Bristol House (29 page)

Hazan returned to studying the drawing, holding it in one hand while the other tapped a restless rhythm on the arm of his chair. “So, Dr. Kendall, from May first you are in London, living in a flat where a mysterious monk is also in residence.”

“Only sometimes,” Annie said. “And except for the crazy business with the store on St. John’s Lane, Geoff can’t—”

The rabbi stopped her with another wave of his hand. “The matter of the grocer is a different sort of thing entirely. We will discuss it later. Now, I understand that you saw the monk when you were alone, before you met Mr. Harris. But after that?”

“The next thing was a phosphorescent glow,” she said. “From under the door of the back bedroom, where I first saw the monk. Geoff had come to Bristol House, and I went into the kitchen and saw the shining and called him. He came, but even though we were both standing in the hall looking at it, Geoff couldn’t see it.”

Hazan leaned forward and returned her sketchbook. “How long?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand.”

“The glow,” Hazan said. “How long did it last?”

Annie considered. “Thirty, maybe forty seconds. No longer. Possibly a bit less.”

“You concur, Mr. Harris?”

“Well, it’s hard to say, since I didn’t see it. But from the time Annie called me until she said it was gone . . . about half a minute, yes.”

Hazan’s feet began to tap out the same rhythm that his hand was beating on the arm of the chair. “As that sort of thing goes, a long time,” he said.

“What sort of thing?” Geoff asked. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. You are a skeptic, Mr. Harris. That is your right, of course. But in Judaism we have a saying.
Lo ra’ete eyno re’ayah.
‘I have not seen is no proof.’ Because you have not seen something doesn’t mean it does not exist. The world is full of mysteries. Dr. Kendall is not the first person to encounter one of them. Please”—fingers and toes still tapping in unison—“after the phosphorescent glow, then what? Tell me the rest.”

She backtracked to the bell, book, and candle incident, then described the singing and the unnatural heat. That part of the story took perhaps another five minutes. About halfway through the narrative, Hazan began humming softly under his breath. The sound was so muted, Annie wasn’t sure he knew he was making it.

“‘Seek here the Speckled Egg,’”
she said finally. “Written diagonally in Tudor script across my bathroom mirror. In moisture caused by steam that should not have been there. And when I snapped it with my cell phone camera, it didn’t show up. Not on the phone and not on my computer.” Then, thinking of what he’d said about television: “My cell phone has a camera, and normally I can—”

Hazan nodded toward his desk. “About that I know.”

There was a sleek laptop on it, open so she could see the perky apple etched on the cover. Juxtaposed with the untrimmed beard and the fringes and the humming and tapping, the high-end computer should have seemed peculiar. The impression of a powerful intellect served to pull it all together. “A man of many parts,” she said, then blushed furiously, thinking it sounded condescending. “I don’t mean to—”

He chuckled. “You are expecting me to have certain attitudes and practices, and you are surprised when I do not. I am classically Orthodox, Dr. Kendall, not a member of a Hasidic sect. Today in Britain Jews such as myself are outnumbered, but I assure you we are not a dying breed. Even in America. Now . . . please . . . I have to think how to explain what I can tell you and what I cannot. And why. Please,” he repeated, “have a bit of patience.” He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. The humming began again. Annie and Geoff waited. After a time Hazan said, “I think we must not be misled by the differences between supernatural and preternatural.”

“Above nature or simply beyond it,” Geoff said.

“Exactly. Your experience with the provisioner in St. John’s Lane, Mr. Harris. That might be neither. It could be only a hoax, a clever charade. An empty store taken over for a few hours by someone who wishes for one or another reason to cause you to buy quail eggs.”

“That’s impossible,” Annie blurted. “First of all, why? Second and even more important, no one knew we were going to be walking along that street at that time.”

Geoff looked as if he’d been drowning and just caught a lifeline. “I don’t know, Annie. Maybe—”

“It’s absurd,” Annie said.

Hazan stepped into the chasm between them. “I agree it is unlikely, Dr. Kendall. But you must admit it is not impossible. Which is my only point. Further, that was a single experience, whereas the things you have encountered at Bristol House have been recurrent and have taken a variety of forms. That makes them much less likely to be a hoax. It’s a great deal more difficult to repeat a clever trick. The likelihood of being unmasked increases with each instance.”

Both Annie and Geoff nodded agreement. Hazan continued: “So in the matter of the Bristol House manifestations, we will rule out some elaborate charade with a purpose none of us can fathom.”

“Then you think,” Annie said, “they are mystical experiences.” Rabbi Cohen had told them that Nachum Hazan was the author of a number of books on Jewish mystics and Jewish mysticism.

“No,” Hazan said quietly. “I do not. I suspect it is a preternatural experience. But like the supernatural, it is never easy to explain.”

“I realize you’re an expert on Jewish mysticism,” Geoff said. “But in this instance Annie is—”

Hazan cut him off. “I know, Mr. Harris. Dr. Kendall is being visited by a Carthusian monk, most assuredly not a Jew. Trust me, it makes no difference. All mysticism is simply trying to understand as much of the One as the One wishes us to understand. It is probing what is known, not what is hidden. In Hebrew we call the attributes of what can be known
sephirot,
and ten are acknowledged. All of this is related to kabbalah. Rabbi Cohen tells me that the documents you were given by Philip Weinraub contain a kabbalistic code, but that even after he broke it with the aid of your mother, Mr. Harris, it meant nothing.”

“That’s right. The letter
A
repeated over and over. It makes no sense to any of us.”

“And that is why I can tell you that your code, whatever it may be, was not designed by a believer in kabbalah. From the first text we can positively identify, Isaac the Blind writing in Provence in the twelfth century, the purpose of kabbalah is to enlighten so we may worship with more fervor. If the code your mother and Rabbi Cohen found does not point in that direction, it is not a kabbalistic code. Only a code designed using kabbalistic techniques. And that’s why I do not think your encounters, Dr. Kendall, are to do with mysticism. Nothing that has happened, nothing you’ve described, indicates that you are being summoned to some greater understanding of the sacred. I suspect what is happening to you—perhaps even to you, Mr. Harris, in the matter of the grocer’s shop where none is known to exist—may be a kind of wrinkle in time. Not metaphysical, simply preternatural. Beyond what we know.”

Hazan got up, went to a bookcase, and pulled out a slim volume. “
Burnt Norton,
” he said. “T. S. Eliot.” He flicked through the pages. “‘Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future,’” he read, “‘and time future contained in time past.’” He closed the book and slid it back into position on the shelf. “That is the insight as expressed by a poet. Einstein came at the same puzzle in a more practical way. For him the simile was that of traveling on a river. In your punt—Einstein didn’t say that, but for me as a Cambridge man, always it is a punt—you can see only the part of the river you are on. The reach, I believe it’s called. But where you’ve been, the water around the river bend at your back, and where you’re going, the river bend ahead of you, those reaches are also there. They are always present. You simply cannot see them from your current position.”

“Dr. Kendall thinks,” Geoff said, “the monk wants something from her. She believes that’s the meaning of the message about seeking the speckled egg. But if he’s dead, living in some kind of afterlife, why would he want anything?”

Hazan returned to his seat. “You’re asking a question about belief, Mr. Harris. That is not part of this discussion. If you wish to come and see me sometime to speak further about such things, about your personal heritage, I would be delighted.”

She had, Annie realized, been effectively shut out. Not only was she a woman, she was not a Jew. She sensed Geoff about to say something scathing and jumped in. “I think you’re saying, Rabbi Hazan, that belief doesn’t matter. That the solution, at least in this case, is not outside nature but natural in a way we don’t yet understand.”

“Precisely. Looked at one way, your encounters raise questions about mysticism, about heaven and an afterlife. All of us, Dr. Kendall, want to know such things. But they are hidden. Like the name of the creator of the universe, in Hebrew, Boré Olam
.
That is one of the names we Jews use because
the
name cannot be known. On Mount Sinai, when Moses asks Boré Olam for this information, he is told,
e’yeh asher e’yeh
, ‘I am that I am.’ The nature of time is not such a mystery, only something not yet entirely understood by science.”

“If it’s science”—Annie could not keep the frustration from her voice—“not mysticism, why wasn’t I able to take a picture of the words? Why am I the only one who sees what I see?”

Hazan shrugged. “I have no idea. Science has rules, but something this far removed from what we know . . . who can say what the rules are, Dr. Kendall? Certainly not I.”

She considered for a moment. “So the bottom line . . . you’re saying I’m seeing around the river bend.”

“No, not exactly.” The rabbi spoke slowly, as if he were weighing every word. “I think I’m saying that your monk, whoever he may be and wherever he may be—he is seeing around the bend.”

22

Geoff had put the quail eggs in the refrigerator as soon as they brought them home. After they returned from Stamford Hill and after they had dinner, when they’d been analyzing everything Hazan said for maybe three hours, he took them out and put them on the counter and stared at them for a long time. “It could have been Weinraub,” he said finally. “Could have been. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And it could have been Santa Claus paying an early visit.” Annie loaded the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. “Look, I grant you Weinraub has the resources to put together such an elaborate charade. But unless he’s also dabbling in mind control, he had no way to know we’d be on that street at that time.”

“Hazan said it could be the explanation. It was the first possibility he mentioned.”

“He said it was highly unlikely. And he can’t be a fool, remember. He’s a Cambridge man.”

Geoff looked glum. “I will refrain from telling you how many fools can claim that distinction. But,” he added, “Rabbi Hazan doesn’t strike me as one of them.”

Their dinner had been something he called a gratin of celeriac, which sounded healthy and boring but became spectacular when he added cream and cheese and toasted walnuts. The baking dish wouldn’t fit into the dishwasher, so she put it in the sink and ran water into it. “You’re latching onto that idea because it’s easier to—”

The doorbell rang.

It was nearly nine. Geoff looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. He headed for the door.

The visitor was Clary Colbert, come, he said, so Geoff could talk him down. “I should have phoned, but that bastard got me so mad, I walked out without my mobile.” He looked at Annie. “See? I’ve been in this damp dark underworld called London too long. I’m beginning to talk like them. Without my cell,” he amended.

“Sit down,” Geoff said. “I’ll get you a drink.” Annie went to sit on the sofa near Clary. Geoff took a bottle of Dewar’s from one of the kitchen cabinets and began doing something with the coffee machine. “I take it the bastard in question is Rob Franklin,” he said.

“None other than.”

“What happened?”

“I went into the studio to finish up some stuff and caught him going over your notes for future shows. The Nubian was with him.”

“Well, well,” Geoff said. He was holding the cup below the stream of coffee but turned to look at Annie. “Time to put you in the picture. The other night when we had the knees-up for the retiring cameraman, Clary told me he thought Rob was trying to undermine me. That he’s been cozying up to an Egyptian newsreader affectionately known to journalistic London as the Nubian. Because of how well she’s endowed.”

“Best rack in town,” Clay said. He did not sound happy about it.

“She was with the BBC until a couple of months ago.” Geoff had turned back to the espresso machine. “Got made redundant in a belt-tightening exercise. Clary thinks Rob’s trying to get her a show of her own with our lot. Maybe make me superfluous. That’s it, isn’t it? Nothing more?”

“She was in the office with him,” Clary said. “They were going through your desk. What more do you want?”

“What advantage,” Annie asked, “does Rob Franklin gain if this Nubian gets a show?”

“Not a show,” Geoff said. “My show. There’s a limited number of slots for this sort of thing.”

“I thought Rob Franklin was your friend.”

“So did I,” Geoff admitted.

“He’s banging her,” Clary said.

Annie immediately felt sorry for Jennifer.

“Maybe,” Geoff said. “Maybe not. Not germane to this scenario. My program was already established when Rob came on board. He gets no kudos for making it work. If he produces a new player, makes her a star, that counts as his goal. Goes on his side of the score sheet.”

“He’s banging her,” Clary repeated.

Geoff came to join them, carrying a tray with a couple of cups of espresso, the bottle of whiskey, and another Schweppes for Annie. “You’re not exactly a nonbiased observer,” he said to Clary. And to Annie: “Clary and Rob have been oil and water from day the first. Except that our black brother here is the best techie on two continents, he’d have been gone long since.”

“Except that you didn’t let it happen,” Clary corrected.