“Well, I’m not sure, exactly,” I said.
He nodded and said nothing more.
“Have you written about Nächtlich recently?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. Why?”
“Remember the way we met Hannah Schneider — she was in Fat Kat Foods and then she reappeared at the shoe store?”
“Yes,” he said, after a moment.
“Ada Harvey described the same thing when she told me how Hannah met her father. She’d planned the whole encounter. So I was worried maybe you were her next victim, because you were writing something—”
“Sweet,” Dad interjected, “as flattered as I’d be for Miss Baker to choose me as her target — never been anyone’s target before — there is no Nightwatchmen, not any longer. They’re considered by even the most laid-back of political theorists to be a mere fantasy. And what are fantasies? What we use to pillow ourselves against the world. Our world, it’s a cruel parquet—murder to sleep on. Besides, this isn’t the age of revolutionaries, but an age of isolationaries. Man’s proclivity today is not to unite, but to cut himself off from others, step on them, grab as much dough as he can. As you know too, history is cyclical and we’re not due for another uprising — even a silent one — for another two hundred years. More to the point, I remember reading an in-depth piece about Catherine Baker being a Parisian gypsy in origin, so however thrilling it may sound, it’s still rather tenuous to assert Schneider and Baker were the same woman. Given the odd way she told all of this to you, how do you know she didn’t simply read a book, a real page-turner about the mysterious Catherine Baker, then let her imagination run wild? Maybe she wanted you to believe, for everyone to believe before she killed herself, that that had been her life, a life of upheaval and causes — she, Bonnie, some other dope, Clyde. That way she might live forever, n’est-ce pas? She’d leave behind a thrilling Life Story, not the dreary editorial that was her truth. Such are the lies people tell. And they’re a dime a dozen.”
“But what about the way she met Smoke—?”
“All we know for certain is that she liked to pick up men in food settings,” Dad said with authority. “She was looking for love amidst frozen peas.”
I stared at him. He did have a few infinitesimal points. On www.iron butterfly.net the author claimed Catherine Baker had been a French gypsy. And given the heaving-bodice posters in Hannah’s classroom, I could conceive how it was somewhat plausible she might devise a more exciting life for herself. Just like that, Dad could poke serious holes in my rowboat theory, make it look embarrassingly overdesigned and ill considered (see “De Lorean DMC-12,” Capitalist Blunders, Glover, 1988).
“So I’m nuts,” I said.
“I didn’t say that,” he said sharply. “Certainly, your little theory is elaborate. Far-fetched? Absolutely. But it is, in a word, remarkable. And rather exciting. Nothing like news of silent revolutionaries to get the blood rushing into one’s head—”
“You believe me?”
He paused and turned his face up to the ceiling to consider this, as only Dad could consider things.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I do.”
“Really?”
“Of course. You know I’ve a soft spot for the far-fetched and fantastical. The wholly ludicrous. I suppose there are a few details to further shape—”
“I’m not crazy.”
He smiled. “To the ordinary, untrained ear you might sound slightly unhinged. But to a Van Meer? You sound rather ho-hum.”
I leapt from the couch and hugged him.
“Now you wish to hug me? So I take it you’ve forgiven me for not telling you about my imprudent encounters with that strange and wayward woman, whom we shall now call, given her subversive connections, Blackbeard?”
I nodded.
“Thank God,” he said. “I don’t think I could have survived another blitzkrieg of books. Especially with that twenty-pound edition of The World’s Famous Orations still on the shelf. Do you feel like eating something?” He brushed hair off my forehead. “You’ve grown too thin.”
“All of this must have been what Hannah wanted to tell me on the mountain. Remember?”
“Yes — but how are you planning to dispense your findings? Will we coauthor a book, entitled, say, Mixed Nuts: Conspiracies and Anti-American Dissidents in Our Midst or Special Topics in Calamity Physics, something with a bit of rumba to it. Or will you write a bestseller with all the names changed, the proverbial ‘Based on a true story’ written on the first page to sell more copies? You’ll have the entire country terrified that unhinged activists are working as teachers in their schools, poisoning the minds of their dear dullard children.”
“I don’t know.”
“Now here’s an idea — you’ll simply jot it down in your diary, an anecdote for your grandchildren to read upon your death when they go through your belongings neatly arranged in an antique steamer trunk. They’ll sit around the dinner table, murmuring in incredulous voices, ‘I can’t believe Grandma did that, all at the tender age of sixteen.’ And via this diary, which will be auctioned at Christie’s for nothing less than $500,000, a story of small town terror will float away by word of mouth into one of magical realism. Blue van Meer will be said to have been born with a pig’s tail, the troubled Miss Schneider driven to fanaticism due to a love that went unrequited for centuries, a Love in the Time of Cholera, and your friends, the Miltons and the Greens, they will be the revolutionaries staging thirty-two armed uprisings and losing every one. And we can’t forget your dad. Wise and withered in the background, the General in His Labyrinth on his seven-month river voyage from Bogotá to the sea.”
“I think we’ll go to the police,” I said.
He chuckled. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“No. We have to go to the police. Immediately.”
“Why?”
“We just have to.”
“You’re not being realistic.”
“Yes, I am.”
He shook his head. “You’re not thinking. Let’s say there’s truth to it. You’ll need evidence. Testimonials of former group members, manifestos, recruitment processes — which will all be rather difficult to find, won’t they, if your suspicions about undetectable murder tactics are correct. More important, there’s an inherent risk when someone comes forward, pointing a finger. Have you thought about that? Coming up with a theory is all very thrilling, but if there’s truth to it, it’s no longer a round of Wheel of Fortune. I won’t allow you to draw attention to yourself, assuming, of course, any of this is true, which we will probably never know with any certainty. Going to the police is gallant for simpletons, for nitwits — but what purpose would it serve? So the sheriff can have a story for his donut break?”
“No,” I said. “So lives can be saved.”
“How touching. Just whose life are you saving?”
“You can’t just go kill people because you don’t like what they’re doing. That makes us animals. Even — even if we can never find it we still have to try for…” I trailed off into silence, because I wasn’t exactly sure what we had to try for. “Justice,” I said weakly.
Dad only laughed. “‘Justice is a whore who won’t let herself be stiffed and collects the wages of shame even from the poor.’ Karl Kraus. Austrian essayist.”