Call Me Brooklyn Page 13

  It was a while before you said anything else. When you were ready, you again brought your glass to your lips.

  What Claussen expected to achieve with the letter we’ll never know. He didn’t speak to me about that. One thing is certain: it only cemented his humiliation. An outsider might have concluded that Jansson’s response was needlessly cruel, but the truth is that—putting myself in his place—I understand. You strapped the band around your notebook again.

  Keeping his word, when the moment came, Frank told Jansson that Niels Claussen had left a letter for him. The captain of the Aalvand shook his head. Of course, he didn’t want anything to do with his former chief mate. To which Otero could only nod.

  He didn’t ask any questions. And never brought the subject up again. It wasn’t long before Claussen called Frank to ask him if he had given the letter to Jansson. The gallego told him that the captain had refused to take it.

  At this point in the story, you began to drink more slowly. Inexplicably, you had attained an almost unbearable lucidity, despite the vodka. Hoping to retain it, instead of emptying another glass in one gulp, you took small sips to fortify your words.

  Jansson had been in Brooklyn for three nights when Claussen showed up at the Oakland. He shouldn’t have done it. Jansson’s decision didn’t really leave room for misunderstanding. But human stupidity knows no limits, and Claussen did the worst thing he could have done. He appeared at the Oakland in full navy uniform. It was a surreal scene that Frank tells me still haunts him. It was nighttime and the bar was packed. Frank’s place is a closed world. Everybody knew the albino and his story perfectly well, so the sight of the former chief mate in full regalia caused an appalling silence to fall over the room. Niels looked around for his old captain, headed toward his table, and when he was a few feet away, he paused, not knowing what to do next. Jansson frowned, stood up, and asked Otero to go get him the letter. When it was brought to him, he approached his former subordinate and made to return the envelope. But instead of taking it, Claussen stood at attention and saluted.

  Frank says what happened next was like a dream. Jansson’s right hand trembled, and after an endless moment, he let the letter drop to the floor. Who knows what was going on in his head? He was likely offended that Claussen had had the temerity to show up dressed in the very uniform that he had desecrated. His hand began to shake more violently. For a moment, Frank thought that he was about to return the salute, but instead Jansson reached back and delivered a slap that sounded like the lash of a whip in the silence of the bar. Niels stumbled back, but managed to quickly recover and hold his stance, still saluting. He was a sorry sight, surrounded by people who couldn’t take their eyes off him. He looked like a marionette abandoned by its puppeteer. His face was tense. A drop of blood appeared in the corner of his mouth. Jansson turned around and continued chatting with Frank as if nothing had happened. Niels remained still for a long while, trying to contain his tears, until—having had his fill—he let his arm drop, and amid the intolerable silence, crouched down to pick up the letter, turned on his heels, and went back to wherever he’d come from. At Frank’s signal, Ernie Johnson hurried to play some music. The noise from the Wurlitzer was like a sudden storm, overshadowing what had happened.

  You passed your finger over the edge of your glass, delaying the moment before you took another sip, as if you knew that you were now at a point equidistant between lucidity and drunkenness. The line of vodka in your glass seemed to mark the frontier between the two states.

  Did Jansson ever explain himself to Frank?

  There was no opportunity. He stopped coming around. He disappeared. He asked to be relieved from the North Atlantic route and they never saw him again. There was some news about him from the Danish seamen who never stopped coming regularly to the bar, over the next few years, but that’s all. Jansson retired in 1964. In the late ’70s, after many years of having heard nothing about him, a telegram arrived at the Oakland with news that the old captain of the Aalvand had passed away. It was an official telegram, signed by someone or other . . .

  What about Niels?

  At first, everyone thought that he had gone back home—but no. Last thing anyone knew, he was still living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but that had been before the murder. One day, a friend of Frank’s told him he had seen Niels in Red Hook, begging for change and completely out of it. Later news confirmed that he was in effect living in a bit of parkland next to a garbage dump with a bunch of other homeless guys. Frank went to look for Niels and recognized him right away. He saw a foul-smelling wreck collecting cans, glass bottles, and plastic containers that he would later exchange for a negligible amount of cash at a supermarket. But his height, his hair, and the color of his skin were unmistakable. It was the albino, all right.

  Did Niels recognize Frank?

  By then he had completely lost his mind. He had already become the man you see sitting there. The only difference is that now Manuel el Cubano takes care of him. The albino doesn’t remember a thing. You can tell him anything you want about his past, he won’t react. Once we put him in front of the photograph with all of them on the deck of the Aalvand, and he laughed like an idiot—we might as well have shown him a picture of monkeys fucking, shall we say. That’s why, when I told him that Niels had come to my table to talk, Frank didn’t buy it, and only believed me after I showed him the clipping.

  Speaking of clippings, you said, tapping your notebook with your index finger, Jaclyn Fox’s was the first. From then on, every time I come across news of that sort in the New York Times, I cut the article out. I’d been doing it for years, not knowing why, until one day I decided to turn one of the news articles into a story. I thought that if I did that, perhaps I would be able to make some sense of it all. So I began to take notes in a journal—different from all the others I keep. I didn’t have to think much to come up with a name for it. It was clear that the common denominator of all those stories was death. But I still didn’t know what shape I wanted to give my material. Little by little, I’ve been writing stories based on the articles I’ve been collecting . . . but not Niels’s, that remains to be done.

  We looked hard at each other, probably to avoid looking at Niels, although he was far away by now, watching Boy and Orlando play in the poolroom. You pushed the notebook toward me and invited me to open it. I was impressed by how carefully organized it was. It was a veritable catalog of the horrors of which human beings are capable—of the terrible things that we live with but don’t pay attention to, since they appear routinely in the newspaper as part of our day-to-day lives. The monstrosities recorded in the Death Notebook repeated themselves with a mesmerizing monotony. It was strange, very strange, going through it. There was so much pain in those clippings. I flipped through the pages without daring to read any in detail, barely even looking at the headlines. They seemed like windows opening onto evil itself. Which is your phrase, not mine.

  You filled your cup, pouring interminably. Soon the fire of the alcohol began to burn in your eyes. Your voice shook. Your words were more spat out than spoken.

  To understand, simply to understand how anyone can commit such atrocities, you said, slurring a bit. That’s all I want.

  I noted something inside you, then, that I would only see again when I was with you at the Shipyard; I didn’t know what to call it, but whenever I saw it, I made sure to keep my distance. Raúl had come out of the office, but he didn’t come over, and I’m sure that Frank was staying away to avoid seeing you in that condition. Raúl went to sit with Niels, who was dozing off peacefully in the poolroom. He looked like a gargoyle perched on the arm of the sofa. Manuel el Cubano was sitting beside him, one hand on his back.

  Anyway, you shouldn’t pay too much attention to me, Ness.

  It was the last thing you said, and it was said with a great deal of effort. You managed to get to your feet, but when you tried to take the Death Notebook, you couldn’t quite grasp it, and I had to hand it to you. You went to pour yoursel
f another vodka, but all you could manage was to pour the little liquid left in the bottle right out onto the surface of the table. Everyone in the place was watching you, now. With a surprisingly steady step, you walked toward the dance floor, but after making it into the middle of the darkness, you stopped. I came up from behind you to turn on the light and waited until you crossed the empty floor. You made it to the revolving doors and disappeared into the lobby of the building.

  The glass panes continued to revolve for a few seconds; when they finally stopped, I saw a figure reflected there. It took me a moment to realize that the shadow lost among the ghostly lights of the dance floor was me. Had I not heard Nélida calling my name at that very moment, I would have been lost, I think—adrift in time and space.

  Eight

  DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE DATING?

  Clark Investigations & Security Services,

  Ltd. 341 West 56th Street

  New York, NY

  CASE # 233-NH (CLASSIFICATION ID 08-1)

  DATE OF CONTRACT: October 25, 1973

  NAME OF CLIENT: Gal Ackerman

  Report prepared by William S. Queensberry, Jr.

  SUBJECT OBSERVED: Nadia Orlov. Age: 23. Born in Laryat, Siberia, May 17, 1950. Daughter of Mikhail and Olga, nuclear physicists. The Orlovs sought and obtained political asylum in the United States in 1957. Associate professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mikhail died of pancreatic cancer in 1965; his widow continues to teach and lives in the family home in Boston. After graduating from Smith College, Nadia Orlov was accepted at the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan, where she is in her third year. Current address: 16-62 Ocean Avenue, # 30-N, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. She shares the place with Zadie Stewart, vice-president and director of publicity at Leichliter and Associates.

  ADDITIONAL FACTS: The subject works three days a week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center from 3 to 6 in the afternoon (5 to 8 on Tuesday). Saturdays and Sundays she works as a waitress at the Paris Bistro at 764 Avenue N in Brooklyn. No criminal record. She does not seem to be currently involved in a romantic relationship. Activities during the weekend: she arrived at the restaurant at 5 P.M. and left after midnight. Returned to Brighton Beach by taxi. Her routines offer no new revelations: shopping; a visit to the post office; a concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday afternoon; a stroll in Coney Island on Sunday morning by herself. Her roommate, Zadie Stewart, didn’t show up at the apartment all weekend . . .

  Good morning, Ackerman. Queensberry walks into his office and shuts the door. I’m sorry I made you wait. Well, at least you got a chance to look at the report.

  I make as if to stand, but Queensberry asks me not to bother and shakes my hand. He has a plastic cigarette is in his mouth, making his enunciation less clear.

  Don’t take this the wrong way, he says, leaning on his elbows, but this is probably the blandest case we have had so far this year. I warned you. But, hey, it’s your money. The only thing even slightly atypical about the case is the age of the subject. This sort of job is most common with people who’ve been married a certain number of years. One or the other party starts developing irrational jealousies out of sheer boredom. It’s just another way of throwing away money, like I said, although, actually, we tend to get better results than psychiatrists—when our clients read their reports, they tend to calm down right away. As you can see, this girl isn’t hiding a thing.

  I slip the brief report prepared by Queensberry into a gray envelope.

  I also took a few pictures, he goes on, having stopped chewing on his so-called cigarette. Mostly to entertain myself. From a professional perspective, they’re perfectly irrelevant, although if you may permit a frivolous remark, there’s no doubt that the subject is quite attractive.

  He hands me another envelope, the same color as the first. The intercom buzzes as he does so. Queensberry pushes a button. A female voice is heard, somewhat distorted.

  Thank you, Tracy. Put him on hold on line two, please. Excuse me, but I have to take this call. Your case is closed. I wish you the best, Ackerman. I’m glad I was able to be of some help. It’s been a pleasure.

  William S. Queensberry, Jr. stands up and shakes my hand.

  Same here, I make sure to say. But as soon as the detective picks up his phone, I’ve ceased to exist for him. Before turning the doorknob, I read on the glass in the door:

  When I close the door behind me, the letters, written in gold letters, appear rearranged in their natural order. The receptionist who attended me on the first day stops her typing and comes up to the counter, smiling. On her blouse is a plastic name card: Tracy Morris. I give her a check, duly filled out and signed. She studies it for a few moments before giving me a receipt and then leads me to the outer door.

  Thank you, Mr. Ackerman. Have a good day.

  There’s no one else on the landing. As I wait for the elevator, I examine the envelopes. One has the CLARK logo, next to the magnifying glass with the stain that could be an insect or a clump of pubic hair. The other one, firmer to the touch and without any markings, contains the photographs. On each of the envelopes is a white label with the name William S. Queensberry, Jr. typed in. When I described him in one of the notebooks, I nicknamed him Bullfrog. Just like that, no frills, with a capital B, as if he were a boxer, the Bullfrog. So sorry, Queensberry, I think as I pull the photos out of the envelope, I tried to come up with another nickname, but I’m afraid that one is in your genes.

  The morning sun falls gently on southern Manhattan. The streets are full of life; people are wearing light clothes enjoying the outdoors. I would like to return to my place on foot but I have to finish a job for McGraw-Hill, so I decide to take the bus. I think about Marc. I really need to speak with him, give him all the minute details in the report, show him the pictures so he can see what Nadia looks like. Nadia. I go over the set of pictures again, studying them one by one. They are good-sized enlargements that bend a bit when I take them out. As photographs, they leave a lot to be desired, but they’re better than Polaroid snapshots. In truth, there’s only one that’s any good. I go back to it when I finish with the rest. Queensberry caught Nadia right at the moment that she was coming out of the library at Lincoln Center. Her left arm is blurry and in her hand is something I can’t quite identify at first, but after looking closer decide are sunglasses. She brandishes them as if they were a gun. It happens sometimes, even in bad-quality pictures, that the camera fortuitously captures a moment of everyday mystery and freezes it in time. Nadia looks at the camera with a fixedness that betrays some anxiety. I think of a deer that has suddenly sensed the presence of a hunter amid the silence. Muscles tense but perfectly still, an animal captured in a fragment of time a mere tenth of a second before fleeing. Nadia too has detected a vague danger. I linger on the shape of her lips, on the eyes whose depth fills me with unease. I can sense her restlessness, trapped in the moment when fear turns to anger. My instinctive reaction is to protect her, but she doesn’t need protection, there’s an aura of strength about her. Her expression is in fact familiar. It’s the same one I saw just before she threw her bag at my face in Port Authority. I’m so absorbed studying the details of the photograph that I don’t notice the bus arrive. When it stops in front of me, the screeching of the brakes makes me jump. Although I’m at the head of the line, I step aside for everyone else waiting to get on. I put away the pictures and climb in, restless because I’m not sure what the next step should be, now that I’m acquainted with the details of Nadia Orlov’s routine. I throw a handful of coins into the slot as I hear the muffled sound of the door closing, leaving the world behind.

  After the radiant sun in the street, my place feels like a black hole, but I don’t turn on the lights. I’d rather wait until my eyes get accustomed to the darkness. I leave the envelopes on the table and call Marc at work. He answers on the first ring. It’s good to hear his voice and I begin telling him everything hurriedly, overwhelmi
ng him with the details of Queensberry’s report, my words tripping over each other.

  Gal!

  But I keep going.

  Gal! What’s gotten into you?

  And I realize that I didn’t even bother to say hello.

  Sorry, Marc, I’m a little shaken up.

  At first there’s a silence on the other end of the line, then the murmur of a distant voice. Someone must have come into his office.

  I need to talk to you.

  I can’t now, I’m sorry. I have a business lunch. Marc’s voice sounds different, mechanical, professional. I won’t be back to the office for the remainder of the day. Why don’t you drop by the Chamberpot tonight?

  What time?

  After eight. Sorry, Gal, I have to go.

  A beam of light sneaks in through the window. The midday sun appears from behind the skyscrapers that keep my building in the shadows all day. Except for now. Fifteen minutes. That’s it. At this time of the year, there are only fifteen minutes of natural light a day. Fifteen minutes during which, if the sky’s clear, the sun shines particularly bright as it runs the course between the two skyscrapers that box in the courtyard of my building. A patch of light appears on the kitchen floor. I go to the window, close my eyes, and wait for the sun to hit me square in the face before it vanishes for the day. When I feel the shadow again through my eyelids, I let the curtain fall and sit at the table.

  I know the search isn’t over. After so much expectation, everything’s happened too fast. I found the girl in the photograph. I know where she lives, where she works, what she does every day. I know the external details of her routines, and if I want, I can burst into her life; but something tells me I shouldn’t do that yet. It’s as if I’ve reached the border of some new land, shrouded with fog. I’ve cheated fate till now—to take the next step will mean danger. But wait. I push away my doubts and make a quick mental calculation. I have time to finish correcting these galleys and turn them in to McGraw-Hill before she finishes her shift in the library.