The Fury of Rachel Monette (10 page)

They watched each other through the smoke. From the street rose a short auditory drama—a honking horn, colliding steel, shattering glass, and a policeman's whistle, after the fact. Calvi heard, but it was only unrelated noise.

“Anyone who thinks that the Sephardim could be used as a fifth column doesn't know us at all,” Calvi said. “I'm surprised you would treat such an absurd notion seriously. Have you ever seen us fight the Arabs?”

For the first time the dark eyes looked annoyed. “I've been in every war since 1956.”

“Then you know that the Sephardim are without doubt the crudest in battle. If the Arabs think they can use us they should talk to their own soldiers.”

“Then why have you said that Oriental Jews should look to the east?”

“I'm talking about eastern culture in general, not the Arabs. You should look at the map more often, Major, and see where we are.”

Grunberg slapped the back of his hand through the smoke. “Eastern culture?” he said. “Forty percent infant mortality? Wasteland instead of orchards? Is that what you want?”

Calvi stood up angrily. “I don't have to listen to this bigotry in my own office. Get out.”

Grunberg rose and approached the desk. He faced Calvi. “Very well. But before I go I'm sure you'll be interested to hear a little piece of information which came my way. The Egyptians have decided to agree to no further commitments at the peace talks until after April the second. It's a secret, of course. They plan to attend, to seem enthusiastic, to be friendly. But to do nothing.”

Calvi felt his mouth go dry.

“April the second.” Grunberg spoke like a man musing idly to himself. “That's the day of your next rally, isn't it?”

Calvi ignored his question. “How do you know about this—this secret, as you call it?”

Grunberg laughed in his face. “That's my job, the way yours is making philosophy out of lines on a map. Let's just say that someone in Cairo has a secretary who likes to talk.”

“You don't get information like that from secretaries.”

“No,” Grunberg admitted.

“Who, then?”

“Who?” Grunberg repeated. “Now we're entering the area of my own little secrets.” He leaned forward. “Every man is entitled to keep some things to himself, isn't he, Mr. Calvi? Such as where he goes on cold dark nights?”

“You're not making much sense, Grunberg,” Calvi said. In his mind he saw two soldiers. But it could have been the waiter. Or the felafel vendor. Or all of them.

Grunberg leaned across the desk, looking up from under his luxuriant eyebrows: “Must everything always make sense? Does it make sense that a man who says he's not political becomes more radical than his mentor? Does it make sense that a man who arrives from Morocco at the age of twenty-eight, and with enough money to soon buy his own farm, brings no family?” Grunberg pushed himself away from the desk and walked toward the door.

“Life wasn't easy in Morocco,” Calvi said to his back.

“Remember that when you write your speech,” Grunberg replied as he went out.

Calvi sat at his desk for a while and then stood up and began pacing past the American presidents on the wall. He paused in front of the one showing him and Kennedy saying hello or goodbye on an airport runway. Kennedy was smiling warmly. He had taken Calvi for someone else. He looked at the photograph for a long time before an idea came to him.

The telephone rang. Calvi went to the desk and lifted the receiver. It was Cohn.

“What the hell is going on?” His voice was tight and angry.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Those posters weren't supposed to go up until next week. And I thought we had decided on a small printing. They're all over the God-damned place. Why this big production?”

“It's not a big production. I thought it was important to attract a big crowd, that's all. You always say that yourself.”

“What about paying for all this? Where is the money going to come from?”

“Don't worry. We'll be more economical from now on. I promise.”

“I just don't understand the way things are being done lately. I don't like being kept in the dark.”

Calvi could hear the shreds of other conversations in the wire. The voices sounded distant, and had the tinny high-pitched tone of mice in American animated cartoons. He wondered whether his telephone was tapped.

“It's nothing to get upset about, Moses. Calm down. It's just the usual sort of speech. You know that. Consciousness raising—isn't that what you called it?”

“Who's writing it? You?”

“Me? I can't do half the job you can. What a question.”

Calvi waited for a response. He heard only the mice, far away.

“Don't you want to write it, Moses?” he asked finally. He listened to the mice and had a sudden thought. “Is Grunberg there?”

“Of course not,” Cohn said quickly. “Why would he be?”

“I don't know. You sound strange, that's all.”

“I'm thinking about the peace talks a lot these days.”

“What about them?”

“They seem to be going well. I wouldn't want to do anything to spoil them. Every war seems so much worse than the last.”

“Do you think that I want to spoil them, Moses? Do you think that I want to get my ass shot at in another war?”

“It's not likely that you'll be sent to the front the next time, Simon,” Cohn said drily.

“That's unfair. You're the one who always told me that anyone who waited for his rights until Israel was secure was a fool.”

“That's true.”

“So I don't understand you. It's just the same old stuff. We'll even tone it down a little. It might get us a few points from some of the hostile press. Why don't we work on it tomorrow morning?”

Cohn sighed. “All right,” he said, and hung up. Calvi held the receiver firmly to his ear, listening for any sign that the line was tapped. But he heard nothing unusual. Even the mice had gone away.

In the late afternoon he walked home. The sun was low in the sky, radiating through the air above the city a heavy, tangible golden light that made everything seem solemn and peaceful. It even affected the pedestrians, making everyone walk slower, except the middle-aged American couple who jostled past him. He heard the man say, “The nerve of that God-damned waiter. I came this close to telling him what we give to the UJA.”

“I don't think it would have helped, dear,” his wife said gently. “You can't buy politeness.”

“Then what can you buy?”

A black-bearded Armenian priest in a pointed cowl caught the conversation as he approached from the other direction. He directed a big white smile at Calvi as he passed. Calvi smiled back as the priest walked away, chuckling happily to himself.

On an impulse Calvi went into an American-style drugstore. He walked up and down the sterile aisles, not sure of what he wanted. In the end he bought a small round hot-water bottle. It had two eyelets in the rubber rim and the stopper was placed in the center of one side.

“That will take care of all your aches and pains,” said the girl at the cash register.

At home he found Gisela in the bath. He bent down to kiss her on the lips. Her pubic hair, a shade darker than the hair on her head, waved gently under the water, like seaweed on a calm day. She followed his gaze.

“Come in with me,” she said.

“In this little tub?” He laughed and went to the study. It was time to work on Marie's letter to Walter D. He looked in the bottom bookshelf where he kept his copy of
Crime and Punishment,
but its space was empty and the surrounding books leaned inward as though trying to cover up. He quickly scanned the other shelves, then tried the desk, and its drawers. He felt his heart beat faster. He clearly remembered replacing the book in its usual spot.

He found it in the bedroom, on the floor by the bed. By the side of the bed where Gisela slept. He ran for the bathroom but outside the door he forced himself to stop and turn away.

“Have you changed your mind?” she called through the door. “Hurry, I'm just getting out.”

“Never mind then,” he said.

He waited until they lay in bed with the lights out before he said, “Are you enjoying
Crime and Punishment
?” He felt the tone of her skin change beside him.

“It doesn't seem to be the kind of book you enjoy,” she said. “But I've only read a few chapters.”

“I suppose it isn't.” He remembered how Raskolnikov took an axe to the old woman. He wished he could remember more so that he could question her on the content, but he had read the book at the age of sixteen and everything but the murder was locked up out of the reach of his memory.

“Why didn't you buy a German translation?” he said. “I'm sure one is available here.”

“I can manage the French,” she said.

They lay quietly in the dark. After a while she touched him, and they clung together. But for the first time in his life, Calvi found himself unable. They both pretended it was not important, and Gisela soon fell asleep. Calvi lay beside her, but not touching, thinking about Raskolnikov. Much later he left the bed and went to the window. On the street below he watched a man in a broad-brimmed hat emerge from the shadows, walk through the cone of yellow light under the street lamp, and merge with the shadows on the other side. In five minutes he came walking back the other way.

10

“Mrs. Monette?” The manager of the little bank on Spring Street stood in the doorway of his frosted-glass office opposite the teller's wickets and crooked an arthritic finger. “Have you got a minute?”

“I'll be right with you, Mr. Kettleby,” Rachel said. She performed the ritual of the deposit slip under the watchful gaze of the teller-priest who, satisfied, banged a purple stamp of approval on the dividend check from Leonine Investments and accepted the offering.

Rachel went into Kettleby's office. Kettleby sat behind an ugly mahogany desk which dwarfed him.

“Please sit, Mrs. Monette,” he said. He leaned forward to counter the divisive influence of the desk. Under the translucent skin of his face delicate capillaries formed patterns like red spider webs. Two necks like his could have found room in his shirt collar and the pinstriped jacket of his old-fashioned suit would have hung just as well on a scarecrow. He was an old man stripped of extras like a Mississippi paddlewheeler before a big race.

“We at the bank were all very sorry to hear about your husband.” Even his voice sounded spare, as if he were down to one vocal chord. But the blue eyes were unimpaired, and they were kind. “Is there any news of the boy?”

“Nothing definite,” Rachel said.

“Well, it's only been a few weeks …” Kettleby said, his voice trailing away. He looked down at his pink blotter. Three weeks and two days, Rachel thought. Kettleby's eyes stayed on the blotter. There were no interesting inkblots to study because it had never blotted anything. He looked up quite suddenly and blinked at her, as if he had been startled.

“In any event, Mrs. Monette, we've been reorganizing your affairs here at the bank as we always do in situations like this. On the instructions of your family attorney we have transferred the funds in your husband's accounts to yours. These funds amount to $892 from his savings account and $136.70 from his checking account. The total is $1028.70.”

He had the figures in his head. She wondered if he had been meandering through a forest of numbers when he fell into his stupor over the blotter.

“We have transferred the entire sum into your savings account.” He looked up. Rachel nodded to show she had been following.

“There is one other matter.” Kettleby paused, and licked his lips nervously. “Your husband's safety-deposit box.” From a drawer he removed a locked tin box and set it carefully on the desk.

The sight of it sent a chill through her body. Again Kettleby's eyes went to the blotter. She guessed that it was common banking knowledge that husbands often had safety-deposit boxes that their wives knew nothing about. Rachel felt something tugging at her inside, very deep, like a strong current on an anchor. Her dead husband was changing the way they had lived.

“Your attorney has instructed me to turn the contents over to you, Mrs. Monette.” He removed a key from his vest pocket and opened the small padlock. He opened it carefully, his head slightly back, as if he suspected that a prankster had placed a jack-in-the-box inside.

All he found was a sealed manila envelope, eight by eleven. There was no writing on it, no stamp, no marking of any kind. He handed it to Rachel, looking relieved. As she left she wondered what he had found in other men's safety-deposit boxes.

She drove home with the envelope on the seat beside her. What had he hid from her? A secret romance? She thought about the women they knew, and couldn't imagine him with any of them. But there were female students in his classes she knew nothing about. An approaching car honked angrily and she swerved back onto her side of the road.

She parked in the driveway. In March all the snow melts in the valleys of the Berkshire Mountains, leaving the sickly brown grass to recover slowly under gray skies. Across the street a fair-haired gardener with a squat body was scattering seed over the bare patches on Mrs. Candy's lawn. His shiny black tool box lay in the mud by the telephone pole. Rachel walked across her own lawn to the door; with sucking noises it tried to pull her boots off.

She sat at the kitchen table, the envelope in her hand. She tried to picture Dan's face, at a picnic, playing tennis, in bed. But she could only see him in front of the house, with smudged unhappy eyes.

Her hands shook as she opened the envelope. Inside she found no secret telephone numbers, no love letters, no sickening Polaroids. There were only two sheets of paper folded together and beside them a small envelope addressed to Dan care of the history department and postmarked in Nice on the tenth of January.