“Yes, sir.”
“I mean it.”
“I promise.”
“All right. Gus, why don’t you and Jake go keep Ruth company. She’s in a mood to play, and I know how she appreciates an audience.”
Gus said, “If she asks where you’ve gone?”
“Tell her anything you like,” he said, “except the truth.”
38
The drive to the home of Emil Brandt was no more than five minutes but it felt like forever getting there. Because of my father’s doubts, seeds of doubt had been planted in my own thinking and I thought maybe Jake was right. Maybe I should have said nothing and left the resolution of the whole mess in God’s hands. But what was done was done and when we parked in front of the old farmhouse I got out and steeled myself for the ordeal ahead.
As we approached the porch I could hear Emil Brandt playing his grand piano inside. I knew the piece. It was something Ariel had composed and in the wash of its beauty I swore I could feel Ariel’s presence. We stood on the porch until the piece was finished then my father—reluctantly, I could tell—raised his hand and knocked on the screen door.
He called, “Emil?”
“Nathan?”
Through the screen I saw Brandt rise from the great piano and come to greet us. He pushed open the door and said, “Who’s with you?”
“Frank,” my father said.
He smiled with pleasant surprise. “What brings you both back so soon?”
“We need to talk.”
The smile fell away and Brandt looked troubled. “This sounds serious.”
“It is, Emil.”
Brandt stepped outside and we took the wicker chairs where not long before he’d sat in good friendship with my parents. With the sun down, we sat in the moody blue of dusk.
“Well?” he said.
“Did you father my daughter’s child, Emil?”
My father asked it so directly that it startled even me and I could see that Brandt was clearly taken aback.
“What kind of question is that, Nathan?”
“An honest one. And I would appreciate an honest answer.”
Brandt turned his face away and held himself motionless for a long time. “She was in love with me, Nathan. Blind and battered as I am, she loved me.”
“Did you love her, Emil?”
“Not in that way, not really. I’d come to rely on her greatly, and I loved her presence in this house, and she reminded me so much of . . .”
“So much of whom?”
“Of her mother, Nathan.”
“And that’s why you made love to an eighteen-year-old girl? She reminded you of her mother?”
Was it anger I heard in my father’s voice? Profound indignation? Betrayal?
“I know how terrible it sounds, but it wasn’t like that, Nathan. It happened once. Just once, I swear, and I was so ashamed. But Ariel, for her it was so much more. Of course. Something like that to one so young, it means everything, I know. She talked marriage. Marriage to me, can you envision that, Nathan? A man more than twice her age, blind as a bat and with the face of a monster. What kind of marriage would that be for her once she opened her eyes and realized the poor bargain she’d struck? And what about Lise? Lise could never have accepted someone else in our retreat here, especially someone who might, in my sister’s understanding, steal all my affection. Nathan, I told Ariel no. Honest to God, I did everything in my power to dissuade her from throwing her life away on a wreck like me. But she . . . oh, the young, they’re always so certain of what they want.”
Brandt stopped talking and the silence was a great, heavy stone that settled on us all. He was blind but he nonetheless looked down as if his eyes were weighted with shame.
“I tried to kill myself once before,” he finally said. His voice was like something that had come from a distance on the wind. “Did you know that? In the hospital in London after I was wounded. I fell into such a darkness. I couldn’t imagine a life for myself this way.” He put his fingertips to his monster of a face and then went on. “Do you want to know why I tried to kill myself this time? A more noble reason, or at least that’s what I told myself. I wanted Ariel to be free of me, and I simply couldn’t see any other way.”
“Except killing her,” I said.
“Frank,” my father cautioned.
“Killing her?” Brandt raised his head and a terrible understanding blossomed in his sightless eyes. “That’s what you think? That I killed Ariel? That’s why you’re here?”
The screen door opened and Lise Brandt stepped outside and looked at us with concern and irritation as if we were trespassing. She said, “Emil?” Except that because of her deafness and the resulting oddness of her speech it came out something like Emiou?
Brandt signed to his sister.
“I wan them to go away,” she said in a drone.
Brandt turned so that she could read his lips. “We have business to finish, Lise. Go back inside.” She didn’t immediately obey him and he said, “It’s all right. Go on. I’ll be in soon.”
Lise drew herself back slowly like mist being sucked into the house and I thought that if I were her I’d hide myself and listen but of course that would do her no good. I watched through the screen as she vanished into the kitchen and I heard the faint sound of cookware rattling.
“It’s true then,” my father said. “The baby was yours.”
“She didn’t tell me about the baby, Nathan. She never said a word. And when I found out that she’d died pregnant, I hoped against hope that Karl might be the father.”
“You hoped that Ariel might be sleeping around?”
“That’s not what I meant. It just seemed impossible. Ariel and I had been together only once.”
“She came here often after dark,” my father said. “Frank saw her leave the house several times.”
“Yes,” Brandt admitted. “But she came late at night and all she did was stand out there in the yard and watch my window.”
“You’re blind, Emil. How could you know this?”
“Lise saw her. She wanted to chase her off, but I asked her not to interfere. I talked to Ariel and she promised to stop her nocturnal visits.”
“Did she?”
“I suppose so but I don’t really know. It was right after that that I tried to kill myself. And then so much happened.”