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“Infidelity?” the Detective said; his voice was no longer his, behind the glass again, far away from him.

“Yes, infidelity; adultery; cheating on one's mate. You do believe in it? It is a possibility?”

The white, feminine-fancy stationery, the rubber band, the slanting curls of Sadie's script…it is late, night, and spotlit, stage center, the woman sits. I'm keeping a diary, she says. The man nods, accepts, but now and forever the Detective wanders, peering into, peering from, the blurred and darkened corners, the edges of vision, superimposing new transparencies, analyzing possibilities—but who can tell now, who can tell…?

“Yes,” Mrs. Klein said, “yes, I can see that he does. The detective believes it's a possibility. However, let's assume a further motive, a motive for the infidelity, a motive for the motive. All causes are external, says Descartes, every cause has a cause. Hypothetical murder is caused by hypothetical infidelity which, in turn, is caused by the hypothetical death of a marriage. Now what is it, I ask myself as a historian, as a detective in a manner of speaking, what is it that caused this hypothetical death of a marriage? What's the cause of the cause of the cause, I ask myself as a believer in the scientific method? Are you with me, Descartes?”

The Detective felt himself nod.

“All right. So how could it happen, how could this marriage, which started out so wonderfully, die? The man was not unkind. The man was loving and considerate in his own way. His marriage mattered to him; it was the bedrock of his life, in fact. His work, however, was changing him, was beginning to obsess him. He refused to see it, though, refused to admit to it; he became indignant at the mention of it. And because he refused to admit to it, he got worse, became more and more obsessed with his work (which was hypothetical to a degree, which was theoretical), and it was killing his marriage, killing what mattered to him most. Can you see that? Are you with me so far? Is that a possibility for the detective—that someone, without knowing it, could kill what mattered to him most?”

“The absent husband,” the Detective said softly. He wet his lips. “The empty vessel.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Klein said. “Absent. Empty.”

“Perhaps, perhaps she didn't let him know. Perhaps if he had only been told…”

“Perhaps he couldn't be told. Perhaps no matter how hard she tried, he wouldn't admit to it.”

They were silent for a moment. Mrs. Klein retreated to her chair, stepping backward, never taking her eyes from the Detective's.

“Yes,” she said, “he couldn't be told. He became obsessed with his work and wouldn't admit to it. And there we have the cause, the hypothetical cause of the death of a marriage. But what's the cause of the cause, I ask myself? I do that. I keep asking myself why he became so obsessed with his work—gruesome, cold work, with awful implications. How could he fool
himself with those rationalizations? How could he let his work kill what mattered to him most? Can you tell me that, can my fellow detective please come up with the solution to that?…Because I can't.”

“Perhaps,” the Detective said; he shook his head. She waited, pinioned him with her protuberant stare, with its sincerity. “Perhaps,” he began again, “she never understood. Perhaps if she had become involved herself, if she had had the gift herself…those moments when he was completely engaged, those moments when in the middle of a problem, he felt at peace with himself, carried by something bigger than himself, perhaps if she had felt them too?” He faltered. “Perhaps she never understood.”

“No,” Mrs. Klein said softly, eyes averted, “no, she never understood.”

“So she…?” The Detective hesitated, hoping Mrs. Klein would complete the question; but instead, she only prompted him.

“So she?”

“She was…unfaithful?”

“Perhaps—it is a possibility, is it not? But you see, that's what
he
never understood. He never admitted to himself that it was a possibility. Oh, he believed in possibilities, all right, but his possibilities were always hypothetical, theoretical. He never in his heart believed that it could actually take place.”

There was a pause, a natural lull, this part of the interrogation brought to a close. Helpless, the Detective stared at Mrs. Klein—she knew, she did know something, about the case, about infidelity—and his glance was a plea for her to stop her teasing, to end the ambiguities and tell him something…something definite. For a moment, she seemed to relent, her face gone sad, hidden in her hands, rubbing her eyes with her fingertips; but then, recharged, she surfaced quickly, an actress again, exuding energy—merciless.

“And there we have it; Descartes himself couldn't have done better. Our etiology, our history of causes: his obsession with his work led to the death of their marriage which, in turn, led to her infidelity which, in turn, served as the motive for his murder. All hypothetical, of course. All theoretical.”

Mrs. Klein rose from her stainless steel chair and stepped toward the wide glass wall to her left. Behind her hung a canvas, the room's largest,
riotous with color; beyond her the sky, still uniformly overcast, had darkened gradually into a premature nightfall, the evening smothered by fuliginous shadows that clung like lichens to the mist-topped, brine-soaked rocks. No gulls or terns crossed the sky now and the Coast Guard cutter had disappeared from view. The dull green of the ocean was gone too; all of the cove, the scene of the crime, framed by the shrieking orange of the drapes, had been bled of its color, merging into shades of the approaching night, toward one black frame, impenetrably opaque. The Detective watched Mrs. Klein as she stared at the cove. She seemed trapped to him then, out of place in the room, a creature indigenous to the outside world, this violent seascape he was forced to call home, but which frightened him, overwhelmed him now with its blunt indifference to human forms; a world he had ignored all his life until Sadie had died, leaving him the letters to open his eyes; a world beyond rooms, beyond measure, baroque with complexity, whose secrets defied his powers of detection, and which, alien and immense, had begun to cloud his mind with alien thoughts. He had tried to hide from those thoughts, their suspicions, their ever expanding, spiraling implications, afraid that he would lose himself in their cold immensity, a mote of matter in infinite space. But then Mrs. Klein had appeared, those thoughts, that world given an advocate, a face and voice for their mysteriousness; and, too, with her sarcastic probing, her relentless intrusion into his private self, an instrument of that world's steel-stark justice: its detective.

A world, a woman, he feared; a crime he could not comprehend; a life he could no longer with confidence justify, although an end, the end, was drawing near. Fact, he told himself, fact: you're dying. It was Mrs. Klein who reminded him.

“It's about five,” Mrs. Klein finally said, “wouldn't you say?”

“Yes—about five.”

“It's about time, then, wouldn't you say?” She turned to him, her face passionless; a scale-bearer, implacable Justice. “Time to test the hypothesis.”

The Detective swallowed, turned away; Sally would be in the kitchen now, his study—down the hall and around the corner—warm and safe. Looking up again, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head.

“Oh yes you do,” Mrs. Klein said. “You know what I mean—you may not want to, but you do. It's time, Descartes, time for the real detective to take over; time to reenact the crime, test the hypothesis. You
do
understand that the time has come?”

Adrift in the current, unable to turn away, he watched her. Freeze-frame the crime, he has said, says, hears himself say over and over, the words in amber, the climax of detection. Freeze-frame the crime; enter its world; reenact, relive the moment of its occurrence—but if the crime's your life, when the crime's your life…? The Detective turned toward the cove, an alien world darkening: the scene of the crime, the death of Mr. Klein, or just another seaside postcard setting?

“It's a little before five,” she said again. “It's time,” he heard her say to him.

He didn't move, the mobile spinning above him, the sun—hidden somewhere behind the house, the clouds—dropping faster now, light fading, sight fading. He had thought himself a good husband, a good father…The Detective felt a hand tugging gently on his sleeve. Mrs. Klein bent over him; seemed, he thought to whisper to him, a voice from beyond the glass: “I'll help you, Descartes. I'll be your accomplice.”

The Detective stood, felt himself stand, silently led to the corner of the room; a slow procession, priestess and penitent, seeress and initiate, seekers after truth in a ritual reenactment—detectives, too, in a manner of speaking. There, at the brink, the oblique angle where glass and plaster met, Mrs. Klein deserted him, slipping behind a strand of drapery, the Detective alone again and staring out…at the scene of the crime, the wormwood wilderness of his enforced retirement, this dimmed Maine coast. He reached out, touched the glass, tested its illusions, the cool hard sheen of its sentinel surface, his own image, a wraithlike visage, cast back at him—“pass no further!” Always stopped; always between the see-er and the seen, this cruel exclusion, a glass partition; this permanent exile, the limits of knowledge: Moses, the old man, brought to the top of the mountain and shown where he can never go; Moses, forever dying in the land of Moab, on the other side of what he wished to know. But then, against his skin, the breath of the wilderness, a cold wind penetrating; the pulse of the surf, like
the hushed promise of the burning bush, drawing him forward; the drapes thrown open; and there, in the corner, the Red Sea miraculously parting: a door.

The Detective passes through.

————

A promontory point on the northern coast of Maine. Its rock worn smooth, washed by wind and rain, perpetually damp—always the salt spray, always the fog rolling off the North Atlantic and condensing on its abraded, undulating face. Daylight asphyxiates; no sun, no stars, no moon, a time when all things become their shadows, when ernes turn invisible and, bodiless, screech from within the cove, a resonating cry muted by the rhythmic rush of the tide, a water-soaked echo. A metallic walkway, raffish orange, arrives at the point from two directions, merges into a cul-de-sac, a low-railed rim around the promontory's edge; and there, sealed in by the fetid ceiling of a sky, framed by the railing and by time, the couple stand face to face. A man, a woman, a promontory point, a moment. The North Atlantic—white-capped, rock-torn—five hundred feet below.

Fact: now and forever it is January.

A man and a woman in a moment. Living, relived, they stand stage center, spotlit by the Detective's eye as he peers into, peers from, the blurred and darkened corners of the crime. Note how the man is propped against the railing; note the arms cast into the air, struggling for balance; note the arched back, the bowed thighs, the heels raised from the ground, toes begging for a hold. Note the face, try to focus on the face—its desperation or surprise, mouth dropping and eyes gone wide, yet focused on the other face. Yes, note the man's face, an expression there, a message, silent because words take time, a plea, but which plea: to live? to die? Note the woman, how she faces the man, close, so close, an arm's length away. Note how their positions balance, how she mimics him in reverse, her shoulders pulled back, arms drawn to her side—a flinch perhaps, a reflex, the body's wisdom beating time? And the face, her face, is there a message there too, a plea? a denial? Note the scene, its formal beauty, its unity, the organic quality appreciated by the aesthetician's eye, and then sketched by him, entitled: “The Fall”? “The Crime”?

A man and a woman in a moment. But there is no title, there is no
meaning without movement—and no movement without meaning. In the cove, tide-tossed, Dexter waits, not knowing that he waits; in the bedroom, Sadie waits, pen in hand, not knowing that she waits. For the new scene. The new moment. For another miracle, another door to the world beyond.

It happens; now and forever it happens, one moment into the next, one frame into the other, movement and meaning. She reaches, has reached, is always reaching, her hand on his chest; frozen there at the fulcrum, the critical moment, a time when the world demands an accomplice—everything possible still. In the cove, Dexter waits; in the kitchen, Sally waits, always waiting. Somewhere below a lone gull cries and, time suspended, echoes again and again its crying, waiting for the sound to die, as her hand rests on his chest: to push or to pull? to save or to kill?

The Detective peers into, peers from, the blurred and darkened corners. Note the face, her face, fate's accomplice; the sketch is incomplete, the solution elusive, without understanding that face. But there is only one angle of vision, one point in time and space that can provide the solution. Truth always a risk, to know or not to know—only he can decide.

It happens; now and forever it happens, one frame into another; he too becomes fate's accomplice, taking a step into the world beyond. The Detective becomes, has become, is always becoming a man in a moment, a man at a railing, back arched, arms cast into the air, heels raised from the ground, toes begging for a hold—the North Atlantic, rock-torn, five hundred feet below. The Detective becomes this man in this moment, the man at the fulcrum, his wife's hand on his chest, and who can say, does he himself even know for sure, which plea is in his own eyes? But note the face now, her face in this moment, the key to the solution—the protuberant eyes, the pride smoldering in silence. Is the jittery search over? Is the dream at its climax? Have all the accusing glances been merged into one?

A man, a woman, a promontory point, a moment. Helplessly, Descartes awaits the judgment of history; passively Moses, the sentence of God. Helplessly, passively, with her hand on his chest, the truth-seeker, the detective, awaits the solution; the absent husband, the declaration: to be pushed or to be pulled? affirmation at last or guilty as charged?