The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Go on then,” Nora Jane said. “Tell Lydia to come in here and let me see what she’s doing to her hair. Never mind, I’ll go in there. Did Betty give you supper? Did you eat supper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, go to Tara’s until eight o’clock. Then come right back.”

  “I’ll take her,” Freddy said. He got up and put down the papers he was holding.

  “It’s only four houses. Leave her alone. We can’t change their lives. Go on, honey. She and Tara are doing a science project. They have to work on it.”

  Tammili left the room and Freddy followed her. She went to the carport and found her bicycle and wheeled it out onto the long driveway that curved down the acre of land to the street.

  Freddy stood by the front steps watching her. Two of his three sheepdogs ran over and begged to be petted. He caressed their fine big heads. An old male named Prospero and his granddaughter, a high-strung beauty they called Cleo. It was growing dark. To the west there was a cloud bank of unearthly blue, so subtle and evanescent that it changed as Freddy watched. Cleo nuzzled his hand. Prospero pushed her away and stood against his leg like a pillar.

  Tammili’s bike moved down the long drive and out onto the sidewalk and continued down the hill. As she passed a hedge of azalea bushes, a man rose up and stood in her way. Tammili screamed. Freddy and the dogs began to run. The dogs were there before the bicycle finished falling. Then Tammili was on the ground with a dog on top of her and the man was running down the street with the second dog pursuing. He jumped into an old red car and drove away.

  Cleo returned to Freddy. She was holding a piece of torn leather in her mouth. She was slobbering and breathing hard when Freddy reached her but would not let go of the leather.

  Prospero was with Tammili, licking her and whining. He was making little short breathy whines. Tammili was petting him as she extricated her legs from the bike. She stood up in a rage. “He hit Prospero with a gun,” she said. “He hit him on the back. Poor old Prospero, poor old wonderful dog.” She was examining the animal for wounds. Freddy bent over to look for cuts on her legs.

  Nora Jane and Nieman were running down the yard with Lydia behind them. “Call the police,” Freddy yelled to them. “Call the neighborhood patrol.”

  Fifteen minutes later a bomb went off in the front window of Clara Books. It destroyed an exhibit of first editions of Karsh and Ansel Adams monographs and took out the entire travel and poetry sections. There were books there that would never be in print again. All the Lost Roads and Dragonseed editions printed on paper made to last a thousand years. All the Faber and Faber hardbacks. It would be a long time before the extent of the damage was fully revealed to the staff of Clara Books, the oldest and least economically successful privately owned bookstore in the Bay Area. But that is a different tragedy. “And furnished me with books from my own library, which I prize above my dukedom,” as the real Prospero said.

  The neighborhood patrol beat the police to the house. Jason Hebert was right behind them. He had been on his way to tell Freddy about the bombing. Before he reached the door he got news of Tammili’s assailant.

  “We assume this is all related until we find a reason not to believe it,” he said. “I’m really sorry about your store. We have it cordoned off. I’ll take you down there if you want to go.”

  “I have a piece of the jacket,” Freddy answered. “I had a time getting it from the dog but I tried not to touch it. I wrapped it in plastic. What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Your family will be under our protection,” Jason answered. “It will be a twenty-four-hour watch. I want you to know they will be safe.”

  “You’re leaving in the morning and taking the girls with you.” Freddy was folding his clothes to leave on the chair overnight. It was a habit he had gotten into at Exeter and he always fell back into it when he was thinking. No matter how wrinkled or dirty the clothes were, if Freddy was thinking hard he folded each piece as he took it off and stacked the pieces on a chair. He took his socks off next to last and his underpants off right before he got into bed. He was taking his socks off now. As he rolled them into a neat roll, Nora Jane knew she was in for it.

  “You can go to Mother’s house or up to Willits or to Europe. If the house on the beach was finished you could go there. What you can’t do is stay in this house with my children and my unborn child until we find out what’s going on.”

  “We are perfectly safe. The police are watching us. Nothing is going to harm us here. I’m not leaving, Freddy. It would scare the girls to death. I don’t think that man was after Tammili. It was some sort of coincidence. Besides, I won’t be run out of my own house by murderers. I want to go see Mrs. Hawk and ask her what Adrien said to her on the phone. I told Inspector Hebert I was going to help.”

  “Help! What are you talking about? You don’t help in a murder investigation. Good Lord, Nora Jane. I don’t believe you said that. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “It does have to do with me. I liked Adrien so much. Oh, God, do you think she knew they were going to kill her? Do you think she had time to think?”

  “You’re in denial. They bombed the store. A man was in our azalea bushes. And, yes, she had time, they slit her throat, which is why you’re leaving here.”

  “Come get in bed. I’m scared too, Freddy. But I’m not leaving unless you do. I’d be more scared being away from you than being here.” She patted the pillow, tried to pretend to look seductive, but it didn’t work.

  “I’m going to look in on the girls first.”

  “Nieman’s sleeping in the room next to them with the door open. And you know he never sleeps.”

  “I’ll just look.” Freddy padded down the hall barefooted and looked in on the girls. Then he looked in at Nieman, lying on his back in the guest room pretending to be asleep.

  Freddy returned to his bed and got in beside his wife. “Can you believe he insisted on staying here? That’s just like him. I love Nieman, Nora Jane. He’s a pillar. He’s never let me down.”

  “Go to sleep,” Nora Jane said. “Come here to me. This is our house. No one can harm us here.”

  Night settles down upon this house, Nieman was thinking. Night fills the oceans and the valleys and the towns, night falls on this murderer, this sick or benighted person whom it serves no purpose to hate or fear. Only reason can save us now, and reason is slow, so slow. Reason is the turtle in the race, and reason demands that I sleep. I will sleep. Nieman relaxed the muscles in his cerebral cortex, he relaxed the muscles that pump blood to the brain, he relaxed the muscles that control the eyes. He set his sights on Athena and he slept. He was not always this fortunate in controlling his brain’s whims.

  As soon as they finished breakfast the next morning, Nieman and Freddy went into a small office behind the kitchen to decide how to proceed. It had been a maid’s room when Freddy bought the house. Later he had turned it into a reading room. The walls were lined with the books he had owned when he was a student. The sofa was covered with an old blanket he had taken to camp as a child. He sat down upon it now and it seemed to give him strength.

  Nieman sat facing him. “Don’t talk,” he said. “Think.”

  “Figure out who the enemy is. Who would kill Adrien, then bomb my store. If it was Muslim fundamentalists they would have announced themselves, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that how they operate?”

  “Look for the thing we have forgotten. Is there a money trail? Is it about you or Nora Jane? Someone who works for the store?”

  “No. No way.”

  “Is it Sebranek?”

  “It looks that way. But then, if they are after Sebranek, why bomb the store? It would hurt him more if suspicion stayed on Johnnie.”

  “Are the two things related? That’s the real question.”

  “And what of the man who startled Tammili? That’s the thing that’s driving me crazy. Right here, in my yard, on my property, while I watched. If the bombing is related to that, we have to leav
e San Francisco. The house on the beach will be finished in a month. It might be safe there. At least the property is open and could be watched. God, Nieman, is this happening to us? What effect will it have on the girls?”

  “I was up half the night pondering that one.”

  “Tammili’s spooked, whether she admits it or not. She’s probably listening outside the door right now. Nora Jane kept them home from school.” Freddy got up and went to the door and opened it. The only sound was the dishwasher in the kitchen.

  “Is it about our being Jews?”

  “I don’t know.” They were silent. Then Nieman raised his arms as though to conduct a symphony.

  “Freddy, why didn’t we think of it? There’s the new Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley. I met the director the other day. I’d been so derisive and irritated about it and then I ran into the director in Musa’s office and he turned out to be rather nice. Affable, trying to make friends. He’s a Palestinian Christian, a Doctor Zouabi, something like that. I was struggling so hard to overcome my prejudices so we could talk that I didn’t get his name. Let’s go over there and get him to give us a reading on it. We can’t rely on the police, or even the FBI on this one. We have to make our own assessment. Don’t you agree?”

  “Call him now. Make an appointment.” Freddy got up quietly and pulled open the door and caught sight of Tammili’s red shirt disappearing around a corner.

  Three hours later they were sitting in a crowded cubicle in the old administration building, part of which had been turned into the new Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Freddy and Nieman told Doctor Zouabi what they knew, including the Salman Rushdie problems of the past.

  “Who do you think is after us and why?” Freddy asked. “I want to meet them and talk to them. I’ll take his books out of the store if it’s still Salman. I mean it. Find out what they want.”

  “Can you help us?” Nieman added. “Can you find out anything?”

  “I can try. I’m more suspect by those factions than you are. They are not happy about our work here.”

  “Do you have an idea?”

  “There are hit lists. Perhaps your Mr. Sebranek Conrad is on one of them.” He laced his fingers together. He was an extraordinarily ugly man, wearing very expensive corduroy trousers and fine leather shoes with cashmere socks. A silk shirt, a dark green alpaca sweater. A gold watch. There were rings.

  He’s got about twelve grand on his person, Freddy decided. Then bowed his head. Don’t be prejudiced, he warned himself. You have come for help. Don’t project prejudice or hate. Help me, you son-of-a-bitch. Tell me which of your ugly benighted countrymen is after my life and my children.

  “If you get information for me I’ll make a grant to your foundation in gratefulness,” Freddy said. “If they want Salman’s books out of the store they can have that. I’m sick of fighting this battle. I don’t have to defend free speech for Muslims who don’t believe in it anyway. To hell with it. I should have given up when they bombed me last time.”

  “He’s overwrought,” Nieman added. “As you can see. We appreciate your seeing us. We’re grateful to you already.” If you want to veil your women and keep harems, go on with it, he was thinking. But then, you’re a Christian, aren’t you? So the university believes, anyway. Well, I won’t be prejudiced. I’ll outgrow my conditioning. I’ll rise above it. I swear I will but not today in all probability, not with you wearing those pants and that watch and those rings.

  When they were gone, Doctor Hava Zouabi picked up the phone and began to call numbers on two continents. At six o’clock that night he got what he wanted. “Two Jews are being harassed over some book-selling Jew from New York City,” he said. “They want to apologize and buy someone off. Do you know who might want an apology from a bookstore in San Francisco?” He listened for a while, then wrote down a name and an address. “Thank you, Saleem, God be with you.”

  It’s good when they learn a lesson, he decided. How much I hate this ugly place, these ugly big people and their heartiness and disdain. Three more years. I will suffer it and cause my little children to suffer it for three more years, then I will go home. I will never set foot in their filthy cities again. Never watch their piglike children slop around the streets all day and night, their whores of women, their television sets.

  He closed up his little cubicle and walked the seven blocks to his rented house and went inside and kissed his children and let his wife bathe and feed him and put him to sleep for the night.

  III

  “We must grow or die,” Freddy said, when they were in the car with Nieman driving. “We have read Amos Oz. We have seen the bodies of our children and their children. If this is about Salman, the books go out of the store. I won’t put my family in jeopardy for him. Let him apologize to his people or take the stupid book out of print. Who cares? If you think for one moment I’m not serious about this, you’re wrong. I hate them. It’s true, deep down inside where I can never root it out I hate and fear them and wish them dead. I cannot rise above this, Nieman. There must be a way to ride above it then. A way to constantly know how stupid it is. Hate and war make hate and war. They destroy the reasons men attain the property over which they fight. The idea is to protect women and children and then the women and children end up being killed.” Freddy rolled his shoulders into a ball as he spoke. He curled his body into itself. He undid his seat belt so he could think better. His hair was very thick and curly and he was nearly always in need of a haircut. Today it was even dirty.

  “You look like an Arab street kid with that hair. Let me put it this way. If you remove Salman’s books from the store and apologize to the Arab world it’s all right with me. As long as that’s the enemy in this case and I’m not sure it is. I’m not blameless in this hatred and you know it. Just because I try to be rational doesn’t mean my mother wasn’t just as big a bigot and ball- and soul-breaker as yours was. They all are. That’s what they do and we must forgive them every morning and move on.

  “Freddy, I woke up this morning thinking about what was in the window of the store the day they bombed it. It doesn’t make sense. Ansel Adams photographs. Then I started thinking. You put that exhibit up the day after Adrien spoke. I was by there the day before she spoke to buy a book about coins for my nephew and the front window was a mess. There were displays of Adrien’s books and photographs of her. But that was crowded into a small space. All around it were piles of mess. I was meaning to say something to you about it. I thought it was disrespectful to have her things all crowded in with everyone else’s pet agendas. Every rabid feminist of the last ten years was represented, as though Adrien was not a law unto herself with broad-ranging interests. What was all that stuff?”

  “Nieman, stop the car. Do you realize what you just said? That was a pro-choice display from the day before. I guess Frances just crowded it to the back to put Adrien’s books in the window. The women had a benefit for Planned Parenthood the day before Adrien came. One of the speakers was that Palestinian woman they’re all so crazy about who says all men are rapists. What if it was unrelated? What if Adrien’s death had nothing to do with the bombing? All these years I pay lip service to the scientific method and when I need it, what do I do? Jump to the first conclusion that occurs to me. Tammili keeps saying the license plate on the car said Alabama. She reads all the mysteries she can get her hands on. She would read a license plate, wouldn’t she? We would have when we were her age. Don’t stop the car. Go down to Jason Hebert’s office and let’s talk to him.”

  “I wasn’t going to stop the car. We’re on the freeway, Freddy. I thought you wanted to go see about the store.”

  “Frances will take care of the store. Go to Jason’s office now.”

  Doctor Hava Zouabi was still worrying about the visit Freddy and Nieman had paid to him. He picked up the phone and began to call numbers he should not have been calling from his office phone. He called the cell in New York City and the one in Los Angeles and the man in Los Alamos. “Th
ey said Amir might know why a bookstore was bombed and a woman killed,” he asked these people.

  “Amir is not interested in bookstores,” they answered him.

  “Is he interested in Salman Rushdie?”

  “No one bothers with Salman Rushdie now. Let him stew in his own juice. He has angered the British. He has been ungrateful and the British don’t like that. We have other mares to tame, Doctor Zouabi. Don’t be involved in things that don’t interest you. Do your work. Trust in Allah. Allah be praised.”

  “Life is good. Allah be praised.”

  Lydia and Tammili and Nora Jane and two detectives were in the Harwoods’ living room. Tammili and Lydia were wearing matching navy blue jumpers and white blouses. They were wearing the gold bracelets they had gotten for their tenth birthday. They were wearing white tennis shoes and new white Nike socks. Lydia had her hand on Tammili’s arm.

  “It said ALA 540, then I couldn’t see the rest,” Tammili was saying. “It wasn’t dark and I wasn’t really hurt and Prospero was on top of me but I could see. I have twenty-twenty vision. The first thing I did was look at the license plate. It said ALA 540. He was as skinny as he could be and he had on that black jacket and Cleopatra tore off a piece of it. How did those dogs know what to do? That’s what I want to know. Did they read my mind or did they know he was mean?” She sat up very straight. Tammili wasn’t afraid. She lived in the center of a group of people who would kill or die or move to Malibu for her. What did she have to fear?

  “Could it have said AR?” the detective asked. “Think very hard, Tammili. Think as hard as you can.”

  “It might have. There was an A and the plate was white with dark letters. I thought it was ALA but if you put the 5 very close to the A I guess it could. It could. I’ll say provisionally it could.” Provisionally was one of the vocabulary words Nieman had sent her last week on E-mail. She had been looking for a way to use it.