“Anything.”
“Teach me bravery. Your kind of bravery, a man’s kind of bravery. War bravery, battle bravery. There must be a trick. You were so brave. Whatever else, for so long you were so brave. That attracted me from the first. I fell so in love with it. Teach it to me. I’m sick of being scared.”
“I don’t know much about it anymore. It used to be so important to me. A guy I thought was the bravest man in the world — the guy that taught me everything — ended up floating in the Danube. He left me a message, and it had an eerie ring to it. He told me to fetch the shoe that fits. The shoe fits? It was a joke, I thought. But now I don’t know. Frenchy was trying to tell me something. About all this. He was scared too, because he was going in solo and Frenchy hated to work solo.”
“He was a hero?”
“In our line of work, he was the best. Yes, I suppose he was a hero. Yet even the Frenchman came unglued at the end. His wife — his widow — told me about it. He grew up, he burned out, he got tired.”
“Still, he died for something. Scared and tired and old, he died for it. That’s really it. That’s the lesson I want to learn. This Frenchman — he went ahead. He pressed on.”
“Yes. You’d have to give him that.”
“He died for something he believed in?”
“The joke is, when you think you’re dying, the last thing you think about is what you believe. You think about crazy things. I thought about basketball.” I thought about you, he thought.
“Still, it’s the act that counts, not the motive. That’s a shoe that fits.”
“I suppose it does.”
“Paul, I want to go back to the apartment now. Can we go back and make love?”
He looked at her in the hard light. It was noon, the sun harsh, the breeze stirring old limbs in this leafy place. Slivers of light cutting through the overhead canopy lay about them on the ground, on the walk. She was without color, a severe profile, almost stylized in her beauty.
“Of course we can. Sure. Let’s go. Let’s run back.”
She laughed.
“Johanna, I hardly recognize you.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s you, Paul. I really do draw from you.”
“Johanna, I—”
“Please, Paul. I want to go back. Let’s go. The shoe fits.”
He had always thought beautiful women a breed apart, and maybe they were, some mutant species, made crazy by all the hits on them, or made cynical, contemptuous of the twerps kissing their asses so desperately, or, the worst, made devious, unable to respond until they had figured out just what they stood to gain or lose. But not Johanna: she seemed to him none of these things except achingly, innocently beautiful as she sat before the mirror working on her hair, an abundant woman, flawless in the late afternoon light, after their lovemaking. “Jesus, are you fun to watch,” he called from the bed.
She smiled, but did not look over.
The telephone rang. Chardy rolled over to look at the ceiling.
Johanna said, “It’s for you. A woman.”
He took the phone.
“Hello?”
“Paul?”
The tone, queerly familiar, seemed to arrive from another universe.
“Yes, who is this?”
“Paul, it’s Sister Sharon.”
“Sister Sharon! How are you? How in the world did you find me?”
The nun taught at Resurrection, back in his other life. She had the third-graders, and was a funny, quiet, plain girl, so young, who’d always liked him.
“Paul, it wasn’t easy. You left an address with the diocese to forward your last check; one of the secretaries gave it to me. It was a government office in Rosslyn, Virginia. I went to the library and got out the Northern Virginia phone book and looked up the government offices. I finally found one with the same address. It took an hour. I called the number. I got a young man named Lanahan. I told him who I was and he was very helpful.”
Lanahan. Sure, he’d break his Catholic neck to help a nun.
“Finally he gave me this number. Am I disturbing anything?”
“No, uh-uh. What’s up?”
“There’s a telegram for you. It came to the school. They were just going to send it along but I thought it might be important.”
Who would send him a telegram?
“I had to open it to see if it was an emergency.”
“What’s it say?”
“It’s from your nephew. He wants money.”
Chardy, an only child, had no nephew.
“Read it to me.”
“‘Uncle Paul,’ it says, ‘onto something, need dough. I beg you. Nephew Jim.’”
Trewitt.
“Paul?” Sister Sharon said.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said, but he was calculating. Trewitt had found a soft route back in, trusting no one except his hero, and reaching him through his whole other life. Trewitt, you surprise me. Where’d you get the smarts — from some book?
“Is there any kind of address?”
“Just Western Union, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Is it all right?”
“It’s fine. A college kid, a little wild. Always in trouble, always after me to bail him out.”
“I’m glad it’s not serious. Paul, we all miss you. The boys especially. Even Sister Miriam.”
“Give ’em my love. Even Sister Miriam. And, Sister Sharon, don’t tell anybody about this. It won’t do the kid any good. He’s probably in some jam with a girl and he doesn’t want his folks to know about it.”
“Of course, Paul. Goodbye.”
She hung up.
“Johanna, I have to go out. Is there a Western Union office around here? Come with me.”
“Paul. You look ecstatic.”
And Chardy realized he was.
23
For the moment, the Kurd could wait, Chardy could wait, it could all wait. Other things occupied Joseph Danzig.
He was astonished. What little rabbits they were. He had lived most of his life in a kind of sexual sleep; then, at forty-seven, catapulted into an absurd celebrity, made preposterously powerful, imprinted upon the collective imagination, he was also granted, almost as a fringe benefit, an astonishing freedom with women. Not that they were attracted to his body — it was a wreck, a blimpish shamble of wrinkles, almost toneless muscles, a wilderness of wattles and fissures, a great, white dead thing — nor even his power (for they could not partake of that) nor his mind (they never talked about anything). They sought him not for cocktail party conversation or to get jobs with the State Department or for exclusive interviews to advance their careers in journalism or to punish their husbands or lovers.
Why then?
He asked one once, a lissome Georgetowner, thirty-four, ash-blonde, Radcliffe, old Washington/Virginia connections. They were at the time both naked and had just consummated the act with passion though not a great deal of skill — in this field, Danzig was well aware that he was merely an adequate technician. With prim efficiency Susan, for such was her name, was preparing to dress, arranging her Pappagallos, her Ralph Lauren double-pleated slacks, her cashmere turtleneck (from Bloomingdale’s, he guessed; it’s where they all dressed these days), her subtly checked tweed sport coat that re-created almost hue for hue the Scottish heather.
“Susan,” he said suddenly, “why? I mean, really: Why? Be honest.”
“Well, Joe,” she said, matter-of-factly — and paused. He knew she was the mother of two girls, three and five, and that her husband was a Harvard law grad in the midst of a flourishing career with the FCC. “Well, Joe” — naked she was small and fine, with tiny shapely breasts and delicate wrists. She was slender enough to show ribs and had creamy, mellow skin. She had tawny hair, expensively taken care of, and had been a champion golfer and an excellent doubles tennis player. “I guess you could say I was curious.”