O'Brien's Desk - Ona Russell

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painfully empty. She had never before read about his exploits in the evening. But she had never been here alone before either. One rare event surely deserved another.

      Sarah couldn’t remember precisely when her flirtation with the master detective had become an habitual affair. She did know that beginning the day with him and the trusty Dr. Watson was good for her. Not only did the practice sharpen her mind, but it made her more empathetic. If the order, the logic, the impeccable deciphering of clues in the story encouraged her to think more analytically, the problems surmounted by the fictional cast made her better understand those faced by the real people she encountered at court. Not that her reading was limited to the works of the popular Arthur Conan Doyle. Not by a long shot. But more demanding literature she saved for the privacy of her living room. There she had tackled everything from Milton to Austen, Dostoevsky to some of the recently published poems by Emily Dickinson. Last month she had even made it through, although not entirely comprehended, the new translation of Emile Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. But it was Doyle’s larger-than-life, eccentric protagonist who inspired her in the quotidian present.

      Over the years she had become fascinated with Doyle, too, a man whose complexity nearly matched that of his most celebrated character. A physician turned writer, Doyle possessed both the logic and imagination necessary for each of those professions. He even claimed to believe in the paranormal, and while Sarah didn’t go quite that far herself (her rather embarrassing participation in the telepathist performance last fall notwithstanding), she admired someone of his intelligence admitting that things existed that reason alone could not explain.

      It was, however, Doyle’s acute sense of justice that Sarah found the most compelling. Like the time he demonstrated that a man convicted of having slashed a number of horses and cows couldn’t have committed the crime because of poor eyesight. Or the incident involving Sir Roger Casement. Though adventure fantasy wasn’t her type of story, she had read Doyle’s The Lost World because the character of Lord John Roxton was based on Casement, an Irish diplomat accused of trying to get Germany’s support for the Irish independence movement. Casement had previously alerted Doyle to the terrible injustices committed against blacks in the Congo, and when Doyle felt that Casement had become the victim of injustice himself, he offered his support. Convicted of being a traitor in 1916, Casement was eventually put to death, but not before Doyle almost succeeded in sparing his life.

      Sarah reached into her emergency candy jar with one hand and turned to the final paragraph of The Last Bow with the other. She had read the story once before, and therefore already knew that Holmes averts the death of thousands by infiltrating a German spy ring. But the plot was only part of the pleasure. Words themselves were comforting. As were the familiar characters. If they were interesting enough, what did it matter that they repeated themselves?

      Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it’s time that we were on our way. I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if he can.

       “Done.” She closed the magazine and sighed with a familiar mixture of satisfaction and loss. Finishing a story was always like a little death, no matter how many times one had read it. Best to begin another immediately. Next on her list, The Valley of Fear, the only full-length Holmes novel she hadn’t yet read. She would start it bright and early tomorrow.

      She slipped on her outfit, exchanged her tortoise shell comb for one with pearl studs, and added a pair of matching drop earrings. She sighed again and frowned. What was bothering her? She couldn’t place the feeling. Too much chocolate? The disruption to her pattern? Perhaps the story’s not quite-so-happy ending. Generally, of course, it was optimistic. But, as Holmes had rightly predicted through his metaphor of the east wind, bad had to precede the good. For the story was published in 1914, when England’s worst days of the Great War still lay ahead.

      Sarah walked rapidly down the long corridor that led to the stairs. With the building empty, her Cuban heeled, brown patent leather shoes echoed loudly, drawing her gaze momentarily toward the floor, where once again she saw her reflection. The marble here was duller than upstairs, her image fuzzier, the outline of her more formally attired shape blurred. And that gave her pause. If the same tortured soul she had conjured up earlier had been waiting down here instead, he might have very well decided to stick with his lie, the entire course of his life altered by something as minor as a slight shift in location. She gave a departing look around the court’s hallowed halls and exited feeling queasier than ever. Chilled rather than refreshed by the cool breeze that was starting to gather force, she headed quickly for the theater, wondering when the approaching storm would touch ground.

      Ironically, it was on a balmy Friday evening, about one week later.

       Celebrating a break in the oppressive humidity that lasted nearly the whole month of July, Sarah had decided to walk rather than take the streetcar home. The courthouse gradually disappeared as she strolled past Adams, Monroe and Madison to Summit, where she had an unobstructed view of the Maumee, the deep ribbon of water that wound its way through the industrialized southeast section of Toledo and emptied gracefully into vast Lake Erie. Framing the city skyline— a cluster of domes and uneven box-like structures—the Maumee served as the harbor of Toledo and a major port of the Midwest. In recent years several new draw bridges had been constructed over it, including the steel and concrete Cherry Street Bridge with a lift span to accommodate large ships. As in much of the country, these were booming years in Toledo, and the Maumee, though only navigable for about twelve miles from its mouth on lake Erie, contributed greatly to the city’s economic prosperity.

      When Sarah looked out and observed the relentless flow northward, she felt a sense of continuity, a belonging to something larger than herself. Gazing out at the water’s soft swells she was temporarily transported in time and space. At moments like this, the inner workings of the city, the quest for money, and particularly the corruption that accompanied it faded from view, and she could almost imagine turning around to find the buildings replaced with the lush primeval marshland upon which they were originally built.

      She sighed. But, of course, the river had its dark side, too. Flooding had repeatedly occurred during spring thaws, steamers had broken away from their moorings while docked on its shores, and people in despair had used it as their last resort.

      Sarah continued walking, past her beloved Madison bookstore with the scandalous new work by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the window, past Steton’s Shoe Shop, past the full stock of Victrolas on display in Grinnell’s. A Citizen’s Ice truck, parked in the street for a delivery and lilting like the Tower of Pisa, halted the elegant glide of a jet black Paige Fairfield “Six-46” and momentarily blocked her own path. After maneuvering around it, she picked up speed. The exercise and fresh air had sparked her appetite for the home-cooked meal she knew would be awaiting her. A relaxing dinner and perhaps a game of cards with her brother and sister with whom she shared a small house on Fulton Street was just what she needed after a long week in court.

      First she would light the Sabbath candles, since the sun had already begun to set. Sarah partook in this weekly ritual not because she was devout, but rather to honor her parents who had long ago passed away. God, she felt, was subject to interpretation, Judaism no more or less correct than any other religion. But, as German-Jewish immigrants, her parents had experienced episodes of vicious antisemitism, and Sarah felt that if she abandoned her traditions entirely, their suffering would have been in vain. Besides, the history of her people served as a continual cautionary tale. As someone born a Jew, she could never become complacent. Although she had found a level of acceptance in Toledo, many in the city were vehemently antisemitic. As others had done in the past, they would seize any opportunity to blame the Jews for the ills of the world.

      As head of the Women’s Probate Court and now probation officer of the Juvenile Court as well, Sarah had followed the lead of other Jews at the time, who, while discouraged from serving in medicine, law, and other professions,

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