I am not Newton. I am a descendant. And even if I am not the giant that Newton was, I am standing at least several shoulder heights above the giant, and see far too far to limit my vision. My knowledge is made up of toothpaste that cannot be unsqueezed.
My memory cannot be unsqueezed.
I have sat in this dining room every day staring at this statue, contemplating the one mystery I cannot explain. I have read of Arthur and Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone, and all the tales in the Arabian Nights.
I am Malory — King of the Christians, King of the Jews, and, if the Princess of Septimania’s Chapbook is to be believed, I am the Son of Newton, King of Science, King of the World, and yet I have nothing and have nothing to say. I argued that the answer was One. Tibor argued that the answer was Seven, at the very least. The answer was none of the above, neither negative nor imaginary.
The answer is Zero, terrifying and complete.
I have Zero to say to this girl. Less to say to Tibor.
On Christmas Day, I will turn fifty myself. And still I have Zero to say.
And yet, this girl found me.
Ottavia? Could that possibly be her name?
Could she possibly be Tibor’s daughter?
Could she possibly remind me more completely of a day, almost twenty-three years ago, that I have worked so forcefully to forget?
And yet — if the simple really were the sign of the truth — it is clear, despite Ottavia’s theatrical delivery, that if someone does not rescue him, Tibor will be dead very soon.
I will not be that someone, even though I have no wish to see Tibor dead.
And yet I do not want the girl to leave empty-handed.
The Pip. She asked for the Pip.
It is here, of course, in its canister. Behind Newton and his Queen.
POOR MALORY. I DON’T KNOW WHICH OF US WAS MORE THE GHOST. BUT while I explained myself, while I told my story, he shrank further and further into himself, as if he might disappear and leave only a pile of corduroy on the terrazza. But after I finished telling him about Tibor, after I finished telling him why I had come to find him, to bring him to the United States, to bring him up the Hudson to TiborTina, where Cristina was busy preparing a celebration of Tibor’s fiftieth birthday in the hope of a miraculous rejuvenation, I waited. I waited five minutes, fifteen. I polished off two scones and three espressos.
Finally, Malory spoke, in a voice that convinced me that he really hadn’t spoken to much of anyone in a long time.
“No,” he said, and then began again. “I’m sorry, but no. I can’t. But I’d like to give you something.”
“For Tibor?” I asked.
Malory shuddered. “For yourself,” he said. “You’ve come a long way. I don’t want you to leave empty-handed.”
I looked around. It was a dining room — seven chairs set around a table. Unused but not undusted. And then I saw them. At first I thought they were alive, the people. And then I saw that they were as small as me, as comfortably small as Malory, and made of stone. A statue of a man — I thought for a moment it was Isaac Newton, although he looked much younger than the statue in Trinity College Chapel — and next to him, a woman.
“That,” I said to Malory.
“The whole sculpture?” Malory asked, even paler and smaller than before. “You want that?”
“Only the apple,” I said. I don’t know why I wasn’t more surprised that the apple was floating in mid-air. Without waiting for an answer from Malory, I walked over to the figures. And whether the man on the left and the woman on the right smiled their approval to me, I can’t be sure. But I reached out and took the apple, as easily as I might pick a McIntosh at the market.
“Thank you,” I said to Malory. It looked at first like pain, the movement of his mouth, perhaps because he hadn’t performed the action in over twenty years. But by the time Malory walked over to me and reached down to touch the marble apple in my hand, I knew he was smiling.
2/7
TTAVIA RETURNED FROM ROME IN TRIUMPH, AND FOR THE NEXT four days, as Tibor’s birthday approached, she was treated the way she imagined a daughter ought. Cristina installed her in the Yellow House down by the creek. With the antiqued brass of the four-poster and the angelic white of the sheets and mosquito netting, Ottavia was starring in Cristina’s idea of an Ibsen dollhouse, in the stately pleasure dome of TiborTina — the upstate kingdom that coupled Cristina’s name and Tibor’s to an approximation of the Roman island of Tiberina, so central to their beginnings in the western world. Ottavia’s yellow dollhouse by the creek sat below the white clapboard house of the Master and the Mistress, the red-sided barn for the Bomb Squad and the Nurses, and the host of guest cottages — the love children of Andrew Wyeth and David Hockney in bright pastels of magenta, chromium, and cobalt. All the color, all the light refracted through poplar and reflected off water and wrapped Ottavia in familial comfort and power.
She rose at dawn on Tibor’s birthday, as she had each of the preceding dawns. The morning was still cool. She crossed the bridge over the creek and strode up a tractor path through the meadow and past the vegetable patch to the pond. She swam for an hour, back and forth across the water, roughly following the minute hand clockwise. By the time she’d dried herself and climbed up the wooden terraces to the back deck of the White House, Cristina was waiting for her with grapefruit juice, café crème, and a basketful of fresh breakfast. Cristina met Ottavia in a fully engaged present, full of mutual marvel and wonder at the butter and marmalade and cut flowers of her Paradiso. Ottavia had grown at least an inch and a half since repatriating Tibor and convincing Malory to leave the Villa Septimania and fly to the United States. If Cristina was the president of TiborTina, Ottavia was anxious to prove herself a worthy secretary of state and see this diplomatic mission through to a world-changing conclusion.
Once she’d heard that Malory had agreed to come to Tibor’s party, Cristina stepped into high gear. Malory’s plane was due to land at Teterboro at noon. His driver would deposit him at the Blue House at two, giving him time to shower and rest. Drinks would be at five, dinner at six in deference to Malory’s jetlag. Simple. Cristina had initially wanted to invite surviving Nurses, mobile remnants of the Bomb Squad, a producer or two, and a number of local neighbors to celebrate. That was Plan A. But given the unpredictable state of Tibor’s storm front, Cristina had changed plans so many times she was well past the alphabet.
In the ten days since he had returned from London, Tibor had done little but sit on the deck in a wooden-slatted Adirondack chair, look down at the pine-ringed pond, and smoke himself into a fog. He wasn’t drinking — there wasn’t even a flip-top can of turpentine on the ten acres of TiborTina. Cristina wasn’t certain this silent alternative was more desirable. But although he sat apart in his Adirondack, the white of Tibor’s shirt and trousers and the gray of his hair and cigarette smoke mixed into a shade of solidity that anchored the women and convinced them that, as long as the cigarettes held out, there would be fifty more years in TiborTina of peace and hope.
Still, Cristina needed fruit and vegetables. More, she needed Tibor to show some signs of life.
“Darling,” she said to Ottavia. “Why don’t you drive Tibor down to the Farmers’ Market after lunch and pick up a few things for dinner?”
On that Monday afternoon, there were a dozen or so cars and SUVs at the round barn of the Farmers’ Market. Across River Road, two beat-up Chevy 10s stood in front of the Seven Veils Bar & Grill. An early-model BMW idled in front of Kolodney’s Fish Market.