“We might have had, and if you put a gun to my head, I might be able to dig it up, but short of that, I’m not likely to.” He shrugged again. “That’s just the way it is. This isn’t a missing-persons bureau, and I’ve got other things to do.”
I told him I understood, thanked him anyway, and got up to leave.
“Come back later,” Harry said. “You can always find people to talk to if you’re buying drinks, and someone in the crowd may know more than I do about this guy.”
I thanked him again and went back to the hotel.
Sitting here in my room—sitting, pacing, staring out the window—it suddenly popped into my memory that, when the heroes of fairy tales don’t know what to do, they just sit down and weep. In the same circumstances, a modern hero can slug somebody or go out and get drunk, but he can never just sit down and weep.
I’ve read enough detective stories to know I should go pry some information out of somebody, but whom?
Sitting here staring at this notebook, it has finally occurred to me there’s something I’ve avoided doing, and that’s reading the talk I took down in my other notebook last night at Der Bau. I confess to having a strong reluctance to do that.
Interesting: I remember the title of the talk (“The Great Forgetting”), but I’ve forgotten what The Great Forgetting is. I haven’t really forgotten it, of course, but I’ve shut the door of my memory on it, which means that—
Saved by the telephone bell. As I should have been. When the hero sits down and weeps because he doesn’t know what to do, the fairy-tale universe sends magical helpers. Mine wasn’t very magical but he was certainly mysterious. I think I can put it all down verbatim.
ME: Hello.
HIM: Fr. Osborne?
ME: Yes. Who is this?
HIM: What the devil do you think you’re doing?
ME: What?
HIM: Do you understand what you’re supposed to be doing here?
ME: Who is this?
HIM: I was led to expect someone marginally competent.
It was impossible to miss the drift of the conversation, and I was certainly getting the rough end of it. I tried to rally a bit of self-defense.
ME: I don’t know who you are or who appointed you my housemother, but I know who I am. I’m a parish priest. If you were expecting James Bond, either you were misled or you misled yourself.
HIM: Does being a parish priest mean you live in a coma?
ME: I’m sorry to have been a source of disappointment for you.
With that crusher, I hung up, something I don’t think I’ve done to a caller since junior high. There’s nothing to beat it when your back is against the wall. As expected, he called back immediately.
“The girl is sick,” he told me, sounding as if nothing had happened. “The girl is dying.”
“What?” For a second I thought he was giving me a password of some kind. Maybe I was supposed to reply with, “But the swallows will return to Capistrano anyway.” Luckily I caught myself and said, “You mean the one who was signing?”
“Of course. Didn’t you see her face?”
“I saw her face. I just didn’t realize it was—What is it, lupus? Lupus isn’t fatal, is it?”
“It’s scleroderma, or possibly mixed connective-tissue disease. They’re all in the same family, including lupus. It’s an autoimmune collagen disease, degenerative, incurable.”
“Okay. And what am I supposed to do with this information?”
“Radenau has a research facility devoted to the study and treatment of collagen diseases. That’s what the two of them are doing in Central Europe. Radenau is the center of the circle, ninety kilometers south of Hamburg.”
“So what are you saying? When in doubt, head for Radenau?”