The Arm of the Starfish

by Madeleine L'engle

  3

  The canon did not look at Adam, but went straight to the inspector, bowing and saying, “Good morning.” Then, in precise British accent, he said, “But yield who will to their separation …”

  There was a pause as the inspector looked at the canon. His visage, too, was grim. Finally he replied, “My object in living is to unite …”

  The two men remained looking at each other, not speaking, until the inspector got up from the desk, nodded at the canon, came around to Adam, and handed him his passport. “I find your papers are quite in order after all,” he said. “You may go. I believe the bus is still waiting.”

  The official who had escorted the canon opened the door, making a respectful obeisance. The canon looked at the inspector, bowed slightly, turned to Adam, saying, “Come.”

  Adam followed him. The priest moved with the ease of familiarity through the maze of passages until they were at the glass doors. Outside the bus was sitting greyly at the curb. The driver opened the doors. The canon got in. Adam climbed in after him. Someone had given the redheaded child a seat and she was asleep, her head down on the shoulder of a middle-aged, motherly-looking woman, who looked at the canon, saying, “She’s all tuckered out. Let her sleep.”

  The priest smiled at her. “Thank you, Martha.”

  Adam knew that he, too, ought to say ‘thank you,’ since in some way the canon had been responsible for the escape from the inspector’s inquisition, but the boy’s mind was in such a turmoil that he could not speak.

  It was obvious that the passengers, who had been kept waiting in the dark bus all this time, were intensely curious. A young man turned to Adam. “What on earth happened? Why did they drag you away like that?”

  The canon answered quickly for him. “Just the usual passport confusion. There’s one in every busload. You’ll get used to it.”

  Now at last Adam said, “Thank you very much, sir.” But he was not sure just how grateful he was. Although the canon had an easy and relaxed expression, reminding Adam once again of the intelligent teddy bear, there was still the memory of the grim look with which Tallis had greeted him in the inspector’s office.

  The bus started with a grinding of gears and a series of jolts. Adam felt surprisingly weak in the knees and would have liked to be able to sit down, but he clutched the aluminum pole firmly and braced himself so that without bending down too far he could look out the window. The trip into Madrid somehow surprised him. Spain seen from the air had been, except for the emplacements, everything that he had pictured it in his imagination; the outskirts of Madrid were a strange and unexpected conglomeration of old and new. There were many bleak housing developments like the projects in New York or those pictured in articles about Russia. Ugly apartments crowded upon beautiful old houses with walled gardens. Some new buildings were finished as far as the scaffolding, but seemed abandoned. Outside both the old buildings and the new laundry was flapping in the breeze. There were many billboards, well over half of them advertising American products, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, toothpaste, Singer sewing machines. The city itself was modern, commercial—buses, trolley cars, taxis, booths advertising the National Lottery, priests, nuns, young people on bicycles, old women with long black skirts and black shawls over their heads, girls with bright skirts high above their knees, newsboys calling, lottery boys calling—Adam’s mind whirled. The impressions were coming too thick, too fast, events had been too confusing from the moment he had reached the fog-bound airport in New York for him to assimilate and sort out any of it.

  Canon Tallis reached down and wakened the child. “Poly. We’re here.”

  She opened her eyes and yawned as the bus drew up in front of the Hotel Plaza with another sickening jerk that almost threw Adam and all the standing passengers off their feet. As they surged toward the exit Canon Tallis said to the boy, “I’ll see you.”

  A pleasant Swissair representative was waiting for them and herded them quickly out of the bus and through the revolving doors into the hotel. The Hotel Plaza, at least, seemed to hold no startling surprises for Adam; it was very much what he had imagined a middle-class European hotel would be like.

  The passengers were lined up at the desk, where their passports were collected. Adam’s was given no more, no less attention than anybody else’s. They were assigned rooms. The man from Swissair explained that, because of the fog that gripped Lisbon now as it had New York the day before, they would not be able to leave Madrid until five in the afternoon, when weather conditions were supposed to improve. Precisely at five they were all to be in the lobby of the hotel and would be driven back to the airport where a plane would be waiting for them. Meanwhile they were free to sleep or to do some sightseeing around Madrid.

  Adam went up in the elevator to his room not knowing exactly what he was going to do. He was wavery with the desire to sleep, but he was determined not to waste the day. He decided that a shower and some food would refresh him, and then he would find a bus or trolley to take him to the Prado and maybe some other places of interest.

  His room, a small one with an enormous bathroom, faced the back. If the view from the front of the hotel was definitely twentieth century, the view from the rear flung him into the Middle Ages. He looked down into a courtyard filled with strutting black geese. In the center was a stone fountain. The rooftops, in a confused jumble of levels, were warm red tile. The houses were oyster white, with crooked, unmatched windows. The geese strutted about, their heads jerking awkwardly in and out of the downpour. An old woman, almost completely covered by an enormous black shawl, came out of a door and threw the geese some grain, toward which they scurried, gabbling. The woman stood, one hand holding the shawl about her face, watching them; then she disappeared into the house.

  Adam felt his eyes gritty with sleep. If he didn’t take that shower and get some more coffee and some food he would succumb to the temptation to lie down on the brass bed, and that he was determined not to do. Who knew when he would ever have another day in Madrid?

  The water was hot and he steamed happily, then turned on the cold; he was shivering under its stinging needles when he became aware of a tapping on his door. He turned off the shower and called out, “Just a moment, please.”

  The hotel towels were fluffy and white and voluminous enough to wrap around him as a kind of bathrobe. Some instinct—or was it Kali’s warnings?—made him call, before he opened the door, “Who is it?”

  A pleasant British voice replied, “Canon Tallis.”

  Adam fought down a desire to say, ‘Go away. You’re dangerous. Kali warned me.’ But after all the canon had, by no matter what devious means, rescued him. So he said, “If you’d wait a minute, please, sir, I’m just out of the shower. I’ll throw on some clothes.”

  He dried and dressed as quickly as he could, then cautiously opened the door. Canon Tallis was standing, hands behind his back, staring upward through the ceiling at some inner vision. He smiled, the faint ridges where he should have had eyebrows rising slightly, followed Adam into the small room and sat on the one chair. Adam sat on the bed. The canon looked at him for a moment; Adam was getting distinctly tired of being looked at.

  “So you’re the young man who’s going to be working for Dr. O’Keefe this summer.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Adam responded with a terse “yes.” He was giving out no information. He began to wonder if Old Doc might not be getting senile after all, letting him in for this kind of thing. And as for his parents, they had no right to allow him to go off into the unknown like this. Of course there had been correspondence between his father and Dr. O’Keefe, and a couple of transatlantic phone calls, but Adam felt that none of the disagreeable things that had happened should have been allowed by parents who took a proper concern for their offspring. He forgot that he had been elated at first by Kali and her warnings.

  “Tired?” Canon Tallis asked.

  “No.” He bit the word off and did not add sir or father or whatever it was one was
supposed to call an English canon.

  “Not much sleep last night.”

  Adam could not help adding, “Nor the night before.”

  “Planning to catch up on it today?”

  “No,” Adam said briefly. “I’m going to the Prado.” Then, because his training in courtesy had been thorough, he added in a more reasonable voice, “I’ve never been in Spain before and I don’t know when I’ll get another chance. I didn’t think I ought to waste it.”

  Canon Tallis nodded. “Poly’s taking a bit of a nap, but then we’re going to the Prado ourselves. Meanwhile I need a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. How about you? Dr. O’Keefe’s a friend of mine, and maybe I can brief you a bit. Also I want to ask you a favor. I find I am going to have to stay in Madrid for a few days on business that would be very dull for Poly. She’s the O’Keefes’ daughter and a bright child, and perfectly capable at this point of traveling alone, but I’m responsible for her, and I feel rather badly about cutting her little vacation short, so I thought, since we’ve happened to run into each other, that I’d ask you to be kind enough to let her travel back to Lisbon with you.”

  What was there to say? There was no possible grounds for refusal of this perfectly reasonable request, so Adam nodded with a mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

  The canon stood up and yawned amply. “Two sleepless nights haven’t given you the best preparation in the world for seeing the Prado. Nevertheless you may find it rather impressive in its own modest way.”

  When they reached the lobby the priest, instead of heading for the revolving doors, went to the desk. “Passports for Canon Tallis and Adam Eddington, please,” he said in fluent Spanish. There was a brief wait, during which Adam felt himself getting nervous again. But the passports were handed to them without question.

  “Be careful of it,” the canon said. Adam did not mention that the advice was unnecessary. “Let’s just go into the dining room here, shall we? No point in getting soaked again before we have to.”

  They went into an almost empty dining room with white-naped tables, and the canon ordered café au lait and an omelette.

  Adam told the waitress, “Está bien para mi, también.”

  As she left the canon said, “You speak excellent Spanish.”

  “I had it in school,” Adam found himself explaining again.

  “Any other languages?”

  “A bit of French and German.”

  “Portuguese?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. Russian?”

  “No. I’d have liked to, but they stretched a few points for me with the ones I took.”

  “Poly’s our linguist,” the canon said. “She speaks all of those, plus Gaean. Now she wants to tackle Chinese. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to hold Poly down.” He seemed to be looking at Adam as though searching for something. “Poly’s the oldest of the O’Keefe children, and she helps her mother a great deal. This is the first real vacation she’s had. I had to give a couple of lectures in Boston and it seemed a good chance for her to get away. Then I was to have gone to Geneva for a few days and I’d planned to take her with me there, too. Too bad this fog had to come up and spoil her little treat for her. I must ask you, Adam, please to stay close to her. It is not that Poly isn’t capable of taking care of herself. But there are some—shall we call them undesirable characters?—who are far too interested in Dr. O’Keefe’s experiments. I will see to it that you both get on the plane, and Dr. O’Keefe will be at the airport to meet you. But please do not let Poly out of your sight. Will you promise me that?”

  “Well—yes, of course,” Adam said. “But I don’t understand.”

  The priest looked at him thoughtfully. Adam looked back. —I’m going to do some of the staring, too, he decided. Grey eyes looked steadily into grey. Finally the canon said, “Adam, I wish I could tell you the things that would make you understand. When you start working for Dr. O’Keefe you’ll realize for yourself the importance of his work, and its implications. But for now I must simply ask you to trust me, as I must, in my turn, trust you.” His face again looked grim, though it was a different kind of grimness from that in the stark and frightening room in the airport.

  —But I don’t trust you, Adam thought. Not after Kali. Not after you seemed to be so in cahoots with a fink like the inspector. People you can trust simply aren’t in with secret police kind of people.

  The waitress brought their coffee and omelette, and crisp, crunchy rolls each wrapped separately in tissue-like paper. The omelette was delicious, though the coffee was bitter, and stronger than any Adam had tasted before. He watched the canon take the hot milk pitcher in one hand, coffee pot in the other, and pour simultaneously, and so he did the same for his second cup and found it considerably improved.

  Finally, leaning back and lighting a cigarette, the canon said, “There. That’s better. I hear that you have the makings of a fine scientist.”

  “Well—it’s what I’m interested in,” Adam said. “Marine biology.”

  “Yes. I saw the letter Dr. Didymus wrote Dr. O’Keefe. You will, I trust, like working with Dr. O’Keefe, Adam. He’s a very great man, far greater than Dr. Didymus, fine though he is—”

  “Old Doc—” Adam started indignantly.

  “Old Doc would be the first to acknowledge it,” the canon said sternly. “If he didn’t think you had the makings of—somebody worthwhile, he would never have sent you over here.”

  Adam flushed with pleasure, then remembered Kali’s warnings, superimposed on a few Grade B movies.—Flattery, he thought.—He’s trying to get around me with flattery. And just because he looks like Winnie the Pooh … . Yukh: I’ve got to watch it.

  Canon Tallis pushed back his chair. “Let’s go wake poor Poly up, and then we’ll be off to the Prado. You’ll come with us, of course.” This, again, was a statement, not a question.

  Adam’s first instinct was to say, “Of course I won’t.” But then he thought,—If I go with him I can keep an eye on him. And if I have to drag this kid to Lisbon with me I might as well see what she’s like, too.

  So all he said was, “That will be fine, sir.”

  They went up in the elevator together to the top floor. As he reached for his keys the canon whistled the first few measures of a melody. Behind the closed door the melody was returned. Adam recognized the tune, but in the fatigue and confusion of the moment he could not place it. Canon Tallis unlocked the door.

  Poly was sitting on the edge of the bed, reading. She looked up, indignantly. “You locked me in.”

  4

  “No, Poly darling,” the canon said. “Just others out.”

  “Oh. Oh, okay, then.”

  “Adam, this is Poly O’Keefe. Poly, this is Adam Eddington, your father’s new laboratory assistant.”

  Poly stuck out a lean brown hand and shook Adam’s. Her grip was firm and confident. “Hello, Adam. Actually my name’s Polyhymnia. Isn’t that an awful name to give anybody? And it’s all Father Tallis’ fault. He’s my godfather and he christened me. It’s surprising that I still love him, isn’t it? I tell you all this so that you’ll know that if you ever call me anything but Poly I’ll jump at you and kick and scratch like a wildcat.”

  “All right: Poly it will be,” Adam said.

  Canon Tallis said, “Get your coat and hat, Pol.”

  Poly looked out her window, which faced front on the modern street. “Nasty, stinking, foul old rain,” she said, crossly, wheeled and took a navy blue burberry and a beret out of the closet.

  They stopped off on Adam’s floor while he picked up his trenchcoat, then went out into the street where the canon hailed a taxi with his furled umbrella.

  “A lot of good it does us that way,” Poly remarked.

  They got in the taxi and the canon began pointing out places of interest. “If we have time this afternoon well go to the Plaza Mayor and you can walk around a bit.”

  “That’s where the Spanish Inquisition started,” Poly said, “and bullfights, a
nd all kinds of icky stuff. It always gives me the shivers. Do we have to go there, Father?”

  “Don’t you think Adam ought to see it?”

  “Oh, I suppose so. But I always seem to hear screams still quivering in the air. And smell blood.” She looked defiantly at Adam. “I am not morbid.”

  “It’s all right,” Adam assured her. “I think that places hold atmospheres, too.”

  “You’re nice,” Poly said. “I shan’t mind flying to Lisbon with you after all. At least Father said that that’s what I’d be doing if it’s all right with you.”

  “It’s fine with me,” Adam said. She was a queer kid and he couldn’t very well hurt her feelings. Something in the tone of his voice, though, seemed to make her dubious, so he added, “Now I won’t have to worry about recognizing your father.”

  Poly laughed, a warm, deep chuckle. “I look exactly like daddy. Stringbean aspect and all. Some of daddy’s assistants have called him a long drink of water. That’s me.”

  “The red hair and blue eyes, too,” Canon Tallis said, “and with a little bit of luck the looks of your mother and maternal grandmother.”

  “Oh, I don’t really care about being beautiful,” Poly stated. “At least not yet.”

  As they neared the Prado, which was a longer drive than Adam had anticipated, Canon Tallis explained that although the museum was now in the city of Madrid, it was not too very long ago that it had been out in the country in the middle of fields.

  It was not at all what Adam had expected of one of the most famous museums in Europe. Not only was it utterly unlike the Guggenheim or even the Frick, which was only natural, it also bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Metropolitan, either in the building itself, or in the display of pictures. He was amazed to find it an enormous, dirty, badly lighted place, the light even worse than usual now because of skies dark with rain. In room after room there was a great jumble of masterpieces, El Grecos, Murillos (many of these looking like cheap religious Christmas cards), Velasquezes, Goyas, Raphaels, lesser known painters, unknown painters, early work, middle work, later work, good painting, middling painting, bad painting, finished and unfinished painting, all thrown at the wanderer in one great saturating splash. Canon Tallis was obviously familiar with every inch of the place, separating, sorting, explaining, ostensibly to Poly, but also for Adam.