“Well, you know now,” he said, his temper abating. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. My mind is gone, that’s the problem. Just leave it alone, Cyril, all right? They’re fine without you. They’ve been fine without you all these years. They don’t need you now. It’s too late for you to involve yourself in their lives.”
I stared at him, unsure what to say. I had a son. He would be fourteen years old by now. I stood up and slowly made my way toward the door but before I could go through it I heard my old friend’s voice once more, quieter now, frightened, scared at the end that his life was taking.
“Cyril,” he said. “Please don’t go—”
“If she’d wanted to let me know,” I said, interrupting him and considering the matter carefully, “she would have been able to. There are ways that she could have found me.”
“So it’s her own fault, is that what you’re saying?”
“No, I just mean—”
“You know what, just get the fuck out of here, OK?” he said, his mood changing dramatically in a moment. “You treated her like shit and you spent a lifetime lying to me. I don’t even know why I’m giving you the time of day when I have such little time left. Get out.”
“Julian—”
“I said get out!” he shouted. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The Last Night
There was a thunderstorm on the night of May 11, 1987, and the rain pounded on the window of our apartment as I sat in my favorite armchair reading an article in the New York Times on Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, whose trial had just begun in Europe. Across from me on the sofa Emily was doing everything in her power to make me feel uncomfortable as she gave Ignac a foot rub and occasionally leaned across to nibble on the poor boy’s ear while he reread “Araby,” his favorite story from Dubliners. How he could stand the way she pawed him I didn’t know; she was like a hungry mouse working her way through a block of cheese.
“I don’t know why anyone is interested in that stuff anymore,” she said as I made some comment about the lawyer who had been hired to defend the former Gestapo captain. “It’s all so long ago.”
“It’s not that long ago,” I said. “And you’re supposed to be the historian, aren’t you? How can you not find it interesting?”
“Maybe if I’d been alive during the war, like you, then I would. But I wasn’t. So I don’t.”
“I wasn’t alive during the war,” I said, rolling my eyes. “As you very well know, I wasn’t born until August 1945.”
“Well, close enough then. What did this guy do anyway? He’s an old man now, right?”
“Yes, but that’s no reason why he shouldn’t be held accountable for the things he did in the past. And are you actually trying to tell me that you don’t know what he did?”
“I mean, I think I’ve heard the name…”
“He dragged forty-four Jewish children out of an orphanage in Izieu, for one thing,” said Ignac, not looking up from his book. “And had them deported to Auschwitz. Where, you know, they died. Most intelligent people would know that.”
“OK,” said Emily, unwilling to argue with him as she would have with me. I was glad to hear a note of discontent in his voice. “Let me have a look at that paper.”
“No,” I said. “I’m still reading it.”
She let out a deep sigh, as if I had been put on this earth for no other reason than to torment her. “Anyway, Mr. Avery,” she said after a moment. “Has Ignac told you our news yet?”
“What news?” I asked, putting the paper down and looking across at him.
“Another time,” said Ignac quickly, throwing her a look. “When Bastiaan is home.”
“What news?” I repeated, praying that they weren’t getting married or having a baby or doing anything that would connect him to this awful woman for the rest of his life.
“Ignac’s been accepted,” she said.
“For what?”
“For a place at Trinity College. We’re moving to Dublin in the fall.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling an unexpected surge of both excitement and anxiety at the mention of my hometown’s name. To my great surprise, my first thought was Does that mean I can go home at last too? “I didn’t think you’d made your mind up about whether or not to apply.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure,” he said. “But I wrote them a letter and they got back to me and we had a few phone calls and they’ve said there’s a place for me in October if I want to take it up. I haven’t decided for certain yet. I wanted to talk to you and Bastiaan about it. Privately.”
“We have decided,” said Emily, slapping him on the knee. “It’s what we both want, remember?”
“I don’t want to rush into anything that I might regret.”
“Have you spoken to them about scholarships?” I asked.
“Oh don’t worry,” snapped Emily, perhaps sensing the same annoyance from her boyfriend toward her that I was and taking it out on me. “No one’s asking you for money.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
“Of course it’s not,” said Ignac. “And, yes, I have. It looks like there’s a few different funds that I can apply for.”
“Well, that’s good news,” I said. “If you’re sure that it’s what you want.”
“It’s what we both want,” said Emily. “And anyway, Ignac’s not a child anymore. It would be better for him to be living with people his own age.”
“So he won’t be living with you then?” I asked.
“Someone closer to his own age,” she said with a half-smile.
“I would have preferred to tell Cyril and Bastiaan together,” said Ignac quietly. “And when we were alone. As a family.”
“Well, they had to find out at some point,” said Emily. “And Dr. Van den Bergh is almost never here, is he? He’s always at the hospital.”
“He’s not always at the hospital,” I said. “He’s back here every night. You saw him only this morning.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Emily, we all had breakfast together.”
“Oh, I’m no good in the mornings. I’d barely notice either of you at that time of the day.”
“You need more sleep then,” I said. “That’s what happens when you get older.”
The phone rang and Ignac leaped off the seat, happy to walk away from our sparring. He almost never joined in when Emily and I argued, and I liked to think that it was because he was not fully on her side. A moment later, he returned and poked his head around the door. “It’s Bastiaan,” he said. “For you.”
I stood up and walked into the hallway, taking the receiver from the stand.
“I’m glad you called,” I said. “You’re not going to believe what I’ve just been told.”
“Cyril,” said Bastiaan, and the serious tone in his voice sent a wave of dread through my body.
“What is it?” I said. “What’s happened?”
“I think you should get in here.”
“Is it Julian?”
“He’s taken a turn for the worse. He doesn’t have long. If you want to see him, you should leave now.”
I sat down on the chair by the telephone table before my legs could give way beneath me. Of course I had told Bastiaan about my relationship with Patient 741 and he remembered me telling him about Julian more than a decade earlier when we had first met. But I hadn’t spoken about him since, so he’d failed to make the connection when he first began treating him.
“I’m on my way,” I said. “Stay with him, will you? Until I get there?”