The Messiah of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick (beginner reading books for adults TXT) 📕

her down, didn’t you? I’ve neglected to notice that side of you—that poor Adela! She ran howling back here to complain I’d sent her to a thug.”

Lars said, “Is it Dr. Eklund?”

Dr. Eklund held out his cup. “A little more.”

Heidi bustled to the kettle. “She’s coming tonight. To consult Dr. Eklund. If he weren’t Dr. Eklund”—Lars saw she was going to be whimsical—“she couldn’t consult him, nicht wahr?”

“She’s not even bruised! Is she bruised?”

“For heaven’s sake, this isn’t a health clinic, what do you think we are? She’s coming about what’s in that bag. I promised her this time no one would knock her down. I don’t imagine she’ll be glad to see you, Lars. You’d better leave before.”

“I don’t understand how he got in,” Dr. Eklund said.

“With your key. I gave him your key.”

“If he knocks people down you shouldn’t give him my key.”

“I thought,” Lars said heavily, “there wasn’t any Dr. Eklund.”

“Lars believes in ghosts,” Heidi explained.

“You made me think he was made up.”

“Cogito, ergo sum,” Dr. Eklund said. “Why would you think a thing like that?”

“Not everyone has to exist.”

“That is remarkably plausible.”

“He means he’s an orphan,” Heidi said. “He was one of those refugee orphans. He doesn’t know who his mother is.”

“I don’t know who my father is either,” Lars said.

“Here’s something new!” Heidi cried. “Your father is the author of Cinnamon Shops. Your father is the author of Sanatorium. Your father is the author of The Messiah. That’s who your father is.” She let out her rapid doglike laugh.

“I don’t have a father.”

“You’ve lost your father? But not his eye,” she taunted. “You’ve kept that eye?”

“It’s gone. It’s not there.”

Dr. Eklund asked, “Eye? Eye? Where is such an eye?”

“An intelligent boy, but subject to hallucinations,” Heidi declaimed—did she mean to humiliate him? A wave of regret. He had entrusted her with his arcane mote: his visitation, his apparition. There was no eye. It had left him. It would not come back again.

“Hardly a boy. If he grew whiskers he’d be a graybeard,” Dr. Eklund said through his pipe.

Lars in his shame felt himself stumbling over a certain familiarity of inflection, of accent. Sibilance. Something was too accustomed here; he could not assess it. A strangeness in Dr. Eklund’s voice. Strange because not strange enough.

“A slight resemblance nevertheless,” Dr. Eklund continued. “A very minor resemblance. The chin, perhaps. No more than an inkling, yes? The summer of 1938—I’m not mistaken about this—I saw him drinking tea—steaming tea—at a café in a little outdoor courtyard. In Paris this was. He was pointed out to me. Then I absolutely recognized him for myself.”

“Dr. Eklund is fluent in Polish,” Heidi supplied.

“There was very much Polish being spoken at that table. A group of three or four. They had been to the galleries. The subject was art. I remember what a hot day it was, and still that fellow was drinking steaming tea! No different from what’s in this cup. Hotter, probably. Sometimes one or two of them would retreat back into French, but mainly it was Polish. Though that fellow never said a word. He looked like a hayseed, he wore his pants cuffs too high. You could see an inch more of sock than was decent—imagine, this was only a couple of years or so after Cinnamon Shops. A piece of luck.”

It seemed a muddle—who exactly was it Dr. Eklund was saying he had seen in Paris? Then it occurred to Lars what it was he was hearing in Dr. Eklund’s throat. He had thought at first it might have been the muffling of the pipe. But it was not the pipe. Dr. Eklund’s vowels—was it possible?—were not unlike Adela’s. Dr. Eklund—was it possible?—was not a Swede at all.

“You never mentioned it,” Lars accused. “About the Polish.”

“Dr. Eklund doesn’t like it known. He gets people out, you see. He does his best. He’s always done his best. He got Mrs. Rozanowska out, for instance.” “He got the Princess out?”

“That was a long time ago—you’ve heard all about that. Together with her husband. Dr. Eklund got them out and then he got them in. For all you know,” she said maliciously, “he got you out. In your swaddling clothes! He knows how to do those tricks, don’t you, Olle?”

Dr. Eklund took a discreet sip. “I don’t like it when you give things away.”

“You’ve got your key back.”

“Not everything given away is recoverable.”

How theatrical they were, Dr. and Mrs. Eklund! Two old troupers in rehearsal. Lars leaned his chair toward Dr. Eklund and bathed his whole head in the roast-meat cloud that was seeping out of Dr. Eklund’s pipe. “Who was it you saw,” he said, “in Paris?”

“That fellow. That author of yours.”

“In Paris? You saw him in Paris?”

“Only for a few moments. A piece of luck.”

“But you saw him! You saw his face?”

“He had a pointed chin. I remember that.”

“And what else? How did he look?”

“Like someone drinking hot tea in July.”

Lars turned on Heidi: “Your husband saw him! You never mentioned it, you never told—”

“I’m hearing it now for the first time myself.”

“In a pig’s foot you are. And on top of that the Polish! To have a husband fluent in Polish,” he echoed, “and never to say a word about it—”

“Well, you should have figured that out on your own.”

“Figured it out!” How preposterous she was; how senseless, how operatic. “Why not send Adela to your husband, if it’s translation she wants? I’m not the one she’s looking for!”

“Dr. Eklund prefers not to translate. Dr. Eklund is obliged to go back and forth. He follows things up. He gets things out.”

“Translation is not my interest,” Dr. Eklund affirmed. “Especially of dubious manuscripts.”

“What a baby you are, Lars. Naïve. It’s not only ghosts you believe in. It’s a question of detective work, can’t you understand that? Agents. Connections. Combinations. How else would I have gotten hold of those Warsaw items? Who am I to get hold of such things? A little hole-in-the-wall bookseller—”

“I don’t like it,” Dr. Eklund