Quartet for the End of Time (2 page)

Then, without signing off, as was his habit, the Judge hung up the phone.

S
UTTON WATCHED AS HER
mother set the receiver down.

Well, that's all right, then, Mary Kelly said loudly, as though someone might disagree. Then she went into the kitchen and fixed herself a pot of tea. By that time it had become very still and quiet. There was no noise to be heard from the direction of the Mall or anywhere else. All the houses in the neighborhood, including the Hellers' next door, were shut tight.

As they waited, the hours lengthened. Now and then—in order to interrupt what seemed their interminable flow—her mother would get up and turn in a slow circle. Was Sutton quite comfortable? she would ask. Did she need anything? When Sutton replied that she was quite all right, as she did every time, her mother would press a hand to her head. Oh, the
headache
of it, she would say. The very multipurposeness of this expression—which, for as long as Sutton could remember, had been employed
by her mother just as readily in the most innocuous of circumstances as in the most acute—served to comfort them both. Once or twice its effect was augmented by something of a more material nature when Mary Kelly slipped away to the medicine cabinet at the back of the house, within which she kept a cure for just about anything you could think to complain of—and even some mysterious conditions you didn't know, until you were cured of them, you actually had. The bedroom, and its cabinet, was a further extension of her quarter of the house. It had been known as the “guest bedroom” until gradually Mary herself became its permanent “guest.” Now they called it the “back room.” Never “Mary's,” or “Mother's” room—though she not only slept there nightly, but also spent most of the late afternoons there, up to four hours at a time, the door shut tight.

Now, after each disappearance, she would return, looking momentarily refreshed, and say, Well, that might be some help. Are you sure you're doing all right?

Each time, Sutton assured her she was. But not an hour would go by before her mother would disappear once more—to fix tea, though neither one of them required it, or to go look up in the telephone directory the number of the police dispatcher, or the family doctor, just to have them “on hand.”

F
INALLY, THE TELEPHON ERANG AGAIN
. It was the Judge. Both Sutton and her mother got up and listened into the heavy handle of the phone, which the older woman once again held away from her ear.

Now—the Judge hesitated—I don't want you worrying over nothing, but, see, there's been some—slight—trouble, which I'll need to look into. Alden—now, look, he's
all right
. It's taken care of, see. Now, you just turn in—don't wait up. Alden's here. With me. Like I told you—everything's
all right.

W
ELL
,
THE
J
UDGE SAID
after Sutton had recounted all of this to him— her heart still beating wildly for some reason, though there was nothing in it the Judge would not have already known—that's good, very good.
Because—he gave her a quick, decisive nod—it's the truth. I've no doubt of it.

Sutton's cheeks were cooling now, her heart beginning to slow to its more regular pace.

It is best—the Judge went on—as I have always maintained, to tell the honest truth, whenever it is possible to do so.

There was something new, now, Sutton noticed, in her father's voice. At first she found it difficult to place, but then—she remembered. It was the same voice she had heard him use on the one occasion she had seen him preside in a court of law. Both Alden and she had been in attendance, accompanied by their mother. She herself could have been no more than ten—Alden, twelve or thirteen. They had sat at the back, and left as soon as the proceedings were over—their mother's hand ushering them out the door before anyone else had yet risen.

It had been a simple open-and-shut case, the Judge had told them— they knew even before it was over what the verdict would be. What else could it have been? A Negro, in the process of holding up a hardware store, had fired a gun and mortally wounded the wife of the store's proprietor. He had confessed to the deed without hesitation—pleading only that the crime had been unmeditated, resulting from the confusion of the holdup. The prosecution had argued, to the contrary, that the crime had been malicious in intent: that the young man in question was of “underdeveloped” character and would continue to prove a certain and perpetual danger to society.

Are these the sorts of “accidents” to which we would like our city streets prone? Accidents, ladies and gentlemen! the prosecutor had shouted. Nothing happens out of the blue—on its own, and for
no reason
!

Then an exhausted-looking woman, in whose house the young man had once been employed, testified that on several occasions she had feared for her virtue in the company of the young man. At the time, the word
virtue
, used in this particular context, had confused Sutton, but she knew enough not to ask her mother about it—that it was something that had, for good reason, been left undefined.

In the end, the maximum penalty was served: death by hanging. Sutton
felt her blood thrill suddenly in her veins as the verdict was read. A murmur rippled through the crowd. There was no time to observe the reaction more closely, however—or assess her own. Her mother was already pulling her up by the hood of her spring coat and ushering her out the door. What was it within her that had thrilled at the mention of the accused man's demise? Now, as she listened to her father speak— that same note ringing out in his voice as the one she had heard all those many years before—she tried to recall it: the particular dimensions of the sensation she had felt at that moment as the verdict was read. It seemed it was almost possible—that it was a thing that might, after all, prove measurable. But still she could not ascertain the slightest thing about it—where it had come from, and what it meant to have found it so suddenly within her own body.

Later that evening she overheard her mother speaking sharply to her father.

That was
hardly
a suitable case for children, Stephen, her mother had said. If I'd known— But Sutton never was to find out what it was her mother might have, but had not known, because her father ended the conversation abruptly.

Mary, he had said. Justice is justice! There's never a time where that is not observable, even—or especially—by the very young.

S
OME HOW, THAT PHRASE
—her father's voice, and those words, beginning with her mother's name—became inseparable for Sutton from the memory of the accused man's face, as he had stood quavering on the stand. It was perhaps the first time she had looked, for any extended period of time, into the face of a black man. She was fascinated by the way the whites of his eyes stood out in such sharp contrast against his dark skin. Even from that distance, in the back row, wedged between her mother and brother, she could see the way his eyes, when the verdict was read out loud in her father's voice, darkened slightly. They did not flash in alarm, or in fact move at all, but somehow there was a change—and she had witnessed it. It was that change to which the words her father spoke later, beginning with her mother's name, seemed, afterward, to
cohere. An almost unseen darkening of a stranger's eye. And it was that which was somehow evoked for her again as her father pronounced those words—
the honest truth
—so many years later.

Never again after that was she to see her father preside in court. Not only because of her mother's sense that the case they'd observed had not been “suitable,” but because, shortly afterward, her father was elected to Congress. From then on, he was a government man—the work that he did even more mysterious and difficult to understand.

T
HE REARE
,
OF COURSE
, her father was saying, exceptions to every rule. Times when it simply
is not possible
to tell the truth in the way we ordinarily would be expected—would, that is, expect
ourselves
to do. Times when, indeed, telling what might at first appear to be a
stretch
of the truth actually corresponds more accurately with the truth than the truth itself.

The Judge paused—only very slightly. Into this pause Sutton nodded slowly, her lips pressed into a tight line. She fixed her gaze, not on her father's face as he spoke, but again on the space between them— occupied by the hat.

The nod, though slight, sufficed; the Judge answered it with his own.

Sometimes, he continued, following her gaze and touching the hat gently, as if almost by accident, it is in fact the
exceptions
to the rule that constitute the strength of the rule itself. Because it is against these—but here, again, he paused. Abruptly, he withdrew his hand from the hat.

Is this something, he interrupted himself, you think you can understand? Because it is very important, he went on, that you do. Important for your brother, yes, but more … particularly … for your mother. You know—again he hesitated, peering at his daughter over his spectacles, which he had only recently begun to wear. She isn't always in the most … perfect health.

It was on account of certain—sensitive—
materials
, the Judge informed Sutton, a small but (here he cleared his throat and, once more, his fingers grazed absently over the brim of the hat on the table between them) rather powerful bomb found in Alden's position, that they now found themselves in the difficult position they did. Certainly it could be
a lot worse, the Judge admitted. Had the explosive actually
reached
its intended target they would, all of them, be dealing with one hell of a bigger mess than they already were. Alden—the Judge explained—had failed to cooperate. Indeed—the Judge was sure—he had never
intended
to cooperate with those
rightful
proprietors of the explosive in question, and its devastating goal. And so you see the matter is indeed—the Judge concluded—a question (depending on which way you looked at it) of being at precisely the
wrong
, or precisely the
right
place—and at either precisely the wrong, or precisely the right time. But that did not, he added quickly, prevent all of it, no matter which way you looked at it, from appearing, from the outside, very bad indeed.

Now, look, he said. We know some of the fellows involved in this business already. Communists, all of them. With nothing—as this incident convincingly attests—but the destruction of this country and everything it stands for in view. I hope that is clear to you. I have no doubt it is to your brother, now! It's just a matter of … wrapping things up. Putting the fellows we
know
are behind all this away—and for good this time. That's how it is with the law, see—it's not always as literal as one might wish it to be, or suppose. Even sometimes when you
know
something, without a shadow of a doubt—you still might not have all the right cards in hand, so to speak, to shut the case. Or to make sure that the truth itself (which is not, perhaps, though it be quite certain, necessarily held in hand) does not just … slip away. I know you don't want— the Judge said—any more than I do, for the men guilty of this particular crime to slip away. Especially (here he coughed drily into a cupped hand) at your brother's expense.

Now, what this means—he continued, after only the briefest pause, in which Sutton only stared across the distance between them marked by the hat—is that both your brother and I are going to be counting on your help in identifying the man
truly
guilty of this crime, which will (here he laid his hands down flat and looked straight at Sutton—for the first time, without a doubt, meeting her eye) require, he said, a slight …
stretching
… of the truth. Not a lie, see, because it is quite certain who the guilty party is. If I tell you the earth is round, but you have not yet
circumnavigated it yourself, does it stand that if you also should announce,
The earth is round
, that it is a lie? To punctuate his question, he reached out and once again laid a hand on the hat—this time squashing it slightly in the middle. In another moment, however, when he had lifted his hand again, the hat quickly regained its original form.

Hardly, the Judge said, in answer to his own question.

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER
, S
UTTON
found herself following her father down the long empty courthouse corridor, their footsteps—his low and hollow-sounding, her own sharp and high—ringing in her ears. At the end of the corridor, when the Judge drew up short, she—a pace behind— drew up, too. From that perspective, she could see only the Judge's set jaw, and beyond that a perfect rectangle of gray hair, where it had been cut above the ear with astonishing exactitude. A heavyset guard was seated behind a low table. Behind him, a long panel of glass reflected darkly. It was possible, therefore, from where Sutton stood, to observe her father undetected in the glass, as first he shook hands brusquely with the guard, then leaned down, and—with a furious gesture—signed his name in a book, which lay open between them. He turned, then, as if noticing Sutton for the first time, and motioned her to join them. The guard peered curiously at her as she approached—but when, a moment later, he saw her looking back, he blinked quickly and glanced away. She was handed the same heavy pen with which her father had signed his name, then asked to sign her own.

Beneath the illegible loop her father had made on the page, her own name appeared naïvely discernible.

Shortly after, the heavyset guard disappeared, only to reappear a moment later through an identical door into another room, separated by the dark wall of glass. It was only, indeed, after he had entered it that Sutton realized it was a room at all—and not just the reflection of the one they were in. Behind the guard, a long line of men—their hands fastened behind their backs, faces pointed straight ahead—followed slowly. Though she could see them very well, her father informed her then, they could neither see nor hear
her.