like that? How many hundreds of little things, all of them making the point over and over again: You lost part of your life, almost six percent, if the actuarial tables are to be believed. You’re behind the times. You missed out.
“John?” The voice was soft. “Are you asleep, John?”
He turned over. A dim silhouette stood in his doorway. A small man with rounded shoulders. It was Weizak.
“No. I’m awake.”
“I hoped so. May I come in?”
“Yes. Please do.”
Weizak looked older tonight. He sat by Johnny’s bed.
“I was on the phone earlier,” he said. “I called directory assistance for Carmel, California. I asked for a Mrs. Johanna Borentz. Do you think there was such a number?”
“Unless it’s unlisted or she doesn’t have a phone at all,” Johnny said.
“She has a phone. I was given the number.”
“Ah,” Johnny said. He was interested because he liked Weizak, but that was all. He felt no need to have his knowledge of Johanna Borentz validated, because he knew it was valid knowledge—he knew in the same way he knew he was right-handed.
“I sat for a long time and thought about it,” Weizak said. “I told you my mother was dead, but that was really only an assumption. My father died in the defense of Warsaw. My mother simply never turned up, nuh? It was logical to assume that she had been killed in the shelling ... during the occupation ... you understand. She never turned up, so it was logical to assume that. Amnesia ... as a neurologist I can tell you that permanent, general amnesia is very, very rare. Probably rarer than true schizophrenia. I have never read of a documented case lasting thirty-five years.”
“She recovered from her amnesia long ago,” Johnny said. “I think she simply blocked everything out. When her memory did come back, she had remarried and was the mother of two children ... possibly three. Remembering became a guilt trip, maybe. But she dreams of you. ‘The boy is safe.’ Did you call her?”
“Yes,” Weizak said. “I dialed it direct. Did you know you could do that now? Yes. It is a great convenience. You dial one, the area code, the number. Eleven digits and you can be in touch with any place in the country. It is an amazing thing. In some ways a frightening thing. A boy—no, a young man—answered the telephone. I asked if Mrs. Borentz was at home. I heard him call, ‘Mom, it’s for you.’ Clunk went the receiver on the table or desk or whatever. I stood in Bangor, Maine, not forty miles from the Atlantic Ocean and listened to a young man put the phone down on a table in a town on the Pacific Ocean. My heart ... it was pounding so hard it frightened me. The wait seemed long. Then she picked up the phone and said, ‘Yes? Hello?’ ”
“What did you say? How did you handle it?”
“I did not, as you say, handle it,” Weizak replied, and smiled crookedly. “I hung up the telephone. And I wished for a strong drink, but I did not have one.”
“Are you satisfied it was her?”
“John, what a naive question! I was nine years old in 1939. I had not heard my mother’s voice since then. She spoke only Polish when I knew her. I speak only English now ... I have forgotten much of my native language, which is a shameful thing. How could I be satisfied one way or the other?”
“Yes, but were you?”
Weizak scrubbed a hand slowly across his forehead. “Yes,” he said. “It was her. It was my mother.”
“But you couldn’t talk to her?”
“Why should I?” Weizak asked, sounding almost angry. “Her life is her life, nuh? It is as you said. The boy is safe. Should I upset a woman that is just coming into her years of peace? Should I take the chance of destroying her equilibrium forever? Those feelings of guilt you mentioned ... should I set them free? Or even run the risk of so doing?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny said. They were troublesome questions, and the answers were beyond him—but he felt that Weizak was trying to say something about what he had done by articulating the questions. The questions he could not answer.
“The boy is safe, the woman is safe in Carmel. The country is between them, and we let that be. But what about you, John? What are we going to do about you?”