The After-Room

by Mailie Meloy

  Janie felt dismayed, and tried another tack. “There’s an idea in your letters—” she began.

  The poet drew himself up in indignation and stretched to an astonishing height, his head drifting up toward the ceiling. “A lady should never read a gentleman’s letters!”

  “But—they’re published!” she said. “Lots of people have read them. They’re famous.”

  He drifted back down to size, curious. “How did the publishers get them?”

  “From your friends, I guess,” she said. “And from Fanny’s children.”

  “Her children?” His face wavered and pulsed with horror.

  “She mourned you for a long time, before she married.”

  “Married!” he wailed.

  “But—she was so young when you died. Wouldn’t you have wanted her to have a life?”

  He recovered himself. “Of course. Of course I would. I did. I do.”

  “So, you wrote in your letters about ‘negative capability.’”

  Keats looked eager again, and Janie wondered if his moods had shifted this quickly in life, or if it was just part of his ghostly driftiness. Mercurial, that was the word. “Of course!” he said. “Did you understand it?”

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Well?”

  She felt self-conscious. She had been excited by the idea of negative capability when she first read about it. She thought it was something like what the old gardener had told them, back in the Chelsea Physic Garden—the thing that had made her believe she might actually become a bird. But she had never expected to be quizzed on the concept by the poet himself. “It means—that you don’t always need rational explanations,” she said. “You can trust that mysterious things happen, and live with the strangeness of it, and allow for many different possibilities. So your mind isn’t bound by rationality, I guess. You thought Shakespeare had it.”

  “Yes!” he said. “Exactly!”

  “You have it, too,” she said, encouraged. “That’s why I think you can find this man who was killed. He died in Rome, not that long ago, and no one knows how.”

  Keats shook his head, blurring his features. “There are so many people out there. You have no idea.”

  “But I think this one is close by!” she said. “He might even know that we’re talking about him now. He might be hovering, like you used to hover around this house. Just think about it for a minute, and see if you can find him. His name is Carlino. Please try. And then I’ll find out where Fanny is for you.”

  The look on the poet’s face when she said Fanny’s name was touching. He had really loved her. “Oh—very well!” he said. “Let me think.”

  He closed his eyes. As Janie watched, his transparent body seemed to lose form, to drift apart into a nebulous cloud, as if he were no longer an individual being, with an individual’s memory. He was merging, becoming part of something larger. And the room seemed to drop in temperature. Janie shivered. It was hard to judge the time passing, but she thought he had been dissipated in that formless cloud of smoke for several minutes.

  Then the high-collared frock coat materialized, together with the spilling curls and the handsome, expressive young face. “I have the answer!” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “But it’s terribly sad.”

  “What is it?”

  The poet folded his misty arms. “First you find what happened to Fanny! I must know that you know!”

  “Fine!” Janie scanned the bookshelves and found a biography of John Keats. She pulled it down, and looked in the index under the Bs:

  Brawne, Fanny, 124–6, 137–9, 165;

  marriage 362;

  death 368

  She flipped back to page 368, the poet watching her expectantly. She felt a little nervous. Was she doing the right thing? Would Fanny want to see him? The poet had been Fanny’s first love, who died tragically. If Benjamin died, and Janie lived fifty more years and married someone else, and they were all long dead, would she still want to see Benjamin? But it wasn’t even a question. Of course she would.

  “Well?” the poet asked.

  Janie hugged the open book to her chest. She didn’t trust him; he could just drift through walls and leave. “I have it. But you go first.”

  He sighed. “All right. Your Carlino wasn’t murdered. He was delivering a package by the river, waiting for someone on the bank. A bird flew up out of the brush and startled him, and he stumbled and fell in. Near the Piazza del Popolo. He couldn’t swim, and his clothes were heavy, and maybe he’d had a few drinks. And he drowned.”

  “He just drowned?” she said.

  “It happens!”

  “So no one did it, no one pushed him.”

  “An accident. Terribly sad. He’s very sorry, apologizes to his friend, says something about a sack of stolen potatoes, as proof that the message is from him. Now—where is my Fanny?”

  Janie read from the book. “She died in London, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. She was sixty-five. Her married name was Fanny Lindon.”

  “Sixty-five!” Keats said. “And married! My lovely Fanny!”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “But I must go to London at once!” And he passed through the bookcase and disappeared, off to find Fanny Brawne.

  Janie slid the book back onto the shelf and ran past the empty ticket desk, down the stairs, and out into the Piazza di Spagna. She had to get back to the hotel to tell Rocco and Benjamin what she knew.

  Chapter 34

  A Squall

  On a clear twilit evening, Jin Lo slept while Ned Maddox steered the boat north along the coast of China. She was dreaming of flying, searching for barrels that contained something she couldn’t identify, when she heard him call her name.

  She ran up on deck and Ned Maddox pointed to the horizon. A fishing boat, larger than theirs, was steering to intercept them, and powering along at a deliberate pace. All thoughts of sleep were gone.

  “Pirates,” she said.

  With her supplies from the herbalist, she had prepared two bottles of liquid, and now she uncorked both, pouring them together into a bucket of water. A fine mist rose up, and quickly coalesced into a dense cloud. It started to grow.

  “What is that?” Ned Maddox asked.

  “A storm, to protect us.”

  The cloud rose above them, gathering strength, a column of dark, roiling fog. “Does it know it’s supposed to protect us?” he asked.

  The pirates had drawn closer, and Jin Lo saw a stout woman on the deck, in simple black cotton clothes, with her hair pulled severely back. Beside her stood Danby, tall and thin, with his white forelock. Jin Lo’s intuition had been right, he had followed her, but she wasn’t ready for him yet.

  The dark cloud picked up moisture and enveloped the boat, so they couldn’t see their pursuers. Rain began to fall.

  “Go faster,” Jin Lo said, and Ned Maddox pushed the throttle forward.

  As they ran, they carried the storm with them, pouring out of the bucket, seeding the clouds overhead and sucking up water from the sea. The pirates would have a long, snaking squall to fight their way through, and heavy winds. Lightning shot out of the cloud. Jin Lo squinted into the rain that pelted her face.

  “How do you know that lightning won’t hit us?” Ned Maddox shouted.

  “We’ll outrun it,” she said.

  “I can’t see anything!” he shouted, rain in his eyes.

  But the storm was exhilarating, and finally they broke through into the clear twilight. Jin Lo was oddly elated. Danby was still behind her, still within reach. The storm trailed in their wake, the pirates lost in it, but Ned Maddox raced on ahead.

  Chapter 35

  A Telegram

  Janie ran all the way from the Keats house to the Hotel Majestic. The doorman wasn’t outside. She ran past the fron
t desk and up the stairs around the slow elevator cage. On the top floor, dizzy and breathless, she knocked on the door of Rocco’s suite.

  No one answered.

  She knocked again, and called, “Benjamin?”

  Nothing. She put her ear to the door and heard no voices and no movement.

  She descended the carpeted stairs more slowly, thinking. At the reception desk, she asked if Mr. Rocco had gone out.

  “You are a moment too late, miss,” the clerk said. “He has left the hotel.”

  “What about the boy who was with him?” Janie asked.

  The man shrugged.

  “Did they leave a message for me? My name is Janie Scott.”

  The man rummaged among the papers on his desk, then shook his head.

  Janie went outside. She looked up and down the curving avenue. It didn’t make any sense. She felt in her pocket for the jar of powder. At least she still had that. But why would Benjamin leave? Why wouldn’t Rocco wait for the news about his friend?

  She started walking down the hill, and ran into the boy Primo. “Sai dov’è Benjamin?” she asked.

  Primo shook his head.

  “Gli altri?” she said. “Vili? Doyle?”

  He nodded and tugged at her sleeve, then led her on a bewildering path between buildings to Vili’s flat. The count’s face was shaven when he opened the door, but he looked careworn.

  “Is Benjamin here?” she asked.

  “No,” Vili said, frowning. “He’s not at the hotel?”

  “No one’s there. They’ve left.”

  “Oh dear,” he said. He produced some coins from his pocket and gave them to Primo with instructions in rapid Italian. The boy scampered off down the street, and Vili stepped aside to let Janie into the flat.

  Doyle was sitting on the couch in the sitting area, his long legs stretched out on the rug. “So?” he said. “What news of the dead guy?”

  “He wasn’t murdered,” she said. “He fell into the river.”

  “Oops,” Doyle said. “You really talked to the poet? To Keats?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But now no one’s at the hotel. Why didn’t you stay with Benjamin?”

  “What, now I’m a babysitter?” Doyle said.

  “You got him into this!”

  “A telegram arrived from Jin Lo,” Vili said. “It was forwarded from my house in Luxembourg. Primo brought it to me, and I came back here to translate it. I thought it was safe to leave the hotel. Rocco is a man of his word.”

  Janie was torn between concern for Benjamin and curiosity about the telegram. Jin Lo had been out of contact for so long. “What did she say?”

  “She thinks an atomic weapon has been stolen from the Americans, to be used against China. She’s trying to find it.”

  Janie felt as if alarm bells were going off all around her head. “Can we go to her?”

  “Not in time.”

  “Maybe we could fly as birds.” Of course that was impossible, but when she pictured Jin Lo without anyone to help her, it made her feel desperate.

  “It’s much too far,” Vili said. “And far too dangerous.”

  “I’d like to fly as a man in an airplane, back to Michigan,” Doyle said.

  Janie turned on him, all her helpless frustration finding a target. “You can’t leave. You know too much. You already sold out Benjamin once.”

  Doyle held up his hand. “I give you my solemn word that I will keep your secrets.”

  “That’s worth nothing. And if an American bomb goes off in China, and Russia attacks the United States, you won’t be safe at home.”

  “Then my number’s up,” Doyle said. “At least I’ll be home.”

  “You could help us stop it,” Janie said.

  “An atomic bomb? You’re out of your mind.”

  “You can do things we can’t.”

  “Yes,” Doyle said. “I can understand when I’m out of my depth. That’s a specialty of mine.”

  “We’ll make you a new filter,” she said, because that was the one thing she knew Doyle wanted. “A better one.”

  Doyle scowled, but she felt his interest rising. “Look, I’m not a good team player,” he said. “Cooperation puts me in a vile mood.”

  “That’s the deal,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

  He eyed her, and she knew he was reading her mind. “You’re not sure if Benjamin can make a better one,” he said.

  “No, but we’ll try.”

  They stared each other down. Doyle’s talents might be useful, but he really was a pain in the neck.

  “All right,” Doyle said. “But you have to stop thinking what a jerk I am.”

  “Well, stop being a jerk, and I’ll stop thinking it!”

  “Let’s hear the telegram, and I’ll explain why all your plans are stupid.”

  “That’s not helpful,” she said.

  “I’m already having regrets about this,” Doyle said. “Just tell me exactly what your China girl said.”

  So Count Vili spread out the pages on which he’d decoded Jin Lo’s message. The essence was this: Jin Lo believed that a U.S. Navy commander had removed a nuclear artillery shell from his ship. His only son had been killed in the shelling of the islands. The commander, disappointed that there had been no U.S. retaliation against China, had taken the shell and disappeared. Jin Lo was trying to find him, and believed he was headed up the Grand Canal to Beijing.

  “That hasn’t been in the news,” Janie said. “I mean the stolen shell. Has it?”

  “I imagine the U.S. Navy is keeping it quiet,” Vili said. “It would be a great embarrassment.”

  “Does Jin Lo have a plan?”

  “She seems to be in pursuit. And to have an ally in the navy.”

  “And if she finds the commander?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t say.”

  They sat in silence. Janie toed the expensive-looking rug. China was so far away. When they had gone after the hydrogen bomb in Nova Zembla, it had taken Vili and Mr. Burrows and Benjamin and Jin Lo, all working together, to stop it. What could Jin Lo do on her own?

  Doyle was the first to speak, still lounging on the couch. “Holy smoke, you idiots do need me,” he said. “Sheesh.”

  Janie looked up at him.

  “You don’t see it?” he said. “You go to the kid!”

  “What kid?”

  “The commander’s son,” Doyle said. “He’ll know where his father is.”

  “He’s dead,” Janie said.

  He rolled his eyes. “You go through your After-lounge!”

  Janie finally saw what he meant. “But Benjamin isn’t here.”

  “Benjamin’s no use! You told Rocco he couldn’t go today, because he’d get sick.”

  That was true. “So?”

  Doyle sighed. “So you go.”

  “Me?” Janie said.

  “You took the powder too, right? For your secret love chats? And that’s what creates the link?”

  Janie began to feel apprehensive. Go to the After-room herself? “I don’t think Benjamin would want that,” she said.

  “Oh, I misunderstood,” Doyle said, with a sarcastic smirk. “I thought you wanted to save the world from nuclear war. But what you really want is to preserve your boyfriend’s morbid attachment to his dead papa, and his condescending ideas about what you can and can’t do.”

  “Stop it!” she said.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “It’s dangerous there!”

  “But you don’t have the emotional investment that Benjamin has,” Doyle said. “So it will be much safer for you. And anyway, I’ll talk you through it.”

  She looked to Vili, whose advice she trusted. “Vili?”

  Vili looked conflicted. “He might be right. If you want to go. It
might be our only way to help Jin Lo.”

  “But how would I find the commander’s son? There are so many dead people! And he died in China!”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Doyle said, pushing himself up out of the couch. “Why is this so difficult? You just try it and see! You found the other dead guy. You have the powder?” He grabbed a water glass.

  “Now?” Janie said.

  “Now!”

  “I’m scared,” Janie said. Her lungs felt tight, all of a sudden. She understood why Benjamin couldn’t breathe, when he went.

  “We’ll be right here,” Vili said.

  “It’s like the high dive at the pool,” Doyle said, filling the glass from the tap. “You can’t think about it too much, and stand there shivering. You just go.”

  Chapter 36

  The Afterworld

  At first there was nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the fear that she would fail. She kept her eyes closed and tried to push the fear away. She had to think about the apothecary, to make the connection.

  She thought about the time Mr. Burrows had taken a dead-looking tree that only bloomed every seven years, and made it burst into a cloud of white blossoms. There had been a pleased, boyish look on his face at the moment when the huge flowers burst forth, and she’d had the strange impulse to tell him he’d done a good job. It was hard to imagine Mr. Burrows as a boy, and she wondered if he had been stubborn and impatient with his own father, like Benjamin was. He was so deliberate and careful, always working out some problem behind his spectacles.

  Then she thought about the trip back from Nova Zembla, where Benjamin had almost died, and how upset the apothe­cary had been. And she remembered the apothecary’s own death, how he had struggled with his last breath to tell Benjamin not to get caught up in bitterness and regret, so that he could carry on their work.

  The darkness behind her eyelids changed and deepened, and then she was in another place. She understood why Benjamin had called it a room. It had a boundary that surrounded her on all sides, with a feeling of space beyond. The silence was complete—no birds outside, no Rome traffic, no sounds of Vili and Doyle shifting or breathing.