Harpo found Blima in the room of windows. He stood in the doorway, caught her eye and cocked his head, and out she came, running. He felt a surge of something like affection, only more so. He needed a sidekick. Maybe he’d take the tramp’s. Maybe Blima would be great in the pictures. He took Blima’s hand and led her out the door. “There’s a place I want to show you,” he said as they walked down the stairs. “Also, I need to know everything you remember from Russia. I’m trying to solve a mystery. I need your help.”
“My bed was metal,” she said. “We had a maid who snored like a train engine. And I had a toy house that had furniture made of metal, but it was too big, so I wasn’t allowed to bring it.”
“What about leaving Russia?”
“I had a brown coat. It smelled like mothballs. That’s because the woman who gave it to me wasn’t a good housekeeper, that’s what my mother said.”
Harpo nodded. Brown coat. Bad housekeepers. The agents would probably need something more in the way of coordinates. If he was going to enlist their help, he would need concrete information to give them.
“Sometimes the old man with the tooth taught me poems. Then I recited them door to door. It was one poem for a kopeck, or three for a denezka, it was a bargain. Our neighbours paid me to recite because I was the cute one then. And when we first moved to Canada, people used to call me adorable. Then I always said ding-dong. Then I had to stop because adorable and a doorbell are two different words.”
“Do you remember what it looked like? Where you lived in Russia?”
“There was my favourite tree.”
A place with trees. “Did the trees look like these ones?”
“Oh no.” Blima looked at him soulfully. “They were much higher.”
Trees that were high as seen by a girl who was little. The path swerved, and he could hear the waterfall now. The roar of it was starting to drown out his thoughts, and wasn’t that some luck, because he didn’t know what to think. Blima clutched his arm. He needed details. Concrete information. Anything. Except Blima must have been nine minus three, so very young, when they moved away.
“What else do you remember?”
“One time, we went into the big city for the day. I was playing on the docks. There were boys jumping into the water. Then one of the boys jumped in, except he didn’t float up again. There was just red water. He’d hit an anchor. Everyone was shouting.”
“That must have been scary,” said Harpo. And yet. He’d figured something out. If there were anchors, then it must have been a port town. Odessa, maybe? Could they have come from a small place just outside?
“My daddy picked me up and carried me away again.”
As they got closer, Blima held his onto his fingers tighter and tighter, scared by that roar, by the sound that had scared him too. But then the falls became visible and she ran off like she was one of those race car toys, and Harpo had to run after her. She climbed up the tiny mountain, then turned and ran back to him. “I also remember a lamp.”
“What?” said Harpo, panting. “From Russia?”
“It was really tall, and I wasn’t allowed to walk behind it. And there was an office. It had a drawer with needles inside. Inside the office, there was a hidden door for the goyim to go in.”
“Did you say golems?”
Blima spun on her feet and ran back up again. Harpo stumbled after.
At the top of the hill, Harpo sat down on the rocks. He took the movie notes and Susan letter drafts out of his pocket, and put them on the mossy ground beside him. Then he took a sheet of paper and folded it into a boat, then set it in the water. Blima ran after it as it crashed down the falls. Harpo folded another one as Blima ran back up holding the sopping mess of paper.
It had been hours of repetitive folding and chasing when the boats finally disintegrated and couldn’t be put back together again, and Harpo took Blima’s hand to walk home. When they got to the lodgehouse’s back door, Ayala was waiting. Her cheeks were red and she was smiling thinly. The guests on the waterfront path laughed and waved, but they seemed to exist in a whole other world. Harpo and Blima squeezed each other’s hands. Ayala was furious. They could tell. Both of them. They knew the signs.
Harpo opened his mouth to say something, but Ayala took Blima’s other hand roughly. “It’s not your fault, Harpo,” she said, pulling the little girl away from him. “Blima knows better than to go outside without asking for permission.” She dragged Blima into the lodgehouse, and Harpo stood still and mute. He’d made a mistake, hadn’t been a good guardian, a good father figure. Harpo stumbled inside, to make it up to them, to Blima.
The dining room was full and cheerful, and Harpo was frozen like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was watching Ayala, who had her hands around her daughter’s shoulders. She shook her. Then she shook her again. People would notice and why wouldn’t Ayala just stop? It was his fault, not Blima’s. He was the adult.
“You don’t care if I take Sonja for walks.” Blima’s voice was shaky.
“You can’t go that far,” said Ayala, “never. You know better than that.”
“You love Sonja more. You wouldn’t be this angry if Harpo had taken her instead.”
The blood running through Harpo’s veins chilled. If he tried to move to Blima, he’d crack right open, shatter, fall to the floor in a million pieces. Minnie had let Chico get away with anything too. A new feeling thrummed through Harpo, like his stomach was a giant guitar string. It was anger, maybe. No, not anger. Desperation. Despair. Where were the Gods of The New York Times now? He didn’t know what to say, what to do. Blima would be so embarrassed. Everyone in the room was dressed for dinner. Why hadn’t he thought first? Why had he let this happen? All he wanted was to prove that he could be a good father.
“They’ve been spray-painting on the wall again,” hissed Ayala. “Last night, your father saw tire marks, bats made of wood. Outside the window, there was a hammer.”
Harpo flushed cold again. Ayala was right. It wasn’t safe, and he should have known that, should have known it better than anyone. It was his fault.
“You’re a big girl now, Blima,” Ayala was saying, “but it’s still my job to keep you safe.”
Harpo looked around the room full of people talking, bustling, pretending that they didn’t see. Across the room, someone sneezed. Harpo heard it, but through a filter like there was cotton in his ears, like his ears should pop.
“You have to listen to me, Blima. You have to remember what I tell you to do.”
Harpo looked at the floor. He was vibrating at a frequency that should make all the glass in this place explode. He willed Blima to look at him. After a moment, she did. She fixed him with a hurt expression and Harpo felt like his heart and his insides were suddenly liquid. He sat down, collapsed right into the chair beside him, suddenly without the power to stand, without any bones at all. When he looked up again, Blima and Ayala were gone. He heard a door slam shut down the hall. Poor little kid.