The Astrologer's Daughter

by Rebecca Lim

  The look of uncertainty on Simon’s face makes me reach out and give his elbow a tentative squeeze. As we languish by the door, feeling hot and stupid and out of place, Wurbik crosses the room and greets the head waiter, who seems to be expecting us. He’s a young buzz-cut guy in black-framed nerd glasses and a three-piece suit. He shows the three of us to a table for four set up behind one part of a high concrete wave. It’s utterly private back here, and quiet; a pendant shade casting moody light all over our table.

  Wurbik dismisses the hovering waiter but none of us sits. To my look of enquiry, Wurbik replies, ‘He demanded that we approach you to finish the job; chewed Mal’s bosses’ ears off till they said for Mal to make it just go away and he handballed it to me. The police force, you see, believes in astrology like it believes in the tooth fairy.’ He sighs. ‘I’m sure he’ll be here in a minute.’

  ‘I’ll get out of your hair as soon as he does,’ Simon offers. He’d insisted on coming with me, but being here has done something to the way he carries himself. He is hunched over, wary.

  Wurbik, shooting the two of us a shrewd glance, sits himself down at the far end of the table with his notebook out like he’s about to conduct a job interview. I slide into the seat beside him, my back against the concrete curve, regretting my sartorial choices—another polar fleece hoodie over a pair of denim-look leggings—as soon as a fit-looking old man in a navy blazer, pink jumper and pressed chinos, with thinning white hair and a pencil moustache, comes through the gap.

  The waiter holds out a chair deferentially, but the older man comes straight around the table, towards me, and I am engulfed by a cloud of sharp, expensive-smelling cologne. To my right, Wurbik stands, and Simon starts backing towards the door. But I remain frozen in my chair, head tilted up at an awkward angle as the stranger holds his hand out and says smoothly, ‘Avicenna? I’m so sorry to ask at a time like this, but it’s very important to me. And I wanted it “on the record”, so to speak.’

  ‘Because evil never sleeps?’ Wurbik enquires dryly from the other side of the table, and the stranger says, ‘No, it doesn’t,’ without a pause, shaking my hand with a cool, firm grip.

  Simon’s almost made it out of our private area but the old man—still clasping my hand—looks at Simon with his alert blue eyes and says, ‘Stay, stay, young man. I insist.’

  The old man’s speech is full of sharp emphases, like he’s used to giving orders to idiots and having them instantly obey. Simon backtracks towards me, sliding his beanie off his head and into a pocket, while the old man takes the seat beside mine, opposite Wurbik. Simon takes the last one, across from me. I have to remind myself, as I look around the table at all the serious faces, that it’s a Sunday morning, and this is the new normal.

  Pulling my wad of photocopied notes from my backpack, I place them on the table even though I won’t need to refer to them. After I hung up from Wurbik last night, I spent hours analysing Mum’s handwritten notes, the finished chart, doing a progressed one of my own, just to check. And I wonder again, just like Simon did, why on earth anyone would want to know the date and way they were going to die.

  Elias Kircher—the first client in Mum’s current journal—takes out a slim silver voice recorder and places it on the table, pressing the record button. Then he folds his hands together and rests them in his lap. Wurbik looks at the tiny machine then surprises me by sliding out one of his own and placing it beside Kircher’s. It starts with a tiny whirr when Wurbik states his name and rank, the date, place and time.

  ‘We’re here today for a number of reasons,’ Wurbik continues smoothly, like he’s rehearsed it. ‘We called you, sir, because your details cropped up as part of a current investigation. Independently of that call, you rang the hotline, yesterday, after seeing an online news article regarding Joanne Nielsen Crowe.’

  Mr Kircher inclines his head once and says, ‘I called straight away. I was shocked. I’d been expecting her to call me for days, you see, so she was very much top-of-mind.’

  He looks at me then, and it feels like I’m in a play where I don’t know my lines. There’s this sensation, like I’m about to step out into the abyss and there’s no safety net, and I will freefall.

  ‘For the record,’ Wurbik adds, ‘you have been ruled out as a suspect in Joanne Nielsen Crowe’s disappearance and this meeting with her daughter, Avicenna Crowe, also attended by Simon Thorn’—Simon widens his grey-green eyes at me across the table—‘has been instigated at your insistence, Mr Kircher, and doesn’t form part of the official investigation.’

  Kircher’s blue eyes bore into mine as he states, simply, ‘Nevertheless, there are answers, and I want them.’ Then everyone looks at me expectantly.

  I clear my throat, a surge of acid in my stomach. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ I say gruffly.

  ‘But you can, Avicenna,’ Kircher replies, placing his hands on the table in front of him, ‘and that’s the vital thing. The detectives assured me that you possessed your mother’s…talents. Please begin.’

  I push the fancy table settings in front of me to one side so that I am facing him down an expanse of snowy-white cloth. ‘You asked for a horary reading.’ My voice is slow and hesitant. ‘Elias Herman Kircher. You wanted to know the date you are ordained to die.’ I pause to swallow. ‘And you want to know how.’

  Elias Kircher leans forward in his chair, replying softly, but clearly, for the benefit of the voice recorder, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ His face is eager, alight with interest, and his eyes are fixed on me like there is no one else around.

  ‘Uh, okay,’ I continue, discomfited. ‘So your natal chart indicates that you’re a, ah, Capricorn, and your progressed aspects between Jupiter and Neptune—the uh, what did Mum call it? “Millionaire Aspect”—and between Jupiter and Saturn are really very exceptional and bear out your luxurious, um, lifestyle, and ability to get and maintain enormous wealth. But there’s a repeated pattern of afflictions in your fifth and seventh houses—to do with love and marriage, the moon and Venus, you know—which indicates a strong attraction to the, ah, female sex, but a general lack of harmony and support in your relationships. So I’m seeing multiple marriages, lots of divorces. You also have extraordinarily powerful aspects for accumulating property, but as Uranus rules your ninth house, and you see how Jupiter sits right here…?’

  I point to the photocopied chart. Wurbik half stands and pushes the page across the pristine tablecloth to Kircher, who receives it without even glancing at it.

  ‘This indicates constant travel in connection with the maintenance of your wealth and a level of upheaval and risk-taking that—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Kircher’s voice is impatient now. ‘That’s all very well, but it’s really very simple. All I want to know are two things. I don’t want the helicopter-level, tourist’s version of my life. I am living it. I just want to know when and how.’

  I feel the blood whoosh up into my face. ‘I suck at this, I’m sorry,’ I mumble. Mum would have known that this guy took his bad news straight up, no preamble. ‘But Mum’s not here,’ I remind him, ‘and I’m not her. She would know how to tell you. She just had this way with people. I’ve spent my entire life avoiding these kinds of moments.’

  I find myself emphasising my words just like Kircher does, so that the idiot might somehow understand how much he is aski
ng of me.

  ‘And you shouldn’t ask these kinds of questions,’ I add beseechingly. ‘You’re probably really rich and really important and really smart, so you will understand me when I say that these things are self-fulfilling. I’ve seen it, like, a million times before—Mum tells someone what’s going to happen and then it happens. No matter how many times she told them: “These are just planetary conditions, you have the power to influence the outcome, free will, blah, blah, blah.” Whatever she warned them of would just happen. People behave like sitting ducks. Knowing what’s around the corner has the power to make you freeze in place and then it just gets you; the future you’re so scared of. I don’t want to tell you, Mr Kircher. I’m afraid for you.’

  The whole café seems very quiet after I finish talking, as if even the waitstaff, the short-order cooks in their exposed, gleaming, million-dollar kitchen are all listening with bated breath. I’m sweating so furiously that I swipe my forehead, inelegantly, with the back of one hand and it comes away glistening.

  It’s true, I’m afraid for him. I’ve never seen stars like his.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Kircher says, quiet but adamant. ‘I want to know.’ The only sign of nervous anticipation? A single fingerstroke across his neat moustache.

  We stare at each other for a long time before I gesture at Kircher to return the sheet of paper. He looks down, before jabbing his forefinger into the page, and pushing it back across the table. There are smudged notes in lead pencil on the back, scribble only I can read, though I spent hours on it, working long after Simon turned the lights off in the living room. I’d gathered all of Mum’s almanacs around me, with the internet locked and loaded for backup. All in all, I managed maybe a couple of hours’ sleep, tops, before my alarm went off, but I know—like I know my own name—that I’m right. We’re right, me and Mum.

  I’d written:

  Unnatural death signified at the hand of open enemies. Sun, moon, ascendant and ruling sign, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth houses, all afflicted with no mitigating benefic aspects. Multiple eclipses. Multiple malefic angles and planets (both Mars and Saturn). Confirmed by natal vertex rising, conjoined with Neptune.

  I’d only managed to sketch out a shaky-looking chart, because Mum really did take every compass in the house with her and I’d been forced to use my school-issue plastic protractor. But the glyphs are in the right places, progressed by several degrees from Mum’s own, like a dial has been turned, or a focus magnified, because everything moves inexorably forward, time cannot be stopped. And what they say, those glyphs—when read alongside the chart in Mum’s journal—are undeniable. Reading the two charts together is like a slow-motion death-scene tracking shot in a horror movie. The first chart foreshadows the badness to come. But the second?

  I swallow. Taking a deep breath, I hold up Mum’s chart to Kircher’s gaze. ‘An astrologer creates one of these on the basis of the time the question the subject of the horary reading is received and understood. This is the answer Mum came up with based on the meeting she had with you.’ I flip the piece of paper around to show my workings on the back. ‘This is mine. I received and understood “the questions” last night, at 11.13pm, based on my discussions with Detective Wurbik here.’

  Wurbik chimes in with, ‘We actually agreed the time over the phone, both of us looking at our watches. For the, ah, record.’ His voice is faintly sceptical.

  Kircher inclines his head again, in acknowledgment.

  I clear my throat. ‘I have to tell you that the two charts are entirely consistent. I also have to tell you that it is usually very hard to predict a person’s exact date of death with certainty. Astrologers can do it for themselves, obviously, because of their ability to understand the themes present at their own birth, and then read the flowering of that potential in subsequent progressions of their own natal chart.’

  ‘So?’ Kircher says eagerly. ‘Spit it out, child! I’m more than ready to receive the answers. As you might gather, conventional methods have so far failed me.’

  I know every word of what I’ve written off by heart, but I find that I can’t raise my eyes from the page. I’m a terrible coward, because I read aloud the second part first, the how versus the when.

  ‘Death of subject indicated,’ I blurt. ‘Sudden, violent and unnatural death indicated involving spouse and/or some other person related to subject through close business or professional connections. Travel and water indicated, asset of great value indicated that is not fixed. Afflictions associated with the blood indicated. Afflictions associated with swallowing, digestion and lungs also indicated.’

  I pause for breath and Kircher snaps, ‘When? When?’ His eyes are very wide, as if he has recognised something in my words that holds no meaning for me. The three men around the table are leaning forward in their chairs.

  I put my piece of paper down and place my shaking hands flat upon my own words, hiding their awfulness.

  ‘You have a short window,’ I say weakly, ‘maybe a week, eight days at most? Before the conditions change. But I’d say that, uh, any time now would appear to be a ripe time to die. Act accordingly.’

  I cover my mouth with my hands, knowing I have uttered some kind of death sentence for this man. But Elias Kircher beams at me as if I’ve just told him he’s won the lottery. He presses the stop button on his voice recorder with a flourish, calling out to the hovering waiter, ‘Ben? Ben? I think a spot of breakfast is in order.’

  Wurbik and Simon flanked me silently as we crossed back towards the police complex. None of us had felt like eating, so we left the waitstaff fawning over Kircher and his morbid celebratory brunch.

  Wurbik tells Simon and me to wait for him in an empty meeting room that looks and smells almost identical to the one from yesterday. As I fumble my way into one of the swivel chairs, Simon’s voice breaks into my thoughts. ‘Why don’t you do what Kircher suggested? You know, do a, uh, reading for your mum? Maybe it could help? It wouldn’t, like, hurt.’

  He slumps down into the chair beside me, and I see that tug-of-war between belief and disbelief in his expression, too. He’s leaning away from me like he’s almost…afraid.

  Instead of feeling triumph—imagine, Simon Thorn, afraid of me!—I feel sadness. Mum got the same reaction, all the time. Like there was an invisible forcefield between her and the rest of the population. It made her want to reach out even more. She would talk to anyone, anytime. It embarrassed me so much I would often pretend we were not out walking together.

  I swivel to face him. ‘We are men of science, Simo,’ I reply tiredly. ‘How could it possibly help? You saw Kircher’s reaction: he just read whatever he wanted to read into what I told him, and now he’s going to go fall into a six-star swimming pool in Bali, or whatever, and drown because he’s convinced himself that’s the way he’s going to go. I’m interested in finding my mum. I’m not interested in theory. Besides,’ I whisper, picking at some loose stitching on the edge of my chair, ‘I don’t even know when or where she was born; she made sure of that.’

  And I don’t want to do it. Reduce her to symbols. Hold her entire life in my hands. It’s too much. I don’t say that part out loud.

  ‘Oh,’ Simon replies, surprised. ‘Well.’

  Wurbik comes back into the ro
om with my home telephone. ‘Appreciate what you just did,’ he says, taking a seat and sliding the machine across the table to me. ‘Kircher’s been hassling us independently for weeks. Issues with extended family. Thinks they’re after his money, all out to get him. So when he heard your mum had come up with a finished chart and you could read it? Well, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Who’d want to be rich, eh? Whole different set of problems.’

  I look at Simon and he looks away, face shuttered.

  Wurbik leans forward in his chair, his expression suddenly grave. ‘We’re making progress, Avicenna. We’ve got her mobile phone moving through a tollgate to the north-west of the city on the day in question. It pings off a few more towers before going off the grid, but we’re following that up as a matter of urgency, trying to work out exactly where she ended up, how she got there. Keep you informed, of course, every step of the way.’

  The room seems to waver in and out. Wurbik and Simon both put a hand out hurriedly, when it looks like I might pitch forward, face-first. I shake my head weakly to indicate I’m fine, I’m still listening, hair falling all over my face as I jam the base of one palm into my eyes.

  ‘Three other quick things,’ Wurbik says when I finally look up. ‘Good news is you’re not going to starve. That bank account you gave us details for has just over $40,000 in it. You’re cleared to use it again, but let us know if you notice any discrepancies between transactions. Strange things coming in or out, that sort of thing.’