Andrea Barrett - The Air We Breathe

NEWS OF THAT scene spread quickly, and some damage was already done by the next day, when Dr. Petrie was called into Dr. Richards’ office for yet another discussion. There he found Dr. Richards struggling, as were the rest of us, between his own knowledge of Leo’s character and what, he said, was Miles’s fierce conviction that Leo had somehow caused the fire.

“If you had seen Leo yesterday,” Dr. Richards said, “the way he went silent—”

“I did see him,” Dr. Petrie said. “Last night, when I went to check on him.” On the corner of Dr. Richards’ desk lay the confiscated copy of The Principles of Chemistry . Months ago, before the fire, Dr. Petrie had paused in his rounds while Leo read to him a sentence from one of those green volumes: Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the realm of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals. They’d laughed like hyenas, agreeing that science as they knew it was endlessly interesting, even engrossing — but never free, not here.

To Dr. Richards, he said, “I was getting ready to release him to his room, but now — he’s taken a big step backwards.”

“His health has to come first,” said Dr. Richards, tugging at his ear. “Still, even you might admit that the evidence Miles has gathered is more than troubling.” He gestured toward the books. “If those belonged to one of us, it would be different. But for someone like Leo to have them, along with that box, and then to offer such a feeble excuse…”

“But he has a perfectly good reason for having those books,” Dr. Petrie said wearily, repeating what he’d already told Miles. What, exactly, did Dr. Richards mean by “one of us?” “Irene gave them to him, so he could study. Give him a little time to explain himself.”

“I don’t think we have much. Miles wants me to go to the Board of Overseers and see about a new official investigation. Or, failing that, that we let him organize one himself through his committee. He took the box as evidence.” Dr. Richards plucked his ear again. “We’re supposed to keep this secret, but I think you know already — I’m on that committee too, now. Along with quite a few people you know. Miles reports to someone at the Secret Service and I think it’s going to matter, later, who joined and who didn’t.”

Dr. Petrie stared at the mounds of paper surrounding the green volumes, aware that even his silence cast him as Leo’s champion. Whatever evidence Miles had uncovered, he wouldn’t get to see it; Miles would tell him nothing more now. If he’d joined the league, Miles might have spoken more openly — but how could he have done that? The letter of invitation had burned his hands like poison. He’d dropped it, tossed a newspaper over it, failed to answer it for a week, and finally responded with a one-line note. All he could do now was try to delay Miles and Dr. Richards until Leo was ready to explain himself. Baffled, he said, “I have work to do. Would you excuse me?”

At least, Dr. Petrie thought as he left, Leo had friends: by that he meant us. Back in his own office, he pushed aside a pile of papers and then, exasperated by the chaos on his desk — how could he work, how could he think, with these tongues of paper lapping from stack to stack, stray sheets wandering from one report into another? — he swept the whole array into a single mass and heaped it on the floor. One project on his desk at a time, which he could then work on unimpeded. For the moment he wanted only to think about Leo and Miles. If Miles really wanted to push matters, he’d be supported by the rest of his league and maybe even by Dr. Richards. On the other hand, Leo would be supported by all of us. So many companions, willing to testify about Leo’s good character, must be worth something. Calmed slightly by that realization, he began pulling sheets from the pile.

OVER THE NEXT few days, what Dr. Petrie sensed as he made his rounds among us shocked him as much as if we’d all sprouted tails. We were so cold-blooded we shocked ourselves. From the moment Miles’s agents searched Leo’s room, something swept through the sanatorium that we’re still ashamed to admit, and that we still don’t completely understand. On the night of the search, it spread from the cluster of Abe, Arkady, and Otto through the second-floor porch in both directions. The chemist, we muttered among ourselves: as if we didn’t know Leo, as if we didn’t know better. Of course. Who else? From that row of densely packed chairs, the judgment we were so quick to pass seeped up to the women on the third-floor porch, down to the men on the first-floor porch, voices rising as the conversation took hold. Leo had shown no one the little tin box; why was that? We hadn’t seen the diagram, and we knew nothing then about Ephraim’s visitor; why had Leo been so secretive? And what had he said to Naomi that had so upset her on the night of the fire?

He kept secrets, we felt. He always had — and now, as news spread of Leo’s well-timed coughing fit and his failure to answer Miles’s questions, we discovered that we’d all resented that. Who’d given him the right to keep himself to himself? By the end of the second day, our suspicions had painted a portrait of Leo about as close to his true self as Eudora’s X-ray portrait was to his living, breathing lungs. Dr. Petrie and Eudora both found, over those two days, that each time they moved toward a group of us we’d break up and slip away, no one saying anything, everyone avoiding any mention of Leo. Dr. Petrie, so sure he understood us that he often assumed he was one of us, could not believe what he was seeing. When it registered, he went to Irene.

During Irene’s stay in the new infirmary, he’d visited her daily, reading aloud to her or simply chatting into the silence. Leo, so glad for Dr. Petrie’s visits, didn’t know that she was the one who’d really drawn Dr. Petrie there; he’d stopped by to see Leo only after seeing her. He brought her tidbits from the newspapers and news about the latest conception of atoms and their structure. Astonishing, he said, the reverse of common sense. Instead of seeing the atom as a solar system, electrons whirling like planets around a dense nucleus, now we were to imagine that each atom possessed a certain number of possible shells which the electrons might inhabit.

Irene, her throat bandaged, her face scarred, had listened intently, comforted as no one else would be by his blundering explanation of atomic structure. Her mind, he’d seen then to his huge relief, was as keen as ever. Now, as he knocked at the door of her room in the women’s staff cottage, he felt sure that she’d be able to make some sense of Miles’s accusations, Leo’s reticence — he felt sure Leo had willed his collapse, as a way of gaining time — and our disturbing behavior.

Her room, which had only one window, still seemed cheerful and bright and Dr. Petrie sank with relief into her blue upholstered chair. Resting his feet on the ottoman, he explained the events of the last three days as Irene, still unable to speak, listened closely, nodding now and then. She’d already heard about the search.

“The worst of it,” Dr. Petrie said, “is what’s driving Miles to pursue this. He told both Dr. Richards and his own agents that Leo’s background makes him particularly suspicious. Russian, Jewish, German — there’s not a part of him Miles trusts. But we both know the real reason. Apparently someone hinted at Naomi Martin’s feelings for Leo, and once that happened…”

Irene, her mouth compressed, reached for her pad of paper. Why are the patients acting like such sheep? she wrote. Us, she meant.

“They’re frightened,” Dr. Petrie said with a shrug.