
In his store-top apartment in the Innenstadt of Mainz, Mannfred Gebhardt was also awake. He had stayed up all night, his weary eyes fixed on the papers strewn about his living room floor, his expression of earnestness gradually degenerating into one of distaste. Never before had he felt more useless than now. Except in jail.
He really ought to handle the materials more, he thought. Treat them roughly, make some creases and ragged edges. So Blumenfeld would think he’d actually been doing something.
The wall clock told him another dreary day was about to begin. He wondered what the old lady would discover today and call him stupid for not having discovered himself.
His gaze fell on Cellarius’s last map, and his eyes, almost of their own accord, focused on the oblique pictorial illustration of Idar-Oberstein.
Then on the Felsenkirche, the Church in the Rock.
Finally on the steeple of the church.
He waited a full minute for what he saw to sink in, to make sure an alternative explanation would not snatch his idea away. Then he reached for the phone.
“What is it?” Blumenfeld asked flatly. The staccato beats of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony filled the pause that followed. In the background, Gebhardt could just make out the sound of dogs barking.
“I think I have something.”
It was eleven o’clock in Philadelphia, and Sarah Sainte-James had just come out of the bath. David Freeman was already asleep in their bed. Sarah wrappe
d a towel around her head and settled down into David’s beanbag chair in front of the television, but she was unable to follow the plot of the old movie. She was thinking about John Graf.
It was funny; she kept catching herself thinking about him. Ever since they’d met, she’d been intrigued by his gentlemanly manners, his sturdy ego, his unpretentious ways.
Intrigued? Maybe she should just say “impressed.”
Most of the men she had known had been good looking and fast talking. Get-rich-quick schemers. Extroverted and bold. Like David. She had met David just as her life was bottoming out; her agency had dumped her, and she was working for Barclay Zimmerman, helping him switch stones. Zimmerman wanted his X-rated movie theater to be more profitable, and he wanted Sarah to earn the profits. David found her sitting on the steps of the theater one afternoon. Her face was in her hands, and she was weeping uncontrollably.
“Do you like Czechoslovakian food?” he asked.
She looked up at the stranger smiling down at her. “Huh?”
“Do you or don’t you?”
“How the hell should I know?”
David was sharp. David swelled with confidence. David thrived on pipe dreams.
John, on the other hand, was a different breed. He wasn’t necessarily the best-looking guy around, but he thought about what he was going to say before he said it, and he treated women with respect.
And he liked her. Without a doubt.
John was thinking about Sarah, a hundred kilometers to the west, in Lancaster. But he happened to be lying naked in Annette’s bed. Next to him, also naked, was Annette.
Still breathing heavily from exertion, he adjusted the blanket to cover his exposed skin. Annette chose to be immodest. She sprang up and tried to tickle him playfully. When he failed to respond, she lit a cigarette and paced the room.
The sight of her ample breasts had, just minutes before, inspired John to babble inanely about her looks, her intelligence, her value to mankind. Now they were just mammary glands. At least, he thought with relief, he had finally—successfully—copulated with a woman.
The Tavernier Stones: A Novel Page 19