At this point Paul, in his agitation, spilled a quantity of ale onto his chinos. Andreas later told Berenice, “He gave me a look so ugly it broke out the sweat on me as though I’d been running. I stared at him and felt I was looking into an abandoned mine shaft.”
Paul snapped, “It’s out of the question.” “OK. I understand. I do, truly, understand. Please, though, try to think of what I said in a simpler form. Think of it as something, just conceivably, not impossible. No more than that, for now — just: not impossible.”
“It’s impossible.” Paul stood up as if to leave. Berenice: “We’ll talk about something else. Have some more ale at least, to make up for the spillage.”
“No. No, thank you. And thank you for the feast. I’m afraid you’ve cast your bread before swine.”
6
As prologue to their next evening, Geoffrey and Margot had a surprise for their friends. Captain Kipper, the chief of the town’s police force, and Sergeant Kerr, whom Geoffrey described as the Captain’s right-hand man, had been invited for cocktails so they could meet Berenice and Andreas. With them they observed a notable caution in their conversation, probably a professional reflex. The Captain did his best to play the cut-and-dried officer of no particular age and color (he was a hale forty-five and of a florid complexion), with a vaguely Scottish accent and, in his adopted role, about as emotional as a bagpipe. Berenice quickly detected a softness behind this assumed impersonality. The Sergeant rarely spoke and then usually to support an opinion of his superior’s.
These roles were much in evidence when Margot mentioned the “notorious Wicheria,” who she’d heard was a friend of the unlikely twins that so fascinated their neighbors. Captain Kipper intervened at once: “The Twins are a fascinating subject, but I have to say that Wicheria does not deserve the epithet ‘notorious.’ She strikes a lively figure in our apparently settled community, but she is a very decent person. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you what she knows about John and Paul — may I suggest to her that you’d like to meet her? You do agree with me, Sergeant Kerr, that there would be no harm in that?” “Absolutely none, sir,” the Sergeant quietly replied. The Captain: “Well then, it’s as good as done.” Margot and Geoffrey had invited the two policemen for this very purpose; it had been accomplished a little too quickly to bring the meeting to an end. Margot poured another round of whisky, and Andreas obligingly asked Captain Kipper about crime, and his pursuit of crime, in what seemed such a peaceable town. The Captain: “You’re right about that, sir —,” “Andreas, please.” “Very well, Andreas. You’re right about that. Isn’t he, Sergeant?” “Right on, sir.”
“There are scuffles outside the watering holes on Saturday nights. There is one hopelessly clumsy pickpocket on the loose — we can’t lock him up because, first of all, he can’t hold his liquor, which is what triggers his thieving urge; so that, second, we always know who’s responsible when a bungled pickpocketing is reported; and lastly, his reputable family would go into mourning if they learned of his arrest. So we detain him until he’s sober, then send him home. We’ve never had a murder or a rape (forgive me, ma’am) or even a bank robbery, which is ridiculous — there are three banks in town, all of them sitting ducks. We’ve lately had new kinds of crime, though: money-laundering and such (our bankers are dullards) — I’ve had to hire an accountant and a former hacker (homegrown, I’m proud to say) to help me with these. It’s a pleasantly quiet assignment, Andreas, I have to admit; somehow I don’t think it will lead to significant advancement. What do you think, Sergeant?” “I think, sir, that sooner or later you will be tapped for the position you deserve.”
Andreas asked a few more questions; the Captain gave him Wicheria’s phone number and email address; the policemen finished their drinks, thanked their host and hostess, and departed. The four friends sat down to dinner, after which Geoffrey proposed to tell his story.
“Like Berenice’s, my story concerns a man, one very unlike hers. I met him on a long flight from Sydney to Zurich. The airline was Pan Am, still surviving in the early eighties, after its first rough spell. It had kept its upper deck reserved entirely for business-class passengers, at least those smart enough to request it. It felt like a kind of club. It was there I found myself seated between the spacious aisle and Malachi — Malachi is the name of the ‘messenger’ who closed the prophetical Canon of the Old Testament. We struck up a conversation that, as often happens between strangers who meet outside their usual circuits, quickly became intimate; and so Malachi told me about his singular life.
“His parents had brought him to Belgium when they left Poland in the early months of 1939, as soon as the
