“It’s a good feeling. And it lets you, oh, get into yourself, sometimes in new ways.”
“Is that good?”
Her face clouded. “It depends what you find. But if you find something bad, you tell yourself I’m high, it’s just the drug, and when I get straight again it won’t apply.”
“And that works?”
“For me.”
“I was with several men once who used hashish. I mean that they used it in my presence, but I didn’t partake. They didn’t seem to be affected by it, and yet I gather they were very high.”
“I had hash once.”
“It’s the same idea as marijuana, isn’t it?”
“Well, like an orchestra is the same idea as a tin whistle. It’s tons stronger. Where was this, that you were?”
“Morocco. No, Tunis.”
“It must have been total dynamite. Tunis? What were you doing there?”
“Negotiating. There was an interest in mineral rights.”
“You were with some corporation or something?”
“I represented them. Just in that series of negotiations. Nothing came of it.”
She said, “I wonder about you, you know. For hours at a time. About your life. Who are you. You paint all of these pictures, but I can never quite see you in any of the pictures.”
“There’s really nothing to see.”
“Just a sweet quiet man who drinks mint tea.”
“And watches robins.”
“You know-”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. She got to her feet. “I can’t even pay you today and look, I stayed three hours, almost four. I guess I better go.”
There was a brief moment when he could have asked her to stay for dinner. He recognized the moment and willed himself to let it pass.
“I’ll be over Tuesday, then.”
“Yes, good. And don’t worry about the money. Please.”
“I should have it by then.”
“If you don’t, it’s no matter.” He walked her toward the door. “I may be out of town,” he said. “I can’t be sure, and I don’t know how long I would be away.”
“The Turkish cigarette?”
“Yes. Something I might have to do.”
He thought of the man who had smoked the Turkish cigarettes, and of the letter from Heidigger. Tampa. Jacksonville. Washington. His mind jumped through cities and time.
He said, “A favor.”
“What?”
“One I’ve no right to ask. And can’t honestly explain. Don’t go to Washington tomorrow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Call it a feeling I have. I’ve learned to live on my intuition. I find it more reliable than pure reason. You’ve said your presence won’t affect the demonstration any more than it in turn will affect policy. Indulge an old man. Spend the weekend here.”
She looked at him. “All right,” she said finally.
Twice more before the sky darkened he went to the kitchen window to watch the robins. The amount of work required of the parent birds was prodigious. They were constantly flying off and returning with worms to be thrust into gaping mouths.
He wondered why they bothered. Because they were robins, he thought, and that was what robins did.
Could they think, he wondered. Could they in any sense muse on the instinct, the irresistible urge to fill up the planet with copies of themselves? He decided they could not. The musers, the ponderers, would miss too many worms. They would build shaky nests. Cats would stalk them and pounce upon their reveries. And their seed would die, while less intellectual birds killed off the more thoughtful worms.
A wave of wholly unreal sadness enveloped him. “What shall I wish you?” he asked the birds, speaking aloud in English. “A long fruitful stupid life? Or fatal insight into the avian condition? Eh?”
He cooked some spaghetti. He used a bottled sauce, cooking a few sprigs of garden herbs into it. He drank a small glass of dry white wine with his supper.
Would she have enjoyed sharing this meal with him? Or would such an intimacy have made them nervous with each other?
A few minutes after nine he left his house and walked downtown. A neighbor, trimming a privet hedge with electric shears, waved to him as he passed. Dorn returned the greeting. At times he wondered what the neighbors thought of him. Probably they supposed he was doing something vaguely scholarly. A foreigner, a refugee, settled in a college town. No trouble, quiet, keeps to himself. Had they invented a role for Jocelyn? He smiled at the thought.
At nine-thirty he placed the call from a telephone booth in the hotel lobby. He told the operator his name was Leopold Vanders. A woman with a Latin accent answered on the third ring and accepted the call. The operator rang off. Dorn waited, saying nothing.
A man’s voice said, “Mr. Vanders? I hope your decision is favorable.”
“It is.”
“Can we see you tomorrow? It would be three times better that way.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“You received a letter today. The food is good there.”
“All right.”
“Until then.”
The line went dead. He held the receiver for a moment, then replaced it. The voice was not one that he recognized. He was fair-to-good at American accents but would have had trouble placing this one with assurance. Kansas? Oklahoma?
He left the hotel. He walked the several blocks to his house and noted the spring in his step, the increased vitality. Did one ever retire?
The dining room of the Holiday Inn in Tampa at three in the afternoon. Until then.
Two
Heidigger had a cowl of longish white hair around the edges of his large bald head. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses, a short-sleeved white shirt open at the throat, dark blue trousers, and blue crepesoled canvas shoes. His face and arms were deeply tanned. His smile showed several gold teeth.
“Miles Dorn,” he said. “Miles Dorn, Miles Dorn. Am I really to call you that?”
“It suits me.”
“Miles Dorn. You know, I think it does. There is a thick, blunt honesty to it. Miles Dorn. Miles. Yes, it works. I believe you’ve lost weight, haven’t you? I, on the other hand, have found some.” He patted his belly. “But I am more at ease with it. I thought recently of those times in my life when I was thin. Never gaunt, mind you, but thin. Genuinely thin. I was also miserable, or in deep trouble. Often both. So I cannot regret my paunch. You did eat, I trust.”
“Yes.” He had taken a table downstairs and ordered a sandwich and iced tea. While he waited for it a young woman passed his table and repeated a three-digit number twice. After he had finished his sandwich he went to the room that matched that number. Heidigger, alone, admitted him.
“Do you like my room, Miles Dorn? In the past few years, I have discovered Holiday Inns. The most extraordinary institutions! There is at least one in any American city you could possibly have occasion to visit. The most unlikely places have them. And you know what is so remarkable about them? Not merely that they are clean and comfortable. One expects that in this country. The big cars, you know. The soft seats in theaters. And the American bathroom. God, the American bathroom! I’ve heard it attributed to the Puritan heritage, a pathological absorption with cleanliness. Nonsense! Americans simply have an honesty that enables them to admit that human beings piss and shit and ought to be able to do so under the best possible circumstances. American toilet paper. I could write a monograph on American toilet paper. Have you ever stopped to think that this is quite possibly the only place in the world where a man can actually look forward to the prospect of wiping his asshole?”
“I hadn’t, but I’m sure the thought will never be far from my mind. Eric, is this room clean?”