Nerval was wiry, dark, and sharp-featured, with sparkling eyes and a half-jack-o’-lantern, bent mouth. The muscles of his face tensed when he met Jules, in an expression that said, ‘I’m looking through and into you, I accuse you, and won’t let go.’ This was intensified by a tic that, although neither Parkinson’s disease nor any other malady, involved the near-continual short oscillations, like the action of a fishing lure, of his head upon his neck. Left, right. Right, left. Ad infinitum. He impolitely refused the offer of something to eat or drink, instead sitting down opposite Jules in Shymanski’s study and, without the normal human curiosity that might have caused him to note or appreciate his surroundings, getting right to business.
He loved to catch people. Some hunters hunt for food and regret that they must kill. Others enjoy and take pride in it, the ones who become elated after a day in the uplands in which they’ve left two thousand birds dead on the ground. Nerval believed that he was doing justice as long as he followed the rules, and he gave not a moment’s thought to the fate or motives of perpetrators of fraud against the company. No one could fault him for doing his duty according to the law, but as he did so he never tempered his view of what he did by taking into account that Acorn itself was a perpetrator of fraud – in bribing legislators and bureaucrats to allow premiums far in excess of covering costs and reasonable profits; in fighting savagely to deny claims, especially to anyone with neither much education nor a lawyer; in greasing judges; in accomplishing illegal trades and rigging markets with the vast capital it controlled; in false accounting; paying off auditors; and stiffing independent contractors; not to mention false advertising, impenetrable contracts, monopolistic control of certain sectors, and billing statements as easy to comprehend as hieroglyphics. In short, Nerval was so heavily un-nuanced he would have made a happy executioner.
He opened Jules’ file and laid it out on his lap. Reading for a moment, he said, both contemptuously and with the enjoyment of a fisherman who sees a fat trout about to swallow the hook, “We know exactly what you’re up to.”
Absolutely still, without a blink or a twitch, as if he were made of stone, Jules waited and waited and waited, unnerving Nerval. “Who’s we?” he then asked quietly.
“Acorn,” Nerval answered. “Our agents, officers, and investigators – like a sock around the ball of the world.”
“Oh,” said Jules, amazed at the metaphor – it was too strange to be just a simile – “I see.”
“What do you see?” Nerval pressed.
“What do you think I see?”
“I think perhaps you see, or you should see, that we know what you’re up to.”
“And what am I up to?”
“You tell me.”
“No,” Jules said firmly. “You brought it up. You tell me.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Nerval said aggressively.
“Yes you do.”
“Why?”
“Because you came out of the blue. You have to initiate. All I have to do is sit here.”
“What other than guilt would prevent you from answering my question?”
“What question?”
“What you’re up to.”
“You didn’t ask me what I’m up to. You told me that you know. That’s not a question.”
“All right then, what are you up to?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“How do you know?” Jules asked.
“Because we know exactly what you’re doing.” Frustrated, Nerval then assumed the position not of the interrogator but the interrogated. “You have a ten-million-Euro policy. Weeks after the start of coverage, you suffered a cerebral aneurysm. Upon admission to the hospital, semi-conscious, you made an accurate diagnosis – inoperable basilar aneurysm. The attending emergency physician, a radiologist, and two neurosurgeons were able to reach that conclusion only after imaging and consultation. How, exactly, were you able to do that?”
“Did I do that?”
“Yes, you did.”
“That’s remarkable.”
“It is remarkable, in that it has fraud written all over it. Are you a physician?”
“No.”
“Were you trained as such, or in any related field?”
“I’m a cellist, although in University I ranged widely, including in the sciences, and now I read widely, including in the sciences. I resent when scientists assume that because I’m a cellist I know nothing of their subject matter. I read scientific journals and have done so for … let me see … fifty-seven years.”
This unnerved Nerval. “Do you have them?”
“The journals?”
“Yes.”
“I discard them. I found that I never reread magazine articles. I don’t think I’ve ever done so more than once or twice in my life. I used to save them, but then I realized it was unnecessary.”
“Can you prove that you’ve read these?”
Jules let seconds go by, long enough to see satisfaction, a slight reddening, and relaxation in the face of his tormentor, whom Jules allowed to rise a little before slapping him down. “Yes.”
“How?”
“Just enquire of the two or three journals I’ve read over the years as to whether I’ve subscribed. And, to protect myself in an examination of the tax authorities, I’ve kept my financial records, including my checks, which will document my subscriptions.”
“Beginning when?”
“Beginning after I got back from the war in Algeria.”
“You have your records since then?”
“Yes, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t born then. It’s ridiculous.”
“That you weren’t born then?” Jules asked.
“No, that you keep such records.”
“They will prove what you asked to be proved, if you wish to look.”
“You claim that on the basis of having read scientific journals you were able to make an accurate diagnosis, without imagery, that four physicians required a day to make, in consultation, only after test results?”
“I don’t claim that. It was you who did. You may think whatever you wish.”
Nerval now wanted to kill Jules, or at least beat him physically. “You know that we’re carefully checking your medical records. Nothing will pass.”
“And you’ll find nothing you seek. I’m not quite sure what that is.”
“In all of France?”
“In all of France and in all the world.”
“We have a very wide net.”
“How nice to have a wide net.”
“Have you traveled abroad in the last ten years?”
“I was in America in the fall.”
“We can’t look there without a judicial determination, both French and American, which, eventually, we can and will get.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll sign any release,” Jules said, pivoting from resistance to overwhelming cooperation. It amazed Nerval.
“You will?”
“Of course, to speed your investigation. What else can I do for you?”
“You can explain how you did what you did.”
“The diagnosis?”
Nerval nodded. Now he was the sheep, and Jules the shearer.
“That’s easy,” said Jules, enjoying, without showing any sign of it, that the medical question distracted Nerval from the trust account Jules had used as a bank reference. He needed only to last until the first of August, baiting Nerval with the bullfighter’s cape of the complex medical situation, which had the irresistible air of a scheme, because that’s what it was.
“Okay. How?”
“Winston Churchill.”
“Winston Churchill?”
“Exact. Like most geniuses, he was indifferent to what didn’t interest him. ‘Good’ students are like good dogs. They can fetch what their teachers want them to fetch. Churchill was not made to fetch. He was, as he once said, ‘Bloody Winston Churchill’.”