I am not devout myself, although I am not an atheist either. Nor an agnostic, a position I consider absurd, and excessively timorous. I suppose I am a Catholic still, although I do not practice the faith. Like the demons in hell, I believe and tremble. If people ask, I say this is because certain positions of the hierarchy or the Vatican are repugnant to me, as if the church were not quite good enough to contain the glory that is Jake Mishkin, but this is not true. I abandoned worship so that I could be a devil among the women. Yes, my single expensive hobby.
Back to Monday…I was in the gym, which is at Fifty-first off Eighth Avenue. Part of the gym is a regular carpeted Nautilus operation for the locals, but the weight room is unusually well appointed. This is because the proprietor, Arcady V. Demichevski, formerly lifted heavy for the old Soviet Union. Arcady will give you weight-lifting advice if you ask him, and he has a Russian-style steam room with a masseur on site. This end of the gym smells of wintergreen, sweat, and steam. Arcady says the great lifters lift with their heads more than their bodies, and this I have found to be true. It should be impossible for a human being, however muscled, to heave a quarter ton of deadweight into the air, but it is regularly done. As noted already, I have done it myself. It is all about concentration and, who knows, some strange form of telekinesis. It is marvelously relaxing for me to spend an hour or so in the middle of the day lifting weights. When I am done lifting, and have had a steam, I can barely remember that I am a lawyer.
In any case, I had just finished a set of three-hundred-pound bench presses with Omar spotting me. As I was filling my water bottle at the fountain on the Nautilus side, I spied two men entering the gym. They spoke to Evgenia, Arcady’s daughter, at the front desk and I saw her point me out. They came over to me, showed their badges, and introduced themselves as police detectives: Michael Murray and Larry Fernandez. We are so prepped by the cop shows to be interviewed by the police, we have all seen it a zillion times, that when it happens in real life it is oddly anticlimactic. The actual cops looked like the guys who just missed getting the TV part: an ordinary medium-size Jewish-type New York guy and a ditto Hispanic. Murray was somewhat more overweight than they like to show on TV, and Fernandez had misshapen teeth. It was somewhat hard to keep a straight face as they asked me if I knew Andrew Bulstrode, because I imagined what we were doing playing out on the small screen, and I sensed also that they did as well, that they had even learned how to behave from watching N.Y.P.D. Blue and Law & Order.
I answered that he was a client of mine, and they asked me when I saw him last, and I said the first time was the last time, and then they asked if I knew why anyone would have wanted to harm him. I said no, but also that I didn’t know him all that well, and I asked them why they’d come to see me. They said they had found a binder agreement in his room in a residence hotel on upper Broadway that Columbia keeps for visiting faculty, at which point I asked them had anyone harmed him? They said that someone had visited him in that room on Sunday night, tied him to a chair, and, apparently, tortured him to death. They asked me what I was doing Sunday night, and I told them about Ingrid.
Tortured to death. They didn’t supply any details and I did not pry. I recall being shocked but, and this was strange too, not surprised. I neglected to tell the police about the package he had given me, for I considered that it was none of their business, not, at least, until I had taken the time to examine it myself.
THE BRACEGIRDLE LETTER (3)
So we began & I found I had a head for this worke-the numbers stuck hard as Latine never did. I learnt me what is twice two, twice three &c until sixteen sixteens & he expounded & I did fix it in my mynde how to figure therebye using but a pensille & paper: & also Division, as if a man wished to packe 2300 jarres twelve to a boxe how many boxes to be builded & what left in the last one alle figured with no board. He gave me besides a booke which was a wonder to me named DISME: or the Art of Tenths by a Dutchman Simon Stevins, & although you will be hard put to understand Nan I will any way tell you that Disme is a kind of Arithmeticke consisting in Characters of Cyphers; whereby a certain number is described & by which also all accounts which happen to humane affayres, are dispatched by whole numbers, without fractions or broken numbers. When I had shewed I was master of that he let me looke into his Euclid lately englished by Billingsley Lord Mayor of London. Which I ate as foode to a stervyng man or lyke one bounde in fetters, of a sodden set free. Beside this he instructed me in the art of the quadrante & other philosophickal devises that were I thinke ne’er seen on Fish Street before & taught me to make plats to scale from measoures wee took with quadrante & chaynes: also the elements of astronomick figuringe such as takynge Latitudes from the sun & divers stars: mee that when I began I sweare I knew not a Latitude from a cheese. So it was a greate thinge for me to accomplish this who had been accounted a slugg at schole.
This all in one sommer my twelft year: but now my father seeyng this taxed us sayyng what shal you not only be idle thyselfe but also tayke my clerke into idlenesse with thee? But Mr Wenke stod his grownde lyke a man quoth he sir this lad you have is as apt at the Mathematicks as any I have seen: in some few moneths he has learned near all I have to teach hym & will shortly exceede me. He, that is my father, saith how will this Mathematicks sell me more iron? Mr Wenke then says what I have taught the boye will grately spede the workynges of accountes, and to me saith, do you shew your father your Arithmeticke.
So I took pensille & a bit of paper from the fire-box & wishing to mayke a vainglorious shew I Multiplied two numbers of seven figures together. My fathere looked & he saith pah that is mere scribbling. Nay sir, Mr Wenke sayde he has it right. My fathere sayde how can you say so? For it would take an houre or more to mayke certayne that figure working with my borde. So we were at a stand; also my fathere had it in his heade besides that there were some thing papistical about such workynges as cominge mayhap from Italie or other landes under sway of the harlot Rome.
Nexte day he ruled I should studie no more with Mr Wenke & be made a foundry-man insteade, saying we shall see if you founder in this as well & laughed heartie at his witte. Soe amid many teares of my deare mother & I too wept most bitter, I wase sent off to my Bracegirdle cozens at Titchfield. The night I left Mr Wenke sought me privily & pressed on me the first ten bookes of his Euclid, saying I have them by heart in the maine & can buy more at Pauls if needbe & make thou good use of them. Soe I departed my home.
My cozzens workes at Titchfield were as unlyke the countynge-house in Fish Streete as one could well imagine for makeing iron is as different from sellyng it as slaughteryng oxen be from the sarving of a mete pye: by that I intend dirty hard callous brute work. My cozzen Matthew the maistre of the place was harde as the stoffe he mayde. Looking down at me for he was a tall grete beare of a man he sayde what a paltrie thinge thou art but we will toughen you or kill you before a yeare be out we shall see which it shalbe & laughed. But though I worked lyke a slave & slept hard on straw with the other prentyces this was not the hardest of my newe lot for I had been blessed by nice breding never a curse in my house & all orderly nor had I ever been much among sinners in the way of the flesh. But now I thought I was amongst vere devils. My maistre though he professed the true faith was a vile hypocrite verey sober in church of Sundays but otherwise a roisterynge knave he kept a punke in the towne & dranke & beat his wyfe & servantes when in cups & fed we prentices short commons in oure kennel. The prentices themselves I swear were become little more than beastes of the field fighting & stealing & drunk when they could filtch ale. They were upon me from the start like crowes at a carcasse on account of my manneres & that I was a relatioun of the maistre & mayde my lyfe a miserie, which I bore as I must, weepeing onlie in secrete & prayynge for release whether by deathe or some othere mercie I cared not. But now one of them Jack Carey by name a lowde booreish fellow spied me at my Euclide & ripped it from my hande & mocked me for a mere clerke & made to throw it in the fyre, then I lept up lyke a fiende, & tooke up a stave & stroke him upon his heade so that he dropped the booke & fell senselesse down & three of them muste holt me then or I would have done grete evil upon hym even murther I think for being overcome with my rage, for which may God forgyve me. But afterwards my waye was more easie amongst them.