Baptism in Blood(31)
He shouldn’t have worried about Tibor sitting alone in the dark. It wasn’t only the foyer light that was on. Through the archway, Gregor could see all four lamps in the living room, all lit. He could see the television, too. That wasn’t lit. He moved carefully through the apartment, holding himself in so that he wouldn’t brush against anything. He was a big man, six four and carrying more than twenty extra pounds. The halls in Tibor’s apartment were narrow and their walls were lined to the ceilings with paperback books. Aristotle’s On Nature, in the original Greek. Mickey Spillane’s The Body Lovers. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, in the Vatican edition, in Latin. Judith Krantz’s Scruples. Here and there, Gregor found a lightweight book club edition of something or other, mostly steamy sex novels of the throwaway variety. Bennis had given Tibor a membership in the Literary Guild for his birthday.
The living room was empty. The seats of the chairs were all full of books, as usual. The books had dust on them, which they never used to do, before Oklahoma City. Gregor went to the television set and ran his hand along the top of it. That was thick with dust, too. Tibor was supposed to have a housekeeper who came in every couple of weeks or so—the church paid for one—but either she didn’t come or she’d given up trying to make the apartment livable. Tibor being Tibor, he probably sat her down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, got her to talk about all the problems she had ever had in her life, and never let her get any work done at all.
Gregor opened the door to the kitchen and looked in. The lights were all on in there, too, both the overhead and the small ones built in under the cabinets to make it easier to work at the counters. The kitchen table was covered with books, except in one small corner, which had a plate and fork on it, both clean. The sink was clean of dirty dishes, too. There was a straw basket full of apples on the counter next to the stove. The apples looked new and shiny. The basket looked full, as if it had been delivered as a gift and not touched since. Gregor took a deep breath and counted to ten.
“Tibor?” Gregor said finally.
There was a grunt from the direction of the pantry. Gregor had to make himself take a deep breath again. He didn’t know what was wrong with him these days. He was always imagining disasters—and he had never been like that, never, not even in the worst of Elizabeth’s dying. Now he was imagining Tibor flat on the pantry floor, out cold, the victim of a stroke or a heart attack. Gregor was a much better candidate for either than Tibor would ever be. Still, Gregor could see it. The dark pantry. The shelves of canned corn and sacks of flour. The smell of carrots and potatoes, still not washed clean of the dirt they grew in.
“Tibor?” Gregor said again.
“I am coming,” Tibor said again, in a perfectly clear and normal voice.
Gregor felt himself blushing for the tenth time that morning. He went over to the pantry and looked in. There was an overhead light, and it was on. There was also a clip-on extension lamp on the table Tibor had set up to work on, the only table in the house that was not so thoroughly covered with books as to be unusable for any other purpose. What this one had on it was a brand-new IBM PC with a four-color display screen and a host of attachments Gregor couldn’t begin to comprehend. Tibor was tapping away and humming a little under his breath. He had a Sony Walkman plugged into one ear. The other earplug was dangling, and through it Gregor could hear the thin sounds of Gregorian chant. He looked at the display screen again. He didn’t know much about computers—in fact, he didn’t know anything; he had been very, very happy to retire from his job before everybody at the Bureau had been required to know how to run one—but he knew expensive when he saw it, and this was very, very expensive.
“Where did this come from?” he asked Tibor.
Tibor took the headphone off his head and laid it down next to the keyboard. “Bennis got it for me. It’s much easier to use than the one in the church office, Krekor. I have no problems with this one at all.”
“That’s good. What are you doing with it?”
Tibor pointed at the screen. “There are things called bulletin boards, Krekor. And discussions. People from all over the world share information. Even people from places like China, where they aren’t supposed to. It’s a wonderful thing.”
“I’m sure it is. What are you sharing information about?”
“Sometimes I talk to people about religion. There is something called CR NET. It is for traditional believing Catholics who want to know more about the Church. I talk on that sometimes.”