Quartet for the End of Time (21 page)

All right? the Indian said.

Alden nodded yes.

The Indian returned the nod, then he ducked through a low entryway, motioning for Alden to follow. Once inside, they were enclosed in almost perfect darkness. Alden followed the Indian hesitantly down a short flight of stairs, his hand on the rough wall beside him, so that he wouldn't stumble. At the bottom of the stairs, he could see that the small cellar they had just entered had been converted into sparely furnished living quarters with a bed in one corner of the room and a table at the center. A small lamp on a high window ledge cast a limited glow.

What—? Alden began—but the Indian put a finger to his lips, and pointed toward a third figure in the corner, at that moment just rising to greet them. It was Aida. Though Alden's eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the light, he recognized the contour of her shape immediately as she approached. What a relief it was to see her!

Alden, she said. She, too seemed relieved; she approached quickly, then drew up short suddenly, just before she reached him.

Alden nodded, swallowing hard for some reason—though for some time his throat had been dry. He placed his hand on the back of the child, whom she held in her arms. He would have liked to extend his hand farther; to have placed it lightly, instead, on Aida's cheek, which looked in the dim light even more drawn and thin than he recalled. He would have liked to have filled that space, whatever it was; to have brushed away whatever shadow had fallen there if it was only, as he hoped, a trick of the light.

Come. Sit down.

She indicated the corner of the low bed, and the Indian went to the window to remove the lantern still flickering there. Soon all three of them, along with the sleeping child, were seated together on the bed. The lamp cast only a small circle of light from the point on the floor where the Indian had set it; beyond that it was ringed with what seemed an even more complete darkness.

He'll sleep here, the Indian said, to Alden as much as to Aida. He isn't fit—

Alden tried to protest, but even as he did he felt a heaviness in his mind and on his tongue and the words that he did manage, if indeed he managed them, only reinforced what had been said. Aida nodded, and began to make up a bed on the floor.

And did you—? she began, looking up shyly from her work. The Indian shook his head.

We'll speak about it later, he said. Then, to Alden: Sleep. You are tired, and unwell.

I am well, he said.

I have just to look at you to see that you are not.

Perhaps not, he said. Perhaps I haven't been well for a very long time.

But still—the professor is right. I have not suffered, I have—failed—

But here the Indian rose abruptly from the bed.

I would advise you to sleep, he said. Then, over his shoulder, gruffly, and not to utter that word again in this house.

Alden nodded gravely. He understood.

I will not, he said. The dim lamplight, and the solemn beauty of Aida, as well as the vast quantities of alcohol that had gone to his head reverberated within him, making him feel sentimental and sad. He continued, therefore, to quietly admonish himself. No, he said. It is true. I have not suffered. I have not yet even
begun
—

But he did not have time to finish his thought. He found himself suddenly breathless and choking, his body pressed flat against the wall. It was several seconds before he understood what had happened—or recognized the Indian, John, his large head nodding in front of his own, as the force that held him there.

What did I tell you? the Indian said, his white teeth flashing.

Alden's mind reeled. Certainly, he thought to himself, he must know the answer to this. But just as a word “at the tip” of one's tongue retreats further and further from reach the more eagerly it is hunted, so the information he so desperately required seemed to retreat further away from him—disappearing finally into the deepened shadows of the room.

What did I say? the Indian said again, but his voice was so close and
his face so obscured by darkness that the voice did not seem to be coming from him at all. It seemed instead to be only—a voice, and Alden began to wonder if it was not according to the force of a man, but the force of the voice itself that, in another moment his body was slammed again against the hard wall, causing a sharp pain to shoot through his shoulders and down the length of his spine.

I said, the voice replied—because Alden was very far from responding now—not to speak that word again in this house. Do you understand?

The pressure suddenly released from his throat, Alden slid from the wall—slumping against the Indian's shoulder. He heard another voice then, which at first he took to be only the sound of his own throat as it gasped, in confusion, for air. But then he realized it was the sound of Aida, crying. He strained to lift his head from the Indian's shoulder and saw that she had knelt behind her husband on the bed. That she still clutched the baby, who had not woken, white tears glinting on her cheeks.

Do you understand? the Indian asked again. But now his voice had changed; had become soft with regret.

Alden, Aida sobbed. Do you hear him? He is saying he is sorry. Speak, she begged of him. Speak.

He was able to respond only with a low groan, but even this proved such a relief to the girl that she began to sob again, this time out of gratitude, saying, Thank you, O my Lord, for your everlasting kindness.

Slowly, as the oxygen once more entered his blood, Alden began to search back through his memory and, little by little, like a man retracing his steps in badly drifted snow, to recall what had transpired. His mistake, he realized finally, had been in assuming that the word most terrible to the Indian's ear had been the same word most terrible to his own. As if in confirmation of this, he could hear the Indian remark, almost under his breath, but with a vehemence that rendered the words, nonetheless, even in Alden's state, distinct and clear: There has been enough suffering.

In that moment, as Alden realized more fully the extent of the mistake
he had made, he felt powerfully—almost unbearably—sad. There existed, he realized then, in every word the possibility of just such a mistake. And, as he sat there on the bed, the blood just beginning to return to his brain and to his heart, it occurred to him that the likelihood of his ever being able to speak aloud any word that would communicate within it the meaning he intended and desired was very slight. The realization swept over him all at once, indistinguishable from a wave of overpowering fatigue.

Very soon after that, he fell asleep where he lay—waking again only after the first fingers of light had pried their way beneath the makeshift curtain of the room's single window, which opened onto the street.

A
IDA WAS ALREADY AWAKE
. She paced the floor slowly, as the child, Felicity, cooed—her small voice dissolving the moment it was uttered into the warmth of Aida's hushed replies. The comforting sound, as well as a dull pain in his throat where it had been bruised, distracted him temporarily, but soon—as, gradually, he made sense of his surroundings and recollected the events of the night before—a powerful shame swept over him.

Just as it did, the Indian's step was heard on the stairs and, a moment later, he appeared before them. To Alden's great relief, however, the Indian merely grinned in Alden's direction—then inquired teasingly (as if what had transpired between them had little to do with either of them, and was of little consequence) after his health. Attempting to match the Indian's tone, Alden assured him he was well. But as he rose from the bed in order to prove that this was so, he found that the throbbing of his head increased, and that his feet under him proved unsteady. Slowly, he made his way to where the Indian and Aida, along with the child—who had begun to call out in a shrill repeated cry—were already seated at the table. By the time he reached them, the child had grown quiet, and too late Alden realized this was because Aida had raised the child to her breast. As eyes will on anything uncommon to them, Alden's lingered longer than was necessary on the child's head—pressed there, against its
mother's breast—before, remembering himself, he averted them sharply, his cheeks burning.

If the Indian sensed Alden's discomfort, he did not let on. He had already begun to speak in a deep and measured voice, as though recounting an old story, which he knew by heart. And yet it was not an old story. It was, instead, the recent events of the twenty-eighth of July that the Indian recounted then—beginning from the moment he had last seen Alden; just before he had departed, along with Douglas and Arthur, in the direction of the National Mall.

He made no mention, in front of Aida, of the “sensitive materials” he himself had, a moment before, transferred into Alden's care, but instead began his account immediately after the three of them—Alden, Douglas, and Arthur—had taken their leave.

It was very soon after that (the Indian said, his eyes darkening), that the trouble broke. He and Aida herded—suddenly—like animals from their tents. Then a noise like a shot—or a whip being cracked. And after that … it was as if all the pressure that had built up in that stinking swamp over the long months broke at once, and now there was nothing to do but be swept along with the force of the tide that moved to fill the breach that had been torn. To pour out—a great mass—moving not because they had direction but because they did not.

And so it was that in my one hand, the Indian said, I held Aida, and in the other the girl, and we fled through the streets and it was as if we were one body moving, pressing toward the opening at the end of the row, where there was no opening now. We moved like sleepers, he said, in frustratingly slow motion, only half aware of the fact that we were not making any progress toward our goal, if indeed we had been able to determine one.

Then, just as we reached the end of Delaware Row, Aida screamed. And so I
heard
it before I felt it myself: a searing pain. It seemed as though it was the pain itself that blinded me, independent of any cause, because there did not appear to be one. But then I felt it, and the child—felt her go stiff in my arms. I worried that I had held her too tight and squeezed
the life from her, but I could see nothing and I was scared that if I loosened my grip she might slip from my grasp and that then I might never be able to find her, so I continued to hold her tightly, but now I was frightened by my own strength and the pressure of my arm against her body, which I could not gauge. I tried to speak, to say something in warning or comfort to Aida or the child, but when I opened my mouth I only choked on the air, and I felt as if it would kill me before I managed to bite from it a single word.

A
IDA AND
A
LDEN
,
AND
even the child, were still; they had hardly breathed while the Indian spoke. But now he was silent, and Alden realized that both he and Aida had redirected their attention to him. That the Indian had asked him a question.

Douglas. Arthur.

He shook his head. Both Aida and the Indian continued to regard him silently, still waiting for his reply.

You see, the Indian said, when still Alden said nothing, it seems that Arthur's been detained—for a reason yet to become clear. There was some—he continued—altercation with the police, the boy said. But beyond that he knew nothing. Now the Indian looked up at Alden sharply.

Chet's looked into it, he continued, but has not been able to get very far. The charges, you see, are not exactly … proportionate … to the boy's account of what transpired. Again the Indian paused. He seemed— he began again—to be under the impression that you were also there— at the time of the arrest. I thought perhaps—still he regarded Alden, his eyes seeming to see deeper and deeper with every word—you might be able to help us understand the situation, and that perhaps if we knew more, we might—

Alden shook his head. No, he said. His voice harsh, and feeling particularly painful now in his throat. Again the Indian's gaze dropped swiftly away.

There was some confusion, Alden said. I believe … a policeman was hurt. But I did not see what happened—and I know nothing of what happened to either Douglas or Arthur after I was released.

This was not altogether a lie.

And the negotiations—the Indian was saying—for your own release. Was there anything in their nature that might shed any light on the charges that Arthur is faced with now?

Alden was beginning to feel ill. He was certain the Indian could see it; could detect—but what, exactly?

He shook his head. The Indian was silent for a time.

Finally, it was Aida who spoke—raising her head from where she had buried it in the child's dark hair.

Well, she said, I suppose in that we are no closer we are no further away.

After that there was nothing but silence between them.

—

L
ESS THAN TWO WEEKS LATER
—
IN A MOVE THE PROFESSOR CONSID
-ered inspired (and which, incidentally, he had thought up himself), Alden had a job at the
Washington Post
. Judge Kelly (just as the professor had anticipated) was relieved, in light of current circumstances, by Alden's sudden expression of interest in anything at all; he had therefore been more than happy to approach Mr. Gradon Stanley—editor in chief—with whom he happened to be personal friends. Alden had flunked out of two of the four core subjects in his final high school year, and flatly refused to attend college in the fall—but despite this, as a favor to his old friend the Judge (who was not at all a bad man to have on your side), Mr. Stanley welcomed Alden with a firm handshake, and with that—he was a newspaperman. He was given a desk in the corner of the room by the door, which—swinging open and shut all day— caused a constant draft and rustled the pages in both the incoming and outgoing files.

This was merely a preliminary measure, the professor assured Alden. As such, his main job was … to do nothing. To behave as any entry-level copy editor might. To be ambitious—but not overly. To do his work—neither poorly, nor too well. He was expressly forbidden to
involve himself in party affairs, or express his opinion to anyone regarding the party—or politics in general. All of this—to be neutral and inconspicuous in every way—should have been easy, but for some reason—he couldn't help it—he was nervous as a cat. He would shuffle the papers from the piles in front of him until he wasn't sure any longer which ones were coming and which ones were going, and whenever anybody passed by, giving him an unsuspecting wink or a wave, he would begin to perspire, his heart slamming violently against the inside of his chest.