Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“How about you? Going to join them?”

“I might, as long as I’m here,” he said, with his annoying smile.

“All forgiven, is he?”

“It comes with the job.”

“And he’s all apologetic for what he did?”

“Not in the least. He’s never said a word to me or Miri about that time, or about Mother. He thinks I’m a jerk and a clown and treats Miri like a servant. As far as I can see he hasn’t changed one bit since Brooklyn, except he’s older, richer, more corrupt, and boinking successively younger women. Oh, and of course, politically he’s a total fascist, way to the right of Kach. Death to the Arabs, Sharon a sellout, the usual.”

“Charming. Paul, why the hell do you waste your time with him?”

His turn to shrug. “Filial duty. Or so Miri doesn’t have to carry the whole load by herself. Or maybe I have hope that he’ll put himself in a position where I can give him what he needs.”

“What would that be?”

“I’m not sure. Penitence and reconciliation? My prayer is that I’ll know it when it happens. In the meantime, he’s my father, and although he’s a nasty bastard he’s still part of me, and it does me good to see him every once in a while. You should try it sometime.”

I said I’d pass on that and he didn’t press me. He never does. I can’t recall the rest of the conversation and I had left my little machine in my room, but I vividly recall the next time I saw my brother, which was when he burst into my room at about ten that evening with the news that my children were missing.

Of course, Amalie had called me first on my cell, but as you have probably gathered by now, I dislike them intensely and always turn mine off during meetings and this evening I had forgotten to turn it back on, and I also recall that I had neglected to inform her I was staying at the Dorchester instead of my usual Knightsbridge place. Therefore, she could not get ahold of me and called Paul instead.

I immediately called her, of course. In a curiously dead voice she told me the story. Amalie had taken the children ice-skating near her house. Ice-skating is Niko’s sole athletic activity, so his mother is always ready to take him to the rink. He typically skates in tight obsessive circles, staring down at the ice. Imogen is a fair figure skater and loves any sort of showing off. They went out with Crosetti and his girlfriend and afterward had their hot chocolate at Zic-Zac. The kids finished and ran outside to wait, the way kids will, especially if their mother thinks they are rude American barbarians not fit to be served in even a low-end Zurich joint. The adults finished their coffee and pastries, and when they emerged the kids were gone. A bystander told her that a sedan had pulled up to the curb, a blond woman had stuck her head out the window, engaged them in conversation, and they had both jumped into the car willingly. She assumed that they knew the woman in the car, or she would have given the alarm. Of course, my first thought was that it was Miranda, and I have to confess that for a brief moment I felt a kind of joy-even though she was a criminal who had kidnapped my children, she was in a way back in my life, I might see her again!

“I’ll come right over,” I said to my wife, “I can be there by seven.”

But she said she didn’t want me. She said I should have been there already, that it had happened because I wasn’t there, because I had broken up the family and let nastiness into what should have been the safe refuge of our home, and do you now pretend to offer me comfort? I don’t want your comfort. You have no comfort to give. And now that your children have been taken by gangsters you will be even more free to do whatever it is you want, and do you want to know what I feel? I feel I was so foolish as to want to raise children with a man like you, I thought yes, I could fix it all with love, I could spread a blanket of love around all of us so that in this frightful world there would be one corner that would be for us alone but no, you didn’t want this, you tore it to pieces my poor little blanket and now what will you do, Jake, on what basis will you mourn for your children? Will you even miss them very much? I don’t even know that and so how can you come and sit with me and give me comfort?

And a good deal more in this vein, with me making excuses and defense and for God’s sake Amalie what are you doing? Have the police been notified? And all sorts of operational stuff that I wanted her to focus on, not to mention the thought (which I was not ready to share with her) that the only reason anyone would have snatched my kids was to trade them for the Item. Which I had not got, and had not much hope of getting if Crosetti was right, and on and on talking past each other like people in a postmodernist play, and eventually she said she didn’t want to talk with me at all anymore and asked to speak with Paul. I gave him the phone and sat on the bed, dull and paralyzed, staring at the desk, which happened to be in my direct line of sight. The desk was covered with neat stacks of paper and folders in various colors into which I was arranging the results of my recent legal work, my laptop computer glowed invitingly and the demons put into my mind the thought that oh, well, I still had my work; no family, shame about that, but still…and then followed the realization of what my work actually was , at which point I went matagalp , as I believe they call it in the Philippines.

I let out a howl like King Kong and began to tear the room apart. I overturned the desk, the chair crashed into the mirror, the laptop went clattering into the bathroom. I threw a fairly heavy Regency armchair through the window and was trying to toss all the papers and my briefcase after it when Paul tackled me. I am, of course, much stronger than he is, but he managed to get me in a painful hold of the type used to disable sentries and after a few seconds of painful, futile struggle my rage collapsed into sobbing. I believe I screamed and cried for some time and then the police came because of the broken window, but Paul was able to deal with that, since priests are nearly always given the benefit of the doubt.

Some hours later, having Xanaxed myself into dull apathy, the expected call came through. Paul took it on the hotel phone and handed it to me. The voice was accented, Russian maybe, but not Shvanov’s. This person was not threatening in any way, explained that he was not a barbarian, that my children were safe and comfortable, not taped to chairs in abandoned factories or anything, and neither you nor your wife was going to be so foolish as to involve the police. I assured him we would not. He said that all this could be handled in a civilized way, since I surely knew what they wanted, and that as soon as I had obtained it I should place an ad on such and such a Web site and they would contact me, and when I said I had no idea where the goddamn thing was he said, we’re patient and we have confidence in you and broke the connection. Nearly as soon as I hung up, my cell phone made the noise it makes when there’s a message waiting and I went into my mailbox and there was a photo of both kids smiling and a message from Imogen: “Hi, Dad, we’re okay and healthy and not getting tortured like in the movies. Don’t worry, okay?” Proof of life, they call it, very professional. And she really did sound okay.

Okay, fast-forward a little. Paul’s gone. He wanted to stay and talk but I kicked him out, mainly because he was taking the kidnapping worse than I was and I had no taste for his empathy. I’m alone in the wrecked suite. The management has placed heavy plastic over the window, but I told them I would pick up the place myself, to gather my important confidential papers. Money has been liberally schmeared among the staff. I am actually gathering up the papers and stuffing them any which way into my briefcase, when my eye falls on a thick pack of printouts that I don’t immediately recognize. On closer inspection I see it is the genealogy of the Bracegirdles that Niko prepared for me. I am about to toss it in the can when I notice that it’s the female branch, the one I never looked at. I sit on the edge of the bed and leaf through the stack and learn that Richard Bracegirdle has one surviving female relative in the direct line, a Mary Evans, born 1921, in Newton, Maryland, and still there residing.