“I thought she was an eye doctor.”
“There was an audition, three hundred doctors, and she won it. She gets good ratings. And your mother?”
“Healthy. Thank God. Retirement suits her, she reads everything she always wanted to read.”
“Do you still live with her?”
I look at him to see what he’s thinking. But why should I keep it a secret? The hours I spend with Mama are bright and peaceful, the best hours of the day. We eat cake, sitting facing each other, we don’t talk much, we wait for evening to come. What’s bad about that? “I live at the presbytery, but I visit her often.”
“Every day?”
“Are you still eating your pasta?”
He looks at his untouched plate as if it’s the first time he’s seen it. But before he can answer, a man stops behind him, bares his teeth, and claps him on the shoulder. “Friedland!”
Eric jumps up. “Remling!” He pretends to box the man in the stomach, while the man holds Eric’s upper arm tight. Both of them laugh awkwardly.
“Do they let just anyone in here?”
“As you can see!”
“Everything okay?”
“Obviously. And you?”
“Absolutely.”
“That last game! A disgrace!”
“Madness!”
“I wanted to shoot myself! This is my brother.”
Remling looks at me. A fleeting look of surprise passes over his face: the usual look people get when they find themselves unexpectedly face-to-face with a priest. He holds out his hand, I reach out too, and we shake hands.
Then the two of them stare blankly into nothing. Obviously neither of them can think of anything to say.
“So!” says Remling. “Well then!”
“Absolutely!” cries Eric.
“Why don’t we. Get together.”
“For sure!”
Remling nods to me and goes back to his table at the window.
“I hate him. Almost wrecked the Ostermann deal for me last year.” Eric sits down again and starts tapping at his phone. The waiter reappears behind him, bends over his shoulder, and whisks away my empty plate and Eric’s untouched one so fast that I can’t protest. “So!” Eric puts the phone away, pushes his chair back, and gets to his feet. “Nice to see you. I’ve got to run, you can’t imagine everything that’s going on. Of course I’m paying.”
“But why did you want to talk to me?”
Eric is already on his way to the exit. He doesn’t turn around again, pushes the door open, and is already gone.
Shall I order something else? But it’s expensive, the portions are small, and I can get a curry sausage right on the corner.
I stay for another few minutes. I will have to ask the waiter to pull the table out, then the man next to me will be forced to stand up, then they’ll pull his table out too, which means in turn that the man sitting opposite will have to stand up too. Half the restaurant will be on its feet by the time I’m on mine.
I’m late. Mama will be waiting with the cake by two p.m., then I have to get to a meeting of the Catholic Youth, and in the evening I have to hold Mass again. What on earth did Eric want with me?
Thoughtfully I finish the water in my glass and smile amiably at everyone in the room. Blessings be upon you, whether you want them or not. That’s my job. Day after day I bear witness to the fact that there is an order to things and reason rules in cosmic affairs. What is, must be. What must be, is. I am the legal representative of all that prevails, defender of the Status Quo, whatever that may be. That is my profession.
And the world really isn’t that bad. Thanks be to God, though He doesn’t exist, for things like restaurants and air-conditioning. I’m going to order dessert after all. I’m already signaling the waiter.
I was sitting in the seminary library with the cube hidden behind an edition of Stages on Life’s Way when Kalm came in to tell me my father was on the phone.
To reach the public phone, you had to go down a flight of stairs, along a long corridor, then up a second flight of stairs. The whole way there I was worrying that Arthur might hang up again. I was panting when I reached the phone; the receiver was swinging on the cord.
“Do you have time?”
It really was his voice. I’d never been able to conjure it up in my memory, but now I recognized it as if not a day had gone by.
“Time for what?”
“I’m in the neighborhood right now. Bad moment?”
“You mean — now?”
“I’m here.”
“Where?”
“Come out.”
“Now?”
“So it’s really a bad moment?”
“No, no. You’re here?”
“That’s what I’m saying. In front of the building.”
“This building?”
Arthur laughed and hung up.
It was a year since his strangest story had appeared in his last collection. It was called “Family,” and it was about his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, it was the story of our ancestors, generation by generation, all the way to some vaguely sketched version of the Middle Ages. Most of it is pure invention, for according to Arthur right at the beginning, the past is unknowable: People think the dead are preserved somewhere. People think their traces are inscribed on the universe. But it’s not true. What’s gone is gone. What once was, is forgotten, and what has been forgotten never returns. I have no memory of my father. Oddly, this made me feel robbed. They were my ancestors too.
I went out into the street and he was standing there. His hair as mussed up as always, his hands in his pockets, the same glasses on his nose. When he saw me he spread his arms wide, and for a moment I thought he was going to hug me, but it was a gesture of astonishment at my seminarian’s garb. He suggested we go for a walk. My voice was suddenly so hoarse I couldn’t answer.
We walked in silence. Streetlights flashed, cars honked, and I heard fragments of words as people passed. It felt as if all the noises were part of a secret conversation, as if the world were talking at me in hundreds of sounds, but I couldn’t concentrate and didn’t understand a thing.
“I’ll be in the city for a while,” he said.
“Under a false name?”
“I’m only a well-known writer. Nobody knows well-known writers. I don’t need a false name.”
“What have you been doing all these years?”
“Have you read my books?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know.”
“And apart from that?”
“Nothing. I haven’t done anything apart from that. That’s what it was all about.”
“Oh, that’s what!”
“You’re angry with me?”
I said nothing.
“That I wasn’t there? That we didn’t have sack races, or visits to the zoo, that I didn’t come to parents’ days, roll around on the carpet, and take you to the annual fair? You’re angry about that?”
“What if the books aren’t any good?”
He looked at me sideways.
“What then?” I asked. “Everything sacrificed and then they’re no good? What then?”
“There’s no insurance against that.”
We went on in silence.
“Obligations,” he said after a while. “We invent them when required. Nobody has them unless they decide they have them. But I love you a lot. All three of you.”
“And yet you didn’t want to be with us.”
“I don’t think you missed much. We’ll talk about all of it. The hotel opposite the station, come this evening, Ivan will be there too.”
“And Eric?”
“He doesn’t want to see me. Come for dinner at eight. I’m guessing you like to eat.”
I wanted to ask what gave him the right to say such a thing, but it had been his form of farewell. He waved, a taxi pulled up, he got in and shut the door behind him.