A Mind of Winter (28 page)
I caught myself.
Sanity?
What was I thinking?
A picture leapt to mind: Barnaby, Oscar, the mysterious, nameless visitor, and me, all of us creeping about in the gloom of night, illicit meanderings in some vast below-ground cavern.
The visitor’s business card; how could I have forgotten about it? The thought of it now propelled me to my feet. Had I brought that spring jacket with me? Yes! I’d been wearing it on the drive up. I opened the closet; there it was. I dipped my hand into the pocket.
I was puzzled by what I discovered, though somehow, at the same time, not really surprised.
Official lettering at the top, sitting above a distinctive, familiar seal:
Department of Justice
. Below this, in simple black typeface:
Office of Special Investigations.
And a name and title—
Jan van der Putten. Senior Investigative Officer.
A Dutchman?
Could this have something to do with those photographs Oscar had attempted to develop, and lost? Clearly, his pictures of his family—the woman bore such a striking resemblance to him. Why was Oscar so terribly troubled? And how could any of this require Oscar to obtain legal counsel?
Impulsively, I picked up the receiver of the white telephone on the bedside table and dialed the number printed on the card. The phone rang emptily for what seemed a very long time. I was about to replace the receiver when I heard a gentle click, and then a voice.
“Mr. Van der Putten?”
“Speaking.”
“Marilyn Whittacker.”
A pause. “I hadn’t hoped to hear from you so soon.”
“Why are you stalking us at Ellis Park? What is it you want?”
“Stalking is a strong word.”
“What would you call it?”
“I am an investigator, madam. I am investigating a case.”
“War crimes. Isn’t that what your office investigates?”
“That is correct.”
“Why did you ask me to contact you?” I was aware of the hostile edge in my voice.
“It is notoriously difficult to build these types of cases; these people are masters of covering up their tracks. We rely on the minute slips. Typically, our most useful sources are those closest to the suspected perpetrator. Someone who is around the person day in, day out—as you are—who is likely to pick up some trifling, but telling clue. I had not planned to approach you quite yet. But then, when I ran into you on the lawn—well, I suppose I was just operating on a hunch. A hunch which, I daresay, if I might judge from the present call, was a good one.”
A sudden recollection—not something I’d ever paid mind to before: the odd gesture Oscar exhibited, from time to time, of absently reaching up and rubbing a patch on his left upper arm, as if to ease a spasm or ache.
“Miss Whittacker?”
“I’m still here.”
“Perhaps you will think about what I have said.”
I found I was speechless.
“I’m glad you called. Please feel free to call me again. And if there’s anything—”
Quietly, I replaced the receiver before he could finish his sentence.
A trembling took hold of me; it started in my fingers and coursed through my body—like a slap of fever.
That moment, on the walk, with Oscar: it came back to me like a punch to the jaw. The chill moment of frisson, the baffling desire to ask Oscar not only if and where he had fought in the war, but
on whose side.
It had seemed like an absurd thought at the time but now, in this moment, it seemed inevitable, even perfect: much like the feeling I would get when I sensed that a perfect photograph was about to erupt from the world and present itself to my eyes.
I lay down on the bed; a curdling confusion within turned to misery. I don’t know how long I lay there. I shifted toward the window, watched as the sheer curtain billowed slightly and settled to stillness, watched as the rectangle of light moved through the room, then was snuffed to night.
I lay there in the heat, amidst all those ruffles; drifting into sleep, I found myself again back in London at the site of the bombed-out house. Time had stalled. I was looking up at the sky—seconds, fractions of seconds, I had no way of knowing. The colors in the sky were fading, the undoing of an image, like a developing picture in reverse—a return to the void. Inside, a terrible struggle: sensing, intuiting, somewhere deep within, that the only right thing would be to leave the boy to his grief, to simply turn away. But I did not want to let it go, I had to stop myself from crying out with the loss of it.
I took the shot.
My instinct had been on the money; the photograph of the little boy before the rubble was extraordinary. It won several awards and widespread acclaim, became an icon of Wartime Britain. The shot that established my reputation, and also destroyed, for me, that intimate space of the viewfinder that had made my camera a refuge.
I was awoken by a loud rap on the door. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table: eleven p.m.
“Your cab, miss. It’s waiting outside.”
I hastily gathered my belongings and rushed downstairs, where I settled the bill and thanked the innkeeper. She appeared to have given my situation some thought and must have decided to pity me, for she reached over, patted my hand, and bestowed a reassuring look.
Thankfully, the driver was not the chatty type. We sped through the warm night in silence. I was aware of some feeling of resolve, though I had formulated no plan.
I had the driver drop me at the bottom of the driveway, by the Spanish gates, which at this hour cast fanciful deep shadows. I walked the driveway, aware, in a new way, of what Oscar had intended to achieve with the canopy of leaves overhead: an invitation not to pleasure, but to solace.
Entering the house through the back door, I made my way directly to the blue suite, Barnaby’s rooms, knocked twice, waited, entered. As I expected, the rooms were empty. I opened the closet, pulled at several drawers: all empty. Barnaby had taken full leave of the place.
I felt eerily ghostlike as I headed toward the yellow suite on the other side of the house. Once there, I deposited my weekend bag, splashed cold water on my face, pulled a comb through my hair, and brushed my teeth.
Back in the hallway, I felt sure-footed again; whatever its complications, I realized that I had made Ellis Park mine. Outside Oscar’s study, I hesitated. I had no idea what I was going to say. I knocked, turned the handle, first of the outer door, then of the inner, and stepped into the room.
Oscar started, his face exhausted. Seeing it was me seemed to have little effect; he continued to look as if he were in some kind of shock.
“Oscar, it’s only me,” I said unnecessarily.
His hand rested on his pipe. I sat in the chair facing his desk. He scrutinized my face, as if trying to decipher something.
“I’d like to help,” I said.
He was silent.
“Marilyn, there are some things there’s no helping,” he said finally.
“What is it? What’s happened? Is this about those people in the photographs, the ones that fell into the vat? They’re your family, aren’t they, Oscar? Your mother, your father, your sister.”
His face darkened. I knew I was intruding, but I could not stop myself.
“Where are they? What happened to them?”
“I don’t know, Marilyn. That’s the thing. I’m trying to find out.” Oscar gestured to the papers arranged in neat piles on the desk.
“The man who’s been following us all around, does he have anything to do with this?”
Now Oscar looked like the wind had gone out of him, as though he’d been kicked in the gut. “What man?” He seemed unconvinced by his own feigning.
“Your late-night visitor.”
Oscar reached into the drawer of his desk and drew out his tobacco pouch. “Have you spoken to him?” he asked calmly.
“No. Well, yes. Not really.”
Oscar looked at me inquiringly and waited.
“Just once. About two weeks ago. I saw him sneaking out the back entrance. I asked him what he wanted. He looked at me rather arrogantly, I thought. He didn’t answer my question, needless to say.” The rest I left out—the business card he’d given me, and later, the dreadful telephone call.
Oscar carefully filled his pipe. I could see he was waiting for me to say more.
“I came by your office one night. To talk. Oscar, I heard you speaking German. At least I think it was you. It was hard to tell.”
I saw it now, for the first time. Something beneath Oscar’s extraordinary control. Sensed that he was embroiled in an ongoing struggle to appear calm, against great odds—battling always, and with great effort, a mighty, invisible storm.
“What is it he wants?”
And then Oscar’s control slipped: only for an instant, but I saw again that rawness I’d glimpsed in the studio the night I’d showed him my desperate pictures of Erla; for a moment I felt I was looking at someone I’d never met—not Oscar at all, but a stranger, inhabiting his flesh.
I looked away. When I cast my glance back, Oscar was restored. He picked up a match, touched the flame to the bowl of his pipe. As he puffed to get it going, he seemed to be measuring his words.
“Things are seldom as they seem. I know you know this; I’ve seen it in your photographs.”
Oscar could not have known the impact of his words. The image reared up, the boy in the green jacket, little poisonous flecks of soot, almost invisible, dancing about him in the air. I spoke without thinking.
“Sometimes things
are
what they seem. Isn’t that what you intended to create here, at Ellis Park? Nothing but pleasure and calm and grace?” I hardly knew what I was saying. “Only superficial people don’t judge by appearances—isn’t that so?” I continued, a tremor in my voice, throwing back at him a line from Oscar Wilde that he liked to quote.
I’d spoken about Ellis Park but, in fact, I was thinking of what I had done—saw, in that moment, the true nature of my own actions, though I suppose in some sense, I’d known it all along. This was my crime: showing Oscar the photographs that evening in the darkroom, the photographs of Erla. Showing the world the orphaned boy, there, before the rubble of his house. Ferreting it out, exposing.
And now, here I was. No camera, it is true, but equally presumptuous. In a room bursting with secrets and pain.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, feeling the spill from my eyes. “Really, I am.”
I rose, walked around the desk. Oscar rose too. Unthinkingly, we embraced: a long, slow embrace, Oscar still, utterly still.
I knew, in that moment, that whatever the disconcerting man from the Office of Special Investigations might believe, Oscar could not possibly have committed the kind of crime to which he’d alluded. It was simply unimaginable.
I drew away, averting my eyes, understanding only now, and too late, that it was not always my business to see.
“He’s mistaken.” Oscar said this in an unfamiliar voice; I fancied I detected the trace of a German accent. “Whatever he told you—”
“Yes?”
Oscar had frozen; he was looking at me from some dark place. I’d been to dark places myself, but this was something else entirely. I took a step toward him; he held up his hand, keeping me at bay. Still, he said nothing. I stood unmoving; the heavy silence hung between us.
“I’m tired.” Oscar seemed to be speaking to himself. “Terribly, terribly tired.”
I remember every second of that meeting. It was the last time I lay eyes on Oscar.
The North Shore of Long Island. Summer, 1951.
A
nother witness apparently has surfaced. This brings the number to four. From what I can piece together, my visitor’s organization generally does not proceed unless a larger number can be produced. They have their reasons to be wary, I suppose, beyond an interest in justice: legal suits, libel claims, and the like. Who the witnesses are, how they came to light: on these issues, my visitor has remained silent. Not surprising, given the nature of the investigation and the fact that he is, for the most part, a man of few words.
The one exception to his general taciturnity was on his first visit, when he talked at length about his organization, giving a detailed account of the dossier they had amassed pertaining, as he put it, to my “case.” When he came to the end of his monologue, I was speechless, so great was my astonishment. I detected a measure of embarrassment on his part at my reaction. I was standing by the window and it was only then, the two of us silently facing each other, I noticed the curtain behind me was not properly drawn. I quickly rose. On my approach, my visitor sidestepped me in the direction of the door, his green eyes cool. He flinched as I brushed past him. Before pulling the curtains to, I noted with some relief that the courtyard below and the wing opposite were in complete darkness.
In subsequent meetings, my visitor has restricted himself to the fewest words necessary to convey the latest information. Once, he had nothing to communicate. When I asked him that evening about the purpose of his visit, seeing he had nothing to report, he replied that these
briefings
—that was the word he used—had been scheduled at prearranged intervals, that they did not depend on new developments.
I am having trouble staring down the multiple horrors before me.
I cannot bear to learn about my accusers or their circumstances. One thing I do know is their method of identifying me.
Posing for that picture was a grim business. That first evening, my visitor was carrying a leather satchel, which he set down on the end table by the door. After his little speech, he removed from the satchel the most compact camera I have ever seen, and a tiny flash to go with it.
“Over there,” he said, indicating an unadorned section of the wood paneling where I understood he wished me to stand.
I walked to the spot, instinctively straightening my cravat, feeling like a fool for having done so.
“It would probably be better to remove that,” he’d said, keeping his eyes on me while he fiddled with something on the camera.
I untied my cravat and, not knowing what else to do with it, stuffed it into the pocket of my jacket. I looked straight into the camera. The miniature lens glinted at me before disappearing, along with everything else, in the tiny but potent light of the flash.