She was, however, certainly no spinster. Jackson guessed her to be somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-nine, and on the whole, he found her almost beautiful, but if not quite that, at least striking. Her face was oval in shape and light olive in complexion. She wore no makeup, not even a touch of lipstick on her full-lipped mouth, which was smiling slightly now.
“Please come in, Mr. Jackson,” she said. “You are just in time for tea.”
It sounded like a phrase that had been learned early from someone with a British accent and hoarded carefully for later use. Jackson nodded, returned her small smile, and followed her into the suite’s sitting room, where a tea service rested on a table.
“Please sit down,” she said. “My father will join us presently.”
“Thank you, Miss Oppenheimer,” Jackson said, and picked out a comfortable-looking beige chair near the window. The Oppenheimer woman decided on a straight chair near the tea service. She sat down slowly, keeping her ankles and knees together, and was not at all concerned about what to do with her hands. She folded them into her lap, after first smoothing her dress down over her knees, and smiled again at Jackson as though waiting for him to say something observant about the weather.
Jackson said nothing. Before the silence became strained, the woman said, “You had a pleasant journey?”
“Very pleasant. Very... scenic.”
“And Mr. Ploscaru, he is well?”
“Very well.”
“We have never met, you know.”
“You and Mr. Ploscaru?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We have only talked on the telephone. And corresponded, of course. How old a man is he?”
“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, somewhere around there.”
“So young?”
“Yes.”
“On the telephone he sounds so much more older. No, that is not right. I mean—”
“Mature?” Jackson supplied.
She nodded gratefully. “He could not come himself, of course.”
“No.”
“The trouble with his papers.”
“Yes.”
“They are very important these days, proper papers. Passports. Visas.”
“Yes.”
“He is a large man, Mr. Ploscaru? From his voice he somehow sounds quite large.”
“No, not too large.”
She again nodded gratefully at the information. “Well, I am sure you will be able to handle everything most satisfactorily.”
“Thank you.”
Jackson had never prided himself on his small talk. He was wondering how long it would continue, and whether he might risk lighting a cigarette, when the blind man came in. He came in almost briskly from the bedroom, carrying a long white cane that he didn’t really seem to need. He moved into the center of the room and stopped, facing the window.
“Let’s see, you are near the tea, Leah,” the blind man said in German.
“Yes, and Mr. Jackson is in the beige chair,” she said.
The blind man nodded, turned slightly in Jackson’s direction, took two confident steps forward, and held out his hand. Jackson, already up, accepted the handshake as the blind man said in German, “Welcome to Ensenada, Herr Jackson; I understand you speak German.”
“I try.”
The blind man turned and paused as if deciding which chair to select. He moved confidently toward a wingbacked leather one; gave it a cursory, almost careless tap with his cane; and settling into it, said, “Well, we’ll speak English. Leah and I need the practice. You’ve already met my daughter, of course.”
“Yes.”
“We had quite a nice chat about Mr. Ploscaru,” she said.
The blind man nodded. “Damned clever chap, that Romanian. Haven’t met him, of course, but we’ve talked on the telephone. Known him long, Mr. Jackson?”
“No, not terribly long.”
The blind man nodded again and turned his head slightly so that he seemed almost to be looking at his daughter, but not quite: he was a trifle off, although no more than a few degrees. “Think we might have the tea now, Leah?”
“Of course,” Leah Oppenheimer said, and shifted around in her chair toward the tea service, which Jackson, for some reason, assumed was sterling.
Afternoon tea was apparently a studied and much-enjoyed ritual in the Oppenheimer household. It was certainly elaborate enough. There were four kinds of delicate, crustless sandwiches, two kinds of cake, and a variety of cookies.
While the daughter performed the tea ritual, Jackson scruntinized the father, Franz Oppenheimer, the man who the dwarf had said spoke no English. Either Ploscaru had lied or Oppenheimer had deceived the dwarf. Jackson bet on the dwarf. For if Ploscaru was not a congenital liar, he was certainly a practicing one who regarded lying as an art form, although perhaps only a minor one.
Franz Oppenheimer was at least sixty, Jackson decided, as the daughter served tea, first to her guest and then to her father. He was also a well-preserved sixty — stocky, but not fat, carrying perhaps ten or twelve too many pounds on a sturdy five-ten-or-eleven frame. Jackson concluded that it might be a good idea if the Oppenheimers were to cut out their afternoon tea.
Over his sightless eyes the blind man wore a pair of round steel-rimmed glasses with opaque, purplish-black lenses. He had gone bald, at least on top, and his scalp formed a wide, shiny pink path through the twin hedgerows of the thick, white, carefully trimmed hair that still sprouted on both sides of his head.
Even with the dark glasses, it was a smart man’s face, Jackson thought. To begin with, there was all that high forehead. Then there were a pair of bushy almost white eyebrows that arced up above the glasses which rested on the good-sized nose. The nose thrust out and then down toward a wide mouth with thin, dubious lips. The chin was heavy, well-shaved, and determined, perhaps even stubborn.
Oppenheimer ate two of the small sandwiches quickly, sipped some tea, and then patted his lips with a white linen napkin. There had been no fumbling in his movements, only a slight, almost undetectable hesitancy when he replaced his cup on the small table beside his chair.
With his head turned almost, but not quite, toward Jackson, Oppenheimer said, “We are, of course, Jews, Mr. Jackson, Leah and I. But we are also still Germans — in spite of everything. We intend to return to Germany eventually. It is a matter of deep conviction and pride. Foolish pride, I’m sure that most would say.”
He paused as if waiting for Jackson to comment.
In search of something neutral, Jackson said, “Where did you live in Germany?”
“In Frankfurt. Do you know it?”
“I was there for a short time once. In ’37.”
The blind man nodded slowly. “That’s when we left, my family and I — in ’37. We put off leaving until almost too late, didn’t we?” He turned his head in his daughter’s direction.
“Almost,” she said. “Not quite, but almost.”
“We went to Switzerland first — Leah, my son, and I. My son was twenty-three then. He’s thirty-two now. About your age, if I’m correct.”
“Yes,” Jackson said, “you are.”
Oppenheimer smiled slightly. “I thought so. I’ve become quite good at matching voices up with ages. I’m seldom off more than a year or two. Well, the Swiss welcomed us. In fact, they were most cordial. Correct, of course, but cordial — although that cordiality depended largely on the tidy sum that I’d had the foresight to transfer in a round-about way from Frankfurt to Vienna to Zurich. The Swiss, like everyone else, are really not too fond of Jews, although they usually have the good sense not to let it interfere with business.”