by Kai Meyer
Yellowish light fell through an open doorway that led into another hall, much smaller, but still of considerable length. Maybe this had once been a cafeteria, as the long tables from one side of the room to the other suggested. There were no chairs or benches now. Not far from the entrance, Rosa saw an unmade bed and an open cupboard with dozens of white coats spilling out of it. Large quantities of mugs that had held dried soups were stacked on the floor; all you had to do was add hot water. It looked as if after drinking the soup Sigismondis had simply thrown the empty mugs into a corner, where they formed a tall, stinking heap.
On the long tables stood hundreds of stuffed animals. In pairs, two of each species.
The air smelled like straw and mothballs. There had been some hunting trophies in the Palazzo Alcantara, fox and beaver, even a young wolf. They had smelled the same; you needed only to get close to them to pick up the odor. But here the whole room stank of it.
In passing, Sigismondis put his notepad down on one of the tables and took a full syringe out of a metal dish. Rosa stiffened, but he made no move to attack her. Instead, he began walking down the row of stuffed animals, injecting a few drops into each. After five pairs of animals the syringe was empty, but the next one lay ready. Sigismondis went on down the row with it.
He worked with great care, going from animal to animal, inserting the needle with precision. As he did so, he slowly walked away from Rosa, who was standing near the doorway and who suddenly no longer knew what she really wanted.
The stuffed animals were not Arcadians. She saw martens, polecats, foxes and hares, as well as hawks, owls, and crows. None of the creatures was larger than it would be in nature. After metamorphosis, Arcadians seldom deviated much from their human dimensions. That was why the Harpies had been so murderously large, the Hundinga so strong. But these animals could never have been the captives from the cages.
Sigismondis’s experimental subjects had been exchanged for these. And the old man never noticed that he was not injecting drugs into live bodies but rather into stuffing made of straw or synthetic material.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking after them.”
Sigismondis was now more than ten yards away from her. She started to follow him at a distance. The creatures’ glass eyes watched her.
You don’t belong here, they seemed to want to say. Leave us in peace. Leave him in peace.
“How long have you been doing it?”
“A very long time.”
“Did you look after Costanza, too? And her sons?” She still found it difficult to speak of them in the plural. Sons. Twins. Davide and Apollonio.
Was her father really not responsible for what had happened to her in New York? Had the man in the video been her uncle?
“Look after,” repeated Sigismondis thoughtfully, injecting another dead animal.
“Are you alone down here?”
“No. I am never alone. They are all with me.”
She would have liked to rob him of that illusion out of vengeance because she wanted him to suffer. But she knew it wouldn’t make any difference what she said. He had been living in a world of his own for a long time now.
She slowly followed him, watching every movement he made. If he approached her with a syringe, she would shoot. He might be old and sick, but somewhere in him the monster he had been still lurked. The monster who had abducted Arcadians and made them into hybrids. The monster who was also responsible for everything that had been done to her.
“What happened back then?” she asked, without much hope of an explanation. “What did Costanza have to do with TABULA? And what did my father have to do with the organization?”
He went on working in silence. She was on the verge of snatching the animals off the table in front of him. But she dared not get too close to him.
“What became of my father? He wasn’t in his casket in the family vault. I saw that for myself.” It was making her more and more aggressive to be ignored like this. Or maybe he simply kept forgetting that she was here at all.
He reached the end of a long line of tables, went around to the other side, and moved back in the opposite direction. Pick up a syringe, ten injections, put the syringe down again. Pick up the next one, ten injections, and so on.
She quickened her pace and slowly caught up. Her forefinger was shaking on the trigger.
“Where is he?” she asked. There were only a couple of yards between them now. “Where is Davide Alcantara?”
Sigismondis stopped, without looking at her. “Davide?”
“What happened to him? I was told he died. Was that the truth?”
He repeated the name again, as if now he understood who she was talking about. Slowly, he turned around to her.
“He’s here.”
She aimed at his forehead. Her hand was shaking; her whole arm was shaking up to her shoulder.
“Here?” she whispered.
Then she saw the figure who had silently appeared in the doorway.
“Hello, Rosa,” said the man.
TWINS
SHE SWUNG THE GUN around and took aim.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He stepped out of the shadow of the doorframe into the neon lighting, but he was too far away for her to make out every detail. Yet she recognized him, even after fourteen years. It was something in his appearance, in the sound of his voice.
Cats can’t be tamed, a voice from the past echoed in her head. She had been four at the time. Surprising that she remembered it so clearly. But it was one of the last things he had said to her. Cats can’t be tamed. And: It will hurt you.
“Stay where you are,” she told him. “Don’t move from that spot.”
With a nod, he obeyed. He was wearing a floppy white coat, the kind of thing that scientists put over their clothes when they entered a laboratory. She knew that from movies. All of this was like a movie. The stupid thing was, it was her own story.
“You’re furious with me,” he said gently. “It’s been a long time. I can understand that.” Only now did she realize that he was speaking English to her—and she to him.
“Are you . . . him?” Wonderful! She was stammering like an idiot.
His smile looked mild, even at this distance. “You wouldn’t believe me, I imagine. But Sigismondis? He’s not in any state to think up lies these days.”
She glanced at the old man, still doing his rounds and injecting the stuffed animals. Once again he seemed to have lost all interest in Rosa.
“You’re my father?” she asked the man in the doorway.
“The chances are fifty-fifty, right? And so are the chances of you killing the wrong man if you pull that trigger.”
“You didn’t answer my fucking question!” she shouted.
“I’m Davide Alcantara. And yes, I’m your father. Gemma would tell you so, too, if she were here.”
“If she were here she would shoot you.”
He avoided meeting her eyes. “There was no other option. I had to go. She’d never have understood.”
“Never have understood what?”
He pointed to the way out of the hall. “Come with me. I’ll show you something.”
“I’ve seen those cages. And a video of them when they were still full of Arcadians. The two of you belong to TABULA. You’re mass murderers.”
“No,” he said calmly, pointing to Sigismondis. “Only him.”
“What about Apollonio?”
“My twin brother.”
“I know that. And I also know about his little deal with Tano and Michele Carnevare.”
From a distance, he hardly seemed to have changed. He looked very much a southern Italian, with black hair, skin tanned brown, and dark eyes.
He still didn’t move from his spot. He didn’t seem afraid that she might shoot him. “What Tano and Michele did was appalling. But it has nothing to do with me.”
“Michele filmed it all. I’ve seen the recording. I know exactly who was there.”
“Apollonio wasn’t in his right mind.” Why did he smile when he said that? He knew about all of it, and now he was smiling? “That’s why I killed him.”
“You—”
“Killed him. Right after I heard what he had done to you. He deserved it.” Now she realized that his smile was not cheerful, but cold as ice. The kind you would smile thinking about your worst enemy before shooting him in the kneecaps.
She slowly followed Sigismondis along the tables toward the door. She kept her eye on both of them, although neither man seemed like he was going to attack her. Sigismondis was much too busy injecting the corpses of his animals, while the man who said he was her father just stood there, looking at her.
“Show me your hands,” she demanded.
He did. They were empty.
“Turn around. I want to see your back.”
He obeyed that order, too. No hidden weapons. The white coat had no belt or pockets.
He sighed. “Doesn’t sound like there’s going to be a big hug for our reunion.”
“I was four when you deserted us,” she said. “That’s fourteen years ago. Without any good-byes, without a word to Zoe and me. Mom is heartbroken about it to this day. What did you expect? We’d fall into each other’s arms and I’d tell you how great it is that you just happen to have stumbled back into my life? Not, by the way, because that’s what you wanted, but because I found you. Here in this dump.”
“You sound like your mother.”
And for the first time, she was proud of it. At last she realized how very much she loved Gemma. All the anger she had felt toward her mother for years was really for him.
“I’ve behaved like a bastard,” he said. “But are you going to shoot me for that?”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,” she replied.
“You’re right. I didn’t go looking for you. Meeting again today has nothing to do with paternal feelings—it would be a farce to put on that kind of show for you. We’re here together because you turned up at this place, where, by the way, you have no business being. That’s the truth. But as you are indeed here, I can also show you something. And explain a few things, if you would like that. Maybe it would keep you from pumping your dad full of lead.”
Considering that he had never had much to do with Cosa Nostra in the past and had steered clear of his family’s businesses, the Mafia slang flowed easily from his lips today.
“I’ll go ahead,” he offered, “and you can follow. With your gun at the ready, for all I care. Only do me a favor and don’t trip. That would make this occasion a rather short family reunion.”
“Where are we going?”
He put a conspiratorial finger to his lips, nodding in the direction of the old scientist. “To the real laboratory,” he said quietly. She almost expected a familiar wink, but he didn’t overdo it to that degree.
She glanced at Sigismondis, who was carrying on with his injections at the next row of tables while muttering quietly to himself, and paying them no more attention.
“What’s the matter with him?” she asked.
“He’s been in this state for years. He eats, he sleeps, he works. Or at least, that’s what he thinks.”
“And you’ve been looking after him?”
“Not because I’ve taken him into my heart, believe me. But should I have let him starve? Or shot him?” He pointed to her pistol. “I don’t have your expertise with these things.”
“It’s not by choice.”
“No,” he replied seriously. “I know.”
Only the width of a table still separated them, less than a yard and a half. At close range, she recognized the little lines around his eyes. His lips were rough and cracked, possibly the result of the air-conditioning in the bunker.
“You really do have a lot of explaining to do,” she said, but she did not lower the pistol.
“I guess I do.”
“So why not here?”
“Because you have to see what I’m doing in this place before you can understand why I’m doing it. What’s more, I’m never quite sure how much he really understands. Sometimes he says surprising things, then he goes back to being as helpless as a baby.”
She made a face. “Do you change his diapers?”
“It hasn’t reached that point yet. But you’re welcome to move in with us and make yourself useful.” His tone bewildered her. Caustic but at the same time familiar, as if they had never parted.
“You go ahead,” she said.
He gave her another brief smile, then turned around and went out into the huge hall.
“Slowly.”
“If I was planning to run away, I’d hardly have come here to you and our confused friend, would I?”
He was walking along by the side wall now, next to the outer row of cages, back to the front area with the freight elevator and the stairway. Rosa glanced over her shoulder, to reassure herself that Sigismondis was making no move to follow them. She didn’t like knowing that he was behind her back, but she had to deal with that.
“Is there anyone else down here?”
“No, no one.”
His arms swung at every step, and the material of his white coat rustled. She walked about three yards behind him, watching the shadows of the gratings on the cages pass over him. “My mother worked with TABULA,” he began. “Costanza never had anything in mind but her own gain. I’m sure Gemma has told you about her. In that case, you probably have a good impression of what she was like. A Lamia through and through.”
Curiously enough, this last comment affected her more than she wanted to admit. He hadn’t said it about her, he was speaking of his mother, but it annoyed her to hear him lumping all Lamias in together.
“Costanza was a monster,” he went on, “but all the same, there was someone at least as bad as she was, if not worse. Her mother. She was well over forty when she brought Costanza and her twin sister, Catriona, into the world, and she nearly died at their birth. The clan would have been left almost without a leader, the business would all have been managed by capodecini, by men—unimaginable for a Lamia family. Many of them weren’t too happy when your great-grandmother came back after a few weeks. For her part, she had informed herself in detail about those who had been counting on her death, and she wasn’t squeamish when it came to avenging herself. She had nineteen men murdered in a single night—men who, she thought, wanted to divide her power between them. She was right about some; others were innocent. When it came to Costanza’s right to lead the clan, that made no difference. She didn’t want to run the risk of men determining the history of the Alcantaras again.”
“What does that have to—”
“Everything,” he interrupted her. “It has everything to do with the present situation. And if you want to try to understand what drove Costanza, then you must know the background. So let’s fast-forward thirty-five years. By now Costanza and Catriona are grown women, but their mother is also still alive, and in her early eighties she still won’t allow anyone but herself to direct the Alcantara affairs. She is sick, maybe already slightly confused, but she can’t let go of her power, or bring herself to name one of her daughters as her successor.
“Catriona can live with that; she hasn’t inherited her mother’s ambition. Costanza, on the other hand, is consumed by hatred for the old woman, who doesn’t trust her to lead the clan. Sigismondis, still in the early stages of his research into the Arcadians at the time, gets wind of the existence of a Lamia who is making no secret of her dissatisfaction. And he sees that this is his chance to get insider knowledge about the structure of the Arcadian dynasties. He makes contact with her, promises her God knows what, maybe impresses her with his knowledge or his vision . . . Well, however exactly he manages it, Costanza begins supplying him with information about some of the dynasties. Of course, only those who are not well-disposed to the Alcantaras, enemies who are also waiting for the old woman to make a mistake so that they can finally get their hands on the fami
ly’s businesses. In that way, Costanza succeeds in eliminating several of the worst adversaries of the Alcantara clan—she simply ensures that those Arcadians are the first to be abducted by TABULA and to end up on Sigismondis’s dissecting table.
“The old woman doesn’t guess anything about that, but she is gradually coming to realize that she doesn’t have long to live. And at last she decides to make one of the two twin sisters her successor in her own lifetime. But neither Costanza nor Catriona has children, in spite of various love affairs, and the old woman begins to worry about the continuation of her bloodline. She commits herself to making whichever of them first brings a daughter into the world her successor, remembering only too well how the late birth of her twins almost cost her her life, and the clan its female leadership, and she does not want such a thing to happen again, not at any price.
“Costanza and Catriona, although they are twins, do not get on very well. Catriona is the happy-go-lucky one, men dangling at her fingertips. Costanza thinks her sister might get pregnant just to spite her. She herself has tried in vain, in the past, to have a child, and she fears she might be infertile. And who do you think she remembers in that situation? Who maybe even owes her a few favors?”
“Dr. Frankenstein,” said Rosa.
He looked over his shoulder as they approached the end of the rows of cages. “You’ve inherited her subtle sense of humor as well as her good looks.”
“Go to hell.”
Laughing quietly, he gazed ahead of him again. “The trump card up her sleeve is indeed Sigismondis, the authority on the subject of genetic research. And she makes a deal with him. Sigismondis has been experimenting for a long time with methods that we would call artificial insemination today—even with cloning. Though at the time those terms were not in wide use. All this happened a few years before the birth of the first official test-tube baby. And Sigismondis’s practices were entirely different from those used today for fertilization in vitro. He was always obsessed with old formulas and experiments, the precepts of alchemy, and everything that had a reputation for being forbidden and mysterious. There’s been a secret society known as TABULA since time immemorial, but before Sigismondis came upon it and shook the whole thing up it consisted of a few old fools drinking tea together in dusty libraries. He made TABULA what it is today.”
