Episodul 47 · A Door Closed

By the following Wednesday, Krista was moving the exhibition upstairs. The principal sponsor had withdrawn on Monday; on Tuesday the committee had declared the large room unavailable because of the heating.

Soles was helping with the frames. He had read the sponsor’s letter, thanking her for the partnership and citing a realignment of the foundation’s priorities. Neither that letter nor the room notice mentioned the photographs.

— Someone’s paid to write these, Krista had said. I’d like to meet him. I might learn something.

The committee’s man arrived while Soles was fixing a narrow frame at the top of the stairs.

Downstairs, Krista worked at the long table, and Alden, the archivist who had shown them the albums, was sorting photographs into a box, his glasses on the end of his nose. The man came in without knocking. He was tall, his light-gray coat open at the neck, and he spoke in a low, friendly voice, like a man who had never needed to raise it.

— Ms. Krista. I understand the construction-site photographs are staying.

— They are.

— The committee asked you very nicely.

— The committee asked me to remove historical documents from a historical exhibition. I declined very nicely.

The man smiled. He looked at the panels on the wall, at Alden, who had lowered his gaze into the box, then back at her.

— It’s a shame, he said. You’ve done lovely work arranging the panels. But an exhibition is not an investigation. And a committee needs professionals.

Alden stopped sorting.

Soles rested the frame against the railing.

He wanted the man to stop speaking to Krista as though she had been hired to move furniture. He came down the stairs to say so. With each step, the familiar weight settled through him: the dinner table, Serren’s room, the king’s hand resting on a chair. He felt entitled to the silence that fell when he stopped before the man.

— Ms. Krista, he said, does not arrange panels.

The voice was not his. It was lower, colder, and landed on each word like a step only he was entitled to climb.

— She writes the history of this place. You merely sign whatever others put in front of you. Do not confuse the two.

The man looked at him, then smiled again, less warmly, buttoned his coat at the neck, and left.

The door closed softly with a click.

Alden looked at Soles over his glasses and lowered his eyes into the box again, deeper than before.

Krista rose from the table.

— The hallway, she said. Please.

The hallway was cold and smelled of floor polish. Krista closed the workroom door behind them.

— Never do that again, she said.

— He insulted you.

— I know he insulted me. I was there. I heard every word.

Her voice was polite and level, and that made it colder than the man in the coat’s.

— And I had an answer. I didn’t get to give it, because you gave yours.

— I only wanted—

— To speak for me. In front of Alden. In front of the committee. So everyone knows Ms. Krista has someone to defend her.

Soles felt that weight rising again. He knew he should not let it. He did not know how to stop it.

— Perhaps you need someone to defend you, he said.

The words came out cold, bored, from above, like a verdict delivered from a high seat.

Krista did not answer. She stood in the middle of the hallway with her arms at her sides and looked at him as if he were someone she did not know.

When the certainty ebbed, Soles heard the insult in his own words. He opened his mouth. Nothing he could say would make Krista unhear them.

— Krista…

— Thank you for the frame, she said. You can leave it on the stairs. I’ll carry it up.

She went back into the room and closed the door.

That evening, Soles waited until Maxim had left for a late collection.

He sat on the shed step in the cold, phone in hand, until the screen went dark on its own. Then he called Varren.

Varren came within twenty minutes and sat beside him on the shed step.

— I said something to Krista. It sounded like the king.

Varren turned toward him.

— But I heard it coming, Soles added. I could have stopped.

Varren was quiet for a while.

— Have you dreamed about him?

— Yes. He thinks everyone’s beneath him. I let myself think it too.

Varren watched the yard, the dark greenhouse.

— And now?

— Now I look at her and don’t know if she’ll ever open the door again.

— She will.

Varren turned his head toward him.

— But not tomorrow. Tomorrow she needs to be angry with you. It’s her right. Let her have it.

Soles nodded. He did not know why, but being told what to do calmed him.

Varren stayed late. They did not speak of Krista again. They spoke of Maxim’s pump, of the dogs, of a book Varren was reading and disliked. When he left, Soles thanked him.

— For what? Varren asked.

— For coming.

Varren smiled.

— I always come, he said. You know that.

On Friday, Tesa sent him a single line: Third time.

Then a photograph, taken while moving, crooked, through the glass of a bus shelter. A gray car parked at the corner of a street Soles did not recognize, its rear plate half caked with mud.

Then: It’s been following me for a week. Or it wants to see whether I notice.

Soles called her.

— Where are you?

— Home. Door locked. Don’t worry, I’m not opening it unless someone pounds on it.

Soles did not laugh.

The message and the call came almost at the same time on Monday morning.

First came a message from Krista, no greeting, nothing else: I have the name of the second signatory. I won’t put it in writing here.

Then the investigator called.

— Kerr wants to speak to you. Only you. I’ve arranged tomorrow at ten, with supervision. His lawyer has been notified; that’s procedure. Do you want it?

Soles stood in the middle of the yard with the phone at his ear and Lucky pressed against his leg.

— I do, he said.

— There’s something else, the investigator said. He asked for paper and a pen last night. He wrote two pages. He won’t hand them to anyone but you.

Soles hung up. He remained in the yard in the clear morning cold, phone in hand.

For the first time since his parents died, he thought he could see the end, far away.