The Death Instinct

'I am not beautiful. How would they know I was a foreigner with no family?'

'How did they know you lived in New Haven? Or that you were going to Hamburg? One thing is certain: they have money. Enough to investigate people.'

Unexpectedly, she rested her head on his shoulder. 'At least we're safe on this ship. I can feel it. I wish we never had to reach Europe.'

Younger had made inquiries with the ship's bursar, from whom he learned that he'd been the last one to buy tickets. Colette, it seemed, was right. The ship was safe; no one had followed them aboard. 'We don't have to get off when the ship gets to Bremen,' he suggested. 'We could stay on for the return voyage. At New York, we could stay on again. Go back and forth forever.'

'Don't say anything else,' she answered, closing her eyes. 'I'm going to dream about that.'

He looked at her lovely face: 'Yes, if I were running a white slavery ring, you'd be at the top of my list.'

Later that morning, Younger emptied onto the deck the contents of a large sack he'd brought along with his luggage. There was a baseball, a bat, a jumble of wooden pegs and metal plates, and assembly instructions. A half-hour later, he had constructed a batting tee — a freestanding pedestal for holding a baseball in place, about waist high, so that a batter can practice his swings at it. Younger then fashioned a bag of netting around the baseball, tying off this bag with a long cord of rope borrowed from a seaman. The other end of the rope Younger secured to a winch. He then set the bagged ball atop the tee and gave Luc a lesson in hitting. After each swing, they retrieved the baseball, soaking, by reeling in the rope.

Soon a good number of male passengers wanted a go, doffing their hats and undressing to their shirtsleeves to take their cracks. Naturally, the handful of other boys on the voyage were eager to try as well. Younger made them ask permission first from Luc, who solemnly granted it, and who for the rest of the journey thereby became an indispensable member of the little gang of boys, despite his muteness.

Of all the men and boys who had a go at the batter's tee that day, Younger hit the most towering drives. But the next morning several of the ship's seamen joined in. One of these was a muscular swab who had played for the Brooklyn Robins during the war and who, taking his shirt off altogether, packed so Ruthian a wallop into his first swing that the rope was not long enough. The netting broke; the ball was lost. Younger tried several substitutes — an orange, a globe of wood cut by the ship's carpenter, a golf ball lent to them by another passenger — but there's nothing quite like a baseball, and that was the end of that.

As the days of oceangoing passed one to the next, Younger found he couldn't make any further headway with Colette. His relations with her were intimate enough, but only in a friendly way. She was affectionate, but distant. And she became more so as they drew nearer to Europe.

Sometimes he would catch her staring out to sea into a future he couldn't penetrate. Or was it a past — a memory of falling in love with a devout, ailing soldier in Paris, to whom she had given her heart, and whom she hadn't seen for more than two years?

You're his hero, you know,' she said to him one day, coming out of such a reverie.

'Whose?'

'Luc's.'

'Am I?' said Younger. 'Who's yours?'

'I have two: Madame Curie and my father. I'm lucky that way. The Germans killed my father when he was still a hero to me — fearless, strong, noble in every way. Even the Germans couldn't take that from me. But Luc barely remembers him. I used to try to remind him about Mother and Father — tell him stories of Father's strength and bravery.

But he wouldn't listen. He isn't even curious. That's what he really needs — a father.'

'And you're doing your best to find him one?'

She didn't answer.

'Do you really think he loves you?' Younger went on. 'Heinrich, I mean.'

'Hans.'

'Heinrich hasn't written you a single letter in two years. That doesn't sound like love to me.'

'It doesn't matter whether he's written me.'

'You mean you love him regardless? You don't. I'm sorry, but you don't. If you loved him, you'd be thinking of one thing only: how he'll react when he sees you. You'd be in a panic to know whether he still cares for you. You'd be looking in mirrors. You also wouldn't concede that he hasn't written you. You'd tell yourself that he wrote to the hospital in Paris, but that you never received the letters. Instead you say it doesn't matter.'

She didn't answer.

'Is he that handsome?' asked Younger. 'Or did you give yourself to him, and now you think you have to marry him on that account?'

Colette looked away: 'Don't talk about him anymore. Please.'

'What do you owe him? You nursed the man when he was sick, but you act like he was the one who saved you. As if you owed him your life.'

'You can't understand what I owe him,' she said. She looked at him: 'Do you want me to say I love you more than him? That I'll give him up for you? I won't. I'm sorry. You shouldn't love me. You should just — leave me alone.' She got up and went to her cabin and didn't return.

On the last night of their voyage, as he contemplated the unfathomable force drawing Colette to her soldier from thousands of miles away, Younger tried to decide which was the greater illusion — the false motion of the stars, which seemed over the course of a night slowly to cross the sky, or the false motionlessness of the earth, which was in reality soaring around the sun at unthinkable speed.

How could it be that a young man whom Colette had known for only a few months exerted such power over her, or that this French girl exerted such power over him — Younger — against his will, against his reason, against his judgment? He seemed to be in orbit around her, circling her, closing on her, then falling away, always with some final, unbridgeable distance between them. Does the earth find its orbit a cause of unending torment?

The Amityville Sanitarium on Long Island was spotless and white and healthful, but Edwin Fischer, its newest resident, did not seem content. Gone was the gregarious good cheer so conspicuous when he was taken into custody in New York City a month earlier.

'How are they treating you, Fischer?' asked Littlemore, taking a seat in the visiting room.

'The Popes have always been against me,' replied Fischer. 'Are you Roman Catholic, Officer?'

'Catholic? My wife is.'

'None of the Popes has ever been a true Catholic. They pretend, of course, but it's always been a lie. They are using their powers against me. Why did you come here?'

'Funny — I'm asking myself that same question right now.'

'Shall I tell you the reason the Popes wish to keep me confined?'

'Because you're crazy?'

'They don't believe I'm an agent of the United States Secret Service.'

'You're not.'

'Why do you say that?' Fischer looked genuinely hurt. 'I resent that very much. Are you a Secret Serviceman?'

'No.'

'Are you the Secretary of the Treasury?'

'Why?' asked Littlemore.

'If you were, you'd be in charge of the Secret Service.'

'I don't think so.'

'You don't think you're the Secretary of the Treasury?' replied Fischer. 'Most people are sure, one way or the other.'

'I happen to work for the Secretary of the Treasury, and I don't think he's in charge of the Secret Service.'

'Then he's an impostor. I know why you're here.'

'Is that right?'

'You're here to get me out of this place.'

'No, I'm not.'

'Yes, you are. And to ask me when I first received my premonition of the Wall Street bombing.'

Littlemore sat up.

'I'm correct?' asked Fischer.

'Son of a gun. How'd you know that?'

'Were you at the train station when the police brought me from Canada, Captain?'

'No. So when was it — your first premonition?'