Nocturnes (3 page)

The priest looked a little perplexed by Isaac’s line of questioning. He had covered a lot of ground during conversion discussions, but this was a novel path. Isaac pushed more questions into the uncertain silence, his passionate motives flowing out of
him.

“I want to know if God recognizes, and gives some sort of priority to, the love between a man and a woman who wanted nothing less than forever. Because if He doesn’t, I am never going to see my wife again. And I could never want to know, or try to love, a God who would give us the capacity for such longing only to viciously rip the heart out of the dream. If there is no reunion to hope for, He can send me straight to Hell right now and skip the
formalities.”

Isaac’s eyes blazed with accusation, with ten lifetimes’ worth of anguish. Until now he had kept the depth of that suffering to himself. The world of men was no longer a place of meaning for Isaac Bloom. His attention was now focused on the afterlife, and the love that might yet await him there. Evan Connor was caught in that powerful undertow.

This truly was a soul in need. Here was a man who might never hope again. It was thin ice for a young priest to skate out upon. But there was great possibility here as well. And the priest had to believe that God was trying to reveal something to both of the young men who sat pondering the eternal in a London rectory, only months removed from the greatest carnage in “civilized” history.

“Isaac, I can’t even begin to comprehend your pain. And I certainly can’t offer any simple answers to your questions. I will say this: When love and faith come together, it is the most powerful combination imaginable. I have seen lives changed and great miracles performed under such circumstances. It is as though God takes our abilities and multiplies them. But the best product of this rare confluence is an unshakeable inner peace. A peace that is everlasting. That is, it lasts as long as one’s faith does. Your own faith has been sorely tested. But your love, at least in the most perfect conjugal sense, has stood firm. We need to set about the recovery of your
faith.”

Isaac leaned back into his chair and sighed deeply. “That alone could constitute a miracle,” he thought
bitterly.

During the course of the next several months, the two men were nearly inseparable. They took long afternoon walks through Hyde Park and along the Thames. Through autumn leaves and over wintered bridges. One step at a time.

Father Connor spoke of the risks of faith, and of justified hope. He took the great historical lessons of suffering and put them into a personal context…always bringing the conversation back around to love.

He was an enthusiastic teacher, learning as much from his own ideas as he hoped Isaac was. He tried to convey to Isaac that the great mining-out of the heart that suffering performs could eventually be filled with the deepest kind of love—the kind that Isaac was on a quest to find—and that he would need faith if he were to realize the dream of eternity with his wife.

“Suffering often produces hatred and anger. But perhaps its greatest miracle is the softening of the heart…and that softening is love,
Isaac.”

Finally, two weeks before Easter of 1946, Evan Connor told his friend that he would administer the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and First Communion on Holy Saturday. Isaac spent the next twelve days in prayer, imploring St. Jude, the patron saint of Lost Causes, for intercession. He pleaded with all who would listen to preserve his marriage forever.

It was an evening ceremony. The church shadows danced in the flickering candlelight as Isaac made his way to the altar to receive his First Communion. Father Connor smiled at him and leaned forward to whisper in his
ear.

“Rejoice, Isaac! I have been praying very earnestly for something to bring you comfort. I have never heard of this being done, but I can find no misgivings in my heart for what I am about to do. I have come to believe that Lessa’s spirit does dwell within you as part of your own
soul.”

With that, the priest took
two
hosts, dipped them into the crimson wine, and held them forth like an answered prayer to Isaac’s trembling lips.

“The body and blood of
Christ.”

From that time forward, whenever he received communion from Father Connor, he received it for himself and for Lessa. It may have been nothing more than a well-intentioned placebo for the ailing soul, but to Isaac it was the recovery of some measure of hope. Life would always be a sentence to be carried out as long as he was separated from his love, but now a possible pardon seemed to exist, out there
somewhere.

In 1953, Father Connor was transferred to a parish in Boston. Isaac had stayed on in London after his conversion, and had found work with a major newspaper. When his one true friend departed, he could find no reason not to join him in America. By following Evan to Boston, he could continue his faith, with the unique incentive of the two hosts.

Now, as memories finally gave way to fatigue, Isaac shifted onto his side, wrapped his arms around a pillow, and called out the day’s final
yearning.

“Lessa, come to my dreams. Please, come to
me…”

Chapter Two

I
saac rose early the following morning, determined to focus on the task at hand and to put the previous night quickly behind him. Eleven cities needed to be covered in the next twenty-four days. There was no time for nocturnal involvement with dreams and ghosts…or strangers in the
shadows.

He worked with intensity and by lunchtime he was famished. Last night’s encounter was a thing of fading anxiety. He placed an order for a bottle of Pouilly-Fume and grilled chicken salad to be delivered to his room. He sat at the balcony table enjoying the brilliance of the cobalt sky and opened the paper, automatically, to the obituaries. No familiar names. He was just about to turn to the redundancy of the headlines when something caught in the smoky webs of reluctant memory and demanded his attention.

He glanced back over the obits and there it was, the vague little paragraph that marked the end of a life…and the end of a lullaby.

Jane Doe. Unidentified elderly vagrant female.
Found dead in Piedmont Park. Cause of death
Unknown. Pending autopsy.
Police do not suspect foul play.

Isaac rose and walked to the balcony’s edge. He looked out over the rooftops and the busy streets toward Piedmont Park. He could see the density of trees that marked the park’s interior. Dark questions of coincidence whispered like a rustle of
leaves.

“Hush little baby, don’t you
cry…”

He knew it was her. That pitiful wraith, singing herself to sleep on a park bench, would dream no more.

Did the stranger in the shadows have anything to do with
it?

“Careful, Isaac. There’s a whole neighborhood of well-wishers back home just waiting for you to start chasing demons when you’re out in the yard with that broom,” he thought
aloud.

In fact, his own fear deterred him as well. He knew that he had an over-active imagination. He was a writer, for Chrissakes. There were times, especially during recollections of the camp, that he doubted if he would return to the world intact. Best not to ponder what is unseeable, and unknowable.

But the question refused to die that easily. He had shared a bond with that old woman. He crossed himself and offered a prayer.

“Give her a good home, lord. And a soft pillow, free of
tears.”

*

The next day he caught a flight to Charlotte. By charging into his assignment, he was able to keep that old sorrowful ghost at bay. But that night, as he lay his head on the scented pillows, he was forced to succumb and invite her into the crowded haunts of his memory.

Over the course of the next several nights a pattern developed, in which his memories oscillated between the homeless woman and his wife. Lessa seemed especially close now, almost reproving in her love. His conscience was curiously co-mingled with thoughts of how Lessa would deal with recent events.

“There is nothing I can do for her, Mrs. Bloom,” he would say to an empty chair. “She is at peace now,” he would remark to the clothes in the closet. “This is ridiculous,” to the bidet.

But still he could not free himself of the troubling idea that the old woman and the dark stranger were connected. And the notion that he should somehow get involved began to wear on his
nerves.

Nine days later he was in St. Louis and lack of sleep was taking its toll. He didn’t carry fatigue well, and when he checked in to the hotel the manager, who had known Isaac for a decade, politely inquired of his health. Isaac went straight to bed and into a dreamless sleep. When his call came at eight the next morning, he was already up and alert, feeling much renewed.

He ordered eggs Benedict, sourdough toast, and French press coffee, then stood for fifteen minutes under a scalding shower. When breakfast and the morning paper arrived he was feeling as frisky as a fifty year old. He avoided the obituaries for the moment, unwilling to dampen his mood with the news of death. The deceased were interred there in their little columns. They weren’t going anywhere.

He read through the news and shook his head. “What have we become?” He gazed up at the ceiling and wondered aloud at the cruel and violent obsessions of mankind, and suddenly felt fatigue wash over him again. He sat there, half a century removed from the butchery of the Holocaust, and had to admit that the species hadn’t learned a thing. He had avoided the obituaries, but why? Every newspaper in the world had become one redundant obituary for the planet, and for the most overrated species ever residing upon
it.

With disgust, he turned at last to those neat little rows of the dead to look for any familiar names. All that remained of a life, of loves and disappointments. A name, whispered among friends, wept over by family…and called out in anguish in the long night of
mourning.

Consciously he tried to avoid it, but his eyes kept returning to a troubling little paragraph that whispered of Atlanta.

Itinerant male found dead
near Braintree Station.
Identity unknown. Cause
of death uncertain.
Pending coroner’s
report.

There was absolutely nothing to connect the two deaths. Nothing except a fevered imagination fueled by too many sleepless nights. He knew that he needed more rest than he had been getting. He also knew that he had taken the old woman’s death too personally. He knew that the whole thing was crazy. He picked up the phone and got the number to the County Coroner’s office.

*

“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Please follow
me.”

Isaac was led down several winding corridors of tile and chrome and flickering fluorescent lighting. The attendant introduced Isaac to the assistant coroner as Arthur Stratton, the name that he had given over the phone when he had called as a concerned relative looking for his missing brother.

Isaac was still swimming in disbelief over his own actions. He could not rationally explain to himself what he was trying to accomplish by viewing the dead body of a transient in a town that wasn’t even his home. But when he tried to disengage himself from the gruesome task, he could feel the annoying tug of his conscience urging him on. He had to follow his gut on this if he was going to have any
peace.

“Hello, Mr. Stratton. I’m sorry to meet under such solemn circumstances. Hopefully, this part of your search will prove
futile.”

The assistant turned and led the numbed Isaac to a gurney occupied by a linen-swathed figure. With no preamble, he pulled the pale garment from an even more colorless
body.

The abrupt face-to-face with death caused Isaac to sway and clutch at the gurney for support, find the cadaver’s arm instead, and pull it off the edge. It dangled there, outstretched with rigor mortis and pointing at the shaken old man like an
accusation.

The attendant grabbed him and Isaac composed himself enough to notice the bruised and punctured skin near the joint of the dead man’s elbow. The young coroner rearranged the arm, covered the face, and looked questioningly into Isaac’s
face.

Isaac finally managed to tear his gaze from the figure. He looked into the coroner’s eyes and shook his head. “Just out of curiosity,” casually, cautiously, “how did he
die?”

“Nothing terribly exciting. A combination of poor physical health and morphine. I hesitate to call it an overdose because, in a healthy man, it wouldn’t have been. But his body had deteriorated enough from the disease that would have eventually killed him that the drug in his veins was just enough to help things
along.”

“The disease that would have killed him?’ Isaac asked, confused.

“Yes. It seems that he was only a few months from succumbing to throat cancer. He probably knew his time was short. The morphine must have offered a combination of escapes…from the pain, and from the reality of his
condition.”

They had returned to the lobby. The coroner was shaking his head. “Unfortunately, he is just one of many such stories around here. He won’t even be missed. Well. I wish you luck in locating your brother, Mr. Stratton. Good
afternoon.”

Isaac had kept the taxi waiting, and his bags were in it.

“Take me to the airport,” he said to the back of the driver’s
head.

He had anticipated something strange…almost a premonition. He had packed and made reservations on the next flight to Atlanta. This was a detour from his assignment, but he would only need a day there to wrap this up…whatever this was. Either there were similarities in the two deaths, or there weren’t. He would give the matter just that much attention and no more. But that much was necessary if he was going to exorcise the nagging demons of his
conscience.

Another call from a “concerned relative” got him access to Jane Doe’s file, all that was left of her. One of several receptionists in the coroner’s office pulled the particular Jane from the particular day in question and, without the slightest inquiry, handed the slender file over to him. He took a seat in the barren lobby and opened the folder to the two-page autopsy and coroner’s report.

He read it through three times, then set it on the seat beside him. A tingling sensation started somewhere behind his eyes and spread rapidly to the base of his skull. This was not real. He was having a dream. The tingling ran like electric wires down both of his arms, straight through to each fingertip. A secretary coughed behind the counter. A phone was ringing.

It was a replay of the case in St. Louis, just a different potentially-fatal disease robbed of the chance to finish her off. Leukemia. And
morphine.

He rose and returned the file to the receptionist, then walked stiffly to the exit and out onto the busy street. For several minutes he stood, blinking against the sun before returning to the counter and asking for a phone. He called a cab and went directly to the same hotel from which he had started upon this odyssey. In his room, he downed four quick shots of brandy and stretched out on the bed to
think.

“Now what?” he asked himself pointedly. “Do I call the police? Excuse me, officer, but I was walking in Piedmont Park after dark and noticed a rather suspicious character. I believe he may have had something to do with the death of that homeless
lady.”

“Is that so? You were walking in the park after dark, saw a strange person and a homeless lady that you know was dead the next day? We’ll check right into that, Mr…uh, what was your name again,
sir?”

Probably not a great idea. Not yet, anyway. Better to do just a little more research on the subject. Then perhaps an anonymous call with all the facts laid out for the authorities. That seemed like an acceptable solution. He rolled onto his side, turned off the bedside lamp, and waited for
sleep.

The next day he returned to the coroner’s office, dealt with a different clerk, and used his real name and credentials to gain access to five years’ worth of Jane and John Doe files. To the “why do you need this stuff?” question, he simply replied that he was conducting some research for a possible article on the homeless, and needed some baseline data that might indicate dietary habits, life expectancy, causes of death,
etc.

He copied everything before returning to St. Louis that evening, where he repeated his request at that coroner’s office the following day.

*

Files and photocopies were scattered about the suite. Before he examined any of them, he ordered a bottle of Secco-Bertani, ran a hot bath, and eased into the steaming tub to open the pores of his heart and mind to the problem before him. He had felt from the beginning that Lessa was somehow exerting a kind of psychic influence in this affair. He was not going to close his mind to that possibility. Rather, he would try even harder to tap in to her love and compassion. He would need her help to look bravely and objectively upon those files.

He took a long, fulfilling draw of the elegant wine and closed his eyes…soft cherries and strawberries, caressed by a firm acidity. Lovely. He took the mental notes for his travel piece, then cleared the present from his mind and allowed his thoughts to carry him back. Back through the smoke and thunder of his pain…and back, slowly. Until, at last, he could part the heavy, dark curtain that he kept sealed against
Warsaw.

He and Lessa were at a popular night spot in the Stare Miasto, old Warsaw. It was a gay evening, warm and alive with stars. They were out with a group of friends: the young, the brave, and the creative heart of the city. They were dancing, and raising glasses to their esoteric little society.

Josef Griter, a longtime admirer and would-be lover of Lessa’s, had just completed a satirical speech on the morally-enlightening qualities of Scotch whisky. Isaac took Lessa’s hand and led her out to dance. With his arms safely around her, Lessa was able to let go of the last wisps of the anxiety that had clouded her days of late. Isaac felt her relax into him and marveled again at how well they fit
together.

“Josef will probably go to his grave carrying your heart on his sleeve,” he said
casually.

“Isaac. You exaggerate. Josef likes the idea of love more than he likes the work required to sustain it. He’s too sentimental. And he admires every woman he knows he can never have. But he doesn’t care for me any more than he cares for Sarah, or Judith. Besides, he loves you like a
brother.”

“Perhaps. But he would certainly jump at the opportunity to love you like more than a
sister.”

“You’re jealous,” she laughed against his shoulder.

“Of course I am. It goes with the territory of loving the most beautiful fish in the sea. One is always looking out for hungry
sharks.”

She squeezed his hand as they laughed some more, and laid her head against his chest. This was where she belonged. Her home was right here. And everyone who saw them together knew it. The song ended and they returned to the crowded table.

“Oh, Lessa! You’ve returned in the very nick of time.” Josef took her hand from Isaac’s and led her to the head of the table, explaining, “Karl has been driving the spikes of his alleged poetry into our ears, and we need you to soothe our fevered brains with something cool and embraceable. Ladies and, ahem, gentlemen,” he shouted above the din at the table, “I give you the most lovely, the most talented, and temporarily the most obscure poet in all of Poland: Lessa Frankle! Or should that be ‘Bloom’?” He winked knowingly at Isaac as the group applauded and whistled.

Lessa smiled and looked at each of her friends in turn. “These are the best of times,” she thought. “But they cannot
last.”

She pushed the troubling whispers aside and addressed the
table.

“You honor me with your enthusiasm. And Isaac has promised me that the ones who whistled will be entitled to a little extra over what was
discussed.”

Isaac pretended to reach for his wallet as everyone whistled in
unison.

“I’m afraid that I have nothing new to share with you. I am working on some new pieces now, but they won’t be finished for a
while…”

The exaggerated agony of their pleas assailed her. “Anything, Lessa! Recite one of your
lullabies.”

She laughed. A luxurious and rich low-note melody. To Isaac, her laughter was her greatest lullaby.

She was enjoying herself, and smiled at them all again.

“All right, then. A lullaby for my sleepy
friends.