Near closing time, Stencil approached Profane, who'd been drinking all night but for some reason was still sober.
'Stencil heard you and Rachel are having difficulties.'
'Don't start.'
'Paola told him.'
'Rachel told her. Fine. Buy me a beer.'
'Paola loves you, Profane.'
'You think that impresses me? What is your act, ace?' Young Stencil sighed. Along came a bartender's rinkydink, yelling 'Time, gentlemen, please.' Anything properly English like that went over well with the Whole Sick Crew.
'Time for what,' Stencil mused. 'More words, more beer. Another party, another girl. In short, no time for anything of importance. Profane. Stencil has a problem. A woman.'
'Indeed,' said Profane. 'That's unusual. I never heard of anything like that before.'
'Come. Walk.'
'I can't help you.'
'Be an ear. It's all he needs.'
Outside, walking up Hudson Street: 'Stencil doesn't want to go to Malta. He is quite simply afraid. Since 1945, you see, he's been on a private manhunt. Or womanhunt, no one is sure.'
'Why?' said Profane.
'Why not?' said Stencil. 'His giving you any clear reason would mean he'd already found her. Why does one decide to pick up one girl in a bar over another. If one knew why, she would never be a problem. Why do wars start: if one knew why, there would be eternal peace. So in this search the motive is part of the quarry.
'Stencil's father mentioned her in his journals: this was near the turn of the century. Stencil became curious in 1945. Was it boredom, was it that old Sidney had never said anything of use to his son; or was it something buried in the son that needed a mystery, any sense of pursuit to keep active a borderline metabolism? Perhaps he feeds on mystery.
'But he stayed off Malta. He had pieces of thread: clues. Young Stencil has been in all her cities, chased her down till faulty memories or vanished buildings defeated him. All her cities but Valletta. His father died in Valletta. He tried to tell himself meeting V. and dying were separate and unconnected for Sidney.
'Not so. Because: all along the first thread, from a young, crude Mata Hari act in Egypt - as always, in no one's employ but her own - while Fashoda tossed sparks in search of a fuse; until 1913 when she knew she'd done all she could and so took time out for love - all that while, something monstrous had been building. Not the War, nor the socialist tide which brought us Soviet Russia. Those were symptoms, that's all.'
They'd turned into 14th Street and were walking east. More bums came roving by the closer they got to Third Avenue. Some nights 14th Street can be the widest street with the tallest wind in the earth.
'Not even as if she were any cause, any agent. She was only there. But being there was enough, even as a symptom. Of course Stencil could have chosen the War, or Russia to investigate. But he doesn't have that much time.
'He is a hunter.'
'You are expecting to find this chick in Malta?' Profane said. 'Or how your father died? Or something? Wha.'
'How does Stencil know,' Stencil yelled. 'How does he know what he'll do once he finds her. Does he want to find her? They're all stupid questions. He must go to Malta. Preferably with somebody along. You.'
'That again.'
'He is afraid. Because if she went there to wait out one war, a war she'd not started but whose etiology was also her own, a war which came least as a surprise to her, then perhaps too she was there during the first. There to meet old Sidney at its end. Paris for love, Malta for war. If so then now, of all times . . .'
'You think there'll be a war.'
'Perhaps. You've been reading the newspapers.' Profane's newspaper reading was in fact confined to glancing at the front page of the New York Times. If there was no banner headline on that paper then the world was in good enough shape. 'The Middle East, cradle of civilization, may yet be its grave.
'If he must go to Malta, it can't be only with Paola. He can't trust her. He needs someone to - occupy her, to serve as buffer zone, if you will.'
'That could be anybody. You said the Crew was at home anywhere. Why not Raoul, Slab, Melvin.'
'It's you she loves. Why not you.'
'Why not.'
'You are not of the Crew, Profane. You have stayed out of that machine. All August.'
'No. No, there was Rachel.'
'You stayed out of it.' And a sly smile. Profane looked away.
