The Thieves of Manhattan - By Adam Langer Page 0,85
the excitement.
As for me, I knew that I was running out of time. Whose fault would it be when they learned that no Tale of Genji was here, that everything I had told them before was true? Upon whom would they take out their frustrations and their disappointment? In Roth’s manuscript, his hero shot Iola and Norbert dead, then buried them in the desolate field. But I had cut that scene, and anyway, I wasn’t the one with the canino. In the book, I managed to “wrest the gun away” from Norbert, but exactly how was that supposed to work? I might have put up a good fight against some of the men I’d met when my dad took me along to librarians’ conferences, but Norbert was no typical librarian. The directions on the map were leading us farther into darkness, and the fog was growing thicker.
This was a hell of a place for an adventure to end, I thought, on some futile march through this dark and cold. As we walked, I cursed everyone who had brought me here—my mother, who had given birth to me and died before I knew her; my father, who had given me faith in stories and dreams, but left me too soon to know where that faith would lead; I cursed the Confident Man and I cursed Faye for pointing him out to me; I cursed Anya and Anna Petrescu, and I cursed Blade Markham; I cursed Geoff Olden, and I cursed Jim Merrill, Jr. I cursed Norbert Piels, and I cursed Iola Jaffe; most of all, I cursed myself: I cursed the author of The Thieves of Manhattan, who had led me to this fate, and I cursed Ian Minot, who had been too stupid and naïve to anticipate it.
And then, when Iola stopped walking, I cursed the crosses that I saw before us in the middle of a little Kansas family plot, in which every headstone displayed the name Blom. I cursed Faye’s painting that was still hanging in my apartment with its country house, its gleaming white car, its meadow, its graveyard, and its title, No Place Like Home. I cursed the freshly turned grave that had no headstone and was marked only by a golden cross. I cursed the man whose eyes ignited as he said, “That’s it, is it?” I cursed the woman who took a deep breath, then said, “At long fucking last.” I cursed the thick, smoky air as I pulled out the cross. It wasn’t a cross for Christ; it was a T for Truth, I told myself, and now that truth—either an empty grave or a forged manuscript—would finally be revealed. I tossed the cross onto the earth, then began to dig.
MY SWEET LORD
Two feet down, mounds of black earth atop the snow on either side of me, there was still no sign of any book, but Norbert urged me to keep at it, ay, while Iola anxiously muttered Shakespeare soliloquies and swearwords. My hands were cold; they ached as they clutched the shovel handle, and I could feel pain in my shoulders and back with each plunge into the earth. But I kept digging; at least, the deeper I stood in the ditch, the less I could feel the snow and wind.
When the hole was waist-deep, I could feel the dirt in my nostrils, taste it on my tongue. Another foot of earth, another mound; the ground was getting rockier, harder to dig. I was growing woozy and delirious, and the wearier I felt, the more I considered just surrendering. I could lie down, hands across my chest; the grave was ready-made. I sank the shovel into the earth one more time. And then I heard a clang as it hit something hard and metal.
“Wha’s tha’?” Norbert asked.
Five feet above me, Iola sprang to attention, and now so did I. Norbert threw down his vonnegut and lit another. I dug once more, heard a louder clang.
“Wha’sat?”
I stopped digging and cleared away the dirt. Iola pointed her flashlight into the hole, and I could see what appeared to be a metal case with a dull red handle. Iola’s hands shook, her eyes sparkled; she looked ten years younger. Norbert panted as he bent his knees, desperate to learn what I’d found.
I pulled the case out of the earth. Something inside seemed to shift. It felt like a manuscript, maybe a book. I remembered how Roth and I had described The Tale of Genji, and