Read Online The Crime of Julian Wells by Thomas H. Cook - Free Book Online
Authors: Thomas H. Cook
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deserve to be written about,” he added softly.
This called into question the whole of Julian’s work, how relentlessly dark it had been. I recalled an article on bastinado he’d once written, the beating of the feet, its different names, falanga, falaka, where and when it had been practiced, and with what instruments. He’d even meticulously described the physical structure of the feet, the large number of small bones, the nerves that cluster in the soles, how painful it must be to suffer such assault.
My father shrugged. “But that was Julian,” he said in a way that made it clear he had no intention of dwelling further on the grim nature of his books. “So you’ll be going away.”
“For a little while,” I said. “But I’ll stay in touch. With Skype, we can even see each other. And if anything . . . comes up, I can fly back in no time.”
“Of course,” my father said, though he was clearly reticent to see me go, feeling vulnerable as old people inevitably do.
“I have to do this, Dad,” I said.
My father smiled, then reached over and touched my hand. “I can see that,” he said. Something inexpressibly sad drifted into his eyes. “It’s a good thing to have a mission.”
I considered all the futile missions my father had undertaken. He’d worked for fresh water in lands ravaged by cholera, for regional clinics in jungle redoubts, for irrigation in regions made barren by drought. In every case, as he’d long ago admitted, he’d been thwarted by the “big picture” at the State Department, global strategies of containment, domino theories, the specter of mutually assured destruction.
“Yes,” I said, then changed the subject, and for the next hour or so we talked of old films he’d watched on television lately. In addition to Westerns and spy movies, he’d begun to watch the noir movies of the forties, Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd, and when he spoke of them I could hear a strange longing in his voice, his old desire to be a man of action still pursuing him and accusing him and tainting his memory with failure.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” I asked in hopes of stopping the downward slant of his mood.
“No,” my father answered. He seemed to go deep inside himself, then return slowly, like a diver resurfacing. “It’s the dusty people, Philip, too small for us to notice,” he said, “the little dusty people who bear the brunt of our mistakes.”
His mood was quite obviously descending, so I gently urged him toward his youth, and for the next few minutes he talked rather nostalgically about his own father, then his college years, then about my mother, who, like my own wife, had died before her time.
“You should be getting home now,” he said at last. “I could go on for hours.”
“Yes, I probably should,” I said.
My father looked like one who’d once been offered a mission not unlike my own, but had either refused it or failed to achieve it. “Good luck,” was all he said.
7
There is no substitute for meaning, and the luckiest of us are those who have felt the spur of a grave commitment. I couldn’t possibly include myself among the men who hung in dark frames from the walls of my father’s apartment. They had been warriors and diplomats, and a few, as my father had once reluctantly admitted, had been spies. I knew that my own life would never be as charged with mission as theirs. Even so, that map of Argentina, the grim fact of Marisol’s disappearance, and finally Julian’s curious mention of some crime I had witnessed— his crime—had joined together to provide a purpose to my going to Paris that was larger than any I had known in a long time.
This purpose was still in my mind when I got back to my apartment.
I poured a glass of brandy, took my usual seat at the window, and looked out over the park, a glance into the night that loosened the bonds of recollection, and took me back to Berlin with Julian more than twenty years before.
He’d gone
This called into question the whole of Julian’s work, how relentlessly dark it had been. I recalled an article on bastinado he’d once written, the beating of the feet, its different names, falanga, falaka, where and when it had been practiced, and with what instruments. He’d even meticulously described the physical structure of the feet, the large number of small bones, the nerves that cluster in the soles, how painful it must be to suffer such assault.
My father shrugged. “But that was Julian,” he said in a way that made it clear he had no intention of dwelling further on the grim nature of his books. “So you’ll be going away.”
“For a little while,” I said. “But I’ll stay in touch. With Skype, we can even see each other. And if anything . . . comes up, I can fly back in no time.”
“Of course,” my father said, though he was clearly reticent to see me go, feeling vulnerable as old people inevitably do.
“I have to do this, Dad,” I said.
My father smiled, then reached over and touched my hand. “I can see that,” he said. Something inexpressibly sad drifted into his eyes. “It’s a good thing to have a mission.”
I considered all the futile missions my father had undertaken. He’d worked for fresh water in lands ravaged by cholera, for regional clinics in jungle redoubts, for irrigation in regions made barren by drought. In every case, as he’d long ago admitted, he’d been thwarted by the “big picture” at the State Department, global strategies of containment, domino theories, the specter of mutually assured destruction.
“Yes,” I said, then changed the subject, and for the next hour or so we talked of old films he’d watched on television lately. In addition to Westerns and spy movies, he’d begun to watch the noir movies of the forties, Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd, and when he spoke of them I could hear a strange longing in his voice, his old desire to be a man of action still pursuing him and accusing him and tainting his memory with failure.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” I asked in hopes of stopping the downward slant of his mood.
“No,” my father answered. He seemed to go deep inside himself, then return slowly, like a diver resurfacing. “It’s the dusty people, Philip, too small for us to notice,” he said, “the little dusty people who bear the brunt of our mistakes.”
His mood was quite obviously descending, so I gently urged him toward his youth, and for the next few minutes he talked rather nostalgically about his own father, then his college years, then about my mother, who, like my own wife, had died before her time.
“You should be getting home now,” he said at last. “I could go on for hours.”
“Yes, I probably should,” I said.
My father looked like one who’d once been offered a mission not unlike my own, but had either refused it or failed to achieve it. “Good luck,” was all he said.
7
There is no substitute for meaning, and the luckiest of us are those who have felt the spur of a grave commitment. I couldn’t possibly include myself among the men who hung in dark frames from the walls of my father’s apartment. They had been warriors and diplomats, and a few, as my father had once reluctantly admitted, had been spies. I knew that my own life would never be as charged with mission as theirs. Even so, that map of Argentina, the grim fact of Marisol’s disappearance, and finally Julian’s curious mention of some crime I had witnessed— his crime—had joined together to provide a purpose to my going to Paris that was larger than any I had known in a long time.
This purpose was still in my mind when I got back to my apartment.
I poured a glass of brandy, took my usual seat at the window, and looked out over the park, a glance into the night that loosened the bonds of recollection, and took me back to Berlin with Julian more than twenty years before.
He’d gone
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