THE NEW SCHOOL
July 24, Senegal
ABAKAR TARAB WAS FIVE, and on his way to the store to fetch a Fanta for his big brother, Yaccoub.
He passed the small houses of his neighbors and ran down the dirt road, his bare feet making soft plashes of dust. They needed rain. He often heard his mother talking about it, and about how Yaccoub needed to find a job. Yaccoub always laughed at that, his lean face just a little bit mean, in a way that scared Abakar. Sometimes Yaccoub hit their sister, Issa, who was thirteen. Once, when their mother got between Issa and Yaccoub’s raised hand, Abakar had been afraid that his brother would strike their mother—a complete, absolute taboo. Abakar had held his breath while their mother stared hard at Yaccoub, a warning like steel in her eyes, and breathed again when Yaccoub lowered his arm and said, “How do you think I get the money to feed us, woman? I have a job. It is not an easy job to feed three other worthless people.”
But even Abakar knew Yaccoub was doing something bad. Something he got a lot of money for. He kept a lot of guns under his bed and Issa said that he sold them.
Abakar ran faster, passing people lugging buckets of water for the day back home. A poda-poda passed him, stuffed with passengers, with a chicken coop tied onto the roof. He dodged the wadded-up paper bag someone tossed out the window right in front of him and coughed in the dust of the van’s wake. Sweat ran into his eyes and his mouth was very dry. He pictured the Schweppes Yaccoub had said he could get for himself, imagined the rattle of ice falling into the space his aching-cold bottle would leave when he pulled it from Mr. Hauron’s big washtub.
“Abakar!”
He glanced across the street, past two mules carrying baskets, driven by a man with a stick. A motorbike roared past. It was more crowded here; the market was only half a kilometer away. Across the road, a young woman swept the dirt in front of her compound, while some older people sat around a pot of plantains boiling over a fire, talking in the morning sunlight. This road led to other villages.
“Mauka?” Mauka was only a little bit older than him. Her eyes danced and her bright green scarf lifted in the wind.
“Come,” she shouted, and waved her hand.
“No!”
“Just for a minute! I have something to show you! Something strange!”
He thought of the Schweppes. He thought of something strange, and veered across the street.
Then he saw it. On the vacant lot in which they often played, and where old man Zbu sometimes kept his cow, was a large white building, shaped like a dome. The door was round, with twisty sections that untwirled into a short, low tunnel. He could see children inside; a lot of the wall was clear.
Mauka said, “You have to crawl inside! Come on! It’s fun.”
“I’m getting a Fanta for Yaccoub.” He felt the big money in his pocket, the money that would get him a soda too.
“Just for a minute!” She bounced up and down in her eager way, grabbed his hand, and pulled him through the door, which twirled shut behind him.
Inside it was cool, and a soft white light fell on everything.
The floor was light-colored planks, like wood, but they had a smoother feel beneath his feet.
“Come and play! C’est amusement!”
He walked, slowly, drawn by the colors and shapes he saw before him.
Low shelves held some kinds of toys. Children played with them on small rugs that lay on the floor. He saw tiny Zanir from down the street, wearing his usual bedraggled red shorts, sitting with his own big sister Naufa, who was counting wooden sticks. She could count very high. But Abakar could count high too. He counted fourteen children.
“Come and play with me,” Mauka said. She plopped down in front of a pile of blocks and began building a tower. “Find the next big one,” she said impatiently.
He heard low, quiet words when he touched one of the blocks. “Cube,” the voice breathed.
“Is it all right to play in here?” whispered Abakar.
Mauka laughed. “Yes! I have been here for many days. Look. If you want a snack, you can make it at that table. Ground nuts and biscuits. Oh! And sugar-cane.”
Abakar didn’t know how long he stayed there. He played with many things. He learned sounds. He learned names. There were many, many things to do, and Mauka showed him how to do things.
“Hey!”
Abakar jumped up. Yaccoub had his head inside the center of the dilating door. It was too low for him; Abakar saw that he was on his knees. “I can see you, you little maggot! So this is where you’ve been playing around. I’m going to slap you so hard that your head will spin!”
Abakar trembled. He couldn’t help it.
“No,” said Mauka, putting a calming hand on his calf. She didn’t seem worried. “He cannot get in!” She giggled.
“Don’t be silly.” Abakar yanked his leg from her grasp and tried to see if there was a back door so he could get away from his brother. The places that were clear became white, most of them, but he could still see through some of them to the dusty street outside, and people gathering around Yaccoub’s butt, pointing at him and laughing.
Yaccoub struggled, trying to shove his shoulders inside. “This f*cking thing is crushing me!” He backed out and the door shut completely. In a moment they saw him beat the walls, very hard with a stick. It was a dull, thudding sound, accompanied by his curses. “I will sell all of you children! You girls! You know what is coming!”
“He will shoot!” whispered Abakar. “He will kill all of us.”
“Bullets bounce off. He cannot come in! The building knows if someone is bad.”
Abakar didn’t believe her. But he found that it was true.
They didn’t all die, even after Abakar heard the familiar pop-pop of bullets flying. Instead, Mauka got out a small tablet and started talking funny to it. And after a few minutes, soldiers came and dragged his brother, who kicked and cursed, away.
Abakar watched in amazement. “Where are they taking him?”
“I don’t know? To jail?”
“Who will feed us?”
“Haven’t you been to the New Market?”
“What?”
“Here,” she said. She went over to a shelf and pulled out a basket. The basket was full of plastic rings. “Put one on.”
“Can I have any color?”
“Yes.”
Abakar chose a red ring with a snake on it. “It’s nice.”
“The New Market is on Saturday mornings, over on Wbab’s field. You show them the ring and they touch it with a wand, some kind of computer wand, and then they will give you food. Millet, jackfruit, even lamb.”
“No! Why?”
“I don’t know. But the ring works.”
Suddenly, a lot of children picked up small tablets that they carried with them and started talking that silly talk again. There was urgency in their voices. Mauka pulled one out of her pocket.
“I want one,” said Abakar.
Mauka frowned. “Someone is in trouble. One of our friends. In the United States.”
“No one is in trouble there.”
“His name is Whens. We must tell someone.” She jabbered to herself for a moment. “The ambassador. We’re telling the ambassador. And then the police. They can find him by his classbook.”
“Who is the ambassador?”
Mauka talked into the classbook then held it in front of Abakar. A voice said, “An ambassador is a person from one country who represents the people to another country. He or she lives in the other country. They have special legal rights…”
“What is ‘represents’?” asked Abakar.
“Aggh! I have to get you your own classbook right away!”
The Ambassador
July 23
“SIR?”
The Senegalese ambassador pushed his speaker button. “Yes?”
“It’s those troublesome children again who can’t speak English very well. They keep saying ‘Senegal.’ Maybe they speak your language. If you could please, sir—”
“Just hang up.” He glanced at his budget, unknotting his tie. It was getting late, and he had a ceremonial luncheon to attend. Sighing, he left his budget to get ready.
He had just finished changing to Senegal dress for the luncheon when the phone buzzed again.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“This time it’s a little girl who says she’s from Nantes. She does speak English, quite well. She says that children from your country know about a little boy who has been kidnapped in Washington, D.C. His name is Whens.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What can I do about it? Why doesn’t she call the police?”
“I asked her, sir. She said they tried, but that the police wouldn’t listen to them because they are children. And also, if I may, sir? I’m not sure that the children from Senegal trust the police.”
He sighed. “Put her on the line.”
“Hello? Sir ambassador?”
“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”
“Adelie, sir. This is very serious. Please do not hang up. Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“This little boy doesn’t know where he is, but he has been kidnapped in Washington, D.C. He is talking to us on his classbook. Maybe the police can tell where the classbook is and find him.”
“Please hold on.” He switched to his secretary. “Could you please get the Metro police on the line?”
In a moment someone said, “Metro police.”
“Yes. I have gotten a very strange call about a kidnapped boy—”
“Is his name Whens?”
The ambassador was surprised. “Yes.”
“Please stay on the line.” In a moment, another man came on the line. “Detective Kandell. To whom am I speaking?”
“The Senegalese ambassador, here in Washington. Is there really a kidnapping?”
“Yes. What do you know?”
“I have been getting calls all morning from some children who say they are in Senegal, and now a girl from France has called and says that he is using his classbook to try and get help. I suppose they have a frequency you can track?”
“Thank you for calling. Thank you very much. I’m going to give you back to the desk sergeant to get some information. Is the girl from France still on the line?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Keep her there.”
Jill
A TURN OF EVENTS
July 23
AS SOON AS ZOE GOT BACK, the phone rang. The house phone.
The FBI guy nodded. Jill picked it up, trembling. “Hello?”
“Is this Jill Dance?”
“Yes.”
“This is GW Hospital.”
“Yes?” She imagined Whens, badly hurt—but they’d called all the hospitals, again and again—
“This is kind of a strange call, but we have a John Doe here that had a bad concussion last night. A blow to the head. He has no ID. He was brought to the emergency room, and he’s finally revived. He can barely speak—can’t write; his hand is broken. But we think he’s asking for you. I’m sorry to bother you; we’ve called about ten people whose names sound like yours. We can’t quite make out who he’s asking for.”
“It’s not a little boy?”
“No. An elderly man with a beard.”
Jill’s heart seemed to stop. “An elderly—”
“He does keep saying ‘I seem to have lost my wife again.’”
“I’ll be right over.”
The FBI agent looked up from his console. “Ma’am you can’t leave. You have to wait for the ransom call.”
Jill called Brian. “Where are you?”
“Driving around with Elmore.”
“I think Dad is in the GW emergency room.”
“I’ll be there in two minutes flat.” He hung up.
Jill stood in the silent foyer, searching for the Golden Arrow of Breath, but it seemed to have disappeared permanently.
“Jill?”
Jill shut her eyes. She hadn’t heard that voice in …
Her mother’s arms came around her. She pressed her cheek to Jill’s. “It’s okay, honey. You can open your eyes. It’s really me.” Jill felt her heart beating hard, and could feel her mother’s heartbeat too, soft and comforting and very, very present. After a moment Bette murmured into her ear, “Can you forgive me?”
Before Jill could speak, Zoe came in with her notebook. She dropped it and stared. “Grandma?”
Bette kissed Jill, turned to Zoe, and knelt. “Yes, honey, it’s me. Just older.” She hugged Zoe, her eyes glistening, a huge smile on her face.
Jill said, “You’re the ghost in the attic they’ve been playing with! You gave me the photos! You—”
The phone rang again. Everyone hushed. The FBI put it on their speakerphone. It was Daniel.
“Whens is in Anacostia. We know the block, from his classbook, but we’ve lost the signal, and can’t get any more precise. I’m sending some men, along with the ambassador from Senegal, who has just arrived at the station. I’m hoping we can pick up the signal.”
A hundred questions crowded Jill’s mind. Zoe interrupted. She held up her notebook, a wild spatter of color. “I know where he is now. Really.”
* * *
Whens had been in the nasty apartment all night. They made him sleep on a blanket on the floor, in his clothes, and Tall Thin Man took away his classbook and put it on top of a shelf in the kitchen, which was empty and bad-smelling and filled with bugs that scuttled under the cabinets when you went in.
Bip brought them breakfast in a bag and gave him some kind of awful sausage thing and a Slinger, and they drank Slingers with their breakfast too. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe Slingers were bad for you.
He drank all of his, though.
Tall Thin Man went back to watching television. Bip joined him on the couch. Whens went into the kitchen, where they peed in the sink, trying not to breathe. He climbed up on the counter. He could just reach his classbook. He turned it on and found the emergency band and started to talk to some kids who were listening just then, in Africa. He thought of his globe. Wow. Really, really far.
“Hey,” said Bip. He was in the front room, looking out the window. The TV was on, loud.
Tall Thin Man didn’t pay any attention.
“Hey, there’s a lotta kids out front.”
“So?” The man turned the volume up.
“It’s weird.”
Whens ran from the kitchen, carrying his classbook, and ran to the window. He waved, then pounded on the window, and yelled. They were looking at him. They waved back. They talked to their classbooks.
“Hey, kid, stay away.” Bip pushed him back. “And stop that crazy smack talk. You retarded or something?”
A sleek black sedan pulled up in front of the apartment building.
“Some African dude getting out,” said Bip nervously.
“So? We’re in Anacostia.”
“I mean, he’s wearin’ funny African clothes and all.”
“Lotta them dealers do.”
The regal-looking African peered up at the building. He leaned down and talked to somebody in the car. A white girl stuck her head out the car window and nodded.
“What did I tell you!” Bip smacked Whens across the face and the classbook clattered across the floor. “No more a that talk! Hey! Another man comin’ up the walk.”
Tall Thin Man finally turned, an angry look on his face. “Look, just get away from the f*cking window. Now! Nobody’s gonna come lookin’ for us here. You’re botherin’ my show.” He turned the volume up to a deafening level.
The door burst open, hitting Bip from behind. “Police!”
Bip staggered and fell. The other man grabbed his gun from the arm of the chair, half-rising.
The policeman fired, and the man with the gun slammed back into the couch, screaming, “You killed me, man, you killed me! Where’s your warrant? Man’s got a right to defend! I’m gonna sue!”
Whens ran out the open door and down the narrow stairs. As he rushed out the door onto the sidewalk, Zoe leaped from the car and hugged him. “I told them you were here! I could hear you! I showed them the way.” A police officer grabbed her and hauled her back inside.
His mother leaped from the car, grabbed him, and smothered him in kisses. He was very glad to see her. His mother was crying. “Don’t you ever, ever, do that again!”
About ten children of various ages stood in the street around the sedan, shouting, “Aqui! Whens!” into classbooks. A thin, harassed-looking woman hurried around the corner and stopped. She looked relieved. She put her hands on her hips and shouted, “You kids get back to the center right now!”
A tall black man in beautiful robes stood watching, bemused, as an ambulance pulled up behind them. Some EMTs dashed into the building.
A second ambulance pulled up. Elmore dashed from it, and grabbed Whens, hugging him until Whens thought his back would break. “Ow,” he said, surprised. He had never seen his father cry before.
Brian followed Elmore from the ambulance, then turned and helped a woman climb out. Whens saw her over his father’s shoulder.
“Grandma?”
Wilhelm
WILHELM’S GAME
July 23
AT ABOUT FIVE that afternoon, Wilhelm Anderson staggered into the Metro police station on L Street. From one hand dangled a metal tray with a map of the world on it—green continents, blue oceans, a simple child’s map. Parts of the oceans and all the land were almost invisible, peppered with tiny red dots.
Tears seeped down his face, steady as springwater from the ground. Anguish reverberated in his voice as he stepped up to one of the glass reception windows. “I want to turn myself in.”
The people in the tiny waiting room looked up with interest. The guard next to the window became alert. The clerk asked, “Name?” Then he took a second look. “Don’t move.”
Wilhelm didn’t move.
The clerk pushed a button. “I’ve got Anderson, the guy we’ve got an APB out on, standing in front of me. Wants to turn himself in.”
* * *
A few hours later, Wilhelm was in an interview room with his lawyer, Detective Kandell, and another detective, Dabelle Fleck. On the table was the metal tray. Wilhelm had been processed, and looked weary. His reddened eyes had dark circles beneath them; his face seemed thinner, more deeply furrowed, and his hair was noticeably whiter than his Bank ID photo, renewed only a week ago. He had already signed his arson confession, his lawyer arguing with him every step of the way, in the end shaking his head and assuring Wilhelm that he could get it thrown out.
Daniel was asking about the board. Wilhelm’s lawyer slouched back in his chair, looking resigned.
“Like I said, this woman behind my condo put cuffs on me and made me drink HD-50. The Hadntz Device.”
The lawyer had a bit of life left in him. But not much; he didn’t even change his posture as he said, “I would like to again state for the record that my client is undoubtedly mentally deranged—obviously, he was drugged.”
“He’s no stranger to drugging others, and without their knowledge,” replied Kandell. “Mr. Anderson, did you or did you not slip Rohypnol, the ‘date-rape’ drug, into the drink of Jill Dance, one of your colleagues, at a World Bank reception at the Four Seasons Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue on July nineteenth, after which she collapsed in view of at least a hundred witnesses?”
“Yes, I did,” said Wilhelm. His lawyer sighed.
“Why?”
“So I could drive her home and get into her house.”
“What for?”
“To find this.” Wilhelm nodded at the board. His weariness was palpable, a thousandfold worse than that of his lawyer.
“Not to sexually accost her?”
“I hoped that she might agree to have sex with me. I even hoped she might marry me. But that was not why I wanted to get into her house.”
“Why did you want this metal tray?”
“It’s the Hadntz Device. One incarnation of it.”
“Look,” said the lawyer. “I demand that a psychiatrist be present and that my client be immediately committed.”
“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” said Wilhelm. “I’m perfectly sane. But if you want one, I don’t object.”
The lawyer opened his Q, typed something, and closed it.
Daniel asked, “What is the Hadntz Device?”
“It is a tool for promoting the end of war throughout the world.”
“Why did you want it?”
“I misunderstood its capacity, its purpose. I thought it would give me power.”
“Power to do what?”
Tears gathered in Wilhelm’s eyes once again. “To impose a Nazi regime on the world. To bring back Hitler’s vision and make it a reality, this time.”
“And what happened instead?”
“Try it yourself and see.”
“Just describe what happened.”
Wilhelm stood and paced the room. “Visions of horror filled my brain. It was as if I were a Jewish businessman in Treblinka, watching smoke rise from the crematorium, which I had been forced to fill with dead Jews. I was a child, hiding in terror in an attic. I was a Prussian officer, about to be hanged for treason. I was Goebbels, I was … but that’s not all! Touch it! See for yourselves! I was an American soldier on a death march in the Philippines. I was a Chinese woman a thousand years ago, watching as raiders raped my mother and sisters. I was—”
He seized the board and flung it against the wall. “I was a billion horrors, one after the other, and they all ran through me like a fire, and I couldn’t stop seeing them, couldn’t stop touching the goddamned board, sitting on a bench in Dupont Circle, even though that woman cut the cuffs and walked away hours ago. I—”
He looked up, suddenly calm, his eyes quite clear. “I have been changed. This Device, which I thought was about power, is actually quite the opposite.” He sat down, put his elbows on the table, and clasped his hands. “It’s about empowerment, but for everyone. It’s about equality, freedom, education; it’s about the evolution of the human mind; it is about leaving behind our legacy, our habit, of war.” He looked at them for a moment, his eyes lucid, his face relaxed, a bit of his handsomeness reappearing as a thatch of hair fell across his forehead. “It’s much simpler for me now. My mind was imprinted with the rightness of my task—my old task, to defend the Thousand Year Reich, when I was a child, in Germany, when I saw Hitler at my brother’s swearing-in as a Hitler Youth. He really did seem to me the epitome of fatherly love, of the essential goodness of his bizarre strange fantasy of German dominance. Do you know that because of his love of animals, it became illegal, or at least frowned upon, to manufacture using leather? And yet—” He shook his head. “Incarcerate me, please. I deserve punishment for the crimes I’ve committed. I need much more time to heal. Perhaps ages. I only ask that I be allowed a writing device—pen and paper, if necessary—and an outlet for my thoughts. I believe, now, that I can help. I may not be able to help much. I realize, now, that I’m only one man, capable of evil and of good. It’s … very complex. I’m just at the beginning.”
At a knock on the door, Kandell said, “Come in.”
“This is Dr. Bernstein.”
“Hello,” she said. “I’m the on-call psychiatrist.” She handed all of them a card.
The lawyer rose and stretched. “I foresee a long and complicated case.” He did not look unhappy at the prospect.
A Marvelous Evening
July 23
THE EMTS PULLED Sam’s stretcher from the back of the ambulance, put down the legs, and rolled him up the walk. He was beaming; Zoe could almost see light coming out of him. Bette, walking alongside, squeezed his hand.
The doctor at GW had been reluctant to release him, but Elmore quickly filled out a power of attorney for Brian. Sam was released to his son. At Elmore’s frantic, unyielding insistence the ambulance detoured to the scene of the kidnapper’s arrest.
When Bette climbed into the back of the ambulance, his confusion cleared, somewhat. His smile suffused his entire face. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
“And I’ve been looking all over for you.” She kissed him tenderly, and they headed home.
He had a broken rib, which had been taped, and the brain swelling was going down. The doctor emphasized round-the-clock observation, and told them that he wanted to see Sam back in two days even if everything seemed fine. His assailant had slashed him with a knife, which cut his forearm deeply. Then the man had apparently knocked him out with a punch and grabbed Whens. The right side of Sam’s face looked like a bad watercolor, purple and reddish, yellowing around the edges.
Jill and Megan were strongly for taking him back to the hospital, but, as he was shifted from the stretcher to the bed in the living room, he heard them, and was able to reply, in a clear and forceful voice, “I want to be home. I’m fine.”
Bette nodded at them. “We’ll leave him here, for now. I’ll stay with him.”
“Oh, we’ll all stay with him!” Jill leaned over and hugged her father. He hugged her back with one surprisingly strong arm.
Daniel called soon thereafter, saying that Wilhelm had turned himself in. “Apparently,” he said, “he had an encounter with a woman who administered HD-50, then gave him a Game Board and left him in Dupont Circle. He says he spent most of the day reexperiencing World War Two—from the point of view of other people.”
“What a relief! I was imagining him still roaming around, filled with evil intent. Regarding the woman, I can only think of two possibilities.”
“Well, don’t mention them to me. His lawyer is here, and he looks hungry. I will be over later this evening. Is Whens okay?”
Jill looked over at Whens, asleep on a couch. “He’s pretty worn out. Not hurt physically. We’ll have to wait and see. Thank you so much, Daniel.”
“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.”
Jill hung up and looked at her mother. “Did you, by any chance, meet a man named Wilhelm today?”
She grinned. “I am a teacher, remember? I showed him some of the latest advances in education.”
That evening, she and Sam filled their children in on how those advances had happened, and what they had been doing since they disappeared.
Kind of, anyway.
* * *
Before he went to bed, Brian asked, “Dad, do you play the cornet?”
Sam smiled. “No. But Wink does.”
The Reading
July 31
JILL WAS SETTING UP folding chairs in the bookstore for Koslov’s reading of Rosa’s poems.
The trees in front of her store, between the sidewalk and the curb, rustled in the wind. Their leaves turned up silver. The darkening sky over Rosslyn presaged a storm, which, depending on when it happened, might be in time to cool off the store. Her patrons knew of her hatred of air-conditioning, and apparently didn’t mind sweltering a bit for the privilege of perusing her latest choices. She had big ceiling fans, and if she kept the back door open, there was a nice breeze. She set a large copper umbrella holder next to the front door with one umbrella in it to suggest its use.
She pushed back some wheeled shelves to make more room, and asked Zane to open the first bottles of wine.
She’d gathered that Wink had probably been the mysterious man who had visited her hospital room. She and her father had both assumed he had died during the JFK assassination attempt, so Sam was infused with hope, thinking he was the man who accompanied Brian at the Gypsy Cat. They hadn’t heard from him, though.
Zoe, Brian, Abbie, and Cindy arrived, and pitched in to help. Zoe had brought her violin. After reading Rosa’s poems, and talking to Lev, she had written some music to back up the poems. She had been practicing, with Arabelle’s help, in the ballroom. Brian’s family was all moved in now, and it was working out very nicely. Sam had recovered well, and was enlarging his memoirs for Brian. Megan was gathering support for a start-up company that would produce HD-50 and preparing to submit it to the FDA, which would be a long process. When it cleared the FDA, she planned to sell it at just above cost, and was arranging to distribute it for free in many places.
The pod school in the woods clearing had grown quite unnoticed by any of the adults until lately, and was now mature, a neighborhood attraction for kids. Jill and Cindy visited it daily, just to bask in the wonder of it, to explore new additions, and to note any improvements they thought necessary. Q-Schools were appearing all over the world, to much enthusiasm, and in increasing number.
A week ago, Jill had invited Clarissa and, with Lev’s help, the other people who had been a part of the clandestine circle, and many of their friends, to an open house night at the school. There, she dosed their drinks liberally with HD -50, left them to explore some interesting-looking metal boards, and did not feel one whit bad about it. There were more and more stories in the Post about schools opening in parts of the world where women and girls had been denied an education, or where children had been denied a full education, and of officials welcoming them with major policy changes. Jill strongly suspected an underground dissemination of HD-50.
She looked around. Everything was ready.
Lev arrived, with a fresh haircut, exuding the smell of Wolf cigarettes. He stood at the lectern going over his marked poems while greeting students, colleagues, and members of the poetry-reading public. Soon, there was only standing room. Jill sent Zane to the bar next door to try and borrow some chairs.
Zoe leaned over her violin case and removed her violin and bow, beginning her preparations as people wandered around with glasses of wine, chatting. Jill was surprised to see Zoe set up a music stand; she was sure she had the piece memorized. Arabelle, Daniel, Gerald, and Ron appeared; Arabelle sat next to Zoe while Daniel gave Jill a quick kiss and asked what needed to be done next.
She looked around. “Oh, I think everything’s under control. Go ahead and sit down; I saved you the front row.”
A sheet of newspaper skittered down M Street as the wind picked up. Distant thunder rumbled from the west. Jill stepped to the podium to introduce Lev.
“Most of you know Lev Koslov, who has translated the poems of Rosa Hadntz. Rosa, a medical doctor, perished in a concentration camp in early 1945. Dr. Koslov has also written a short biography, which appears at the back—” She stopped.
Eliani Hadntz and a wizened old man carrying a violin walked in the door. And—was that—
“Wink!” Bette and Sam rushed to embrace him as Lev said, “I would like to introduce you to Eliani Hadntz, Rosa’s daughter, who has honored us with a surprise visit. I hope you will do this reading for us, Eliani.”
Zoe’s eyes were wide, and widened farther when Eliani winked at her.
Her long, curly hair was white, and she had not worn her red lipstick. She wore a long, multicolored skirt and a white blouse and was spare, almost thin. She looked around for a second, and then moved a low stepstool from behind the counter, stepped onto it, and smiled. “I need a little extra height.” The audience laughed lightly with her; the ice was broken.
“My mother was, like myself, a medical doctor, but wrote poetry all her life. During her last year, she lived in Budapest, before an unanticipated Nazi crackdown captured her in its net. I, unfortunately, was not there at the time.” Her voice was somber. “I was unable to help.”
Zoe and the old man stationed themselves a few feet from Eliani. Wink, in full fedora regalia, extracted a cornet from the duffle bag he’d dropped by the door, and stood on the other side of Eliani. Jill had a glimpse of the wild spatter of colors on the sheet music Zoe set on the stand. Arabelle rose unobtrusively, stood behind and between Zoe and the old violinist, and the music commenced, low and haunting.
Eliani began to read, her deep, rich voice filled with pain and love:
ELIANI, 1944
i
my daughter, visiting me in Budapest,
brought a gypsy violinist
she rescued from the Nazis.
his music flowed
fluid as her long black hair
fluid as her mind in childhood.
she told me of her thoughts:
how the brain is a series of tree and root
linked in quantum chorus
singing with light and thought: how the roots of trees themselves
mirror their sunlit branches
partaking of dark minerals—
crystals, like our own memories—
while their leaves
devour the sun; how each of us
are mirrored
in some elsewhere,
still growing
while we, here in Pest, are changed to
sudden spears of light
that pierce the night sky
as bombs explode,
or when we fall in droves
like the Ukrainians,
twenty-four thousand in one day
into
one
large
grave
whose name is Europe.
ii
I bind wounds.
Set bones.
Cut skin in thin red lines.
Yank an arm and set the shoulder free;
Make them live;
Pronounce them dead.
My daughter draws; thinks; writes
in a back room
away from the surgery.
She seems younger now that her father has died
of a broken heart
when his own mother ceased writing from besieged St. Petersburg.
She helps sometimes
when I can’t find a nurse
and says things like
“Mother, don’t worry.
I am fixing everything.
there will be a better world.”
To have her here,
In this world,
while war rages,
is like a light surrounding me.
She cuts gauze,
removes a bullet,
comforts a child without a leg, and without parents,
Her hands as practiced as mine
while the gypsy down the hallway plays unceasingly
driving me mad.
When she leaves,
I live only
for her return.
Jill was surprised at how Wink’s cornet could wind so solemnly through and punctuate so perfectly the wartime milieu. Apparently, he could read Zoe’s music. Arabelle turned a page.
Eliani continued. She read poems that pulsed with deep happiness; poems of impatience; poems of depth and intensity, poems which Jill regarded as the work of a genius. Zoe’s music skirled, gypsylike; gardens and tranquil city streets, piney mountains, a clear pellucid lake and a child: all were induced in their turn, floating through Jill as if she were there, herself. The storm loosed suddenly in a great silver burst. Rain bounced from the pavement; thunder echoed long-ago, distant canons. Eliani raised her voice a bit, and the spell was fully woven when she finally finished, half an hour later, to great applause.
She nodded. The musicians stood still, their instruments at their sides.
Eliani Hadntz concluded, “I have been working for the cessation of war my entire life, along with a wide circle of colleagues, close friends, and my beloved husband, long dead. I believe that we can move from the terrible waste, pain, and tragedy of war, which I hope will someday be seen as only a stage in the growth of humanity. I have let go of many parts of myself in the process. And now I have done the final letting go.
“Some of us have opened a peace center, on P Street, and all of you are welcome to visit; I will leave information. Please thank our musicians, thank Dr. Koslov for his masterful, perfect translation, which is a work of love, and Jill Dance, for offering us this opportunity to be here tonight.”
After a standing ovation, Hadntz and Koslov signed books, all of which sold immediately. After a few skirmishes among customers, Jill raised her hand and shouted, “I can have more by Thursday for whoever wants to order one.”
“I will sign the others when they arrive,” Hadntz promised. Jill looked at her, surprised. Hadntz smiled. “I am thinking of staying, at least for a while. I think your parents are too. We all need to catch our breath. It has been a long, long war.”
The rain was over. Steam rose from the street, water dripped from the trees, and the sun emerged in one bright beam, turning street, trees, cars, and unheeding pedestrians, on their way to a restaurant or heading home from work, into moving, living gold.
Chapter the Last
THE GIRL WAS, PERHAPS, fourteen. She was tall and thin and almost purple, the color of a glowing, beautiful aubergine.
Her hair was cropped short, and zigzagged in a pattern that caught the soldier’s eye, as he stood there in the center of the village with his machine gun trained upon the girl, her parents, her aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters—indeed, the whole village was before him and his cohorts, shaking, sobbing, and pleading.
Her movement, as she reached into the large, baggy pocket of her dress, was slow, almost dreamlike, and yet it was so swift that his eye could not really follow, nor could his finger pull the trigger nor his mouth open to utter the rote words of terror he had so often used before and which would make them fall down begging while he smiled.
He did not see what was in her hand when she pulled it from her pocket. He supposed, in those very long seconds, that it would be a small pistol, useless in her situation. As they stood there, poised for the usual drill of rape the women, kill the men, subjugate the children—the same thing that had happened to him and his family three years ago, when he had begun his training as a killer—he did not have a very long time to remember what happened next.
It seemed to him that she drew forth moving pictures, which moved very swiftly indeed. And then as in the pictures, the entire village let forth a scream and rushed him and the other soldiers that were part of his band.
Instead of pulling the trigger, as he had done thousands of times before (although very few villagers had ever challenged them, believing to the last that they would be killed if they did so, which was true—but it was also true that most would die anyway), he felt in brief amazement his hands drop, as if he had been inflicted with a fast-working virus that rendered his muscles uncooperative. But no, it was his very mind that refused to fire, as he was rushed, pummeled, beaten with sticks and shovels, and very nearly killed.
As he lay on the ground in deep pain in front of the small concrete-block school, he saw children gather around him. They stared down with curiosity on their faces.
“Is he dead?” asked a boy. The soldier felt a vicious, hearty kick in his left side, and pain shot through him.
“Na,” said the girl with the dress that had the deadly pocket. She knelt and looked into his eyes. “You want to know what happened, soldier boy?”
He made a strangled sound; he decided that blood must be pooling in his throat. It tasted like blood, thick and iron-tinged.
“When you were training, eh? With those video games? There was a fast sequence slipped in. A subliminal image. You saw it a thousand times. It is in the opening sequence. Too fast for you to realize you even saw it, eh? It is called neural linguistic programming, a new and powerful kind of it, precise. It works on your brain, on your mirror neurons. Your mirror neurons cause you to imitate what you see others doing. At first, the imaging was not precise. Now it is. We can do things with it. Eh? You understand, boy-man?”
He tried to shake his head, no, but could not. She continued in her soft, inexorable voice, that voice that sounded like the voice of his dead sister, whom he had so loved. He had not heard a soft woman’s voice in years. The only sounds women made now were pleading wails, sobs, whimpers, shrieks.
This girl’s voice might be soft, yet it was somehow sharp and hard as a razor, drawing tracks of oozing pain through his brain. Maybe that, he thought, was what his mirror neurons were. Pain places, places that had locked down and shut, a series of doors closing, closing, closing, releasing him, he had thought, into manhood, which meant killing with no pity.
“So when we resist, you cannot kill us.” Her dark eyes held very little. No contempt, no fear, no anger, no sense of vindication or revenge; not even satisfaction. They were pure, dark pools observing him. But she did speak a few words of hope. “You are lucky. You are still alive. These very angry people have killed all of your soldier brothers. If you survive, you will be sent to the UN rehabilitation center. Maybe you, like myself, can come back here as a teacher.”
He looked a last question at her. She nodded. “Yes. I was like you. A child soldier. The UN saved me. And maybe they can save you. I don’t know.”
She paused for a moment, then said, “But I hope so.”