“Yes, I know what you mean,” Nybern said, “but I don't have enough wall space for all this at home. There, I'm putting together a collection of modern religious art.”
“Is there any?”
“Not much. Religious subject matter isn't fashionable these days among the really talented artists. The bulk of it is done by hacks. But here and there … someone with genuine talent is seeking enlightenment along the old paths, painting these subjects with a contemporary eye. I'll move the modern collection here when I finish this one and dispose of it.”
Hatch turned away from the painting and regarded the doctor with professional interest. “You're planning to sell?”
“Oh, no,” the physician said, returning his pen to his breast pocket. His hand, with the long elegant fingers that one expected of a surgeon, lingered at the pocket, as if he were pledging the truth of what he was saying. “I'll donate it. This will be the sixth collection of religious art I've put together over the past twenty years, then given away.”
Because he could roughly estimate the value of the artwork he had seen on the walls of the medical suite, Hatch was astonished by the degree of philanthropy indicated by Nyebern's simple statement. “Who's the fortunate recipient?”
“Well, usually a Catholic university, but on two occasions another Church institution,” Nyebern said.
The surgeon was staring at the depiction of the Ascension, a distant gaze in his eyes, as if he were seeing something beyond the painting, beyond the wall on which it hung, and beyond the farthest horizon. His hand still lingered over his breast pocket.
“Very generous of you,” Hatch said.
“It's not an act of generosity.” Nyebern's faraway voice now matched the look in his eyes. “It's an act of atonement.”
That statement begged for a question in response, although Hatch felt that asking it was an intrusion of the physician's privacy. “Atonement for what?”
Still staring at the painting, Nyebern said, “I never talk about it.”
“I don't mean to pry. I just thought—”
“Maybe it would do me good to talk about it. Do you think it might?”
Hatch did not answer — partly because he didn't believe the doctor was actually listening to him anyway.
“Atonement,” Nyebern said again. “At first… atonement for being the son of my father. Later … for being the father of my son.”
Hatch didn't see how either thing could be a sin, but he waited, certain that the physician would explain. He was beginning to feel like that party-goer in the old Coleridge poem, waylaid by the distraught Ancient Mariner who had a tale of terror that he was driven to impart to others lest, by keeping it to himself, he lose what little sanity he still retained.
Gazing unblinking at the painting, Nyebern said, “When I was only seven, my father suffered a psychotic breakdown. He shot and killed my mother and my brother. He wounded my sister and me, left us for dead, then killed himself.”
“Jesus, I'm sorry,” Hatch said, and he thought of his own father's bottomless well of anger. “I'm very sorry, Doctor.” But he still did not understand the failure or sin for which Nyebern felt the need to atone.
“Certain psychoses may sometimes have a genetic cause. When I saw signs of sociopathic behavior in my son, even at an early age, I should have known what was coming, should've prevented it somehow. But I couldn't face the truth. Too painful. Then two years ago, when he was eighteen, he stabbed his sister to death—”
Hatch shuddered.
“—then his mother,” Nyebern said.
Hatch started to put a hand on the doctor's arm, then pulled back when he sensed that Nyebern's pain could never be eased and that his wound was beyond healing by any medication as simple as consolation. Although he was speaking of an intensely personal tragedy, the physician plainly was not seeking sympathy or the intimacy of friendship from Hatch. Suddenly he seemed almost frighteningly self-contained. He was talking about the tragedy because the time had come to take it out of his personal darkness to examine it again, and he would have spoken of it to anyone who had been in that place at that time instead of Hatch — or perhaps to the empty air itself if no one at all had been present.
“And when they were dead,” Nyebern said, “Jeremy took the same knife into the garage, a butcher knife, secured it by the handle in the vise on my workbench, stood on a stool, and fell forward, impaling himself on the blade. He bled to death.”
The physician's right hand was still at his breast pocket, but he no longer seemed like a man pledging the truth of what he said. Instead, he reminded Hatch of a painting of Christ with the Sacred Heart revealed, the slender hand of divine grace pointing to that symbol of sacrifice and promise of eternity.
At last Nyebern looked away from the Ascension and met Hatch's eyes. “Some say evil is just the consequences of our actions, no more than a result of our will. But I believe it's that — and much more. I believe evil is a very real force, an energy quite apart from us, a presence in the world. Is that what you believe, Hatch?”
“Yes,” Hatch said at once, and somewhat to his surprise.
Nyebern looked down at the prescription pad in his left hand.
He took his right hand away from his breast pocket, tore the top sheet off the pad, and gave it to Hatch. “His name's Foster. Dr. Gabriel Foster. I'm sure he'll be able to help you.”
“Thanks,” Hatch said numbly.
Nyebern opened the door of the examination room and gestured for Hatch to precede him.
In the hallway, the physician said, “Hatch?”
Hatch stopped and looked back at him.
“Sorry,” Nyebern said.
“For what?”
“For explaining why I donate the paintings.”
Hatch nodded. “Well, I asked, didn't I?”
“But I could have been much briefer.”
“Oh?”
“I could have just said — maybe I think the only way for me to get into Heaven is to buy my way.”
Outside, in the sun-splashed parking lot, Hatch sat in his car for a long time, watching a wasp that hovered over the red hood as if it thought it had found an enormous rose.
The conversation in Nyebern's office had seemed strangely like a dream, and Hatch felt as if he were still rising out of sleep. He sensed that the tragedy of Jonas Nyebern's death-haunted life had a direct bearing on his own current problems, but although he reached for the connection, he could not grasp it.
The wasp swayed to the left, to the right, but faced steadily toward the windshield as though it could see him in the car and was mysteriously drawn to him. Repeatedly, it darted at the glass, bounced off, and resumed its hovering. Tap, hover, tap, hover, tap-tap, hover. It was a very determined wasp. He wondered if it was one of those species that possessed a single stinger that broke off in the target, resulting in the subsequent death of the wasp. Tap, hover, tap, hover, tap-tap-tap. If it was one of those species, did it fully understand what reward it would earn by its persistence? Tap, hover, tap-tap-tap.
After seeing the last patient of the day, a follow-up visit with an engaging thirty-year-old woman on whom he had performed an aortal graft last March, Jonas Nyebern entered his private office at the back of the medical suite and closed the door. He went behind the desk, sat down, and looked in his wallet for a slip of paper on which was written a telephone number that he chose not to include on his Rolodex. He found it, pulled the phone close, and punched in the seven numbers.
Following the third ring, an answering machine picked up as it had on his previous calls yesterday and earlier that morning: “This is Morton Redlow. I'm not in the office right now. After the beep, please leave a message and a number where you can be reached, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”