Thomas H. Cook

If there have been more beautifully written books in the past three years than Thomas H. Cook’s ‘Mortal Memory’, ‘Breakheart Hill’, and ‘The Chatham School Affair’, I failed to read them. Although his early work was first rate-after all, he received Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations for Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, as well as for a true crime book, Blood Echoes, his more recent, more mature novels are truly distinguished.
It is always trite to say that a given work transcends its genre (as the Los Angeles Times has said of Cook’s work), because that is inevitably true of superior works of art. It remains, however, impossible not to say it of those books. They are mysteries, of course, in the sense that they contain crime and suspense and murder, but they are firstly poignant, elegant portraits of people and families that remain etched in the consciousness long after the covers have been closed.
The following tale, conceived almost miraculously in the midst of a conversation, offers one of the most unexpected twists you are likely to experience-a surprise ending to end surprise endings.

Fatherhood

Watching them from a distance, the way she rocked backward and forward in her grief, her arms gathered around his lifeless body, I could feel nothing but a sense of icy satisfaction, relishing the fact that both of them had finally gotten what they deserved. Death for him. For her, perpetual mourning.
She’d worn a sombre gown for the occasion, her face sunk deep inside a cavernous black hood. She stared down at him and ran her fingers through his blood-soaked hair, her features so hideously distorted by her misery it seemed impossible that she’d ever been young and beautiful, or ever felt delight in anything.
By then the years had so divided us and embittered me that I could no longer think of her as someone I’d once loved. But I had, loved her, and there were times when, despite everything, I could still recall the single moment of intense happiness I’d had with her.
She’d been only a girl when we first met, the town beauty. Practically the only beautiful thing in the town at all, for it was a small, drab place set down in the middle of a desert waste. To find something beautiful in such a place was nearly miracle enough.
She was already being pursued by the local boys, of course. They were dazzled by her black hair and dark oval eyes, skin that gave off a striking olive glow. I yearned for her no less ardently than they, but I kept my distance.
Looking out my shop window, I would often see her as she swept down the street, heading toward the market, a large basket on her arm. Coming back, the basket now filled with fruit and vegetables, she’d sometimes stop to wipe a line of sweat from her forehead, her eyes glancing briefly toward the very window where I stood, watching her, and from which I always quickly retreated.
The fact is, she frightened me. I was afraid of the look that might come into her eyes if she saw me staring at her, their pity, perhaps even contempt, for a portly, middle-aged bachelor who worked in a dusty shop, lived alone in a single musty room, had no prospects for the future, and who had nothing to offer a vibrant young woman like herself.
And so I never expected to speak to her or approach her in any way. To the extent that she would ever know me, it seemed certain it would be as the anonymous figure she sometimes noticed as she made her way to the market, a person of no consequence or distinction, as flat and featureless in her mind as the old stones she trod upon. My fate would be to watch her silently forever, see her life unfold from behind my shop window, first as a young woman hastening to the market, then as a bride strolling arm-in-arm with her new husband, finally as a mother with children following behind her, her beauty deepening with the years, becoming fuller and richer while I kept my post at the window, growing old and sickly, a ghostly, gray-haired figure whose life had finally added up to nothing more than a long and fruitless longing.
Then it happened. One of those accidents that make a perpetual mystery of life, that bless the unworthy and doom the deserving, and which give to all of nature the aspect of a flighty, cruel, and unloving queen.
One of my customers had tethered a horse to the post outside my shop. It was sleek and beautiful, and coming back from the market, the girl of my dreams stopped to admire it. First she patted its haunches. Then she moved up the twitching flanks to stroke its moist black muzzle. Finally, she fed it an ear of corn from the overflowing basket she’d placed at her feet.
“It is yours?” she asked me as I came out the door, my arms filled with the wood I used in my trade.
I stopped, astonished to see her staring at me, unable to believe that she’d actually addressed her question to me.
“No,” I said. “It belongs to one of my customers.”
She returned her attention to the horse, drawing her fingers down the side of its neck, twining her fingers in its long brown mane. “He must be very rich to have a horse like this.” She looked at the wood still gathered in my arms. “What do you do for him?”
“Build things. Tables. Chairs. Whatever he wants.”
She offered a quick smile, patted the horse a final time, then retrieved her basket from the street and sauntered slowly away, her brown arms swinging girlishly in the afternoon light, her whole manner so casual and lighthearted that only a sudden burst of air from my mouth made me realise that during the time I’d watched her stroll away from me, I had not released a breath.

I didn’t talk to her again for almost three months, though I saw her in the street no less often than before. A young man sometimes joined her now, as beautifully tanned as she was, with curly black hair. He was tall and slender, and his step was firm, assured, the walk of a boy who had never wanted for anything, who’d inherited good looks and would inherit lots of money, the sort whose bright future is entirely assured. He would marry her, I knew, for he seemed to have the beauty and advantage that would inevitably attract her. For days I watched as they came and went from the market together, holding hands as young lovers do, while I stood alone, shrunken and insubstantial, a husk the smallest breeze could send skittering down the dusty street.
Then, just as suddenly, the boy disappeared, and she was alone again. There were other changes too. Her walk struck me as less lively than it had been before, her head lowered slightly, as I had never seen it, her eyes cast toward the paving stones.
That anyone, even a spoiled, wealthy youth, might cast off such a girl as she seemed inconceivable to me. Instead, I imagined that he’d died or been sent away for some reason, that she had fallen under the veil of his loss, and might well be doomed to dwell within its shadows forever, a fate in one so young and beautiful that struck me as inestimably forlorn.
And so I acted, stationing myself on the little wooden bench outside my shop, waiting for her hour after hour, day after day, until she finally appeared again, her hair draped over her shoulders like shimmering black wings.
“Hello,” I said.
She stopped and turned toward me. “Hello.”
“I have something for you.”
She looked at me quizzically, but did not draw back as I approached her.
“I made this for you,” I said as I handed it to her.
It was a horse I’d carved from an olive branch.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, smiling quietly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said and, like one who truly loves, asked nothing in return.
We met often after that. She sometimes came into my shop, and over time I taught her to build and mend, feel the textures and qualities of wood. She worked well with her hands, and I enjoyed my new role of craftsman and teacher. The real payment was in her presence, however-the tenderness in her voice, the light in her eyes, the smell of her hair-how it lingered long after she’d returned to her home on the other side of town.
Soon, we began to walk the streets together, then along the outskirts of the village. For a time she seemed happy, and it struck me that I had succeeded in lifting her out of the melancholy I had found her in.
Then, rather suddenly, it fell upon her once again. Her mood darkened and she grew more silent and inward. I could see that some old trouble had descended upon her, or some new one that I had not anticipated and which she felt it necessary to conceal. Finally, late one afternoon when we found ourselves on a hill outside the village, I put it to her bluntly.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She shook her head, and gave no answer.
“You seem very worried,” I added. “You’re too young to have so much care.”
She glanced away from me, let her eyes settle upon the far fields. The evening shade was falling. Soon it would be night.
“Some people are singled out to bear a certain burden,” she said.
“All people feel singled out for the burdens they bear.”
“But people who feel chosen. For some special suffering, I mean. Do you think they ever wonder why it was them, why it wasn’t someone else?”
“They all do, I’m sure.”
“What do you think your burden is?”
Never to be loved by you, I thought, then said, “I don’t think I have one burden in particular.” I shrugged. “Just to live. That’s all.”
She said nothing more on the subject. For a time, she was silent, but her eyes moved about restlessly. It was clear that much was going on in her mind.
At last she seemed to come to a conclusion, turned to me, and said, “Do you want to marry me?”
I felt the whole vast world close around my throat, so that I only stared at her silently until, at last, the word broke from me. “Yes.” I should have stopped, but instead I began to stammer. “But I know that you could not possibly... that I’m not the one who can... that you must be...”
She pressed a single finger against my lips.
“Stop,” she said. Then she let her body drift backward, pressing herself against the earth, her arms lifting toward me, open and outstretched and welcoming.
Any other man would have leapt at such an opportunity, but fear seized me and I couldn’t move.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That I wouldn’t be able to...”
I could see that she understood me, recognised the source of my disabling panic. There seemed no point in not stating it directly. “I’m a virgin,” I told her.
She reached out and drew me down to her. “So am I,” she said.
I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel, but after a time she grew so warm and moist, my pleasure in her rising and deepening with each offer and acceptance, that I finally felt my whole body release itself to her, quaking and shivering as she gathered me more tightly into her arms. I had never known such happiness, nor ever would again, since to make love to the one you love is the greatest joy there is.
For a moment we lay together, she beneath me, breathing quietly, the side of her face pressed against mine.
“I love you,” I told her, then lifted myself from her so that I could see her face.
She was not looking at me, nor even in my direction. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the sky that hung above us, the bright coin of the moon, the scattered stars, glistening with tears as she peered upward to where I knew her thoughts had flown. Away from me. Away. Away. Toward the one she truly loved and still longed for, the boy whose beauty was equal to her own, and for whom I could serve as nothing more than a base and unworthy substitute.

And yet I loved her, married her, then watched in growing astonishment as her belly grew day by day until our son was born.
Our son. So the townspeople called him. So she called him and I called him. But I knew that he was not mine. His skin had a different shade, his hair a different texture. He was tall and narrow at the waist, I was short and stocky. There could be no doubt that he was the fruit of other loins than mine. Not my child, at all, but rather the son of that handsome young boy she’d strolled the town streets with, and whose disappearance, whether by death or desertion, had left her so bereft and downcast that I’d tried to cheer her with a carved horse, walked the streets and byways with her, soothed and consoled her, sat with her on the far hillside, even made love to her there, and later married her, and in consequence of all that now found myself the parent and support of a child who was clearly not my own.
He was born barely six months after our night of love. Born weighty and full bodied and with a great mass of black hair, so that it could not be doubted that he had lived out the full term of his nurture.
From the first moment, she adored him, coddled him, made him the apple of her eye. She read to him and sang to him, and wiped his soiled face and feet and hindquarters. He was her “dear one,” her “beloved,” her “treasure.”
But he was none of these things to me. Each time I saw him, I also saw his father, that lank and irresponsible youth who’d stolen my wife’s love at so early an age that it could never be recaptured by her or reinvested in me. He had taken the love she might have better spent elsewhere, and in doing that, he had left both of us impoverished. I hated him, and I yearned for vengeance. But he had fled to parts unknown, and so I had no throat to squeeze, no flesh to cut. In his stead, I had only his son. And thus, I took out my revenge on a boy who, as the years passed, looked more and more like his youthful father, who had the same limber gait and airy disposition, a boy who had little use for my craft, took no interest in my business, preferring to linger in the town square, talking idly to the old men who gathered there, or while away the hours by reading books on the very hillside where I’d made love to his mother, and who, even as I’d released myself to her, had slept in the warm depths of her flesh.
I often thought of that. The fact that my “son” had been inside her that night, that my own seed had laboured to reach a womb already hardened against them. Sometimes, lost in such dreadful speculations I would strike out at him, using my tongue like a knife, hurling glances toward him like balls of flame.
“Why do you hate him so?” my wife asked me time after time during those early years. “He wants to love you, but you won’t let him.”
My response was always the same, an icy silence, followed by a shrug.
And so the years passed, my mood growing colder and more sullen as I continued to live as a stranger in my own household. In the evening, I would sit by the fire and watch as a wife who had deceived me and a son who was not my son played games or read together, laughed at private jokes, and discussed subjects in which I had no interest and from whose content and significance I felt purposely excluded. Everything they did served only to heighten my solitary rage. The sound of their laughter was like a blade thrust into my ear, and when they huddled in conversation at the far corner of the room, their whispers came to me like the hissing of serpents.
During this time my wife and I had terrible rows. Once, as I tried to leave the room, she grabbed my arm and whirled me back around. “You’re driving him from the house,” she said. “He’ll end up on the street if you don’t stop it. Is that what you want?”
For once, I answered with the truth. “Yes, I do. I don’t want him to live here anymore.”
She looked at me, utterly shocked not only by what I’d said, but the spitefulness with which I’d said it. “Where do you expect him to live?”
I refused to retreat. “I don’t care where he lives,” I answered. “He’s old enough to be on his own.” There was a pause before I released the words I’d managed to choke back for years. “And if he can’t take care of himself, then let his real father take care of him for a while.”
With that, I watched as tears welled up in her eyes before she turned and fled the room.
But even after that, she didn’t leave. Nor did her son. And so, in the end, I had to stay in the same house with them, live a life of silent, inner smouldering.
A year later he turned fifteen. He was nearly a foot taller than I was by then. He’d also gained something of a reputation as a scholar, a fact that pleased his mother as much as it disgusted me. For what was the use of all his learning if the central truth of his life remained unrevealed? What good all his command of philosophy and theology if he would never know who his father was, never know where he’d gotten his curly black hair and lean physique, nor even that keenness of mind which, given the fact that he thought me his natural father, must have struck him as the most inexplicable thing of all?
But for all our vast differences of mind and appearance, he never seemed to doubt that I truly was his father. He never asked about other relatives, nor about any matter pertaining to his origins or birth. When I called him to his chores, he answered, “Yes, Father,” and when he asked my permission, it was always, “May I, Father?” do this or that. Indeed, he appeared to relish using the word. So much so, that I finally decided it was his way of mocking me, calling me “Father” at every opportunity for no other reason than to emphasize the point either that he knew I was not his father, or that he wished that I were not.
For fifteen years I had endured the insult he represented to me, my wife’s deviousness, her false claim of virginity, the fact that I’d had to maintain a charade from the moment of his birth, claiming a paternity that neither I nor any of my neighbours for one moment believed to be genuine. It had not been easy, but I had borne it all. But with his final attempt to humiliate me by means of this exaggerated show of filial obedience and devotion, this incessant repetition of “Father, this” and “Father, that,” he had finally broken the back of my self-control.
And so I told him to get out, that he was no longer welcome in my house, that no more meals would be provided, nor any bed for him to sleep in, nor a fire to warm him, nor clothes for his back.
We stood together in the backyard, he watching me silently while I told him all this. He’d grown a beard during the preceding few weeks, his hair had fallen to his shoulders, and he’d taken to going barefoot. “Yes, Father” was all he said when I finished. Then he turned, walked back into the house, gathered a few personal items in a plain cloth knapsack, and headed down the street, leaving only a brief note for his mother, its sneeringly ironic message clearly intended to render me one final injury, “Tell Father that I love him, and that I always will.”

I didn’t see him again for eighteen years, though I knew that my wife maintained contact, sometimes even making long treks to visit whatever town he was passing through. She would return quite exhausted, especially in the later years, when her hair was gray and her once radiant skin had become so easily bruised that the gentlest pressure left marks upon it.
I never asked about her trips, never asked a single question about how her son was doing. Nor did I miss him in the least. And yet, his absence never gave me the relief I’d expected. For it didn’t seem enough, my simply throwing him out of the house. I had thought it might satisfy my need to get even with his father and my wife for blighting my life, forcing me to live a transparent and humiliating lie. But it hadn’t.
Vengeance turned out to be a hungrier animal than I’d supposed. Nothing seemed to satisfy it. The more I thought of my “son,” the more I got news of his various travels and accomplishments, heard tales of the easy life he had, merely wandering about, living off the bounty of others, the more I wanted to strike at him again, this time more brutally.
He had become quite well known by then, at least in the surrounding area. He’d organised a kind of travelling magic show, people said, and had invented an interesting patter to go along with his tricks. But when they went on to describe the things he said, it seemed to me that the “message” he offered was typical of the time. He was no different from the countless others who believed that they’d found the secret to fulfilment, and that their mission was to reveal that secret to the pathetic multitude.
I knew better, of course. I knew that the only happiness that is possible comes by accepting how little life has to offer. But knowing something and being able to live according to that knowledge are two different things. I knew that I’d been wronged, and that I had to accept it. But I could never put it behind me, never get over the feeling that someone had to pay for the lie my wife had told me, the false son whose very existence kept that lie whirling madly in my brain. I suppose that’s why I went after him again. Just the fact that I couldn’t live without revenge, couldn’t live without exacting another, graver penalty.
It took me three years to bring him down, but in the end it was worth it.

She never knew that I was behind it. That for the preceding three years I’d silently waged my campaign against him, writing anonymous letters, warning various officials that he had to be watched, investigated, that he said violent things, urged people to violence, that he was the leader of a secret society pledged to destroy everything the rest of us held dear. By using bits of information gathered from my wife, I kept them informed about his every move so that agents could be sent to look and listen. He was arrogant and smug, and he had his real father’s confidence that he could get away with anything. I knew it was just a matter of time before he’d say or do something for which he could be arrested.
I did all of that, but she never knew, never had the slightest hint that I was orchestrating his destruction. I realised just how fully I had deceived her only a few minutes after they’d finally peeled her away from his dead body and took it away to prepare it for burial. We were walking down the hill together, away from the place where they’d hung him, my wife muttering about how terrible it was, about how brutally the mob had taunted and reviled him. Such people could always be stirred up against someone like our son, she said, a “true visionary,” as she called him, who’d never had a chance against them.
I answered her sharply. “He was a fraud,” I said. “He didn’t have the answer to anything.”
She shook her head, stopped, and turned back toward the hill. It was not only the place where they’d executed him, but also the place where we’d first made love, an irony I’d found delicious as they’d led him to the execution site, his eyes wandering and disoriented, as if he’d never expected anything so terrible to happen to him, as if he were like his real father, wealthy and irresponsible, beyond the fate of ordinary men.
A wave of malicious bitterness swept over me. “He got what he deserved,” I blurted out.
She seemed hardly to hear me, her eyes still fixed on the hill, as if the secret of his fate were written on its rocky slope. “No one told me it would be like this,” she said. “That I would lose him in this way.”
I grasped her arm and tugged her on down the hill. “A mother is never prepared for what happens to her child,” I said. “You just have to accept it, that’s all.”
She nodded slowly, perhaps accepting it, then walked on down the hill with me. Once at home, she lay down on her bed. From the adjoining room, I could hear her weeping softly, but I had no more words for her, so I simply left her to her grief.
Night had begun to fall, but the storm that had swept through earlier that day had passed, leaving a clear blue twilight in its wake. I walked to the window and looked out. Far away, I could see the hill where he’d been brought low at last. It struck me that even in the last moments of his life, he’d tried to get at me just one more time. In my mind I could see him glaring down at me, goading me in exactly the way he had before I’d kicked him out of the house, emphasizing the word ‘Father’ when he’d finally spoken to me. He’d known very well that this was the last time he’d ever talk to me. That’s why he’d made such a production of it, staring right into my eyes, lifting his voice over the noise of the mob so that everybody would be sure to hear him. He’d been determined to demonstrate his defiance, his bitterness, the depth of his loathing for me. Even so, he’d been clever enough to pretend that it was the mob he cared about. But I knew that his whole purpose had been to humiliate me one last time by addressing me directly. “Father,” he’d said in that hateful tone of his, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”