Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс, Пикард Нэнси
- Год: 2008
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008». Краткое содержание книги:
That afternoon Tatum worked on the British Museum project in the library. From the school computer, she downloaded images, cutting and pasting them with Superglue on a poster board. The pictures were of ancient artifacts taken from the Mediterranean. The British Museum is a thief, she wrote in the heading. In smaller print, she added: The English exploited other people in distant countries, even after they had given up colonization, stealing their history from them and claiming it as their own. Famous museums in America also knowingly took donations from rich people who bought stolen goods from Greece or Italy. They knew what they were doing. They couldn’t help themselves. They let the facts of the situation get all tangled up with their desires.
Tatum wanted to tell the tall man about these illicit acts. Maybe he was someone who used to teach here, or the husband of one of her teachers who wasn’t even aware that he came on campus, because he was supposed to be working at the Corner Bookstore or in City Hall, defending criminals. That was it. He defended criminals, and he needed to conduct research in the library on campus in order to understand the criminal mind.
Jen had started talking to Tatum about all kinds of things. That night she described her paper topic for the Eastern religions course.
“Suchness,” she stated matter-of-factly. “It’s Buddhist.” When Tatum took off her glasses, Jen looked small.
“Suchness,” Jen repeated from her distant bed. “It means something like being present.”
“Whatness?” Tatum asked. She’d been reading Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man for literature, and they’d learned about James Joyce and his kind of crazy epiphanies.
“No, it’s Suchness. Which is what you need,” Jen stated in a superior voice. “We all do,” she added softly.
She read from her textbook: “For Buddhists, truth and acceptance are the pillars of faith. ‘Suchness’ is a term used to describe life as it is, the truth as it is. A flower is a flower. Without the knowledge of Suchness, we find ourselves trying to make life into something that it is not through false desires and illusions.”
Jen stared into space, looking thoroughly pleased with this idea. She took a bite out of a peach her mother had sent in a basket from South Carolina with matzos. Being the Southern Jewish girl on campus who studied Buddhism gave her an air of importance.
“This peach is a peach — nothing more, nothing less,” Jen added solemnly.
“Suchness,” Tatum repeated. It sounded like a kiss. The word made her think about the tall man.
She wrote in her journal, while Jen took her shower.
Today he sat on the bench by the lake. I frowned at him rather than smiling. He moved slightly closer, then watched me when I got up and walked away.
For her very private satin-pillow journal, she added, I could tell he wanted to follow me. I want him to know about Suchness, about the feeling of being inside a kiss, of expecting to be kissed.
Tatum stopped by the security office the next day after classes. She’d hoped that Officer Cathy would ask her more questions and read from the composition journal that Tatum carried with her. But she needed to make late-afternoon rounds on campus.
“Would you like to come with me?”
Tatum nodded agreeably.
“Let me know if you see anyone who looks like the man who is following you,” Officer Cathy instructed. “You can signal to me by tugging on my sleeve. No need to say anything.”
There were not many men on campus, just the headmaster, who always walked in a big hurry, along with some teachers and maintenance workers. No green windbreakers.
They checked doors and looked behind buildings. Tatum liked being seen with Officer Cathy. She thought she’d like to have a job that required wearing a uniform. But not a nurse. Tatum did not like the sight of blood or even being around sick people. That was why she had been sent to the boarding school in the first place. When her mother got sick and had chemo last year, her father said it was time for Tatum to go to prep school, where she wouldn’t have to worry about taking care of sick people.
She and Officer Cathy circled around the pond. They picked up trash along the way. Everyone in the school was supposed to do that. “We’re all responsible for where we live.” That’s what the headmaster said at convocation every term. Peppermint candy cellophane, paper cups, and a small, green, rectangular wrapper were in her path near the bench where she liked to sit. Tatum knew about the green wrapper from health class. The teacher had passed out condoms last semester and told the girls to open them up and to put the smooth latex on their thumbs, making them look like sad puppets with no ears or eyes or hair.
She threw away the other trash but kept the condom wrapper in her jeans pocket. Touching it made her feel grown-up, more knowledgeable about the secrets of life.
Officer Cathy didn’t ask too many questions along the way. They walked briskly, checking the locks on the doors in the main buildings. It was after five o’clock, and the administrative offices were closed. Together they secured the back and side doors to the residence halls. Students were supposed to use the main entrances after 5 p.m. When they got to Buckley, Tatum’s dorm, the basement door was propped open with a brick.
“This is not a good idea,” Officer Cathy pointed out, as if accustomed to giving lectures on safety. “Anyone could get in here. Anyone at all.”
Tatum nodded in agreement. She took the brick from the security guard, placing it behind some bushes. “Nobody will be able to find it there.”
“I’m going off duty for today. Stop by to see me tomorrow, or call me on your cell phone if you see him again, if he bothers you.” Officer Cathy’s large, blurry eyes fixed on Tatum’s for a solid moment before she turned away. Tatum wished she would hug her. Officer Cathy’s arms and chest were strong, not fragile and tight like her mother’s had become.
After Officer Cathy disappeared down the sidewalk, Tatum went to the front entrance to the dorm and headed down to the basement side door. She retrieved the brick and propped open the door once more. “Life is transient,” Jen had told her. “There is no such thing as security.”
Tatum changed into a clean silk blouse, another hand-me-down. On the way to dinner, she checked her mailbox. There was nothing there, not even a postcard from her mother, who sent one almost every day, collected from faraway lands where she’d traveled with her father before he retired from the newspaper — places like Hong Kong, Croatia, India, and the Big Sur. Her mother stored the postcards in a small wooden box along with her formal stationery. She wrote little wobbly messages, sometimes quotations, all across the postcard with no room left for the address. Then, she placed them in an envelope and mailed them to Tatum. Sometimes she sent several postcards in a single mailing with sequential, numbered messages, like those Tatum had received yesterday: “(1) There is a new robin making a nest in the bushes. I hope that she will lay her tiny blue eggs there. (2) And the skinny, hungry babies will be here when you come home. XOXOX your Mother.” The postcards provided different views of the glimmering Taj Mahal, which the caption said had been built for love.
Tatum stuck the postcards to her wall with Superglue that would get her written up once the residence counselors realized what she had done. But she didn’t care. And Jen didn’t seem to mind either. Sometimes she posted them with the writing side exposed, where there were quotations written in her mother’s hand from Alice in Wonderland or Little Women. She had wanted a new picture of her mother, even if she didn’t have hair anymore. But her father would not send her one, not even by e-mail. At spring break her mother had worn a lovely Asian scarf around her head, maybe from Hong Kong, with interwoven Oriental colors. When Tatum returned to campus, she’d begun wearing Jen’s striped scarf; soon afterward the man started following her.