“It's a double celebration. Mom, we're getting engaged.”
“Oh, honey!”
“Marriage next June, if that works out.”
“That's wonderful news.”
“And she wants to settle near her parents. We'll be able to visit more often than I have lately.”
“That would be really nice, dear.” A vague picture arose and sharpened in her mind, of roses, of arbors, sunshine, smiling people, a happy event in her very own beautiful, flower-soaked yard. “How did you meet? At school?”
“No, she worked in a copy place at night putting herself through college. I was always in there in the middle of the night.”
“Who spoke first?”
“You obviously don't know her or you wouldn't bother to ask.”
She heard a tinkle of laughter in the background. So Tammy was there, listening. “What's she like?”
“Oh, she's a riot. Has a story about everything. Kind of like you, Mom, although she talks more. Much, much more.”
He yelped and dropped the phone. “Oops,” he said, “sorry.”
“Will she be with you when you come?”
“Yes. And, Mom. I tried to resist, but she begged me. And I gave in. I told her all about you.”
“You have?”
“She knows all your secrets.”
“Really.”
He laughed. “I'm sure there are a few left you can tell her yourself, if you can get a word in edgewise. You two are gonna get along like a house afire, Mom. That, I promise you.”
He kept her on the phone for a very long time. She heard love in his voice, and hope. Listening to the emotional outpouring, her heart pumped faster. Her eyes welled up. They made plans for his visit, then she said good-bye and hung up.
Sun came through the window, spilling butter on the bed, warming the skin of her arm. Outside, blue skies, puff clouds, all kinds of prettiness.
Plans to make.
She needed to make the place beautiful with her flowers. It wasn't too late to put in some azaleas for a fall bloom. She stuck the pills into her bedside drawer. Dusting his picture with a dishrag, she gave it a kiss and put it back on the desk.
She remembered the day the photograph had been taken, how eager he had been to change the oil on his first car, how she had begged him to read the instructions in the manual first, how he had gone ahead and got more of it on himself than into the pan. How hard she had laughed.
When they came, she would show the picture to Tammy. And then, Tammy would ask about her son's interesting expression. She would tell her all about it.
And then, Tammy would talk.
His Master's Hand
I am a cultured man. I am a lonely man. I am a nefarious man. My liver is healthy, and I expect to live well into my eighties.
I have my pleasures, and I enjoy my work.
Have you heard of Peter the Gravedigger? No, you have not and you never will because if the authorities ever realized I existed, they would staple my face onto every post office wall.
My profession is a solitary one. Oh, I am not the first. There are a few rudimentary practitioners in the Valley of the Kings, where there is a long history of my line of work. And of course, there is the woman. She is not in my league yet. I am the specialist, a professional with the highest standards. My work demands a strong back and a scientist's curiosity, and… but let me give you an example.
In the summer of the year 200-, I needed funds. My bank account at the time would appear large to you, but my interests are expensive. A generous contributor to several charities and a certain political party, in that pivotal election year I had outdone myself in more ways than one. Christie's chose that moment to announce a forthcoming auction of an incredible treasure-the manuscript of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, written entirely in the Master's hand, which I had coveted since reading a copy as a boy, sitting beside a fresh grave while my father dumped dirt into a neat pile beside me.
In that chilly Upstate New York village of my origin, I began my odyssey through life, my small steps accompanied by the sound of a shovel, a man grunting, moist soil, and the gaping holes that receive life's detritus. My father, whose broken English inspired such derision from the locals, taught me after school in our shack on the edge of town about Tolstoy, Stendhal, about that European culture which America has so hastily forgotten… and about Dostoyevsky.
The Master's story, the spewed-out vitriolic phrases, laying bare the hypocrisies of the Establishment in his day, had turned my staid world upside down. And now his ms. was available to the highest bidder. To me!
Gates might acquire his Leonardo for $30 million, Spielberg could keep his Holocaust memorabilia… for me, the supreme collectible has always been the paper upon which was penned the immortal ruminations of the nineteenth-century Russian novelists, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and… the most tortured of them all, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky.
I had to have it. I contacted my New York agent for more details and found out the manuscript's probable cost. One lucrative job plus my current liquid holdings would suffice.
After driving to the library of the large university in my city one humid Sunday, I immersed myself in the academic journals. What I needed to find were the latest historical academic brouhahas. The Egyptian controversies I skipped; a one-man operation is unsuitable for an Egyptian project.
The University of Missouri Journal of American History mentioned a dispute over John Wilkes Booth's body. Certain academic factions alleged that Booth was not buried in his grave, but instead had fled to the Wild West after being-oh, please!-unjustly accused of the assassination of Lincoln. It had possibilities. Speaking of Lincoln, the old controversy as to whether he suffered from Marfan syndrome had heated up again. Then I waded through the usual Napoleona. Cause of the stout little general's death has never been indubitably established-a trip to the Isle of Elba might be pleasant.
Then I found it: a most acrimonious debate. The National Review of Musicology, a new publication of the Juilliard School with a slick cover photo of Mahler in his slippers, smoking a pipe, contained an intriguing series of letters. A Juilliard professor, Anton Sabatich, expert on eighteenth-century opera, was embroiled in a wintry and progressively more impolite exchange with Professor Arnhem of the University of Leyden concerning the cause of Mozart's death.
Sabatich refused to believe the young genius died of any illness, much less the atypical tuberculosis theory advanced by Professor Arnhem. The American, influenced perhaps too heavily by popular media, opined that Mozart had been slowly poisoned by his rival, Salieri, probably with arsenic. It's well-known that Mozart died penniless and was buried in a pauper's field.
I faxed Sabatich my standard letter:
Dear Professor Sabatich:
Regarding the death of Mozart: I can make you privy to incontrovertible scientific evidence as to the causa mortis.
Please fax me to arrange a meeting.
Sincerely,
Peter C.
Before lunch I had my reply, a very good sign, and I duly flew to New York City for a consultation. We met in the VIP waiting room at La Guardia. Sabatich was a short, hawk-nosed man glinting with fanaticism behind his spectacles. He never opened the heavy briefcase, presumably full of learned papers, which he held tightly on his lap. I discussed my ways, my means, and my price, ignoring the gaping of his mouth and the paling of his skin. By the time I finished, he had recovered his normal floridity and fallen under the calming influence of his own avarice. He agreed to my terms. He had money or the intensity of his need had overpowered his good sense. Usually, they try to dicker.