Free The Whole Megillah by Howard Engel Page B

end of the lot. Its many small windows assisted the impression of gruel and potatoes eaten at long bare tables. As I walked up to the door, a squirrel ran up my leg looking for a handout. I was apologizing to him and almost turning out my pockets when a priest in an old-fashioned cassock got off his bicycle ahead of me. The hem of the black skirt was caught in the bicycle chain. From him, for a little help, I got some information and a palm covered in three-in-one oil.
    â€˜Come in,’ said the voice behind the door I found at the end of my instructions. The stairs were dark and the corridors dull and grey with doors so uniform they looked stamped out of a mould. ‘Come in!’ The tone suggested that he already knew who I was and wanted to get the interview over with as quickly as possible. I walked into a simple, celllike room with a desk, a chair and a narrow bed. In the bed lay an old man.
    â€˜Are you Father Campbell?’
    â€˜I am. And who might you be? I was expecting Father Quinlan with my tea. There’s a chair,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t get up.’ I pulled the chair over towards the bed and tried to sum up the old man in the bed. He looked like that Irish actor with the testy, expressive mouth, who plays bishops and parish priests in the movies. He was wearing striped pyjamas of a secular design with no distinguishing collar, Roman or otherwise. He looked hot and uncomfortable, with creases in the sheets under him. It was a round, unlined, almost un-lived-in face, surrounded by wisps of white hair that spread out on the pillows he was propped up on.
    â€˜To what do I owe this visit?’ he said with a guarded smile.
    â€˜My name is Cooperman,’ I said, and told him I was a friend of his friend Kurian. He nodded to show he was weighing all I said. He reached for a yellow tin of tobacco and a package of papers. Slowly he rolled himself a cigarette without taking his eyes off my face. I watched until he had lighted up with a wooden kitchen match that seemed to go with the whole kit. I put a Hall’s in my mouth when he blew smoke at the brown spot above his bed on the ceiling. I tried to figure out how sick he was from the bottles on the small bedside table. I didn’t want to upset an already dying man with news of the accident that had just befallen his friend. He was studying me at the same time; I felt like I had holes in my knees. He had a fleck of tobacco stuck to his dry upper lip.
    â€˜The old goat said he’d come to play chess with me this week. But he forgot. Forgot an old man confined to his bed, and who’s to know if I’ll ever get out of it? Are you a chess player by any chance, Mr. Cooperman? He shouldn’t have given his promise, if he wasn’t going to keep it,’ he added as an afterthought. I told him that I could move the pieces around the board. He liked that. He thought it was modesty hiding the cunning of a master, whereas it was a simple statement of fact. Father Campbell lifted himself up on his elbows and pointed to a cupboard where I found a battered wooden board and a basswood box of pieces shiny with finger-wax. I set up both sides on the table, sweeping away the bottles and glasses of the sickroom.
    â€˜Are you sure that you should be playing?’
    â€˜What? Afraid I’ll die on your hands? Think no more about it. We’ve all got so long and not a moment longer. So don’t waste any of it.’ He said this with the cigarette dangling from his lips, looking for all the world like a dealer in a gin-mill. He held out two knobbly fists: I picked the one with the white pawn, which gave me the advantage of the first move. To make a long story short, he took me two games in a row. I didn’t want to gang up on the poor old geezer since he was laid low and all.
    â€˜You don’t get much practice, Mr. Cooperman, but I admire the way you fianchettoed your bishop in the last game. It’s