Refiner's Fire (41 page)

“I'm partially responsible for that, you know. I insisted that they tell you who you really are, and since you have no way of being that other self of which you were robbed by shifts in history, you're sort of stuck. You don't really fit in anywhere. Where would you? You were born in the midst of a fierce naval battle off the coast of Palestine. You grew up in the Hudson Valley...”

“How do you know?”

Levy smiled. “I haven't really said anything yet. All I said was that you grew up in the Hudson Valley.”

“But how do you know?”

“I know, because I've been following your progress since you were a year old. Not long after I returned to the United States I found out who had taken you. I went to Eagle Bay on several occasions, and knew you quite well until you were about two and a half. Then I was posted abroad, and after I returned I decided not to disturb you.”

Marshall was too confused to be either astonished or angry.

“Then I began to raise my own family, but I kept in touch. We thought it best to wait until you decided on your own to seek me out. Now that you have, why don't you stay with us? That is, with my wife Susannah and our two children. Peter is ten. No one calls him anything but his nickname, which is Rollo. Amanda is four. There's plenty of room and we have much to discuss. Although I can't do much more than broach the subject now, I can tell you that I have been trying to discover the identity of your father.”

There was a long silence as Marshall felt a surge of emotion working its way through him. Even though he had no idea of what he would find out, he felt that a certain resolution approached, that he was about to satisfy an overwhelming curiosity which, though unknown to him until this very moment, had directed his entire short life. He could not help himself, and he got all choked up. Paul Levy had expected that he would.

They spoke for the rest of the afternoon, interrupted by aides who came in with important matters to be discussed. Not used to sitting in an office, Marshall became extraordinarily fatigued and hungry, and could not wait to have dinner. He assumed that Levy's house was nearby. But Levy's position allowed him a great deal of flexibility. “I don't live in Norfolk,” he said, as they walked into a small building by a huge tarmac, “but in Charleston.”

“Charleston?”

“Yup.”

“That's hundreds of miles away. Don't you work here every day?”

“Every weekday. I met my wife when I was CO in Charleston, and we bought the most beautiful house there, on the Battery. It's only three hundred and fifty miles south, and in an hour I can get from my desk here to my front door at home.” They walked into a ready-room for combat pilots. “I ferry a different F-4 up and back every day. There's a maintenance schedule as sure as the tides. They used to have a man doing it as a full-time job. Now I do it instead—very efficient. An F-4 is a Mach 2.4 aircraft. Once we get off the ground, we'll be in Charleston in twenty minutes.”

They lost some time as Levy explained to Marshall how to eject, and how to work the oxygen and the intercom. However, the plane had been ready on schedule and, with Marshall in the navigators seat, they rolled to the end of the runway. At the moment of clearance they burst forward so certainly and with such terrifying speed that Marshall was pressed back in his seat as if he had been crushed by a bull, and couldn't understand how Levy could move his hands to work the controls. But they roared upward and shot through the clouds, leaving Norfolk behind as if it had been engraved on a plate. The whine of the engines was wilder than the whistle on a steam flier.

“It feels as if there's hardly anything except us and engines,” screamed Marshall over the intercom.

“That's a good description,” returned Levy. Then he banked, and swooped in a dive of several miles to show Marshall the delight of living on the border, close to absolute force, faster than sound, speeding in gravityless full-dimensional power flight. They traced the distant strip of Hatteras as if it were the white line on a highway—broken not symmetrically but only here and there by inlets around which the sea made sweeping circular patterns. Levy was an expert guide. “That,” he said, gesturing out the canopy at a netted green treasure of fields, patches of blue forest, rounded and long-bodied lakes, and dark mountains behind which a revolving apricot-colored sun was vanishing, “is America.” And when he said “America” he took the plane upward a half a mile, in an instant, so that if Marshall had not already been elated, he was sure to have been.

I
N A
mild translucent dusk they approached Levy's house. Stars were beginning to shine. It was delightfully warmer than in Norfolk. The house was a subtle beige English neo-classical, with lines as restrained as those of the Parthenon, and immaculate white trim. Instead of a frieze, one round window cast its light from under the peak of the roof. Several stories of windows were lit and aglow. Through them Marshall could see colored walls, books, paintings, tall plants, and jewel-like lamps. The grounds were surrounded by a solid gray fence.

As they headed up a brick walk to the entrance, the front door flew open. First out was Rollo, who sailed from the porch and rushed to his father, only to stop short, glance at Marshall, and say, “What's that?”

Rollo had recently become a tough guy, and knowing this, Levy looked at him drily and said, “Shut up, Rollo.”

“Make me,” retorted Rollo.

“You want your allowance?”

“I can do without.”

“You sure?”

“A hundred percent.”

Then Levy leaned down and gave him a kiss, which he wiped from his face in great annoyance. Susannah Levy, a beautiful blond woman in her middle forties, came out with Amanda clutching at her dress. She took the child into her arms and gave her to Levy as he introduced Marshall.

“I'm Susannah Levy, and this is Amanda, and this is Peter.” “Rollo.”

“Peter!”

“Rollo.”

“All right then, Rollo, dumb Rollo, what a name.” Then she kissed Marshall, which made him feel awfully good, and as he was about to be embarrassed, Levy handed him Amanda, who turned her head away in a fey movement which she then contradicted by resting against Marshall as if she had known him since she was born.

They passed through ranks of potted rhododendron and palmetto into the main hall, and into the kitchen, where they sat down to eat. The table was enormous, and all five of them filled only one end. A fireplace with a roaring fire made it necessary to fling open the windows. Spotlights and candles lit the room; there was a fine maritime painting on a far wall; the floor was of octagonal terra-cotta tile; two bulletin boards were filled with notes and invitations. As they sat down, a phone rang. Levy glanced in its direction and shook his head. “Let it ring,” he said.

Marshall was surprised when Levy went to a cabinet and took from it four
kipõt
(Amanda would not be left out). Then Marshall realized that the candles were in front of Susannah Levy, and that on the table were silver cups and a
hallah.
“Not only that,” said Susannah in response to Marshalls expression, “but the meal is
cashér,
and so is the Admiral—at least on Friday nights. He makes billions of exceptions. An odd bird, all in all.” She began the ritual, which took twenty minutes, and then they feasted on roasted meat and potatoes, fresh vegetables, and the best red claret.

After dinner, when, with faces turned to the fire, the children leaned against their chairs, Levy lit up a Cuban cigar—“They pass through Guantanamo”—Marshall guessed that Levy was thinking about him, but it was impossible to tell. He might very well have been concentrating on a naval problem.

“Are you contemplating your naval problems?” asked Marshall.

“Oh, no. No no. I was thinking about something else.”

“What? Marshall?” asked Susannah.

“Yes.”

“And what did you think?”

“Solvitur ambulando,
and I believe that it's so.” He knew several thousand Latin phrases, and had her always running to the dictionary.

“What does that mean?” she asked. “I don't feel like getting up.”

“It doesn't mean ‘I don't feel like getting up.'”

“Paul.”

“Deo optimo maximo
,” he said.

“A high-quality cigar,” added Marshall.

“Dixit crescendo absoluta excudit in Regnum Paulus
,” he said. They dared not provoke him further.

He carried the sleeping children off to their rooms and put them to bed. Marshall watched Levy's face as he held the cigar between his teeth and maneuvered the nightclothes onto Amanda. He admired Levy, and was glad to be on his side.

The circular window was in the study, an enormous room under the roof, in which were five or six thousand books, several desks, an aquarium of unusual size, and the ever-present maritime paintings and brass instruments, as well as a fireplace in which Levy built and struck a birch fire faster than Marshall had ever seen it done. He went to a vault, neutralized a battery of coded alarms, opened it, and took out a slim looseleaf notebook.

“These are my researches into your origins. There are just a few pages, and they themselves are terribly inconclusive, but they took years to assemble. Would you like them now, or do you want to rest?”

“I'll tell you what. Why don't you put them back, until I have decided how I'm going to approach them—which might take a few days. Is that all right?”

“Sure, that's all right. I don't want to press.”

“Okay.”

“Tomorrow we're having a big party. All the brass on the East Coast is going to be there, and a bunch of big civilians. But I always invite my family and Susannah's, and lots of young officers—so you'll have people your age. These things aren't like real parties because they break up into knots of people talking shop. I know that you don't like parties. Livingston told me.” Marshall nodded. “But do yourself a favor,
come to this one.
"

His room of white walls and dark hardwood flooring overlooked the rippling bay beating landward from the ocean. The wind was warm, the moon bright, and even in spring the palmettos and vines were as sweet as summer. It was good to be once again in a settled house, and to know that he might there begin to get his bearings. For many things had followed him and he wanted to confront them, so that he might turn in some of his ways and learn.

As he closed his eyes, listening to the rustling palms and the water lapping the Battery, he felt again as if he were in the navigator's cockpit of the F-4—spiraling upward at a blast; swinging through the sky in arcs as wide as half the state; hurtling forward and straight, high and clean; having left behind all slow-moving encumbrances; having surrendered himself to what he would find and feel, to the physics of that fighters motion above America, Kitty Hawk, and Charleston in the Palmetto Country.

T
HAT
S
ATURDAY
was almost hot. Rollo and Amanda were home from school but not underfoot. Amanda was preoccupied with the discovery of flowers in the garden. First she approached the flower, walked around it to observe from all angles, peered over it, touched it, bent back the petals, and followed the stem down to the ground. Marshall watched a bee alight on a pure white geranium cupped in Amandas hands. The bee arose and began to fly around her head. She closed her eyes and began to gasp, which meant that in little time she would break down completely. Marshall ran to the garden, took her from her footing of soft earth and, after a kiss, set her on the lawn, where she soon fell asleep.

Rollo was bent over a complex but childish mechanical drawing. “What's this?” asked Marshall, sitting down at Rollo's table.

“If I tell you, do you promise to keep it a secret until I get a patent?”

“I promise.”

“All right. I noticed that when I went on my bicycle I could go five or six times faster than if I walked, with the same effort. I figured out it was because of the lack of friction in the wheels, and because of the gears. Anyway, it's a terrific machine, and it makes me able to go way over there without hardly trying.

“Now, Daddy took us riding. We went in Virginia. After we learned how, we went for ten miles in the forest and in the woods. The horses went as fast as a bicycle, and they weren't even tired.” He looked extremely tense and serious, as if what he was going to say were the most important revelation in the history of all mankind.

“I invented a horse bicycle. It was obvious. It has four wheels, each of which has its own gears. The horse puts his feet in specially molded rubber buckets which attach to the pedals. The pedals are hydraulically mounted so that they will give enough resistance. Otherwise, he would break his legs. It's steered by a rack-and-pinion mechanism attached to the levers and then to ropes which go to the rider's hands.” Marshall was speechless, but his face gave away his skepticism. Rollo became even more serious, knitting his brows as his father often did.

“The horse has to start when very young so he can learn how to do it. This is my third drawing. I make them better and better. With a horse bicycle, I could ride from here to Florida in five days, for only fifteen dollars.”

Susannah sent Marshall and Rollo to the store to pick up a case of beer. They had plenty of champagne for the party but had forgotten to get beer. On the way and back along the Battery past piles of cannonballs and massive squat-looking mortars, Rollo gave away the secrets of the ages, in describing a vast catalog of inventions. He made Marshall swear a hundred times not to tell, or steal them. They were, in fact, often practicable and sometimes ingenious, and included a new design for a freight yard to facilitate easier switching; an optical anti-collision system for ships at sea; a means of transporting heavy loads over wilderness terrain with minimal effort; improvements for surveying and navigational instruments; apt and wonderful slogans for corporations and products; games; camping and survival equipment; new types of snacks; colas; food packaging; a record-keeping system for small businesses; the horse bicycle; clever kitchen and garden implements; and many different recipes for cakes and cookies—all of which sounded delicious. Marshall concluded that with a skilled and loyal support staff Rollo would become a corporate giant, and advised him to write down the ideas and have his father put them in the vault.