Page 24

24

What Is Literature?

The sun a golden ball in the east, the sky hanging clear blue overall, and the sweet clean air seemed to promise a lovely day—but in an instant, the promise was shown to be a lie.

In a severely tailored black suit that featured a matching waist-length cape, black shoes with one-inch heels, and a burgundy cloche hat with a black band, Britta Hernishen was approaching the diner as the amigos exited it.

Spencer thought that if you knew what job she held, you would think Britta looked professorial. But if you did not know her line of work, you would assume she was the chief justice of a top-secret court that put modern-day Nazis on trial and condemned them to death for not being Nazi enough.

The amigos froze the way rabbits will at the appearance of a wolf, and Britta said, “I asked myself where you might have taken rooms, and of course it would be in this place, such as it is.”

“What’s wrong with this place?” Rebecca asked.

Britta’s nostrils flared. “Do you not see what it says of you that you need to ask?”

“It’s a nice place,” Spencer said. “Back in the day, even Aldous Blomhoff ate here when he was both the director of the institute and the town mayor.”

“Is that your considered opinion, young man? Even after our phone conversation yesterday, do you cling to the illusion that Aldous Blomhoff’s patronage is any kind of recommendation?”

Stepping up to the guillotine, figuratively speaking, Bobby said, “It’s clean, cozy, and quiet.”

“Is that your position, Mr. Sham?”

“Shamrock.”

“Is that your position?” she pressed.

“Yes, I stand by it.”

“You’re all of a type,” Britta said, “but I can do nothing about that. What have you done with Ernest?”

“Done?” Rebecca asked. “We said goodbye. Then he died.”

“And you call yourself an actress.”

“I am an actress,” Rebecca insisted, but more meekly than Spencer would have expected.

“I am content,” said Britta, “to allow history to make that determination.”

“That’s generous of you,” Rebecca said.

“It is my nature.” Scowling, she turned to Spencer. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“Then it was a thought, was it?”

Spencer felt a little shaky when he said, “I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“In your case, that is perhaps a credible defense.”

“Thank you.”

“No doubt you know that, for patients’ privacy, there are no security cameras in the hospital wings where they lie abed.”

Spencer hadn’t known this, and neither had his amigos, and Bobby made the mistake of smiling in relief.

Detecting the smile in her peripheral vision, Britta pivoted toward Bobby. “You are amused, Mr. Sham.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You boldly deny it?”

“It’s just my face. It plays tricks on me.”

Britta Hernishen stared intently at him for a long and silent moment before she said, “However, there are cameras in the lobby and the parking lot.”

None of them dared to say anything, and Spencer made an effort not to think, either.

“You were seen pushing an individual in a wheelchair. He was wearing sunglasses and Mr. Truman’s hat—”

“Truedove,” said Spencer.

“‘True love’? Why are those words germane to our discussion?”

“True dove . It’s my name. I was just correcting you,” Spencer said. Even as he spoke the word “correcting,” he deeply regretted having put himself in such a perilous position.

Britta regarded him as if he were something a dog had left on the sidewalk. “I see. Then may I ask—did your mother raise you to believe that interrupting your elders was acceptable?”

“My mother abandoned me to find herself. She now lives in New Orleans under the name Constanina de Fornay, which is who she was in some past life. I never hear from her, probably because Constanina never had children and doesn’t know how to relate to a son.”

“How interesting. Have you wondered, Mr. Truman, why she went to such lengths to escape the environment of which you were a part?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot.”

“Knowing you as I do, I assume all that thinking has failed to lead you to any conclusion. May I continue with what I was saying? Would that be an arrangement of which you would approve?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Britta said, “The individual in the wheelchair could not be identified from the video, but he slumped as if quite dead.”

“Oh, him,” said Rebecca. “That was Ralph Osmond. He was at the hospital to visit a sick friend. We gave him a lift home.”

“How gracious of you. Can you imagine how he might have gotten to the hospital?”

Spencer realized they should have left the answer to Bobby, but only after he had said, “His wife brought him and went home to wait for his call but got a terrible migraine.”

Britta stared at Spencer almost as long as she had regarded Bobby in silence when he’d said his face played tricks on him.

Then she asked, “Are you sure Mr. Osmond’s wife didn’t run away to New Orleans to live as a previous incarnation?”

Again, the amigos retreated into glassy-eyed silence.

Britta said, “The parking lot cameras didn’t have a view of the vehicle into which this Ralph person was assisted.”

Spencer knew better than to smile.

“The police, being of a caliber that makes them unsuited even to be crossing guards, say the doctors might have misdiagnosed my son. He might be alive and merely wandered off in some fugue state.”

“It happens,” Bobby assured her.

Britta skewered him with her stiletto stare. “They tell me that, in a missing persons case, I must wait forty-eight hours. If Ernest remains missing, only then can they begin a search for him.”

“Well, maybe Rebecca, Spencer, and I could go looking for him.”

“Illuminate me as to how you would do that, Mr. Sham.”

“Well, you know, we could cruise the town, see if we can find him wandering around somewhere. We care about him, too. We came all this way to see him.”

“Cruise around town.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She lifted her chin as if to be in a better posture to look down on him. “The books you have written that you wish to call ‘novels’—the events in those books, which I suppose you call ‘plots,’ are quite as overripe as this situation. Are they not?”

“Well, maybe, in some ways, I don’t know.”

“Therefore, I suppose, as you consider this bizarre situation, you are slavering with excitement at the potential to make a so-called novel from it.”

“Well, when a novel idea excites me, I don’t really slaver.”

“You would know, I suppose. Having had the fortitude to peruse some of your writing, I have a question for you, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do not want a hasty answer. I want you to go away and think about this as deeply as you are capable of thinking. I believe any answer you give will be fascinating, but the most revealing one will surely be the answer you have racked your whole mind to discover. What is literature? Do you understand the question?”

“You want to know what literature is.”

“Oh, I know what it is. I want to know what you think it is. I would find that most interesting.”

Bobby said, “I’ll be back to you.”

“One other thing. This is directed to all three of you. If you have taken Ernest’s body—my dear boy, the fruit of my womb—to use it in some satanic ritual or to give it a Christian burial, either one, I will destroy all of you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She met the eyes of each, one by one. When it was Spencer’s moment to be scrutinized, he waited to be turned to ice or stone, but he survived the stare.

“Now, though your kind might find it inexplicable why anyone would be seeking an education,” Britta said, “there are summer classes at the college. It has fallen to me to shape those foolish young minds into something less absurd than they are now. Remember my warning and conduct yourselves accordingly.”

As Britta walked away, her cape flared like bat wings, though the day was windless.

Rebecca said, “How did Ernie turn out so nice?”

“Niceness,” Bobby said, “was the best weapon he had.”

Spencer looked at the sky. It had been clear and sunny when they came out of the diner. Britta had put him in the mood to expect a tide of dark clouds swelling over the horizon, but it was still clear and sunny. It wouldn’t be sunny for long. Britta would return, and when she did, she would arrive amidst storm clouds, accompanied by flying monkeys.