“Yes, I would. Do you remember your friend Shirin’s last speech at the theater a week ago? Or did you lose that along with the explosion?”
“I lost it, but I listened to a tape of it yesterday.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said heavily. “At any rate, Reichmann made a tape of it as well, and played it for me on the phone. That was what …” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness.
“That was what sealed her fate,” I suggested.
“Yes, that’s right. You see, she showed me more clearly than any advocate of ecumenism why we are a confraternity, Jared—we Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus. We’ve drawn ourselves up from the slime in which animism grovels so proudly. We represent what is highest, what is most upward reaching, transcendental, and sublime in mankind. What stands between t
he members of the confraternity are minor rifts. What stands between the confraternity and animism is a gulf as wide as the gulf between Man and brute, spirit and matter.”
“I agree.”
“What will you do now?”
I took the tape recorder out of my pocket and showed him that it was running. “First, I’ll find a safe place for this tape, Father. You called us too incredibly trusting to be conspirators, but you’re pretty trusting yourself.”
“You’re quite right, Jared. None of us has been trained to look at the world with suspicious eyes. But you won’t turn it over to the police.”
“Certainly not. This is my safe-conduct for at least as long as you’re alive. Once the police have it, it’s worthless for that purpose.”
He nodded. “Yes, you’ll definitely want to find a very safe place for that.”
I left, and because it seemed like a good time to start being a little less incredibly trusting, I didn’t turn my back on him till I was outside with the door shut between us.
Tuesday, June 4
Radenau revisited
I’m installed in my old room at the hotel, and it feels rather eerie. The desk clerk acknowledged my appearance without surprise, allowing himself the liberty of hoping I was now completely restored after my “unpleasant experience” of nearly being blown to bits.
I arrived early enough to do a little useful groundwork. I picked up a few necessities like underwear and shaving equipment and spent some time with telephone directories at the library. I managed to place a display ad in the local paper asking Shirin or Michael to contact me. Naturally the ad takers would accept nothing but real money, so tomorrow I’ll have to see if this piece of magic plastic will actually produce more cash if inserted in the proper slot of some proper machine.
My work with the phone books paid off to the extent that I managed to locate Frau Doktor Hartmann; she says my head should be cut off and thrown to the dogs, and torture wouldn’t induce her to help me find either Michael or Shirin if they were alive; although beyond prosecution, I am, in her opinion, guilty of their murder. On this basis, I guess I can cross Frau Hartmann right off my list of supporters.
I talked to half a dozen people with first names approximately Michael and last names approximately Dershinsky and have dozens more to try as far north as Hamburg and as far south as Hannover, and if I want to try as far east as Berlin, I should be able to keep busy through Columbus Day.
It’s now eight P.M., and I’m running on three cylinders. All I can do at this point is stay awake long enough to reset my biological clock to local time.
In truth, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here. I suppose I’m here to prove that Herr Reichmann and Heinz Teitel are wrong, the inner circle is not gone—but I don’t know how to go about it. I can’t seriously expect city officials to dig up a million tons of rubble to prove something they already believe to be true. What then? The Teitels aren’t going to be any more helpful in person than they were over the phone. Can I imagine myself persuading the guardians at Shirin’s clinic that I’m a close friend who should be given her address and phone number even though I don’t know her last name? No, frankly I can’t. Of course, I can just plant myself on the front steps of the place and see if she shows up someday.
For the moment I can’t think of anything else useful to do. For the moment I’m too jet-lagged to think at all.
Wednesday, June 5
Plastic death
This morning I found myself a money machine, shoved in my plastic, and learned that I’d ceased to exist. My card had been revoked and was fresh out of magic. I considered myself lucky. They could’ve been a day quicker, in which case the card wouldn’t have passed muster at the hotel.
I had a couple of choices. I could cash in my return plane ticket or I could call home and ask my mother for a loan. I decided to cash in the plane ticket. I then had to think about my position with the hotel. As long as I didn’t try to use the card again there, I figured I was okay, and the hotel would not get stiffed, since the card was still valid when I checked in. Presumably the Laurentians would get stuck with the bill, which did not tax my delicate conscience at all.
Since the airline has no office in Radenau, I’d have to make a trip to Hamburg, which I decided to get out of the way. I made it back by six o’clock, looking forward to dinner, having missed lunch. As I was heading up to my room to rinse off, the clerk called me over to inform me that my card hadn’t passed muster after all. I not only owed them for one day, I owed them for two, having missed today’s checkout deadline by several hours—and of course I was going to be a cash customer from now on if I wanted to stay past tomorrow morning. I shoved nearly half my resources across the counter and told him I’d think it over.
Yeah.
Saturday, June 8
Walkabout