"A man who builds a tower that only rises when two people lift together," Roz said, "wasn't building something to sit still behind glass."
Corinne looked at her over her glasses for a long time.
"During Advent. On a new drive, fully reversible, nothing original drilled. Built by the only two people alive who can read that notebook, one of whom I removed for an excellent reason." She sighed. "He'll do it as an outside contractor, with Mr. Pawlak, under my registrar. Unpaid — he already offered, in a very long email at two in the morning that I'm choosing not to have read. My counsel hates this." She signed the amendment. "Thirty-five years I've acquired things from families, Ms. Achterberg. I have never acquired anything from a floor. I find it humbling."
VII.
They took it apart over three days in January, in the closed-off rotunda, the tall windows full of white winter light. Lucjan worked from the top down, the way Benedek had taught him; Elliot worked beside him; two art handlers from Chicago in black aprons numbered and photographed and wrapped. Roz came every day in her father's sweater and was allowed to hold things.
She learned that there were pencil marks under every tier in Benedek's hand — *here, this way, careful, Lucek* — the last written in 1973, the first year Lucjan was trusted to reassemble it alone. She learned that Lucjan had carved *L.P. '74* inside the third-tier ring and told no one for fifty-two years, and that he was boyishly pleased when Elliot found it and photographed it for the file. She learned that Elliot hummed the same four notes when he concentrated and did not know it, and that Benedek had done exactly the same. She learned that the tower, lifted out at last and laid on a padded table, weighed less than a loaf of bread.
And she learned she was still angry with Elliot Varga, and that it was not a simple anger, and that it did not go away because he was right and gentle and good with his hands.
She told him so on the second night, in the Shop, after everyone had gone. He sat at Benedek's bench copying the drive mechanism from the oilcloth notebook into a sketchbook of his own.
"I'm still angry. About the grandfather. I understand why you didn't tell me. I even think you were right about the report. But the first thing I ever learned about you that mattered, I found out by accident, in a basement, with a clock running. In two weeks I won't have a job or a building or a reason to get up at five-thirty. I don't know who I am on the first of February. I can't start something with a man when the first thing I knew about him was the thing he chose not to say."
The pipes ticked. He was quiet a long time.
"Then I'll tell you things," he said. "On purpose. As slowly as you want." He turned the notebook toward her, to a page near the back: a pencil drawing of a boy of seven at a lathe, tongue between his teeth. "That's me. He drew it the summer before he died. I didn't know it was here until that night. I've been trying for a month to tell you without it sounding like a bid for sympathy. So — that's the first thing."
She looked at it for a long time. "What's the second?"
"I'm not asking you for anything. Not on the first of February. You should get to close the store without anyone standing next to you wanting something."
"And after?"
"After, you'll know where to find me. Chicago. The one with the screwdriver."