“The flashbacks seemed to have something to do with tea, she said, because after Veronica broke a teacup, she started to experience them more frequently and at greater length. Each time they overtook her, more was revealed.
“First there was the hum and the sculpted trees and the uneasiness. Then the hum and the trees and the uneasiness and a kind of umbrella of pine needles. Then, she said, there was the humming and the sculpted trees and a shadowed figure under an umbrella of pine needles. Then there was all of this and the dark figure was revealed to be a man. Then there was the humming and the shaped trees and the needles and the man in the shadows stroking himself. He was forming a word, Ellen said, the ‘f-word.’”
“‘Fuck.’”
“These flashbacks were disturbing enough in themselves, but what worried Ellen most was a certainty that the identity of the man would inevitably be revealed to her. She did not want to know who it was. And yet she did. To protect her daughter. After she received the phone call, she felt the man was targeting her home. She was afraid for Veronica. You see now why I must consider that Ellen might have had good reason to flee from her home? She was protecting her child by drawing the perverted man’s attention to herself.”
“Why didn’t she tell her husband about this?”
“She planned to do that. Just as soon as the man’s face was revealed to her. Until then, she thought it sounded mad, crazy.”
“The tuneless hum, did she repeat it for you?”
“No, but she told me that something in her cab ride in New York City called it to mind. The driver was an Arab, as you discovered. He made her uneasy, she said, talking on his short-wave radio in salacious tones about a girl named Tina. I told her, in Arabic teena is a word for fig, as well as a rather improper euphemism for a female. Ellen had good instincts. She knew the driver was talking about her in, let us say, over-familiar terms.”
“Then it makes sense that he followed her home? She walked straight into the path of a classic stalker.”
“That seems likely, but then what about the phone call she received a year ago and then again before she met me in New York, before she met the taxi driver? Doesn’t it seem extremely unlikely that two men were stalking our friend?”
“Yes, but it’s slightly more believable than the notion that the taxi driver and the man who called are one and the same. How could a taxi driver plant himself in the position to pick up a particular woman at Penn Station? It’s just too impossible to engineer. But the caller could well have been Ali, the tongue-tied boy from her past who, I learned, exposed himself to her in the incident she is calling to mind in her flashbacks. Olga told me someone mumbling a tuneless hum phoned her at the same time every year until last year. She feared he’d turned his attentions to Ellen instead. I discovered where Ali lives and works, but he went missing two days after Ellen did. Now there’s a coincidence I know is real.”
“The fact that both men are Arabs is suggestive. I wonder if a common expression, or simply words spoken in the flowing Arabic language, might have been used by both.”
“The tuneless hum! That might be it!” Thinking about tones of voices led Liz to ask, “Did you, by any chance, phone the Johansson house on December 18, the day after you parted with Ellen?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. But I only left a message. I felt terrible about losing a roll of film I’d taken of us in New York.”
“Do you recall saying, ‘It’s all my fault’?”
“I might have said something like that. I knew she’d be disappointed because it was a standing joke between us about how dreadful a photographer she was. We both used our cameras while we were in Manhattan, and she was sure my photos would be far better than hers.”
“In your letter to Ellen, you advised her not to open a Pandora’s box. What did you mean by that?”
Nadia’s expression changed to one of shock.
“I’m sorry, Nadia,” Liz said. “I must admit, I read your last letter to Ellen. It was given to me by a workman who had access to her house.”
Nadia was quiet for some minutes.
“Ellen told me she was going to find a hypnotist to help her unveil the figure in her flashbacks,” she said at last. “It made me terribly uneasy for her. It’s one thing for a repressed memory to reveal itself, don’t you think? It might be monstrous, but at least it’s pure. It seems to me a hypnotist might manipulate things, twist the truth. Then you never know the actual truth of the matter.”
While Nadia engaged in “urgent work” in unidentified offices in Singapore, Liz toured the extensive orchid gardens there, marveling at their quantity and variety. She also located and interviewed the horticulturist for her travel article and arranged for photographs to be sent to her at the Banner newsroom. Later, Liz shopped in Chinatown and Little India, ethnic enclaves where beautifully crafted items were plentiful and cheap, and browsed without buying anything in the opulent Japanese department store on Orchard Road, a thoroughfare known as the “Fifth Avenue of Singapore.”
In the evening, the two met at a hot pot restaurant decorated with Mao Zedong and Chinese Communist memorabilia. After ordering their fare from waiters dressed in classic comrades’ garb, they collected tofu, pieces of raw fish, several varieties of mushrooms, and a half-dozen varieties of Asian greens and took them back to their table. In the center of it, a waiter installed a steaming pot of broth, which was kept bubbling on an electric burner. Using chopsticks to drop in the food they had collected, they watched it cook and then ladled the soup into bowls. As the two dined, Liz enthused about the orchids she’d seen.
“Then you must come along with me to Fiji,” Nadia said. “There’s a marvelous orchid garden there established by the actor Raymond Burr.”
“It sounds wonderful, but I’ve already broken my bank by paying for my airfare to get here.”
“Use some of my frequent-flyer miles. I have more than I can ever spend. And you can join me in my lodgings. I travel alone so much it will be a pleasure to have your company during this little holiday. I shan’t be working in Fiji, so I will have more time to converse with you. We will have more opportunity to put our heads together about Ellen, too.”
On the morning of September 10, the two made their way to Fiji’s main island and installed themselves in the aptly named Shangri-La’s Fijian Resort. After freshening up, they toured Raymond Burr’s Garden of the Sleeping Giant orchid plantation, so-named for the long mountain, shaped like a reclining titan, which stretches out above and beyond the garden. Liz took photographs and copious notes for another travel article. And then she and Nadia returned to the resort, in time to attend a fire-walking demonstration and outdoor banquet.
“I had thought fire walkers would skitter quickly across the stones,” Liz said. “But they seemed to linger on them.”
“Like you with your work and me with mine.”
“I’m not so sure that’s true. Here we are, behaving as tourists and making little progress at all.”
“If you think so, you are mistaken. The more I get to know you, the more I feel I can say about Ellen. You see, she has been my friend for two decades. I have known you only for a matter of days.”