An Excerpt from “The Vowels of the Earth” by Matthew David Brozik
Comedy. Sci-fi. Wordplay. Aliens. The origin story of the letter H. The Vowels of the Earth is available now from Humorist Books. While you wait for it to arrive or download, read the first chapter, right here and right now, for free.
Chapter One
New York City
Late December 1948
When I decided the moment was right, I turned off Second Avenue—onto Seventy-Eighth Street, as it happened; I had been walking with no destination, just walking and trying not to screw up anything else terrifically—then stopped short, wheeled about, and addressed the man in the jet black fedora as he came around the corner.
“You’ve been tailing me all morning,” I hissed. I didn’t actually grab the lapels of his trench coat, but I did point an accusatory finger at him. “I’ve seen you. Let me give you some advice: When you’re stalking a man with one good eye, stay on his blind side.”
“I wasn’t trying to keep out of sight,” he said, unintimidated. “Trust me: If I didn’t want you to know I was there, you wouldn’t have known.”
“I don’t trust you,” I told him.
He didn’t respond right away, but when he did, he said, “I respect that.” It took the indignant wind out of my angry sails. “My name is Bradford,” he went on. “I’m with the federal government. And I’d like to talk to you about something important.”
“I’ve already given my testimony,” I said. “Under oath,” I added, unnecessarily. “I said everything important I have to say. And I even had some words put in my mouth.”
“I know, professor,” this government agent named Bradford said. “I was there. At the hearing. I heard it all. I even read the transcript afterward.”
“You must be my biggest fan,” I said. “What’s so interesting about me? Is it how passionately I incriminated myself? How decisively I dug my own grave?”
“Professor,” Bradford said, ignoring my histrionics, “I need your help. That is, I need someone’s help, and I think you might be that someone. What you did… what you were involved in… the hoax, the scandal, the scapegoating… none of that disqualifies you. To the contrary, if it weren’t for all of that, I might never have identified you as someone likely to have useful insight.”
This brought me up short. I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” Bradford asked.
“There’s a greasy spoon I like near here,” I said, “and I haven’t eaten lunch yet.”
“I know,” Bradford said.
“Touché.”
We stepped into a joint called Leo’s. We seated ourselves at a booth toward the back. I let Bradford have the bench that faced the door, figuring a G-man would want to sit where he could see who came in and who went out. And for my part, I’d already been stabbed in the back several times that month, so I suppose I just didn’t care if it happened again.
After we’d ordered food and coffee—light and sweet for me, black for him—I commented on a compact man sitting at the counter. He was wearing a long, white lab coat, and his feet were nowhere near the floor. His hair was white and not what you would call kempt.
“Mad scientist at three o’clock.”
Bradford gave a slight laugh through his nose. “My father used to say it takes all kinds to make a world.”
“My father used to say that it doesn’t take all kinds, there just are all kinds.”
“Your father was… from where?”
Pretty sneaky, Bradford, I thought. “Eastern Europe,” I said.
“And he came here because…”
“Because it seemed like a smart thing to do at the time. Bradford, are you trying to get me to reveal treasonous leanings?”
“No,” Bradford said. “We have no concerns on that point. But I do want to ask you just a couple more questions, if you don’t mind. Besides English, do you speak any other languages as well?”
“If you mean ‘in addition to’ English,” I answered, “then yes. If you really mean ‘as well as,’ then no.”
“Words are a serious matter to you,” Bradford commented.
“They used to be my career,” I reminded him.
“What other languages are you comfortable with?” Bradford asked, returning to what he wanted to know, changing his question to accommodate my pedantry.
“I can read classical Latin and Greek, I’m proficient in the major modern Romance languages and have a functional comprehension of some of the minor ones—including Galician and Aragonese—and I’ve spent time with several other members of different branches of the Indo-European family. Asian languages are completely foreign to me, though.”
“Do you speak Hebrew?” he asked me.
“I don’t,” I told him.
“But you are Jewish…?” It was a question… and it wasn’t.
“I am Jewish. Most Jews born in this country don’t speak Hebrew,” I informed him. “A lot of them do speak Yiddish, though.”
“Do you speak Yiddish?”
“Ikh kenen,” I said. “But most of the time I don’t. There’ll be plenty of time for that.”
“When?” he asked me. He seemed genuinely interested in the answer.
“When I’m an old Jew,” I told him. The food arrived and I delivered a forkful of scrambled eggs into my mouth. When my head was down, I thought I noticed Bradford signal to someone, and I assumed he needed more coffee or another napkin. But it wasn’t a waitress who came to the table. It was the man in the lab coat, and he didn’t just come over, he took a seat on the bench next to Bradford.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure.
“Professor Carp,” Bradford said, “this is Doctor Martin Smith, a… specialist on my team.”
“So it’s a science project you’re running?”
“After a fashion. It’s what you professors call ‘interdisciplinary,’” Bradford said. “And I thought you might as well meet Doctor Smith sooner rather than later. He’s much nicer than I am. You could actually enjoy working with him.”
“You know, you haven’t yet told me anything about what you’re working on.”
At this, Dr. Martin Smith, specialist in something or other, stood up from our booth again and excused himself. “I should be getting back,” he said. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Professor Carp.”
“Likewise,” I said as he left. Again, I wasn’t so sure. When I was reasonably confident he was out of earshot, I questioned Bradford: “Smith? Schmidt, I should think.”
“You’ve got a good ear,” Bradford said. “Smith fled the Fatherland when he saw the writing on the wall. I know a man whose father did the same.”
I was about to compliment Bradford again on making a good point, but something disturbing occurred to me.
“Hang on,” I said instead. “Sch… mith was waiting here for us to arrive? You knew we’d be coming here? But… it was my idea. How did you know?”
“You had lunch here yesterday too.”
Bradford handed me a card.
“Call me if you want to help,” he said.
“Help whom?” I asked.
“Everyone,” he said. “Including yourself.”
When the man who called himself Bradford—just Bradford—had departed, I lingered at the restaurant. I had nowhere to be and nothing to do.
I called over the middle-aged owner when he passed by my table. Leo and I were friendly, and he didn’t know or care about my recent troubles, public though they had been. “That funny little man at the counter. What did he order?”
Leo cocked his head to one side, then rattled it off: “French toast. Belgian waffles, sausages—”
“Italian or Polish?” I interrupted the restaurateur to ask.
“Both,” Leo said, matter-of-factly. “And a Danish pastry,” he added.
Typical German, I thought. Trying to conquer Europe before noon.
Then I realized that I was being indefensibly uncharitable. Hadn’t Bradford told me that Smith had been an expatriate for many years? Smith and I probably had more in common than I would ever have guessed. Maybe Smith had fled Germany because he’d embarrassed himself there, gotten himself fired from his job and declared a pariah in his field, and needed a fresh start in a country where he was unknown. Or maybe he was simply wary of being coerced into contributing his scientific knowledge and faculties to a wholly inhuman and inhumane cause. Either was a good reason.
“What’s new with you, Professor?” Leo was asking. I thought he had walked away while I was ruminating. Maybe he had and returned. Maybe I should have opened a small restaurant rather than doing all of the things that I had done to get me where I was just then: sitting by myself in a small restaurant, regretting several choices I’d made recently.
“Didn’t see you for a couple of days,” Leo mentioned.
“I was out of town,” I told him. “I had business in Washington.”
“Politics, Professor?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Always knew you had a good head on your shoulders,” Leo flattered me.
“Had my ass handed to me, Leo,” I said.
“Yeah? Well, welcome back.”
“Thanks.”
I paid my tab and went home, where I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else for the rest of the day if I didn’t want to. And I really didn’t want to.
***
The Vowels of the Earth is out now.
1. Who are you? What are you doing here?