“That is, in fact, exactly the position I’m in here at the Times, “he informed me dryly.” I’m here for no other purpose.”
“Could I drop by and see you this afternoon then?” I asked.
“Not this afternoon, unless you’re calling from a burning building or a crime scene.”
“Nothing like that,” I admitted. “Tomorrow morning?”
“Can you give me a hint? About the story, I mean. Is it something to do with the Tull family?”
“No, it has nothing to do with the family.”
“I trust you’re not just going to tell me you’ve found the girl of your dreams and are going to get married.”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how about it?”
“Let me ask a question back,” I told him. “Has it ever occurred to you to wonder if the history we teach our children is a lie?”
After a moment of stunned silence, he said, “Good Lord, Jason. I hope you’re joking.”
“Why?”
“Surely that’s manifest.”
“It isn’t to me.”
“You’ve been there, Jason. We were there together. It’s all lies and bullshit till graduate school. Why else have graduate school?”
“That’s very cynical.”
“Is it?”
“Suppose I were to tell you that the lies don’t stop in graduate school.”
“Golly, Jason, what great truth are you going to reveal to me? That the earth is hollow and inhabited by the survivors of Atlantis? That the human race is an experiment in sociology being run by little green men on Mars?”
“I haven’t lost my mind, Ward. Give me an hour and I’ll convince you of that.”
“An hour? Christ, what do you think this is, the reading room of the British Museum? This is a newspaper. If you can’t convince me in five minutes that you’ve got something I can use, then you don’t have something I can use. It’s as simple as that.”
“All right, give me five minutes.”
“I’ll gladly give you five minutes, Jason, but, please, no bullshit about the lies of history. That’s not news, that’s just blather.”
I said I understood, and we made a date for eleven the following morning.
Edmund Dial, when he made his appearance a few minutes later, was nothing like I’d vaguely expected, an elderly gentleman with a bookish stoop and dusty clothes, but rather a trim, sharp-faced man in his mid-forties, dressed rather more smartly than I was. Though he came through the door wearing a smile intended for my father, he quickly recovered when he realized his mistake, not discarding the smile but ratcheting it down to a more appropriate level.
He asked if I would join him in a cup of coffee, and I naturally said I’d be delighted. Having used the family name as a calling card, I had to endure the attendant ceremonials. He summoned an assistant, issued instructions, and looked as if he had to restrain himself from sending her off with a clap of the hands. When the rituals had been attended to, and sufficient time had passed, he asked what he could do for me.
I said, “I suppose you’ve seen and handled every kind of book there is.”
He raised an eyebrow but agreed that this was so. “There are collectors,” he added gravely, “for every type of book.”
I took out Mallory’s copy of The New Negro, which I’d been carrying in an envelope, and handed it to him. He recoiled, not so much from its title, I felt, as from its condition, which was that of any old, heavily used book. Lifting the cover with his fingertips, he scanned the copyright page, shook his head faintly, and asked why I was showing it to him.
“You said there are collectors for every type of book. I was wondering if there are any collectors for this type.”
He gave me a frosty smile. “You caught me in an overstatement, Mr. Tull. I assumed you were hinting at some variety of erotica. There are hundreds of thousands of old books that no one wants—no one at all—and this is one of them.”
“So you wouldn’t sell a book a like this.”
“I’d be glad to sell it if there were someone to buy it. As it is, if it belonged to me, I’d throw it in the trash. I trash thousands of books a year, Mr. Tull, books received when entire collections and libraries are sold in a single lot.”
He handed me back the book.
“I take it that merely being two thousand years old doesn’t make it valuable.”
“Certainly not. Any pebble on the street is thousands of years old. That doesn’t make it valuable.”
“But surely there are some two-thousand-year-old books that are valuable.”
“Of course,” he said, beginning to look bored. “You’ve seen many such books in your father’s collection.”
“What distinguishes one from the other?”
He gave me a look of frank disgust. “The valuable books are the ones people want, of course. The worthless ones are the ones no one wants.”
“But how can you tell just by looking that no one wants this book?”
“That’s how I make my living, Mr. Tull. It’s my business to recognize books that are wanted, and The New Negro isn’t one of them, I assure you.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to revise your estimate, Mr. Dial. The New Negro has joined the ranks of the wanted. I want it.”
“Well,” he said, with a bit of a smirk, “luckily, you have it.”
“And I want others.”
He frowned. “Others of what kind? Books about Negroes?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then what? You can’t simply want all the books I discard. They don’t constitute a type. All they have in common is that no one wants them.”
“Let me think for a minute,” I told him. “I assume you know who Adolf Hitler was.”
“Of course. The so-called Hero of Dachau. A semi-legendary character, I assume, like William Tell.”
“Actually, he was a historical person.”
Mr. Dial shrugged.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone wrote a biography of him in English during the Great War.”
“Why do you stress ‘in English’?”
“The English-speaking nations were Hitler’s enemies during the Great War.”
Mr. Dial looked as if he were being led into deep water. “So,” he said meditatively, “you’re looking for a biography of the Hero of Dachau as written from an enemy point of view—a Jewish point of view, in other words.”
“Why do you say that? I mean, why Jewish in particular?”
“Because most of the publishing houses of England and America at the time were in Jewish hands. I assume that’s how this book came to be published,” he said, nodding at The New Negro. “Obviously no one but a Jew would care to publish such a thing.”
“Perhaps that’s the guideline we’re looking for, then—books published by Jews.”
Finally Mr. Dial knew he was dealing with a madman. He stared at me blankly, hopelessly, perhaps wondering if he would ever be called upon to repeat this lunatic conversation to my father.
“For the moment,” I pressed on, “do me this favor. Let me root around in your discards. It can’t do any harm, and if I find something I want, you can set any price on it you think is fair.”
For half a second he thought he would balk at this suggestion; then it seemed to occur to him that it was a way to get me out of his office. A few minutes later, I was in a vast underground chamber where two young women were engaged in the apparently endless task of separating newly acquired lots of books into valuable and worthless. It looked like nasty, boring work, but my presence and my quixotic enterprise provided some welcome amusement for them.
After three hours, I realized I was working too much in the dark. I’d made two finds that seemed remarkably lucky: an antiwar novel called All Quiet on the Western Front, translated from the German, and one called It Can’t Happen Here, about the possibility of a fascist takeover in the United States. I also selected an incomprehensible little item called Three Lives, b
y someone named Gertrude Stein, just because I felt sure Mr. Dial would say no one but a Jew would care to publish such a thing. I unearthed but ultimately left behind a few books by authors with notionally Jewish names like Steinbeck and Dreiser, figuring they could wait till I knew more.
When I submitted my treasures to Mr. Dial for valuation, he was torn, feeling that in good conscience he could neither make me a gift of such rubbish nor charge me for it. We deferred the problem till later by opening an account for me, listing the three items as having a value “to be determined.”
Returning to the hotel, I learned that Mallory was off touring spaces on offer as artists’ studios. I settled down with the phone to find someone who might know how to deal with two-thousand-year-old photo negatives. Most experts assured me they would be beyond salvation, but I finally tracked down a technological archeologist who said she knew a trick or two that others might not and agreed to have a look at them.
After Mallory returned and had a bath, we tackled the grave matter of where to dine. I made a number of suggestions, but she finally decided she didn’t want to “make a production out of it,” so we ended up in a dining room downstairs.
In the middle of our second cocktail, I told her I couldn’t imagine not asking her to marry me.
“That’s a strange way to put it,” she replied. “Are you asking or just making conversation?”
“I’m asking.”
She took out time to have a sip of her drink. “Actually, I know what you mean. I also couldn’t imagine your not asking me.”
“Are you accepting or just making conversation?”
“So far,” she said, “I’m just making conversation.”
“I see,” I said, in my owlish way.
“You know that scrawny black chick you saw in the photo yesterday? That’s me.”
“I realize that.”
“I slept with half the guys in the Club before I hooked up with Roy. Can you stand that?”
“That was two thousand years ago, Mallory.”
“To me, it was last year. I’m that person.”
“Okay, but I’m also some other ‘that person,’ you know. We just don’t happen to know what person it was. Maybe I was one of the guys who tracked you down to that tunnel.”
She wasn’t buying this. “If you were one of those guys, you aren’t him now. But I am that girl in the photo, I guarantee it.”
“I love you whatever girl you are, Mallory. It’s you I love, not a photograph.”
“Love is too much for me right now, Jason. That’s just the way it is.”
“I understand. I’m not trying to push you.”
“I know you aren’t. We’re having fun, and that’s a good start. Even yesterday was fun, in its own weird way.”
“I liked the part where I was hanging off that ladder thirty feet in the air.”
“I did too.”
We were back in the suite by nine-thirty and having a nightcap when the phone rang. Mallory answered it and reported that a visitor downstairs was asking to come up, one Harry Whitaker.
“Harry Whitaker!”
“Who’s Harry Whitaker?”
“An old friend of the family. Do you want to have him up? It’s entirely up to you.”
Mallory told the desk clerk to send him up.
“What do you suppose he wants?” Mallory asked.
“I can’t imagine,” I said, and went on to fill her in on Uncle Harry.
As it turned out, Harry wasn’t alone. He was followed in by a dour, muscular person roughly my age, whom he introduced simply as Clay. Clay nodded, then took in the surroundings with the detached manner of a bodyguard checking for sniper nests.
Uncle Harry ignored the room entirely. Even before an introduction could be made, he had sized up Mallory and decided how she would be played: not as a nonentity (as he might have done if it suited his purpose), but as a welcome addition to the Tull inner circle. This meant he judged she could be used as an ally in whatever venture he was engaged in here.
“Nice place,” he said, finally pretending to be interested in our suite. “Haven’t visited the Escorial in ages. What’s that you’re having?”
I poured two more brandies and invited them to sit down.
I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen Uncle Harry outside the environment of the Tull citadel. What struck me was that he seemed as much at home here as he did there. He’d walked into our suite and effortlessly made it his own.
He was briskly interrogating Mallory about her background and history, and she was as briskly feeding him whatever lies came to hand. Suddenly realizing that she was twitting him, he roared with laughter and gave me a wink as if congratulating me on having acquired a nimble-witted girl instead of a dunce.
It was an odd scene, made sinister by the very geniality of Harry’s performance. Mallory seemed less intimidated than I was, behaving as if men like Harry were an old story to her. I found myself becoming rather irritated with them both. Presumably Harry was there to talk to me, so why the devil wasn’t he getting on with it?
“So,” he said after a bit, “how did you two meet?”
“We met at a gallery showing of my work,” Mallory said.
“I see. So you’re what—a painter?”
“That’s right.”
“Interesting,” he said, glancing at me. “I somehow formed the impression you had something to do with Jason’s work with the Resurrection Institute.”
“The what?”
Now he seemed to have hit on the idea of playing the fool.
“Harry means the Reincarnation Institute,” I explained.
“Actually, that’s the case,” Mallory said cheerfully. “I’m the reincarnation of a black whore who was hunted down and murdered in this city a few years after the glorious triumph at Dachau.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Uncle Harry take a hit from anybody. Shaken, he visibly searched for a chuckle but couldn’t seem to find one anywhere.
“Jason,” Mallory said, “Harry’s glass is empty.”
And so it was. So were most of them, in fact, except for Clay’s, who was dutifully abstaining. I filled glasses, taking my time.
Harry settled back in his chair and crossed his legs, as if in preparation for a long stay. “I’m always glad to learn,” he said after taking a sip of brandy. By now once again in command of himself, he gave Mallory an appreciative nod. “You’ve taught me something, and very economically too.”
Mallory nodded back coolly.
“This young woman knows who she is,” he said, turning to me.
“Mmmm,” I said in agreement.
“Do you know who you are?”
Unprepared for such a question, I answered rather lamely. “I think so.”
“I think not,” he said.
“Excuse me, Uncle Harry,” I said, wrapping myself in as much dignity as I could assemble about myself, “but it’s getting late. Would you mind explaining why you’re here?”
“I’m here to find out if you know who you are.”
I shook my head in frustration.
“You think I’m trying to embarrass you in front of your girl,” Harry said, reading my mind with total accuracy, “but in fact I’m here to spare you embarrassment.”
“Explain how that works, Uncle Harry,” I replied bitterly.
“I’ve known you since you were a toddler, Jason. And ever since I’ve known you, I’ve known that your greatest problem in life would be discovering who you are. This isn’t something unique to you. The sons of men like Jason Tull always have difficulty discovering who they are—aside from being the junior version of their fathers. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about, Jason. Being the junior version gets you the headwaiter’s attention. It gets you a pair of seats at the opera when there are no seats. It gets you a respectful warning instead of a speeding ticket. You like getting all those things, but you know you don’t get them because of who you are but because of who your father
is. Being the junior version lets you move around like a prince, but it never lets you find out who you are in yourself. This is very much behind your interest in reincarnation, you know.”
“Is it, now! What makes you think so?”
“Isn’t it obvious? All the tales of reincarnation you’ve told us over the years are about people who have found out who they are—something you’d very much like to do for yourself. They’re all your proxies in discovery. Like them, you’d love to wake up one morning and be someone else entirely. If you were no longer just a junior version of Jason Tull, then of course you’d have to know who you are.”
“There’s something in what you say, Harry—God knows there is—but I don’t see why it’s something that needs to be discussed on this particular night.”
Harry looked at Mallory, who held his gaze for a moment then looked away. Turning back to me, he said, “This particular night is precisely when it needs to be discussed.”
“Why?”
“If you had a better idea of who you are, then you’d know why.”
“That’s very clever, Harry, but I don’t think it’s more than that.”
Again he looked at Mallory, as if expecting some kind of support from her. Again she looked away, but I could see she had something on her mind. Finally she gave me her eyes and said, “Jason, I think you’ve got to try and put this together.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why is Harry here tonight?”
I looked at Harry, and he looked back, with suddenly ferocious intensity. “Who are you?” he said, as if genuinely in the dark and genuinely curious.
“Christ,” I said, actually a little scared, “I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at.”
“Who are you?” he insisted.
Feeling trapped, I staggered to my feet. “What the hell is he talking about, Mallory? Do you know?”
“I think he’s trying to make you see why he’s here tonight, Jason.”
“Why is he here tonight?”
The two of them exchanged another glance.
“Harry’s telling the truth, Jason. He’s here tonight because you don’t know who you are.”
“This is bullshit,” I said, meaning approximately, “Why are you two ganging up on me?”