The phone rang, twice, stopped, bleeped, and an edge of paper began to slide from the mouth of the fax. László rewrapped the Beretta in the napkin, hurriedly, as though he had been caught striking poses in front of the mirror. In heavy black type the words Serbian Justice were curling into view, and then – blurred but quite graphic enough – pictures he did not wish to look at but could not at first look away from. A human back, black and swollen from a beating. A man’s body sprawled in a ditch. And the inevitable corollary: a woman in a headscarf, bewildered, terrified, her hands outstretched in wretched supplication – an image that seemed emblematic of the entire century. It was not the first such material he’d received. Since the beginning of March there had been maps, photographs, statistics, horrors. He knew more or less where they came from, and felt again a flare of resentment at being solicited in this way. Political junk mail! Kurt could deal with it in the morning, file it somewhere. Had he known how to, he would have turned the fax off, sabotaged it, perhaps by pulling at the skeins of wire that led to the wall socket, but he had remained fabulously ignorant of what he still called the ‘new’ technology, and he did not want to run the risk of Kurt sulking for half a day.

On the shelf above his desk the digits of the radio alarm flicked from 8:59 to 9:00. Karol was due at any moment and there were still a dozen jobs to be done in the kitchen before they could eat. But as he left the study he imagined the fax continuing all night, the paper spreading over the desktop, over the floor, then rising in rustling loops to the ceiling. An inexhaustible complaint. An oracle. A relentless call to arms.

7

With his jacket slung over his shoulder, Larry negotiated the shuttle satellite at LA airport. Ahead of him the young Jewish mother carried the child on her hip until the two of them were met by a party of Jewish men in Streml and skullcaps, one of whom, a magnificently built young man, his beard as soft and glossy as a girl’s pubic hair, was evidently the child’s father, and she climbed into his arms, all nausea forgotten, proud and giggly, reunited with her hero, rescued.

Larry watched them for a while, furtively, from between the gathered suits under the flight information screens. How sweet if he could somehow be included in that little group and share in their happiness! He imagined himself in a crisp white shirt, Uncle Reuben perhaps, with the type of excellent pale skin that comes with certain kinds of righteousness. He would own a dry-goods store downtown, or a kosher delicatessen so that his fingers smelt faintly of pickles. Vi gay’st du, Reuben? Come into the circle!