“Fine,” Gregor said. “Now. Do you know what he was doing in Philadelphia? Did he have a job?”
“He was taking a course in archaeology at the university. He was very interested in Greek ruins.”
“When was the course supposed to be over?”
Tibor thought about it. “It was over,” he said finally. “At the end of the summer, I think. You will have to ask Donna about this, Gregor. From what I heard, I had the impression he had stayed in Philadelphia to be with Donna, after his course was over. But I’m not certain.”
“All right, I’ll ask Donna,” Gregor said. “Assuming she wants to talk to me.”
“She wants to talk to you.”
“The point is, nothing about this sounds as if there was anything strange about the boy. Fine. But that brings me back to the problem I had with this in the first place.”
“Problem? But Gregor, I don’t understand. I thought you just said there wasn’t going to be any problem.”
“There may not be any problem finding the boy,” Gregor said. “There may be a problem about whether or not we want him found.”
“But Donna—”
“Even if Donna wants me to find him, it may be a better idea if I didn’t do it. Shotgun weddings aren’t such a good idea, Tibor. I don’t care if they’re all the rage back in the old country. In this country, they far too often end up with a wife who gets her bones broken once a week.”
“Gregor.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of such a thing,” Gregor said. “And don’t tell me you don’t think it could happen to Donna.”
“In America,” Tibor hesitated.
“People are the same in America as they are everyplace else.”
Tibor looked away. His face was flushed. The restaurant suddenly seemed much too warm. Gregor wondered what was going through his mind. Maybe he’d spent so much of his life dealing with big evils, the little ones had escaped his notice. Persecution, torture, genocide—in the middle of all that, a little wife beating or an everyday rape might not seem very important, if they registered at all. But the little evils were important. Gregor was sure of that. Out of them, everything else flowed. In them, the very essence of being human was fully and irrevocably destroyed. Genocide was impersonal. Child abuse made the worst sort of paranoid delusion look like a badly managed Halloween party.
Tibor was fussing with his cigarette lighter and his cigarettes, like a boy who had never used either. Finally, he pushed them away and folded his hands on top of the tablecloth. He looked like he was about to deliver a lecture, maybe on those verses in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians where wives are admonished to be dutiful to their husbands.
Instead he said, “Gregor, does this mean you won’t look for the boy at all?”
Gregor felt immensely relieved, although he couldn’t have said why. “Of course not,” he told Tibor. “I’ll be happy to look for him. Given one or two conditions.”
“Yes?”
“In the first place, I want to talk to Donna Moradanyan alone. I want her to tell me she wants the boy found.”
“Yes,” Tibor said. “Yes, yes. That is very sensible.”
“In the second place, when I do find him, the only person who’s going to know I’ve found him will be Donna. I’ll give her a name, an address, a phone number. Whatever she needs. She can do what she wants with them. Including not tell the rest of you that she has them.”
Tibor’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead, as slowly and evenly as if they’d been raised by hydraulic drift. “Not even Donna’s mother?” he said.
“Especially not Donna’s mother.”
“You’re a very intelligent man, Gregor.”
Gregor didn’t know how intelligent he was, but he thought he’d at least been rational, in this case. He picked up the bottle of wine, found that it was empty, and waved for the wine steward. First the Hannaford murder, then Elizabeth’s grave, then Donna Moradanyan’s little problem. The world seemed to be full of depressing situations.
The wine steward was doing his best to indicate, without actually saying anything, that chardonnay was not the sort of thing one should use to get definitively drunk on in the daytime. Gregor ignored him. He’d never had a strong taste for alcohol, but there were times it was absolutely necessary for medicinal purposes. This was one of them.
The wine steward came back with a fresh bottle, went through his little dance, and departed. Gregor filled both the wineglasses and got Tibor started on the happiest topic he could think of.