Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [90]
A few weeks later, the United States declared war. He enlisted at once.
When Younger got back to his townhouse, the afternoon mail had come, and with it a letter from Colette. He opened it still standing in his hallway:
25-9-1920
Dearest Stratham,
I can’t do what you ask. I realize now that everything that’s happened in America has been a sign telling me to go back to Europe. God must want me to. Vows are sacred. I have to honour mine, no matter how rash or wrong I was to make it. Maybe I will see when I’m there that he is not the one. But God puts these feelings in our hearts: of that I’m sure. I beg you to understand—and to come with me. I need you.
Yours,
Colette
He didn’t understand. Why say she “needed” him when she so obviously didn’t? If it was money she needed, he wished she would simply ask him for it outright.
Rummaging through his mail, Younger found a statement from his bank. With a cold eye, he observed that his balance, once a thing of six figures—that was before he’d bought his house—had shrunk to four, and the first of those four was a one. Ever since Younger had come into his inheritance, he had turned over his professor’s salary and, later, his soldier’s wages to one or another insufferable Bostonian charity. He had lived without thought of money. The bequest having fallen into his lap, he had determined never to let it become an anchor.
He knew he would give it to Colette—the money for her passage—fool though that would make him. All she had to do was ask. He threw on some evening clothes, and went out. At the Post Office, he dropped off the following scribbled reply:
September 25, 1920
Since it’s God’s will, go with Him.
—Stratham
Littlemore, arriving home late and frustrated Saturday night, found his wife in a state of distress. Her mother, a robust little woman who spoke only Italian, was next to her. “They came for Joey,” Betty exclaimed, referring to her younger brother.
“Who did?” asked Littlemore.
“You—the police,” answered Betty.
It turned out that policemen had paid a visit to Betty’s mother’s apartment on the Lower East Side looking for Joey, a dockworker who still lived with his mother. Mrs. Longobardi told the police he was out, which was true. They entered and ransacked the apartment, seizing newspapers, magazines, and letters from relatives in Italy.
“They say they’re going to arrest him,” Betty concluded. “Arrest him and deport him.”
“What kind of policemen?” asked Littlemore. “What were they wearing?”
Betty translated this question. The policemen, Mrs. Longobardi answered, were wearing dark jackets and ties.
“Flynn,” said Littlemore.
On Sunday morning, Younger didn’t wake rested. In fact he didn’t wake at all, because he had never gone to sleep. When he got back to his house, unshaven, tie askew, it was well after dawn. Making himself coffee, he decided it was high time he got back to work.
He hadn’t written a scientific paper since 1917. He hadn’t even contacted Harvard about resuming his professorship. But he did have notes from the experiments he had conducted during the war; there was a paper on the medical use of maggots he wanted to write; and he did have an old set of patients who would probably be delighted to make him their doctor once again. It was time to return to his senses.
He went to his study and began organizing his papers and his finances.
At dusk he jerked awake—having fallen asleep at his desk—heart pounding with a dream whose final image he could still see. Colette had come straight back to America after her Austrian voyage. She had cabled him: she didn’t care for Hans Gruber after all; it was he, Younger, whom she loved. He waited for her in Boston Harbor. She came running down from the ship, but when she reached him she froze, her green eyes shrinking from him in horror. He limped to a mirror. In it he saw what she had seen. During her five weeks’ absence, he had aged fifty years.