The Committee. Sterling Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ Jewish students who made the 350-mile trip up from Miami to Gainesville. Another was that his Presbyterian minister father had instilled in his son the belief that the Jews were God’s chosen people. What they had been chosen for was a matter of endless debate.

      As Stall walked from Murphree Hall back to his office in Anderson, tendrils of regret crept into his mind. He’d been too hard on young Martin Levy. By Stall’s standards, the boy had been rude, but where Levy came from manners might be different. And it was entirely possible that Levy, a budding young English scholar, was steeped in the Jewish tradition of midrash, the kind of determined, even angry disputation over the finer points of biblical texts that was, arguably, the earliest form of literary criticism, predating even Aristotle and his Poetics. Stall shook his head as he walked and admonished himself: He’s just a boy. You’ll have to call him in and make this right.

      A man fell into step with Stall. “Talking to yourself, professor? I guess it’s true what they say about you intellectuals. Got your head in the clouds.”

      The words were mildly insulting, but they were spoken in a jovial, man-to-man tone. Stall turned to see the blond football player looming beside him, at least two inches taller than his six one. Stall stopped walking, and the big man did too. He faced Stall and extended a hand the size of baseball glove. “I’m Cy Tate. Good to meet you, Tom. Frank Vane recommends you highly.”

      Recommends me for what? Stall shook the big hand. “Well,” he said, “next time you see Frank, thank him for me. I’m pleased to have his high opinion . . .” Stall got lost in the syntax, “of me.”

      Cyrus Tate chuckled warmly. “You and Frank were army buddies, weren’t you?” The big man took a few steps, and when Stall didn’t follow, he stopped and turned back. His voice went low and serious like he was offering Stall a special deal on merchandise of uncertain provenance: “Let’s talk in your office. I think that’d be better, don’t you?”

      Better than what? Stall was losing patience. “No, let’s talk right here. I’m sure this will be brief.”

      “No, no, it won’t be.” Tate said the words thoughtfully, even kindly, again as though he were doing some kind of favor.

      Stall felt the worm of fear turn over in his stomach. “All right, my office then.” He took off striding toward Anderson Hall.

      Cyrus Tate caught up quickly and matched him stride for stride until they crossed the threshold of the small office. Stall sat behind his desk, trying to seem at ease. He considered putting his foot up on the lower drawer that he always pulled out for that purpose, but thought better of it.

      Tate took the chair in front of the desk that students usually occupied. He moved the chair so that it blocked the doorway. “Shall I close the door? This will be confidential.”

      Stall held his hands out, palms down in front of him. They were sweating. “I see no reason for that. As I said outside, this will be brief.”

      Tate was well dressed for an ex-cop. His gray summer suit was cut to fit, though his arms and shoulders stretched the material in ways that left no doubt of the power of his body. His silk tie was bright but conservative and, even Stall knew, expensive. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and carefully spread it open across his broad, flat chest and crossed his legs with a masculine ease that told Stall who owned this small space.

      He has the gift of ease, Stall thought. Few men have it. He’s ready for anything. And then Stall wondered if the man was carrying a weapon, if the powers conferred by the Johns Committee allowed him to strap on a gun. There were no obvious bulges, but an ex-cop would know how to wear a firearm without making it obvious.

      “So, you and Frank were pals in the war. He told me about how you two almost died in that field hospital, how you went to Paris later and had yourselves the time of your lives.”

      We had the time because we were alive, Stall thought, remembering how important it had seemed after he had risen from the hospital bed to do something with his youth. Hearing this man talk about that time, reducing it to the clichés a person might use to describe a vacation to the Grand Canyon, Stall felt anger light up his chest again as it had back in the classroom with the kid, Martin Levy. In the winter and spring of 1945, Stall and Frank Vane had been accidentally not killed, accidentally in beds next to each other in a field hospital, and accidentally in the same army truck that hauled fortunate men to Paris on three-day passes. They had been accidental friends for a time, and then they had lost each other. And now this—a big, powerful man named Tate with a badge and possibly a gun, telling Stall that Frank Vane recommended him highly.

      Tate took an envelope from his pocket and put it on Stall’s desk. God, Stall thought, not another one. This is beyond Byzantine. His hand leaden, his anger gone, the worm of fear turning again, Stall opened the envelope and removed a photograph.

      She had changed, of course, but he recognized her immediately. Brigitte. Her blue eyes seemed smaller, and there were wrinkles at their edges. Her blond hair was thinner and her cheeks were hollow under the high cheekbones that had been part of her beauty in Paris in 1945. Her lips were as wide and full as ever, and they had been what had first caught Stall’s eye, and, as he would have said then, and as he told her then, they were what had quickened his heart on a narrow street near Sacré-Cœur.

      He put the picture down on his desktop and looked at Tate, gave the man his bleakest stare. “What does this have to do with me? It was a long time ago. I haven’t seen the woman since 1945. I’ve had no contact with her, not a letter, not a postcard. I don’t understand why you bother me with this. A woman I met thirteen years ago during the war.”

      “Well, she wasn’t exactly a woman, for one thing,” Tate said with the look on his face of a man who is a little embarrassed to be splitting hairs. “She was only fifteen years and, let’s see, seven months old. Not even sweet sixteen, as we say here in the States. Did you know that, Mr. Stall, at the time?”

      She looked a lot older, Stall’s stunned mind told him. She looked every inch a woman. And I was what, twenty-three?

      “Well, you asked me what this has to do with you. Ordinarily, I’d say not much, except for this.” Tate took another photograph from the inside pocket of his tasteful suit coat and put it on the desk in front of Stall.

      There was Brigitte, with whom Stall had two of the most glorious nights of his life, standing on a city street holding the hand of a little girl. Again Stall looked up at Cyrus Tate.

      Tate said, “It has to do with you if she had your child.”

      Stall looked back down at the picture. The little girl could have been anybody’s child, the offspring of any man in the world, but Stall knew beyond any doubt that she was his. It was as though a beam of light were fired from the innermost chamber of the heart of a Frenchwoman, now almost thirty years old, across six thousand miles of ocean, to pierce the stricken chest of Thomas Stall. To split him open. And for a few seconds it was as though Brigitte lay next to him again in the warm narrow bed in the pension with the piano and accordion music drifting through the window from the bal musette across the street, the sad, lovely notes whispering, The child is yours, Tom. She is your daughter.

      Stall swallowed and put his heart back together and tried to recover his mind from the narrow bed in a small room that smelled of cabbage soup and cheap wine, and of lovely Brigitte. His voice was a croak when he said, “This is a flimsy excuse for a reason to blackmail a man.”

      “I doubt your wife would say that, professor.” Tate reached down СКАЧАТЬ