Lasher (19 page)

Yuri stopped. How could he have said such a thing…a fluid that would give one eternal youth? And here this young man was sick unto death, maybe even dying, unable to move his right arm, though he tried again and again to lift it. How could Yuri have said it? And he thought of his own mother, dead on the little bed in Serbia, and the gypsies coming in and saying they were his cousins and uncles! Liars! And the filth there, the filth.

Surely she would never never have left him there if she had dreamed of what was going to happen. A cold fury filled him.

“Tell me about the maharaja’s palace,” said the man softly.

“Oh, yes, the palace. Well, it’s made entirely of white marble…” With a great soft relief Yuri pictured it. He talked of the floors, the carpets, the furniture…

And after that he told many stories about India, and Paris, and fabulous places he had been.

When he woke it was early morning. He was seated at the window with his arms folded on the sill. He had been sleeping that way, his head on his arms. The great sprawling city of Rome lay under a gray hazy light. Noises rose from the narrow streets below. He could hear the thunder of all those tiny motorcars rushing to and fro.

He looked at the man. The man was staring at him. For a moment he thought the man was dead. Then the man said softly, “Yuri, you must make a call for me now.”

Yuri nodded. He noted silently that he had not told this man his name. Well, perhaps he’d used it in the stories. It didn’t matter. He brought the phone from the bedside table, and, climbing on the bed, beside the man, he repeated the name and number to the operator. The call was to a man in London. When he answered, it was in English, what Yuri knew to be an educated voice.

Yuri relayed the message as the sick man lay there speaking softly and spiritlessly in Italian.

“I am calling for your son, Andrew. He is very sick. Very. He is in the Hotel Hassler in Rome. He asks that you come to him. He says he can no longer come to you.”

The man on the other end switched quickly into Italian and the conversation went on for some time.

“No, sir,” Yuri argued, obeying Andrew’s instructions. “He says he will not see a doctor. Yes, sir, he will remain here.” Yuri gave the room number. “I will see that he eats, sir.” Yuri described the man’s condition as best he could with the man listening to him. He described the apparent paralysis. He knew the father was frantic with worry. The father would take the next plane for Rome.

“I’ll try to persuade him to see a doctor. Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Yuri,” said the man on the other end of the line. And once again, Yuri realized he had not told this man his name. “Please do stay with him,” said the man. “And I shall be there as soon as I possibly can.”

“Don’t worry,” said Yuri. “I won’t leave.”

As soon as he’d rung off, he put forth the argument again.

“No doctors,” said Andrew. “If you pick up that phone and call for a doctor, I’ll jump from this window. Do you hear? No doctors. It’s much too late for that.”

Yuri was speechless. He felt that he might burst into tears. He remembered his mother coughing as they sat together on the train going into Serbia. Why had he not forced her to see a doctor? Why?

“Talk to me, Yuri,” said the man. “Make up stories. Or you can tell me about her, if you wish. Tell me about your mother. I see her. I see her beautiful black hair. The doctor wouldn’t have helped her, Yuri. She knew it. Talk to me, please.”

A faint chill passed over Yuri as he looked into the man’s eyes. He knew the man was reading his thoughts. Yuri’s mother had told him of gypsies who could do this. Yuri did not have this talent himself. His mother had claimed to have it, but Yuri had not believed it. He had never seen any real evidence of it. He felt a deep hurt, thinking of her on the train, and he wanted to believe that it had been too late for a doctor, but he would never know for sure. The knowledge numbed him and made him feel utterly silent and black inside and cold.

“I’ll tell you stories if you will eat some breakfast,” said Yuri. “I’ll order something hot for you.”

The man stared again listlessly and then he smiled. “All right, little man,” he said, “anything you say. But no doctor. Call for the food from right here. And Yuri, if I don’t speak again, remember this. Don’t let the gypsies get you again. Ask my father to help you…when he comes.”

The father did not arrive until evening.

Yuri was in the bathroom with the man, and the man was vomiting into the toilet, and clinging to Yuri’s neck so that he did not fall. The vomit had blood in it. Yuri had a time of it holding him, the wretched smell of the vomit sickening him, but he held tight to the man. Then he looked up and saw the figure of the father, white-haired, though not so very old, and plainly rich. Beside him stood a bellhop of the hotel.

Ah, so this is the father, thought Yuri, and a quiet burst of anger heated him for a moment, and then left him feeling oddly listless, and unable to move.

How well-groomed was this man with his thick wavy white hair, and what fine clothes he had. He came forward and took his son by the shoulders, and Yuri stepped back. The young bellhop also gave his assistance. They placed Andrew on the bed.

Andrew reached out frantically for Yuri. He called Yuri’s name.

“I’m here, Andrew,” said Yuri. “I won’t leave you. You mustn’t worry. Now let your father call the doctor, please, Andrew. Do as your father says.”

He sat beside the sick man, one knee bent, holding the man’s hand and looking into his face. The sick man’s stubbly beard was thicker now, coarse, and brownish, and his hair gave off the smell of sweat and grease. Yuri struggled not to cry.

Would the father blame him that he had not called a doctor? He did not know. The father was talking to the bellhop. Then the bellhop went away and the father sat in a chair and merely looked at his son. The father didn’t seem sad or alarmed so much as merely worried in a mild sort of way. He had kindly blue eyes, and hands with large knuckles, and heavy blue veins. Old hands.

Andrew dozed for a long time. Then he asked again for Yuri to tell him the story about the maharaja’s palace. Yuri was distressed by the father’s presence. But he blotted out the presence of the father. This man was dying. And the father was not calling a doctor! He was not insisting upon it. What in the name of God was wrong with this father that he did not take care of his son? But if Andrew wanted to hear the story again, fine.

He remembered once his mother had been with a very old German man in the Hotel Danieli for many days. When one of her women friends had asked how she could stand such an old
man, she’d said, “He’s kind to me and he’s dying. I would do anything to make it easy for him.” And Yuri remembered the expression in her eyes when they had come at last to that miserable village and the gypsies told her that her own mother was already dead.

Yuri told all about the maharaja. He told about his elephants, and their beautiful saddles of red velvet trimmed in gold. He told about his harem, of which Yuri’s mother had been the queen. He told about a game of chess that he and his mother played for five long years with nobody winning as they sat at a richly draped table beneath a mangrove tree. He told about his little brothers and sisters. He told about a pet tiger on a golden chain.

Andrew was sweating terribly. Yuri went for a washcloth from the bathroom, but the man opened his eyes and cried out for him. He hurried back, and wiped the man’s forehead and then all of his face. The father never moved. What the hell was wrong with this father!

Andrew tried to touch Yuri with his left hand but it seemed he could not move that hand either now. Yuri felt a sudden panic. Firmly, he lifted the man’s hand and stroked his own face with the man’s fingers, and he saw the man smile.

About a half hour after that, the man lapsed into sleep. And then died. Yuri was watching him. He saw it happen. The chest ceased to move. The eyelids opened a fraction. Then nothing more.

He glanced at the father. The father sat there with his eyes riveted upon the son. Yuri dared not move.

Then at last the father came over to the bed, and stood looking down upon Andrew, and then he bent and kissed Andrew’s forehead. Yuri was amazed. No doctor, and now he kisses him, he thought angrily. He could feel his own face twisting up, he knew he was going to cry, and he couldn’t stop it. And suddenly he was crying.

He went into the bathroom, blew his nose with toilet tissue, and took out a cigarette, packing it on the back of his hand, shoving it in his mouth and lighting it, even though his lips were quivering, and he began to smoke in hasty but delicious gulps as the tears clouded up his eyes.

In the room, beyond the door, there was much noise. People came and went. Yuri leaned against the white tile, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He soon stopped crying. He drank a
glass of water, and stood there, arms folded, thinking, I ought to slip away.

The hell he would ask this man for help against the gypsies. The hell he would ask him for anything. He’d wait until they had finished all their commotion in there, and then slip out. If anyone questioned him, he would give some clever little excuse, and then be off. No problem. No problem at all. Maybe he’d leave Rome.

“Don’t forget the safe-deposit box,” said the father.

Yuri jumped. The white-haired man was standing in the door. Behind him, the room appeared to be empty. The body of Andrew had been taken away.

“What do you mean?” demanded Yuri in Italian. “What are you saying to me?”

“Your mother left it for you, with your father’s passport, and money. She wanted you to have it.”

“I no longer have the key.”

“We’ll go to the bank. We’ll explain.”

“I don’t want anything from you!” said Yuri furiously. “I can do well on my own.” He made to move past the man, but the man caught his shoulder, and the man’s hand was surprisingly strong for such an old hand.

“Yuri, please. Andrew wanted me to help you.”

“You let him die. Some father you are! You sat there and you let him die!” Yuri shoved the man off balance, and was about to make his getaway when the man caught him around the waist.

“I’m not really his father, Yuri,” he said, as he set Yuri down and pushed him gently against the wall. The man collected himself somewhat. He straightened the lapels of his coat, and he gave a long sigh. He looked calmly at Yuri. “We belong to an organization. In that organization, he thought of me as his father, but I wasn’t really his father. And he came to Rome in order to die. It was his wish to die here. I did what he wanted. If he had wanted anything else done he would have told me. But all he asked of me was that I take care of you.”

Again, mind reading. So clever, these men! What were they? A bunch of rich gypsies? Yuri sneered. He folded his arms, and dug his heel into the carpet and looked at the man suspiciously.

“I want to help you,” the man said. “You’re better than the gypsies who stole you.”

“I know,” said Yuri. He thought of his mother. “Some people are better than others. Much better.”

“Exactly.”

Bolt now, he thought. And he tried it, but once again the man tackled him and held him tight. Yuri was strong for ten and this was an old man. But it was no good.

“Give up just for a moment, Yuri,” said the man. “Give up long enough for us to go to the bank and open the deposit box. Then we can decide what to do.”

And Yuri was soon crying, and letting the man lead him out of the hotel and into the waiting car, a fine German sedan. The bank was vaguely familiar to Yuri, but the people inside it were perfect strangers. Yuri watched in keen amazement as the white-haired Englishman explained everything, and soon the deposit box was opened, and Yuri was presented with the contents—several passports, the Japanese watch of his father, a thick envelope of lire and American dollars, and a packet of letters, one of which at least was addressed to his mother at a Rome address.

Yuri found himself powerfully excited to see these things, to touch them, to be close again in his mind to the moment when he and his mother had come here and she had placed everything in the box. After the bank men put all these articles into brown envelopes for him, he held these envelopes to his chest.

The Englishman led him back out and into the car, and within minutes they were making another stop. It was a small office, where the Englishman greeted a person familiar to him. Yuri saw a camera on a tripod. The man gestured for Yuri to stand in front of it.

“For what?” he asked sharply. He was still holding the brown envelopes. He stared angrily at the white-haired man and his friendly companion, who laughed now at Yuri as if Yuri were cute.

“For another passport,” said the Englishman in Italian. “None of those you have is exactly right.”

“This is no passport office,” said Yuri contemptuously.

“We arrange our own passports,” said the man. “We like it better that way. What name do you want to have? Or will you leave this to me? I would like you to cooperate, and then you can come to Amsterdam with me and see if you like it.”

“No,” said Yuri. He remembered Andrew saying no doctors. “No police,” said Yuri. “No orphanages, no convents, no authorities. No!” He rattled off several other terms he knew for
such persons in Italian and Romanian and Russian. It all meant the same thing. “No jail!” he said.

“No, none of that,” said the man patiently. “You can come with me to our house in Amsterdam, and go and come as you like. This is a safe place, our house in Amsterdam. You will have a room of your own.”

A safe place. A room of his own.

“But who are you?” asked Yuri.

“Our name is the Talamasca,” the man said. “We are scholars, students if you please. We accumulate records; we are responsible for bearing witness to things. That is, we feel we are responsible. It’s what we do. I’ll explain all to you on the plane.”

“Mind readers,” said Yuri.

“Yes,” said the man. “And outcasts, and lonely ones, and ones sometimes who have no one else. And people who are better sometimes than others, much better sometimes. Like you. My name is Aaron Lightner. I wish you would come with me.