The Scapegoat

by Sara Davis

  “In a letter home from Hispaniola, Álvarez Chanca quoted Cato: ‘Delenda est Carthago.’ Carthage must be destroyed.”

  He turned to the map behind him now, as if to explain some of its various features, but I found it difficult to follow, and I heard my own racing thoughts instead.

  On the windshield of my car, at the hotel. And this man! I thought, suddenly energized by these thoughts, these connections, I had seen him before, too—on the flyer I’d found in my mailbox, advertising the lecture called “American Holocaust.” (And once before that, at my father’s open house—but that I did not recall until much later.)

  “In the North America of the 1700s, this preoccupation with space takes on something of a different flavor,” he was saying now, and he, too, seemed suddenly invigorated. “What is necessary to remember is that for the Franciscans, once the soul was Christian, the physical form was more or less expendable.”

  Now the slide showed two men hanging from a makeshift gallows, their bare feet dangling above the ground.

  Yes, I thought, that’s right. The missions were furnaces of death—it was all part of the same demented thing. Now the man at the lectern spoke again.

  “What a consolation, truly, to in death return to the bosom of God.”

  The words fell on an eerie silence. The constant smacking noises my neighbor had been making suddenly came to a stop. These people, I thought, they were behind it all. The silver-haired man was the leader of this sinister bunch, and these—I looked around me now at the rapt faces shining palely in the darkness—were his followers. This conclusion struck me with the force of truth.

  But what was the point? To be sure, if the missions really had been furnaces of death, that was unfortunate, but what did it have to do with any of these people? No one in this room was in any way responsible for any death at a mission; they had not even existed in the same century. I shivered and thought: This kind of preoccupation is like a disease, it is the saboteur of healthy living, I must get away from here at once.

  “Oh,” said the silver-haired man, and it was as though the room’s acoustics had undergone a shift. The light was falling on his face in an unusual way, and he spoke with a soft, peculiar coldness. “I take it you think your hands are clean?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I must have misheard, I thought.

  “Melissa,” he said. “Could we have a little light?”

  I sat, frozen in place, as a spotlight swung from the back of the auditorium toward the front. It slowed as it came closer to the stage, then hovered in the first row, as if hesitating.

  “I was under the impression,” he continued, “that it was you who said that they are dying out in a quick and easy way, and are being supplanted by a superior race?”

  It was difficult to dismiss the obviously irrational feeling that he seemed now to be speaking directly to me.

  “And that the better classes have been overwhelmed by the unrestricted breeding of inferior racial stocks?”

  No, I told myself, it is not possible, and yet I found myself thinking furiously: Me? Me? Of course not.

  “Farther back,” said another man’s voice, from the audience. The spotlight stirred and began to swing slowly away from the stage.

  I cleared my throat. To answer these accusations would be to dignify them, I told myself.

  “And was it not you…” said the silver-haired man now, that soft, cold voice caressing, trying to sneak a way in. “Wasn’t it you who said—referring to the children, of course—wasn’t it you who said, Nits make lice?”

  “No,” I whispered. “I never said anything like that.”

  “The first step,” said my neighbor, her face turning suddenly to mine, “is to admit your guilt.”

  I shook my head vigorously. I wanted to say, You are all mistaken, but the moisture had emptied from my mouth. The light had made its way to our row now, and I was blinded by its glare. I held up my hand against it.

  “What’s the matter?” said my neighbor. “Your father knew what he did. Didn’t have a problem admitting it at all. Blood on your hands. His hands. Blood on the whole family.”

  “That’s enough,” said a female voice, measured. “You’re scaring him.”

  I know that voice, I thought, looking ahead of me for that familiar silhouette of shoulders, lavender-hued, the familiar brassy hair. The light made it impossible to see, although I had a terrible sense of movement all around me, toward me, scuttling across the floor. It was the guest lecturer; of course, she was part of it, too.

  “Yes, Melissa,” I heard the man at the lectern say, as if from a great distance. “She’s right. Let’s have them all off.”

  27

  Into the darkness swung the same sun-dappled clearing in the trees that I had just visited in my dream the night before.

  Reclining on the marble tomb, propped up on one elbow, was Mr. Reinecke, as still as a sphinx, seeming again to be utterly without surprise at my sudden appearance. He flicked a lazy glance in my direction and then picked a piece of lint off his immaculate white sweater.

  I’ve been here before, I thought, seen this before. But something about it is different.

  “Coming up soon now, isn’t it?” said Reinecke, with his customary uninterested air.

  A brisk wind blew through the trees around us with a dry, papery rustle of the leaves.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  Reinecke looked at me archly.

  “Are you sure about that?” he said, a mocking curve to his mouth. “I think you know more than you pretend to.”

  I looked down. Did I? Then I was arrested by the sight of what I was holding in my right hand. I was no longer holding the briefcase—I was holding the whale-shaped paperweight from Professor Pindar’s office.

  “I’m afraid I can’t stay,” I said. I heard my own voice, but disembodied, as if the sound no longer corresponded to me.

  “Yes, yes,” said Reinecke with some weariness, as if he’d already heard this a hundred times. “You must go. But perhaps you might answer the phone, even so.”

  I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but before I could I was made conscious of the faint sound of ringing, and Reinecke had produced from behind his person a telephone remarkably like the one in my office. It sat atop the white marble tomb, incongruous.

  “It’s for you,” he said, and the sound of the telephone ringing grew louder and louder, until it drowned out everything else.

  28

  “Hello?” I said. I was in my office and a considerable amount of time had passed. Through the telephone I could just barely hear the sound of light feminine breathing.

  “Hello?” I said again. “Who’s this?”

  The breathing increased in tempo for a moment, and then the caller finally spoke.

  “This is a friend,” she said. It was a woman, as I’d thought, but she did not sound like either Linda in Professor Pindar’s office or the guest lecturer.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

  I looked out the window at the parking lot. Most of the cars had gone now, and the sky was awash in the soft dove-gray and golden light of dusk.

  The prospect was unappealing, but I had no energy to resist. “What is it?”

  “Can you meet me?”

  I thought about that for a moment. I was so tired, and my meeting with the guest lecturer in the Arboretum had been so sunny and taxing.

  “Oh, never mind,” said the woman. “I saw you in the auditorium today.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “In the lecture hall—listen—I shouldn’t be saying this, trust me, they will not appreciate it, but you shouldn’t go back there—I can explain.”

  I tried to make sense of what she’d said.

  “Go back where?” I asked. “Explain what?”

  “It’s for your own good—under no circumstances should you go to the hotel tonight. Really, you should never go there again.”

  The hotel, I t
hought. And: I have heard this voice before.

  “What makes you think I’m going to the hotel? Why shouldn’t I? Have we met before?”

  There was a long pause, and then a silvery jingling noise, as if the caller was wearing a lot of bracelets.

  “They’re using you,” she said, whispering now. “And yes, we have met. Once.”

  “At the—”

  “Open house. Yes. It’s Sharon,” she said, in a whisper so soft I could barely hear it.

  Of course, I thought, I could see her clearly now, coming down the path, the FOR SALE sign like a grounded white bird on the lawn.

  “But I don’t think you should have to pay for your father’s mistake.”

  Her voice had taken on a shrill, self-righteous tone.

  I drew in a breath, and pushed it out again through my teeth. Everyone seemed entitled to speak about my father today—first Professor Pindar and now Sharon.

  “What mistake?” I asked, in a voice that was not quite my own. “Using me for what?”

  “They want it to close,” she said.

  “Want what to close?”

  “The hotel, of course,” she said quietly. “It’s a desecration.”

  This again, I thought. “A desecration of what exactly?”

  Sharon made a chirping sound of disbelief.

  “It’s like making a hotel out of Auschwitz,” she said, forgetting to whisper now. “The missions were—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” I said, cutting her off. Really there was only so much of this one could take. “The missions were furnaces of death.”

  * * *

  I hung up the phone, my heart ping-ponging in my chest, and when it slowed to a more reasonable speed I looked around. My foot was numb, and parts of my left knee felt perilously incorrect. The days when I could nap curled up like that had passed, that was for certain.

  But was that what had happened? The love seat cushion was indeed imprinted with the outline of my head. Could that entire sequence of events—the meeting with Professor Pindar, the atrium, the lecture hall—have been part of my dream? That would, after all, be more believable than much of what had occurred.

  But—the whale-shaped paperweight was sitting on top of a stack of papers on my desk. I picked it up and gave it a little shake. So it had all happened, implausible as it was. I looked over to where the leather briefcase was perched on the chair opposite, like a tiny, silent visitor. I slid it toward me across the desk and opened it.

  I put the paperweight inside and closed the gold buckles with two crisp, final-sounding clicks. It was so much heavier now, I thought, as I rose to my feet with the briefcase at my side. Then came that strange feeling I’d had before in Professor Pindar’s office, the one that took me far from the room, of the weight being familiar and somehow correct, as if I’d been meant to have it all along.

  29

  I’d made my move too quickly, I thought. I should have allowed myself more time to recuperate after the misunderstanding on the Alexandra Bridge, because it was that, and how I’d handled it, that had more or less caused the rupture with F, I could see now, almost thirty years later, as I nosed the car out of the medical school parking lot and onto Campus Drive.

  Why had I called F from the hospital? On the one hand, it was true that at the time my circle of acquaintance had not been large, and it was F who had come to mind when the kindest nurse, after bringing me a blow dryer, a blanket, and a cup of hot coffee, had asked if there wasn’t someone she could call who could come and drive me home.

  It had been a mistake; I could see that now. Because if I was completely honest with myself, he had not just “come to mind,” but something less savory: a part of me had hoped that the person who answered the telephone when the nurse called would be not F, but his wife or one of his children.

  Because why should they be so oblivious? I thought. It did not seem fair that to them I did not exist at all.

  Only by chance that I was alone and could come straightaway, F had written, in the note he left me at the breakfast table, the morning I’d gone to meet my father. Only by chance. Had he suspected? But, I thought, that was not relevant now; it had all been so long ago. F’s children most likely had children of their own now. There had been a time when I’d dreamt of it nearly every night, of the gray and swollen river rising up to meet me.

  But honestly, I thought, anguished now, what an inconvenient time for all my thoughts to be pulled toward the past, and not just the general past, but to those particular weeks, the weeks I’d returned to with such alarming frequency in the last few days. I could not allow my thoughts to drift like this—I would not. I dragged them back to the task at hand; I chained them there by force.

  Now I was coming along the edge of campus, and I saw that the fog had drawn in much farther than usual, completely obscuring the foothills in a wall of white. There was no real reason to think it, but I had the impression that I was driving to the Old Mission Hotel for the last time.

  30

  “Mr. Shriver,” said the smooth-faced young man. He stood behind the reception desk, as doll-like and inscrutable as ever. Someone had replaced the vase of white lilies on the counter, and I became aware, as I had before, of their precise and not entirely pleasant scent. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  I gave him a long, slow, careful look, which he returned candidly.

  “I see you’ve got your briefcase.”

  “Yes,” I replied. I had the distinct impression that this was not the first time I had heard his voice that day.

  “Were you there today?” I asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “At the lecture.”

  A silent pause went by, in which he held my gaze steadily.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what you mean.”

  He reached into a drawer and retrieved a ring from which hung a key and a leather tag inscribed with the number 409. “I think you’ll find the room very comfortable.”

  He opened his mouth again, as if to add something, but thought better of it. I took the key without comment and turned away, and had taken three steps toward the bar and the elevator when some extra sense caused me to turn back. The young man was watching me, and when our eyes met he treated me to a very beautiful smile, like a sunrise dawning on his lovely features. I had made the right choice, his expression seemed to say.

  * * *

  I crossed the lobby, passing the long bar. Its row of red candles looked as though they had just been lit, and yet the bar was deserted, and there was no sign of that surly bartender.

  “Hey there,” said a voice in the darkness. “There you are.”

  I turned and felt the briefcase bang painfully into my thigh as I swiveled in haste. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom.

  “I think you’ve underestimated this place,” said Mr. Reinecke. He was draped like a festive garland across one of the white, donut-shaped couches.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Beside him, on another of those distinctive couches, perched the little boy in old-fashioned clothing from my dream. He was sitting beside his mother, whose back was ramrod-straight.

  “We’d prefer it if you came with us,” he said.

  “Just a minute,” I said, with some difficulty. “What are you doing here?”

  Then I heard another voice behind me.

  “Sir?” It was the smooth-faced young man. I turned back toward the front desk, which, as suggested by the young man’s current proximity to me, was unattended.

  “Sorry, sir,” he went on, and with a light touch on my elbow he steered me away from the donut-shaped couches. “I should have mentioned that the elevator is out of order.”

  And that was apparently true; ahead, I could see that a white paper sign had been taped over its buttons, the words written on it too small to read from this distance.

  “Not to worry,” said the young man calmly. “There is someone on the way.”

  I nodded, allowing him to guide me gently across t
he shiny floor, like a dance partner in some sedate medieval routine.

  “There’s no one in the lobby, Mr. Shriver,” he said, the tone and volume of his voice unchanged. “You’re in exactly the right place.”

  Now we had reached the door to the stairs, where the young man, still smiling, deposited me. I turned back to the lobby, feeling his eyes on me, tracking my gaze. Mr. Reinecke and the little boy had vanished—just as he had said, it was deserted.

  * * *

  Everything about the fourth floor was quiet; nothing could have looked more ordinary: it was the same thickly carpeted dark hallway I had been down before with the guest lecturer. Here I was, approaching the door to 409, key in hand. I paused. What if the room was already occupied? I raised my fist to knock.

  Does this make sense? I asked myself. What was I planning to say, exactly, to the room’s occupant?

  But, I admonished myself, I had been paralyzed by indecision too many times before—now was the time for action, not more thinking. I knocked on the door three times: bright, sharp noises. Inside, I felt something—some presence—respond.

  “Yes?” said a muffled female voice. “Come in.”

  “It’s locked,” I said, but when I looked down I saw that I was wrong. In fact, the knob was turning smoothly in my hand.

  The room was quiet and, at first glance, empty. There was the bed with its tight dark coverlet, the cabinet, the night table, and the desk. Everything was exactly like it had been before, only the time of day was different—then it had been night, and now it was merely drawing dusk, so that the setting sun tongued the hem of the curtain with an orangish light.

  “In here,” said the woman’s voice, and I saw that the door to the bathroom was slightly ajar, and that the sound of the voice came from within, and that it was accompanied by the quiet splashing sounds a person makes while taking a bath.

  “You’re early,” she said. It was difficult to say, muffled as her voice was, but I thought I detected a hint of irritation. “I’m not ready. But you can have a drink and wait.”