Mortals

“All I know is that my sister is lost.”

“A lost cause.”

She sighed in a conclusive way and he was encouraged to think she had come to the end of the topic, for now.

She sat up sharply. “Oh boy,” she said.

“What?”

“You can stop now.”

He released her feet and began grinding his hands dry in a bath towel. She went off toward the bathroom, thanking him over her shoulder, in advance.

* * *

They had eaten. She had liked the collation he’d gotten up, especially the crab salad. They were at the kitchen table. Three candles provided their light, their only light. They were sipping chilled fresh guava juice. They were closer. Tonight he would give her a wrenching orgasm, if at all possible.

“We have to discuss your brother,” she said, not eagerly.

“How is he?”

“It’s hard to tell on the phone. We spoke a lot. He’s like you. It’s hard to tell how he is. We spoke a lot about the book and the arrangements and whether he could, well, impose on you to read it.”

“Well and how’s his roommate?”

“I’ll come to that in a minute.”

“Come to it.”

“I shall. I have to say, though…”

“What?”

“Don’t be… your usual way on this.”

“My brother has never been anything to me but a source of pain and embarrassment, to start with a given.”

“Okay, so you’re hostile. But I learned something talking to him you never bothered to mention. Our name isn’t really Finch, or yours isn’t, so mine isn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, spacing his words for emphasis.

“Well, in passing it came out, when we were talking, that your family changed its name from Fisch, F-i-s-c-h, to Finch, which is fine, if they wanted to do it, but it does raise the question of why you never mentioned it.”

“It just never arose. It’s ancient history. Look. Look, it was during the First World War, for God’s sake, and there was a lot of feeling against Germans, so my grandfather decided to change the family name.”

“Germans?”

“Yes of course.”

“Well I thought Fisch was a Jewish name.”

“No it was because we were German, Iris. And then when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped there was a Fisch involved in that, so my grandfather had to consider it a doubly good idea.”

“Your brother obviously thinks it’s a Jewish name. He says you’re Jewish, or half or some part.”

“Well, a perfect example of my brother’s nonsense. Look, and may I add that by the time Hitler came along, they were very glad to be Finch, I would guess, with what Hitler did for being German.”

“You’re saying the family was never Jewish?”

“Never, so far as I know. Fisch is a common German name. It can be Jewish, of course. But we weren’t. The family is from Stuttgart.”

“Your brother is so convinced.”

“My mother has whatever papers there are, if you want, you can follow it up. But Rex says things just for effect, you know, Iris.”

“It would be interesting if you were Jewish, Rex.”

“Look, if it’s interesting to you, then get in touch with my mother. If there are any papers, she has them, so get in touch with her. Take up genealogy. You might enjoy it.”

He said, “I’m sorry. I am not testy about this, in fact. I’m just not interested in it. If you want to pursue it, fine with me.”

“You are testy, so forget it.”

“No I’m not. It’s just that life, now with the assistance of my dear brother, is presenting me with more tasks than I can currently shake a stick at. This is Rex getting attention, Iris. You know the line ‘Family I hate you’?”

“Yes, Ezra Pound.”

“You mean I’ve quoted it to you before?”

“Yes, and we discussed it. I don’t admire Ezra Pound. And I don’t admire the sentiment. I know things about your brother that are pitiful.”

“I have a feeling you’re going to share, as they say.”

She looked pityingly at him, and said, “I intend to. There are certain things you have to do…”

A sudden impulse to break secrecy startled him. He fiercely wanted to tell her something he had learned about Boyle that he shouldn’t tell her. Probably it was to get sympathy. There were heavy movements going on behind the scenery. There was some very unusual conferencing taking place. Things were abnormal, or getting to be. The agency was going to do something instead of sitting there collecting data forever. He could tell. He didn’t like it. He was about to break secrecy, in a minor way only, really. He wanted to.

He said, “I want to tell you something funny about Boyle, Iris.” She looked amazed. They were both so practiced at circumlocution when it came to his work with the agency that what he was saying felt major to her, obviously.

He went ahead. I am not thinking, he thought.

“This is Boyle for you.

“There are certain times when the chief of station may have to call all his actors together into one conference, to get at something, to fix something, to stop something from happening that it’s urgent to stop.

“These are called action inquests or operation inquests, if they’re taking place after the fact, or called just, well, plenaries, if they’re for preemptive emergencies.” There was no need for him to offer technical terms. But he felt like it.

“By his actors, I mean the whole range of operatives, from contract agents like me to staff members, officers, to various special short-term contract parties, informants, occasionally. Now of course the key thing, a key thing, is to preserve internal ignorance about who is working for the agency. The actors are supposed to know who their boss is, no more than that.

“Now in a very large station there are sophisticated ways of planning things and maintaining general anonymity, using high tech. You can convene and deliberate and get what you want and nobody finds out who the next guy is. But in smaller stations, it’s a lot more difficult. As you can imagine.

“So Boyle had a situation come up in Central America. Namely Guatemala. He was new in the post. The technology was out of commission for some reason. And this need arose. So Boyle improvised. He found a venue and called a plenary and got his thirty or forty actors in one room, with every one of them wearing a paper bag over his or her head, with eyeholes and mouth holes cut into them, and Boyle presiding and shouting out to them to press the mouth holes tight across their faces so that words were not muffled up in these bags. And there were numbers on the foreheads of the bags, so he could keep track of who was contributing.”

Ray was laughing. So was Iris.

“That is hilarious! And Ray, thank you for telling me! And I mean that. And it shows me something I didn’t know about the business you’re in. It was interesting!”

She had a grateful look, soft, he thought.

“This goes no further, of course.”

She nodded, offering a friendly, comic-mournful expression he realized he craved from her. That was better.

She took his hands across the table. “Your brother’s book, Ray.”

“I’m listening.”

“First, he’s been working on this for years. It’s huge. I’m going to do my best to describe it. The title for the