Once a year, before Passover, Nesha allowed himself the bittersweet ritual of taking his pistol out of the cabinet and cleaning it. It had been thirty-five years since it came into his possession and each year he brought it out like a relic, the sole concrete evidence of his youth. Only the hard steel convinced him that his past was not a bad dream. He had no mother, no father, no brothers. No photos to bring out of the drawer that could comfort him with familiar faces. After all these years it was the absence of photos he regretted the most.
He tenderly dismantled the gun into its dark steel segments. His legacy consisted of the herringbone-patterned handle, the slide, the barrel, the recoil spring. Set on a piece of cotton flannel on the kitchen table, they absorbed the light from his window. The Bay shone outside, Marin County with its upscale houses set into the hills, their glass walls flaming in the sun. But with the gun before him, sucking in the light, he was in Poland again, in the woods running between villages. Mud sucking at his feet. Branches grasping at him. If he’d only had the gun then. There would have been fear in the peasants’ eyes, not contempt. He knew which ones he would’ve used the gun on. The big stupid one who beat him every day for a month with his hamfists. Nesha escaped one winter’s night, flying through the frozen fields like a ghost, the wind taking hold of him, biting his skin beneath the thin coat. In the next village an old woman wanted him to help her feed her cows. She had a good heart most of the week but on Saturdays she got into the home-made vodka and beat him with her cane. The gun came too late to save him from those floggings. But he had been lucky, too. Not all peasants were the same. Some had pity. He was alive because of them.
A plane hummed over the Bay. He removed the magazine from the handle of the pistol and dismantled it, using a patch of cotton flannel to clean off the dirt, then rubbing it lightly with oil. He applied solvent to the interior of the barrel with a cleaning rod, then ran a fresh patch of flannel through the bore to wipe out the excess. He moved an old toothbrush along the cylinder gear, then over the grip panel of the handle, always in the direction of the herringbone pattern, to remove any dirt that managed to accumulate since the last cleaning. He didn’t understand how a gun could collect dirt hidden away in a box inside a cabinet. But the Earth turned; salt air from the Pacific crept in through crevices and would pock the smooth surface of an uncleaned gun with rust.
Through the two hours that it took him to clean and lubricate the pistol, his mother’s face rose before him. Each time, he pushed her back, unwilling to have his heart broken again. But as he reassembled the gun in the fading light, he blinked too long and her dark hair appeared in the distance, the usually tidy bun unravelling in strands to her shoulders as she lined up with the others. And when she turned — he would never forget — her face white and twisted with terror, all the blood drained as if she were dead already. And her eyes, as familiar to him as his own, pleading with him to run, go back to the forest, run, forget, never come back.
All at once he looked up, startled to find a ragged, bearded man watching him. It took him a full minute to recognize himself in the reflection of the kitchen window, a mirror now that the sun had set. One day, he thought, his mind would pull him back into those woods and he would never come out. He wouldn’t mind. They were more real to him than the fabled Bay outside his window.
He turned on the light and finished polishing the exterior of the pistol with a lightly oiled chamois. The gun was a 9 mm Parabellum. He had done his research. The word came from a Roman proverb: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you seek peace, prepare for war.
There was nothing he wanted as much as peace.
chapter five
Tuesday, April 3, 1979
Rebecca had barely started her second week in the new building. The scent of fresh paint lingered in the air and some of her former patients, arriving for appointments, commented on the elegance of her new office. Mr. and Mrs. DaCosta were also impressed, sitting tentatively on the edge of the nubbly new chairs while Rebecca described the surgical procedure of vasectomy. She was reassuring them that it was relatively foolproof and that, no, the likelihood was that they would have no more children, when voices rose in some commotion outside the examining room. A plaintive accented voice arrived muffled through the closed door.
“You don’t understa... I must see Doctor ... life or death....”
Rebecca recognized Mrs. Kochinsky’s accent but was surprised at her level of distress. What had set off her alarm bells to come running into the office the day before her regular weekly session? She had never shown up without an appointment, though she was often upset when she came. Iris would have to deal with it.
Rebecca spent ten more minutes with the DaCostas then led them back down the short hallway to the waiting-room where she spotted Mrs. Kochinsky, grey-pale, dressed more casually than usual. She was rocking back and forth on the edge of the couch. When she saw Rebecca, she jumped to her feet. Her anxiety touched Rebecca but didn’t alarm her when she took it in the context of the woman’s usual mental state. Beside Mrs. Kochinsky sat a young woman whose little girl had turned her back on the old lady and lay tightly curled in her mother’s arms.
Iris handed Rebecca Mrs. Kochinsky’s file and whispered in her ear, “She’s ready to explode. I haven’t seen her this bad.”
The other patients, who had been waiting longer, sat stone-faced as Rebecca led Mrs. Kochinsky down the hall.
Wearing a beige trenchcoat over polyester pants, the older woman stood in the centre of the examining room wringing her hands. She nearly wept out her words, her chest heaving with exertion.
“I’m sorry — I know this not my day for appointment. But I see him. The man... He follow me here. I’m sure he there outside.”
She stepped to the window that looked out onto D’ Arcy Street. Pushing aside the vertical blind, she peered down, her face white with terror. “There. There in car, man sitting.” Her finger poked the air triumphantly.
Rebecca moved toward the window and glanced out at one of the quietest spots in downtown Toronto. The facade of an alternative high school was camouflaged by mature spruce trees. In front, across the one-way street, sat a young man in a run-down silver Chevy. “How old was the man you recognized?” she asked.
Mrs. Kochinsky’s hand flew up in exasperation. “I don’t know. Maybe fifty, maybe sixty. What difference?”
“Look at the man in the car.”
Mrs. Kochinsky bent her head toward the window again. “He’s no more than twenty,” said Rebecca. “There’s a high school across the street. He’s probably waiting for someone.”
The older woman continued to look through the blinds. “Could be anywhere. There. Cars on other street. What about there?” She pointed out the corner of the window in the direction of Beverley Street. Rebecca peered sideways toward the front of the medical building. Cars were parked on both sides of the street at meters. She had picked the corner of Beverley and D’ Arcy for her new office because of its tranquillity and saw nothing out the window to make her regret that decision.
“Was he the same man who frightened you last week?”
Mrs. Kochinsky’s hand flew up again, this time to entreat the ceiling. Her dark eyes flashed impatience. “You don’t understand! They always send different man. But this it! This man... This man last one.”
Rebecca