Sipping, Charlie propped an elbow on the back of her chair in order to be able to glance naturally over her shoulder. Joseph had vanished, taking his papers with him.
The resting room they had retired to was as large as the room they had left and quite as bare. A couple of army beds and a teleprinter made up the only furniture, double doors gave on to a bathroom. Becker and Litvak sat facing each other on the beds, studying their respective files; the teleprinter was tended by a straight-backed boy named David, and periodically it heaved itself and disgorged another sheet of paper, which he devoutly added to the pile at his elbow. The only other sound was the sloshing of water in the bathroom, where Kurtz, with his back to them and stripped to the waist, was dousing himself at the handbasin, like an athlete between events.
"She's a neat lady," Kurtz called as Litvak turned a page and sidelined something with a felt-tipped pen. "She's everything we expected. Bright, creative, and under-used."
"She's lying in her teeth," said Litvak, still reading. But it was clear from the slant of his body, as well as the provocative insolence of his tone, that his remark was not intended for Kurtz.
"So who's complaining?" Kurtz demanded, flinging more water in his face. "Tonight she lies for herself, tomorrow she lies for us. Do we want an angel suddenly?"
The teleprinter burst abruptly into a different song. Both Becker and Litvak glanced sharply towards it, but Kurtz appeared not to have heard. Perhaps he had water in his ears.
"For a woman, lying is a protection. She protects the truth, so she protects her chastity. For a woman, lying is a proof of virtue," Kurtz announced, still washing.
Seated before the telephone, David held up his hand for attention. "It's the Embassy in Athens, Marty," he said. "They want to break in with a relay from Jerusalem."
Kurtz hesitated. "Tell them to go ahead," he said grudgingly.
"It's for your eyes only," David said and, getting up, walked across the room.
The teleprinter gave a shudder. Flinging his towel round his neck, Kurtz sat himself in David's chair, inserted a disc, and watched the message turn to clear text. The printing ceased; Kurtz read it, then ripped the tearsheet from the roller and read it again. Then he let out an angry laugh. "A message from the very highest twig," he announced bitterly. "The great Rook says we are to pose as Americans. Isn't that nice? ‘On no account will you admit to her you are Israeli subjects acting in official or near-official capacity.' I love it. It's constructive, it's helpful, it's timely and it's Misha Gavron at his unmatchable best. I never in my life worked for anyone so totally dependable. Cable back ‘Yes repeat no,' " he snapped at the astonished boy, handing him the tearsheet, and the three men trooped back on stage.
seven
To resume his little chat with Charlie, Kurtz had selected a tone of benevolent finality, as if he wished to check a few last fiddly points before moving to other things.
"Charlie, regarding your parents once more," he was saying.
Litvak had pulled a file from his briefcase, and was holding it out of Charlie's line of sight.
"Regarding them," she said, and reached bravely for a cigarette.
Kurtz took a little break while he studied certain documents that Litvak had slipped into his hand. "Looking at the final phase of your father's life now, his crash, financial disgrace, death, and so forth. Can we just confirm with you the exact sequence of those events? You were at English boarding school. The terrible news came. Take it from there, please."
She didn't quite follow him. "From where?"
"The news comes. Go on from there."
She shrugged. "The school threw me out, I went home, the bailiffs were swarming over the house like rats. We've been there, Mart. What else is there?"
"The headmistress sent for you, you said," Kurtz reminded her after a pause. "Great. So what did she say? Precisely, please?"
" ‘Sorry but I've asked Matron to pack your things. Goodbye and good luck.' Far as I remember."
"Oh, you'd remember that" said Kurtz with quiet good humour, leaning across to take another look at Litvak's papers. "No homily from her on the big wicked world out there?" he asked, still reading. " ‘Don't give yourself away too easy' type of thing? No? No explanations of why, exactly, you were being asked to leave?"
"The fees hadn't been paid for two terms already--isn't that enough? They're in business, Mart. They've got their bank account to think of. This was a private school, remember?" She made a show of weariness. "Don't you think we'd better call it a day? I can't think why but I seem to be a trifle flaked."
"Oh, I don't think so. You are rested and you have resources. So you went home. By rail?"
"All the way by rail. On my own. With my little suitcase. Homeward bound." She stretched, and smiled around the room, but Joseph's head was turned away from her. He seemed to be listening to other music.
"And you came home to what precisely?"
"To chaos. I told you."
"Just specify the chaos a little, will you?"
"Furniture van in the drive. Men in aprons. Mother weeping. Half my room already emptied."
"Where was Heidi?"
"Not there. Absent. Not counted among those present."
"Nobody sent for her? Your elder sister, the apple of your father's eye? Living ten miles up the road? Safely married? Why didn't Heidi come over and help?"
"Pregnant, I expect," said Charlie carelessly, looking at her hands. "She usually is."
But Kurtz was looking at Charlie, and he took a good long time to say anything at all. "Who did you say was pregnant, please?" he asked, as if he hadn't quite heard.
"Heidi."
"Charlie, Heidi was not pregnant. Heidi's first pregnancy occurred the following year."
"All right, she wasn't pregnant for once."
"So why didn't she come along, lend some family help?"
"Maybe she didn't want to know. She stayed away, that's all I remember. Mart, for Christ's sake, it's ten years ago. I was a kid, a different person."
"It was the disgrace, huh? Heidi couldn't take the disgrace. Of your father's bankruptcy, I mean."
"What other disgrace was there?" she snapped.
Kurtz treated her question rhetorically. He was back at his papers, watching Litvak's long finger point things out to him. "In any case, Heidi stayed away and the entire responsibility of coping with the family crisis fell upon your young shoulders, okay? Charlie, aged a mere sixteen, to the rescue. Her ‘crash course in the fragility of the capitalist system,' as you put it so nicely a while back. ‘An object lesson you never forgot.' All the toys of consumerism--pretty furniture--pretty dresses--all the attributes of bourgeois respectability--you saw them physically dismantled and removed before your very eyes. You alone. Managing. Disposing. In undisputed mastery over your pathetic bourgeois parents who should have been working class but carelessly were not. Consoling them. Easing them in their disgrace. Almost a kind of absolution you gave them, I guess. Tough," he added sadly. "Very, very tough," and stopped dead, waiting for her to speak.
But she didn't. She stared him out. She had to. His slashed features had undergone a mysterious hardening, particularly around the eyes. But she stared him out all the same; she had a special way of doing it left over from her childhood, of freezing her face into an ice-picture, and thinking other thoughts behind it. And she won, she knew she did, because Kurtz spoke first, which was the proof.
"Charlie, we recognise that this is very painful for you, but we ask you to continue in your own words. We have the van. We see your possessions leaving the house. What else do we see?"
"My pony."
"They took that too?"
"I told you already."
"With the furniture? In the same van?"
"No, a separate one. Don't be bloody silly."
"So there were two vans. Both at the same time? Or one after the other?"
"I don't remember."
"Where was your father physically located all this time? Was he in the study? Looking through the window, say, watching it all go? How does a man like him bear up--in his disgrace?"
"He was in the garden."