altar.
I stood in that room and thought of what Zeno, with a touch of bitterness in his voice, had once said, long ago, that you could plot family histories on a graph, as a line that rippled up and down, up and down, up and down; people made their fortune, their offspring benefited from that fortune, the third generation squandered it all, and the family returned to the bottom of the curve and began working its way back up. An endless cycle of profit and loss, wealth and poverty, rise and fall. Except for the history of our family, Zeno had said, that was a whole other thing. Our family history could best be compared to a railway timetable: one person left, and while he was on his way, another returned, and while he was busy arriving, others were setting out on a new journey. ‘Normal families stay in the same place for centuries,’ said Zeno. ‘If they do ever leave it’s a major historical event. In our family it would be a historical event if, even after just half a generation, we associated suitcases with a holiday instead of a new life.’
‘Right,’ said the doctor, who probably wasn’t much younger than the victim himself. ‘Let’s get to work.’ He placed his bag on the writing table, opened it, stuck his hand in the gaping leather mouth, and pulled out a spectacle case. The glasses gave him an air of efficiency, like a tailor about to pin up a hem. He went to the bed, moved the body over so he could sit down, and began poking and prodding. Then, peering into the dead man’s clouded eyes, he asked what had happened. I turned to the girl, who was still hunched over in her chair. She seemed to sense my gaze, and lifted her head. She looked extremely unhappy. ‘The doctor would like to know whether you noticed anything unusual.’ She shook her head. ‘Well?’ said the doctor. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘She didn’t notice a thing.’ The doctor frowned. ‘Are you saying he just popped off?’ I looked back down at the floor. She shrugged. Sighing, the doctor got to his feet and took off his spectacles. His eyes travelled around the room. Then he went up to the girl. He stood before her and, jabbing the air with his glasses, said, ‘What were you doing to him?’ The girl clapped her hand to her mouth and ran out the door. We heard her in the bathroom, quietly retching.
It was around one in the morning by the time the four of us emerged outside, in the moonlit doorway of the hotel. A hearse glided soundlessly by. The wind rustled the tall oaks around the patio, there was faint music in the distance. The doctor and the hotel manager reminisced about a man who had once been found tied to the bedposts, the girl and I watched the police car as it turned onto the road in a cloud of flying gravel. The doctor and the manager said goodbye and we were left behind. We stood outside the door listening to the music. It sounded like Ives.
‘I think he would have enjoyed dying that way,’ I said. ‘In a hotel, with a young woman at his side.’
She started retching again.
I stared into the half-darkness of the city and thought, for the first time in years, about the future, which had once lain before me and now, now that I was old and worn, lay behind me.
‘He was a traveller,’ I said.
The girl turned to me and opened her mouth. The heavy lipstick was smeared along one cheek, which made her whole face look lopsided. She breathed out quick, small puffs of steam and shivered in her baseball jacket.
‘We were all travellers,’ I said.
She turned away and looked at the empty street and the light that hung yellow and still beneath the tall trees. I saw her glance at me from the corner of her eyes, hurried, fearful, like someone who has found herself with an unpredictable psychopath and doesn’t know which would be better: to stay or leave, respond or ignore.
There was a pale blue haze around the moon. A gentle breeze rustled the treetops. As if Uncle Herman’s soul had dissolved in the night, I thought, and now, the final matters settled, the remains of his life carried off, had disappeared in a last contented sigh. On its way, forever.
And at that very moment, there, outside the hotel where Uncle Herman … had lost his life, at that moment I saw myself for the first time in maybe twenty years, and the image that loomed up out of the labyrinth of my life was that of a face in the crowd, a man nobody knows, yet is there nonetheless, an eyewitness, a stowaway in time.
The fire in the hearth burned peacefully, like a flower with red, orange, and yellow petals, swaying in the wind. The mahogany claw of a chair leg jutted out of the flames, as if we had been sacrificing some wooden animal.
‘Are you asleep?’
I looked sideways, at Nina, who sat cross-legged in the big armchair next to me. She was sitting on a sleeping bag, her long red hair hanging down, and leaning on the palms of her hands.
‘No, I’m not asleep. But I might just as well be. I’ve rarely felt as old as I feel today.’
She nodded. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘Nothing special.’
‘Come on, N. If we’re really going to be snowed in here for the next few days I don’t want you playing the mystery man. Do your Decamerone. Give me the Canterbury Tales. You’re a fairy tale writer. Amuse me.’
‘You want to hear fairy tales?’
‘Maybe later. All I want to hear now is what you were thinking.’
‘I was thinking about Uncle Herman. I suddenly remembered the last time I saw him.’
‘When was that?’
‘When he was dead.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘My God, how times have changed. You say: Oh, that. For me … it was a shock, I can tell you.’
‘After the sixties? I thought all you men ever did in the sixties was fuck and get high.’
‘Them, niece. Not me. I would’ve liked to. But I’m a Hollander. Nathan Hollander. A respectable man. I eat my poultry with a knife and fork, I hold my wine glass by the stem. I’ve never fucked around or used drugs.’
‘Nuncle, would you mind not calling me “niece”? It sounds like grey woollen skirts and sensible shoes.’
We grinned.
‘But haven’t you ever …’
‘Oh, sure. Hash. Long time ago. Not my style. I like being in control.’
She sighed. ‘The two-glasses-of-wine-five-cigarettes-a-day man.’
‘That’s me.’
‘And the sex wasn’t so hot either?’
‘Nina! I’m your uncle. I just turned sixty. That’s not the sort of thing you’re supposed to ask old people.’
‘Old people … You’re not old. What’s sixty anyway, nowadays? You’re still in great shape.’
‘Thank you. I only said I was old to hear you say I wasn’t.’
‘And that’s why I said it.’
‘No, I haven’t had a very thrilling sex life. Certainly a lot less thrilling than Uncle Herman’s.’
Nina stared into the fire. It
