Borderline

by Janette Turner Hospital

  Waves of energy passed through Gus like pleasurable electric shocks.

  It was expected that they would all gain yardage. It was expected that each and every one of them would hit a few out of the ball park. It was expected that collectively they would meet the new company objectives, set a new branch record, and win Bob Wilberforce a week in Barbados.

  The ball was in their court.

  They were asked to bow their heads for a moment’s silent contemplation of that fact; they meditated on the great scoreboard in Head Office; they pledged themselves to regard each precious minute as being in the bottom of the ninth.

  And then it was time to hustle. They dispersed into the infields and outfields of the city.

  Gus touched all his old bases. At Mister Donut he lined up three client interviews in the space of ten minutes, two with customers, one with the girl behind the counter; all certain sales, each of which would add at least five dollars a month in commissions to his income. He was off and running.

  It was a good place to do business. He chatted with police constables as they came in on their breaks. (Now there, if ever, was a group who needed insurance!) Factory workers ending shifts contemplated their possible demise over coffee and a custard-filled. High-school students — the clients of tomorrow — stopped to shoot the breeze with Gus while skipping classes. There was a stream of store clerks from up and down the street. Supermarket checkout girls. Bank tellers. And from the fashion boutiques, the slinkily clad and high-heeled attendants whose legs went all the way up to their thighs.

  Jillian from Jill’s Flowers came sashaying in.

  And La Magdalena chose that very moment to manifest herself in a glazed double-chocolate doughnut. How could you? she asked. And so soon after leaving me? I meant nothing to you.

  Gus was so agitated that he knocked his cup of coffee off the counter, scalding his arms and legs. Flustered, he mopped at the mess with paper napkins, keeping his burning face low, crouching and running along beneath the counter’s overhang to the door. He escaped to his car before Jillian realized he was there.

  He did not know until well after he had turned into the on-ramp for the 401 that he was heading east for Montreal and L’Ascension. And then he realized he had been planning to ever since he woke on Saturday morning.

  17

  Felicity replaced the receiver. She looked at the business card of Augustine (Gus) Kelly, For all your insurance needs, then ripped it neatly into four pieces and dropped them into her wastepaper basket. End of episode. Canada vanished and the weekend never was.

  She knew better than most people how simple it was to rearrange the past, that yesterday was an hypothesis existing purely by the grace of today. Every week she snipped crowded centuries into manageable clusters of years, she billeted them in suites of rooms, she labelled them in catalogues. Florence and Umbria: the battle for supremacy. This was now an event. It had all the attributes of an event. It had a chronology, a geography, leading figures, an accompanying text. It was discussed in the New York Times, that arch-arbiter in ontological matters.

  Felicity — and any number of journalists and art critics — could also toss the present into yesteryear with a mere flick of the phrase. Neo-Renaissance. Twentieth-century Florentine. Umbrian revivalist tendencies in post-abstractionist painting. The dark could be made light, and the fashionable passé. No style of painting was so lost in disrepute that it could not be “reassessed”, no reputation so assured that it could not wane. Some painters vanished overnight, others mushroomed into vogue.

  (For the past, as Felicity knows and I know, is a capricious and discontinuous narrative, and the present an infinite number of fictions. The braiding of the two is the very stuff of a curator’s bag of magic. A historian’s too, for that matter, and history is what I’m writing.)

  Felicity was busy conjuring up the Florentine-Umbrian saga in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, office when two gentlemen materialized at her door. They looked out of place, overly solid for the gallery’s arrangement of empty spaces. They sensed this and rubbed their ankles together awkwardly. A damp cloak of unease hampered them. Almost furtively, they examined their boots, suspecting that they should have removed them and left them at the street entrance.

  “Name’s Trog, ma’am,” said one, flashing an ID card. He cleared his throat apologetically. “FBI. Like to have a few words with you.”

  They came into her office and shut the door behind them. “This is Mr Hunter.” Mr Trog jerked his thumb at his colleague. They pulled up chairs and sat facing Felicity across her desk. “We’d just like to chat a bit,” Mr Trog said. “But then I’m afraid we have to take you in for questioning as a possible witness in a murder case.”

  Felicity was never surprised by the extraordinary, which was altogether too commonplace in her experience, but it did have a way of pitching her into temporary disorientation. A wheel would spin in her head. Which year? which country? which language? she would think in a daze, waiting for the wheel to stop at the right answer.

  The wheel stops, she is on a beach, the shadow of palm branches falls across the sand, the fishing boat and her father are getting smaller and smaller, the waves bigger. Nothing can be done about it. The palm trees are thrashing at the sky, her ayah is calling for her.

  But why? she asks her ayah. Now they are at the Trivandrum airport. Why isn’t he here to say goodbye?

  Because the tide hasn’t turned yet, her ayah says.

  But the wheel is spinning and she is somewhere else again. In her grandparents’ garden in Brisbane, there is a gardenia tree six feet tall. A passionfruit vine climbs around her window. She is happy, though fishing boats often arrive in dreams. There is a knock at the door but she will not go with those who have come for her. She does not want to see the box containing her grandmother. She climbs out her window, she runs away, she hides in the gully behind the house. Bellbirds call her and she follows the sweet haunting sound. The bush is full of solace.

  But there is a knock at the door. Whatever uniforms they wear, whatever accents they speak in, the messengers look the same. There is bad news, there is no one to explain in Malayalam, the wheel is spinning, she has arrived in Boston, there are two policemen in her office. She recognizes them, they have come so often, their news is old. She knows where she is now.

  “Entukontu?” she asks.

  But as soon as she sees the word curling toward the two men like a thin twist of smoke, she sees that it is in Malayalam, her ayah’s tongue, and is embarrassed. An improper alignment. Swift adjustments are made.

  “Why?” she repeated. “I don’t understand.”

  (She did not say: “There must have been some mistake” — because there are always mistakes and it is pointless to be amazed.)

  Mr Trog produced a photograph. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

  The photograph was a large black and white, rather grainy. There was a face distorted beyond anyone’s recognition by bruises and knife slashes. All that could be told with certainty was that this was the face of a woman with long dark hair. The hair was matted with what appeared to be blood.

  Felicity said faintly, “I can’t tell.”

  “How about this?” Mr Trog produced a second photograph.

  When the wheel is not spinning, when Felicity knows which year of her life she is in, a different thing happens in moments of distress. Her body becomes a cage full of small white birds in a panic. The cage is overcrowded, teeming, a myriad tiny wings are beating frantically. Felicity has to empty her mind of everything else, she has to concentrate on calming the birds, she focuses on the leaping pulse behind each fragile white breast until it is still. The wings flutter to rest. Then she can speak.

  She looked at the second photograph. When she spoke her voice was almost entirely steady. “I think I recognize that face from a painting.”

  “What?” Mr Trog drummed his fingers on the desk. They were thick fingers with knuckles like small tumours, behind one of which was a signet ring that
would never come off again without being cut. “We’re not talking about paintings,” he said irritably, looking about him for somewhere to leave his air of uneasy deference. His finger-drumming had a military sound to it. “We’re talking about murder. Have you or have you not ever seen this woman?”

  “I’ll show you.” Felicity’s voice was calm as a dreamer’s. She took a catalogue from the shelves behind her: Treasures of the Pitti Palace. She flipped through the coloured plates to the ever-faster accompaniment of Trog’s drumming fingers until she found the Perugino. “You see?” she said.

  But Trog brushed the book testily aside. “The woman was known professionally as La Salvadora,” he said. “Her real name was Dolores Marquez and she was under government protection, she worked for us. Her body was found up in Quebec, Canada, where you went on the weekend. Dumped in the forest. Forty-six stab wounds, some apparently done as ritual marks. She was found not far from a cottage owned by you. Canadian police have run a very thorough check and we’re cooperating. At this point, you are a possible witness but not a suspect.”

  “I see,” Felicity whispered.

  “You are allowed to make one phone call, and then, I’m afraid, you must come with us.”

  Aaron, she thought. He knows all the best lawyers. But his secretary would not put her through. I’ll give him your message, the secretary said. Tides turn, Felicity thought.

  “I can’t get through,” she told Trog, “but it doesn’t matter.”

  Mr Trog did not care for irregularities. Cases could be thrown out of court over just such details. Investigators could be demoted.

  “You have to reach someone,” he said. “Call someone else.”

  So she dialled Seymour’s number in New York. But either he was not in his studio or had disconnected his phone.

  “There’s no answer,” she said.

  Trog’s fingers were galloping, a rat-a-tat-tat of impatience.

  She dialled Jean-Marc’s number and spoke briefly to his tape.

  “There’s no one else I could call,” she told Trog.

  Trog shook his head to indicate that he had never expected an interrogation in an art gallery to go well. He led the way to a black cruiser and they drove her to an unmarked office building in the heart of Boston.

  This was what the interrogators knew: that the body of a Hispanic woman had been found near Felicity’s cottage; that the murder had been an act of great brutality and ferocity and appeared, from the number and direction of the stab wounds, to have been committed by more than one person, probably by three; that death had occurred some time on Friday night; that Felicity had spoken to a local priest and had mentioned a woman; that she had been drinking and appeared to be in a state of considerable emotional distress; that there was blood on the bedding and floor of her cottage.

  Further, and perhaps related to the above facts: that a truckload of illegal aliens had attempted to cross the border on said Friday afternoon; that a print-out of border computer data indicated that Felicity’s car had been following said truck; that the truck had driven from Boston that day, as had Felicity.

  This was what the police hypothesized: given that the number of illegal aliens from Central America had now reached epidemic proportions in New York and Boston and Montreal, that this number was increasing almost daily, and that the level of associated violence was also sharply increasing, a careful compilation of data showed that extremist groups of both the left and the right were active in all said cities. Ritual political murders were becoming common. Wealthy businessmen and their families, who were legal immigrants or residents, were being kidnapped and/or killed by the leftists. Subversives, flowing across the borders in illegal droves, were being eliminated by right-wing vigilante groups monitoring the external fomenting of disruption within Central America.

  The Quebec atrocity had all the marks of either a left-wing or a right-wing murder, and (because of the woman’s work) either side could think it had cause.

  It would appear that various people knew when the truck was to arrive at the border.

  It would appear that a contact and a meeting place had been set up.

  Would Felicity kindly outline her ties with extremist groups?

  I am having another nightmare, Felicity told herself.

  “I have no such ties,” she said.

  Then why had she followed a truckload of illegal aliens from Boston to the Canadian border?

  She had never seen the truck until a few miles before the border, she said.

  “And what exactly happened at the border?”

  “There was total confusion,” Felicity said. “It was difficult to know what was happening.”

  Nevertheless, what was her version of what happened?

  Felicity gave a brief account, omitting only to mention the scarcely believable appearance of a fifteenth-century artist’s model in a frozen carcass of beef.

  This report from Father Bolduc, the police wanted to know; this talk about a woman at her cottage?

  “Father Bolduc misunderstood me,” Felicity said. “He’s told you, no doubt, there was no one at the cottage. I … I became afraid, that’s all. Afraid of being alone. Because of the other car.”

  Aha! Trog pricked up his ears. What was this about a car?

  There had been an unknown car, she said. But she knew nothing. She had simply been afraid of summer hooligans. No, because of the dark, she could not describe the car.

  Would she please comment again on the woman in the photograph? Had she or had she not ever seen the woman?

  It is impossible to tell, Felicity said. When I look at the photograph, I think of a painting.

  Trog was becoming increasingly impatient. Smokescreens, he muttered. Whenever detainees threw up smokescreens, he knew they had something to hide. What political organizations did she belong to?

  I am not a member of any political organization, Felicity said. I am not political.

  And yet, Trog prodded dryly, your family has made donations — substantial donations — to numerous political groups. Your aunts are very wealthy women with financial and political clout.

  My aunts, Felicity replied, are even less interested in politics than I am.

  How then did she account for their donations to a number of Central American social agencies and church groups, many of which were known to be fronts for political groups?

  Their reasons, Felicity said, are purely humanitarian and charitable, not political.

  With reference to Central America, Trog said, there is no such thing as nonpolitical.

  My aunts and I are nonpolitical, Felicity insisted. They knew more about the fifteenth century, she explained, than they did about the next election.

  “Is that so?” Trog leaned close with the air of one who knows that his victim, given enough rope, will hang herself. His eyes were glittering with triumph. “Your apartment was searched this morning,” he said. “We found a very interesting collection of newspaper clippings in a file. Very interesting indeed.”

  He beckoned to Mr Hunter who hovered like a presiding spirit, possibly benign. This is always rough, his eyes said to Felicity. It has to be done this way, part of the job. Don’t be too angry with us. His eyes never left her face as he handed over a folder. She felt his gaze and glanced at him and sensed he was aware of the tornado of panic inside her, that he sympathized.

  Trog took a clipping from the folder and handed it to Felicity. She read the byline: Texas (The Associated Press):

  A freight train plowed through a group of illegal aliens walking across a railway trestle in the dark, forcing some to jump into a creek 30 feet below and killing four of them. At least seven were injured. As many as 50 aliens may have been on the bridge when the train approached late Saturday night at about 40 mph, said the county sheriff ’s dispatcher. Authorities arrested 14 aliens who escaped injury, and searched yesterday for more victims in the creek and for other aliens who may have sought cover in the mesquite that dots the rugged coastal plains south
of Corpus Christi.

  “We’ve been searching all night,” said the agent in charge of the Border Patrol office here.

  He said the aliens were walking north across the trestle when they were surprised about 10:10 p.m. by the Missouri Pacific freight train travelling south. As the train approached, some of the aliens jumped from the bridge, some tried to outrun the train and some tried to avoid the locomotive by standing at the edge of the trestle. “I’m sure it was mass confusion out there,” he said. He said that the uninjured aliens who were arrested immediately after the accident were taken to the sheriff ’s office to be processed and sent to a detention centre. He said authorities think most of the aliens were from El Salvador.

  “Well?” Trog demanded. “If you’re not political, why did you clip this?”

  “It’s part of a collection,” Felicity said. “It belongs with Magritte and Escher and some stories by Borges.”

  “What are you talking about?” Trog was drumming his fingers again, a peremptory sound like a firing squad.

  Felicity sighed. “The absurd has an awful fascination for me.” She spoke wearily, not expecting to be understood. “I collect items. I find it … I suppose I do it because …” Her hands moved, speaking of the inadequacies of language. “It’s my immunization program. I mean, the desire to understand is itself absurd, isn’t it?”

  “Is it now?” Trog’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “And I suppose it’s absurd — just a coincidence about which, of course, you know nothing — that some of those people on the bridge in Texas wound up in a truck at the Canadian border.”

  Even her febrile nerves were perfectly still with astonishment. She stared at Trog with awe, with reverence almost: How could he carry on in his line of work? How did he resist being crushed under the weight of the world’s irony? She searched his eyes intently. Mr Hunter watched Felicity as though he could only breathe when she did.