“And I was afraid for me too. I married Sid Hatfield. The town sheriff. Sid fought that day – tried to defend Cabell and everyone else. And he could fight. Had two six-shooters. I was there, on the street, on the ground. Sid shot the man who shot Cabell, and a few others too. He was lean, just 30 years old himself. He had this crooked smile on him most of the time, and his teeth had a lot of gold in them, but he was a handsome man in my eyes. Sid was almost from another time. He’d have been a star just 40 years before. But this century wasn’t for him, and he wasn’t for it. Baldwin Felts men murdered him on the steps of the courthouse not long after that. Sid was unarmed that day, like the honest man he was, going to court. I was there, and they shot him again and again. He died instantly. No time for last words. Part of me wished I had been shot dead alongside him. Twice married, twice widowed. I was twenty-six years old. I left that town and … and you kind of know everything else, I think.”
Kristian watched the now crowded horizon.
“And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”
“I thought we had a flood to change all that.”
Mrs Hatfield smiled bravely at him, and he smiled back.
They passed a sign.
“New York State,” she said, quietly, more to herself than to him.
Rosti and Watson were awake and staring out the windows as they reached the outskirts of the great city itself. Kristian was exhausted, and hungry, but pressed on. He stopped in a narrow street in Brooklyn and looked at the battered card in his hand.
“This is it. I’ll come back down with him if he’s home and then we will get something to eat. My brother’s place is small but I’m sure he can… help use out at least for the time being.”
Kristian forgot his tiredness and took the stairs two at a time. His brother lived on the third floor and within seconds Kristian was knocking loudly.
“Hey boyki, it’s dinner time.”
The door of the next apartment opened. A middle aged woman looked out, a little unsteady on her feet, but with a kind expression.
“Hello?”
“Hello – I’m looking for my brother Hans. Hans Vandort – he still lives here, right? I was on the road for a while so I’m not sure if he…” Kristian stopped. She sobbed.
“He was such a lovely boy.”
Kristian gritted his teeth. “Now hold on a minute – I’m talking about Hans Vandort, apartment six – in this building. Hans Vandort, looks like me but a bit taller. Hold on just one minute there, don’t you say anything about was a lovely boy.”
She pulled her door closer to her, and swallowed her tears.
“It was the mob, you know. That damn mob. He never hurt a fly, wasn’t mixed up in anything. He was just unlucky.”
Kristian balled his hand into a fist and pounded it on the door.
“Hans, open the fucking door!”
The neighbour pulled her door shut and locked it. “I’m sorry,” said her muffled voice.
When Kristian got back into the ambulance he looked at Mrs Hatfield hard. His face was grey, his eyes dry. He looked at her and looked and looked, hoping she would say something that would undo everything. His hope withered away, and he smiled.
“That flood didn’t work, Mrs Hatfield. But I will.”
*
Robert sat at his tiny desk, staring at a single word on the eggshell white page in his typewriter.
inevitability
Robert believed in history, not as an element of nature or a divine plan, but as the acts of human beings to create progress. The path was long and bloody and rough, but it was heading somewhere better.
He now knew this was not the case. At least, not here. Not in Europe either. Or in China, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were being slaughtered by the Japanese army. Civilians, he thought. Such a cold word for unarmed women, children, old people, defenceless men. Slaughtered, a stronger word, speaking of bodies strung up, throats cut; speaking of death on an industrial scale. Maybe not strong enough. Robert stared at the window, not out of it. He stared at his reflection in the grimy fog. Unarmed people dragged out of their homes screaming, their heads hacked off in the street. Young girls raped and bayoneted in front of their parents, young women in front of their own children. To write about anything but what was happening in China seemed childish. China and Germany. China, Germany, and Ethiopia. And Spain. Lest we forget.
He typed another line.
too many fires to put out
He knew it would get worse. And the Russians, who’d so soundly whipped the Japanese so recently, sat on their hands. While most people cursed Stalin for the things he’d done, Robert cursed him for the things he would not do. Had things gone differently, the Nazis would have been smashed before they had crawled out of the sewers.
He typed another line.
so we do what we can
Robert wondered if charity began at home. The attacks on Comely’s clean businesses had surprised him, but the Blue Man never was one to care for public opinion. He remembered something he’d heard recently: The innocent will suffer with the guilty. Romero was gone, and had taken his wife and child with him. The Blue Man had no heart, but he understood it was the great vulnerability of his enemies. The Blue Man was a terrorist in the most true sense of the word. Arbitrary attacks on blameless targets calibrated for maximum misery were his way. Anna had a store. Robert must have been seen walking into it dozens of times. Anna and the Greek girl would be dragged out of that store, screaming. Or burned alive inside it. Just to get to Robert, and through him, at Comely.
Robert cursed himself, for all the things he’d done but particularly for the one thing he hadn’t done – leave. He’d known from very early on that Aldous Comely, charming fellow he may have been, was not someone to get mixed up with. Comely, at best, as a petit bourgeois criminal. At best.
Robert had to visit Anna’s store again. He couldn’t simply telephone. He had to put her at risk, again, but it would be the last time for a while. After Mexico he would return, as long as the war just begun was over. This one little war, not the others. He couldn’t wait for a miracle.
As he walked towards the store he began to stagger a little. His head felt light and heavy at the same time, and he leant the blue stone wall of some municipal building to catch his breath. It was all ruins, he thought, but only for now. ‘Temporarily ruined’? Absurd. It was all absurd. Robert thought of Mrs Cottlesbridge and her husband. Their love had outlived him, and it would outlive her too. Something like that, he thought, comes along every thousand years or so.
Anna was dealing with customers who wanted a wedding dress altered. He wondered why they didn’t get it right the first time. Vasiliki was measuring a seemingly delighted young man for a suit, three piece. She looked at Robert and waved, shouting to Anna that her fiancé had arrived, her loudness startling the patrons, particularly the young man whose ear she’d shouted past.
Robert waited. Anna saw the expression on his face, and her smile vanished. It was almost one in the afternoon. The wedding dress changers left, and Anna asked Robert upstairs.
“Do you want lunch?”
Robert was silent, and did not sit.
“Oh,” she said, and sat down. “I understand what is happening.”
“You’ve heard?”
“No. Someone bombed ten places in the town and I did not hear. I must be deaf. But it is ok, Robert. It is always ok. You and Comely, such a strange pair. But if it were not for him, I would not have met you at all. I can’t be angry at him can I? So at whom can I be angry? No one. Perhaps me, for caring about someone. But we must care about people mustn’t we? Imagine, not caring about people – what a world you would live in.”
“I will come back.”
“In one year, or two years. Maybe you will be sent to Europe to fight someday soon.”
“When I have finished the job in Mexico.”
“I know that ‘job’. Maybe
when it is finished with you you can come back… Or maybe I will be a bit character in your story, an interesting anecdote to share with the sons you have with a nice American girl.”
“The job will last months, not years. It’s like… It’s an opportunity, better than any scholarship or any other job. When I come back, I’ll be – “ he couldn’t find the expression. “When I come back, I will stay here.”
They stayed in silence. Robert still standing, back to the kitchen door, behind which were the stairs into the rear of the shop. Anna sat at the small round table, just three yards from Robert in that tiny kitchen, but the small stretch of linoleum floor between them had become miles long.
“Before you go,” she said, in a voice unwavering, her eyes clear. “I will tell you about Paolo Speranzo. You know he fought in the great war, and they took his leg. Before that, he was a baker. He was a child before that, and also a baker. He loved a girl in his town. Fabrizia. Such an ugly name. Her family was murdered and she went mad while Paolo was away fighting. When he got home, ragged and in pieces, he was told she had gone to America. So he came here, with no English and one leg. He worked in a factory, I told you that. And he looked for her – so hard, for so long. Ten years later he had stopped looking, and, after that, he found me. He helped me in a fight, would you imagine? A man trying to rob me on a job, and Paolo struck him with his cane. We met again, because I wanted to thank him, to help him, to look after him. He had looked wild the first time I saw him, but the next time he had shaved and combed his hair. It made him look so very young. We were the same age almost exactly. I loved him then – that second time we met. Maybe I loved him the first time. And he began to love me too. We lived together, but we did not marry. And then, after a very good year – his first good year, he called it – he saw her. Fabrizia. When he was no longer looking. And she saw him, too. She was married, had children – bimbi, he called them – and had a nice house. She was so far away from the old world now, and there he was – a relic of it. She told him she could not leave her husband, but that she had always loved him. Such an ugly thing to say. And I think he saw that he loved her too, maybe he always had. So he told her never to contact him, never to come looking for him, to leave him alone, to forget everything – again. He returned to our home and told me everything. He collected very few things, even fewer than he possessed, and he cried like a baby and he left. He told me I deserved someone who had a full heart and could give it all to me. He was so broken, Robert. All broken. I thought I had repaired him, and I think he thought so too, but the damage was so great. It had all been too much, and it broke him.”
Robert leaned on the door, looking at her face. She was smiling, her voice unwavering, her eyes clear.
“He was an honest man, and he did the right thing – even though it was a disaster for both him and me. And I know you are an honest man too. I know why you must go, and why you can’t ask me to come with you. The gun in your hotel room. The one you never take out, not even when working for Comely. So strange. I thought it must be easy to get a gun in Mexico. I imagine your people gave it to you for the trip. You should have made the trip long ago, I know, but you stayed. First for Aldous Comely, then for me. You have a good cause waiting for you there. I know it must be, because I know you, but don’t forget – I am a good cause too, Robert. But it is ok. You go Robert, and I will be waiting. I didn’t wait for Paolo, but I will wait for you.”
He leapt from the door on to his knees in front of her, pushing the table aside and wrapping his arms around her tightly. Her tears drenched his shoulder and he cried too, kissing her head.
“I love you.” He said, just once.
She looked up, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
“This is very silly. We will write a lot, won’t we?”
“Of course!” he exclaimed.
“And you are not so far away there. When do you leave?”
“I could go today. Or tomorrow. Maybe the next day, but soon.”
“Make it the next day then. And at least stay and eat lunch now.”
And they ate together, much more slowly than usual, letting Vasiliki deal with the patrons below.
*
The fish of the east river are a sorry lot, but islanders fish for the memory more than the meal. Arturo had dropped a note at one of Comely’s operations, a bar in the lower east side, inviting him to meet at a small jetty not far from one of the ferry stops. It was a poor spot for fishing during the day, but by night a handful of locals used it.
Arturo had dropped the note before the attacks, but even so the barmen had looked at one another with unease. “He will be in touch,” they said. Arturo sensed something was wrong. Four days later, after no word, he returned to the same place and left another note. This time, they said “He will be there.”
Arturo waited on the jetty, watching the green-black waters lap against the barnacles below. It was an old timber thing, beams across beams, standing on logs driven deep, huge old iron nails driven into them. He wondered who’d built it. He imagined them, bustling away. He wasn’t sure when it had been built, but he imagined the place then, the world as it was. He saw it in black and white, but like a daguerreotype, not like a movie. The idea made him smile. Arturo watched the water, but he had his back to most of the river. He looked up and Comely was already on the jetty.
Arturo noticed immediately that Comely had his arm in a black sling.
“You’re hurt!” he exclaimed.
Comely smiled ruefully. “I slipped in the shower.”
The boy approached him. “You are usually better at lying, I bet, but this is only the second time you have lied to me.”
“Your English has become superb young man.”
“It will have to be.” He looked back at the water. Tonight there was no one else there. “We will have to fish some other time.”
“I’ll bring the rods. What’s going on Arturo?”
The kid looked older, harder. So soon. It worried Comely. Arturo put his hands in his pockets.
“You are in trouble, and I will help you… You look surprised. The expression does not suit you.”
“Ha. I’m not used to it. I’m not in trouble, but I am curious as to how you would help me if I were.”
“You are not the only one who wants to save people, Comely. You rescued me once, but you will not have to again. And now is my chance to save you.”
“I’m all ears little man.”
Arturo looked a bit annoyed, but he got over it quickly – the way grown-ups do when they’re bona fide grown up.
“I know people, everywhere. I know lots of children, newspaper boys, shoe shine boys, the girls who sell matches. I know the men who sell hotdogs and the men who sell chestnuts. I know the postmen and the mailmen. They can be your eyes. And also…”
“Yes?”
“I am quick with a knife.”
Comely became angry.
“Oh right. You are quick with a knife now? I will let you know if I need someone to carve my turkey. Jesus wept kid. How the hell did you become quick with a knife? I told you if you had trouble to come to me. You did when you saw what happened in that knock shop across the road from you, and I took care of it. You should have come to me again.”
The kid stared out to the river.
“When I can take care of myself, I take care of myself.”
Comely crouched and spun Arturo around, looking him in the eye.
“No. No way – that is not for you. That life, is not for you – ok? You can do much better things. You can be a much better man. Listen, if you have trouble – serious trouble – call a policeman. There are people in this city, good people, who know you and care about you. You are a good kid, grow up to be a good man. Please. Get rid of your knife, forget about it. And forget about me too.”
Arturo looked gutted.
“I wanted to help you, and...”
“You already have. Now let me help you one more time, please. Listen to me. You will mak
e it – the right way. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be around longer than the Colosseum.”
Comely fixed Arturo’s scarf so it covered his throat properly and the boy did not protest. “Let’s do something normal, please, like get an ice cream and sit somewhere and watch it all go by.”
Arturo considered the offer.
“Ok. But I will pay for my own ice cream.”
Comely laughed.
“You are a mountain goat sometimes, you know. A mountain goat.”
The kid contemplated the comparison and decided that he liked it.
*
Comely walked. Despite everything. There are some things a person must do not only to maintain their sanity but their very soul. He had always been a walker, though for a time he’d loved motorcycles more.
It was just after sunrise and he was approaching the corner of 5th Street and Lee when it occurred to him that he’d not seen the silent street preacher for many weeks. Perhaps he took long service leave, Comely thought. And then, there he was. The preacher, his back turned but holding a sign once again. He felt relieved. He’d been distracted and hadn’t noticed the man’s absence – but once he realised, he also realised he missed him.
The preacher turned around as Comely neared. The man’s faced had been battered around a few days previously by the looks of it – not too badly, but just enough to terrify him and blacken his eyes. Comely felt sick, and looked at his sign. Instead of his usual helter skelter mix of upper and lower case, the sign was in a neat, precise hand, painted in black ink rather than paint.
Your girl has such a nice shop and such a nice family.
The sickness grabbed Comely’s stomach with icy hands and twisted it hard.
He approached the preacher and the man flinched.