Jacob's Folly (31 page)

An elfin person sat behind a desk before her. Masha was not sure if this person was male or female. The name didn't help: Rathgar Kennet. Masha was looking at the window to avoid staring at the director too hard.

“I came to your show as a last-minute notion,” it said. The tight voice was high for a man, but low for a woman. “Because a friend of mine did the lighting design. I wasn't expecting to find such a powerful performer.” Masha looked back at the androgynous person: lank blond hair fell over a pale forehead, piercing eyes seemed to pin her to her seat. It worried Masha that she found this person attractive. So—male?

“Where were you trained?” Rathgar asked, glancing at Masha's CV.

“The Bridget Mooney School of Acting,” Masha said.

“Will you read for me, Masha? And then maybe sing a little?”

“Sure,” Masha said. She held the script pages before her, turning to the reader, a dark form in a red sweater. Masha focused on him for the first time now, noticing a set of beautiful white teeth.

The emotion buried in the text surprised her. She didn't think it would make her so sad to read those words in front of someone.

“Good. Now. I'd like you to sing.”

Masha had planned to sing a song from the Charcot musical for this audition. But when she took in her first breath, she realized she was going to sing K'vakoras, the exquisite Hebrew prayer she had sung in front of the men at her parents' Shabbat table, when she tore the napkin, all that time ago—when she was a child, it seemed.
Like a shepherd who seeks out his flock, passing the herd under his staff, so do You make pass by, and
number, and take account of, and notice the spirit of every living being
. She disappeared into the song, losing herself gratefully in its dark, winding passages. There was a moment of silence when she went quiet.

“Beautiful,” Rathgar pronounced. “I'm just at the beginning of the casting process for the film, Masha. So …”

Masha nodded, stood up. She was used to being told no by now. Expected it. “But whatever happens with this movie,” Rathgar Kennet added, “I'm glad I found you.”

R
unning from the Comédie-Italienne, the shots of the crazed count still echoing in my head, my lungs burning, I instinctively fled to my old neighborhood in the Jewish quarter.

I walked down the middle of my dark street. The moon shone on the wet cobblestones. An old lame peddler appeared from the shadows, his basket of rags strapped to his back. He gaped at me in my wig and livery. I tipped my hat, which seemed to frighten him. He hurried past me, limping up the street. I stopped at my parents' door. The street was silent. All good people were asleep. I thought with yearning of my old corner of the bed. Shlomo had it to himself now. I imagined sneaking in beside him. He would let out a bellow. I chose a dark doorway across the street, a few doors down, and waited for my father and brother to emerge for morning prayer. The night felt eternal. I kept dropping off, then waking with a start when my cheek felt cold, wet stone. I was so hungry. At last, at dawn, the Jews began their day. Men striding to prayer, women setting off with baskets of rags or used clothing. The door to my building opened, and my father, stout, glowering, officious, emerged, followed by the scarecrowlike Shlomo, whose gaze was always trained on his own feet. My father was explaining something to my brother, his arm waving.
Once they had walked up the block, I scurried into the building and up the stairs.

The door to our apartment was open. My mother was sewing below the back window when I stepped in. She didn't hear me. Buttery light softened her pointed features, made her look young. I stood very still, watching her, her head bent low to see the stitches. The room was bare; the furniture had been pushed to the walls, and an iron tub stood in the center of the floor, as it always was when there was a body to purify. As I have mentioned, my father was among those who prepared our dead. When someone found the body of a Jew, it was my father who was notified. The dead were washed, shrouded; then, the regime suffered us to bury them in cover of darkness, without fanfare, in silence.

“Who died?” I asked. My mother looked up. Nearsighted, she gasped at the liveried figure in a powdered wig standing there, incongruous as an apparition. Then, squinting, she stood. Her darned sock fell to the floor.

“Jacob …” It was almost a growl.

“Mother,” I answered. She walked toward me, into shadow. Reddish pockets under her eyes made her look haggard. I opened my arms, expecting to embrace her, to drink in the scent I knew so well. Tears sprouted from her eyes as she approached me. A low moan escaped her lips. She walked up to me, looked me level in the eye, and hit me in the side of the head.

“You're supposed to be in jail! What happened? I've been going there for months! They told me you had been released, but I didn't believe them. I didn't believe you could disappear like this!”

“Please, Mother, can I sleep here for the day, while Father is out? I am very hungry and tired.”

“Are you crazy?” she shrieked. “You're going back to your wife! Take off that ridiculous costume.”

“I'm not going back to that maniac,” I said.

“What kind of a man are you?” she whispered with frightening disdain, turning and opening the bread basket. She took a challah roll, cut it in two with a furious sawing motion, then hacked a thick slice of cured beef off a haunch hanging from the ceiling. Pressing the sandwich into my hand contemptuously, she drew me to her, kissing me hungrily all over my face, then pushed me away, tears running down her cheeks. I ate like an animal.

Just then we heard footsteps on the stairs. My ear was still hot from her slap as she shoved me into her bedroom. I heard shuffling, something being dragged along the floor. My father's stentorian voice boomed out a few orders. My mother came back into the bedroom carrying a bowl of stew, handed it to me furiously, and bolted us in.

“Who died?” I whispered between mouthfuls.

“Chayim,” she answered.

“Chayim Levi?” I asked.

“Be quiet,” she said, her eyes ferocious. She sat down in a chair opposite me and watched me eat. It was unnerving, but still I licked the plate clean. In the next room I heard the sound of water being poured over the body. The purification had begun. This could take ages, I knew, and it was making me thirsty. My mother would return me to Hodel, probably that afternoon. I would be yoking up my peddler's box by morning. I had to get out. I stood and walked to the door. My mother's exhausted eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets as she beseeched me silently to stay in the room. But what was there to lose? I unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen.

My father and Shlomo were standing on stools holding beakers of water. The tall, wasted body of Chayim the petty criminal was on a slanted board, held up by two strong men.

The board was propped inside a metal tub. My father was pouring a cascade of water over the naked dead man, washing his sins, the only things that had distinguished him, away. Poor Chayim, the rake. His jaw was tied shut with a strip of white muslin. In life, he had never
shut up. He had loped around the neighborhood whenever he was in Paris to sell some gems or seed pearls, his coat flapping open, ragged slippers on his feet, his deep-set eyes glimmering with anarchic humor. It didn't seem fair to cleanse him like this without his permission. The water glided, shining, over the wasted flesh, gradually filling the metal tub. My serious brother stood at the ready with his beaker. The flow of water over the body must not be interrupted. My father looked up and clapped eyes on me. He took me in slowly, from head to toe. The flow of his beaker thinned. My father turned to Shlomo, who was now staring at me, and told him to begin pouring. When Shlomo began, my father got off his stool and turned his back to me, watching the proceedings. I could hear my mother sobbing in the next room. I thought about going in to her, but I couldn't bear to.

I was almost down the stairs when I heard her shouting my name. I turned. Her face swollen from weeping, she ran down the steps, stuffed a few coins into my hand, kissed me on the mouth, then ran back upstairs.

I spent a week in flophouses or sleeping in parks. I wrote to Solange, begging her to meet me at eight o'clock at night one evening, any evening, at a certain fountain in the Tuileries, with my earnings from the bet. Every night for two weeks I waited for her. I began to get to know the night life there. Once the sun set, figures moved silently, furtively, through the hedges. Fine carriages slowed and were approached by silken shadows. Figures alighted and were dropped off, flitting back into the darkness. A great deal of money was exchanged as I waited, hungry, for Solange. One night a well-dressed man sat beside me on the cool stone rim of the fountain. He wore a powdered wig. His face was very pale in the moonlight. He was looking at me intently from under long lashes. I said nothing.

“I've had a long night,” he said. “But my rod is ready.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Let's go,” he said, grabbing my hand. I looked at him stupidly.

“Are you deaf?” said the man. “I'll pay you thirty sous!” At that, a man with an enormous mustache, a rarity in those days, emerged from behind a neighboring shrub.

“You are both under arrest!” he pronounced. Beside him, an officer of the watch shook his leg, trying to get his circulation back after squatting in that bush for hours, I guessed. My companion on the bench turned to me with a withering look. “
Sale mouche
,” he muttered, then rose to meet the inspector with great hauteur.

“I am the Marquis de Saumane, second cousin of the Duc de Condé,” he said. “Do you still want to arrest me?”

The inspector was flustered and bowed his head. “In this case, monsieur, I will be happy with your pledge that you will no longer indulge in the Italian vice, at least not in such a public way. Our sovereign has made it clear he will not abide by it.”

“What is your name?” asked the man.

“Inspector Marais. I act on the pleasure of the king.”

“You are the famous Inspector Marais?” said the marquis, smiling. “I hear the king sits in bed with Mme de Pompadour and reads out your reports on the intimate habits of the noblesse. I hear that the royal consort finds it all very entertaining.”

“The king wishes me to keep track of the nobles of Paris, and I do so. What he does with the information I give him is his own affair,” said Marais, raising a low-slung chin. It was dark, but I imagined he was blushing. The marquis gave a little snort and walked off. Marais dismissed the officer with a shrug. The man walked off to find more scenes of Sodom, still limping slightly. Marais looked down at me.

“I really was just sitting here,” I said.

“I know,” said Marais.

“You're not going to arrest me?”

“No,” said the inspector, sitting down beside me, his large behind drooping over the rounded rim of the fountain. He eyed my livery. “You are in service?”

“I was. I lost my job,” I said.

“Well, that is fortuitous,” Marais said, smoothing his mustache. “Because I have one for you.”

So began my life as a honey trap, a “
mouche
,” a fly to catch the spiders. Every night I reported to the Tuileries at nine o'clock, meeting up with my fellow informer, Georges, a desperate young runaway from the country with broad shoulders and stubby legs. Clearly, Marais was looking for two physical types. I was meant to attract the men who were looking for a slip of a thing. Georges could have killed his potential customers with his bare hands. Marais had given me money to buy a set of gentlemanly clothes to work in. I found a yellow silk jacket and britches at Les Halles. The job also came with a place to live: I roomed with Georges in a furniture-free rented room near the Tuileries. We shared a straw mattress on the floor.

Eventually Solange appeared one night, her back rigid, slender hands firmly jammed in a muff, despite the warm weather. She had been trying to find me for days, she said. My money was gone—and so was Le Jumeau. He had found my stash and fled with the well-padded cook. So that was that. Solange gave me a few sous, her mouth turned down with dismay. “Ah, Johann,” she said. “What has become of you?” She took me for a prostitute. I didn't bother to set her straight. My current occupation was not much better than whoring.

For several months I worked for Inspector Marais. I was good at the flirting. I got reprobates of all types arrested, from chimney sweeps to men of the Church. For me it was a game, an act. Georges took it much too seriously. He felt ashamed of posing as a pederast, and often cried himself to sleep on our lumpy straw mattress. It was impossible,
he explained to me, for him to return home. His father, a violent drunk, would almost certainly kill him.

One night, Marais and his policemen were nowhere to be seen and I had trapped a man ready to give me a fat sack of coins for my services. He offered to take me to his home—a rarity. I went. It did me no harm.

L
eslie lay beside Deirdre as she slept, his chest tight with longing. His body was corrupted by need for the girl. There was no pure bit left in him, clean of her. He imagined an automobile turned over. She was in it, unconscious, blood on her face. No: screaming, awake, pleading with him. He held the Jaws of Life in his hand, a great pair of scissors to open the car like a can. And she, inside, soft and vulnerable as her carapace was removed, reached her trembling arms out to him. The charge of the scene was overwhelming to him. He stood, ruffling his hair and passing his hand over his face. He looked down at Deirdre sleeping. She seemed inanimate, alien. He had no way to reach her. He walked to the window. The moon was full, fading against the tender blue dawn sky. Down on the lawn the orange cat, the interloper, was stretching himself. The two Senzatimore cats stalked around him in a peculiar servile fashion, tails up. Two more felines emerged from the shadows. Several were skulking down the street. Leslie's lawn was filling up with cats. He stood and watched, incredulous. It was eerie. They all seemed to be swirling around the orange cat. Some were yowling. A fight broke out somewhere. He worried for his own cats. He should go out there and break this up.

He hurried downstairs in his slippers, pulling on his robe over his
T-shirt and pajama bottoms. He walked into the teeming yard, looking for his pets. “Trix! Patty!” It was impossible to tell them apart from the other animals in this half-light. The cats moved with savage delicacy from one point to another with no apparent cause. Why were they here? Leslie tried to shoo them away, kicking out with his feet, clapping his hands. The cats would skitter away a few feet, then close in again. Leslie walked to the center of his lawn and looked around him. Cats were sniffing, mewling, stretching, yawning. Unsettled, he waded through the furry tangle of them and onto the sidewalk. He felt repelled from the house. Turning, he walked off in his pajamas and robe, meandering down a few streets in his slippers, until he found himself in front of Dennis Doyle's house. Dennis's squad car was parked in the garage. The kitchen light was on behind the shades. A paunchy silhouette crossed the plate-glass window. Dennis. Leslie walked up and knocked on the door. The birds were singing now. He could hear footsteps, shuffling. Dennis was arming himself, no doubt.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Leslie.”

Dennis opened the door. He was fully dressed in his tight uniform, gun in holster. “What's up?” he asked, ready for an emergency.

“I have about sixty cats in my yard,” said Leslie.

“Come again?”

“I couldn't sleep and I got up and looked out the window and there were all these cats,” said Leslie. “I've never seen anything like it.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing, I just thought you might want to see it.”

“I'm okay,” said Dennis, eyeing Leslie's pajamas. “You want to come in and have a cup of coffee? I don't have to leave for a few minutes.”

“Sure,” said Leslie. Dennis's kitchen was done up in aqua, one of Marcie's recent whims. Leslie sat at the gleaming table, his long legs splayed out.

“Why do you think that would happen—a convocation of cats like that?”

“No idea,” said Dennis. “Animals are weird. They get signals …” There was a pause. “I'll take a look on my way out in the car,” he said.

“It's a strange sight,” said Leslie.

“Everything okay?” asked Dennis. Leslie took a sip of coffee and grimaced.

“What?” asked Dennis.

“It's like water.”

“That's how I like it.”

Leslie put the cup down. “You come over to my house, I'll make you a real cup of coffee.”

“Invite me, I'll come over,” Dennis said.

“I am inviting you.”

“What—now? I have to go to work.”

“When do you start?” Leslie asked.

“Five-thirty.”

“I should leave you to it, then.”

“How's Deirdre?” Dennis asked, a little too quickly. Dennis admired Deirdre. Always had.

“She's all right. It's hard with Stevie sometimes, but she's fine. Life continues.” There was a silence between them. Leslie heard a car whoosh by. “How is it, with no kids?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Dennis asked.

“I just wonder what it's like. As a couple.”

“To be honest, for the marriage, I think it's good. Kids seem to get in the way of that. But … I think Marcie's sad about it sometimes. I hear you're working over at Ross Coe's.”

“Yup. He has a Chris-Craft I'm refurbishing. Wants me to do it all there.”

“I was called to his house a couple of times over the years, when I was stationed out in the Hamptons,” said Dennis. “False alarms.”

“It's a big paycheck,” said Leslie.

“I can imagine.”

Leslie stood up reluctantly. He didn't want to leave. Why did he feel the need to be near Dennis, of all people, when he found him so irritating?

Dennis was the last of the kids who had been playing in the cul-de-sac, the day Leslie's father died. Chuck Tolan was dead; the others had moved away. Dennis was the final witness. He and his parents had come by the house when they heard the news; Leslie could still see chubby, freckled little Dennis's embarrassed expression as he hovered near the doorway. To have your old man die was a tragedy; to have him hang himself was humiliating. Leslie resented Dennis for having been there. Yet it made him feel close to him, too, this shared horrible thing. Neither of them had ever mentioned it.

Back at the house, the cats were gone. Leslie called his own animals, but they were nowhere to be seen. It was as if the whole thing had never happened. When he returned to the bedroom, Stevie was sleeping in the center of the bed beside Deirdre, his skinny arms flung wide. Leslie gingerly climbed under the covers and gathered the boy to him, cuddling him, kissing his warm, soft cheek. Stevie snuggled in, resting one small hand on Leslie's shoulder. Without warning, Leslie's chest quickened, tears sprang to his eyes. He buried his face in Stevie's birdlike chest and sobbed. The boy stirred, but he didn't wake.

Deirdre heard her husband crying. She put her hand on his shoulder, but he huddled in toward Stevie. Sliding her hand down his arm, she lay still, her eyes on the ceiling. Something bad was happening to him. She didn't think it was just the girl.

An hour later, Stevie woke. Deirdre took him downstairs, then to school. When she came back home, Leslie was still in bed. His eyes were open. I was replaying the fire rescue of Masha over and over in
his mind. And words too, injected into his brain with the needle precision of a mosquito:
Get up. Go to her house. Tape open the door. Needs to happen soon. In and out in fifteen minutes. Rescue her
.

“You want some coffee?” Deirdre asked him. He shook his head, but his eyes stared out the window, vacant. She sat down on the bed.

“What I said about you last night. It's not what I think. You know that.”

“It doesn't matter,” he said. When she left the room, Leslie rose. He walked over to Deirdre's purse and peered inside. A packet of Marlboro Golds were nestled amongst the debris of everyday life. He opened the pack and drew out one clean white cylinder.

Late that morning, Leslie drove to Masha's Victorian wearing his navy fire department casual jacket and matching trousers. He knew her schedule: she was at the Coes' at the moment, ironing out her accent with Doris van Hoff. Striding up to the front door, a clipboard cradled in his massive arm, he knocked on the door. A worker, a short young fellow with a scraggly blond beard, opened the door and let him into the basement without question. The respect in the man's eyes shamed Leslie, but he stayed his course. He felt he had been supplanted by something else, a story spooling out of him. It was almost a relief to give in to it.

The basement was neater than he had imagined, swept clean and bare but for the washer and dryer set against the back wall, and two wicker laundry baskets tucked under a long table. Leslie walked over to the dryer, shimmied it away from the wall a few inches, and checked the gas feed pipe. He leaned down, took a small wrench from his jacket pocket, and loosened the lead to the dryer. Then he tightened it back up. He pushed the dryer back in place, walked over to the door leading to the outside. He took a roll of silver duct tape from his pocket, ripped a piece off with his teeth, and taped the door strike
open. Then he walked back up the stairs into the front hall of the house. He could hear the workers in the living room.

“Thanks,” he called out to them.

That night, Leslie was on duty. He slept in the den, like always, in case his pager went off. Nothing strange about that. He stretched out on the couch and stared through the window. He told himself if he slept through the night, he would forget the whole thing.