go to the master and say, Why have I not attained enlightenment? I have done everything you say. The master grew angry and told him not to come bothering him with any more complaints. Not to come to him at all until he attained enlightenment.
I know how this ends, I thought. I was half tempted to heckle.
The student went away and managed to stick with it for another month. Then he climbed up the hill to the master once more, and all he wanted to ask was, Am I nearly there? Am I making any progress at all? Is there the slightest hope? But the moment he began to speak, the master pulled out his sword. With a single motion-it flashed just once in the sunlight-he cut off the student’s finger.
Stunned, howling, the student staggered back from the master, turned and stumbled down the hill. He hadn’t gone far when the master shouted his name. The student stopped, clutching his bleeding knuckle, and looked back up the hill. The master slowly raised his hand and, with a smile of utter bliss on his face, wagged his own index finger.
Rebecca paused, and I knew she was demonstrating to Wyndham. Wyndham looking up from his task to see her imperturbable face. Beautiful slender finger wagging at him.
And at that moment, she said, the student attained enlightenment.
Ah, yes, said Wyndham, a very different kind of cold.
My regard for religion, any religion, has always been low, but Zen Buddhism-perhaps because it is fashionable in those urban enclaves where fashion is everything-seemed to me particularly bogus, precious, its masters the spiritual equivalent of mimes. As for sub-zero pedagogy, the High Arctic is the coldest teacher of them all-I have lost far more than a finger under its instruction-but I have yet to attain even a modicum of wisdom, let alone enlightenment, for all its fabulous array of blades.
Not like Vostok, Wyndham added.
Rebecca’s laugh, brief, throaty. Not like Vostok at all.
Oh, smug! Oh, Annex! I thought, my sneering still at full roar when it was blown from me as if by a sudden blast, a shock wave that rolled outward from their easy concord. It had been stupid of me to imagine Rebecca and I sharing the warmth of that unspoken contra mundum attitude that seems to envelop certain couples.
A few days later, I changed my mind yet again. We had a globe at Arcosaur, quite a big one. Close to the poles, there’s nothing like a globe to give a proper sense of geographical relationships. But I had another globe of my own that I kept on display in my area of the lab. It was a scruffy, disreputable-looking thing I had picked up at a flea market. (I am a frequenter of such places when in a big city, not because I have any expertise or love for antiques, but because I have a certain affection for things that survive, especially if they survive for no apparent reason.) The market stall had two globes on display, high school models of the same vintage. One of them was the familiar blue and white sphere interrupted by nations of less natural shape and colour, many with vanished names. Siam. Yugoslavia. The GDR.
Someone had painted the other globe, an identical high school model, matte black.
How much is that? I said to the vendor. It looks like something they’d use in a TV version of Hamlet.
He looked at the black sphere and back at me. Three bucks.
My black Earth went with me on all my travels after that. Whenever people would ask me about it, and they invariably did, I would give them different answers.
What is that? Rebecca was standing behind me in the lab. I could smell the faint cucumbery scent of her hand lotion.
My mother, I said.
It’s like something from Hamlet, she said. If it had been written for television.
4
Delorme parked in the lot of the Algonquin Bay Public Library and got out of the car with her hood up. She took her briefcase from the back seat and shut the door. She walked as far as the sidewalk and looked across the street. A half-dozen cars were parked behind the Quiet Pint, none that she recognized. The night was cold, snowless. From somewhere, the repeated grinding of a car engine refusing to start.
She crossed the street and entered. Two young men with long hair and nose rings were chatting in one of the booths, a paperback copy of The Corrections between their pints. The fireside table where she had sat with Priest last time was occupied by a couple. The woman stared at the tabletop while the man traced her hand with a fingertip. Illicit lovers, Delorme thought, or perhaps just a couple recovering from a quarrel.
Priest himself was hunched over a newspaper at the bar. Delorme sat a few stools over and ordered a glass of red wine. “I’ll pay now,” she said when Tommy brought it.
Priest glanced over, then turned his face right back to his newspaper. His cellphone was on the bar beside a half-empty pint of Guinness.
Delorme took out several papers from a conference she had attended months ago and opened the top one. “Developments in Case Management-A Success Story.”
“You intent on making this your home office?” Priest said without looking up. “That your plan?”
Delorme turned to him and raised her glass. “I’m fine, thank you. And how are you this evening?”
“Sod off.”
“Here’s to British hospitality.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Even the jukebox was silent. Murmurs of conversation from the two occupied tables. Priest folded his paper. The Guardian. He picked up his phone and swivelled on his stool, facing Delorme. He keyed in a number and put the phone to his ear. “Yes, I want to report an incident of police misconduct, please.” He kept the phone to his ear, looking at Delorme the whole time. “Yes, Sergeant, I wish to report a case of police harassment… At a pub. The Quiet Pint. Yes, that’s right…”
Delorme kept her eyes on the case management study. The institution of new protocols over the course of several months resulted in significant upward deviations in clearance averages. She read the sentence several times. If Priest was really calling the station, it could be embarrassing.
“Delorme…” Priest said into the phone. “I don’t know her first name. She says she’s off-duty, but she keeps coming round here asking questions. I’ve asked her to stop, but she refuses…”
Delorme turned a page. Precincts where protocols remained unchanged reported lower clearance averages or similar averages with less desirable outcomes.
“No, I think what it is, Sergeant, is she’s one of those cunts who thinks she’s so bloody hot she can do whatever the hell she wants and the blokes’ll just fall all over begging for more… Certainly…”
Priest got off his stool and came over to Delorme, holding the phone out. “He wants to speak to you.”
Delorme took the phone and glanced at the little screen, but it was blank. She could hear a man’s voice, and put the phone to her ear. “You work hard all day,” the voice said, “and now it’s time for some serious relaxation. Call 970-COCK and we’ll lick your pussy for as long as you want. Talk to real live studs, with massive erections ready to serve you-anywhere you want it. Any way you want it. Just open your legs and dial 970…”
Delorme handed the phone back. “I think it’s your dad.”
Priest placed the phone on the bar and slid it down toward his newspaper.
“So tell me. What do I have to do to get rid of you?”
“I’m a paying customer-trying to be. Why do you want to get rid of me?”
“You know why.”
Delorme shrugged. “And you know how.”
Priest turned his back on her, went to the end of the bar, collected his phone and his Guinness, and went to an unoccupied booth and sat down. When Delorme didn’t move, he held out both his palms and raised his eyebrows. Well?
Delorme put her papers into the briefcase, picked up her wine and brought them over to the table. Her knees brushed his as she slid into the booth, and she wished they hadn’t.
Priest half stood and reached across the table for her briefcase and placed it between their glasses. He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice into the handle. “Thirtieth January, two thousand eleven, interview with Leonard Priest in the matter of Laura Lacroix, disappearance of. Present, D.C. What’s-Her-Name and God knows
