Midnight Harvest (48 page)

“Doesn’t it ever bother you?” Steve asked Rogerio when he had finished the last drop of his coffee and set the mug on the tray.

“Doesn’t what bother me?” Rogerio asked.

“Always being at the beck and call of your boss,” said Steve, ignoring the angry glance from his uncle.

“Why should that bother me?” Rogerio asked.

“Steve,” Albert said in a warning voice.

Steve plunged ahead. “Because no time is your own. You can’t go home at the end of the day, and do whatever you like. That’s going to change in the future: you’ll see.”

Rogerio contemplated the earnest young man, and said in a level way, “It may change, but I will not.” He considered his next words carefully. “I find it no imposition to serve le Comte. I have done it for a very long time, and I am used to it I do not feel confined, for he is a very reasonable man. If I wished to find another place to live, he would make that possible: he has done so in the past. At present it suits him and me to share this house. At another time, in another place, it will be otherwise.”

“And it saves him money,” said Steve as if this clinched his opinion.

“It may do; I don’t know, nor do I care,” said Rogerio.

“I’ll bet he does,” said Steve. “Rich men always care.”

“Steven Albert Morris, you’ll hold your tongue if you know what’s good for you.” Albert turned an apologetic gaze on Rogerio. “I’m sorry. Ever since he started earning a hundred bucks a month, he’s been acting as if he were Mr. GotRocks. Not that it isn’t good wages, but it’s not real money, is it?”

“It’s as real as any,” said Rogerio. “But if you mean it’s a vast amount, no, it isn’t.”

Albert seemed relieved. “There. I told you.”

“I’m making as much as Pop’s doing at Treasure Island,” said Steve, a bit defiantly. “And there’s going to be more opportunity for men like me. It’s going to be a better time ahead.”

Before his nephew could launch into his favorite diatribe, Albert stood up. “We’ve got work to do yet, Stevie, and the sooner we get it done, the sooner we get to leave.” He looked over his shoulder toward the stairs. “We’ll be back in the morning, at eight You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Then I won’t,” said Rogerio, taking the tray into the kitchen. He set the dishes on the sink-side counter to be washed, and disposed of the chicken-bones as well as the left-over bits of crusts from the sandwiches into the garbage pail out on the enclosed rear porch; the sky was almost dark and the wind had begun to pick up. He had tied an apron around his waist and was filling the sink with hot water and Ivory flakes when he heard the door-knocker, and a few moments later, Albert called out, “That policeman’s back. He wants to talk to you.” Rogerio turned off the water, wiped his hands, and went to meet Inspector Smith.

T
EXT OF A LETTER FROM
D
RUZE
S
VINY IN
W
INNIPEG,
M
ANITOBA,
C
ANADA, TO
F
ERENC
R
AGOCZY, CARE OF
O
SCAR
K
ING,
K
ING
L
OWENTHAL
T
AYLOR
& F
ROST,
S
AN
F
RANCISCO,
C
ALIFORNIA.

Compton House

658 Selkirk Road

Suites 4–9

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

24 November, 1936

Ferenc Ragoczy

le Comte de Saint-Germain

c/o Oscar King

King Lowenthal Taylor & Frost

630 Kearny Street

San Francisco, California, USA

My dear Comte,

I trust this finds you well and flourishing, in spite of your recent misadventures in Spain. I cannot thank you enough for making it possible for me to emigrate to Canada. This has proven to be the best move of my life. I have never enjoyed myself as much as I have these last several weeks. Manitoba Chemicals, Ltd. is a wonderful company, and I have rarely felt so good about my work since I left Prague.

When I received the offer of employment that brought me here, I accepted it as a kind of last opportunity. To be frank, its distance from Spain was more important to me than the work that was going on here. I accepted the job because I was desperate. The terms were unbelievably favorable, the salary well beyond anything I expected, and I thought it would provide me the chance to recoup some of the losses I had sustained in Córdoba. This was not the best frame of mind to have to begin a new position, but it was mine.

You will be astonished to learn that I am delighted with Winnipeg, and Canada. It is a very genial city, well-designed and filled with interesting persons and places. The Canadians I have met have been hospitable and well-mannered, willing to extend a welcome to me no matter what my reason for arriving on their shores may be. I am purchasing a small house—not out of necessity, but out of choice, that is not far from the laboratory where I have been installed. The neighborhood is pleasant, the neighbors are kindly, and I have now two cats and a dog to keep me company. I cannot tell you how much I like the way I live. Even the prospect of a Canadian winter does not frighten me, although they tell me that three years ago, the conditions were as bad as anyone here can remember. I will hope that I will not have to sustain such a harsh season, but if I do, it is a small price to pay for all the benefits I have gained in coming here.

I have recently heard from my cousin in Brno, and the word from there is grave indeed. Say what they will about the Berlin Olympic Games and all the good-will Hitler is supposed to be showing the world (and I think Hitler’s slighting of that American Negro runner was disgraceful), the Germans are readying for war, and unless the rest of Europe moves now to stop them, they will be running rampant again before the decade is quite over. I wish I had some good reason to contradict him, but even at this distance, I can feel the winds rising and hear the clarions sounding. My cousin told me that six of his colleagues are trying to get permission to go to America while they are able to, not wanting to be caught up once again in the toils of war. I cannot say that I blame them for wanting to leave; in fact, I hope to convince my cousin to join them in their move. So little of our family is left that I would be greatly saddened to see him go the way of so many of the others.

Of course, no one wants war, and everyone is terrified that it could all begin again. So many are willing to look the other way in the name of peace. But one must look: look at Italy, and all they’re doing in Ethiopia. Calling deadly bombs blooming red flowers! What sort of sophistry is that? And the least said about Spain, the better. Mola and Franco are turning the entire country into a slaughter-house, and the loyalists are taking a beating that beggars description that no one outside of the country wants to admit. There are some idealists who have gone there to support the loyalists, socialists, and communists, and no one wonders that they are as much cannon-fodder as any peasant, and are important more to journalists than generals. But I fear that in seeking to maintain the illusion of peace, the cost of war may become monstrous before any resolution is possible.

It may be wrong of me, but I don’t think there is much I can do to ease the hostility in the world. Not even a newspaper columnist can do much to move the public, no matter what one hears. So I have resigned myself to my happiness in this place, and in this work, all the while aware that it may be more ironic than unfettered. Still, I am able to do what I do best in a place that values my work and treats me far more generously than I have been treated by anyone but you. I hope in time I may find some way to thank you for making this possible for me. Manitoba Chemicals is a fine business, and those who work here are very aware of their good fortune; I am first among their number, and I hope it will always be so.

With utmost gratitude and my pledge of good-will,

Sincerely yours,

Druze Sviny

chapter ten

“Do you have any plans for Christmas?” Rowena asked Saint-Germain as she came back into her studio with a wrapped package in her hands. She had changed from her puce-wool suit into a hostess-gown of golden-umber velvet, and had put on the tiger’s-eye frog earrings he had made for her so many years ago. It was a rainy December evening, and they had spent part of the day at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, taking in the latest exhibits and avoiding the downpour outside. “Or are you going to do something at Clarendon Court?”

“No,” said Saint-Germain, mildly amused. “It isn’t a holiday I usually celebrate, unless not doing so would generate suspicions I would rather not have to sustain.” He was meticulous in his three-piece black wool suit, his white silk shirt, and burgundy tie; his hat and overcoat had been laid over the back of the settee at the other end of the double room. “There have been times I have been very diligent about observing it.” The sardonic humor in his face vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. He accepted the package and held a chair for her.

Rowena sat down in the fashionably low, rounded chair, tucking one leg up under her. “Would you like to come here? For Christmas, I mean? I usually have a tree and a proper dinner—not that you care about such things—but I would be glad of the company. The friends I have often celebrated with are not available this year, and I know it will seem empty without some other guests. It used not to bother me, spending the holidays alone, but now that I am over fifty, it weighs on me. At least tell me you’ll think about it.” The light from her floor-lamp cast its soft glow upon her face.

“I can do more than that.” Saint-Germain turned on the table-lamp beside him, and sat down immediately opposite to her and put the package on his lap. “If you would like my company at Christmas, it’s yours for as much of the holiday as you want.” He said nothing about having been born at the dark of the year, on the day now reckoned as Christmas Eve; marking his birth after forty centuries struck him as hubris at the least, absurdity at the most.

“Thank you,” she said, and held out her hand. As he took it, she went on, “I haven’t known how to bring this up. I couldn’t seem to find the right moment…” She looked to him for help.

“Christmas?” he asked, not following her thought.

“No,” she said, smiling a bit self-consciously. “I had a call two days ago. From a policeman. An Inspector John Smith. Is there something I should know about?”

A flicker of disquiet went through Saint-Germain, but no trace of it showed outwardly. “No, I don’t think so. He’s the one assigned to the matter of my suite being burgled.”

“So he said. But I can’t think why he’d want to talk to me,” she prompted, hoping he would have answers she had been unable to get from Smith.

“Nor I, on the face of it,” he admitted. “I don’t like that he bothered you.”

“He wanted to know all manner of things about you: how long I’d known you, where we had met, your situation in the world, those you might know in the city.” She pulled her hand back from his. “I was not pleased that he was so suspicious about you.”

Saint-Germain considered this, becoming more alarmed. “How very odd.”

“Isn’t it?” she agreed. “I assured him that I had known you more than a quarter century, and that you had done diplomatic service in England. I was right to tell him, wasn’t I?”

“Of course,” he said.

“He was a bit surprised that you should have been given such a mission so young,” she went on as if confessing a fault. “It took me aback, for I realized how he had assumed—quite naturally—that you must have been in your twenties then, given how you appear now.”

“That is a bit awkward,” Saint-Germain said, hoping to reassure her.

“I said you were older than you looked and left it at that. It seemed the only safe thing to do. But I thought I should tell you, in case you have to answer any more questions.” She joined her hands over her knee. “I don’t know why something so … so natural as years should bother me as it does. They didn’t used to. But talking with the inspector brought it all into sharp relief. I never thought the years would weigh on me, but I’ve found out differently. It’s not as if I’ve been a young woman recently, and my youth is slipping away, and I mourn its passing; it’s been gone for more than a decade, and I usually think good riddance. So that’s not it.”

“It may be you feel that life is passing, and you are losing your chances,” said Saint-Germain as kindly as he could. “That can be a far greater loss than youth.”

“Does that ever happen to you?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Constantly,” said Saint-Germain with a wry smile. “I have become accustomed to it, but it still feels as if I’m standing in a cold wind that blows everything past me.”

She shivered a little. “A powerful image,” she said softly.

“I’d prefer not to dwell on it,” he said lightly. “Don’t let it trouble you.”

“But I have to consider these things, if I am going to become like you when I die; I had better learn what I am going to have to deal with. You told me about your life, back in Amsterdam, but I haven’t thought much about that since.” She leaned forward.

“There are ways you can circumvent coming to my life, if that’s what you prefer,” he said, unable to keep the sorrow from his dark eyes as a sudden image of Tulsi Kil formed in his mind.

“I know; you told me: fire, severing the spine, prolonged exposure to sunlight. I am considering my options.” She held out her hand to him.

Their fingers touched this time with the intensity of the blue heart of a flame. “Whatever you decide, I will honor it.”

Rowena met his gaze with her own. “Thank you.”

Her gratitude surprised him. “You seem to think I would impose my will upon you. Why would I do such a thing?”

“I may decide to reject your life,” she said, as if this must be obvious. “You might see that as a deliberate slight.”