The Immortalists

by Chloe Benjamin

  Eddie pauses. He clears his throat. “Bruna Costello,” he says, finally.

  “What?” There is a rushing noise in Daniel’s ears, a flood of adrenaline.

  “Bruna,” says Eddie. “Bruna Costello.”

  “Bruna Costello.” Daniel savors the words, each one a fact. “And where is she?”

  “That’s two questions,” Eddie says. “When it’s over, I’ll call you. When it’s all said and done.”

  24.

  On Thanksgiving morning, Daniel wakes earlier than Raj and Ruby. It’s six forty-five, milky pink light and the rustling of squirrels, a deer nibbling at the brown lawn. He makes a pot of strong coffee and sits in the rocking chair beside the living room window with Mira’s laptop.

  When he Googles Bruna Costello’s name, the first link that appears is the FBI’s Most Wanted website. Protect your family, your local community, and the nation by helping the FBI catch wanted terrorists and fugitives, the webpage reads. Rewards are offered in some cases. She is categorized under “Seeking Information,” a black-and-white thumbnail in the fourth row. It’s fuzzy, a close-up from security footage. When Daniel clicks on her name, the photo enlarges, and he sees it’s the same one Eddie showed him at the Hoffman House.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking the public’s assistance to identify the alleged victims of Bruna Costello, suspected for fraud in connection with a fortune-telling ring in Florida. Other members of the Costello family have been convicted of federal crimes including grand larceny, false income returns, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. To date, Costello remains the only suspect who has evaded questioning.

  Costello travels in a 1989 Gulf Stream Regatta motor home (see More Photos). She has previously lived in Coral Springs and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is known to have traveled extensively throughout the continental United States. Currently, she is thought to be based outside of Dayton, Ohio, in the village of West Milton.

  Daniel clicks on More Photos. There’s a picture of the trailer, wide and blunt-nosed, painted a dingy cream—or perhaps it was originally white—with a thick stripe of brown. Below More Photos is another link titled Aliases.

  Drina Demeter

  Cora Wheeler

  Nuri Gargano

  Bruna Galletti

  A half dozen more. Abruptly, Daniel closes the computer. Eddie must have known her location. So why didn’t he say so? He must think Daniel is unsteady, intent on revenge.

  Is he? It’s true that Daniel feels motivated for the first time since his suspension. He feels the woman’s presence like a song sung in the next room or a hair-raising waft of wind, daring him to come closer.

  • • •

  Mira and Raj work on the vegetables while Gertie makes her famous stuffing. Daniel and Ruby tend to the bird, an eighteen-pound beast slathered in butter and garlic and thyme. In early afternoon, while most of the food is roasting or waiting to roast and Mira is wiping the counters down, Raj takes a business call in the guest room. Gertie naps. Ruby and Daniel sit in the living room: Daniel in the rocking chair with the laptop, Ruby on the couch with a book of sudoku puzzles. Snow drifts outside the window, melting as soon as it touches the glass.

  Daniel is researching the Rom: how they originated in India, how they left to escape religious persecution and slavery. They traveled west, into Europe and the Balkans, and began to tell fortunes as refugees. Half a million were killed in the Holocaust. It reminds him of the story of the Jews. Exodus and wandering, resilience and adaptation. Even the famous Romani proverb, Amari čhib s’amari zor—“Our language is our strength”—sounds like something his father would have said. Daniel takes a dry-cleaning receipt from his pocket and writes the phrase down, along with a second proverb: Thoughts have wings.

  Lately, he has struggled to sustain a connection with God. One year ago, he decided to explore Jewish theology. He thought of it as a tribute to Saul, and he hoped for solace about the deaths of his siblings. But he found little: on the topics of death and immortality, Judaism has little to say. While other religions are concerned with dying, Jews are most concerned with living. The Torah focuses on olam ha-ze: “this world.”

  “Are you working?” Ruby asks.

  Daniel looks up. The sun is nestled just above the Catskills, the mountains a mellow wash of periwinkle and peach. Ruby is curled against the arm of the couch.

  “Not really.” Daniel shuts the lid of the laptop. “You?”

  Ruby shrugs. “Not really.” She closes her sudoku book.

  “I don’t know how you do those puzzles,” Daniel says. “They look like Greek to me.”

  “You have a lot of downtime, doing a show. If you don’t find something else you’re good at, you’ll go crazy. I like solving things.”

  Ruby tucks her legs to one side, clad today in a different pair of Juicy sweatpants. Her hair is a bulbous bird’s nest of a bun. Daniel realizes that he’ll miss her when she goes.

  “You’d be a good doctor,” he says.

  “I hope so.” When she lifts her head to look at him, her face is vulnerable. A surprise: she cares what he thinks. “I want to be one.”

  “You do? What about your show?”

  “I won’t do that forever.”

  She speaks in a flat, matter-of-fact tone that Daniel can’t quite parse. Does Raj know about this? He would never be able to have a relationship with another assistant like the one he has with Ruby. Daniel thinks of the conversation they had the previous morning, the tension when Ruby and Raj discussed their schedule. Raj claimed it was simple. Rubina, he said, on the other hand—

  Ruby flicks her hair over one shoulder. She isn’t matter-of-fact, he sees. She’s annoyed.

  “I mean, Jesus,” she says, “I want to go to college, I want to be a real person. I want to do something that matters.”

  “Your mother didn’t want to be a real person.”

  The words are out before Daniel can stop them. His voice is low and he’s smiling, for somehow, when he thinks of Klara, this is what comes to mind first: her gall, her daring. Not what happened later.

  “So?” Ruby’s cheeks flush. There’s a sheen to her eyes that flashes in the light from the living room lamp. “So what about my mom?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Daniel feels ill. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Ruby opens her mouth, closes it. He’s losing her already, she’s leaving for that foreign, teenage-girl place: mountains of resentment, potholes he can’t see.

  “Your mother. She was special,” Daniel says. It feels urgent, that he convince her of this. “That doesn’t mean you have to be like her. I just want you to know.”

  “I know that,” says Ruby dully. “Everyone tells me that.”

  • • •

  She leaves to take a walk in the snow. Daniel watches her clomp through the slush in her Ugg boots and hooded sweatshirt, dark tendrils of hair floating next to her face, before she disappears into the trees.

  25.

  Hallelujah. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according to his abundant greatness. Praise him with the blast of the horn. Praise him with the psaltery’”—here Gertie pauses—“‘and harp.’”

  “What’s a psaltery?” asks Ruby.

  When she returned from her walk, she was chipper again. Now she sits between Raj and Gertie on one side of the table. Mira and Daniel hold hands on the other.

  “I don’t know,” says Gertie, frowning at the Tehillim.

  “Hang on. I’ll look it up on Wikipedia.” Ruby pulls her flip phone out of a pocket and types efficiently on the tiny keys. “Okay. ‘The bowed psaltery is a type of psaltery or zither that is played with a bow. In contrast to the centuries-old plucked psaltery, the bowed psaltery appears to be a twentieth-century invention.’” She shuts the phone.
“Well, that was helpful. As you were, Grandma.”

  Gertie returns to the book. “‘Praise him with the timbrel and dance. Praise him with the loud-sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise HaShem. Hallelujah.’”

  “Amen,” says Mira, quietly. She squeezes Daniel’s hand. “Let’s eat.”

  Daniel squeezes her back, but he feels unsettled. That afternoon, he learned of an explosion in the Sadr City district of Baghdad. Five car bombs and a mortar shell killed more than two hundred people, largely Shiites. He takes a long sip of wine, a Malbec. He had a glass or two of a white Mira uncorked while they were cooking, but he’s still waiting for the pleasant fog that comes over him when he drinks.

  Gertie looks at Ruby and Raj. “What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

  “Early,” says Raj.

  “Unfortunately,” says Ruby.

  “We have a show in the city at seven,” Raj says. “We should be there before noon to meet the crew.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to,” Gertie says. “I wish you’d stay a little longer.”

  “Me, too,” says Ruby. “But you can come visit us in Vegas. You’d have your own suite. And I can introduce you to Krystal. She’s a Shetland and a total chub. She probably eats an acre of grass a day.”

  “My goodness,” says Mira, laughing. She cuts a group of green beans in half with her fork. “Now, I have a personal request. I didn’t want to bring it up, because I’m sure people ask this sort of thing all the time, the way our friends are always trying to get Daniel to diagnose them—but we have two magicians in the house, and I can’t let you leave without trying.”

  Raj raises his eyebrows. It’s nearly silent in the dining room—a result of this wooded area of Kingston.

  Mira sets down her fork; she’s blushing. “When I was young, a street magician did a card trick for me. He asked me to pick a card as he flipped through the deck, which couldn’t have taken more than a second. I picked the nine of hearts. And that was what he guessed. I made him do the trick another time to make sure the deck wasn’t filled with nines of hearts. I’ve never been able to figure out how he did it.”

  Raj and Ruby share a glance.

  “Forcing,” says Ruby. “When a magician manipulates your decisions.”

  “But that’s just it,” Mira says. “There was nothing he said or did to influence me. The decision was entirely mine.”

  “So you thought,” says Raj. “There are two kinds of forcing. In psychological forcing, a magician uses language to steer you toward a particular choice. But physical forcing is likely what he used—that’s when a particular object is made to stand out from the rest. He would have paused at the nine of hearts for just a millisecond more than any of the other cards.”

  “Increased exposure,” adds Ruby. “It’s a classic technique.”

  “Fascinating.” Mira leans back in her chair. “Though I confess I almost feel—disappointed? I suppose I didn’t expect the solution to be so rational.”

  “Most magicians are incredibly rational.” Raj is slicing meat from a turkey leg, placing it in neat strips on one side of his plate. “They’re analysts. You have to be, to develop illusions. To trick people.”

  Something about the phrase needles Daniel. It reminds him of what he’s always resented about Raj: his pragmatism, his obsession with business. Before Klara met Raj, magic was her passion, her greatest love. Now Raj lives in a gated mansion, and Klara is dead.

  “I’m not sure my sister saw it that way,” Daniel says.

  Raj spears a pearl onion. “How do you mean?”

  “Klara knew that magic can be used to deceive people. But she tried to do the opposite—to reveal some greater truth. To pull the wool off.”

  The candelabra in the center of the table throws the lower half of Raj’s face into shadow, but his eyes are lit. “If you’re asking me whether I believe in what I do, whether I feel I’m providing some kind of essential service—well, I could ask you the same thing. This is my career. And it means as much to me as yours does to you.”

  The food in Daniel’s mouth becomes difficult to chew. He has the terrible thought that Raj has known about his suspension from the beginning and has played along out of generosity, or pity.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You feel it’s noble to send young men into deadly combat?” asks Raj. “You’re motivated by some greater truth?”

  Gertie and Ruby look from Raj to Daniel. Daniel clears his throat.

  “I have a deep-seated belief in the importance of the military, yes. Whether what I do is noble is not up to me to judge. But what the soldiers do? That’s nobility, yes.”

  He sounds convincing enough, but Mira has noticed the tightness in his voice. She tilts her head toward her plate. Daniel knows she is avoiding him out of courtesy, so that whatever is in her gaze does not reveal him, but this only makes him feel like more of a fraud.

  “Even now?” asks Raj.

  “Especially now.”

  Daniel remembers well the horror of 9/11. His childhood best friend, Eli, worked in the South Tower. After the second plane hit, Eli stood in the stairwell to the seventy-eighth floor, ushering people toward the express elevator. Okay, he shouted. Everybody out. Before that, some people had been paralyzed by fear. Later, a colleague who had been in the towers during the 1993 bombing referred to him as the wake-up voice. Eli made it to the roof, a rescue location in 1993, and called his wife. I love you, darling, he said. I might be home late. He fell with the tower at ten in the morning.

  “Especially now?” asks Raj. “When the infrastructure of Iraq has been decimated? When innocent men are being abused by sadists at Abu Ghraib? When WMDs are nowhere to be found?”

  Raj meet Daniel’s eyes. This Vegas celebrity, this magician in expensive clothes—Daniel has underestimated him.

  “Dad,” says Ruby.

  “Beans?” asks Mira, holding the platter aloft.

  “And you would have us let a brutal tyrant continue the murder and oppression of hundreds of thousands?” asks Daniel. “What of Saddam’s genocide against the Kurds and the violence in Kuwait? The Barzani abductions? The chemical warfare, the mass graves?”

  The wine is hitting him now. He feels unclear and hazy and is glad, therefore, to have been able to articulate Hussein’s crimes on demand.

  “The U.S. has never been guided by a moral compass when choosing political alliances. They run military operations out of Pakistan. They supported Hussein during the height of his atrocities. And now they’re hunting something that doesn’t exist. Iraq’s WMD program ended in 1991. There’s nothing there—nothing but oil.”

  What Daniel refuses to admit is that he fears Raj is right. He saw the horrific photos from Abu Ghraib: the men hooded and naked, beaten and shocked. There are rumors that Hussein will be hung in December during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holy day—a perversion of religion, and not by the enemy.

  “You don’t know that,” he says.

  “No?” Raj wipes his mouth with a napkin. “There’s a reason no country in the world is enthusiastic about the war in Iraq. Except Israel.”

  He says it like an afterthought, as if he has, for once, forgotten his audience. Or was it calculated? The Golds seize, pulling together instantly, atomically. Daniel has his own reservations about Zionism, but now his jaw is rigid and his heart beats wildly, as though someone insulted his mother.

  Mira puts her silverware down. “Excuse me?”

  For the first time since his arrival, Raj’s confidence slips back like a hood.

  “I don’t have to tell you that Israel is a strategic ally, or that the invasion of Baghdad aimed to strengthen their regional security as much as our own,” he says, quietly. “That’s all I meant.”

  “Is it?” Mira’s shoulders are angular, her voice constricted. “Frankly, Raj, it sounded more
like the scapegoating of the Jews.”

  “But the Jews are no longer the underdog. They’re one of America’s most important constituencies. The Arab world opposes an American war in Iraq, but American Arabs will never have the power of American Jews.” Raj pauses. He must know the entire table is against him. But because he is threatened or because he has decided not to be, he advances. “Meanwhile, the Jews act as though they’re still the victims of terrible oppression. It’s a mind-set that comes in handy when they want to oppress others.”

  “That’s enough,” says Gertie.

  She has dressed up for this dinner: a maroon shift dress with pantyhose and leather mules. A glass brooch from Saul is pinned to her breast. It pains Daniel to see the grief on her face. Even worse is the look on Ruby’s. Daniel’s niece is facing her plate, scraped empty of food. Even in the candlelight, he can see that her eyes are beginning to smart.

  Raj looks at his daughter. For a moment, he looks stricken, almost confused. Then he pushes his chair back with a screech.

  “Daniel,” he says. “Let’s take a walk.”

  • • •

  Raj leads Daniel past the first line of maples—flaming weeks ago, now bare—to the clearing beyond: a pond rimmed by cattails and birch trees. He’s shorter than Daniel, perhaps five nine to Daniel’s six feet, but Daniel is struck by Raj’s confidence—how he strode out of the house and into the clearing, as if he’s as comfortable on Daniel’s property as he is at home. It’s enough to make Daniel strike first.

  “You talk about the war like you know just who to blame, but it’s damn easy to make allegations when you’re sitting in a gated mansion doing coin tricks. Maybe you should try doing something that matters.” Where has he heard the phrase before? From Ruby. I want to go to college, she told him. I want to be a real person. I want to do something that matters. Daniel can feel the heat in his cheeks, feel his pulse in his throat, and suddenly, he knows exactly what will hurt Raj most. “Even your own daughter thinks you’re nothing but a Vegas showman. She told me she wants to be a doctor.”