Nobody Knew They Were There

Tuesday, October 29

Sara must leave by eight in the morning. Her exam is at nine o’clock, she tells me as she dresses. She wants to do some last-minute studying, and she also has several telephone calls to make. When I suggest that she make her calls from here, she says she would rather make them at home.

“Who are you going to call?” I ask.

“Some friends.”

“Which friends?”

“Some friends who said they would be here yesterday. Some very dear friends.”

“Would be here? What do you mean?”

“From Los Angeles. Something must have happened. That’s why I have to call them. To find out if and when they’re coming.”

“Will they be staying with you?”

“If they come, yes.”

“That’s not so good.”

“It’s very good. They’re close friends of mine. I want to see them.”

“I was thinking of me” I say.

“Yes, everyone seems to be thinking only of himself these days.” She kisses me on the cheek. “Call me later,” she says, and hurries off.

I order coffee and sweet rolls from room service. I am sitting by the window looking down at the street when the knock sounds at the door. I look at my watch. It is only ten minutes to nine. The dynamiter is early. I go to the door and open it

Abigail is standing there.

“Hello, Sam,” she says.

She looks quite beautiful. She is wearing the ocelot coat I bought her last Christmas. A small black fur hat is angled onto her forehead. Blond hair frames her face. One hand is sheathed in a black fur muff; the other is clutching a small overnight bag. I should be surprised to see her, but somehow I am not I should be concerned about whether Sara has left any of her personal possessions in the room, but somehow I am not It is as though my life is rapidly funneling toward a conclusion already vaguely perceived, and nothing matters but that conclusion.

“Come in, Abigail,” I say calmly, and we embrace, and I kiss her cheek, and I feel nothing.

“Are you surprised to see me?” she asks. She puts down the bag and looks around the room. “What a dreadful room,” she says. “Is this the best room you could get?”

“I didn’t ask for the best room, Abby.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” she says. She takes off her coat and puts it on a hanger in the closet She is wearing a simple black suit with a gold pin on the collar. “Are you surprised?” she asks again.

“Yes,” I answer, but I am thinking there are no surprises left; I am terribly sorry, Abigail, but there are no surprises left

“Eugene told me where you were. I thought I’d better come out”

“Why?”

“To see you. To help you.”

“I don’t need help, Abby.”

“You’ve needed help as long as I've known you.”

“But not now.” I look at my watch. The dynamiter should be arriving in three or four minutes. “Abby,”

I say, “you picked a very bad time for a visit. I’m expecting someone in a few moments.”

“Oh?” she says, and arches one eyebrow.

“A man involved with the contract. A Mr. Weglowski.”

“That’s all right,” she says. “I'll keep myself busy till you get back. There seemed to be some very nice little shops in town.”

“Abby, I may be gone all afternoon.”

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Abby, I don’t want you here.”

“You made that apparent when you called. But you see, Sam, I am here.”

The telephone rings. I answer it at once, and the desk clerk informs me that there is a gentleman in the lobby to see me.

“Tell him I’ll be right down,” I say, and hang up. “He’s here, Abby. I don’t know what time I’ll be back, but when I do get back, I’d like to find you gone.”

“It’s impossible to find someone gone,” Abby says.

“Phrase it however you want. Just go home.”

“No.”

“I can’t argue with you now. I’m asking you to leave, Abby. You’re in danger here, believe me.”

“I’m in bigger danger if I’m not here,” Abby says. “You’d better go. Your Mr. Kowalski is waiting.”

“It’s Weglowski.” I put on my overcoat and go to the door. Before I step into the corridor, I say, “Abby… go home,” and then close the door behind me and walk to the elevator. The black chambermaid asks if I would like to buy an almond crunch candy bar for the support of the local children’s home. I ask her how much the candy bar is. She says it’s fifty cents, and I tell her I’ll take two, and give her a dollar bill, and ask her to leave the candy in my room. She thanks me profusely and assures me it’s very good candy, and all for a very good cause.

The dynamiter is a short squat man with a very red face and bright blue eyes. He is hatless, and his hair is iron-gray and straight, with a high part on the right-hand side. It is unusual to meet a man who parts his hair on the right, and I am immediately suspicious of him. He is wearing a blue business suit “Sachs?” he asks.

“Weglowski?”

We shake hands briefly. His hands are huge and rough, a workman’s hands. But his grip is gentle, almost like a woman’s. From behind the desk, the clerk is watching us. Weglowski and I leave the hotel. The morning is gray. He leads me to a white pickup truck that seems intentionally camouflaged for the climate. The door is lettered in black paint:

“My truck,” he says, with a note of pride in his voice.

I climb into the cab beside him. I notice for the first time that he is wearing brown, high-topped workman’s shoes with his blue business suit His socks are white, like his truck. He starts the engine and begins driving out of town, westward, toward the bridge. He does not speak again until we are halfway there. Then he says, “We look at bridge first, okay?”

“Sure.”

“No?”

“Sure.”

“To see how much explosion we need.”

“Whatever you say. This part of it is all yours.”

“Well, is yours too,” Weglowski says. “You help, no? So is yours, too.” He nods briefly and rams the accelerator to the floor. He is an expert driver, and he knows the road intimately, but he terrifies me nonetheless. On one hairpin turn, we narrowly miss a bus coming from the opposite direction, but the dynamiter only laughs as the bus rolls by not a whisker’s breath away. When we come to the bridge, he seems not to notice it He does not diminish his speed, the pickup truck is roaring right past Henderson Gap.

“That’s the bridge,” I say.

“Yes, but no park. Is better after.”

He drives perhaps half a mile beyond the bridge, rolls around a curve at fifty miles an hour, abruptly jams on the brakes, and makes a sharp right turn off the road and into a scenic overlook with redwood picnic tables. He parks the truck near a huge white boulder, and says, “Now we walk.” We get out of the truck and start down the road. He walks briskly and swiftly. I have difficulty keeping up with him on the packed and rutted snow.

“In Poland, walk maybe five, six miles each day,” he says. “Very good for health.” He nods soberly. “Long time. From Poland.”

“How long have you been here?” I ask. “In this country?”

“Fifty-one year. From after first war. How old you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take guess. Go on.”

“Sixty-five?”

“Seventy-eight year old!” he shouts, and laughs. “Good, no? I look seventy-eight?”

“No, you don’t.”

“Damn right! Healthy like a horse, Sygmunt Weglowski. How many children you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Eight!” he shouts, and bursts into laughter. “That’s good screwing, no?”

“Yes, very good,” I say.

“Very good, damn right!” He is still walking quite rapidly, and I am beginning to get a stitch under my heart. “Too fast?” he asks.

“A little.”

“We slow down. Have all day, no? Look at bridge, pick spots, figure out. Nice and slow. Is Polish proverb, ‘Slow better, fast worse.’ I cannot say in English. But we go slow, is better.” He is walking more slowly now. He looks at me solicitously. “Is better?”

“Much better.”

“Good.” We walk silently for perhaps another hundred yards. Then, abruptly, he asks, “You kill him?”

I debate answering him at first, and then I decide to play it straight “Yes, I hope to.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“Bad man,” he says, and spits into the snow. “Better dead. Alive is worse, no? Worse for you, me, everybody. Worse for country. You kill him, is better.”

“I hope so.”

“Oh, yes!” he says and spreads his hands wide. “Of course. Weglowski think so.”

The air is bitterly cold here on the mountain. I am looking ahead to the morning the train arrives. I am chilled even in my heavy overcoat, and I am beginning to think in need clothing more suited to the task. Weglowski, wearing only his business suit over a white shirt, seems warm as toast. I must ask him his secret

“Was time,” he says, “two, three years ago, was hope. No more. No hope. Is either kill him, or leave America. But come from Poland to escape, no? So now must leave again?” He shakes his head. “No. Is better kill him. You do good thing, Sachs.”

“Would you do it?” I ask.

“I am do it, no? I wire bridge for you. We partners, Sachs. General contractors,” he says, and bursts out laughing again. “I wire, you push, boom! Is happy days again.”

When we reach the bridge, he becomes immediately serious. He studies it from the road, walking back and forth to view it from various vantage points. He is entirely without grace, a short squat brisk little man whose motions are jerky and rapid. When I explain my needs to him, he listens carefully, nodding and saying, “Good” as I go over each point I tell him that I want all of the bridge to fall into the ravine, not just any one section of it Moreover, I want it all to collapse at the same time. I cannot risk, for example, the western end of the bridge standing after the eastern end falls; this would present the possibility of our man escaping before his car plunged into the ravine. The demolition, then, must be complete and simultaneous. Weglowski seems to understand. He nods seriously, and then climbs over the highway guard rail and starts down into the ravine.

He seems to know what he is about In his broken English, he explains that this is a fixed arch or hingeless-type bridge, with both ends of the arch rigidly anchored at the abutments on either side of the ravine. It is the arch that supports the tracks above it The arch, in turn, is held in place by the concrete piers embedded in the eastern and western slopes of the Gap. Weglowski plans to set two charges at these opposite points where steel joins concrete, plus a third charge at the very center of the arch — where the keystone would be if the bridge were built of stone. I listen, barely understanding. What is more, I do not have to understand, I do not have to know. The only thing I must know is how to detonate the explosives. The rest means nothing. So I listen, but I do not care.

I do not care.

She looks, my Abigail, weary around the eyes. She has looked this way ever since the afternoon we received word that Adam had been killed in action. When I come into the hotel room, she is sitting by the window, staring out at the bell tower. She turns to me, and I see her eyes first, and the weariness there. I long to go to her in that moment, to hold her close. I do not. And I wonder why.

“I’m still here,” she says.

“I see that”

Her face looks clean-scrubbed and fresh, the way it did when she was a young girl, except for the weary lines of sadness around her eyes. Again, I feel the impulse to kiss her eyes, to kiss away the lingering grief, to transform her again into the Abigail I knew when she was seventeen, to make of her that spirited girl again. But I do not And again, I wonder why.

“Sam,” she says, “there are things to talk about”

“I know.”

“Here or where?”

“Let’s walk,” I say.

“All right” She goes to the closet and removes from it the ocelot coat She does not bother with the hat or the muff. Instead, she ties a black kerchief around her head, and pulls on a pair of leather gloves. As we are going out of the room, she says, “There were two telephone calls for you. While you were gone.”

“Oh?”

“A woman named Hester and a woman named Sara.”

“Did they leave messages?”

“They said to tell you they’d called.” We are in the corridor now, walking toward the elevators. “Aren’t you going to call them back?”

“Later.”

“Sara sounded very young.”

“She w very young.”

“How young, Sam?”

I do not answer.

It is bitter cold in the street outside. The afternoon sun is waning, and the mountain air is sweeping in over the town. I think ahead to the morning of the bridge. I hope it will not be cold. I hope it will not snow. I hope it will all go just as Weglowski and I planned it today.

“Why are you here?” Abby asks.

“To blow up a bridge,” I tell her.

“Be serious.”

“To kill a man.”

“Sam…”

“Yes, Abby?”

“Do you know that David is in trouble? Do you know that he plans to run off to Denmark with his drug addict friend?”

“His friend is not a drug addict.”

“His friend is a drug addict and a pusher besides. He’s been shooting heroin. And selling it That’s what they found in the apartment”

“David said there was no hard stuff in the…”

“David is a liar.”

“He does not lie to me.”

“He lies to everyone. He lies to you, he lies to me, he lies…” Abby takes a deep breath. “The only person he ever told the truth to in his life was Adam. And Adam’s dead. And David’s about to run off to Denmark with a drug addict.”

“Perhaps not.”

“No? What are you doing to stop him?”

“I’m blowing up a bridge on November second.”

This time she stops, and turns and looks at me. There is a familiar expression on her face. I have seen it there a thousand times in the past, whenever I tried to explain to her a course of action I had already decided to pursue. She wore this same expression when I told her I was defending the Baltimore Five; she wore it when I told her I was writing the brief for the Hoffstadter case. She wears it now. It is bewildered, it is concerned, it is utterly feminine. I love this woman very much, I realize. I love her very much, and I have been unable to talk to her since last April.

The wind sweeps in off the mountains. We are walking again. She is silent, my wife, and I am silent beside her.

“Which bridge?” she asks at last “A railroad bridge.”

“Which man?”

“The man who killed Adam.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asks.

“I am serious, Abby.”

“Don’t do it, Sam.”

“I’ve already contracted for the job.”

“What do you know about bridges? About killing?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t do it. Please.”

“I have to.”

“I’ll stop you. m call the police. I’ll….”

“Abby, I told you because I trust you. Don’t betray me now.”

“We’ve done nothing but betray each other for as long as I can remember,” she says, and suddenly she is weeping. I put my arm around her. The sidewalk is somewhat slippery here, and we walk slowly and clumsily, edging our way across the ice. To the casual passersby, to the college students in their long flowing mufflers and their striding boots, we must appear at first (from a distance, or perhaps even closer, perhaps even passing a hairs-breadth away on this bitter afternoon) to be a doddering couple abroad in a treacherous world, unable to cope, the old woman weeping, the old man shuffling across the icy sidewalk, his arm around her for support.

“There’s a poem,” I tell her. “Do you know it?”

“What poem?”

“The others would come/More often than John/Now they are gone/ I’m alone.”

“What poem?” she repeats, sobbing. “What poem?”

“I just recited it.”

“That isn’t a poem.”

“It’s a poem. A very sad one.”

She is still weeping, snuffling her tears into a tissue. I offer her my handkerchief and she takes it with a small nod and blows her nose, turning her head away as though embarrassed to have me witness this intimate act.

“Sam,” she says, “which one of them are you sleeping with?”

“Neither.”

“Or both,” Abby says.

“Neither.”

I can tell this woman I am about to blow up a railroad bridge, but I cannot tell her I am sleeping with a twenty-one-year-old law student named Sara Horne. This I cannot tell her, for it would destroy her as readily as Weglowski’s charges will destroy the trestle.

“Then who are they?”

“Hester is the one who hired me. Hester Pratt. She teaches English here at the university. Sara Home is recording secretary for the group. I’ve been in constant touch with both of them since I arrived.”

“When did you get here?”

“Early Monday.”

“Where were you before then?”

“What do you mean?”

“You left New York after work on Thurs…”

“I spent three days in Los Angeles. Researching tractor companies.”

“Sam, I find all this spy stuff ridiculous.”

“I’m not enjoying it too terribly much myself.”

“Then come home.” She stops again. She has an annoying habit of stopping dead on the sidewalk whenever she wishes to make a point, so that sometimes I am caught in mid-stride, a step or two ahead of her. I have never liked this about her. She usually does it when we are having a heated argument. It always makes me feel foolish and observed. I do not mind feeling foolish right now, but the one thing I do not want is to be observed.

“Keep walking, Abby,” I say, and there is a harsh edge to my voice. She hesitates only a moment and then falls into step beside me. “Don’t do that again,” I warn her. “If you do, m leave you standing here. Do you understand me?”

“Secret Agent X-9,” she mutters, but I know she will not repeat the action.

The street lights come on.

(Was it only last Thursday that Sara discovered street lights coming on?)

“Why are you doing this?” Abby asks.

“Because Adam is dead.”

“Adam was a fool. And so are you.”

“Abby..

“Adam was a fool. He could have stayed in college and had his student deferment. No. He had to prove something. So what did he prove?”

“He proved he was willing to..

“To die.”

“No. To take a stand for what he believed was right”

“Oh. And what did he believe was right? That he should be drafted?”

“Damn you, Abby, you know that’s not what he believed!”

“He believed in magic and nonsense. He believed in your “Me? What..?”

“He believed that you, by defending those Baltimore draft dodgers and later Hoffstadter, who deserved to be hanged if ever anyone…”

“Hoffstadter was trying to prove something!”

“Yes, just the way Adam was trying to prove something, just the way you're trying to prove something now. What the hell are men always trying to prove? Why don’t they come home, and make love, and shut up? What are they always trying to prove, for Christ’s sake? That they’re men? All right, already, we believe you. You convinced Adam you were a man, didn’t you? You convinced him you were taking a stand, you were speaking out, you were doing your share in correcting the ills of our great and beloved.

“I was! If I hadn’t defended those kids…”

“Somebody else would have, and you know it That isn’t the point, Sam.”

“What is the point, Abby?”

We are talking in very low voices, we are almost whispering. We are walking swiftly now past glowing shop windows, the sidewalks before them scraped clean. We have not really talked since April 26, when Adam was killed, and now we are talking rapidly and in hushed voices, as though anxious to get it all out immediately and forever, but frightened lest either of us might really hear what we are saying.

“The point is that sooner or later it had to get to Adam,” Abby says in the same low voice, as tight as a clenched fist. “Eventually Adam had to take a stand that would equal your own. He couldn’t do it by ducking out of the draft because you were too expert at defending draft dodgers; how can a boy be heroic if he knows his father may charge to the rescue? So he hit upon a brilliant variation.” She pauses and then quickly says, “Did you help him with his variation, Sam?”

“I did not”

“Didn’t you advise him to drop out of school.?”

“No.”

…and publicly declare he wanted the Army to draft him?”

“No.”

“He dreamt that all up himself.”

“Yes.”

“With no help from you, right? All by himself, he figured it would be news if the son of the noted lawyer who’d defended those draft dodgers suddenly dropped out of college and told the world he was ready and willing to die alongside the farm hands and factory workers who were being asked to do so every day of the week. No immunity and no favors. “Let the nation know,” he told the newspapers, ‘that it is destroying all of its young men in this senseless war, not merely those it may consider expendable.' Does that sound like Adam to you?”

“It was Adam.”

“Adam who was struggling by on a C average, Adam who never in his life was a good student, Adam who.

“I knew nothing at all about his idea until that day at Sugarbush when he told me.”

“If that’s true, Sam…”

“It is true.”

“Then why didn’t you tell him it was a bad idea?”

“Because his mind was already made up.”

“If his mind was made up, why was he asking your advice?”

“He wasn’t He was only telling me what he planned to do.”

“And you encouraged him.”

“I told him to do whatever he thought was right.”

“You told him to get drafted and get killed, that’s what you told him!”

“Abby, for Christ’s sake..

“You knew he’d get attention because he was your son, Big Sam Eisler, Baltimore Five. You knew he’d be putting his head on the chopping block — little hippie bastard wants to get drafted, fine, let’s accommodate him!”

“He was about to become a man! Did you want me to cut off his balls?”

“No! I wanted you to save his life!”

“He was doing the right thing!”

“He was doing the wrong thing!”

“For himself, for his conscience..

“The hell with his conscience! Where’s his conscience now, Sam? Dead. He proved nothing. He proved they could draft him. He proved they could kill him. That’s what he proved. And you helped him do it”

“Abby, Abby…”

“And do you know why, Sam? Because you didn’t have the guts to do it yourself. You may have convinced Adam you were a big hero, taking a stand against the war by defending those kids, but there’s one thing he didn’t know — one thing I’ve known for a long long time. You’re a phony, Sam. You’re as phony as every other man your age in this country. You made all the goddamn mistakes, and now you’re sending your sons out to correct them. The only trouble is there won’t be any sons to inherit their mistakes. It’s the end of the line, Sam. It ends with you. Because you did nothing to stop what’s…”

“I’m doing something now.”

“Too late. He’s already dead.”

She stops in the middle of the sidewalk again. She knows I will not walk away from her. I am huddled against the fierce wind that rips in off the mountain. There are tears in my eyes.

“Sam,” she says, “come home with me. Forget all this.”

“No.”

“It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong.”

“It’s right.”

“It’s against everything you believe!”

“It’s lor everything I believe.”

“Do you believe in murder?” she asks, her voice rising.

“Quiet, Abby.”

“Do you?” Her voice drops to a whisper again. “Because that’s what it is, Sam. You are going to kill a man, and that’s murder, and I don’t know how you can possibly justify it, I honestly..”

“I believe in what I’m about to do.”

“Yes, like all the others who did the same damn thing.”

“This is different.”

“How? You do this, Sam, and you’re no better than they are, you’re the same kind of animal.”

“Thank you, Abby.”

“Oh, don’t, Sam, please don’t give me that injured look. This time you know I’m right.”

“You’re always right, aren’t you, Abby?”

“And don’t turn this into a stupid argument! I’m talking about your life here!”

“Yes, Abby, that’s just the point. It’s my life.”

“I thought I was a part of it”

“No. Not this time.”

She draws in her breath. A dull look of resignation comes into her eyes. She expels the breath. “I always knew you were angry,” she says, “but I never knew you were mad. You’re here to blow up a bridge, you tell me, you’re here to kill the man who killed your son. Do you know what I think, Sam? I think yes, you’re here to kill the man who killed your son, and I think you know who that man is, and I feel very sorry for you, I feel very goddamn sorry for you.” She turns away from me, and suddenly presses the back of her gloved hand to her mouth. “I want to go back to the hotel,” she says. “I want to pack. I think there’s a seven o’clock plane. I think I can make it if I hurry. Let's go back. I’m cold, Sam. Let’s go back. I’m cold. I’m cold.”

We are standing outside the gate to her airplane. I have carried her valise to the gate, and now I hand it to her and she looks into my eyes and says, “I lost you both last April,” and then hesitates and says, “He was my son, too, Sam. I loved him more than breath,” and turns, and walks toward the waiting aircraft without looking back at me.