She was in her sophomore year at university when she managed to save enough money to hire a good private investigator, but he didn’t find out much of anything. The detective tried to feed her all kinds of lies just so he could keep tapping her for money. She didn’t have a single lead, no name, no address, nothing. Often, when she was alone at her parents’ apartment, which was somewhere in Brooklyn Heights, she used to search the place for clues, but she never discovered any miraculous scraps of paper to point her in the right direction. She even succeeded in discovering the combination to the safe her father had under his desk, but all she found there were property deeds, bonds, and jewelry.
It was then, she told me, that she attempted suicide for the second time. Her mother had insomnia and the doctor had prescribed her some strong sleeping pills. The bottle was in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, it hadn’t occurred to her to hide it. Julie poured the pills into a mug, added milk, and drank the mixture. Then she went to her room and crawled into bed. Her parents didn’t raise the alarm until the next morning, when they noticed that she hadn’t woken up. When they went to check on her, they found that she was unresponsive and saw she had white foam around her mouth.
Compulsory therapy sessions followed—“a nightmare,” in her opinion—and a diagnosis far too severe for what may only have been a temporary postadolescent crisis. Then there was the compassion from everyone who knew her, compassion that smothered her “like a straitjacket,” as she put it. She could sense their eyes, full of curiosity, boring into the back of her neck, the slightly alarmed politeness of her colleagues, and the coddling of her increasingly desperate parents.
“Why do you think you did it?” I asked her. “I mean, why did you take those pills? I understand you ingested twenty-eight, enough to send you six feet under if you’d had the slightest cardiac-respiratory issue. It wasn’t just a cry for help. You played Russian roulette, Julie.”
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to find out?” she asked me back, with that smile of hers, which always lit up my practice whenever it appeared. “Isn’t that why I’m here?”
“That’s right. But I want to know what you think.”
“What I want is never an argument, mister,” she said. “You’ll have to explain to me why you want to know. You’re my therapist, not my master.”
And there, stretched out on the couch in the living room, with only the light on the screen of the muted TV, I had a strong premonition that the place that I was to head to the next day had a dark and malignant power, like a damp cellar crammed with old junk and dangerous secrets.
three
I LEFT EARLY IN THE morning, and half an hour later I was already making good time on Interstate 91, heading for Maine. The weather was fine and the traffic lighter than I’d been expecting. I turned off onto Interstate 84 and onto Interstate 90. In the early afternoon, as I was nearing Portland, the sky darkened and a heavy downpour began to lash the road. The headlights of the cars in the opposite lane were like yellow globes floating in a stream.
I wasn’t hungry, so I decided against stopping for lunch and continued to drive along Interstate 95 toward Freeport. I stopped to fill up at a gas station, where I had a coffee and asked some locals about Wolfe’s Creek, the region where Fleischer’s estate was located.
A dirt road wound through a pine forest that stretched from the edge of the highway to a pair of large wrought-iron gates. I stopped the car, lowered the window, and buzzed the intercom, while two security cameras stared down at me. In a few seconds the gates slowly began to open and I drove into a large courtyard, divided in two by a cobbled lane. To the left there was a tennis court with the netting gathered in, and to the right there was a wooden summerhouse by an empty swimming pool.
The house, a three-floor mansion in the colonial style, had its façade half covered with ivy. Josh and another man, who looked to be in his early sixties, were sitting on the porch. I got out of the car, walked up the stairs, and we shook hands.
“Walter will take your luggage to your room,” Josh said. A single glance told me that his illness, freed from the constraints of treatment, had already begun to gnaw at him. “I’m so glad to see you here, James. Thanks for coming.”
We went inside the house, while the man he called Walter climbed behind the wheel of my car.
We walked down a hallway, with a huge stuffed bison’s head as its sole item of decor, and entered a split-level living room. The solid oak floorboards were scattered with handwoven carpets showing Native American motifs. On the lower level there were couches, armchairs, and coffee tables. The upper level opened onto a kitchen with a worktable in the middle and a large glass door leading to a garden. Artworks were arranged here and there, mainly tribal artifacts, but nothing seemed ostentatious or excessive. Josh motioned for me to sit down on a couch, and he took a seat in one of the adjacent armchairs.
A butler appeared and asked me what I’d like to drink. I chose a gin and tonic and my host asked for a manhattan.
“How was the journey?” he asked. “I hope you liked the restaurant I recommended.”
“It was easier than I was expecting as far as the traffic went, but I drove slowly, so I didn’t stop for lunch.”
“All the better—I’ve had a splendid dinner prepared. I rarely have an appetite, but when I do, like today, it’s like I’m pregnant. I’ve been craving roast lamb with rosemary since this morning and I’m certain Mandy will have made us a first-class meal.”
“How many people live here?” I asked him, as our drinks were being served.
“Now there are five,” he replied, tilting his tall-stemmed glass slightly toward me to signal a toast, “which is to say, all the necessary staff. There used to be just four, but two weeks ago I decided to take my doctor’s advice and hire a full-time nurse, just in case. Otherwise, the people here have been in my employ for a considerable length of time. I select my employees carefully and pay them well, so they stay with me, which suits me. I’m not a man who likes conflicts, and I don’t place exaggerated demands on them.”
In his tone of voice, his gestures, his gaze, there was an innate nobility, of the kind usually associated with old money, elite colleges, and a life spared of petty problems.
During the meal, we talked about everything except the reason for my being there. He had an elegant way of conversing, passing pleasantly from one subject to another without dropping names or becoming tedious or self-obsessed. The food was indeed well prepared and the wine was great.
Over coffee he thanked me once again for agreeing to come.
“Your letter intrigued me,” I told him, “and naturally, I’m drawn to things that intrigue me.”
“Well, things aren’t all that complicated, James,” he said. “I’m nothing but a dying old man who hopes that his illness won’t destroy his last remnants of dignity before it takes him away, and who still hopes that he won’t leave unsolved matters behind after he passes. I’m sixty-two years old and I could have lived another two or three decades, but … I believe in fate and perhaps everything happens for a reason which sometimes eludes our understanding. Life has been rather kind to me, except that …” He paused and shuddered slightly, as if suddenly feeling a chill. “Well, let’s talk a bit about you. Why aren’t you married, James?”
“I’m thirty-five, so I have plenty of time,” I said. “My grandpa married when he was only twenty-one, and dad was twenty-seven when my mother said ‘I do.’ Maybe that’s the way things are going these days. Almost all my acquaintances are either unmarried or divorced.”
“You said acquaintances rather than friends,” he noted.
“Well, it was just an expression.”
“I think it was more than an expression. I know you better than you think, James. And that’s why I chose to approach you from all the other psychologists and psychiatrists in the world,” he said. “To the consternation of Richard Orrin,” he added, and smiled.
After dinner, Walter showed me to the apartme
nt where I’d be staying.
It was on the second floor and consisted of a small living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Everything was decorated with the same good taste. I took a shower and climbed into bed, having first placed a paperback mystery novel on the bedside table. But I wasn’t in the mood for reading, so I turned off the lights. The silence seemed unreal. The only sounds that filtered through the double windows were the faint calls of night birds.
I’d taken an immediate liking to Josh. He was neither coarse nor pretentious nor full of advice nor eager to shove the story of his business success down my throat. He didn’t have that vindictive air the chronically ill so often possess, as if you were partly to blame for their situation or a tiny cog in the universal mechanism that had been set in motion against them.
But at the same time he struck me as the loneliest man I’d ever met.
He dwelled in the midst of his own wealth like an awkward lodger, who likes what he sees but knows that none of it really belongs to him. He was excessively polite to his personnel, but that courtesy placed a barrier between him and others that was more impenetrable than if he’d been boorish or overbearing. Each gesture, each word, and each look seemed studied, making you wonder whether what you saw was nothing but a persona, a mask meticulously fashioned over time, behind which lurked a completely different man.
At one point, I got out of bed, went to the window, and raised the blinds. The sky was full of stars, and a sliver of moon hung in the sky as if left behind. The dark crowns of the trees were silent, enigmatic sentinels, motionless in their endless vigil.
That night I dreamed of Julie.
We were sitting at a table bathed in sunlight, at a garden café. She wore a white dress and dark glasses, which lent her a mysterious air. She reached over the table and grasped my hand. In that instant I felt my whole body being pervaded by a tremendous pleasure, more powerful than the greatest orgasm. “You have to forget,” she said, and I told her it wasn’t true. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she added. “I’m not Julie.”
As she spoke those words, the café, the sun, and the people around us suddenly vanished, giving way to a dark forest. I awoke in confusion, my heart thudding in my chest, as rays of sunlight glided across the floor.
four
THE WEATHER WAS UNUSUALLY fine for the time of year, and after breakfast Josh invited me for a walk in the surrounding countryside. The butler filled a picnic basket with sandwiches, small bottles of water, and a thermos of coffee. Although the sun was already blazing in the sky, Josh had wrapped himself up in thick clothing. In his condition, even a common cold could prove fatal.
Behind the mansion there was a fallow field guarded at the back by a row of tall maple trees that hid a fence swathed in ivy. Josh took a key out from his pocket and opened the gate. On the other side of the fence there was another dirt road. We crossed it and entered a virgin forest, scattered with fallen tree trunks, wild nut bushes, and the largest ferns I’d ever seen. Josh seemed to know the place quite well, finding his way without a path or signpost.
After a ten-minute stroll, we reached a clearing with a mossy old stone well in the middle, its shaft covered with a padlocked wooden lid, and we sat down on a bench next to it. Apart from the chirping of the birds and the muffled rustle of dead leaves, there was no sound to be heard. We’d only walked about three hundred yards, but Josh was already breathing with difficulty.
I was very curious to find out what he wanted from me, but I had to let him choose the moment to bring up the subject. He asked me whether I wanted some coffee, then poured the dark, piping hot liquid into plastic cups, two twin minuscule ghosts of steam rising up in the air.
“This spot is called Claire’s Spring,” he told me. “They say that the well was dug in the late eighteenth century by a French adventurer named Roger, who was involved in the fur trade with the Algonquians. Claire was his secret lover, the sixteen-year-old daughter of an Acadian merchant. Legend has it that Roger was killed during the French and Indian War, when the Acadians were thrown out of this region by the English. Claire refused to leave and came here searching for her lover. She starved to death right here, next to the well that now bears her name.”
He took a sip of coffee.
“Now, I guess I should start telling you a couple of things about myself. I was born and raised in New York City, into a wealthy family. My father, Salem Fleischer, was a valedictorian at Harvard and a decorated hero of World War Two. In the fifties, he became one of the most respected lawyers of the New York City bar. My mother came from the Rutherford family, who made their fortune in railroads.
“I went to Columbia Grammar School, and when I was just eighteen both my parents died in a car crash in Florida. They were healthy, relatively young, and the suddenness of that event left me petrified for months. I suddenly found myself completely alone, the sole heir to an important fortune, which, according to my father’s will, I was to receive at twenty-one.
“I broke with family tradition and went not to Harvard, but to Princeton, which struck me as being a more open, liberal place. Like many other young men in those years, I was a hothead, a radical, and had the feeling that we were experiencing something crucial, a new millennium. I took part in a few marches, but I quickly realized that all the things that had probably been interesting in the sixties had already disintegrated, leaving behind mostly a kind of perverse snobbery, promiscuity, and congenital laziness skillfully disguised as a rejection of society.
“It’s fashionable nowadays to accuse the baby-boomers of naïveté and wastefulness, but we just felt good in our halls of residence, our campuses, our fancy cars, and we didn’t want anybody to threaten our well-being and send us off to die in the rice paddies of Asia before we could enjoy the prosperity that had landed in America.
“Of course, I’m telling you what I thought.
“Others thought they could change things, whatever those things might have been, by writing petitions and causing social unrest. I wasn’t one of them, I must admit, being probably too rich, lazy, and contemplative. I was too much of a success with the girls to get carried away by extreme radicalism, which, I think, always conceals a certain amount of individual frustration. In those days, you wore your prosperity almost like a thing of guilt, trying to hide it. It was fashionable to be working-class, to shove hard-earned bills in the pockets of your worn-out Levis.
“Abraham Hale, whom I met in my senior year, was one such person.
“His father was from Portland, Oregon, and his mother was a Cajun from Atchafalaya, Louisiana. She died when he was only seven or so. They lived in a small town about twenty miles from Baton Rouge and were very poor. Abe told me that he was around ten when his father bought their first TV set.
“We shared a two-room apartment in Penns Neck, a quiet and nice neighborhood. I majored in English, and Abe majored in Philosophy.”
We’d been sitting on the bench for ten minutes, surrounded by the mysterious, dizzying woods, and it was only then that he started to recover his breath, and a vague hint of color returned to his cheeks.
*
“I’m telling you all this, James, because it’s connected to the reason why I asked you here. The introduction will be long, but important, and I hope that you’ll have the patience to listen carefully.”
“In my profession it’s more important to listen than to speak,” I told him. “The key to understanding is often concealed in seemingly banal remarks, a description of a shopping ride or a favorite sweater.”
“That’s right. See, it was with my friend Abe, in Paris after graduation, that I experienced the event which, in a way, was to change my entire life.”
He fell silent and his expression became tense, as if the mere mention of that event had frightened him. He’d uttered the name of his friend with a kind of horror, as if to pronounce it was to invoke a sort of demon.
“My years at Princeton brought me no closer to discovering what I really wanted to do. In a way, looking bac
k now, I think I used to float above it all, living each day as if I were immortal and had enough time to guide my existence in whatever direction I wanted, whenever I wanted. I had no financial concerns, as I’d already come into my inheritance. I’d had a few articles accepted by a couple of small magazines, and this supplied a kind of alibi for my chronic idleness, nurturing at the same time my hope that sooner or later I’d write something that would bring me the public recognition I secretly craved. So, what was the use in hurrying? At that age, appearances are often more important than reality.
“I used to fall in love about once a month, and I think that I broke a great many hearts in those days. Not because the suffering I caused flattered my pride or brought me any perverse satisfaction, but quite simply because I didn’t care much. I was seen as a bohemian, a wasted genius craving for salvation, and this attracted the girls like a magnet.
“Abe was, in many ways, my opposite.
“He was poor, as I’ve told you, and as a result very determined to do something important and to build for himself a different life than the one his father led. A lot of the time he lied and told people he was an orphan, to avoid questions about his family. That’s what he told me when I first moved into the house on Alcott Street, in December, just before Christmas. I’d been renting another apartment in Princeton Junction, but the landlord had lost the job for which he’d moved to Philly and on his return to town, he gave me notice to find another rental urgently. I found a place through the classifieds, and that was how I came to meet Abe, who had been living there for over three years. The two-bed apartment was on the ground floor of a colonial mansion that was almost in ruins—something was always falling into disrepair. Abe had been living alone up until then, but he’d lost his scholarship and had to save some money.
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