He smiled at me, and asked if I was enjoying my soda. After that he was silent and thoughtful. Then he took a cigarette out of the silver case he always carried, and lit it, and blew out smoke. “If anything happens,” he said finally, “you must promise to look after Laura.”

I nodded solemnly. What was anything? What could happen? I dreaded some piece of bad news, though I couldn’t have put a name to it. Maybe he might be going away—going overseas. Stories of the war had not been lost on me. However he did not explain further.

“Shake hands on it?” he said. We reached our hands across the table; his was hard and dry, like a leather suitcase handle. His one blue eye assessed me, as if speculating about whether I could be depended on. I lifted my chin, straightened my shoulders. I wanted desperately to deserve his good opinion.

“What can you buy for a nickel?” he said then. I was caught off-guard by this question, tongue-tied: I didn’t know. Laura and I were not given any money of our own to spend, because Reenie said we needed to learn the value of a dollar.

From the inside pocket of his dark suit he took out his memorandum book in its pigskin cover and tore out a sheet of paper. Then he began talking about buttons. It was never too early, he said, for me to learn the simple principles of economics, which I would need to know in order to act responsibly, when I was older.

“Suppose you begin with two buttons,” he said. He said your expenses would be what it cost you to make the buttons, and your gross revenues would be how much you could sell the buttons for, and your net profit would be that figure minus your expenses, over a given time. You could then keep some of the net profit for yourself and use the rest of it to make four buttons, and then you would sell those and be able to make eight. He drew a little chart with his silver pencil: two buttons, then four buttons, then eight buttons. Buttons multiplied bewilderingly on the page; in the column next to them, the money piled up. It was like shelling peas—peas in this bowl, pods in that. He asked me if I understood.

I scanned his face to see if he was serious. I’d heard him denounce the button factory often enough as a trap, a quicksand, a jinx, an albatross, but that was when he’d been drinking. Right now he was sober enough. He didn’t look as if he was explaining, he looked as if he was apologizing. He wanted something from me, apart from an answer to his question. It was as if he wanted me to forgive him, to absolve him from some crime; but what had he done to me? Nothing I could think of.

I felt confused, and also inadequate: whatever it was he was asking or demanding, it was beyond me. This was the first time a man would expect more from me than I was capable of giving, but it would not be the last.

“Yes,” I said.

In the week before she died—one of those dreadful mornings—my mother said a strange thing, though I didn’t consider it strange at the time. She said, “Underneath it all, your father loves you.”

She wasn’t in the habit of speaking to us about feelings, and especially not about love—her own love or anyone else’s, except God’s. But parents were supposed to love their children, so I must have taken this thing she said as a reassurance: despite appearances, my father was as other fathers were, or were considered to be.

Now I think it was more complicated than that. It may have been a warning. It may also have been a burden. Even if love was underneath it all, there was a great deal piled on top, and what would you find when you dug down? Not a simple gift, pure gold and shining; instead, something ancient and possibly baneful, like an iron charm rusting among old bones. A talisman of sorts, this love, but a heavy one; a heavy thing for me to carry around with me, slung on its iron chain around my neck.

Four

The Blind Assassin:

The café

The rain is light, but steady since noon. Mist rises from the trees, from the roadways. She comes past the front window with its painted coffee cup, white with a green stripe around it and three steam trails coming up out of it in wavering lines, as if three clutching fingers have slid down the wet glass. The door is marked CAFE in peeling gold letters; she opens it and steps inside, shaking her umbrella. It’s cream-coloured, as is her poplin raincoat. She throws back the hood.

He’s in the last booth, beside the swing door to the kitchen, as he said he’d be. The walls are yellowed by smoke, the heavy booths are painted a dull brown, each with a metal hen’s-claw hook for coats. Men sit in the booths, only men, in baggy jackets like worn blankets, no ties, jagged haircuts, their legs apart and feet in boots planted flat to the floorboards. Hands like stumps: those hands could rescue you or beat you to a pulp and they would look the same while doing either thing. Blunt instruments, and their eyes as well. There’s a smell in the room, of rotting planks and spilled vinegar and sour wool trousers and old meat and one shower a week, of scrimping and cheating and resentment. She knows it’s important to act as if she doesn’t notice the smell.

He lifts a hand, and the other men look at her with suspicion and contempt as she hurries towards him, her heels clacking on the wood. She sits down across from him, smiles with relief: he’s here. He’s still here.

Judas Priest, he says, you might as well have worn mink.

What did I do? What’s wrong?

Your coat.

It’s just a coat. An ordinary raincoat, she says, faltering. What’s wrong with it?

Christ, he says, look at yourself. Look around you. It’s too clean.

I can’t get it right for you, can I? she says. I won’t ever get it right.

You do, he says. You know what you get right. But you don’t think anything through.

You didn’t tell me. I’ve never been down here before—to a place like this. And I can hardly rush out the door looking like a cleaning woman—have you thought of that?

If you just had a scarf or something. To cover your hair.

My hair, she says despairingly. What next? What’s wrong with my hair?

It’s too blonde. It stands out. Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn’t last long in nature. They’re too conspicuous.

You’re not being kind.

I detest kindness, he says. I detest people who pride themselves on being kind. Snot-nosed nickel-and-dime do-gooders, doling out the kindness. They’re contemptible.

I’m kind, she says, trying to smile. I’m kind to you, at any rate.

If I thought that’s all it was—lukewarm milk-and-water kindness—I’d be gone. Midnight train, bat out of hell. I’d take my chances. I’m no charity case, I’m not looking for nooky handouts.

He’s in a savage mood. She wonders why. She hasn’t seen him for a week. Or it might be the rain.

Perhaps it isn’t kindness then, she says. Perhaps it’s selfishness. Perhaps I’m ruthlessly selfish.

I’d like that better, he says. I prefer you greedy. He stubs out his cigarette, reaches for another, thinks better of it. He’s still smoking readymades, a luxury for him. He must be rationing them. She wonders if he’s got enough money, but she can’t ask.

I don’t want you sitting across from me like this, you’re too far away.

I know, she says. But there’s nowhere else. It’s too wet.

I’ll find us a place. Somewhere out of the snow.

It isn’t snowing.

But it will, he says. The north wind will blow.

And we shall have snow. And what will the robbers do then, poor things? At least she’s made him grin, though it’s more like a wince. Where have you been sleeping? she says.

Never mind. You don’t need to know. That way, if they ever get hold of you and ask you any questions, you won’t have to lie.