“I wanted you to see,” Otto says, nervous and distracted. “I have been very conscientious since the last incident. I am doing much better, Doctor. I am feeling like a new man.”
As always, there’s no reply from the rear of the cab, not a grunt of acknowledgment. Otto understands that this is not rudeness per se, but a simple fact of the new methodology. And so he pulls out into Dunot and drives toward downtown without any specific destination in mind. He would feel so much better, could speak with much more clarity, he’s sure, if he had Zwack beside him, buckled in and riding shotgun, as they say. But it is another of the Inspector’s rules that the dummy remain locked in the trunk.
“I had another Gilrein dream last night, Doctor. Excuse, but Doctor—I have been meaning to ask, this is acceptable to you? A man with so many titles. It is hard to know which to use. Herr Doctor? Herr Inspector? Perhaps even Father Emil? Of course, I mean no disrespect …”
A pause, waiting for reassurance even though he knows it will not come. He turns onto Monaldi Way, notes that he’s low on gas, and feels his stomach tighten. Otto’s cab is a restored Bogomil Supreme, the limited edition that came with the sunroof and the tail fins. He’d love to crack open the roof right now. It’s an unusually cool night and he could use the air, but his passenger would have a fit and Otto can’t risk alienating the man right now. Progress could be just around the corner, a time when the nightmares and the migraines will finally cease.
“In the dream,” plunging back in, “Gilrein was again dressed in the Censor’s uniform, but he was not holding the knife this time. In fact, I had the distinct impression that he had misplaced the knife. I thought you might find this significant. You understand, I am not attempting to tell you your work. After all, you are the doctor. And I must stress, once again, how much I appreciate your efforts on my behalf. I still wish you would accept some form of payment.”
The passenger shifts in the enormity of the taxi’s backseat.
“Yes, of course, I realize the conditions of your arrangement with the facility. I researched the term—pro bono. But you must allow me to say, it’s only my opinion of course, the word of an ignorant droshky driver, but the people at the Toth, perhaps they do not realize the treasure they have in such an associate? Again, it is none of my business.”
The passenger gives out a dry cough. Otto flinches and the Bogomil jerks a bit and crosses the center line. He rights the hack as an oncoming motorcycle is forced to skid wide. The biker gives him the finger and a chorus of unintelligible obscenity.
“Forgive me, Doctor. The pills sometimes affect my concentration. And without sleep, well, you can imagine. I have a love-hate relationship with the night shift, Doctor. We avoid the traffic, but there is sometimes a loneliness in the empty streets, you understand? It is a different city at night. All cities are different in the night, yes? And yet, the night is an opportunity. I see things that I would never see in the day. I am witness to a parade of nocturnal oddities. Some of the spectacles are mundane, events that could happen in the glare of the noon hour. But seen at night, they are changed somehow. They take on a new significance. They leave a very different taste. Let me give you an example. Last week, over on French Hill, I saw a dog that had been hit by a car. Killed. A large dog. Enormous. A mastiff, I believe. This is the breed, yes? There was a small girl kneeling by the body of the animal. Just a child. All alone. No more than seven or eight years old, if I am any judge. Dressed in a nightgown. The girl was howling. Crying and shrieking and moaning in a way that I have heard referred to as keening. I am almost certain this was the term. I am sure this sound was what it meant. She was on her knees, bent over the carcass of the beast, her arms trying to lift the dead weight of the thing.”
“Now you would ask, why did I not stop and help the girl, console the poor child? And that question, Doctor, excuse, would show your ignorance of the taxi business and the night shift. You do not get out of your cab. You are only safe inside of your cab.”
“Another time, last winter, I was circling the rotary at Bishop Square and I looked up to the roof of the old train station and at the very top was an enormous burning cross. It looked as if it had been constructed out of two gargantuan telephone poles. And it was blazing. A genuine inferno. I pulled up next to the front steps where a woman was holding a camera, taking pictures of the flaming cross. I rolled down my window and she yelled to me that she was from The Spy, though I had not asked. I nodded to her and drove on. I checked the paper for the next week, but there were no pictures of this curiosity.”
“Do you begin to understand why I both love and, at the same time, hate my job, Doctor?”
There was a night last month. I had just dropped a fare at Camp Litzmann, a warehouse in German Town that sometimes serves as an after-hours club. I was winding my way back to the Visitation when I made a foolish turn down one of the service alleys of the textile park. The price I pay for seeking a shortcut, I know. My way was immediately blocked by a small crowd and they swarmed around me before I could shift into reverse. They were waving money at me, their hands stuffed with bills of every denomination and many countries of origin. I almost panicked, was ready to mow them down before I realized they meant me no harm. They were all locked in a mass gambling frenzy. A man like yourself, Doctor, a counselor, a healer of the mind, surely you know how frightening this kind of mob can initially seem. I shook my head at them as they pounded on my window and in the middle of my protests a space opened before me and I was able to see, for a moment or two, the nature of the sport upon which they wagered. There were two men facing one another within the confines of a chalk circle. They were stripped to the waist. They were connected, one to the other, by a long stretch of rope, the kind of taut, white rope used in the making of drying lines for clothing. The rope was tied at each ankle. It allowed them, at their farthest distance, to reach opposite curves of the chalk circle. They were chasing each other, perpetually maneuvering to intercept one another. And they were both bearing enormous machetes in one hand. A moment after I understood what was happening, one of the players charged his opponent. And in the instant they passed each other, the blade was thrust and found its mark, sliced into the unfortunate combatant and came close to severing his arm from his shoulder.
“I sometimes think that just seeing these things is like having a curse put on my head. Do you agree, Doctor?”
They slow to a stop at a red light and the passenger ignites one of his cigars, a signal that he will not tolerate much more digression.
“Yes, of course, Inspector, I’m wasting your valuable time. I apologize for the foolish ramblings of an old man. I would ask you remember that, even after all these years, the English is a second language to me. It never comes as easily as my native tongue. Gilrein and Miss Jocasta, they grow so impatient with me at times.”
“But where were we last night? Where did we leave off? I know I had come to speak of the July Sweep. As I always do. Everything leads to the Sweep and the Orders of Erasure. This should not surprise though, should it, Doctor? Surely I’m not the only Maisel Jew to obsess on this particular topic? If only I could explain it in the words of my people. It would all be so much more vivid. It would bring the event to life. I know, with as much force of certainty as I know my name, that I could not bear to live through the ordeal again. I no longer have this type of strength. There are times, when I wake from one of the nightmares and I am bathed in the sweat and the tears and the heart is doing things that it should not do, there are times when I wish I could give this burden to someone else. Hand it away. No matter what the consequences. No matter what this would mean regarding the kind of man I have become.”