One man of the group moved, detached and approached carrying his drink. Juliana saw an immensely tall man with black curly hair; his skin, too, was dark, and his eyes seemed purple or brown, very softly colored behind his glasses. He wore a hand-tailored, expensive, natural fiber suit, perhaps English wool; the suit augmented his wide robust shoulders with no lines of its own. In all her life she had never seen a suit quite like it; she found herself staring in fascination.
Caroline said, “Mrs. Frink drove all the way up from Canon City, Colorado, just to talk to you about Grasshopper.”
“I thought you lived in a fortress,” Juliana said. Bending to regard her, Hawthorne Abendsen smiled a meditative smile. “Yes, we did. But we had to get up to it in an elevator and I developed a phobia. I was pretty drunk when I got the phobia but as I recall it, and they tell it, I refused to stand up in it because I said that the elevator cable was being hauled up by Jesus Christ, and we were going all the way. And I was determined not to stand.”
She did not understand.
Caroline explained, “Hawth has said as long as I’ve knOwn him that when he finally sees Christ he is going to sit down; he’s not going to stand.”
The hymn, Juliana remembered. “So you gave up the High Castle and moved back into town,” she said.
“I’d like to pour you a drink,” Hawthorne said.
“All right,” she said. “But not an old-fashioned.” She had already got a glimpse of the sideboard with several bottles of whiskey on it, hors d’oeuvres, glasses, ice, mixer, cherries and orange slices. She walked toward it, Abendsen accompanying her. “Just I. W. Harper over ice,” she said. “I always enjoy that. Do you know the oracle?”
“No,” Hawthorne said, as he fixed her drink for her.
Astounded, she said, “The Book of Changes?”
“I don’t, no,” he repeated. He handed her her drink.
Caroline Abendsen said, “Don’t tease her.”
“I read your book,” Juliana said. “In fact I finished it this evening. How did you know all that, about the other world you wrote about?”
Hawthorne said nothing; he rubbed his knuckle against his upper lip, staring past her and frowning.
“Did you use the oracle?” Juliana said.
Hawthorne glanced at her.
“I don’t want you to kid or joke,” Juliana said. “Tell me without making something witty out of it.”
Chewing his lip, Hawthorne gazed down at the floor; he wrapped his arms about himself, rocked back and forth on his heels. The others in the room nearby had become silent, and Juliana noticed that their manner had changed. They were not happy, now, because of what she had said. But she did not try to take it back or disguise it; she did not pretend. It was too important. And she had come too far and done too much to accept anything less than the truth from him. –
“That’s—a hard question to answer,” Abendsen said finally.
“No it isn’t,” Juliana said.
Now everyone in the room had become silent; they all watched Juliana standing with Caroline and Hawthorne Abendsen. –
“I’m sorry,” Abendsen said, “I can’t answer right away. You’ll have to accept that.”
“Then why did you write the book?” Juliana said.
Indicating with his drink glass, Abendsen said, “What’s that pin on your dress do? Ward off dangerous anima-spirits of the immutable world? Or does it just hold everything together?”
“Why do you change the subject?” Juliana said. “Evading what I asked you, and making a pointless remark like that? It’s childish.”
Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Everyone has—technical secrets. You have yours; I have mine. You should read my book and accept it on face value, just as I accept what I see—“ Again he pointed at her with his glass. “Without inquiring if it’s genuine underneath, there, or done with wires and staves and foam-rubber padding. Isn’t that part of trusting in the nature of people and what you see in general?” He seemed, she thought, irritable and flustered now, no longer polite, no longer a host. And Caroline, she noticed out of the corner of her eye, had an expression of tense exasperation; her lips were pressed together and she had stopped smiling entirely.
“In your book,” Juliana said, “you showed that there’s a way out. Isn’t that what you meant?”
‘Out,’ “he echoed ironically.
Juliana said, “You’ve done a lot for me; now I can see there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to want or hate or avoid, here, or run from. Or pursue.”
He faced her, jiggling his glass, studying her. “There’s a great deal in this world worth the candle, in my opinion.”
“I understand what’s going on in your mind,” Juliana said. To her it was the old and familiar expression on a man’s face, but it did not upset her to see it here. She no longer felt as she once had. “The Gestapo file said you’re attracted to women like me.”
Abendsen, with only the slightest change of expression, said, “There hasn’t been a Gestapo since 1947.”
“The SD, then, or whatever it is.”
“Would you explain?” Caroline said in a brisk voice.
“I want to,” Juliana said. “I drove up to Denver with one of them. They’re going to show up here eventually. You should go some place they can’t find you, instead of holding open house here like this, letting anyone walk in, the way I did. The next one who rides up here—there won’t be anyone like me to put a stop to him.”
“You say ‘the next one,’ “Abendsen said, after a pause. “What became of the one you rode up to Denver with? Why won’t he show up here?”
She said, “I cut his throat.”
“That’s quite something.” Hawthorne said. “To have a girl tell you that, a girl you never saw before in your life.”
“Don’t you believe me?”
He nodded. “Sure.” He smiled at her in a shy, gentle, forlorn way. Apparently it did not even occur to him not to believe her. “Thanks,” he said.
“Please hide from them,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “we did try that, as you know. As you read on the cover of the book . . . about all the weapons and charged wire. And we had it written so it would seem we’re still taking great precautions.” His voice had a weary, dry tone.
“You could at least carry a weapon,” his wife said. “I know someday someone you invite in and converse with will shoot you down, some Nazi expert paying you back; and you’ll be philosophizing just this way. I forsee it.”
“They can get you,” Hawthorne said, “if they want to. Charged wire and High Castle or not.”
You’re so fatalistic, Juliana thought. Resigned to your own destruction. Do you know that, too, the way you knew the world in your book?
Juliana said, “The oracle wrote your book. Didn’t it?”
Hawthorne said, “Do you want the truth?”
“I want it and I’m entitled to it,” she answered, “for what I’ve done. Isn’t that so? You know it’s so.”
“The oracle,” Abendsen said, “was sound asleep all through the writing of the book. Sound asleep in the corner of the office.” His eyes showed no merriment; instead, his face seemed longer, more somber than ever.
“Tell her,” Caroline said. “She’s right; she’s entitled to know, for what she did on your behalf.” To Juliana she said, “I’ll tell you, then, Mrs. Frink. One by one Hawth made the choices. Thousands of them. By means of the lines. Historic period. Subject. Characters. Plot. It took years. Hawth even asked the oracle what sort of success it would be. It told him that it would be a very great success, the first real one of his career. So you were right. You must use the oracle quite a lot yourself, to have known.” –
Juliana said, “I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there it can’t tell us directly, like it always has before? This must be different, don’t you think?”
Neither Hawthorne nor Caroline said anything.
“It and I,” Hawthorne said at last, “long ago arrived at an agreement regarding royalties. If I ask it why it wrote
Grasshopper, I’ll wind up turning my share over to it. The question implies I did nothing’ but the typing, and that’s neither true nor decent.”
“I’ll ask it,” Caroline said. “If you won’t.”
“It’s not your question to ask,” Hawthorne said. “Let her ask.” To Juliana he said, “You have an—unnatural mind. Are you aware of that?”
Juliana said, “Where’s your copy? Mine’s in my car, back at the motel. I’ll get it, if you won’t let me use yours.”