Voice of Our Shadow (15 page)

“Oh, is he dead? I hadn’t noticed. I’m so glad you told me.”

While I fumed she ignored me and ordered a bowl of soup from a passing waiter.

“Please, India, I don’t want to fight with you. Especially now. I just want to know how you can be so sure of things when it’s all so bizarre.”

“It’s bizarre all right, but I’ll tell you something. The way Paul’s going about it isn’t bizarre at all. It’s my husband, Joe. I’d know his brand ten miles away.”

I wanted to trust her judgment, but I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. In the end I was right.

Whenever they were bored, Ross and Bobby played a game that inevitably drove me crazy.

“Hey, Ross?”

“Yeah?”

“I think we should tell Joe the seeeeecret!”

“The
secret
? Are you out of your mind, man? No one hears the secret. The secret is a seeeeeeecret!”

“You guys don’t have any damned secret,” I’d lisp, desperately hoping this time they would tell it to me. I was three quarters convinced there wasn’t one, but I had to be sure, and they always knew when to nudge me when my belief was waning.

“Seeeecret!”

“The seeeeecret!”

“We got the secret and little Joe doesn’t. You want me to tell it to you, Joe?”

“No! You guys are stupid.”

“Stupid guys but not-so-stupid secret!”

This kind of bull-baiting went on endlessly until I would start either screaming or crying. Or if I was really in control of myself that day, I would walk regally out of the room to a chorus of “
seeeeeecret
!” behind me.

To this day I love to hear and be part-owner of any secret. It was easy to see India had attics full of them and that some of the most tantalizing had to do with Paul. But after the discussion in the restaurant she wouldn’t say another word about why she was so sure of Paul’s behavior. I constantly asked questions, but she wouldn’t give an inch. She just
knew
.

Nor did she want us to have much contact until she had figured out the best way of reaching her husband. In the meantime, I went to all the English bookstores in Vienna and bought everything I could find on the occult. I made pages of notes and felt like a graduate student preparing for his doctoral thesis. Seances, Aleister Crowley, and Madame Blavatsky filled those days.
Meetings with Remarkable Men
,
Lo
!, and
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
filled my head. At times I felt as if I had entered a room full of strange and threatening people to whom I had to be nice in order to get what I needed.

It was a land of quacks and yowls, flying objects and great cruelty. I knew there were thousands of people “out there” who molded their lives around these things, and that alone gave me the chills.

Whenever I thought I had something interesting, I called India and told her what I had found. Once I burst out laughing in the middle of one of these conversations when I thought of how shocked any sane person who had been listening would be.

About the same time, I received a letter from my father. I hadn’t heard from him in months. His letter was long and chatty and talked familiarly about his world. He still lived in the same town, although he had sold our old house and moved his new family to a modern apartment complex in the ritzy part of town over by the country club.

He is a calm and pleasant man, but his letters always betray a bit of the ace reporter hot for an exclusive scoop. For some reason he often talks in them about things like who’s died or who’s been arrested. These gory tidbits are inevitably prefaced by phrases like “I don’t know if you remember …” or “Remember the girl who had all her teeth knocked out by her boyfriend? Judy Shea? Well …” and then his zinger follows — she eloped with a convict or put her child in a mailbox.

This one was no different.

Joe, I was going to tell you about this a long time ago, but you know me and how I forget to get around to things. Anyway, our old friend Bobby Hanley is dead.

I heard the whole thing, interestingly enough, on the radio. It was the first time I’d heard about him in years. I knew he’d been caught robbing a store a few years back and that they sent him off to prison for it. I guess he got out, because this time the dumbbell tried to kidnap some local girl. The police got wind of it and came. There was a big gun battle right up on Ashford Avenue by the hospital, if you can imagine that.

It happened last June, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it then. Not that it’s the kind of news anyone wants to hear. It certainly is the end of something though, isn’t it?

The letter went on, but I put it down. Bobby Hanley was dead. He had been dead for six months. Six months ago he was in a shootout, and I … I was a million miles away about to meet the Tates. Ross and my mother, Bobby Hanley, and now Paul. Dead.

“Where do you want to eat dinner?”

“I don’t care. How about the Brioni?”

“Fine.”

The Vienna winter had come, announcing its arrival with thirty straight hours of sleety rain and fog that painted everything dark and coldly smooth.

I kept the windshield wipers on full tilt and drove slowly through slick streets. Neither of us said anything. I was eager to be in a warmly lit place, eating good food, safe for a while from everything out there.

Three or four blocks before the restaurant I turned down a small side street. It was narrow; the buildings on either side were so high that a mountainous clump of fog hung down the length of it, trapped like a tired, lost cloud.

We were halfway through it when I hit the child. No forewarning. A soft, heartbreaking thud and a high scream only a child’s voice could have made. In slow motion a small formless thing in a shiny yellow child’s raincoat glided up and over the hood of the car. India screamed. Before it reached the windshield, the raincoat slid over the side of the hood and disappeared. India wept into her hands, and I put my head on the steering wheel, trying impossibly to fill my lungs with air.

“Get out, Joe! Get out and see if it’s all right, for godsake!”

I did what I was told, but what did it have to do with me? Joseph Lennox hit a child? A yellow raincoat, a small hand crabbed in pain, another death?

It lay face down on the black street, all limbs and pointed hood splayed out, looking like an enormous starfish.

It made no sound, and without thinking, I reached down and gently turned it over. The hand fell off. I hardly noticed because I’d seen the face. The wood was split through one of the eyes, but the head remained whole. Whoever had carved it had done it quickly, indifferently. The kind of doll you often see for sale in stores, advertised wistfully as “primitive art.” Pinned to the raincoat was a little note. It had been done in thick black kindergarten crayon.
Play with Little Boy, Joey
.

The waiter came and went three times before we were able to order. When the food came, neither of us made a move toward it. It looked magnificent —
vanillen Rostbraten mit Bratkartoffeln
. I think I ate one tomato from my salad and drank three straight
Viertels
of red wine.

“Joe, even before this happened I was thinking about what we should do. I came to a conclusion, and I want you to hear me out before you say anything.

“We both see that Paul isn’t going to leave us alone. I don’t know how much it will accomplish, but I think the best thing you could do now is go away for a while. I’ll tell you why. Everything has happened so fast that I haven’t been able to think straight for one minute. Either I’m scared or I’m turned on, or else I’m lonely for one of you, and I don’t even know which one. Maybe if you go away for a month or two, Paul will come and talk to me. I know, I know, it’s dangerous. It scares the hell out of me, but it has to happen sooner or later, or else we’ll both go crazy, won’t we? You and I can’t begin to figure out our relationship until he lets us alone and stops these grisly stunts of his. I haven’t told you, but he’s done a few things to me when I was alone; they were
the
worst.

“Another thing is, if you do go away, we’ll be able to think more clearly about what we want from each other and whether or not we really want to try and make this relationship work for us. I
think
I do, and you said you do too, but who knows now? The whole thing is distorted. Every day is so full of tornadoes; I can’t see straight anymore. Can you?

“If you’re gone for a couple of months, maybe when you come back Paul will have decided to go away. Or maybe we won’t even want our relationship anymore … I don’t know.”

I put my hands on my knees and looked down at my feet. Why did I wear such solemn shoes? One look at my feet told the world I was forever on my way to Sunday school. Who else wore black shoes every day of the year? I didn’t even have a pair of scruffy sneakers in my closet at home; only another pair of black oxfords that were this pair’s twin brother.

“Okay, India.”

“Okay what?”

I looked at her and tried to hold down the tremor in my voice. “Okay-I-think-you’re-right. I knew it was the only thing to do, too, but I’ve been afraid to recommend it. I was scared you’d think I was a coward. But there
isn’t
anything I can do here, is there? Isn’t it obvious? He despises me, and whatever I try to do is going to be futile.” I was squeezing my hands together so hard it hurt. “I’d do anything for you, India. I’m scared to death now, but I would stay and help you fight forever if I thought it would do any good.”

She nodded, and I could see she was crying. I left a few minutes later without having touched her goodbye.

The flight from Vienna to New York takes nine hours. As the plane took off I felt a profound rush of relief. I was free! Paul and India and death and anxiety — I was leaving it all behind.

That relief lasted all of about five minutes. What followed was guilt and a paralyzing disappointment with myself. What the hell was I doing running away? How could I leave India alone in the darkness? I knew then how great a coward I really was, because I didn’t want to stay. If anything, I wanted to be in New York in an hour. A hundred thousand miles away from Vienna and the Tates. I knew it and hated myself for the joy that had slyly bloomed inside me when I knew I’d made it — I had escaped.

I watched the movie, ate all the meals and snacks; twenty minutes before we landed, I went to the toilet and threw up.

I called India from the airport, but there was no answer. I called again from the city bus terminal; the connection was so clear it sounded as if she were in the next room.

“India? It’s Joe. Listen, I’m going to come back.”

“Joe? Where are you?”

“New York.”

“Don’t be goofy. I’m fine, so don’t worry. I’ve got the phone number there, and I’ll call you if I need you.”

“Yes, but
will
you?”

“Yes, Mr. Jet Lag, I will.”

“You won’t, India, I know you.”

“Joe, please don’t be a horse’s ass. This call is costing you a fortune and it’s not necessary. It’s adorable you called and are concerned, but I’m fine. Okay? I’ll write, and I’ll really call if I need you. Be good and eat some cheesecake for me.
Ciao, pulcino
.” She hung up.

I smiled at her orneriness and her guts and my freedom. I couldn’t help it. She’d ordered me to stay.

India hung on to a co-op studio apartment in the city on Seventy-second Street that had belonged to her mother. She had given me the key to it before I left. I went over and dropped off my bags. It was musty and dirty; but tired as I was, I gave the place a good scrubdown. It was night before I’d finished, and I barely had enough energy to stagger to the corner restaurant for a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

I sat at the counter and listened to the people speak English. I was so used to hearing German this language sounded bright and crisp as a new dollar bill.

I knew I should call my father and tell him I was in town, but I put it off so I could be by myself for a few days. I went to the bookstores and ate pastrami sandwiches and took in a few movies. I walked the streets like some rube from Patricia, Texas, gaping at the people and colors and life that floated in the air like an invasion of kites. Because I hadn’t been there for so long I couldn’t get enough of it. The weather was sour and cold, but that didn’t stop me one bit. At times my head was so full of New York I actually forgot Vienna for a while, but then a sound or the way a woman touched her hair reminded me of India or Paul or something I knew back there.

I bought her a number of presents, but the one I liked best was an antique rosewood box. When I brought it home I put it on the dresser and wondered if I would ever give it to her.

I got in touch with my father, and we set up a lunch date. He wanted me to come up to the country to see their new apartment, but I wiggled out of it by saying I’d come to the States to camp out in the New York Public Library and had to work my schedule around their hours. I could say that sort of thing to him and get away with it because he loved the fact I was a writer; anything having to do with “the trade” was okay by him.

The real reason for my avoiding the visit was that I disliked his new wife, who was irritatingly garrulous and suspicious of me. My father thought she was great, and they seemed to have created a really happy life together, but whenever I had appeared on the scene in the past, it had thrown things out of kilter for all of us.

He liked pubs, so we met in front of O’Neal’s on Seventy-second Street and Columbus. He caught me by surprise because he was dressed very nattily in an English raincoat that made him look like an old James Bond. He had also grown a whopping gray mustache that only added to his flash. I loved him for this new image; when we greeted each other with a bear hug, he was the one who let go first.

He was beaming and full of pep and said his new life was going great guns. He’s such an honest person that I knew none of it was pretense or showing off. Good things were happening to this man who for so long had his share of the bad. What I adored about him was how he kept shaking his head at all his new good fortune. If ever there was a person who counted his blessings, it was my father.