One gray Samsonite. The inner pocket contains an old Hebrew-English pocket dictionary. One wheel broken. A ten-year warranty affixed to the side.
One gym bag with a Los Angeles Olympics logo. In the side pocket is a ticket for the javelin throw finals.
One empty cosmetics case.
One military duffle bag. At the bottom, two cheap towels and a pair of khaki underwear.
One red suitcase with every zipper torn. Inside are gas masks, twenty rolls of adhesive tape, and a package of rubber gloves in various sizes.
SIMON T. Lenox sends an urgent fax to the Israeli Embassy. When no reply is forthcoming, he sends another. That evening he is informed about the emergency kit that every Israeli citizen has been required to possess since the Gulf War. Every so often the kits are “refreshed.” They must be joking, Lenox remarks to the commissioner. But the Israelis didn’t trust their authorities, so they added a few of their own items to the official survival kit: a rag soaked in bleach and baking soda, rubber gloves, and muck boots. If the Iraqis invade, they’ll assume the Israelis are busy washing dishes and cleaning bathrooms.
At first the police thought the house had been burgled because there was such a mess. Closet doors and drawers were open, the floor was strewn with belongings, the toilet was clogged and dirty water had flooded the bathroom. But there was a row of suitcases and bags lined up underneath the opening to the boydem. Another unfamiliar term in this document stamped “State of Israel.” Lenox circles it and scribbles a question mark. Then he says it out loud to make sure he hasn’t missed something in the pronunciation. Could they have meant Boy Damn? But what would that mean?
He’ll end up having to go see Jackie Brendel, the woman known in the Secret Service as “the Jewish Question.” But he’s worried he might hurt her feelings and get a complaint filed against him. That’s all he needs, just before early retirement.
My luggage inheritance, said the son who was brought in from Jerusalem by the police to identify the apartment contents.
So the missing man has a son.
But he wasn’t the one who notified the police about the disappearance.
AT EVERY stage of the investigation, Simon T. Lenox calls up images and attempts to construct a scaffolding of the missing person’s drama.
The Israeli stands in his bedroom with its entire contents scattered around him, and looks at the containers in which his life has been repeatedly packed and unpacked. In his mind’s eye Lenox sees the Israeli untie the suitcase strap, kneel down, and rummage through the collection of LPs he couldn’t bring himself to throw out. The White Album, Dark Side of the Moon. The mementos he chose to take with him might shed some light on his mood before disappearing. And how fortunate that vinyl is back in fashion—Lenox will advise the Israeli to sell the collection for a handsome profit.
He must have an interest in sports, since he traveled to the Olympics. But why did he choose a marginal sport like the javelin throw?
Lenox goes back to the photograph. The Israeli’s shoulders are hunched; he does not look particularly athletic. Lenox envisions a javelin floating through the air toward the rainy horizon.
Gravity. An important detail—or perhaps a dead end.
WHAT DOES he have so far?
Yuri Gagarin. A one-way plane ticket. A torn stub. Sneakers. Nonskid soles. Valentina. A pair of faucets in an airplane bathroom. The Vostok spacecraft. Gas masks. A javelin.
There is also a large backpack, the kind favored by serious hikers. That is the item missing from the luggage inheritance, according to the son.
Lenox does not have any children.
HE GATHERS the traces carefully, like precious relics. As the assembly floats around his mind, he has trouble separating the shards of information and ranking them by importance. He has learned to wait patiently for the collision that will direct him to the start of the route, with the understanding that even the slightest random detour could throw him off course.
Don’t give up, Simon T. Some clarity has to emerge from all this. When archeologists gently blow the dirt off their findings, they take into account that the wind might scatter a few blinding particles into their eyes.
Lenox contacts the sneaker manufacturer and asks for samples of nonskid soles. He wastes an hour on futile lines of questioning until he finally identifies the right model.
Sir, why are you so insistent on finding an outdated pair? This model was discontinued long ago. But Simon T. Lenox does not give in, going from one store to another until he can top his stack of documents with an imprint of the sole.
The eighty-forth floor of the North Tower is empty. Everyone has gone home, except the officer on duty. Lenox sips mineral water from a bottle he found in the hallway and scolds himself for being too cowardly to smuggle a bottle of Jack Daniels into the office.
The Israeli has not checked in to any hotel in New York, nor has anyone matching his description rented a vehicle in the last few days. Lenox marks the items still needing clarification, and uncomfortably shifts the papers around, right to left, right to left. The pen hovers, and his hand is tempted to write his name backwards, the way it would be written in Hebrew. His letters come out crooked, clumsy, like a child learning to write.
What made those people in the Middle East choose right-to-left for their alphabet? What kind of Jews are these Israelis?
Jackie Brendel will know, but who wants to get mixed up with the Jewish Question?
He packs up the documents and puts his raincoat on. At the liquor store near the subway he buys a fresh supply of Jack Daniels. His hands fondle the bottles and the papers.
His bladder has calmed down. For now.
EVERY DETECTIVE insists that there is a tendril binding all the clues together, and even if it is merely the product of their contemplations, they spread out the net and do anything they can to declare that they have fished out a meaning.
But Lenox believes that the clues he gathers enable him to track the human mind while it is still bubbling, zigzagging among the fragments of its past and future acts. Lenox walks softly through the thicket, stealthily approaching the unknown land, an estate anyone can claim. He patiently awaits the right explanation, the one and only possibility—yet he does not reject all the others.
HE FALLS asleep at the kitchen table, covered with a mound of clues.
Someone is throwing water in your face, Simon T. It’s washing away the traces. How will you find the way to the island, White Raven?
When Lenox wakes himself, he finds his clothes drenched. For a moment he thinks he has wet himself like a baby, but it’s only sweat.
He plunges onto his bed, his whole body aching from the javelins.
VISIONS.
His grandmother claimed they were flashes of the past or the future, encoded messages sent by the spirits. Unexpected images that come in dreams or hallucinations, during sickness or intoxication.
Perhaps that was the old woman’s way of justifying Lenox’s weakness for Jack Daniels. When he once shared a vision with her, she was ecstatic. First she celebrated the fact that her grandson, the man who had left the reservation without looking back and studied in the finest white institutes of education, was still graced with hidden powers. She viewed this as decisive proof that the river of time cannot sweep away ancient gifts.
But the visions contradict Lenox’s perception of himself as a rational, measured, reasoned man. At first he thought he might have “Korsakoff’s syndrome,” which makes people confabulate to compensate for their memory loss. Then he concluded it was a by-product of his overworked brain.
Is the event that occurred the complete opposite of the event that did not occur?
That’s a crock of shit, said the old woman.
As a last