Montaro Caine A Novel

12





WHEN DR. MOZELLE BEGAN RELATING HIS STORY TO Montaro Caine, he tried to maintain a sense of calm detachment. But as he spoke of the first time his eyes met those of Hattie Sinclair, he couldn’t help but grow more excited. He had called Sinclair at the Long Island residence of her employer—finding her was not difficult, for there were few Gulkievaughs in the phone book. On the phone, she sounded cautious, but she finally agreed to come to his office.

“She walked into this room,” Howard Mozelle told Caine. “She was a tall, majestic-looking woman. About thirty years old, though she seemed older.”

Mozelle told Sinclair about his wife’s illness, and she said that she was sorry. But even after he pleaded with her to help him try to save his wife’s life, she said, “I just don’t think it would do no good, sir. That man never said one word to Dr. Kempler or any of the other people. Even when I went down there with them, he wouldn’t see them. If it weren’t for my daddy knowing his daddy, he wouldn’t have seen me either. Honestly, I’m truly sorry about your wife, and if there were something I could do, I would do it. I wanted Mr. Perch’s medicine to help other people too, but he’s a peculiar, stubborn man. The way he treated Dr. Kempler and the others was uncalled for, but that’s the way he is and nothing’s going to change him.”

Still, Howard Mozelle was unwilling to give up. “But Dr. Kempler and his colleagues wanted his secrets,” he told Sinclair. “I don’t. All those doctors and government officials must have seemed like the modern world coming to rob him of a sacred tradition. All I want is for a dying woman to benefit from that tradition. Please, Ms. Sinclair, I’d like you to meet my wife.”

Mozelle walked over to the door that led to the adjoining room, opened it, and beckoned for Elsen, who had been seated in a chair trying to read a magazine.

Elsen Mozelle had once been a strong, vibrant professor, but the woman who appeared before Hattie Sinclair looked emaciated and exhausted. Hattie gently took Elsen’s hand, and the two women sat quietly, looking at each other.

“Your husband tells me you’re sick like I was,” Hattie said. “I wish there was some way I could help you, ma’am.”

“You can,” Elsen said, her breaths short. “There is no guarantee that he will see me. I know that. And if, by chance, he would, there is no guarantee that he would be able to make me well, I know that, too. But I do want to live, and as small as this chance is, it is all that is left to me.”

“What is it you have in mind?” she asked quietly.

Little more than a week later, Hattie Sinclair was standing beside Howard and Elsen Mozelle on the bow of a rickety sixty-foot motor-boat that chugged among various islands in the Bahamas hauling cargo and mail.

The sky was a deep blue, without a single cloud in it. The little fishing village appeared to glisten in the bright sunshine as the boat approached the makeshift wharf on Perch’s island. During the course of her journey to the Bahamas, Mrs. Mozelle had grown noticeably weaker, though her face did radiate with a glimmer of hope. Dr. Mozelle watched over his wife, very much aware of how deeply he loved her and how much he feared losing her. Hattie Sinclair remained quiet on the trip; Mozelle assumed she was recalling her own boat ride to the island when she first met the elusive Perch.

The two women left the doctor behind and took a taxi from the hotel, driving along a dirt road into the interior of the island.

“Let us out at the sapodilla tree around the next bend,” Hattie instructed the perspiring, heavyset, middle-aged driver, who had subjected the women to very close scrutiny from the moment he had picked them up in front of the hotel, constantly observing them in his rearview mirror. He had seen Hattie Sinclair before. The first time she had been forty-six pounds lighter and near death. Now she had come in the company of a white woman, and from the looks of her, she may have brought her too late.

As instructed, the driver parked in the shade of the sapodilla tree and waited as the two women continued on foot around the bend to the bottom of the hill on top of which sat the secluded home of Matthew Perch. The walk was no more than two hundred yards, but the blazing sun, the humidity, and the stress of the trip were telling noticeably on Elsen. There was no human activity anywhere in sight, just the singing of birds and the humming of insects.

Hattie Sinclair had sent word to Matthew Perch through her family, saying she had to see him as quickly as possible, but she had no idea if he had gotten her message. She had made no mention of the other person she was bringing with her, and she worried about how Perch would react to the frail white woman standing beside her. She hoped he wouldn’t just walk off into the woods without speaking, though she feared that was exactly what would happen.

Slowly Hattie led Elsen Mozelle up the hill. She could remember just about every tree, every stone, every twig. At the summit, they stopped in front of the adobe hut with its thatched palm leaf roof.

They stood there breathing hard, but before they could catch their breath, the door opened and Matthew Perch stepped out. He was a tall black man of about sixty, with stern, serious eyes in a lean, granite-like face. He had full lips, set jaw, and a short, salt-and-pepper beard that matched his eyebrows. His trousers were faded and worn, patched with different fabrics. His jacket had seen more wear than his trousers or the rumpled denim shirt. The women were startled speechless by the man’s sudden appearance.

Hattie Sinclair had never gotten used to Perch’s imposing presence. Now she couldn’t find her tongue. Perch stared back unblinkingly until Hattie blurted out, “I’m sorry, Matthew, I had to come. She’s not like the others, I swear to you. She’s just like I was—very, very sick. All she wants is to live, like I did. You know I’ll always be grateful to you, and I’m sorry to disturb your peace again. But this lady broke my heart, Matthew. Forgive me, Matthew. Please don’t be angry.”

Perch continued to stare silently at the two women who waited for a response. None came. Hattie was apprehensive. Perch was an explosive, complex man. During the course of her treatment, he could take her head off one minute and comfort her the next with a reassuring touch of his hand.

Finally, Hattie filled the void. “This lady is …” she began.

“I know who she is,” interrupted Perch.

Elsen felt a jolt travel through her body. She was too afraid to ask Perch what he might mean.

After a long pause, Perch spoke again. “Where is the man?” he asked.

“My—my husband?” asked Elsen.

“Three of you came,” said Matthew.

“He’s at the hotel,” said Elsen.

Matthew turned to Hattie. “Why did you not bring him?”

Elsen spoke instead. “We didn’t want to risk upsetting you with too many people. Also, my husband is a doctor. He cannot help me, and none of the doctors that he knows can help me. He thinks that maybe you can. He will not interfere, I promise.”

Matthew looked intently at Elsen Mozelle, shifting his gaze from her eyes to her lips, her ears, her hair, and finally to her hands.

“Go away,” he said to them. Then he turned and started toward the door of his hut. “Come tomorrow. Bring the man,” he continued without turning back. “Not you, Hattie. Good-bye.” Then, he closed the door.

The women stood frozen in place. Then, smiling cautiously, they turned to each other. Hattie took Elsen by the arm and slowly guided her back down the hill and around the bend, where the driver and his taxi were still waiting by the sapodilla tree.

“What do you think, Hattie?” Elsen asked when they were back in the car.

Hattie Sinclair was certain of only one thing. The way in which Matthew Perch had examined the sick woman was exactly the way he had looked at her when they had first met. She knew that he had diagnosed the frail white woman and that he knew all he needed to know about her condition. But Hattie believed it would be wise for her to keep that thought to herself. “I don’t want to speak too soon about what I think. I’m just gonna pray hard for you for tomorrow,” she said, putting her arm around Elsen.

Elsen reached up and patted Hattie’s hand while their taxi rumbled on.

The next morning, when Matthew Perch opened his door, a perspiring white couple was breathing deeply before him. Holding each other, they squinted through the blazing sunlight at the silhouetted figure of the black man standing in the darkened hut.

“Hello,” said Elsen, managing to smile through her exhaustion. “This is my husband, Dr. Howard Mozelle.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Perch, and thank you for seeing us.” Howard Mozelle extended his hand.

Perch remained silent but stepped to one side of the door, clearing the entrance while ignoring the doctor’s gesture. The Mozelles hesitated, not sure that they had received an invitation to enter. Perch waited. Finally, Howard Mozelle led his wife into the hut.

Perch closed the door and remained standing by it like a sentry. Moments passed before the Mozelles’ eyes adjusted to the semidarkness. The large one-room interior was plain and sparse: There was a bed, two chairs, one table, all handmade from native wood, and in one corner a chest of drawers from which most of the varnish had long since peeled away. In another corner stood an old, battered steamship trunk. Beneath a window at the southern end of the hut was an open fireplace with piles of wood neatly stacked beside it. On the other side were several rows of shelves on which could be found tin plates, spoons, a few tin cups, clay jars, and a box of matches. Underneath the shelves were a variety of inexpensive cooking utensils. But what caught Howard Mozelle’s attention most were the two-foot-square pieces of artwork that were suspended on the hut’s east and west walls. Each piece was attached to the wall by a string that hung on a nail driven into the mud plaster.

Dr. Mozelle guessed that Perch had made the hangings; though he himself was a man trained in the science of medicine, for years he had relieved the stress of his profession through sculpting and painting. How intriguing, he thought—their worlds seemed to be light-years apart from each other’s, and yet he may not have been all that different from Matthew Perch; they were both physicians of one kind or another, healing themselves through art. He was trying to determine whether he was looking at abstract carvings or sculptures when Perch spoke again and interrupted his thoughts.

“She must eat here, sleep here, live here with me in this room night and day. You cannot,” Perch said directly to Howard Mozelle. “She will relieve herself in the woods. She will wash herself in the stream. If she is unable to wash herself, I will wash her. You may come in the afternoons at three and leave at four. No one else must ever come; and you may bring only clothing, toothpaste, and soap as she needs them. You may leave now. Tomorrow, bring her sleeping clothes, toothpaste, and soap. Good day.”