“How come I never learned any of this?” I asked.

“This is all very powerful, very dangerous. There were people, very devout people, great rabbis even, who were not ready to ascend into certain of the divine rooms and never returned. The rabbis they think maybe you should get off your tuchis and learn more about the bolts and the nuts of our religion before you start to potchkeh with the Kabbalah. Maybe learn first to keep the Shabbos and keep kosher and learn to daven every day. They have a point, Victor, no? These are not games or toys. They take intense commitment. True devotion comes from following all God’s mitzvoth. The righteous, they reach a point where every act in their daily rituals is full of meaning and devotion and life itself, it becomes like a meditation.”

“If this is all so darn terrific, how come I never saw it being hawked on an infomercial?”

“Not everything in this world can be bought, Victor,” said Beth.

“Maybe not,” I said, “but have you seen what the stuff Cher sells can do for your hair? Tell me something, Beth. If your friends are so exclusively devoted to the spirit world, why are they so anxious to get their mitts on Jacqueline’s five-million-dollar death benefit?”

Beth looked at me for a moment. “That’s a good question. I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

“Until we find an answer,” I said, “I think you should be extra careful. They might just be as dangerous as they think they are.”

“That’s exactly why I set it up so you’re the one who’s going to ask Oleanna all about it.”

“Oleanna?”

“Tomorrow night, at the Haven. I told her you had some important questions.”

“And the great seer deigned to meet with me?”

“It’s what you wanted, right?”

“Sure,” I said, suddenly and strangely nervous. “What is she like?”

“I think you’ll be impressed,” said Beth, laughing. “She is a very evolved soul.”

“Her past lives were thrilling, no doubt,” I said. “She was a queen or a great soldier or Nostradamus himself. Why is it no one ever sold insurance in their past lives?”

“You should not be scoffing so quickly,” said Morris. “Someday, when you are ready, I’ll tell you of the gilgul. As Rebbe Elazar ha-Kappar once said, ‘Those who are born are destined to die, those who are dead are destined to be brought to life again.’ Be aware, Victor, there is much to learn in this world, and not all of it can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

I stared at him. “Did you ever go to college, Morris?”

“Aacht. It’s a shandeh, really. I regret so much in this life but that I regret most of all. No. I had plans, of course, when I was a boy, the Academy of Science at Minsk, they took Jews, they even taught in Yiddish, and the whole of my family we were saving each day zloty for my fee. I was to be an intellectual, to sip slivovitz in the cafés and argue about Moses Mendelssohn and Pushkin, that was my dream. Then of course the war, it came and plans like that they flew like a frying pan out the window. Just surviving was education enough. I won’t go through the whole megillah, but no, Victor. Why do you ask such a thing?”

“Because I could just see you hanging out in the dormitories, eating pizza, drinking beer from cans, talking all night about the cosmic mysteries of life.”

“And Pushkin, we could maybe discuss Pushkin?”

“Sure, Morris. Pushkin.”

“I don’t even like the poetry so much, I must admit, but the sound of the name. Pushkin, Pushkin. I can’t resist it. Pushkin. Sign me up, boychick, I’m in.”

“He is less the skeptic than you, Victor,” said Beth. “At least he listens and takes it seriously.”

“I tried it, Beth, really I did, I sat on the floor and meditated and examined myself and my life like a detached observer, just as you suggested.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Before or after I threw up?”

“You know, Victor,” said Morris. “A very wise man once said that nausea, it is the first sign of serious trouble in this life. Very serious. Such nausea, it should not be ignored.”

“What, now you’re quoting Sartre?”

“Sartre, Schmatre, I’m talking about my gastroenterologist, Hermie Weisenberg. Maybe what you need is a scope. I’ll set it up for you.”

“Forget the scope.” I gestured at the box. “You sure you can open it?”

“I can try.”

“I thought Sheldon was coming.” Sheldon Kapustin was Morris’s son and a trained locksmith. “I asked for Sheldon.”

“Sheldon, he was busy tonight. He’s of that age now that I want for nothing to get in the way of his social life. A man my age, he should have granddaughters, no? So don’t be disturbing my Sheldon. Besides, who do you think taught him such about locks anyway?”

“You, Morris?”

“No, don’t be silly. A master locksmith named McCardle, but this McCardle he taught me too. Victor, this girl, when is she coming, nu?”

“Any minute now,” I said, and just as I said it my buzzer rang.

Caroline, when she entered the apartment, was nervous and closed. She came right in and sat on the couch, away from the table and the box. She crossed her legs and wrapped her arms around herself. As I introduced Morris and Beth to her, she smiled tightly and lit a cigarette.

After Caroline and I had discovered the bony corpse the night before we pondered what to do with it. We discussed it in tense whispers while we stood over the skeleton hand that pointed skyward from the grave and we both agreed to cover up the pit as best as we could, shoveling back the dirt, stamping it down, replacing as many plants as might survive, leaving the body right there in the ground. It was not like the corpse was going anywhere, and any hot clues as to the perpetrator were already as cold as death. We convinced each other it was to our advantage to not let on to what we had found as we probed further into the Reddman past. So we left it there under the dirt, the bones of that poor dead soul, left it all there except for the gold ring which clung to the bone until, with force and spit, I ripped it free. We took the ring to help us identify the body and once we examined the ring there wasn’t too much doubt about who was there beneath the dirt. The ring had been engraved, in a gloriously florid script, with the initials CCR.

“What’s the word?” I said.

“I checked an old photograph with a magnifying glass,” said Caroline. “It’s her ring, all right.”

“So there’s no doubt,” I said.

“No doubt at all,” she said. “The body we found is of my grandmother’s sister, Charity Chase Reddman.”

WITH CAROLINE SITTING on my couch, smoking, her legs crossed, her arms crossed, sitting there like a shore house boarded up for a hurricane, I brought Morris up to speed on the mystery of the Reddmans. I told him about Elisha Poole, about the three fabulous Reddman sisters, about how Charity, the youngest, had apparently found herself pregnant and then disappeared, seeming to wrest the shackles of her oppressive family off her shoulders and be free, only to turn up eighty years later in a hole in the ground behind the Reddman mansion. Morris listened with rapt attention; it was the kind of puzzle he liked most, not of wood or of stone but of flesh and bone and blood.

I showed him the ring. “What’s this on the inside?” he asked. “My eyes such as they are, I can’t read printing so small as this.”

“ ‘You walk in beauty,’ ” I read from the inside of the band, “and then the initials C.S.”

“Any idea who this C.S. fellow is?” asked Beth.

“Could be anyone,” I tried to say, but Caroline, who had remained remarkably silent during my background report to Morris, interrupted me.

“They were my grandfather’s initials,” she said flatly. “Christian Shaw.”

“What about the inscription?” I asked. “Anyone recognize it?”