Chapter 30

Maybe, then, I'd made my decision before I ever received this package in the mail. Maybe the package was only the accelerant, like the alcohol Parker spilled on the club floor that night. Not even thirty, and I feel like an old man. The eve of our fifth reunion, and fifty years seem to have gone by.

Imagine, Paul said to me once, that the present is simply a reflection of the future. Imagine that we spend our whole lives staring into a mirror with the future at our backs, seeing it only in the reflection of what is here and now. Some of us would begin to believe that we could see tomorrow better by turning around to look at it directly. But those who did, without even realizing it, would've lost the key to the perspective they once had. For the one thing they would never be able to see in it was themselves. By turning their backs on the mirror, they would become the one element of the future their eyes could never find.

At the time, I thought Paul was parroting wisdom he'd gotten from Tart, which Taft had stolen from some Greek philosopher, the idea that we spend our lives backing into the future. What I couldn't see, because I was turned the wrong way, was that Paul meant it for me, about me. For years I've been determined to get on with my life by doggedly hunting down the future. It was what everyone told me I should do, to forget the past, to look forward, and in the end I did it better than anyone might've expected. When I arrived, though, I began to imagine that I knew exactly what my father felt, that I could identify with the way things seemed to turn against him with no explanation.

The fact is, I don't know the first thing about it. I turn around now, toward the present, and find that I've had nothing like the disappointments he experienced. In a business I knew nothing about, which never captured my heart, I've done well for myself. My superiors marvel that, after being the last man out of the office for five years, I have never taken a single day off. Not knowing any better, they mistake it for devotion.

Seeing that now, and comparing it to the way my father never did anything he didn't love, I come to a certain understanding. I don't know him any better than I ever did, but I know something about the position I've taken all these years, turning to stare at the future. It's a blind way to face life, a stance that lets the world pass you by, just as you think you're coming

to grips with it.

Tonight, long after leaving the office, I quit my job in Texas. I watched the sun go down over Austin, realizing it had never once snowed in all my time here, not in April, not even in midwinter. I've almost forgotten what it feels like to crawl into a bed so cold, you wished there was someone else in it. Texas is so hot, it helps you believe you're better off sleeping alone.

The package was waiting at my house when I came back from work today. A little brown mailing tube propped against my door, so unexpectedly light, I thought it might be empty. There was nothing on the outside but my house number and postal code, no return address, only a handwritten routing number in the left corner. I remembered a poster Charlie said he was sending me, an Eakins painting of a lone rower on the Schuylkill River. He'd been trying to convince me to move closer to Philadelphia, trying to convince me that it was the right city for a man like me. His son should see more of his godfather, he said. Charlie thought I was slipping away.

So I cracked the tube open, saving it for after the regular mail, the credit card offers and sweepstakes notifications and nothing that resembled a letter from Katie. In the glow of the television, the barrel seemed hollow, no poster from Charlie, no message. Only when I stuck my finger inside did I feel something thin curled around the circumference. One side of it felt glossy, the other side ragged. I pulled it out less gently than I should have, considering what it was.

Bottled inside the little package was an oil painting. I rolled it open, wondering for a second if Charlie had outdone himself and bought me an original. But when I saw the image on the canvas, I knew better. The style was much older than nineteenth-century American, much older than any century American. The subject was religious. It was European, from the first true age of painting.

It is difficult to explain the feeling of holding the past in your hands. The smell of that canvas was stronger and more complex than anything in Texas, where even wine and money are young. There was a trace of the same smell at Princeton, possibly at Ivy, certainly in the oldest rooms of Nassau Hall. But the odor was much more concentrated here, in this tiny cylinder, the smell of age, hardy and thick.

The canvas was dark with grime, but slowly I made out the subject. In the background stood the statuary of ancient Egypt, obelisks and hieroglyphs and unfamiliar monuments. In the foreground was a single man, to whom others had come in submission. Seeing a hint of pigment, I looked more closely. The man's robe was painted with a brighter palette than the rest of the scene. In the dusty desert, it was radiant. This man before me, I hadn't thought of in years. It was Joseph, now a great official in Egypt, rewarded by the pharaoh for interpreting dreams. Joseph, revealing himself to his brothers who came to buy grain, the very brothers who left him for dead so many years before. Joseph, restored to his coat of many colors.

On the bases of the statuary had been painted three inscriptions. The first read: CRESCEBAT AUTEM COTIDIE FAMES IN OMNI TERRA APERUITIQUE IOSEPH UNIVERSA HORREA. There was famine all over the world. Then Joseph opened the granaries. Then: FESTINAVITQUE QUIA COMMOTA FUERANT VISCERA EIUS SUPER FRATRE SUO ET ERUMPEBANT LACRIMAE ET INTROIENS CUBICULUM FLEVIT. Joseph hurried out; so strong was the affection he felt for his brother that he wanted to cry. On the base of the third statue was simply a printed signature. SANDRO DI MARIANO-better known by the nickname his older brother gave him: little barrel, or Botticelli. By the date below his name, the canvas was over five hundred years old.

I stared at it, this relic that only one other pair of hands had touched since the day it was sealed below ground. Beautiful in a way that no humanist could resist, with its pagan statuary that Savonarola could never abide. Here it was, nearly destroyed by age, but somehow still intact, still vibrant beneath the soot. Alive, after all this time.

I laid it on the table when my hands became too unsteady to hold it, and I reached into the tube again, looking for something I'd missed. A letter, a note, even just a symbol. But it was empty. The handwriting on the outside, spelling out my address with such care. But nothing else. Only postmarks and a routing code in the corner.

Then that routing code caught my eye: 39-055-210185-GEN4519. There was a pattern to it, like the logic of a riddle. It formed an exchange, a phone number overseas.

At the dark end of a bookshelf I found a volume someone had given me for Christmas years ago, an almanac, with its catalogs of temperatures and dates and zip codes, suddenly useful. Toward the back was a list of foreign

prefixes.

39, the country code for Italy.

055, the area code for Florence.

I stared at the rest of the numbers, beginning to feel the return of my pulse, the old drumming in my ears. 21 01 85, a local phone number. GEN4519, possibly a room number, an extension. He was at a hotel, in an

apartment.

There was famine all over the world. Then Joseph opened the granaries. I looked back at the painting, then over at the mailing tube.

GEN4519.

Joseph hurried out; so strong was the affection he felt for his brother that he wanted to cry.

GEN4519. GEN45:19.