be polite, who had obviously never heard of him and wanted only to resume his conversation with Carpenter. His skin was a scholar’s pale white, with what seemed to be a permanent five-o’clock shadow.
“Yes, we’ve met,” Connolly said as Emma turned around. She looked oddly festive, her nails and mouth vivid red, her eyes shining. Connolly realized it was the first time he had seen her in a skirt, so that she seemed overdressed, as if she had put on heels and makeup for another party and landed here instead.
“Again and again,” she said. “You seem to be everywhere.” And then to her husband, who looked mildly puzzled, “Darling, this is Mr. Connolly I told you about. Or did I? Anyway, he very kindly drove me to Hannah’s, so you must be especially nice. He’s new on the Hill.”
“Welcome,” Pawlowski said in the flat, monotonal accent of one who had learned too many languages. Connolly wondered fleetingly if Conrad had sounded like this, both Polish and English squeezed of all inflection. “Whose unit are you with?”
“Oh darling, he’s not a scientist. He’s with security or something. It is security, isn’t it?” she said, all innocence.
Connolly nodded.
“But you like music,” Pawlowski finally said, at a loss to explain him, and not sure it was worth the effort.
“No, he’s come to spy on us,” Emma said playfully. “Absolutely tone-deaf. Can’t hear a note.”
Pawlowski looked at her, then smiled gently, a lover’s indulgence for what he didn’t understand. It seemed enough that she was lovely and spirited; he didn’t have to keep up to admire her for it.
“Then I will have to play more loudly,” he said, missing the joke. The effect was to make him seem younger than he was, a boy making his way. Connolly looked at his polite face and thought about the unreliability of language. He had studied with Meitner, a man of importance at the KWI, but faced with idle chat he became an awkward teenager. Like so many others on the Hill, he would have to retreat to the language of science to find his maturity.
Johanna Weber was there again, a tugboat still steering him through the harbor. “As loudly as you like, Daniel. Never a wrong note. Not like Hans. But come, some coffee, Mr. Connolly?”
“Or perhaps you’d like a drink,” Emma said, holding up her glass. For an instant, Connolly wondered if that explained the shine in her eyes.
“Coffee would be fine,” he said, and Johanna Weber beamed, clearly pleased, and took him in tow to the tall urn. Emma gave him a weak, ironic salute with her glass.
“Here,” Johanna Weber said, handing him a cup. “Shall I get you some cake?” But she was distracted by a new arrival, and Connolly watched the party game begin all over again, one accurate name following another.
The day had been somber-these were some of the same faces he had seen drawn and grieving in front of the Admin Building-but the party had taken on a life of its own, and as each voice rose to be heard above the others, the small house hummed with a kind of decorous gaiety. The Webers’ rooms were small but, unlike other interiors on the Hill, had the settled look of lives accumulated bit by bit. The heavy furniture, the antimacassars, the shelves of porcelain knickknacks, seemed to have come out of a time machine launched when the world was solid, weighted down and explained by things. There were no cactuses or Indian throws or anything else to suggest they had all gathered on a cool night somewhere on the Parajito Plateau. Warmed by the lamps and the yeast cakes and the smell of furniture polish, they were back in old Heidelberg. The Webers were at home.
“Don’t be noble,” Emma said, coming up to him at the urn and handing him a drink instead. “You’ll want two of these in you before they start playing.”
He took the drink and smiled. “Past experience?”
“Years of it.”
“What was that all about?” he said, gesturing to where they had talked before. “Jealous husband?”
“Daniel? No, he wouldn’t dream of it. That was about Johanna. Always on the qui vive. She gives me the pip.”
“A gossip?”
“Terrible, and she doesn’t have much to go on. She already thinks I’m disreputable.”
“Why?” he said, biting into a cake.
“Consorting with the lower orders, I suppose. She’s a fearful snob.”
“Lower orders meaning me?”
“Well, let’s just say you’re not a scientist. There’s always a pecking order, even here.”
“Who else do you consort with?”
She looked up at him, then took a sip before she answered. “You’ll do for now.”
“Your husband seemed nice.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Just don’t. God, here she comes again.”
“Ah, Mr. Connolly,” Johanna Weber said, as if saying his name aloud sealed it in memory. “You’re meeting people, good. Emma’s an anthropologist, did she tell you?”
“Yes, we were just talking about the Anasazi,” Connolly said.
Johanna Weber hesitated, clearly surprised. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” she said, recovering. “Emma’s become quite an expert on the subject.” She looked at Emma to contradict her.
“In an amateur sort of a way,” Emma said smoothly. And then Frau Weber was being embraced by a new arrival and they were alone again.
“You’ve got a pretty good memory yourself,” Emma said. “However did you remember the poor old Anasazi? Most people can’t even pronounce it.”
“Anthropologist?” he said playfully.
“Pompous old trout. Everybody has to be something grand. Her maid is probably an Indian princess. And you—”
“Dick Tracy?”
“No, darling, Hoover at the very least. What’s the J stand for anyway, in J. Edgar?”
Connolly shrugged. “Maybe it’s like the O in Louella O. Parsons. Maybe they’re the same person.”
She laughed. “That’s a thought. Do you take anything seriously?”
“Everything. Freud tells us there are no jokes.”
“Does he really?”
“Uh-huh. Of course, he meant something else, but I doubt he had much of a sense of humor anyway.”
“How do you know things like that? Who are you, anyway?”
“You pick up things in the paper.”
She looked at him appraisingly. “I don’t think so.”
“But then, you’re an anthropologist,” he said easily.
“Quite. Maybe you’ll be my next project. The mysterious Mr. Connolly.”
“Don’t drop the Anasazi yet. That would be fickle.”
She was quiet for a minute, studying him over the rim of her glass. “Tell me about yourself,” she said softly.
“Such as?”
“Well, who are your people, as they used to say at garden parties.”
“My people? My mother’s dead. My father works at an insurance company and spent his life doing crossword puzzles in ten minutes and resenting the fact that he worked for people who couldn’t. He saved everything to send me to school.”
“Then what happened?”
“I went to work for the same people and now he resents me for the education he wanted himself. It’s a very American story.”
“You like him.”
“I feel sorry for him. Not quite the same thing.” He paused. “Yes, I like him.”
“And you-are you good at crosswords too?”
He nodded. “I used to be. In the genes, maybe. I like figuring things out, watching them fall into place.”
“And have they?”
