Уолтер Мосли - Odyssey

“That it’s psychological. The experts call it hysterical blindness.”

“So you’re faking it,” she said in her most condemnatory voice.

“Excuse me, but I gotta go rob some orphans, Zenith. Good-bye.”

“Hold on, Sovy. I didn’t mean—”

“My name is Sovereign, Zenith. You have a name and I do too.”

“I didn’t mean that you aren’t suffering. But when you say psychological that means you’re making it up, right?”

Sovereign replaced the phone in its cradle and then went to pull the jack from the wall. He went back to his sofa and sat there with his heart thundering.

He was surprised at the rage his sister could call up in him after all these years.

“Hello?” she said at three thirty-one that morning.

“It’s me,” Sovereign James murmured.

“It’s just Sugah, Mama. I told her to call me when she got in so I wouldn’t worry... I don’t know why. I answered it on the first ring. You must’a not been asleep anyway... No, I’m’a be right off... Yes, Mama... Yes, Mama.

“You still there, Mr. James? I mean, Sovy.”

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“It’s my phone and my room and I gave her two hunnert an’ forty dollars when I got back from your house. So she can’t be tellin’ me who to talk to or when.”

“I should have waited until morning.”

“You don’t know. I might have been gone by then. Anyway it was probably important, right?”

“Feels silly.”

“What is it?”

“It’s two things. I really shouldn’t bother you this late.”

“I’m up now, daddy. Talk.”

For the first time since his blindness Sovereign was thankful. He didn’t know why the girl he had barely glimpsed calling him daddy made a difference, but that solitary word out of her mouth opened a door to laughter.

“What you laughin’ about?” she asked, the smile lurking in her throat.

“It’s nothing. You just make me happy.”

“Then tell me the two things.”

“My sister called.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s the first time I’ve heard from her in more than twenty years.”

“Damn. That’s my whole life almost. What she want? Somebody die?”

“She heard that I was blind and called. But when I told her it was psychological she said that I was faking.”

“You want me to call her?”

“Why would you do that?”

“I’d tell the bitch that you had to be blind. How else could a man walk up to you with a bludgeon stick an’ hit you in the head and you don’t even try to duck? I’d ask her do she think you’d make that shit up too.”

“That would set Zenith back on her ass,” Sovereign said. “It sure would. But no, honey, I just needed to tell somebody and I find that I don’t have that many friends.”

“How come you don’t? You got a nice place. People could be over there all the time. You know, my mama’s apartment half yours and we got seven people in here sometimes, just sittin’ around.”

“I don’t know. Most of the people I communicated with are at my job. I’ve worked there for twenty-one years.”

“Couldn’t you call somebody you work with?”

“I guess not.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“What?” Sovereign asked as he thought about the paucity of his social life.

“You said you wanted to talk about two things.”

There was Bert Sender, head of publicity, and Antoinette Laird, director of interoffice communications; these were friends, people he’d known for well over a decade. Neither one had called since he left the office. He had a home number for Bert from a dozen years ago.

Why was he calling this child in the middle of the night? Why didn’t he go to his father’s funeral or to see his mother down South for Christmas?

“That man attacking me,” Sovereign said, “showed me many things. He let me see your face and also made it clear that my existence has shrunk down to the size of my grandfather’s life in his wheelchair. But Granddad had family and neighbors and drinking buddies. He had a full life up until the day he blew his brains out.”

“He killed himself?”

“Yes, he did.”

“I’m sorry about what I said before... about how I’d kill myself if I was like your granddad. I didn’t know.”

“What I wondered was if maybe you’d have a couple of days a week to go around with me. You know... take me shopping or to a concert or maybe a play. You know, I can’t even go outside without thinking that there might be somebody with a blackjack ready to hit me.

“I’d pay you for it.”

“Okay.”

The one-word assent caught James up short.

“Okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Just like that? You don’t need to know anything else?”

“Like what?”

“How much I’m willing to pay, for instance.”

“You already gimme fi’e hunnert. That’s pay for five weeks right there. And if I take you to lunch I get to eat too, right?”

“Of course.”

“That’s okay, Mr. James. I don’t need to know nuthin’. If I don’t like it I’ll just quit.”

“And she just said yes at three thirty in the morning?” Seth Offeran asked.

“It surprised me too. I wanted to have her work for me like I did for my grandfather up until the day he killed himself.”

“Your grandfather committed suicide?”

“Yeah. Didn’t we talk about that?”

“No. When did this happen?”

“I was eleven and pushing him in his wheelchair down along the beach. He sent me to buy a root beer. He would always take a sip or two but it was really for me. And while I was gone he shot himself.”

“Are you considering suicide?” the doctor asked.

“No. Why would you ask that?”

“Because you tell me about your grandfather and obviously you’ve been thinking about him. You’re hiring this young woman to take your place with him and so you become him — the disabled man who killed himself.”

“Wow. And aren’t you worried that you’re putting that idea into my head?” Sovereign asked.

“I’m not afraid to face realities, Mr. James. If you’re considering suicide then we should talk about it.”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“Tell me more about your grandfather,” Offeran said. “What was his name again?”

“Eagle James.”

“Odd name.”

“He was raised on a reservation up in Washington State. His people were a cross between black and red. He was as black as me but he was named by his people.”

“All the people in your family have interesting names,” Offeran said.

“That comes from my father’s mother, Athena Winston-James. She came from Tennessee and was brought up on the notion that a black person’s name had to have power or elevation, or both. She died giving birth to my father but he kept up her tradition. Solar was my father and he named us Sovereign, Zenith, and Drum.”

“Makes you different.”

“The most different one was my younger brother, Drum, but he had everybody call him Eddie. Like I told you, most of the time I called him Drum-Eddie. He had about a dozen nicknames for me.”

“And what was it about Eagle James?”

“Granddad was my lifeline when I was a boy. He told me everything. He even said how after he was wounded in the war...”

The words trailed off.

“What about his wound?” the doctor asked when Sovereign hesitated.

“Years later he went to a doctor and the doctor told him that he was impotent due to the operation they performed to save him.”

“Yes?”

“That operation took place two years before my father was sired.”

“Oh. What did your father think about that?”

“No one ever told him.”