The Book of Air and Shadows

surgical procedure.
    At length I put in, “So it’s a big deal if Shakespeare was a Catholic?”
    “It’s a big deal if Shakespeare was
anything
. I already went through this with you. We know almost
nothing
about the interior life of the greatest writer in the history of the human race. Look…just one example of thousands, and bears on the matter at hand. A woman has recently written a book, she’s an amateur scholar, but she’s certainly done her research, and in this book she claims that nearly the whole corpus of Shakespeare’s work, in particular the plays, is an elaborate coded apology for Catholicism and a plea to the monarch of the day for relief of the disabilities that Catholics then suffered. I mean she gives literally
hundreds
of heterodox readings arguing this theory in reference to all the plays,
and
she also proposes the protective hand of powerful contemporary Catholic peers to explain why Shakespeare wasn’t called to account for writing this easily readable code for the public stage. I mean it’s a complete and original picture explaining nearly all of Shakespeare’s work. How about that?”
    I shrugged and asked, “So-is she right?”
    “I don’t know! Nobody knows!” This a semishout, provoking more looks from the peers. I could now see why Mickey might hesitate to dine here. “That’s the fucking
point
, Jake! She
could
be right. Or someone could write a book demonstrating through just as thorough an analysis of the same plays that Shakespeare was gay, a good Protestant faggot. Or a monarchist. Or a lefty. Or a woman. Or the Earl of Oxford. That’s the basic, intractable problem with
all
Shakespeare studies that bear on intent or biography, and now this!” Tap tap tap. “If genuine…I say
if
genuine, it will be the greatest single event in Shakespeare studies since…I don’t know, since
forever.
Since the field was born as a rational entity in the eighteenth century.”
    “This letter does that?”
    “Not as such. It’s just the first taste, the first tiny opening taste of paradise. But Jake”-he lowered his voice and moved his mouth closer to my ear in a near parody of a man seeking confidentiality-“Jake, if this guy
spied
on William Shakespeare, if he wrote down reports, if he described Shakespeare’s life the way he described his own miserable life…oh, Jesus, that would be something
real
. Not just speculation based on the use of images in the second act of
King
fucking
Lear
, but actual data. Who he saw, what he said, his ordinary speech, what he believed, what he ate and drank, was he a big tipper, how long was his dick…Jake, you have no fucking idea.”
    “Well, I have some idea what that manuscript play would be worth.” He rolled his eyes and made a show of fanning his face. “Oh,
that
. We are not going to even think about
that
. No, I will be creaming in my panties if we can even get hold of those ciphered letters he mentions. No wonder old Bulstrode was playing it so close, the poor bastard. Not to speak ill of the dead, but you might’ve thought that after all I did for him he would’ve given me a little peek when this fell into his hands.”
    “It must’ve driven him crazy. He didn’t say anything to his niece either.”
    “Yes. Poor woman. You don’t have any idea where these spy letters could be?”
    “I don’t, but what I want to know now, and maybe you can help me here, is why a Russian gangster is interested in them enough to commit a federal crime. He’s probably not in the Modern Language Association.”
    “An organization brimful of gangsters and worse,” said Mickey, smiling. “But I take your point.” He paused, and a peculiar dreamy expression came over his face for just an instant, as if he had just inhaled a mouthful of opium, eyes partly closed, as if contemplating a paradise just out of reach. He came back, however, with an almost audible snap and said,
    “Unless…”
    I knew just what he meant. “Yeah, unless Bulstrode discovered something on his trip to England that established the existence of the…Item. The Item, let’s say, really exists, and these guys, or someone hiring these guys, knows about it and wants it. But it turns out that the ciphered letters are part of the trail that leads to it. Do we even know if they were with this letter?”
    “You’re asking me?”
    “Well, yeah. You know more about all this stuff than anyone else but Bulstrode himself and possibly Miranda, both of whom are currently out