"What kind of soup is this?" Gene asked. "It's very good," he added, although it tasted like beets.
"It is 'borshch,' made from beets and other things," She exchanged a few rapid words with Vasilisa. "This kind is from the Ukraine. It is with vegetables and 'kolbasa' --that is the sausage. I myself know nothing about it," she added. "My mother would never let me enter the kitchen, but Vasilisa knows all. Everything."
The other woman beamed. "You like?"
"It's very good." And, in fact, he thought he was getting used to it.
Vasilisa took away the bowls and brought in a huge pastry, then three other dishes. The pastry turned out to be filled with salmon and mushrooms; it was meltingly delicious. With it they ate little carrot patties covered with a pale sauce; golden poppy-seed rolls; and some green vegetable cooked so thoroughly that it was like a pudding. Gene had a tall glass of milk, but the other two drank wine. For dessert they had triangular pastries filled with fruit and nuts.
"Now we will have coffee in the living room," Madame Porgorny announced. Gene's coffee was in a cup, but Madame Porgorny had hers in a glass. "So, did you have enough to eat?" she asked him. Gene smiled; he was stuffed so full that he felt he could barely move. "Good. You are still growing; you must eat, eat, to grow strong. Come into the light." She led him to a little table and sat down opposite him.
"You are a very strange young man," she said, and took his arm. "See here, not a blemish. For everyone is something, a mole, freckle, but for you, nothing. Show me your teeth." Feeling like a fool, Gene opened his mouth wide. "So," she said, peering in. "Perfect. Even if I looked at you all over, I believe I would find nothing. Don't worry, I am not going to do it. Sit down."
She took a worn deck of cards out of the drawer in the table and began to shuffle them in her swollen fingers. The cards had designs Gene had never seen before: men and women in antique costumes, castles, lions, flowers.
"Have you ever had your fortune told? No?" She spread the cards, picked out one and laid it by itself on the table. "This is you." It was a young man in tights with a feather in his cap. She shuffled the cards again, handed them to him. "Cut. No, with your left hand, toward me, in three piles."
She took the cards back, dealt one on top of the other. "This is what covers you." Another, crosswise, on top of the first two. "This, what crosses you." She dealt four more in a cross-shape around the center. "This is behind you -- your past. This below, this above, this ahead of you."
She dealt four more cards in a vertical row to the right of the center. "Here are three major trumps. That is very unusual in reading for a young person. Their cards are always wishy-washy, not this, not that. For you, the cards are not wishy-washy. Also, here are many swords, covering you, crossing you, behind you. You have left a home where you were safe and protected, is that not so?"
"Yes," said Gene. His throat was dry. He stared with fascination at the cards, the woman's face, her swollen fingers.
"There was a struggle with an older man. It is not over yet. Ahead of you -- the Sun. That is wealth; you will be very rich. Do you think that will make you happy?."
"Yes." Gene smiled.
"No, it will not. Now here again, this is you -- the Hermit. Wealth will not be enough for you, you will also seek wisdom. The next card is your life now: you are satisfied, but you will not be for long. Next, this is what you wish for yourself. It is very little, You will discover that you want more. And this is your future -- the third major trump. It is Justice."
"I don't understand what that means."
"Later you will." She gathered the cards, tapped them straight, put them back into the deck.
"Could you read the cards again, Madame Porgorny? About the older man you said was against me?"
"Yes, if you wish, and then no more. It is not good to read them too often." This time she found the knight of swords and put it down, then shuffled and dealt as before. He recognized two of the cards besides the first one -- the young man with the feather in his cap, and the man with the row of cups.
"He wants to settle something that is unfinished. It has to do with you -- here is your card, do you see? He cannot settle it because of money -- either he has not enough or you have too much. Here he is beginning to plan something, and here" -- she tapped the lowest card -- "this is the Moon, the card of deception. That is how he will do it. Here before him is the Fool, he will not succeed." She studied the row of four cards on the right. "This is the man himself, he has suffered a terrible loss. He is strong, he has everything on his side. Here is his wish, it is for dominion, for mastery. And -- this I do not understand -- he will achieve wholeness."
Chapter Seven
Cooley was disappointed in Los Angeles; he spent a week there, going to art schools and asking questions, but found no trace of the boy. He drove north to San Francisco, checked into a hotel. The next morning, he got a city map at the desk, then went to a phone booth and tore out the page of the directory that listed "Schools -- Private." Seventeen of the listings seemed to have something to do with art. In his room, he called them one by one, found out their hours, and divided them into districts with the aid of the map.
That afternoon he visited the Academy of Fine and Useful Arts, the Adams Free Expression Art School, the Beacon Hill Art Centre, and the Co-op Art School. His procedure was always the same. He told the registrar, "My name is Andrew McDonnel, the painter -- maybe you've seen my work? Well, it don't matter. Now I'm looking for a particlar kind of model, very particlar -- the model agencies, they don't have what I want."
"What kind of a model, Mr. McDonnel?"
"Has to be a young boy, not more than, say, fifteen or sixteen, but he has to be tall. Now I thought maybe one of your students wouldn't mind earning a little extra money -- ?"
Then the registrar would open her record book and frown, and say something like, "No, we don't have anybody that young, I'm afraid. Here's a girl, but she's seventeen." And Cooley would thank her and say good-bye.
On the second day, at the Devonshire Gallery and Art School, the woman at the desk told him they had a student, Bob Young, who was sixteen, and she thought he was tall, although she really couldn't remember. Cooley asked when he could see the boy.
"Well, he's down here for Oil Painting on Thursday evenings at eight o'clock -- that's tomorrow. You could come and talk to him then."
Cooley said, "That's funny. I used to know a Young. Wonder if it's the same one. Does he live on Lincoln Way, by any chance?"
"No, Eleventh Avenue -- four twenty-five Eleventh."
Cooley looked up Youngs in the telephone book, and there was one at that address. The kid couldn't have been here long enough to get in the phone book, but there was just a chance that he had got himself adopted by somebody, or maybe he was living with a family and using their name at school.
He was across the street having his shoes shined at a quarter to eight the next day. He watched the students go in, first one, then three together, then a bunch. About half were college-age kids, the other half middle-aged women. There was one younger boy -- tall, sallow, black-haired. Cooley crossed the school off his list.
On Saturday, at the second place he tried, the woman said, "Why, yes, we do have a boy that age. Let's see, he's fifteen. Stephen Miller, and he is quite tall."
"Funny, I have an old friend named Miller -- wonder if it's the same one. Does he live on Lincoln Way?"
"What is it?" asked a loud voice behind him. He turned; it was a tall woman with an imposing bust and a black ribbon for her glasses; she was staring at him as if he were a burglar. "We don't give out addresses of our students," she said in a strong accent. "Why are you asking such questions?"