Frameshift (UC), page 5
Avi needed to relax, to get his mind off all this.
He walked across his living room to the cabinet in which he kept his videotapes. Brighton Beach Memoirs always cheered him up, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and…
Without thinking it through, he pulled out a two-tape set.
Judgment at Nuremberg.
Hardly lightweight but, at three hours, it would keep his mind occupied until it was time to go to bed.
Avi put the first tape in his VCR and, while the stirring overture played, popped some Orville Redenbacher's in the microwave.
The movie played on. He drank three beers.
The tables had been turned at Nuremberg: Burt Lancaster played Ernst Janning, one of four German judges on trial. It seemed like a small, supporting role, until Janning took the stand in the movie's final half hour…
The case against Janning hinged on the matter of Feldenstein, a Jew he'd ordered executed on trumped-up indecency charges. Janning demanded the right to speak, over the objections of his own lawyer. When he took the stand, Avi felt his stomach knotting. Janning told of the lies Hitler had sold German society: " 'There are devils among us: Communists, liberals, Jews, Gypsies. Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.' "Janning shook his head slightly. "It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb."
Lancaster spoke forcefully, bringing every bit of his craft to the soliloquy. "It is not easy to tell the truth," he said, "but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it, whatever the pain and humiliation." He paused. "I had reached my verdict on the Feldenstein case before I ever came into the courtroom. I would have found him guilty whatever the evidence. It was not a trial at all. It was a sacrificial ritual in which Feldenstein the Jew was the helpless victim."
Avi stopped the tape, deciding not to watch the rest even though it was almost over. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth.
But he'd accidentally pushed pause instead of stop. After five minutes, the tape disengaged and the TV blared at him—more of CNN. He returned to the living room, fumbled for the remote—
—and decided to continue on to the end. Something in him needed to see the finale again.
After the trial, after Janning and the other three Nazi jurists were sentenced to life imprisonment, Spencer Tracy—playing the American judge, Judge Haywood—went at Janning's request to visit Janning in jail. Janning had been writing up memoirs of the cases he was still proud of, the righteous ones, the ones he wanted to be remembered for. He gave the sheaf of papers to Haywood for safekeeping.
And then, his voice containing just the slightest note of pleading, Lancaster again in full control of his art, he said, "Judge Haywood—the reason I asked you to come. Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it."
There was a moment of silence, and then Spencer Tracy said, sadly, softly, "Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."
Avi Meyer turned off the TV and sat in the darkness, slumped on the couch.
"Devils among us." Hitler's phrase, according to Janning. Back in his wooden storage cabinet, next to the blank spot for Judgment at Nuremberg was Murderers among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story.
Echoes, there. Uncomfortable ones, but echoes still.
Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.
Avi had wanted to believe that. Destroy the misery, let the ghosts rest.
And Demjanjuk—Demjanjuk—
It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb.
No. No, it had been a righteous case, a just case, a—
I had reached my verdict before I ever came into the courtroom. I would have found him guilty whatever the evidence. It was not a trial at all. It was a sacrificial ritual.
Yes, down deep, Avi Meyer had known. Doubtless the Israeli judges—Dov Levin, Zvi Tal, and Dalia Dorner—had known, too.
Herr fanning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.
Mar Levin, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.
Mar Tal, it came to that…
Giveret Dorner, it came to that…
Avi felt his intestines shifting.
Agent Meyer, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.
Avi got up and stared out his window, looking out on D Street. His vision was blurry. We'd wanted justice. We'd wanted someone to pay. He placed his hand against the cold glass. What had he done? What had he done?
Now the Israeli prosecutors were saying, well, if Demjanjuk wasn't Ivan the Terrible, maybe he'd been a guard at Sobibor or some other Nazi facility.
Avi thought of Tom Robinson, with his crippled black hand. Shiftless nigger—if he wasn't guilty of raping Mayella Ewell, well, he was probably guilty of something else.
CNN had shown the theater that had been turned into a courthouse, the same theater Avi had sat in five years previously, watching the case unfold. Demjanjuk, even now not freed, was taken away to the jail cell where he'd spent the last two thousand nights.
Avi walked out of his living room, into the darkness.
Miss Jean louise, stand up. Yourfather's passin'.
But not even the ghosts stood to mark Avi Meyer's exit.
Chapter 7
Pierre Tardivel became a driven man, committed to his studies. He decided to specialize in genetics—the field that, after all, had turned his life upside down. He distinguished himself at once, and began a brilliant research career in Canada.
In March 1993, he read about the breakthrough: the gene for Huntington's disease had been discovered, making possible a simple, inexpensive DNA test to determine if one had the gene, and therefore would eventually get the disease. Still, Pierre didn't take the test. He was almost afraid to now. If he didn't have the disease, would he slack off? Begin wasting his life again? Coast out the decades?
At the age of thirty-two, Pierre was appointed a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, situated on a hilltop above the University of California, Berkeley. He was assigned to the Human Genome Project, the international attempt to map and sequence all the DNA that makes up a human being.
The Berkeley campus was exactly what a university campus should be: sunny and green and full of open spaces, precisely the kind of place one could imagine the free-love movement having been born at.
What was less wonderful was Pierre's new boss, crusty Bur-ian Klimus, who had won a Nobel Prize for his breakthrough in DNA sequencing—the so-called Klimus Technique, now widely used in labs around the world.
If Professor Kingsfield from The Paper Chase had been a wrestler, he'd have looked like Klimus, a thickset, completely bald man of eighty-one, with a neck half a meter in circumference. His eyes were brown, and his face, though wrinkled, showed only the wrinkles that went with a contracting body; there were no laugh lines—indeed, Pierre saw no signs that Klimus ever laughed.
"Don't worry about Dr. Klimus," Joan Dawson, the Human Genome Center's general secretary, had said on Pierre's first day at his new job. Although Klimus's full title was William M. Stanley Professor of Biochemistry—about a quarter of LBL's eleven hundred scientists and engineers had teaching duties at either the Berkeley or San Francisco campuses of UC—Pierre had been told up front that the old man preferred to be called "Doctor," not "Professor." He was a thinker, not a mere teacher.
Pierre had immediately taken a liking to Joan—although it felt strange to be calling a woman twice his own age by her first name. She was kind and gentle and sweet: the gray-haired and bespectacled den mother to all the absentminded professors as well as the UCB students who did scutwork on the Human Genome Project. Joan often brought in homemade cookies or brownies and left them for everyone to enjoy by the ever-present pot of Peet's coffee.
Indeed, shortly after he'd begun, Pierre found himself seated opposite Joan's desk, munching on a giant butter cookie with M&M's baked into it, while he waited for an appointment with Dr. Klimus. Joan was squinting at a sheet of paper. "This is delicious," Pierre said. He gestured at the plate, which still had five big cookies on it. "I don't know how you can resist them. It must be quite a temptation to keep eating them."
Joan looked up and smiled. "Oh, I don't eat any myself. I'm a diabetic, you see. Have been for about twenty years. But I love to bake, and people seem to like the goodies I bring in so much. It gives me a lot of pleasure seeing people enjoy them."
Pierre nodded, impressed by the self-sacrifice. He had seen earlier that Joan wore a Medic Alert bracelet; now he under-stood why. Joan went back to squinting at the page on her desk, but then sighed and proffered it to Pierre. "Would you be a dear, and read that bottom line for me? I can't make it out."
Pierre took the sheet. "It says, 'All Q-four staffing reports are due in the director's office no later than fifteen Sep.' '
"Thank you." She sighed. "I'm starting to get cataracts, I'm afraid. I guess I'll have to have surgery at some point." Pierre nodded sympathetically—cataracts were common among elderly diabetics.
He looked at his watch; his appointment was supposed to have begun four minutes ago. Damn, but he hated wasting time.
Although Molly had toyed with trying to get a job at Duke University, which was famous for its research into putative psychic phenomena, she instead accepted an associate professorship at the University of California, Berkeley. She'd chosen UCB because it was far enough away from her mother and Paul (who was hanging in, much to Molly's surprise) and her sister Jessica (who had now been through a brief marriage and divorce) that they were unlikely to ever visit.
A new life, a new town—but still, damn it all, she kept making the same stupid mistakes, kept thinking that, somehow, this time things would be different, that she could take spending an evening sitting across from a guy thinking piggish thoughts about her.
Rudy hadn't been any worse than her previous sporadic dates, until he'd gotten a couple of drinks into him—and then his surface thoughts devolved into nothing more than a constant stream of pornography. Boy, I'd like to fuck her. Eat her pussy. Split 'em wide, baby, split 'em wide…
She'd tried changing the topic of conversation, but no matter what they were talking about, the thoughts on the surface of Rudy's mind were like washroom-stall graffiti. Molly observed that the Oakland A's were doing well this season. Fucking want to hit a home run with you, babe. She asked Rudy about his work. Work on this, babe! Suck it down all the way… She mentioned that it looked like rain. Gonna shower you, babe, shower you with come. . . .
Finally, she could take no more of it. It was only 8:40—awfully early to end a date that had begun at 7:30—but she had to get out of there.
"Excuse me," said Molly. "I've—I think the pesto sauce is disagreeing with me. I don't feel very well. I think I should go home."
Rudy looked concerned. "I'm sorry," he said. He signaled for the waiter. "Here, we'll get going; I'll take you back to your place."
"No," said Molly. "No, thank you. I—I'll walk home. I'm sure a little walk will help my digestion."
"I'll come with you."
"No, really, I'll be fine. You're sweet to offer, though." She took her wallet out of her little purse. "With tax and tip, my share should be about fifteen dollars," she said, putting that amount on the tablecloth.
Rudy looked disappointed, but at least his concern for her health was genuine enough to have banished the Penthouse Forum commentary from his mind. "I'm sorry," he said again.
Molly forced a smile. "Me, too," she said.
"I'll call you," said Rudy.
Molly nodded and hurried out of the restaurant.
The night air was warm and pleasant. She started walking without really thinking about where she was heading. All she knew was that she didn't want to go back to her apartment. Not on a Friday night; it was too lonely, too empty.
She was on University Avenue, which, not surprisingly, ended up taking her to the campus. She passed many couples (some straight, some gay) going the other way, and picked up clearly sexual thoughts from those who unavoidably entered her zone—but that was fine, since the thoughts weren't about her. She came to Doe Library and decided to go in. The pesto sauce was in fact making her intestines grumble a bit, so a trip to the washroom might indeed be in order.
After she finished, she went up to the main floor. The library was mostly empty. Who wanted to be studying on a Friday night, after all, especially this early in the academic year?
" 'Evening, Professor Bond," said a librarian sitting at an information desk. He was a lanky, middle-aged man.
"Hi, Pablo. Not many people here tonight."
Pablo nodded and smiled. "True. Still, we've got our regulars. The night watchman is here, as usual." He jerked a thumb at an oak table some distance away. A handsome man in his early thirties with a round face and chocolate hair sat hunched over a book.
"Night watchman?" said Molly.
"Doc Tardivel," said Pablo, "from LBL. Been coming in here most nights lately and stays right up to closing. Keeps sending me back to the stacks for various journals."
Molly glanced at the fellow again. She didn't know the name and didn't recall ever seeing him around the campus. She left Pablo and ambled into the main reading room. The copies of many current journals were stored in a wooden shelving unit that happened to be close to the table this Tardivel fellow was using. Molly made her way over to the unit and began looking for a recent issue of Developmental Psychology or Cognition to while away an hour or two with. She crouched down to go through the piles of journals on the bottommost shelf, her slacks pulling tight as she did so.
A thought impinged upon her consciousness, like the lighting of a feather on naked skin—but it was unintelligible.
The journals were out of chronological order. She worked her way through the pile, reshuffling them so that the most recent issues were on top.
Another thought fluttered against her consciousness. And suddenly she realized the cause for her difficulty in reading it. The thought was in French; Molly recognized the mental sound of the language.
She found last month's copy of DP, straightened up, and scanned the room for a place to sit. There were plenty of empty chairs, of course, but, well…
French.
The guy thought in French.
And a foxy guy he was, too.
Molly sat down next to him and opened her journal. He looked up, a slightly surprised expression on his face. She smiled at him and then, without really thinking about it, said, "Nice night."
He smiled back. "It sure is."
Molly's heart pounded. He was still thinking in French. She'd known foreigners before, but all of them had switched to thinking in English when speaking that language. "Oooh, what a lovely accent!" said Molly. "Are you French?"
"French-Canadian," said Pierre. "From Montreal."
"Are you an exchange student?" asked Molly, knowing full well from what Pablo had said that he was not.
"No, no," he said. "I'm a postdoc at LBL."
"Oh, so you must know Burian Klimus." Molly feigned a shudder. "There's a cold character."
Pierre laughed. "That he is."
"I'm Molly Bond," said Molly. "I'm an associate professor in the psych department."
"Enchante," said Pierre. "I'm Pierre Tardivel." He paused. "Psychology, eh? I've always been interested in that."
"Wow," said Molly softly.
"Wow?"
"You really do that. Canadians, I mean. You really say 'eh.' "
Pierre seemed to blush a little. "We also say 'You're welcome.' "
"What?"
"Out here, if you say 'Thank you' to someone, they all seem to reply 'Uh-huh.' We say 'You're welcome.' "
Molly laughed. "Touche," she said. And then she touched her hand to her mouth. "Hey—I guess I know some French after all."
Pierre smiled. It was a very nice smile indeed.
"So," said Molly, looking around at the musty shelves of books, "you come here often?"
Pierre nodded. There were lots of thoughts on the surface of his mind, but to Molly's delight she could make sense out of none of them. And French—French was such a beautiful language, it was almost like soft background music rather than the irritating noise of most people's articulated thoughts.
Before she had really considered it all the way through, the words were out. "Would you like to get a cup of coffee?" she said. And then, as if the suggestion needed some justification, added, "There's a great cappuccino place on Bancroft."
Pierre had an odd look on his face, a mixture of disbelief and pleasant surprise at his unexpected good fortune. "That would be nice," he said.
Yes, thought Molly. It would indeed.
They talked for hours, the background accompaniment of Pierre's French thoughts never intrusive. He might be as big a pig as most other men, but Molly doubted that. Pierre seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, listening attentively. And he had a wonderful sense of humor; Molly couldn't remember the last time she'd enjoyed anyone's company so much.
Molly had heard it said that French men—both Canadian and European French—had a different attitude toward women than American men did. They were more relaxed around them, less likely to be on all the time, less inclined to be constantly trying to prove themselves. Molly had only half believed it. She harbored a suspicion that their apparently blase attitude toward female nudity was some vast conspiracy: "Keep a poker face, and they'll wave their tits right in front of you!" But Pierre really did seem to be interested in her mind and her work—and that was a bigger turn-on for Molly than any macho display.
Suddenly it was midnight and the cafe was closing.
"My God," she said. "Where did the time go?"
"It went," said Pierre, "into the past—and I enjoyed every moment of it." He shook his head. "I haven't taken a break like this for weeks." His eyes met hers. "Merci beaucoup."
