She had been so young when he was killed that her memories of him were fragmentary, and suddenly here was a new one that she hadn’t even known she possessed.
Anne leaned over and a faint mist of familiar jasmine followed as her lips brushed Sigrid’s cheek. “I know, honey,” she whispered.
Candles glowed from a dozen different clusters around the warm room. Nauman struggled to relight his pipe, Buntrock and Roman were debating the aesthetics of icicles slung on in clumps (Buntrock’s method) or carefully draped one by one (Roman’s), and Jill brought a fresh platter of canapés hot from the oven.
Elliott Buntrock beamed as he savored the ambience. “How utterly postmodern this is!”
“Late postmodern,” Nauman corrected.
Later, when everyone else had left and Roman had stumbled off to bed, Sigrid walked out to Oscar’s disreputable yellow sports car with him. It was midnight and the temperature was frigid, but for once the air was so clear that the brighter constellations shone through the city’s reflected glow.
At the car, Nauman unlocked the passenger door, but Sigrid touched his arm regretfully. “I can’t go home with you. I promised Roman I’d help him clean up before work in the morning.”
“I know,” he said. “But I have something for you and it’s too cold to stand out here on the sidewalk.”
As soon as they were inside, Oscar switched on the engine and started the powerful heater; then he turned and gently traced the contours of her chilled face with gentle fingers. In this dim light, for a fleeting moment, the memory of other faces flickered between his hands-women he had known, women he had slept with, women he had even loved for a little space of time.
And now this woman.
For the first time, he had admitted to himself that she had it within her to be the last. And for the first time he was both awed and apprehensive by what he felt for her.
Half angered by the powerful emotions she aroused in him, he reached into the space behind her seat and drew out a flat package wrapped in brown paper. “Here,” he rasped. “Merry Christmas.”
“Nauman?” She looked at him, puzzled by his sudden belligerence.
He shrugged and stared through the windshield.
Bewildered, Sigrid undid the paper and found a cardboard folder approximately ten inches wide by eighteen inches tall. Inside was a drawing.
Silently, Oscar turned on the interior light so that she could see, and he heard the sharp intake of her breath as she realized what she held.
It was a sheet of light gray paper with a textured surface that was exquisite to touch; and on it was her own portrait, drawn in delicate silver point and highlighted with touches of white.
A taxi lumbered past, an ambulance wailed in the distance, and from the river a block away came the lonesome hoot of a tugboat’s horn; but Nauman’s small car was a pool of silence.
At last Sigrid turned to him. “It’s like something Dürer would have done,” she whispered brokenly. “Is that how you see me?”
“Just like Dürer,” he said and leaned forward to touch the tear that glistened on her cheek.
Paris.
…add my condolences to the Ambassador’s and hope it may somehow comfort you to know that it was not a cold, indifferent stranger that personally supervised the packing of your son’s possessions, but a father like yourself; moreover, one who has also had to submit to the heaviest burden Providence may lay upon the shoulders of any father.
As a pen more gifted than mine has written, “What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?”
I pray God may strengthen you in this hour of darkness.
Letter to Erich Breul Sr., dated 12.15.1912, from Mr. Leonard White, personal assistant to The Honorable Myron T. Herrick, Ambassador to France.
(From the Erich Breul House Collection)
X
Sunday, December 20
Conscience, duty and sheer willpower kept Sigrid from burying her groggy head back under the pillow when her alarm clock went off ninety minutes early the next morning. Getting up at any hour was always a chore, but she had promised Roman that if he’d leave the mess, she would help him clean up before she went to work; so she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower.
After so much wassail the night before, Roman had professed himself uninterested in doing anything other than putting away the leftovers and trundling off to his bed in what had once been the maid’s quarters beyond the kitchen.
Ten minutes in the shower restored the outer woman and Sigrid headed toward the kitchen to see what hot black coffee could do for the inner. As she passed through the living room, she gathered up a handful of dirty glasses and plates and carried them out to the sink.
Roman had cleared himself space on the green-and-white tiled counter and was seated there with newspapers and coffee. His miniature countertop television was tuned to the morning news.
“There’s your friend,” he said, pouring her a cup of coffee by way of greeting.
She paused to watch Søren Thorvaldsen arrive in handcuffs at the federal courthouse. A moment later, cameras panned over the Sea Dancer tied up in custody as belligerent vacationers streamed down her gangways. While the camera lingered lovingly on the stacks of paper money uncovered in the engine rooms, Sigrid opened the refrigerator for juice, encountered the glassy eyes of the Saran-Wrapped eel, and closed the door again, all desire for juice abruptly gone.
When the program moved on to another story, Roman clicked it off and rose with a sigh. “How art the mighty fallen,” he said portentously. “I’ll begin on the dishes if you’ll bring in the rest.”
“Deal,” she said and carried a large tray out to the living room for the demitasse cups and saucers that had accompanied Roman’s bûche de Noël. Christmas trees with their lights extinguished always looked vaguely forlorn to Sigrid. There was something sad about shimmering tinsel when it reflected only cold winter daylight.
Two trips with the tray cleared out most of the disorder and five minutes with the vacuum took care of cracker crumbs, stray tinsel, and a crushed glass ball. Afterwards, she poured herself a second cup of coffee and began to dry the pots and pans while Roman continued to wash by hand the things he couldn’t fit into the dishwasher.
An unquenchable optimist, he announced that his sale of that short mystery story had finally convinced him that he was ready to begin writing the full-length murder mystery he’d been planning since the first day they met back in April.
“In fact,” he said, scouring vigorously with steel wool, “I finished the first chapter yesterday morning. Now if I were to average three pages a day, I could be finished by Easter.”
“Three months?” Sigrid asked dubiously. “I thought a book took at least a year.”
“That’s for serious writers,” he told her.
“And you’re not?”
“My dear, I’m forty-three years old. I have a certain flair for the English language, a certain facility, but depth? I fear not.”
He rinsed a copper saucepot and handed it to her. “Writers with something profound to say write poetry, writers with something serious to say write novels, but writers with nothing to say write genre fiction. I shall become a mystery writer.”
He handed her another wet pot. “Don’t look so sad. I shall try to be a very good mystery writer.”
Sigrid smiled. “Tell me about your plot.”