It was like a painted grimace.
'I was in New York once,' he said dreamily. 'Years and years ago. I went to the theatre. A musical play. What could it have been? I'll remember in a moment.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And what brings you to our fair city, Mr Bigg?'
I was afraid of saying the name again. I feared he might have the same reaction. But I had to try it.
'I wanted to talk to you about the Reverend Godfrey Knurr, Pastor,' I said softly.
His eyes closed again. 'Godfrey Knurr?' Stokes repeated. 'No, I can't recall the name. My m e m o r y. . '
I wasn't going to let him get away with that.
'It's odd you shouldn't remember,' I said. 'I spoke to his sister, Miss Goldie Knurr, and she told me you helped him get into the seminary, that you helped him in so many ways. And I saw a photograph of you with young Godfrey.'
Suddenly he was crying. It was awful. Cloudy tears slid from those milky eyes. They slipped sideways into his sunken temples, then into his feathered hair.
'Is he dead?' he gasped.
First Goldie Knurr and now the Reverend Stokes. Was the question asked hopefully? Did they wish him dead?
I turned my eyes away, not wanting to sit there and watch this shattered man weep. After a while I heard him 397
snuffle a few times and take a gulp from the glass he held on his thin chest. Then I looked at him again.
'No, sir,' I said, 'he is not dead. But he's in trouble, deep trouble. I represent a legal firm. A client intends to bring very serious charges against the Reverend Knurr. I am here to make a preliminary investigation …'
My voice trailed away; he wasn't listening to me. His lips were moving and I leaned close to hear what he was saying.
'Evil,' the Reverend Ludwig Stokes was breathing.
'Evil, evil, evil, evil. . '
I sat back. It seemed a hopeless task to attempt to elicit information from this old man. Goldie Knurr had been right; he was fuddled.
But then he spoke clearly and intelligibly.
'Do you know him?' he asked. 'Have you seen him?'
'Yes, sir,' I said. 'I spoke to him yesterday. He seems to be in good health. He has a beard now. He runs a kind of social club in Greenwich Village for poor boys and he also counsels individual, uh, dependants. Mostly wealthy women.'
His face twisted and he clenched his jaw to press his dentures back into place. A thin rivulet of whisky ran from the corner of his mouth and he wiped it away slowly with the back of one hand.
'Wealthy women,' he repeated, his voice dull. 'Yes, yes, that would be Godfrey.'
'Reverend Stokes,' I said, 'I'm curious as to why Knurr selected the ministry as his career. I can find nothing in his boyhood that indicates any great religiosity.' I paused, stared at him. 'Was it to avoid the draft?' I asked bluntly.
'Partly that,' he said in a low voice. 'If his family had had the money, he would have wished to go to a fashionable eastern college. That was his preference, but it was impossible. Even I didn't have that kind of money.'
'He asked for it? From you?'
He didn't answer.
'I understand he had good marks in high school,' I went on. 'Perhaps he could have obtained a scholarship, worked to help support himself?'
'It wasn't his way,' he said.
'Then he could have gone to a low-tuition, state-supported college. Why the ministry?'
'Opportunity,' the Reverend Stokes said without expression.
'Opportunity?' I echoed. 'To save souls? I can't believe that of Godfrey Knurr. And surely not the monetary rewards of being an ordained minister.'
'Opportunity,' he repeated stubbornly. 'That's how he saw it.'
I thought about that, trying to see it as a young ambitious Godfrey Knurr had.
'Wealthy parishioners?' I guessed. 'Particularly wealthy female parishioners? Maybe widows and divorcees? Was that how his mind worked?'
Again he didn't answer. He emptied the bottle into his tumbler and drained it in two gulps.
'There's another in the kitchen,' he told me. 'In the cupboard under the sink.'
I found the bottle. I also found a reasonably clean glass for myself and rinsed it several times, scrubbing the inside with my fingers. I brought bottle and glass back to the parlour, sat down again, and poured him half a tumbler and myself a small dollop.
'Your health, sir,' I said, raising my glass. I barely wet my lips.
'He was a handsome boy?' I asked, coughing. 'Godfrey Knurr?'
He made a sound.
'Yes,' he said in his creaky voice, 'very handsome. And strong. A beautiful boy. Physically.'
I caught him up on that.
'Physically?' I said. 'But what of his personality, his character?'
Another of his maddening silences.
'Charm,' he said, then buried his nose in his glass. After he swallowed he repeated, 'Charm. A very special charm.
There was a golden glow about him.'
'He must have been very popular,' I said, hoping to keep his reminiscences flowing.
'You had to love him,' he said, sighing. 'In his presence you felt happy. More alive. He promised everything.'
'Promised?' I said, not understanding.
'I felt younger,' he said, voice low. 'More hopeful. Life seemed brighter. Just having him near.'
'Did he ever visit you here, in your home?'
Again he began to weep, and I despaired of learning anything of significance from this riven man.
I waited until his eyes stopped leaking. This time he didn't bother wiping the tears away. The wet glistened like oil on his withered face. He drank deeply, finished his whisky. His trembling hand pawed feebly for the full bottle on the floor. I served him. I had never before seen a man drink with such maniacal determination, as if unconsciousness could not come soon enough.
He lay there, wax fingers clamped around the glass on his bony chest. He stared unblinking at the ceiling. I felt I was sitting up with a corpse, waiting for the undertaker's men to come and take their burden away.
'I understand he was in trouble as a boy,' I continued determinedly. 'In a drugstore where he worked. He was accused of stealing.'
'He made restitution,' the old man said, his thin lips hardly moving. 'Paid it all back.'
'You gave him the money for that?' I guessed.
I hardly heard his faint, 'Yes.' Then. .
'I gave him so much!' he howled in a voice so loud it startled me. 'Not only money, but myself. I gave him my-400
self! I taught him about poetry and beauty. Love. He said he understood, but he didn't. He was playing with me. He teased me. All the time he was teasing me, and it gave him pleasure.'
I felt suddenly ill as I began to glimpse the proportions of this tragedy. Now I could understand that screeched,
'Nothing happened!' And the statue of David. And the whispered, 'Evil, evil, evil. . '
'You loved him?' I asked gently.
'So much,' he said in a harrowed voice. 'So much. . '
He lifted his head to drain his tumbler, then held it out to me in a quavery hand. I filled it without compunction.
