At the Heart of the Universe by Samuel Shem Read Free Book Online Page A

When Rhett finishes, the chief gives a slight smile. When he speaks, his voice reveals vocal chords weathered by many years of barely cured tobacco, an unpaved roadway along which his words jounce and swerve crazily. The chief says that this is a new police station and there are no records from the old police station.
    Clio’s face falls. The chief is still smiling, but the smile is now more malicious than welcoming. He is in charge and there is no question he can’t counter. Clearly this interview, for him, has a low degree of difficulty. “I understand,” she says, “that there are no records of our daughter Katie, but can I ask you about the general policy of the police station in dealing with abandoned babies, with foundlings?”
    The chief nods. Answering Clio’s series of questions and follow-up questions, he seems frank, clear, and matter-of-fact, even bored at telling her the obvious, things of little interest to him. The police get a call from someone who finds a baby where it has been left, almost always in a public place—a railway station bench, a bus station, a busy street corner or park at dawn where the people are gathering to start their tai chi, a busy market, under an overpass where merchants sell things, the front step of a department store. There is even a hole—a kind of ledge in a wall at the entrance to the Martyr’s Park—that is known to be a place where babies can be safely put. The baby is always left where it will be found right away. Whoever finds it knows to call the police. The police go and pick up the baby, bring it back to the police station, make a record of it, take the baby to the orphanage. Each police station has been assigned an orphanage. His is Changsha Social Welfare Center Number One. Katie’s orphanage.
    â€œIs there ever anything left with the baby when it is found?”
    Sometimes, the chief says, there is a note pinned to the baby’s swaddling clothes, which has the date of birth and the name. Is there ever anything more? Never, says the chief. Never ? Clio asks. The chief, with a certain smugness, says maybe once or twice there is a message. What does the message say? The chief shrugs. Can you remember what any of the messages were? Another shrug.
    â€œAre you saying that you don’t read them or you just don’t care?”
    â€œEasy does it, Clio,” Pep says, finding himself suddenly drenched in sweat. The chief turns and looks at him, amused at seeing the first fracture of the marital whole. “You don’t have to translate that, Rhett—”
    â€œGo ahead, Rhett.”
    Rhett glances at Pep, and Pep senses that he also doesn’t want to offend the chief. Smiling, Rhett translates. But before the chief can answer, another policeman walks in. He too is hefty, but not quite as hefty, imposing, but not quite as imposing, and without acknowledging the existence of anyone but the chief he hands two small plastic envelopes to him. The chief opens them—two brass medals suspended from red ribbons. The chief admires the medals, and tucks them into his shirt pocket. The other policeman leaves. As if his receiving these two medals has somehow erased whatever latest pointless question Rhett has asked, the chief sits back and says nothing.
    â€œWhat do you do with the notes, the messages?” Clio asks.
    Rhett translates. The chief smiles and makes the gesture of lighting a match and holding it to a piece of paper, watching as it turns to ashes.
    Tears come to Clio’s eyes. Oh God don’t, don’t cry here now! She wipes them away with her hand but they keep coming. All at once on a wave of sorrow she is back in Columbia a dozen years ago, waking up one night beside her husband and feeling crampy in her stomach, no, lower down in her womb! Three months pregnant. After all the anxiety of trying to conceive, all the humiliation of charting her fertile period and calling Pep up wherever he