Bread Upon the Waters (49 page)

“Why?”

“May I take off my coat?”

“Of course. Did Babcock explain…?”

“He said he was worried about you, he thought you didn’t look too well,” Philips said, as Strand helped him off with his coat. “He told me about your history with a heart problem and if it’s all right with you I’d like to do a little checking.” He glanced obliquely at Strand. “The truth is your color isn’t all it might be today. I know you’ve been under stress and…”

“I’ve lost a little sleep the last few nights,” Strand said curtly. “That’s all.” He was certain that no matter what happened he didn’t want to be put back in a hospital again.

Dr. Philips was taking a stethoscope out of his bag and the apparatus that Strand had become all too familiar with, to take his blood pressure. “If we can just sit over here at the desk,” Philips said, sounding, Strand thought, like a dentist assuring a patient that probing for a root canal nerve wouldn’t hurt, “and if you’ll take off your robe…” Strand threw the robe over a chair. He still had his pants on so he didn’t feel as foolish as he would have sitting naked in his own living room. “You certainly aren’t obese,” Philips said dryly as he put the cold stethoscope to Strand’s chest. The instructions were familiar, too. Cough. Hold your breath. Breathe deeply, exhale slowly. Aside from the brief commands, Philips said nothing. After the chest he put the stethoscope to Strand’s back. Then he wrapped the rubber sleeve of the blood pressure machine around Strand’s arm and pumped it up, let the air out, watching the gauge intently, then repeating the process. Your life on a bubble of air, Strand thought, as he watched the doctor’s impassive face. Or on a slender column of mercury, that unstable element.

When Philips was through he still remained silent while he put the gadgets away in his bag. Shivering, Strand put on his bathrobe again. “Mr. Strand,” Philips said, “I’m afraid Mr. Babcock is a keen diagnostician. Your breathing is very shallow and there’s a worrisome sound to your lungs. Your heartbeat is irregular, although not too bad. Your blood pressure is very high. Do you remember what it was when they released you from the hospital?”

“I don’t know the numbers, but my doctor said it was high normal.”

“It is no longer within the normal range, I’m afraid. Are you taking anything to keep it down?”

“No.”

Philips nodded. “If you’ll come by the infirmary tomorrow morning I’ll give you some pills that should work. Just one a day should do the trick.” He dug into his bag and came out with a small bottle. “Here’s something to help you sleep. Don’t worry—it’s not addictive.”

“I’m really not afraid of becoming a drug addict at my age,” Strand said.

“Addiction is not only a teenage disease, Mr. Strand,” Philips said coldly. “There’s some liquid in your lungs, too…”

“It’s a wonder I’m still walking around, isn’t it?” Strand said, trying to sound amused at the minor misfunctions of his refractory body.

“A little walking is fine. It’s even prescribed. Although I’d stay indoors until it gets a little warmer. I’ll give you a diuretic, too. I don’t want to alarm you. You’ve recovered remarkably from what Mr. Babcock has told me was a massive attack. But emotion—stress, as I mentioned before—plays a great part in conditions like this. If possible, I’d like to see you take things more calmly.”

“What should I have done when I saw one of the boys in my house chasing another with a knife—sat down and played the flute?”

“I know, I know,” Philips said, reacting to the ring of anger in Strand’s voice by talking more slowly and calmly than ever. “There are situations when what a doctor advises sounds foolish. I’m not an extravagantly healthy man myself, but there is advice I give myself that I can’t hope to follow. Still, if possible, try to put your problems into some larger perspective.”

“How do you make out when you put your problems into some larger perspective?”

Philips smiled sadly. “Badly.”

Strand knew from what Babcock had told him that Philips was a widower. His wife had been killed in an automobile accident five years before. He had had a prestigious practice in New York City and had been a professor at Cornell Medical Center. When his wife had died he had given it all up, practice, hospital, office, apartment, friends, and the rest of his family, and had gone off for a year to live alone in a cabin in the Maine woods. He had come to Dunberry, where he had frankly told Babcock that he wanted to have a practice that made minimum demands on him and where his responsibility was limited and where none of the friends and associates he had known when his wife was alive would crop up to remind him of his happier days. As he had just confessed, when he had put his problems into a larger perspective he had fared badly.

“Sprained ankles and adolescent acne,” he had told Babcock. “That’s about as deep into medicine as I want to go for the rest of my life.”

Remembering this dissipated Strand’s irritation with the man for coming over unasked to examine him and highhandedly prescribing for him, meddling, as Strand had felt when he saw the doctor at his door, with matters that were not really any concern of his. After all, Strand was not a child and he had his own doctors to whom he could appeal if he felt it necessary. He tried to imagine what Hazen’s reaction would have been on the phone if the doctor had answered it and counseled him to put Washington and the FBI into a larger perspective.

“I understand from Mr. Babcock,” the doctor was saying, “that you’re the most conscientious teacher in the school. That has to mean overwork and overworry. If I may make a suggestion, be less conscientious. Try to let things slide here and there. And don’t run after boys with knives if you can help it.” He smiled as he said it. “Rest as much as you can. Mentally even more than physically. One more question. Do you drink much?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Take a whiskey now and then. It can put things into a rosier light, aside from opening up the capillaries.” Philips struggled into his coat. Just at the door, he turned. “What do you think will happen to the Romero boy?”

Strand thought for a moment. “Rollins says that if he goes to jail he’ll wind up on the street and he won’t be carrying a knife, there’ll be a gun in his belt and dust in his pocket. I guess what he means by dust is heroin or cocaine. My feeling is that it’s either that or he’ll lead a revolution somewhere.”

Philips nodded soberly. “Mercy is the scarcest virtue on the market,” he said. “We’re all such bunglers, aren’t we? Well, sir, good night. And sleep well.”

Sprained ankles and adolescent acne, Strand thought, as the door closed behind the doctor. Romero hardly fitted into those categories.

Strand went into the bathroom and put the small bottle of pills Philips had given him on the shelf. Nepenthe by the nightly dose, he thought. Retreat to forgetfulness. Civilization’s answer to religion and ambition.

He turned the hot water on again, once more grateful for the swirling steam, taking deep breaths. Then the phone rang again. Annoyed, he turned the tap off and went back into the living room. “Hello,” he said brusquely.

“You don’t have to snap my head off.” It was Leslie, her voice amused though far away. “I know you don’t like to talk on the phone but you might as well tear it out of the wall if you answer it like that. Nobody will ever dare call you twice.”

“Hello, dearest,” he said. “God, it’s good to hear your voice. Where are you? The last I heard from Air France, you were wandering all over European air space.”

“We finally landed at Nice,” Leslie said, “and now we’re in Linda’s place in Mougins. She said as long as we were so close it would be a shame if I didn’t see it. It’s heavenly. I wish you were here with us.”

“So do I.”

“How are things on the battlefield?”

“Picking up,” he said ambiguously.

“What does that mean?”

“Romero’s out on bail and he’s staying with Rollins’s family in Waterbury.”

“Who put up the bail?”

He hesitated. “Friends,” he said.

“Was it Russell?”

“He’s not Romero’s friend.” Strand did not add that at the moment Romero didn’t think Strand was his friend, either.

“I guess it’s better all around that way, don’t you?”

“Much better.”

“Are you taking care of yourself? Are you lonely?”

“I hardly notice that you’re not here,” he said, laughing, or at least making an effort to laugh. “Mrs. Schiller is pampering me outrageously.”

“I worried about you all over the Atlantic.”

“You should have worried about the pilot. You’re lucky they didn’t put you down in Warsaw. I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You sound tired.”

“It’s the connection. I intend to take up skiing tomorrow. The paper promises snow.” It took an effort to be flip, but he made it. If Leslie had been there, he would have told her all, or almost all, of what he had been through that day. But worries, he knew, were multiplied by the square root of distance and Leslie was three thousand miles away.

“What are you doing now?” Leslie was saying. “I mean at this particular minute?”

“I’m about to step into a hot bath.”

“And I’m going to jump into Linda’s pool tomorrow. Imagine being able to swim in November. When we retire I think we ought to live in Mougins.”

“If you find a nice little place for around a million dollars while you’re down there, put a deposit on it.”

Leslie sighed. “It would be nice to be rich for once, wouldn’t it?”

“Thoreau never saw the Mediterranean,” Strand said, “and he was happy on a pond.”

“He wasn’t married.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“If I let myself go,” Leslie said, “I think I would turn into a frivolous, luxury-loving woman. Would you be able to bear me?”

“No.”

She laughed again. “I do like a man who knows his own mind. I’ve talked long enough. This call is costing Linda a fortune. Are you happy?”

“Never happier,” he said.

“I know you’re lying and I love you for it.” There was a sound of a kiss over the scratchy wire and Leslie hung up.

Strand put down the phone and went into the bathroom and finally sank into the warm water of the bath. My private small sea, he thought as he dozed in the steam. Like Thoreau, he would be content with a pond.

H
E WAS SURPRISED WHEN
he opened the door of his apartment after the last class of the day and saw Hazen standing in the living room picking a magazine off a bookcase shelf. Strand had not heard from him since the drunken conversation on the phone more than a week ago.

“Hello, Allen,” Hazen said. “I hope you don’t mind. Mrs. Schiller let me in.” He put out his hand and Strand shook it. “I brought you a little gift.” He gestured toward the table behind the sofa, where two quart bottles of Johnnie Walker, Hazen’s favorite Scotch, were standing.

“Thank you,” Strand said. “They’re bound to come in handy.”

“I came to apologize for my bad temper over the phone.” Hazen peered at him warily, as though unsure about how Strand would react.

“Forget it, Russell,” Strand said. “I’ve already done so.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Hazen’s manner became hearty. “Misunderstandings are bound to crop up from time to time—even between the best of friends. And I was a little nervy about the piece in the
Times
.”

“How is it going? I haven’t seen anything more in the papers.”

“There hasn’t been anything more,” Hazen said. “I guess they decided the fishing expedition was a flop. Justice has probably decided to drop the whole thing.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Can I fix you a drink? I’m afraid I’ll have to give it to you out of your own bottle. I finished ours a week ago.”

Hazen looked at his watch. “Well, I guess it’s just about drink time. If you’ll join me…”

“I could use one, too,” Strand said. “This is drinking weather. I nearly froze walking across the campus.” He went into the kitchen to get ice and glasses and a pitcher of water. Although Dr. Philips had prescribed a drink now and then, when Rollins had finished off the last bottle, Strand had not bothered to go into town to get another one. He tried to stay indoors as much as possible during the cold spell, but he could have asked Mrs. Schiller to buy a bottle of whiskey when she went into town to shop. It wouldn’t be Johnnie Walker. There was a limit to the amount of pampering he could fit into his budget.

Hazen had opened one of the bottles when Strand got back to the living room and Strand poured them each a generous drink. They touched glasses and drank. The immediate warmth in his gullet made Strand resolve that from then on he would have a drink each day before dinner.

Mrs. Schiller had laid a fire on the grate and Strand touched a match to the crumpled newspaper under the grate and watched as the flames began to lick up toward the kindling. He warmed his hands for a few moments before he went over to the table in front of the window where Hazen had installed himself. It was snowing lightly outside in the dusk, making a winter pattern on the half-frosted panes. Hazen’s profile was reflected off the glass and the two images of the man himself and his reflection gave a curious double impression of him. The real face was relaxed, friendly; the reflection was etched on metal, cold and austere, like the head of an emperor on a coin, a wielder of power to whom applications for mercy were useless.

As Strand sat down opposite him at the table, Hazen peered at him thoughtfully. “Allen,” he said softly, “I have come to ask forgiveness. Not only for what I said on the telephone to you. For my treatment of Romero. I’ve had plenty of time to think it over and realize what my responsibilities are. I was up in Hartford today and I spoke to the judge and found out that it was the Rollins boy who went bail for him. How he got the money is a mystery to me, but no matter. The judge said he got it in one day. I tell you, I felt ashamed in front of that hard old man. I told him I was going to take a personal interest in the case and would come to the court to take the case myself and explained the circumstances of how I met Romero through you and what we both thought of his capabilities and his extraordinary background. No matter what he looks like, the judge is not a monster, and he remembers my father from the time he, himself, was just a young lawyer breaking in. What he agreed to do was lift the bail and free the boy on my recognizance.” Hazen smiled bleakly. “I guess he didn’t happen to read
The New York Times
that day. He made conditions, of course. Romero has to report weekly to the hospital for psychiatric tests and treatment. I’ve already told this to Hollingsbee and Hollingsbee will get Rollins’s money back for him tomorrow.”