made him extend a leg in the air and put hers alongside it. She tried to persuade him that despite the difference in their overall height, her leg was almost as long as his. Certainly it was smoother and more appealing in shape.
In the afternoon, however, as they strolled through the ship's exotic outdoor palm court — open to first-class passengers only — she grew contemplative. 'What does Dr Freud mean,' she asked, 'when he says I may be the cause of Luc's condition?'
'I don't know,' said Younger, telling the truth.
'I always thought I could take care of him.'
'You did take care of him.'
'But what if I did the wrong thing keeping him with me all these years?' she asked. 'What if I wanted him to be different? What if I wanted him to be mute?'
'Why?'
'So that I wouldn't have to be alone.'
'Oh, stop it,' Younger replied. 'Pure self-indulgence.'
'You're the one who said I didn't love him.'
'I never said that,' replied Younger.
'You said it with your eyes,' she answered. 'Because I left Luc behind when I took the train to Braunau. You thought killing Hans Gruber was more important to me than taking care of my own brother.'
Younger didn't answer. He hadn't thought any such thing, but she must have.
'If I had died,' she said, 'you would have raised him, wouldn't you?'
'That's why you wanted me to come to Vienna.'
She tightened her grasp around his arm. 'You would have done it — raised him — wouldn't you?'
'If you had died chasing Heinrich?'
'Yes.'
'No, I would have put him in a home for deaf-mutes. Where he belongs. So that he wouldn't remind me of you. But then he couldn't have reminded me of you because I would have killed myself. Besides, you wouldn't have wanted me to raise him: I'm a pauper. Have I mentioned to you how much I have left?'
'No.'
'I don't have anything left. Our stateroom took the last of it. Fortunately, that comes with meals for two, so we won't starve until we reach America.' He stopped, disengaged himself from her arm, and put his hands in his pockets. 'I'm serious. I'm ashamed of my poverty. I should have told you about it. I'm not penniless. I still have my house in Boston, and I believe Harvard will take me back as a professor. But I seduced you under false pretences. No, I did. The worst cad could not have behaved more basely. All this luxury — first-class cabins, grand ballrooms — you'll never see it again. You'd be perfectly justified to leave me now that you know the actual state of things.'
'What a long speech,' she said, taking his arm again. 'And so foolish. I like you much better poor.'
Part 4
Chapter Nineteen
Telegraphic instructions flew from station to station, east to west, across the United States on the morning of November 18, 1920 — the day after Littlemore found the secret cache of Mexican documents. Their point of origin was the War Department in Washington, DC. The most important of these wires was issued to Fort Houston in San Antonio, Texas. It ordered Major General James G. Harbord, commander of the Unites States Army, Second Division, to mobilize for immediate deployment to the Mexican border.
Colette Rousseau held Younger's hand at the ship's rail, steaming into New York Harbor that same morning. All around them, passengers crooned over the fantastical Manhattan skyline, lit by the morning sun. 'This time, even I think your skyscrapers are beautiful,' said Colette.
Over the course of the voyage, they had discovered certain intimacies about each other. She would insist, at night, on his extinguishing every light and candle before emerging from the dressing room in her slip and darting into bed, where she would pull the bedclothes up to her chin. She had an additional scruple — that he was not to be naked in her presence. She seemed to like it when he took off his shirt, but that was as undressed as she was prepared to have him.
'Strange,' said Younger. 'I was going to say that this time even I find them unsettling.'
From coast to coast, the newspapers that morning were filled with strange items concerning Mexico. There were rumors — unattributed to any official sources — of a military mobilization and of an imminent threat that American-owned oil wells were to be nationalized. From Washington, the following was reported:
The Mexican Embassy issued a statement last night declaring that it had been authorized by General Obregon, President-elect of Mexico, to deny that Elias L. Torres, who last Tuesday extended an invitation to Senator Harding to visit Mexico, was acting on behalf of the Mexican government. 'The Mexican Embassy,' the statement said, 'is in receipt of a telegram from General Obregon, in which he categorically denies that Elias Torres is his representative.'
No further details were offered to explain this curious report.
Also that morning, in an antiseptic room in New York City, with perfectly white walls and a single hospital bed in the middle, a girl with long red hair opened her eyes. She tried to speak, but something in her mouth prevented her from doing so. She would have removed this impediment, but her wrists were tied to the bed rails with leather straps.
'Will she be clean?' asked a male voice. Whoever spoke was out of her sight. She tried to turn her head, but couldn't.
'Yes,' answered a man she could see, wearing a white medical coat. 'The last one wasn't clean.' 'It's acidic. It will clean.'
'Will it hurt?' asked the male voice, out of her sight.
'Probably,' said the man in the white jacket.
'Can you give her something?'
'For the pain — now?'
'Please.'
The white-coated man came to her bedside. She felt his hands on her arm and then the prick of a needle. Presently, her fears and wretchedness subsided. A warmth spread through her body. It felt pleasant, comforting. She wanted more.
The man she hadn't seen — and, as the room began to swim, still couldn't see clearly — now came to her bedside. He gently parted her lips. Between those lips, a gag pulled against her cheeks, tightly tied.
The man inserted something bristly into her mouth. It was a toothbrush. He was brushing her teeth, above and below the gag. He went about it methodically, thoroughly, minutely. He brushed in tiny circles, first her incisors, then her canines, then her molars, front and back, upper and lower.
The doctor had been wrong: it didn't hurt at all. It wasn't even unpleasant. At least not at first. Then she felt a burning on her tongue and in her throat. The gag caused her to choke. Tears began to run from her eyes. The man stroked the tears from her eyes, gently. He parted her hospital gown and looked at her white, soft throat and bosom.
'I like this one,' he said. 'No defects. Can't you give her more?'
'She'll be unconscious,' said the man in the white coat.
'I don't want her unconscious. Can you make her — almost unconscious?'
She felt another prick in her arm. Soon the man with the toothbrush set to work again, finding every crevice and crown of her teeth, cleaning her, cleaning. The paste burned her terribly, but she didn't mind it anymore. The pleasant, generous warmth spread deeper into her limbs and chest and elsewhere. Then everything became confused, tangled, and she couldn't understand what was happening. She was pulled, mentally as well as physically, in two different directions; someone was now scrubbing at her neck and shoulders with the same astringent paste, which hurt and which she wished would stop, but there was also more of the heavenly flooding warmth, which she wanted to last forever.
