City of Knives

by William Bayer

  "Lovely place," Tomás said. "It's been years since I've been here."

  "But you still play?"

  Tomás nodded. "Once a week on public courts. Doubles mostly. All my partners and opponents are other shrinks."

  "From what I hear, you're pretty good."

  Tomás smiled, grateful Javier was making an effort. "Used to be. I'm just a duffer now."

  "You wouldn't try and hustle me, father? Some of the slickest players I know are middle-aged."

  "Slick I may be but not very fast."

  "In my experience, slick can often neutralize speed."

  "You wouldn't be trying to tempt me into a match?"

  "Only if you feel like it," Javier assured him, flashing a gorgeous smile so like Sarah's that Tomás felt it hit him in the very center of his chest.

  Tomás often thought that taking six year old Javier up to Boston to live with the Shahars may have been a mistake. But he'd wanted the boy safely out of the country in case he too was arrested, as he more or less expected he would be. His intention was to raise such a public outcry that the authorities would have no choice but to produce Sarah or disappear him as well. Not that he was eager to be disappeared; he simply wanted Sarah back. But between press censorship, the Institute's position of neutrality, and the fact that people were being abducted every day, it wasn't easy to create a furor. Still he felt he was in no position to care for a young child since he intended to devote all his time and energy to locating his wife.

  The Shahars, devoted grandparents, had done well by Javier. Sarah's father was Professor of Latin American Literature at Boston University, and her mother was a successful textile designer who worked from a studio in their home. Yet the price of this transfer was that Javier felt abandoned. And although Tomás visited him dutifully every year, their meetings, as Javier grew up, turned increasingly stiff.

  They were half finished with their lobster salads when Javier asked Tomás what urgent matter had prompted this lunch.

  "Did I say urgent? I meant...important," Tomás said. "A difficult matter to broach, but I'm glad you prompted me."

  Even as Tomás described the phone message and his subsequent meeting with Tony, he understood that his unease today had not only to do with Javier's physical resemblance to Sarah, but with his own painful attempts to recapture her, brought on by Tony's overture.

  Javier, he noted, was studying him closely as he spoke. If only to savor this newfound rapport, Tomás deliberately prolonged his presentation of the pros and cons of accepting Tony's offer, unwilling to stop even as he sensed Javier's impatience.

  Finally Javier interrupted. "I hate to say this, father, but you're sounding an awful lot like a shrink."

  Tomás felt a flash of anger. "That feels like a put-down."

  "Not at all! I am extremely respectful of what you do. But what you've been saying seems tortured and over-analyzed, when to me the solution seems very simple."

  "Oh, really? And what is your 'very simple' solution?"

  "Don't pay anything to this guy, because he's almost certainly a fraud."

  "How can I be sure?"

  "Doesn't matter. Even if this disgusting creature is for real, which I seriously doubt, whatever he tells you will make you feel worse. If the denouncer turns out to be someone you know, also highly doubtful, you'll only be fueling up a grudge. And if it turns out to be a stranger, what then? Stalk the guy? Denounce him? It's what the North Americans call a 'lose-lose.'"

  "Still..."

  "I can understand very well, father, why you feel that knowing is better than not-knowing. You're a psychoanalyst. You have a need to know. But this particular knowledge will likely be so painful you'll wish you still were ignorant."

  Even though Tomás disagreed with Javier, he was impressed by his son's clear thinking. He was also surprised that Javier, who, on account of the denunciation, had lost so much, didn't jump at this chance to find out who'd been responsible for his mother's disappearance.

  "The purpose of my work is to reveal truth," Tomás said. "It's only when we confront what was done to us that we can work ourselves free of it."

  Javier shrugged. "For myself, I feel it's best to go on with life and not look back."

  Tomás found he was enjoying their exchange.

  At least we're finally having an honest dialogue.

  "It's not just who betrayed her, Javier. It's what happened to her. Are you telling me you really don't want to know?"

  "I don't!" Javier sounded angry now. "Why on earth would I want to hear how she was tortured? Her dying words? The particular rubbish heap upon which they flung her ruined body?"

  And that, Tomás recognized, was at the root of the impasse. Because he did want to know those things. Still he was impressed by Javier's commonsensible approach. Javier had chosen to become an athlete. He preferred slamming balls around a tennis court to spending his life agonizing over its central tragedy.

  Lunch was over. Their coffee cups were empty. The waiter had cleared away the dishes.

  "How 'bout we clear the air, hit some balls?" Javier asked. He glanced at his watch. "The court below is ours now if we want it."

  Tomás studied him. He felt something was afoot.

  "Is it your intention to give your old man a public tennis lesson?"

  "What makes you say that, father?"

  "Because you reserved center court."

  "Hey, I'm club pro. Center court is where I play." Javier grinned, that same flashing grin that so reminded Tomás of Sarah. "But if you want I can snag a back court for us. Frankly, I'll do most anything to get you to play."

  Okay, he's a professional, twenty-five years younger too. There'll be no shame in losing to him, and maybe it's important for him to beat me. So, all right, I'm the father, I can play the sacrificial lamb. Let's see what he can do with that.

  "Fine, we'll play on center court," Tomás said.

  After some playful warming up, Javier easily took the first set 6-2, leaving Tomás surprised he'd actually won two games. Their play had been gentlemanly, and, Tomás felt, not particularly exciting, Javier pursuing a methodical strategic line, leaving Tomás with an impression he was holding back.

  What's he got up his sleeve anyway?

  The second set started off in much the same style. But when the score reached 2-2, Tomás decided to make his move.

  If I could break his serve just once, that might tell him something...and it would certainly satisfy me.

  Suddenly, in an instant, everything changed. The gentlemanly duffer psyched himself up to fight. Tomás hit the ball hard, rifling a return straight down the line. Then he took a second point with a lucky two-handed backhand return. On the third serve, he rushed the net, smashing the ball at Javier's feet, bringing the score to love-40, just one point short of break.

  "Great shot, Father!" Javier yelled. Then he smashed in a serve so hard, Tomás could only gaze at it in wonder.

  "Too fast for you, Dad? Want me to slow down?"

  "Hey! You don't have to play paddy-cakes with me!"

  He thought he saw Javier smile slightly, but was too far away to read the boy's face.

  "Want to play some real tennis, do you?"

  "Isn't that what we're here for?" Tomás shouted back.

  "I thought you just wanted a little exercise."

  "I'm not afraid to compete."

  "Good! Let's compete!"

  Javier then served four aces in a row, smashing them one after another into the corners of the service courts. Tomás didn't stand by and marvel, but chased after every one. And even though he missed all four, he felt invigorated by the effort.

  3-2. Nothing wrong with that! My best strategy now is to try and hold my serve.

  The next game was their hardest fought, Tomás employing every trick he knew, lobbing the ball, using the sun to advantage, even going so far as to follow up a medium speed first serve with a second as hard as he could hit. The game went to deuce four times, before Tomás finally pulled it out.


  3-3! Great! I'm playing damn good tennis!

  In fact, he realized, he'd probably played the last game harder and better than any game he'd played in years.

  There came a point during the next game when Tomás realized he was playing instinctively, not trying to reason out what he should do. He found it liberating to play hard honest tennis. And with each point, it seemed to him that the level of his play was rising too.

  They slugged and belted the ball, grunted when they hit it, cursed when they bashed it out-of-court, groaned when they buried it in the net. They panted as they raced back and forth across court, each laughing when he rushed the net to make a smash. They fought hard over every point, each striving to pulverize the ball, give it topspin or backspin, play the angles, employ the sidelines and corners. Their foreheads were dripping, their shirts soaked through. Whenever one of them won a particularly hard-fought point, the other congratulated him, then played the next point more fiercely still.

  Even at 5-3, forty-love, set-point, Tomás knew they'd played a great match, the old deceiver against the young lion.

  He amazed himself by beating back the score to deuce. Then, when Javier regained advantage, he amazed himself again by beating him back a second time. And so it went: 40-30; deuce; 40-30, deuce again.... He wasn't sure how many times they replayed the point, only that when, finally, Javier took the match, he felt so exhilarated, so totally alive, that he ran forward to hug his son, grasp him hard.

  Hearing applause, Tomás looked up to see fifteen or so spectators beaming down at them from the terrace.

  "Great point! Well played!" a woman cried.

  "He's good, isn't he? He's my dad!" Javier called back.

  "Thanks for the tennis lesson," Tomás said, embracing Javier again, then kissing his son on his forehead and both his cheeks.

  Tomás found it curious that his old friend, mentor and training analyst, Carlos Peña, insisted that he "assume the position" on his analytic couch.

  "Ah!" Carlos said, smiling gently when Tomás hesitated, "seems Dr. Hudson's forgotten what it's like to be an analyzed." Then, after Tomás dutifully lay down: "You feel vulnerable now, Tomás, don't you?"

  "As I told you on the phone, I need advice, not treatment."

  "Please humor me a little," Carlos said, "at least until I discover what's troubling you."

  As always, Tomás felt comforted by Carlos' voice, so composed, confident, compelling. He trusted Carlos as much as anyone in his profession. And so, he decided, if Carlos had a hunch he needed treatment, he'd play along, see what the old man had in mind.

  "It's been years since I've lain here," he said, looking around the consulting room, noting that little had changed in the two decades since his training analysis was completed: bronze bust of Freud on the mantel; cluster of diplomas on the wall; and, directly facing the head of the couch, a enigmatic, framed, black-and-white photograph of an old man walking on railroad tracks with storm clouds on the horizon—a perfect picture for a shrink's office since a patient could read myriad stories into it, and, by so doing, reveal his unconscious process.

  "Thank you, Carlos. I'm feeling very much at home now," he said.

  Prompted then by the phrase "And so how are things?" the warm opening Carlos always employed at the start of session, Tomás began to speak.

  He described the message he'd found on his answering machine; his meeting with Tony at the ridiculous Café Sigi; Javier's belief Tony was a chanta; Tomás's concurrence yet his inability to dismiss the notion that Tony's information could be legitimate. Finally, his conclusion that if he learned the name of the person who'd denounced Sarah, he might finally be able to put that terrible chapter of his life to rest.

  Sometime during the ten or so minutes it took him to describe his dilemma, he became aware of Carlos' heavy breathing. He realized too that, as he'd spoken, Carlos had not interrupted with a single question. And that was not Carlos Peña's style, for he was famous for peppering his patients with queries, a technique, as he explained in his seminars, "to help them reorganize their stories."

  Finally Carlos spoke. "Listening to you brings to mind a line of Freud's: 'The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of a sense of guilt.'"

  Tomás was perplexed. "I guess I don't see the relevance."

  Then, aware again of Carlos' silence, Tomás twisted around on the couch.

  He was surprised to find Carlos' face in what looked to be a state of dread.

  "Are you all right?" Tomás asked.

  At first the old man did not respond. But then, as Tomás continued to face him, concerned that he was ill, Carlos began to speak. His words and tone did not resemble anything Tomás had heard from him before. Rather they came at him like an explosion."I know what you want from me, Tomás, the same kind of phony wisdom you impart to your patients. 'It's better to put the past to rest,' et cetera. To which I say bullshit!"

  Along with the word, a fine spray of spittle issued from Carlos' mouth.

  "A person can't deny his needs. Even Freud couldn't! Does the fact he may have sucked Fliess' mangy dick, and been in love with Carl Jung, and occasionally made whoopee threesomes with Martha and Minna, take anything away from his achievement? I think not! But enough about The Great Fucking Founder! What do I suggest you do?"

  In all the years Tomás had known Carlos, he could not remember him ever uttering an obscenity. He was a man of great dignity, always exquisitely dressed, perfectly mannered and composed. Yet now his speech was laced with obscenities.

  "No, Tomás, you don't have to slither back down on the damn couch like a worm. If you want it straight, sit up and face me. You asked my opinion. Here it is. Expose the fucker! Play this scumbag Tony along till you get the fucker's name. Buy it from him or beat it out of him. But whatever you do get the damn name.

  "Let me tell you something. If it were me, and I lost my wife that way, and I found out who denounced her, I wouldn't care how many years had passed. I'd track down the fucker, lie in wait for him some night, grab hold of him when he walked by, wrestle him to the pavement, knee him hard in the balls, then stab him in the belly and twist around the knife. And not just once. Again and again, twisting it each time! Cut off his dick and balls too while I was at it. Hey! I know we're civilized men, psychoanalytic bullshit dispensers. But in a case like yours I say screw all that! In the end we're only animals! Isn't that the lesson of Hitler, Stalin, Perón...the Nazis, the Commies, the Proceso? That we're all fucking animals and will always be no matter how many coats of varnish we paint on? Revenge is sweet! It's been offered to you, Tomás. Don't be a fool. Take it!"

  Tomás was appalled. The man speaking to him was not just someone he didn't know, he was someone he didn't want to know.

  Shaking, Tomás stood up, all the while staring into his old mentor's eyes. Carlos stared straight back, eyes crazed, furious, mouth frozen into an angry grimace. No, this was not the Carlos Peña he knew; this was a monster inflamed.

  Unable to even think of a response, Tomás fled the consulting room without a backward glance.

  He had two appointments that afternoon, but he could not bear to see patients after such a confrontation. Fortunately, he was able to reach both and arrange new times. Then, pacing his office, he thought about phoning someone...but who?

  The obvious choice was Carlos' practice associate, Victoria Fabiani. What could he tell her? That Carlos was in the midst of a breakdown? If he were wrong that would be a terrible betrayal, and if he were right, wouldn't Victoria already be aware of it?

  He considered other possibilities. Outlandish as it seemed, could Carlos's explosion have been some kind of therapeutic trick? But that was stupid. And, in any case, Carlos didn't employ tricks. Tricks went against his most cherished belief: that psychoanalysis was the finest method ever devised for deep exploration of the human psyche.

  When his phone rang a little past three p.m., he considered not picking up. He was still shaki
ng, thinking about going out, walking the streets, losing himself in the city. But as the phone continued to ring, a signal his caller wouldn't give up, he snatched up the receiver hoping it was Carlos calling to explain or at least apologize.

  "Yes?" he answered, surprised by the gruffness in his voice.

  It was Victoria in a panic state.

  "Tomás! Tomás! Thank God you're there! The most terrible thing has just happened!"

  Carlos, Victoria told him, had just a few minutes before left their ground floor office without a word, taken the elevator to the roof, and from there leapt to the street. The building was fourteen stories high. He was killed instantly.

  "It's chaos over here. He was in the midst of a session. He ran out leaving a patient lying on his couch. The girl, seeing a commotion out the window, got up to look. She's now in shock, certain it was something she said that set him off. Another patient was in the waiting room when Carlos stormed out. He was upset Carlos didn't greet him. He's out there now sobbing. People in the building are running about like madmen. There must be twenty or thirty shrinks living and working here. The whole of Villa Freud, for God's sakes! All over the neighborhood they're pouring out of buildings. I've already had calls from the Institute asking what's going on. This is a calamity, Tomás! A huge calamity! You must come over right away. We need trauma experts here. We need his friends. Please! I'm so sorry to cut you off...but now all the phones are ringing...."

  Chapter Eleven

  XI. SPIDER'S WEB

  Marta and Rolo found Reinaldo Costas' photo studio closed, with a neat sign on the door stating the closure was permanent. When they unearthed the building manager, he told them Cyber-Fotografía had shut down three days before. Mr. Costas, he told them, had been killed in a hit-and-run accident in front of his house. His employees had removed his equipment and the business was now defunct.