The Zurich Numbers Read online

  An overhead light flicked on. Someone observed him through a sheet of plexiglass set in the door. Then a voice:

  “Who zat?”

  Devereaux did not speak.

  “What you want?”

  Still he could not speak. If the cab had remained, he would have fled. This was too frightening.

  The door opened a crack, secured by two chains. He did not remember the chains.

  A black face peered at him.

  “Who you?”

  “I want to see Melvina.”

  “Who?”

  Devereaux didn’t speak.

  “Who you?”

  “I told you who I want to see.”

  “She ain’t here. Too late.”

  “Where is she?”

  “You got business?”

  “I don’t remember you.”

  “Who you to remember me, man?”

  “Where is she?”

  Then, behind the door, the iron voice, sure and upright. Unchanged. “Who is it, Peter?” Clear as an iron bell.

  “White dude.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He don’t say nothin’.”

  “Who is it?” Imperious, the empress Melvina to her court.

  Devereaux would not answer.

  “He don’t say nothin’,” Peter repeated unnecessarily, marveling at this strange specimen.

  “Why doesn’t he answer?”

  Peter turned. “I dunno. He stand here, he don’t speak. Gotta bag.”

  Silence.

  “Then that must be Red, Peter. You can open the door.”

  “You sure, miz?”

  “Open the door, Peter.”

  The black face disappeared. The door closed, chains dropped, and the door opened again slowly. Devereaux took a step inside. He was standing in the carpeted foyer at the center of the townhouse. Above him, the same glass chandelier dimly lit the foyer; the light had always been too dim.

  She stood on the stair. She had a pistol in her hand.

  “Is that you, Red?”

  Devereaux looked at her. Older, certainly. She gripped the pistol with both hands. Her hands had blue veins. She had once held the bannister like a boulevardier holding his walking stick; he supposed she used the banister now as a crutch. Except the pistol, glittering in the dim light, did not waver in her grip.

  Old and frail, he thought. An almost indetectable quaver in her iron voice. A mere symptom of age, like the pain in his joints in the morning. She wore a blue print robe and her thin face was barely visible in the shadows cast by the dim light. Pale and stern still, with a pronounced chin and sharp, large gray eyes. Her hair was streaked with gray.

  “You finally came,” she said. It was a rebuke. He was not on time. As though he had been expected after all these years, all these silences.

  She lowered the pistol to her side. With her right hand, she gripped the bannister. Devereaux stood, bag in hand, waiting.

  “What happened?” he said finally.

  “You came here. You took your time.”

  “The mail gets slower.”

  “Everything is slower. Even me. I suppose you came to see if I had died. Or become senile.”

  “No. I wasn’t curious about you.”

  She smiled. “Promise you won’t come to my funeral. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I promise I won’t come to your funeral.” He was rooted to the spot in the hall, aware of the black man called Peter closing the big oak door behind him, unable to move either away from her or toward her, transfixed by Melvina descending. Still the frozen, mute child.

  “Red,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were dry. She stood back from him. “You’re older. Much older than I expected.”

  “You haven’t changed,” he said, not meaning it as a compliment to age.

  “Do you still drink, Red?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have some Scotch. You know I like my Scotch.”

  He knew everything about her.

  “Peter, will you get the Scotch? We can sit in the front room, Red. And ice, Peter? Do you want soda?”

  Devereaux did not answer. He pushed the door to the front room. Unchanged. A museum room, musty and neat. There should have been velvet ropes around the chairs. He entered and she turned on a lamp behind him. Peter came to the door. “You shouldn’t be drinking at night, miz.”

  “I drink when I like, Peter.” Iron.

  The black frowned.

  “Don’t be such a worrier, Peter. This is an occasion. Red has come to visit me.”

  Devereaux turned, sat down in a blue chair, stared at her. That touch of arrogance in her voice. She had ruled the world all her life. Melvina never married, not because she was not a pretty woman or because the young men had not loved her, but because no man had measured up to that smile, that arrogance in the curl of her lip, and been able to overcome it. Certainly not a boy taken from reform school. All the men eventually ran away. Even the boy. Perhaps that was their loss.

  They sat across from each other at the coffee table in the front room. Devereaux picked up the bottle of Laphroaig and poured himself a second glass and pretended not to feel guilt. She watched everything and rarely said anything. Everything he did in front of Melvina provoked this strange feeling in him. It was as though his smallest act testified against the coolness of his words. He tasted the Scotch. The smoky liquid made him want to shiver with comfort, a dog shivering at rest in front of the home fire. The house was cold, furnished with old things that had been precious. Perhaps they still were. The radiators clanged up steam heat from the oil boiler in the basement. As always.

  Everything reminded him of something past. He knew it would. He had not wanted a remembrance of the past. Until when, exactly? Perhaps when his past was stripped from him while he waited in the building on West 88th Street. One last look, Devereaux, before fading. The old woman, the old house. Even Rita Macklin.

  The past wasn’t so much, was it? Cartons of old clothes in shopping bags in a dead man’s room in a men’s hotel. Absolutely worthless when the life that accumulated all that rubbish was extinguished.

  “I’ve been ill,” Melvina said, puncturing his reverie. “As I said in the note.”

  He stared at her, gray eyes cast upon gray eyes. A family trait, she said once; gray eyes make us appear wiser than we are.

  Somewhere in the vast silence of the house, Peter lurked. From the street came a shout and a girl’s laughter, and from farther away a car backfired. Or perhaps it was the report of a gun. Devereaux smiled at the memory of the Pakistani’s concerned face.

  “Cancer,” she said.

  Still, he waited.

  “Oh, thank God you won’t make a great fuss about it. I’m so tired of sympathy, the sad looks people give you.”

  The smile remained. “People never gave you sympathy, Melvina. If you wanted it, you took it from them.”

  In the half-light of the room, she chuckled. “I suppose you’re right, Red. You were a clever boy. I saw that in you. Even in your room at the Audy Home. You were worth my while.”

  “I’m glad, Melvina.”

  “No, you’re an ungrateful child. But I do receive sympathy, Red even if you choose not to believe it. Say cancer to people, they will be concerned. They’re so afraid of everything but especially that. It’s going to happen to them. One out of four, or is it three? They see me and they see themselves, a cancer eating away at them.”

  “What people, Melvina? Your neighbors?”

  “Red. They’re all black. I don’t have any friends here.”

  “Except Peter.”

  “He’s an employee.”

  “Did you save him as well? Stray dogs from the Anti-cruelty Society, stray children from the Audy Home. Where did the black come from, Melvina? Recruited by Sergeant Gottlieb down at Area Two?”

  “Sergeant Gottlieb died three years ago, Red.”

  He said nothing.

  “Are you sorry?”

 
; “No.”

  “Good, Red. Never give in. Even to me. It would be out of character.”

  “He was a bastard.”

  “And you became… what? A saint among your fellow men? Little brother of the poor?”

  “Who sympathizes with your cancer, Melvina?”

  “Monsignor O’Neill, for one. He’s still alive. I’m sure you remember him. He remembers you in his prayers.”

  “I feel his presence nightly when I lay me down to sleep.”

  She ignored him. “He sees me when he can. He gives me Communion, he hears my confession. He sits with me and we talk about the old days. He’s a great comfort.”

  “And he sympathizes with your cancer.”

  “My fears.”

  “You’re not afraid, Melvina. Not at this late stage of life.”

  Again, she smiled but he could not see the turn of her lips in the half-darkness. “Yes, Red, in a way I am not afraid, but Monsignor O’Neill, for all his faith, is. He sympathizes with my final agony. He prepares me, Red. For the end.”

  “Because he can’t prepare himself.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Silence. In the great house, a clock ticked unseen.

  Devereaux sipped the smoky liquid again, tasted the sweetness. He did not want to speak to her but he could not stop himself. In all the years of his silences, he had felt that words were deceptions, tools of his trade; or that words were self-betrayals. And now he resisted the urge to speak to Hanley and Melvina and anyone who would still affirm his existence. He felt as pathetic as a drunkard in an afternoon saloon, trying out a bag of stories on strangers to momentarily halt the march of silences.

  “How does he do it?”

  “What?”

  “Prepare you for the end?”

  “Prayers, Red. That’s obvious, isn’t it? He tells me what I shall see when I shall see that day.”

  “How clever of him.”

  She leaned into the light; he could see her face clearly. She smiled a thin, pretty, and wicked smile, the smile of an arrogant woman who appreciated the young men with their gifts of charm. All the young men had left her, without rejection, save him. Perhaps Melvina had understood Red would go away from her long before he had left that morning, without a note or word of parting, carrying his single suitcase and ticket for the United flight to New York City. For a life away from her. Long ago. She tracked him, of course; it wouldn’t ever end on his terms, only hers. She had mailed a note to him (blue stationery in a blue envelope in his mailbox) at the ratty apartment he had occupied on 111th Street twenty-five years ago:

  My brave little man, going off into the world alone.

  He thought he hadn’t hated her until he saw that note and saw that she had imprisoned him as a child for his own good; still a prison, though a polite and brittle glass prison, a prison of manners and civility and enough money to buy him out of the trouble he wanted. Buy everything after taking away the one thing beyond purchase.

  She said, “Monsignor O’Neill is a fool, I suppose, but an old fool, which excuses everything. When you are old, as I am, you make do with what you have.”

  “Like Peter.”

  “Peter is a colored man. It’s wise, I thought, to have someone of that color to look after my interests, given the time.”

  “You didn’t have to live here.”

  “That would not have suited me, Red. You were always too willing to accept the world as you found it. That’s why you fought so hard against it.”

  “I don’t fight anymore.”

  “That would make me sad, Red, if I believed it.”

  Another silence. She leaned back into shadows. She waited but he would not speak.

  “I think I know what you are. Rather, what it is that you do.”

  He still said nothing.

  “I was mystified for quite a long time. But I’m sure I know now.”

  “As Monsignor O’Neill is certain.”

  “My knowledge is more mundane.”

  “The truth shall make you free.”

  “Yes. Exactly. I have always had the sense of my own freedom.”

  “Because you disregard the freedom of others.”

  “You, Red? You were a child. You weren’t free. You were doing the best you could not to be free. I did the best for you, Red. You refuse to admit it, even now. When I’m dying. That woman never cared if you lived or died. She might have cried for you but she wouldn’t have saved you.”

  “Dear Melvina.”

  “No love, Red? Even at this late date? No pity?”

  Silence.

  The clock struck one. The song of Westminster chimed and then the single bell tolled.

  “What involves you, Melvina?”

  She seemed startled, confused. She leaned into the light again. Her gray eyes watched him sitting coolly on the blue chair. “You mean my letter to you.” Disappointed. “Too bad. I thought you meant more. But the matter intrigues me. It’s good for an old woman who is dying to be interested in something beyond the Last Judgment. The Last Judgment is too weighty a baggage to carry around every day, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You never were cursed with faith, were you?”

  “No.”

  “You were such a terrorist. Your survival counted before all others. I think that made you more afraid to die than me. Like your father.”

  “Did he survive?”

  “No. Your mother saw to that.” A flash of malice like a thin knife waved in half-darkness, the cutting edge turned toward the victim. “Neither will you. Survive, I mean. But the thought of all that energy spent on staving off the inevitable tires me. How futile, Red, don’t you ever see that?”

  This was stupid, he thought. He put down the drink. Had he returned for old home week? Tours down memory lane? Something had happened, it had made Melvina write to him. “What involved you, Melvina?” The voice was cold, remorseless.

  “You sound so strange.”

  Silence. He could endure silence, not words. Not even if he needed them.

  “Something happened.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t been able to keep the house as I wished. I employ a woman. An immigrant. Named Mary Krakowski.”

  He leaned forward, did not touch the glass, waited.

  “Your eyes, Red. So old. You’ve aged.”

  Merely survived, he thought. He said nothing.

  “She lives in a room in an apartment in Hyde Park. I never thought to ask her. You know, about working papers. I assumed.”

  “How did she contact you?”

  “Peter put a note in the Hyde Park Co-op. I needed a cleaning lady once a week. I thought I’d get a colored woman. I was surprised.”

  “When was this?”

  “About a year ago.”

  About the time of Helsinki.

  “She’s been here two years. Once she said to me she wanted to work for me. After. I said, ‘After what?’ She didn’t say. Not for a couple of weeks. I thought it was some waiting time for naturalization or something. Then, out of the blue one day, she said she had a bond. A bond. She doesn’t speak English well but she knew that word. I said, ‘Like a bondwoman?’ Yes, she said. I couldn’t believe it. I told her I couldn’t believe it. I said there was no such thing in this country. I think she was a little drunk when she told me. She worked in the kitchen that morning, singing to herself while she worked. Sad songs. Polish songs. I didn’t understand the words, only the way she was singing them. I think she was that. Is that. Some sort of bondwoman.”

  “Bond to whom?”

  “I don’t know. She lives with others. Immigrants. She has a friend, Teresa Kolaki. Teresa worked here for Mary one day when Mary was ill. I asked Teresa what the bond was that Mary talked about. She seemed afraid.”

  “Why does this involve me?”

  “I don’t know. Two months ago. Two men came. From Immigration.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They showed me id
entification. They were foreign. Accents, I mean.”

  Devereaux felt perfectly still, perfectly cold: This was why he had come. His hands were resting on his thighs. He stared at the form in the half-darkness. He did not speak.

  “They asked me about Mary. Then. Red. They said you worked for the government. They said they were concerned because…”

  He waited.

  “You don’t make it easy.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what’s happening. I’m tired, Red. I want to go to bed. You can stay up. You can sleep in your old room.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.” The coquette again. “In the morning, when I’m refreshed. I didn’t expect you.”

  “I didn’t expect myself.”

  “Does it feel like a homecoming, Red?”

  “This wasn’t home.”

  She smiled. “Good, Red. Never give in, not even when I’m old and dying.”

  “What cancer are you dying from?”

  “Oh. I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m not dying yet. But it pleases Monsignor O’Neill to think he finally has something interesting to say to me.”

  Devereaux smiled.

  “I’m wicked, I know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Red.”

  He waited.

  “One of the men had a gun. I saw it. The other man blocked me from seeing it but I saw it, just for a moment. I think they meant to kill me.”

  “They asked about me? And your cleaning woman?”

  “Yes. A bondwoman. Do you think there’s still such a thing as slavery?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. So do I. To own people.”

  “You owned me.”

  “You were a hostage, Red. To your own bad deeds. I didn’t demand payment when you freed yourself, did I?”

  Silence.

  She rose. She put the glass on the side table. “I’m so tired.”

  “The men. Are you going to tell me about them?”

  “In the morning. I’m worried about Mary. I’m rather fond of her. I know she drinks. I saw vodka in her purse.”

  “You went through her purse?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to save her?”