The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

17

“Bernard,” he said. “And the beautiful Carolyn. Please, come in. Mi casa es su casa, as the Spaniards say, and who are we to question their sincerity? And perhaps it is enough that they say it. ‘The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.’”

“Spinoza?”

He nodded, led us into the living room. The view over the Hudson was as magnificent as ever, even now that New Jersey was beginning to sport a skyline of its own.

“All goes well with you both? So my eyes assure me, Bernard. It seems to me a very long time since we’ve seen one another, but neither of you has aged a bit. You both look exactly as I remember you.”

As did he, remarkably enough. He didn’t look either young or slender, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he stood straight and moved gracefully and appeared quite elegant in a maroon velvet smoking jacket over pale gray trousers. His feet, which had always been a source of discomfort to him, looked happy enough in wine-colored carpet slippers.

“But please,” he said. “Sit down, make yourselves comfortable. I’ve put out a few things.” The marble-topped coffee table held half a dozen large china plates, and the selection on offer included éclairs and cupcakes and sacher torte and, piled high on one plate—

“Girl Scout Cookies,” he announced. “There is a child in this building, just a little bit of a thing, and it is her ambition to outsell all the other members of her coven.”

“I think they call it a troop,” Carolyn said.

“You know, I believe you’re correct. Young Madison is the sales leader at last reckoning, and this is a source of considerable pride to her. Rather than point out that pride is pleasure arising from one’s thinking too highly of oneself, as Spinoza reminds us, I’ve entered into the spirit of the occasion and established myself as her number-one customer. The Girl Scouts have a dozen varieties this year, but these are my favorites.” He pointed. “Adventurefuls. Caramel deLite Samoas. Carolyn, have one of these. Toffee-tastics. And, of course, the irresistible Thin Mints. Bernard, they call these Tagalongs, don’t ask me why, but you must have one.”

One of the chocolate éclairs was calling to me, but I did as I was told.

“And now please tell me what you would like to drink. Are you both still partial to scotch? I have a particularly nice single malt, not quite as assertive as Laphroaig but similarly a product of the isle of Islay. Or, if you’d prefer something less peaty, I can offer you Dewar’s, which is always reliable.”

I’d always found it so, and the single malt sounded worth investigating. But Carolyn and I glanced at each other, and I told Abel we were passing up alcohol for the evening.

“As am I,” he said. “I had a brandy after my supper, but I don’t think it needs any reinforcement.” He pointed to a tall glass on the table. “I’m treating myself to an Einspänner, and if it weren’t prideful of me to say it, I’d tell you it’s every bit as fine as the beverage they serve at Café Frauenhuber.” He beamed. “The oldest coffee house in Vienna,” he said, “and both Mozart and Beethoven entertained there, playing dinner music for the customers. Of course that was before my time, but not much had changed, and I doubt much has changed since.”

It depended, I thought, on what universe one was in.

An Einspänner, it turned out, was a couple of shots of Espressokaffee mit Schlagsahne, and you sipped the coffee through the whipped cream. I don’t know that it would be worth a trip to Vienna, but it was ample compensation for a taxi ride from the Village.

So we sipped the espresso through the schlag, and we ate Girl Scout cookies and Mittel European pastries, and Abel said it was good we’d called when we did, and not a week before or a few days later.

“I am between ocean liners,” he said, and explained that in recent years he’d taken to spending the greater portion of his time on cruise ships. “My health is good,” he said, “but the years take a toll, you know. And my personal physician, who is by no means an alarmist, suggested I consider what I believe they call assisted living. You are acquainted with the term?”

“From a distance,” I said.

“It’s a distance you’d be well advised to keep, Bernard. It’s a first step. You pay an exorbitant price and move into less inviting quarters than you presently occupy, and they have all manner of group activities available, shuffleboard and yoga classes and macramé workshops, all of which you do everything in your power to shun. And you dine one or two or three times a day in the dining hall, where you are presented with a wide choice of unpalatable dishes, all approved by some insufferable dietician, and when your mind decides it prefers dementia to a true awareness of its circumstances, they shift you to the Alzheimer’s ward and join you in the fervent hope that the end’s not too far off.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Carolyn said, “You make it sound—”

“Better than it actually is,” he said, finishing her sentence for her. “I decided perhaps dying was not so bad, when one considered the alternative, and then I sought refuge in the words of Baruch Spinoza, and before long I was in my stateroom on a Holland America ship. The Oosterdam, if I remember correctly.”

“Your friend Spinoza opened a travel agency?”

“What he wrote, and what I read, is this: ‘A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.’”

I let the words wash over me, and Carolyn asked Abel to repeat it, and he was more than happy to comply.

“Okay,” I said. “I kind of get it. But where does the Roosterdam come in?”

“The Oosterdam. Or I suppose it could have been the Rotterdam. It doesn’t matter.“

I had another cookie. I believe it was a Toffee-tastic, but it may have been one of the Adventurefuls. That’s one more thing that doesn’t matter.

“Do you know what a cruise ship is, Bernard? Carolyn?”

She shook her head. I said, “I know what Samuel Johnson said. ‘Being on a ship is like being in jail, with the added hazard of drowning.’”

“And perhaps that was so in the good Dr. Johnson’s time, but my experience is a good deal different. A cruise ship is a luxurious version of assisted living. The food is excellent, and you can eat and drink whatever you want at any hour of the day or night. Your bed is made up shortly after you get out of it, and the linen is always clean, and at night they turn down your bed and place a mint on your pillow. If you don’t want to leave your cabin, they bring you your meals. If you’re not feeling well, there’s a doctor a few decks below, and he doesn’t tell you to take two aspirin and call him in the morning.”

He went on. You had fifteen hundred or two thousand fellow passengers, and could spend as much or as little time with any of them as you wished, and when the cruise was over you never had to see any of them again; you stepped off one ship and onto another, with a whole different array of passengers, and different singers and musicians and comedians to entertain you of an evening. There was a library, there was a game room, there was a gymnasium, and there were restaurants and bars and cafés at every turn.

“And there’s a conveniently located desk,” he said, “occupied by an obliging woman with nothing she’d rather do than book your next cruise. You can go from one ship to another, and sooner or later I contrive to get on one that drops me in New York, where my apartment is just as I left it. And I’m here for as long as I want to be and then I get on another ship.” He beamed. “This coming Wednesday I board the MS Volendam. Even as we speak it is cruising the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, and it will stop in New York on its way to Fort Lauderdale. There I’ll transfer to the MS Zuiderdam for a 66-day circumnavigation of South America.”

Carolyn: “So it’s just one Dam ship after another?”

“And one country after another,” he said, “and one port after another, and sometimes I get off and sample what a new port of call has to offer, but at least as often I spare my feet and remain comfortably aboard. The ship’s library almost invariably has something I can read with pleasure, and I always have Spinoza at my side.” A sip of Einspänner, a Thin Mint. “‘Not to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.’ The perfect companion, my cherished friend Baruch. He takes up so little space in one’s luggage, even as he fills one’s mind and replenishes one’s spirit.”