Cast in Doubt Read Online Free PDF Page B

road. Those winding, horrible roads on the sides of mountains. I would leave civilization at the bottom of a hill rather than carry it on my back to the top, the way Kostas carried Helen. Helen is a kind of civilization. I must be tipsy to think that Helen is civilization, for if she is, she is of a different order from any I know. I’m certain she’s a new type, and I am somewhat proud to have discovered her while the others haven’t. This is probably why I want to know her, she who is scarcely more than a child.
    I pass the cafés. The men are playing tavoli , backgammon, at the tables. A few tourists have come into town. I notice their cars first and then I see them, excited and expectant. They depress me, always. I wonder if the Gypsy woman will make further contact with Helen. I pass the theater. The movie’s a Western which I’ve already seen three times so that makes up my mind. No movie tonight. Work. I love decisions being made for me, like the wonderful blizzards that closed school and kept one at home for the day. Sadly this is not unique to me, even here on Crete, and I am not alone in remembering those wintry New England days, remembering them on hot sunny ones and reliving them, even feeling them, with a poignant pleasure.
    My mother never entirely believed me when I announced I was sick; and I never believed her when she took to her bed, saying she was ill. Like all children I certainly didn’t think she’d ever leave me and die—she did, of breast cancer. Poor Mother. Father died years before her, in an airplane crash. He was with his secretary, and she perished too. I suspect she was his mistress. It was an abiding suspicion—the devoted employee is the patrician boss’s lover—but if my mother suspected as well, I never found out. She was circumspect. Father’s office, at his death, was filled with copies of
Time
magazine. He had subscribed to it from its beginning, from issue number one, and never threw a single copy away. Not one. He was that kind of man, economical and deliberate. He kept all the issues neatly piled and they were in mint condition at his death.
Time
was the only thing he collected, and in his will he left his collection to me, his younger son, his black sheep, his prodigal and wastrel. To my brother, Father willed his set of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, not that my brother was in any way bookish. Mother was to live out her days in the family house, which would one day pass on to me and my brother. According to the terms of Father’s will, after Mother died my brother and I would divide up the estate, and whatever was left would be shared jointly. In the meantime, and until her death, everything was in Mother’s name. I’m happy to say she spent her remaining days in comfort and peace. Generous to a fault, Mother scrupled to leave us as much as she could. Fortunately, I’d already received a reasonable inheritance from my paternal grandfather. I’m not certain what
Time
magazine meant to my father, why he collected it, or why he left all those issues to me. I got rid of them, of course. Even from his grave, Father may still have been hoping to make, as he would have said, a man of me. He may have thought Henry Luce the right kind to emulate. Indeed! I myself try to make men of boys and to have them make something of me.
    Perhaps my fascination with Smitty is another type of atavism. It may simply be boredom. It’s odd. I don’t consciously worry about men loving or accepting me. I know one did deeply and assume two or three others probably have. Of course I always hope there will be another one or two on the horizon. I have always had male friends, in any case. Yet I am, I think, more comfortable with women; I seek out their company and friendship. Occasionally I fear they won’t love me. Gwen does, I know. And Alicia. I know my mother did. But I rejected her when I was young. Perhaps I am punishing myself, even now. I didn’t visit her when she was in the hospital. I