Conspiracy Theory(47)

There was a cold wind coming down the street as he got out of the car, blowing stray pieces of paper along the gutters. He turned in the direction of the church and tried to get a look, but Bennis was right. There was nothing to see from here. It was too far up, and the church had been set back a little from the sidewalks.

“I think I only imagined I could see it all that time,” she’d told him, while they’d still been at the hospital. “I knew it was there, so I thought any dark space in the vicinity must be the church and I must be seeing it.”

Tibor did not point out to her then, or remind her now, that at the beginning of last week the church had been much closer to the sidewalk than it was now. It had had an extra wall. At least, that was what the news programs had said when he’d watched them on television in the hospital, even though the doctor hadn’t been sure he ought to be allowed. There had been one clear photograph of the front of Holy Trinity in daylight, the wall mostly gone, the vestibule destroyed, the long rows of pews covered in rock and sand. It had been taken from too far back for Tibor to be able to tell what had happened to the altar. It made him nauseated to realize that he had not seen the actual church since the explosion had happened. He hadn’t been here to see it. He thought he would have gone crazy in his hospital bed if he’d had to listen to nonstop news reports about the explosion, but there weren’t any. The explosion was not big news. The death of Anthony van Wyck Ross was.

He went up the steps to the tall stone house where Bennis and Gregor lived, along with old George Tekemanian on the ground floor and Grace Feinman on the fourth. As soon as he stepped into the foyer, he could hear Grace’s harpsichord above him. She was playing Bach. He turned toward the mailboxes and stopped. His mail would not be here. It would be down at the apartment behind the church, where he was not allowed to go because of the structural damage caused by the blast.

“What do they do with my mail?” he said to Donna and Bennis coming up behind him.

“They leave it at your apartment,” Bennis said. “Donna and I went over and got it and brought it to you in the hospital, except for what are obviously condolence cards. We left them here.”

“I thought nobody could go into the apartment.”

“That was only the first couple of days,” Donna said. “While they were working things out. We’ve been going over there all the time, since. Bennis has been packaging up your books.”

“Don’t worry,” Bennis said. “I’ve been classifying them and labeling the boxes. There’s a crack in the wall of your bedroom and a leak in the roof there now. That’s the wall the apartment shared with the back of the church vestibule and the first part of the church room, the—”

“Sacristy,” Tibor said.

“That, yes.” Bennis looked relieved. “Anyway, there’s a crack there and the roof is damaged. That’s why you can’t go back right away. But it’s not like the church itself. You could go over there and look through things when you feel stronger.”

“Where are the books you put in boxes?”

“In my back room,” Donna said. “Don’t worry. Russ is terribly impressed. He said he never realized you had such a range before, like with the science books.”

Tibor could have told her that he didn’t really understand the science books, which was true. He read Richard Dawkins and made notes on his books, but he found the details impossible to assimilate into a brain that had been trained from adolescence in literary explication. Instead he started up the big swing-back flight of steps that went to the second floor. At the landing, he paused and looked out the window. There was nothing to see but the wall of the building next door. He went up the rest of the flight and paused politely before Bennis’s front door.

“Stay as long as you like,” Bennis said, brushing past him with a suitcase and pulling him along with her as she went. “I’ve got no need for this place at the moment, and I won’t have for a while. Spread out. My cleaning lady will be in twice a week. If you leave your laundry out on the bed, she’ll do it for you. There’s enough food in the refrigerator for a week, and there will be more. You know how that works—”

“Stop,” Tibor said.

“We’re making him tired,” Donna said. “Maybe we should let him take a nap.”

“I don’t need a nap,” Tibor said. “I’m fine. I was always fine.”

“You were so fine, they kept you in the hospital for observation for over four days,” Bennis said.