John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

No wonder how I lost my Wits;

Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits!

Mysterium tremendum , as somebody else said, the bottom line of creation’s non-sense: to fashion radiant feminine beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are, to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out — the eyes that gave even dry Darwin a chill, to do all this, and to combine it — O horrors! — with an anus! Too much! O Christ where is Thy triumph? So McClaren, anally fixated Platonist, struck back. ( “So it’s you!” the guru would say, Ira Katz had said. Big smile from both parties … )

“…tried him several times,” McClaren was saying, “but no answer.”

Craine’s wandering attention returned. “You happen to check to see if the van’s there?”

McClaren’s eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking? That he might’ve made a run for it? or somebody might’ve grabbed him?”

“Just like to know where everything is,” Craine said. “I misplace things a lot. Sometimes it takes me half the morning to find my shoes.”

McClaren was watching him steadily again, so intent that he forgot to smile. What the danger was, Craine had no idea, but he understood that somehow he was in danger. “What’s the date today?” McClaren asked from nowhere, as if suddenly remembering he had a dental appointment.

Craine touched the palp of his thumb against the tips of his first three fingers, one by one. “Thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,” he said.

“Yes, that’s right,” McClaren said, remembering now. “The fifteenth.” He smiled. “Funny that you started with the thirteenth.”

Craine smiled back, no more readable than McClaren. “Yes it is.”

“So tell me,” McClaren said, “how’s your young friend Ira Katz?” He pressed his fingertips together, shaping a kind of cricket box over his chest.

“I haven’t seen Ira since the morning we found Carnac,” Craine said. “He was all right then.”

“And also you saw him the night before, I think? With April Vaught?”

“Yes that’s right, I did. Actually I went over quite a while before she got there, borrowed a cup of sugar and stayed a while—”

“Arguing—”

Craine glanced at him, puzzled. “No, not arguing … I don’t think so.

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember pretty well. It was late in the day, of course—”

“And you’d been drinking—”

“In moderation, yes. Since early morning.” He spoke solemnly, as if humorlessly, and watched the inspector’s reaction.

McClaren blushed and jerked up one side of his upper lip, baring three gold-framed teeth. Stupid bastard, he said, or seemed to say; the next instant Craine wasn’t sure, because McClaren was saying, genial, “Put it this way, why don’t you tell me what happened that night, from beginning to end?”

Craine sighed and, after he’d filled and lit his pipe, obeyed. It didn’t take long. He could remember now only snippets of the conversation — which McClaren found uninteresting anyway. For no real reason, he said nothing of how the light on the stereo had gone off. When he mentioned that the phone call was from Ira’s wife, McClaren perked up. “Hold on, now,” he said. “You know it was from his wife?”

“I suppose I can’t swear to it,” Craine said. “That was my impression.”

McClaren was leaning on his elbow, his head to one side, his fingers elegantly curled to support his cheek. Craine had a sudden sharp vision of him in navy whites, then, revising it, dressed him in a pea coat. There was no way on earth he could be wrong, Craine knew. Twenty, thirty years ago, McClaren had been a navy man. What it meant about his psyche Craine wasn’t sure yet, but he’d get it, in due time. His left hand went into his suit coat pocket and struggled out again, dragging a paper scrap. “You got a pencil?” he said.

McClaren’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch while his right hand, as if of its own accord, went for the pen in his pocket and held it toward Craine. “What’s the note?” McClaren asked, one eyebrow lifted.

Craine held it up and read, “ ‘McClaren — former navy man.’ ”

“Jeesus!” McClaren hissed, then leaned in hard on both elbows. Though his blush was dark and his small, far from prominent chin slightly trembled, his voice was, though thin and nervous, even. “I’ve put my cards on the table. I thought you agreed in advance to do the same.” (It wasn’t true, and he knew it, Craine thought; but never mind.) The inspector jerked one hand out, palm up, effeminate. “What makes you think Ira’s phone call was from his wife?”

“Several things — nothing that would stand up in court. His look when the phone rang, his tone of voice, the effect it had on him — only a wife can hit the weak spots with such absolute precision.”

“A wife or, sometimes, a neurotic mother,” McClaren said.

“True, except that Ira’s mother’s dead.”

McClaren nodded. After a moment: “Can you remember what was said?”

That too Craine could tell quickly. He could remember only one short outburst: “Kill them! That’s a wonderful idea! Kill them and pin the thing on me!”

“What?” McClaren said, looking at him harder. “You’re sure he said that?”

“Don’t make too much of it,” Craine said.

“What do you make of it?”

“As an ordinary observer of humanity,” Craine said, “I’d say Ira Katz and his wife were very angry, saying whatever they could think of to give pain.”

“You’re not making this up,” McClaren said, studying him.

“Any reason I should?”

McClaren evaded it, slowly swivelling around in his chair to frown thoughtfully at the blank gray wall. “Anything else you can tell me about Katz?”

“Well,” Craine said, hesitant about saying what he had in mind but interested in seeing how McClaren would react, “in the battle between Ira Katz and his wife, I’d say his wife wins hands down up at the English Department.”

“Oh?” McClaren said. It seemed to come to him as news.

“I was talking with the chairman.”

“Wendel Davies.”

“That’s him. Very fond of Katz’s wife — nothing intimate, you understand. Likes her cooking, things like that. As for Katz, Professor Davies seems pretty well certain he’ll never get tenure.”

“Interesting,” McClaren said. “No tenure, no job — no alimony, no child support …”

“That’s true too,” Craine said. “I guess they both lose.”

“Funny man, Wendel Davies — as you’ve noticed. I occasionally see him at faculty meetings and whatnot. Independently wealthy; family’s in plastics. Sometimes you get the feeling he’s made of plastic himself. Great humanist, head full of poetry and fine feeling, but sometimes you get the feeling that back behind all of it …” He let it trail off, as if embarrassed. He cleared his throat.

“Very logical mind,” Craine said.

“Yes, so it seems.” McClaren glanced at his watch. “Of course I hardly know him,” he added. Despite the glance at his watch he was pretending he had all day. No question about it, he was spending more time on Craine than made sense. “That reminds me,” McClaren said, abruptly turning. “What about Carnac — where does he fit in? I assume you’ve got some theory?”

“No theory,” Craine said. “I’ve thought about it, naturally.”

“As for myself, I keep thinking of that idea of Tummelty’s, that Two-heads Carnac, crazy as he seems, may in fact be an authentic psychic.” He leaned forward, fingertips of both hands pressed together, as if trying out the idea on Craine. “Suppose our murderer is someone who knows Carnac well, knows he can ‘see’ things. That would make Carnac a threat, you’ll admit.”