"I guess so," Silvia said, feeling timid and ill at ease; she glanced down at her own self, wondering if she were dressed modestly enough to be standing out here talking to this man.
"I wish to introduce a very fine line of health foods which you may be familiar with," the man said. He kept his eyes on her face, and yet Silvia had the distinct impression that somehow he managed at the same time to examine the rest of her detail by detail. Her self-consciousness grew, but she did not feel resentful; the man had a charming manner, simultaneously shy and yet oddly forthright.
"Health food," she murmured. "Well, I--"
The man gave a nod, and his Bleekman stepped up, laid down one of the suitcases, and opened it. Baskets, bottles, packages... she was very much interested.
"Unhomogenized peanut butter," the man declared. "Also dietetic sweets without calories, to keep your lovely slimness. Wheat germ. Yeast. Vitamin E; that is the vitamin of _vitality_... but of course for a young woman like yourself, not yet appropriate." His voice purred along as he indicated one item after another; she found herself bending down beside him, so close to him that their shoulders touched. Quickly she drew away, startled into apprehension.
At the door, June put in a momentary appearance, now wearing a skirt and a wool sweater; she hung about for a moment and then drew back inside and shut the door. The man failed to notice her.
"Also," he was saying, "there is much in the gourmet line that Miss might be interested in--these." He held up a jar. Her breath left her: it was caviar.
"Good grief," she said, magnetized. "Where did you get that?"
"Expensive, but well worth it." The man's dark eyes bored into hers. "Don't you agree? Reminder of days at Home, soft candlelight and dance music by an orchestra... days of romance in a whirl of places delightful to the ear and eye." He smiled long and openly at her.
_Black market_, she realized.
Her pulse hammered in her throat as she said, "Look, this isn't my house. I live about a mile down along the canal." She pointed. "I--am very much interested."
The man's smile seared her.
"You've never been by before, have you?" she said, now rattled and stammering. "I've never seen you. What's your name? Your firm name."
"I am Otto Zitte." He handed her a card, which she scarcely glanced at; she could not take her eyes from his face. "My business is long established but has just recently--due to an unforeseen circumstance--been completely reorganized, so that now I am in a position to greet new customers direct. Such as yourself."
"You'll be by?"
"Yes, slightly later in the afternoon... and we can at leisure pore over a dazzling assortment of imported dainties of which I have exclusive distribution. Good afternoon." He rose cat-like to his feet.
June Henessy had reappeared. "Hello," she said in a low, cautious, interested voice.
"My card." Otto Zitte held the embossed white square out to her. Now both ladies had his card; each read hers intently.
Smiling his astute, insinuating, brilliant smile, Otto Zitte beckoned to his tame Bleekman to lay out and open the other suitcase.
As he sat in his office at Camp Ben-Gurion, Dr. Milton Glaub heard a woman's voice in the corridor, husky and full of authority but still unmistakably feminine. Listening, he heard the nurse defer to her, and he knew that it was Anne Esterhazy, come to visit her son Sam.
Opening the file he turned to _E_, and presently he had the folio _Esterhazy, Samuel_ spread out before him on his desk.
It was interesting. The little boy had been born out of wedlock, a year or more after Mrs. Esterhazy had divorced Arnie Kott. And he had entered Camp B-G under her name, too. However it was undoubtedly Arnie Kott's progeny; the folio contained a great packet of information on Arnie, for the examining doctors had taken that blood relationship for granted throughout.
Evidently, even though their marriage had long been over, Arnie and Anne Esterhazy still saw one another, enough in fact to produce a child. Their relationship therefore was not merely a business one.
For a time Dr. Glaub ruminated as to the possible uses that this information could be put to. Did Arnie have enemies? None that he knew of; everybody liked Arnie--that is, everyone but Dr. Milton Glaub. Evidently Dr. Glaub was the sole person on Mars to have suffered at Arnie's hands, a realization that did not make Dr. Glaub feel any happier about it.
That man treated me in the most inhumane and cavalier fashion, he said to himself for the millionth time. But what could be done about it? He could still bill Arnie... hope to collect some trifle for his services. That, however, would not help. He wanted--was entitled to--much more. Again Dr. Glaub studied the folio. An odd sport, Samuel Esterhazy; he knew of no other case precisely like it. The boy seemed to be a throwback to some ancient line of near-man, or to some variant which had not survived: one which had lived partly in the water. It recalled to Glaub the theory being advanced by a number of anthropologists that man had descended from aquatic apes who had lived in the surf and shallows.
Sam's I.Q., he noted, was only 73. A shame.
--Especially so, he thought suddenly, in that Sam could beyond doubt be classified as mentally retarded rather than anomalous. Camp B-G had not been intended as an institution for the purely retarded, and its director, Susan Haynes, had sent back to their parents several pseudoautistic children who had turned out to be nothing more than standard imbeciles. The diagnostic problem had hampered their screening, of course. In the case of the Esterhazy boy, there were also the physical stigmata... .
No doubt of it, Dr. Glaub decided. I have the basis for it: I can send the Esterhazy child home. The Public School could teach him without trouble, could gear down to his level. It is only in the physical area that he could be called "anomalous," and it is not our task here to care for the physically disabled.
But what is my motive? he asked himself.
Possibly I am doing it to get back at Arnie Kott for treating me in a cruel manner.
No, he decided, that does not seem probable; I am not the psychological type who would seek revenge--that would be more the anal-expulsive or perhaps the oral-biting type. And long ago he had classified himself as the late genital type, devoted to the mature genital strivings.
On the other hand, his altercation with Arnie Kott had admittedly caused him to probe into the Esterhazy child's folio... so there was a small but finite causal connective.
Reading the folio through, he was struck once more by the bizarre relationship which it implied. Here they were, carrying on a sexual union years after their marriage had terminated. Why had they gotten divorced? Perhaps there had been a serious power-clash between them; Anne Esterhazy was clearly a domineering type of female with strong masculine components, what Jung called the "animusridden" woman. In successfully dealing with such a type, one had to play a definite role; one had to capture the position of authority right off the bat and never relinquish it. One had to be the ancestral spokesman, or else be quickly defeated.
Dr. Glaub put the folio away and then sauntered down the corridor to the playroom. He located Mrs. Esterhazy; she was playing beanbag with her boy. Walking over, he stood observing them until she became aware of him and paused.
"Hello, Dr. Glaub," she said cheerfully.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Esterhazy. Um, when you're finished visiting, may I see you in my office?"
It was rewarding to see the woman's competent, selfsatisfied expression wilt with concern. "Of course, Dr. Glaub."
Twenty minutes later he sat facing her across his desk.
"Mrs. Esterhazy, when your boy first came to Camp B-G, there was a good deal of doubt as to the nature of his problem. It was believed for some time that it lay in the realm of mental disturbance, possibly a traumatic neurosis or--"