Exiles (23 page)

“You’re not facing any charges. You could fly home today, if you could afford the ticket.”

“I may not be facing charges right now. But a lot depends on what happens with Aaronson. Haven’t you ever heard of a thing called aiding and abetting? Didn’t Iris explain that to you? She must have learned about that in Criminal Law one-oh-one.”

“You mean, everyone’s fate is tied to Aaronson’s. If they catch him, we’re all in the noose.”

“Exactly.”

“All the more reason that you should go back to the States while you can. If he gets back here safely, you can always return.”

“No, I have to stay,” Tracy said. “And we have to do everything we can, while he’s gone, to give him cover, to make it look as though he’s never left Uppsala. We have to think of ourselves as actors, and we have to play our roles every hour, every day.”

“Yes, I can do that,” Spiegel said. He felt as if their relationship, already framed, so to speak, by his usurpation of Aaronson’s identity, was about to be placed at an even further remove, like an object left between facing mirrors, its doubled image arcing and fading away toward an unseen vanishing point. It seemed that Tracy was telling him that they could continue to be intimate only as long as he pretended to be Aaronson and she pretended to believe it.

“And we have to begin right away,” Tracy said.

“What more can we do?”

“I mean we have to clean up the evidence, wipe you from the slate. Don’t forget, if the police find you, Aaronson is exposed, too. Mendelsohn was just the first one. Pretty soon, the cops will be combing through your place, trying to come up with clues.”

“Well,” Spiegel said, “it will just look like I’ve gone away, for a weekend trip or something. They’ll find some groceries, my clothes, my books.” Spiegel tried to picture his room, to recall what else he might have left behind, and he felt a sudden hollowness in his stomach. As his mind’s eye scanned the shelf above his desk, he could see a white corner of folded paper, rising above the spines of the books like the flat palm of a drowning man.

“What is it?” Tracy said, alarmed.

“I started a letter to Iris. It may have written down some things . . .”

“And you left it in your room?”

Spiegel nodded. “I folded it and stuck it between some of my books. It must still be there, unless Jorge cleared it out.”

“Why would he do that?” Tracy asked.

“To make room for his hairspray?” Spiegel offered.

“I ought to go up there and look,” Tracy said.

Spiegel asked if he should come along, but Tracy told him that he had to stay away from Flogsta. Why give Lars another chance to file a report on a suspected Spiegel sighting? The place would be under thorough surveillance soon, Tracy said, with Mendelsohn poking around and the police sure to follow. Unless, Spiegel thought to himself, Mendelsohn and the police are one and the same.

But Tracy need not have worried about surveillance. At midday, when she pulled into the muddy lot, Flogsta was deserted. All the students had gone into town for classes. The six looming towers were empty and still, like shrines. Tracy entered Spiegel’s old building. The door at the entryway, improperly fitted, swung loose on a bent hinge. She took the stairs to Spiegel’s floor. Her footsteps scratched against the sandy cement. The hallway to Spiegel’s room looked like a passage through an Egyptian tomb, a mausoleum. A rhomboid of gray light from the emergency door at the far end of the corridor lay across the salmon-colored carpet, like a floating patch of skin. From behind Spiegel’s doorway, Tracy could hear the dull rush of an electric blower. Jorge was at work fixing his hair.

Jorge had settled into Spiegel’s room, camping around the few items of furniture that Spiegel had left behind. The Levi’s and flannels had been cleared from Spiegel’s tiny closet and replaced by silk shirts, flared pants, and black boots of tooled leather. On the countertop, Jorge had set out an opulent display of lotions, ointments, combs and brushes, and exotic colognes in tiny glass ampoules. On the bed, cradled in a nest of woolen blankets, lay Jorge’s guitar.

“He wouldn’t mind, would he?” Jorge said, as he led Tracy into the room. “I thought, as long as he wasn’t going to be needing the room for a while, I would just clash.”

“Crash, you mean.”

“Yes, make myself a home.”

“Sure, it’s okay,” Tracy said. “When Aaronson comes back, I’ll send Lenny to move in with Lisbet. He’ll disguise himself as you.”

Jorge laughed. “Oh, yes. We wear exactly the same sizes, although we do not share the same taste in clothes. Fortunately, from our wardrobe you can tell us apart.”

“I never noticed,” Tracy said.

“Lenny and I could pass for brothers, you know. Under the right conditions, even Lisbet might mistake him for me, if he could play the guitar,” Jorge said.

“I know you love that instrument,” Tracy said, pointing to his guitar nestled on the coverlet. “But do you sleep with it?”

“Oh, I never sleep here.”

Yes, she could see that. The room, in spite of all of Jorge’s accouterments, did not have the feeling of a space that had been inhabited. Everything seemed arranged, as if for display, for safekeeping. Jorge had been living with Melissa, and he used this room, it seemed, only as a storehouse for his material possessions. Jorge liked to maintain his sense of identity by direct physical contact with his belongings. His passions were strong, deep, turbulent, and quickly spent. But his material possessions endured and gave him comfort.

She recalled Spiegel’s story about how Jorge had fallen for Melissa when he first set eyes on her back in the language school, how he had vowed that if he could “only have that bird” he would do anything for her, he would devote his life to her, he would become her slave. Spiegel said he had never believed Jorge for a second, but it turned out that Jorge had been telling the truth. He had given up everything: his peaceful and rather domestic relation with Lisbet, his claim to a student visa, the likelihood of permanent-resident status. But Melissa would grow bored with Jorge, sooner or later, Tracy thought. He would no longer seem to her so exotic, so sensual, and his attentions would eventually feel demeaning and obsequious. His needy, clinging devotion would lower him in her estimate, and she would discard him and move on to a new phase in what Spiegel called her “life experience.”

“How is Melissa?” Tracy asked Jorge.

“Always at rehearsals, it seems.”

Tracy was surveying the room. Jorge had neatly stacked a few record jackets on a corner of the writing desk, but Tracy saw no sign of Spiegel’s books. Perhaps Jorge had removed them because they did not fit with his idea of decor. “When’s the show?” she asked.

“Sometime next month. Do you want to see it?”

“It depends,” Tracy said.

“On what . . . happens? I mean with Aaronson.”

“Yes. Jorge, you and Melissa, you’ve kept your word, haven’t you? Nobody knows?”

“Who would we tell?” he said.

“No one has been around, asking for Lenny? Asking about him?”

“Not that I know,” Jorge said.

“Because,” Tracy said, “a guy came by to talk to us. He said he was a writer, a reporter. He was going to do an article about Lenny.”

“And what did you tell him?” Jorge asked.

“Well, we didn’t tell him that Aaronson was out of the country, of course. But he seemed to know a lot already. For one thing, he seemed to know that Lenny was still in Uppsala. He said he had been up here, talking to students. And one of them had seen Lenny.”

“I did not squeak,” Jorge said.

“No,” she said. “We think he might have talked to Lars, at the end of the hall. He said he saw me up here, too.”

“He saw you?”

“All of which means,” Tracy said, “I can’t hang around here long. If people see me, it could raise questions. I just came here to get some of Lenny’s stuff that he needs and to bring it back to my place.”

“I thought he took his stuff,” Jorge said.

“He left behind some books.”

“Take whatever you want,” Jorge said.

“His books are gone,” she said. “You seem to have rearranged everything.” On the bookshelf, Jorge had set his combs and brushes in a neat row, like soldiers.

“I moved some of his things across the hallway,” Jorge said. “Maybe they got mixed in with Melissa’s books. We could check.”

It was always a little creepy stepping into Melissa’s room, which had been transformed into a strange hybrid of California surf palace and Ripley’s museum. She had tacked corny posters of Pacific sunsets and Hawaiian volcanic beaches alongside her framed art photographs and her private museum of whips, scabbards, and swords—the props. Her collection of shades, sweatbands, bikini halters, and other paraphernalia of sun worship had come out of trunk storage, and the colorful items were strewn across the dresser top, among the stray pantyhose, tank tops, shorts, sweats, and faded jeans. Melissa’s better clothes—some short skirts, cotton pullovers, a cashmere sweater—were piled on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“She was putting away her winter wardrobe,” Jorge said apologetically. “We don’t usually live this way. She would be angry if she knew—”

“Where would she even find room for books?” Tracy said.

“There are some books beside the night lamp.” Jorge gestured to a narrow shelf resting on wall brackets above Melissa’s bed. “Have a look.”

Tracy put her knee on the bed and reached across to the shelf. A scent of roses and funk wafted up from the spongy mattress. The bed was soft, creamy. Melissa’s white coverlet was puffy yet evanescent to the touch, like a cloud. Suddenly, Tracy felt a hand on her shoulder. The mattress pitched, and Tracy almost tumbled forward into the cottony pillows, huge and thick, like laundry bags.

“Get off of me, you pig,” she yelled.

“Melissa won’t mind,” Jorge said. His teeth were clenched, his eyes filled with tears, from the effort to subdue Tracy. She was much stronger than he had thought and much more resistant to his charms.

“Fuck you, Jorge, I mind,” she said. She twisted hard, pulling free from Jorge’s grip and knocking him off balance. He fell face-first onto the bedding, and Tracy pinned him. He was like a trussed chicken. His arms, pulled behind his back like wings, were thin as sticks. His waist was like a reed, his legs like pencils or straws. There’s nothing to him but hair and clothes, she thought, as she gritted her teeth, planted her feet on the floor, and leaned backward to drag him off the bed.

He struggled and rolled to the side, knocking over Melissa’s Tensor lamp. It fell off the shelf. The bulb popped, sending sprinkles of glass among the condom wrappers and the opened tubes of lubricants on the floor between bed and wall.

“I give up, I give up,” Jorge said. “I was wrong.”

Tracy released her grip, and Jorge stood. He was out of breath. His cheek and forehead bore a faint red abrasion, an imprint of the pattern from the quilted coverlet. “How will we explain this?” he said. He wet his thumb to lift a crystal of the shattered bulb from the pillow.

“That’s your problem, isn’t it?” Tracy said.

“It might look to anyone who came in here as if we had enjoyed ourselves,” Jorge said. “Look what we have done.” He leaned across the bed and picked from the floor a crumpled foil packet. He dangled it over an exposed corner of the mattress. A few drops of liquid slipped from a jagged corner and fell like tears to the ticking. The thick fabric sucked in the oils.

“You’re trying to threaten me with Melissa?” Tracy said. “What a joke.”

“She can be dangerous,” Jorge said. He gestured toward the wall, where her armaments were on display.

“Yeah, and I hear she’s a hell of a bar fighter, too,” Tracy said.

“She was taken by surprise,” Jorge protested.

Tracy turned to the mirror to straighten her blouse and to shake free her hair. “They tell me Melissa got a big part in
Miss
Julie,
” she said.

“What do you mean?” Jorge asked.

“I just wonder if she has a special friendship with the director, is all. ”

“She has been at rehearsal every day,” Jorge said, suddenly indignant. “Every night, she studies her script . . .”

“You know where Spiegel’s books are, don’t you?” Tracy said.

“You’re fucking him. Aren’t you?”

Tracy was silent for a moment. “Let’s agree, then, that we all have our secrets.”

“You believe Melissa has been spying on the American community, and I am lying to protect her?” Jorge said. “You are wrong. But I will try to find his books. And I will try to find out if what you say about Melissa is so. If I learn that she has been fucking somebody else, I will—”

“You will what? Move back to Lisbet’s? Do you think she would have you, after all this?”

“I will look through Melissa’s papers,” Jorge said, “and see what I can discover.”

And Tracy realized that she might have made a mistake. She should never have revealed to Jorge how badly she needed to find Spiegel’s books. He had figured out that she was searching for more than idle reading matter, that among the books must be something on which she would place a great value. Tracy had placed too big a marker within Jorge’s grasp, and she had no idea what price he might exact for its return.

It was evening when Tracy pulled into the courtyard in front of her apartment. Gunnar Mendelsohn was sitting on the front steps. He stood to greet her, or to block her way to the door. By the clumsiness with which he moved, she guessed that he had been sitting for several hours.

“You could have rung the bell,” Tracy said. “Aaronson would have let you in.”

“I didn’t want to see him,” Mendelsohn said. “I wanted to talk to you.” He seemed to be a patient man. A professional asset, no doubt, she thought. Like a duck hunter or an ice fisherman, the reporter must wait stock-still until the quarry arrives in his sites.

“Do you want to go for coffee or something? I haven’t eaten,” Tracy said.

“I would rather talk here,” Mendelsohn said. “I will have to rush back to my office as soon as we finish. We are past my deadline. I am keeping the pressmen on overtime because of this story.”

“Which story? You’ve found Spiegel?”