Memoir From Antproof Case (52 page)

But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn't know what to do with themselves. The wisdom, perfection, and beauty of the colors and forms I passed were more than enough, in their collectivity, to hint at the principles that govern the hereafter, whatever that may be. Indeed, even a detail of one painting can offer solid direction in this regard if one knows how to look.

I was in an elevated state, as one might expect after a twenty-mile walk through such extraordinary beauty, after months and years of loneliness, after not having eaten that day and perhaps the day before—except for celery, pistachios, and min-er-al wa-ter. But though I was in an elevated state, the discovery I made, that brought me from my long dream, was purely an accident. Granted, it was strangely coincident with encountering the singers, but it was an accident independent of my state of mind.

Crossing the Tiber from Trastevere, I followed the Aurelian Wall until I approached the southerly
borgo
where the restaurant was located. Save the approaches to the Via Appia, nothing in this place appeals to tourists. Nothing here, at least on the surface, is very old. Here is where families live and grow, where children are loved, where marriages play themselves out leading either to wise contentedness or persistent horror. Like Brooklyn Heights or Beacon Hill, it is a retreat, and one cannot enter it without a drop in pressure and pulse.

Not far from my restaurant I found a little park with a fountain at its center. I bought a large bottle of min-er-al wa-ter, went over to the fountain, and sat down, as those who have walked twenty miles will do, with great relief.

For half an hour I listened to the sound of falling water and felt my blood coursing through my body in alert exhaustion. I breathed slowly. My pulse dropped to forty-five or fifty, which is what it does even now when I feel tranquil and strong. I thought neither of Stillman and Chase nor of Constance, nor of anything, least of all disappointments. In my exhaustion I felt only a fine surge of equanimity. I closed my eyes.

I don't know how long I kept them closed—it wasn't long—or even if I slept for a moment, but I opened them when I heard the sound of a spark. Nothing in this world sounds exactly like a high-voltage spark.

Almost silently, an orange-colored streetcar glided from the right into my field of view, motors disengaged and pantograph dropped. It proceeded quietly but for an undying sound of metal rolling upon metal, until it reached the little bay in which it would wait for a northerly departure. As it rolled to a halt, I smelled ozone and burnt oil.

I thought nothing of this, and closed my eyes once more. Then I opened them. The streetcar (in northern countries, streetcars tend to be green; in southern, orange, yellow, or saffron) stood half hidden by a low stone wall. Had I stood up, I would have been able to see the undercarriage and the wheels, but as it was I could see only the top half of the carriage. Despite the import of what was before me, it took a second or two for me to come awake.

Mounted on the side of the carriage was an advertising sign about ten feet long and three feet high, but I could see only the top of it. There, in capital letters, were the initials—or what I took to be the initials—F.P.F. They were spaced very far apart, which suggested that they were capital letters, and that the whole words would be intelligible were I only to rise.

The last time I had seen the initials
F.P.F
. was also on the side of a rail car, and, then, too, I realized only now, I had been able to see just the top of the letters, because I was too short to look over the obstructions in front of me. Never would I have believed that this sequence of letters would appear before me on rolling stock twice in a lifetime.

I thought against all reason that, if I were to stand up, the name of the murderer would be there for me to see. Of course, this made no sense. Why would it be written on the side of a Roman streetcar four decades after the fact? It made no sense whatsoever, but, still, I stood up, as if I were about to face my executioner. I didn't breathe, and the electricity within me was ricocheting about like a lightning storm in a bell jar.

What disappointment I felt when I saw, alongside the picture of a coffee bean, the words,
EXPRESSO BRIGANTE ECCELLENTE.

I sat down. It wasn't the name of the murderer, of course, but only an advertisement for—what else—a brand of coffee.

In fact, it hadn't even read
F.P.F
. It was, rather,
E.B.E.,
but the lower part had been obscured.

"My God," I said. "My dear God." For there I had my revelation.

As a child, I had not seen
F.P.F
., I had seen
E.B.E
., and though the years had passed and the snow had fallen a hundred times on my parents' graves, I had not known until now. The F.P.F.'s were innocent. Most of them hadn't even had rail cars. We had foolishly pursued the F.P.F.'s, and all the while ... it was E.B.E. who had killed my parents.

And who was E.B.E. if not Eugene B. Edgar?

I thought, wait, wait! What if it were someone else? And then I thought how strange it was and perhaps how just, that I would be able to examine the long-forgotten documents of Stillman and Chase, and that I had been trained to make estimations and deductions, and to follow a clue to its unimpeachable source.

I did not eat in my restaurant; I was too agitated. And I did not sleep on the train. I stood at the window all night long, even when we raced through hellish tunnels, and I drank mineral water and threw the bottles into the forest. They sparkled and they tumbled in the moonlight as we climbed into Switzerland, crossing the great white torrents that from ancient glaciers had recently been unfrozen and now danced with the delight of waking from a sleep of ten thousand years. I was alive as I had never been since 1914.

 

I had assumed that I would return to New York with Tarquin's ravishing strides, rape the Stillman and Chase archives, and, proof in hand, lift Eugene B. Edgar from his gold-and-mahogany wheelchair and kill him by snapping his disgusting little chicken neck. But it was not so easy.

Though I had long before passed the tests of manhood and was well into middle age, the knowledge the streetcar brought propelled me backward in time until I was a quaking ten-year-old, as if the previous four decades of my life had not existed. I felt every fear and vulnerability of a child, and found it hard to believe that I knew what I knew. The contradiction and strain of living simultaneously in two states of mind catapulted me into a slight nervous breakdown.

I know this because, among other things, I saw a new color. Eye doctors always think I'm a little funny. Apparently they are unfamiliar with what I see when I close my eyes, because when I describe it to them they ask if I use drugs. I may be the most drug-free person in existence, but when I close my eyes I see the Battle of Baltimore, the Star-Spangled Banner, bombs bursting in air, star shells, fireworks, the Chinese New Year, undulating dragons of fire. The panorama of flashing lights is so wide and so detailed, so surprising, intricately patterned, and unpredictable, that if I could bring back only half a second of it, it would take an hour to describe. It has always been that way, but after I returned from Rome the flashes disappeared and in their place flowed a deep, bright, most unusual color that I had never seen and have not seen since, but for months it replaced the battles in darkness. It was very much like a blinding magenta—though not magenta—a color that was unsettling, persistent, and unexplained.

Then there was also the question of my relations with the opposite sex. I was totally unsure of what to do or say, and the prospect of making love to a woman was too astounding for words. I called up one of Constance's friends, whom I hadn't seen since the separation. Like Constance herself, this woman was extraordinarily athletic and devastatingly beautiful. When she and I had played doubles tennis against Constance, who was so good that she always played doubles without a partner, I would get that tossed-out-of-an-airplane feeling of weightless ecstasy as she stretched for the ball, and by the time she was sweating with exertion I was virtually good for nothing.

So I called her up, and I said, "Sydney, I don't know how to tell you this except bluntly."

"What?" she asked, nervously.

"Something has happened. My abacus has been snapped back to the time that I was ten."

"Your abacus?"

"Yes. I'm a grown man, but I'm ten."

"Mentally?"

"No."

"Physically?"

"No."

"Emotionally?"

"Perhaps."

"Oh," she said. "I don't know what to say. It's unusual, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Oh yes. There is, there is."

"Uh, would you like to talk? Would you like me to read you a story?"

"Not really, Sydney. It requires much more than that."

"Just tell me."

"Sydney," I said—that such an exquisite woman had such a name was really a crime. "If I can ... and I'm not sure that I can ... I need to make love to you for about four days on end, without stopping, in a ceaseless trance."

Despite silence on the line, I continued. "You'd have to tell your friends that you were going away, you'd have to stop the mail and newspapers, cancel your engagements, turn off the telephone, and stock up on food—lots of creamy cold things, chilled fruit, oysters, champagne, and chocolate." I didn't add, "and big bloody steaks," because I didn't want to upset her and I didn't want her to think I was a dog.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"No. I'm ten. I've never been with a woman before. I want to devote myself to the discovery and worship of every part of you. That's why I need at least four days."

The line went dead for so long that I thought she had hung up. Then she said, "You get over here as fast as you can, and by the time you come I will have returned from Gristedes with the strawberries and clotted cream."

And then there were other things—other women, other colors, visits to Palisades Park and F.A.O. Schwarz—but I finally faced my fear of looking upon the documents that might confirm that for almost four decades I had been serving the man who killed my mother and father.

I began to get (relatively) well. I no longer saw otherworldly colors when I closed my eyes, or needed to make love to Sydney for a week at a time, or spend vast amounts of money on roller coasters, cotton candy, and toy guns. During that strange interlude, Piehand had sensed my vulnerability and had accelerated the chain of events that were eventually to put me in the broom closet.

But my inner machinery began to revive, and one day I was a man again. Though when I went down to the archives I was as nervous as a child before a piano recital, I was a child no longer, and my experience had come into play. I stepped from the elevator my old self had returned just in time to be defeated by practical difficulties.

 

I had never been in the archives. These were separate from the library, where for years I had done research, and were of no use to anyone except economic historians, though neither economic historians nor anyone else was allowed to see them. My intention was to use the dregs of my fast-disappearing rank to buffalo my way in.

It was easy enough to enter the paneled anteroom of the vault of ancient Edgar memorabilia, where I stood upon an Oriental carpet so thick that I found it difficult to keep my balance, and asked the custodian if I could see the records of the years 1913 and 1914.

This woman was a cross between the archetypal librarian and Sophia Loren. I found it as difficult to talk to her as it would have been to address a pushmepullyou. "Of course you can't," she said. "The archives are closed."

"I'm the executive vice-president for research and investment policy," I told her, "
and
a full partner."

"That doesn't mean a goddamned thing," she said, and she was quite right.

"What good are archives if no one can use them?"

"They can be used," she stated.

"By whom?"

"By Mr. Edgar."

"He can hardly move and he can't read. He couldn't bear the weight of a drawer," I said, pointing to the interior of the vault, where the information was kept in giant safe-deposit boxes, each of which—I noticed—had three locks.

"Mr. Piehand and I are supposed to accompany Mr. Edgar to help him with the materials."

"So you see them."

"No, I don't. I can't read through folders."

"But you and Mr. Piehand have access to them."

"No. Mr. Piehand has a key, I have a key, and Mr. Edgar has a key. I know that only Mr. Edgar may see the documents, and Mr. Piehand knows that only Mr. Edgar may see the documents, and Mr. Edgar knows that only Mr. Edgar may see the documents. Believe me, only Mr. Edgar sees the documents."

"Why? What's so secret about them?"

"I have no idea. They belong to Mr. Edgar."

"How often does Mr. Edgar come to look?"

"If Mr. Edgar came to look, I would tell you to ask
him
that question. But the fact is, he doesn't come to look."

"Ever?"

"Not in the fifteen years I've been here."

"You said you can't read through folders."

"I stand by my statement."

"Why did you say it, if you've never seen them?"

"It's the procedure, in case he wants to look."

"He's probably forgotten that this archive exists," I told her, my irritation mixing with amazement. "He's as senile as a baseball bat, you know."

She turned her palms up, as if to say,
So what?

"So you sit here, in an office fit for the president of France, and once a year you receive a set of new materials."

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "This archive spans only the time from the founding of the firm to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934."

"What do you do all day? Why are you here?" I demanded, as if an investment bank had any reason to worry about efficiency and expenditures.