The Book of Air and Shadows

The firm-happy to see me off for a nice rest and delighted to let me use the flight card for some minor legal work in London. I did not tell them I was going to visit the heir of Bulstrode.
    Went to see Paul, nice conversation about killing, wanted to weep but resisted with help of 2 mg Xanax. He volunteered to come along, to, in his phrase, watch my back. I’d never heard this used literally before and I laughed, then reconsidered. I inquired after his sacred mission. No problem, God would watch over, and besides he wanted to spend Xmas with Amalie and kids, he deserved a vacation from the fields of the Lord. So I agreed. From time to time, as then, I acquire the notion that my brother actually loves me, that I am not merely a contemptible nuisance. This always inspires a kind of nervous fear, I don’t know why. Omar wanted to come too, but he is on all the terror watch lists and this makes it inconvenient for him to cross borders. But he said he would pray for me.
    Next morning early we picked up Crosetti at his hut, made sure he had copies of ciphers, just in case. He said the originals were with a reliable pal of his at NYPL, behind bronze doors, good move. Met the others at Teterboro, was wound up tight, unpleasantness with little asshole cursing into cell phone, approval from waiting room but Amalie stared in dismay. What? I snarled. We had words. On plane: the usual fine service and, as luck would have it, the flight attendant is Karen “Legs” McAllister, and both of us are acting cool as sherbet in the circumstances, although we have been several times to the Eight Mile High Club on past flights. Amalie naturally sniffed this out. How? Do I leave spoor on women? Does my face betray me all unknowing? Anyway, we had a crying jag, silent heaving, the worst, she shrugged me off, couldn’t bear it, I went aft, tossed Crosetti out of his seat, and talked to Paul.
    I recall complaining about the wife, a tedious stanza I shall not relate and him listening and then somehow we were talking about Dad and Mutti, and who was the least and most favored son, a familiar trope of ours on the few occasions when we talk about our mutual past, and we merrily recalled an incident in which Paul, aged around seven, had broken a precious Meissen figurine, and Mutti took after him with the hairbrush, our usual instrument of discipline. This was, by the way, not one of your cheapo drugstore plastic models, but a solid chunk of Deutsche maple stuck with boar bristles from the Schwarzwald, a weapon suitable for seizing Jerusalem from the Saracens. On this occasion Paul was attempting to escape by running around the oval dining room table, shrieking hysterically, Mutti in pursuit, uttering threats in German, with we smaller kids watching in fascination. After we had milked this one of its warmth, I happened to remark that, unlike him and Miriam, I had hardly ever felt the hairbrush, me being the good son. He looked at me strangely and said, “Yeah, she used to beat you with her hand. In the bedroom.”
    “What’re you talking about? She never touched me.”
    “You really don’t remember this? Almost every time Dad punched her out, she’d pick a fight with you and take you into the bedroom and lay you across her knee and pound your bare butt with her hand, and you’d wail like a lost soul, and then she’d hold you on the bed and rock you and murmur endearments until you stopped. Miri and I used to watch it through the keyhole. She used to call you
mein kleines Judchen.
”
    “Oh, bullshit! You’re making this up.”
    He shrugged. “Hey, don’t believe me-ask Miri. We thought it was weird even then, even compared to the normal freak show that was our home.”
    “You think I
suppressed
this abuse? God, how unbelievably trite! And this explains all my current problems on the love and family front?”
    “No, the explanation is that God has given you free will and you have decided to use it to sin, rather than abandoning your monstrous pride and submitting yourself to God’s will. Since you asked.”
    Or something to that effect, a style of discourse that goes right past me. The other interesting thing from that conversation is that somewhat later I musingly asked Paul why our parents had ever hooked up in the first place, and he looked at me strangely again and said, “You really don’t know?”
    “A wartime passion, I always thought. They never talked about the feeling part, though.”
    “No kidding. You never