Second sight, p.34
Second Sight, page 34
Despite their physical resemblance, few would have taken them at this moment for father and daughter. The blood test had freed Zarah of all shyness, and as Cathy had feared and Stephanie had foreseen, she was behaving toward Christopher like a girl who had just become engaged to be married and therefore had a right to know the whole truth about his life before they met. She led Christopher to a bench and began to ask questions, beginning with the details of his imprisonment in China. He answered lamely. Zarah paused.
“Would you rather not be asked about this?” she asked. “Am I going too fast? Does it remind you too much of what you went through?”
“It’s not that. I’m just out of the habit of answering questions.”
This was the fact. By the time Zarah appeared on his doorstep Christopher had lived in inviolable privacy for nearly ten years, a period almost exactly equivalent to the time he had spent in prison. Ever since his return from China he had been treated like a man risen from the dead who knew things that no human being ought to know. No one asked him questions about himself. In early days Stephanie had satisfied her curiosity as Zarah was doing now, but no one else had trespassed onto this forbidden ground. Patchen had kept the Outfit snoops away, and in private life Christopher’s friends, and even people who would ordinarily have been his enemies, seemed to think that he would somehow slip back into the nether world of his captivity if he described what had happened to him there.
“I don’t really want to know everything,” Zarah said. “Just some of the details, so I can compare what really happened to what I invented about you.”
“From what you’ve told me already, the two are a lot alike,” Christopher replied.
“That was because I didn’t really invent these things. I had the book Barney gave me. And Lla Kahina saw you in the cards all the time. I just took it from there.”
“She saw me in the cards?”
“You find that hard to believe?”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“She saw you. For example, did you have a very large book with a blue cover that you read every night in your cell?”
“Yes. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.”
“Is that what it was? We thought it must be the Bible. When you were interrogated, did you write answers on a stone floor with chalk?”
“Yes. It’s part of their technique.”
“You’ve told me that your hard labor, day after day, consisted of digging a deep ditch that had no purpose. Did this ditch collapse in an earthquake, almost burying you alive?”
“Yes.”
“And did someone in the hospital give you an orange to eat when you regained consciousness?”
“Yes.”
“Lla Kahina saw all that. She said you were a very strong presence, always appearing when she got out the cards, always insisting that she take notice of you. That was how she found my mother in the first place; you appeared in the cards and told her about me.”
“But I didn’t know about you.”
“Not in real life, but she sees another world in which the dead and the living are all mixed up together. I think Lla Kahina believes that this person she called by your name is really your mother, speaking through you. She thinks your mother is in me, too; she never said so, but I know that’s what she believed. Do you find that hard to accept?”
“That she would believe those things, no. She and your grandmother were very close.”
“But you’ve just said that the things she saw happening to you in the cards actually happened in real life. How do you explain her knowing what was going on in a prison in Manchuria, ten thousand miles from where she was?”
“Unless she had spies among the guards, I can’t explain it.”
“No spies. But you still don’t believe it.”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s all true. I only wish she had come to see me—in person. Then I might have known as much about you as you know about me.”
They smiled at each other; Christopher’s smile was in no way muscular, not brilliant like Zarah’s, but a subtle change of facial expression, a more humorous light in the eyes.
“I see what you mean,” Zarah said. “Maybe you should have had some cards of your own.”
“Tell me what I would have seen.”
“Not much; I led a very quiet life.”
She told him the basic facts: Cathy had taught her to play the piano and ride; Lla Kahina had taught her Berber and Arabic and the history of the Ja’wabi; the Ja’wabi had taught her the ways of the desert. A long procession of tutors hired by D. & D. Laux & Co. had come to Tifawt and guided her through the core curriculums of the famous school and liberal arts college Cathy had attended, and well beyond.
“I think my schooling was based on what Mother read about Lori’s education in Hubbard’s novels,” Zarah said. “God knows what she thought she was creating, or for what purpose. I sure didn’t.”
She knew European music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English, American, and European history and literature, the Bible and the Koran, philosophy from Socrates to Heidegger, Western politics from Suetonius to Marx, mathematics through calculus, and five languages including the Mandarin she had learned at Wolkowicz’s suggestion. Also the fundamentals of anatomy and internal medicine, subjects she had chosen for herself because they interested her.
“Why medicine?” Christopher asked.
“I thought I might have to nurse you after the Chinese let you go.”
Because Zarah had never been inside a formal schoolroom, she had no diplomas or certificates; no memberships; no connections; no physical reminders of the process of learning; no identity in the terms of reference used by the modern world. Her tutors had known her under her mother’s maiden name. Cathy had not even registered her birth, and one of the things Sebastian had done for her was to present the evidence of her existence and nationality to another of the Bank’s clients, an official of the Consular Service, who issued an American passport in her true name.
“It’s lucky Lla Kahina is an American citizen; they wouldn’t have taken a foreigner’s word for it,” Zarah said. “According to Sebastian the man from the government said I was a perfect secret agent. A sleeper, Barney would have called me.”
“You remember that word after all these years?”
“Yes, and lots of other things Barney taught me. If it hadn’t been for him I might never have found you. Can we talk about him?”
“Another day, if you don’t mind.”
Christopher had said this before when she asked about Wolkowicz; she did not press the point.
Christopher said, “You don’t think Meryem would have told you the truth even if there had been no Barney?”
“I’m not sure. My mother said she was hiding me from you because there’s a curse on the Christophers. I think Lla Kahina may agree with her about that. Why else would she have taken us in and put up with my mother all those years?”
“Maybe she just liked your mother.”
“I don’t think that was the reason. You don’t blame Cathy in the slightest degree for what she did to you and me, do you?”
“No. What would be the point?”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.” He smiled again in his quiet way. “I remember that part very well.”
“Why did you love her? Was it because she was so beautiful?”
“That was part of it; most of it at first. Her looks affected everything. That was what troubled her. She wouldn’t have put it this way, but I think she felt she was under an enchantment, that her beauty was some sort of cruel disguise imposed on her by the fates. She couldn’t believe that anyone could see beyond it, or through it, and find within it the person she thought she really was.”
“But you found the person inside the disguise.”
“I don’t know. Obviously she didn’t think so.”
“You seem to have no curiosity about her. Don’t you wonder what her life was like after you said goodbye?”
“It’s pretty obvious she didn’t want me to know that.”
“And you feel you have to respect her wishes even after she’s dead?”
“Yes.”
Zarah started to reply, but she was interrupted by a beggar. Zarah gave him a dollar; he shuffled away. She resumed her line of questioning.
“Sebastian’s documents have made me wonder about the circumstances of my conception,” she said. “You were already separated when it happened, apparently.”
“Yes.”
“Did you think about her at all afterward?”
“Of course I did. But I never suspected your existence.”
“You never thought there might be a child?”
“I wondered. It was an unguarded moment.”
“Wondered or feared?”
“Both. By then it was obvious that we couldn’t stay together.”
“You never thought she might have wanted to entrap you?”
“Entrap me? No. That was the farthest thing from her mind under the circumstances.”
“What were the circumstances?”
Christopher compressed his lips, shook his head. Zarah thought that he might refuse to go on, but he answered the question.
“She had been badly hurt,” he said. “What happened happened in the hospital, before she went in for surgery. She thought she might die. So did I. It was what she wanted.”
“What did you want? Did you still love her when it happened?” Christopher looked into her large gray eyes, the family eyes; they glistened with tears. “How else could such a thing have happened at all?” he asked.
6
WHEN THE CHRISTOPHERS HAD GUESTS TO DINNER THEY SET UP THE table in the long gallery-like room in which the pictures hung and turned on the lights over the frames. For Zarah’s party Stephanie had taken the plate out of its storage bags; a cold poached salmon and chicken breasts in aspic were displayed on glittering silver dishes arranged on a sideboard.
“No red meat is served in this house, ever; Stephanie is hell on cholesterol,” said Sybille Webster, Stephanie’s mother, joining Christopher and Zarah at the buffet. “Speaking of blood, I understand you and Paul passed your consanguinity tests with flying colors.”
“Yes,” Zarah sald, opening her eyes a little wider in amusement as she listened. “A perfect match.”
“Congratulations. I told Stephanie I didn’t see how there could be any doubt about it. I knew your mother and you’d be lucky to look like her, but you don’t. I’ve never seen two people who looked or acted more alike than you and your father.”
Sybille was the first to call Christopher “your father” in speaking of him to Zarah.
“Thank you,” Zarah said.
“Don’t thank me,” Sybille said, mistaking her meaning. “Thank your genes. Stephanie gets annoyed when I say so because it contradicts the intellectual fashion, but I’ve never believed in this nurture over nature nonsense. You can’t turn a plow horse into a thoroughbred by buying it educational toys and reading it Dr. Seuss books. You’re born as you always will be, a version of your ancestors. That’s why I never gave up hope where Stephanie was concerned. Her father thought she might join the PLO, but I knew she’d be all right as soon as she found a husband, though I must say. I never dreamed it would be Paul Christopher.”
“The PLO?” Zarah sald.
“Yes. She went through a revolutionary phase just before she married your father. It was a mystery to me. Yasir Arafat is such a grotesque little gnome, with those whiskers and that checkered napkin on his head and that toy pistol sitting on his Santa Claus tummy. Of course, so is Menachem Begin on the other side; he started out as a mad bomber too, you know. One evening at somebody’s house we met a man from the Smithsonian who told us about this forensic archeologist—that was the term, isn’t it wonderful?—who could examine ancient human bones and tell you exactly what the person had looked like in life. All he needed was the skull and a leg bone or two and maybe a clavicle and he could make paintings of people who had been dead for hundreds of years. Imagine having a picture of Cleopatra or William Shakespeare. The Russians had just shot the pope in St. Peter’s Square, so I said, ‘Why don’t you get the Vatican to let your man have a look at Saint Peter’s bones? I’ll bet he’d turn out to look like a combination of Arafat and Begin.’ He said, ‘No, he’d probably look like a centaur because there are horse and donkey bones mixed in with the saint’s.’ Can you imagine?”
Christopher asked Zarah what kind of wine she wanted.
“White, please,” Zarah said.
“Ah, you drink wine,” Sybille said. “I gather you’re not a Moslem.”
“No.”
“Cathy didn’t convert in all those years? Not that she was exactly born to wear the veil with that glorious face of hers.”
“She did wear it sometimes. She liked it, in fact.”
“She liked it? Honestly? Do you?
“Yes; lots of women my age do. But my mother wasn’t much interested in religion.”
“Great beauties seldom are. I liked your mother. She played the piano very nicely. She wore the most wonderful clothes; I never saw shoes to compare to the ones she wore, they were absolutely perfect. I was very sorry to hear that she had passed away at such a young age. May I ask what happened to her?”
Christopher handed Zarah a glass of chardonnay; Sybille had not touched alcohol for years.
“Mrs. Webster was just asking me exactly what happened to my mother,” Zarah said. Then she turned to Sybille and said, “She was shot to death by terrorists.”
Sybille gasped. Arab terrorists?”
“Among others.”
“Oh, dear.” Sybille put a hand on Zarah’s arm. “Zarah, my child, I’m so sorry I made jokes about the PLO.” Stephanie, seated beside the O. G., was watching them intently. “Here,” Sybille said, handing Zarah the plate she had filled for herself. “Take this to the O. G.; I’ll make myself another. There he is, with his napkin tucked into his vest. He’s dying to talk to you; he knew your grandparents.”
Sybille rushed out of the room with a clatter of high heels; Stephanie took in the scene with a glance, rose from her place, and followed her. Zarah put down her glass of wine and carried both plates to the table; the O. G. accepted his with a little bow.
“Salmon,” he said. “The Washington standby. Did you know that it was against the law to feed indentured servants salmon more than twice a week in the Massachusetts Bay Colony? The rivers teemed with it.”
“Would you rather have something else?”
“No; I like the stuff. I don’t get as much of it as I did before my indenture expired. Sit beside me.”
Christopher intervened, taking Zarah by the arm. “I’ll bring her back in a moment,” he said.
Outside in the garden, they sat down on a bench.
“I’m sorry,” Christopher said.
Zarah was dry-eyed. “About what?” she asked. “Because my mother was shot full of holes by idiots or because I upset that foolish woman?”
“Sybille means no harm.”
He laid his hand on her cheek; she remained as she had been, with her head lifted and her hands clasped in her lap. Over the mumbling of the party inside they heard the sound of high heels on stone. It was Stephanie, emerging from the house. She reached them in half a dozen strides.
“Zarah, I apologize for Mother. She had no idea what she was getting into.”
“Thank you. There’s no need to apologize. She asked an obvious question.”
“A little too obvious. It’s her style. She didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know that. It was a social occasion. I should have lied.”
Stephanie sat down beside her and looked into her face for a long moment. Her manner was professional. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Zarah returned her gaze. “Not especially. Did you know my mother?”
“Not really. Whatever Mother may have said, none of us really knew Cathy; she came and went so quickly. I saw quite a lot of her in Paris when I was a child. She was always nice to me. We talked about horses. Once or twice she took me riding with her in the Bois de Boulogne; she rode like a dream.”
“That sounds like Mother,” Zarah said. She stood up, as if freeing herself of a restraining hand. “I think we should get back to the others.”
“Not yet,” Christopher said. “Tell us what happened.”
Stephanie stood up, too. “Would you rather talk to your father alone?” she asked.
“No, stay,” Zarah said. “Actually horses had something to do with what happened. We used to go on an ostrich chase every year. Mother loved it; she made everyone else go whether they wanted to or not. Ostriches run much faster than a horse, you know. The idea was to post a rider every mile or so, then get one started and chase it in relays.”
Stephanie said, “It sounds cruel.”
Zarah paused for a moment before replying. “It’s not,” she said. “It may have been in the old days, when they killed the animal for its plumes and its body fat—lots of Berbers and Arabs still believe that ostrich grease is a cure for practically everything. But all we did was run them, sometimes for fifty or sixty miles; it could go on for days with no harm to the bird. Distance means nothing to an ostrich.”
In order to find ostriches, Cathy and Zarah and a party of about thirty Ja’wabi, almost evenly divided among mature people and the young, had caravaned several hundred miles through the Sahara and made camp in the Oën oasis. There they waited for a thunderstorm to appear in the distance, and rode toward it; ostriches instinctively run straight for lightning as soon as they see it, so as to graze on the green shoots produced by a cloudburst and the powerful sunshine that follows it. Soon after dawn a couple of days later Zarah and two other young people, riding in advance of the main party, sighted a troop of more than two dozen ostriches grazing on a low hilltop. A line of riders was established in the direction of the oasis. One large male ostrich was cut out of the troop, and the chase commenced. It began at noon because even ostriches are slowed down by the heat of the midday sun.
