Escape

by Anna Fienberg

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Part I The Last Supper Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part II The Adoration Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part III The Birth of Venus Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part IV The Resurrection Chapter 35

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Anna Fienberg has written more than forty well-loved books for children and young adults. Since her first Children's Book Council of Australia award for The Magnificent Nose and Other Marvels, she has gone on to win many others, including the 1993 Victorian Premier's Prize for Ariel, Zed and the Secret of Life and the CBCA Honour Award for Borrowed Light (selected as a 2001 American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults). Her ever-popular 'Tashi' series has been translated into nineteen languages. She lives in Sydney. Escape is her first book for adults.

  Escape

  Anna Fienberg

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Escape

  ePub ISBN 9781864714463

  Kindle ISBN 9781864716900

  A Bantam book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Bantam in 2009

  Copyright © Anna Fienberg 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Fienberg, Anna.

  Escape.

  ISBN 978 1 86325 668 1 (pbk).

  A823.3

  Cover design: debbieclementdesign.com

  Cover image: Getty Images

  Typeset in Arno Pro 12.5/16 pt

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia

  Random House Australia uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Between light and shade there is an intermediate state,

  something twofold, belonging to both, resembling a light

  shadow or a dark light. This it is that you must seek, for it holds

  the secret of perfect beauty.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  In memory of Goliarda Sapienza

  Part I

  The Last Supper

  Chapter 1

  I used to think time was endless, easy to spend, cheap as socks. Now I know better.

  It's five o'clock already, and when I pull up outside my house, I know this evening will be a disaster. The plastic bags stuff ed with veal, capsicum, eggplant, spring onions, mushrooms, champagne and dinner rolls cut into my arms as I haul them out of the car and up the stone path. They'll leave angry red marks, like slashes, just below my elbow. Twenty years ago the marks would have vanished in seconds. Now it takes ages. But that isn't what I'm worried about.

  No, what I'm worried about right now is how late it is and I haven't even started on the dinner. My mother and father will be arriving in an hour for Clara's Last Supper, and I've only just bought the ingredients. The house is a mess, with little balls of fluff whirling around the cork floor like tiny twisters from those flat treeless plains that have lost all their topsoil due to ruthless deforestation and there's something rotting in the fridge. Every time it's opened a dead animal smell seeps out, reminding me of the aroma accompanying the rat which died in the cupboard beneath the laundry sink. Or maybe it's just the stracchino.

  At the front door I consider knocking instead of putting the five bags down on the dirty doorstep while I use the key. But there'd only be the wait while my husband ignores the first knock, hoping whoever it is will go away, then the wave of irritation as he opens the door, fails to greet me, and trudges back down the hall senza even one plastic bag.

  Each time I looked at Guido when we first married, I felt faint with love. Now I often think I might faint with rage. 'Perhaps I'll get cancer,' I said hopefully to Doreen the other day, describing my sliding sensations. 'If I got cancer, I wouldn't have to make any decisions, about anything.'

  'You should come down to the oncology department,' Doreen snapped, 'and see what real cancer does to you. Maybe then you'd appreciate your options.'

  I've known Doreen since our children were little but lately I think she's losing patience with me. It's a shame, because she is the only person I can talk to about the gathering chaos.

  I am a walking shame. A good woman would never complain about the weight of nourishing food she is carrying home to her family. She would be grateful. I had to switch off the television last night, unable to watch another swollen-bellied child with stick legs looking at me as I ate the four squares of dark chocolate I'd been looking forward to since lunchtime. And you're not even happy, chided the voice.

  And now I'll be late putting the veal on to roast. I wish there was such a thing as a magic broom. Tonight should be a joyous night. Celebratory. But just the thought of Clara's going away makes my stomach turn over. When she made her shock announcement, only seven weeks ago, so many feelings rose up in my throat that I had to stand still until everything settled, like a bottle of fizzy drink that's been shaken up.

  I've never liked surprises, at least not unless they were the magic kind. My favourite television show when I was eight was full of them – startling, miraculous surprises, suggesting anything was possible. Dean was the handsome magician and Jean was his assistant. In the world of magic the man always gave the orders, but I didn't care about all that back then. I was just fascinated by Jean's shiny orange harem pants and sequinned bra. When you're a grown-up, my mother used to say, you have to concentrate and understand
the process of things – you can't just go around full of easy belief and wonder all the time. But as a child, I could drift right into the television. Sometimes I didn't even feel the ground beneath me, or hear the dinner sounds in the kitchen. I didn't have to think about anything uncomfortable, like people who were born less fortunate than me. The men and women on TV could look after themselves. Even Jean, regularly sawn in half, vanished by Dean, locked in trunks and pierced by long swords, always returned smiling. She had a beautiful smile, bright red and luscious. I'd flirt with Dean, tossing my pretend long hair like Jean's, as I sat on the couch sipping cocoa from my special white cup reserved for The Magic Show.

  Normally, I'm not the kind of person who likes to sit around trawling through scenes from the past. I'm too busy doing research for my magic manuals, trying to get a chapter written, cooking, shopping, cleaning the kitchen. I can never sit down to work in the morning unless the sink is spotless and gleaming. I polish the indoor plants, buy organic vegetables, give the postman and the pest man nice presents at Christmas. I am (nearly) always polite, and consider others first. It's just that lately, I don't seem to be quite in control. Memories gush in, overwhelming me, like the sudden floods occurring with climate change. And now there's the fear that something wild will leap out of my mouth, a frog instead of a pearl.

  For many years I've written about magic for children: How to Make Magic with Science, Bewitch Your Friends with Chemistry, A Full Evening of Magic Escapes. In the Escape series, which is my specialty, I explode the mysteries of manacles, chains, thumb ties, straitjackets. My daughter says if a person were to judge my mental state by the number of hours I've spent with my nose in escape manuals, they'd think I ought to stay in one of my straitjackets, never to be released. Clara tends towards sarcasm, which is, as I've told her, the lowest form of humour. Harry Houdini, the king of escape, had absolutely no sense of humour about his work. Neither, I suppose, do I.

  This morning I should have gone straight to the library and then done the shopping. I knew that. But to get to the library I have to drive practically right past my favourite shop. Hey Presto sells magic – tricks, light effects, escapology equipment – and it's run by a man called Baudelaire who has a marvellous French accent as smooth as wine even though he has never been to France and actually comes from Newcastle. Every inch of his forearms is covered in tattoos, mainly of naked women having incredible sex with trees, dragons, demons and centaurs, but the rest of him is always extremely polite and restrained.

  Baudelaire never bothers me, he lets me wander free to peer along the shelves, turning the magic tricks over and over. When he's got anything new in, he usually shows me. Last week he had an exploding wallet – it was fabulous. I bought it straight away because a) it wasn't expensive and b) I knew the children I visit at schools would love it. What a show starter – it's ingenious! It looks like a normal leather wallet, quite elegant, but inside there's a secret metal compartment with a chamber containing a flammable polycarbon. When you open it, the lighting mechanism is triggered and flames leap up in a most dramatic and satisfying way.

  I tried it out at the fish shop the next day, where there was a crowd of kids buying chips. After the shopkeeper had wrapped my salmon I went to pay him, holding the wallet close so no one could look over the top. You should have heard them when I opened it! Screaming with surprise and delight, they leaped back. I laughed and snapped it shut, extinguishing the oxygen and killing the flames. Everyone was dumbfounded, standing around with their mouths open. Little Sean from next door had a fit of nervous giggles. I was so carried away, I forgot to pay. I only realised this when I got home, so I had to go all the way back. Typical, said the voice. You always stuff it up.

  Five minutes at Baudelaire's can help me get through a whole day. I wish I hadn't spent quite so long there this morning, though. I'm like an alcoholic with a drink – just one quick look, I tell myself, that's all I'll need. But it's never enough.

  I ease the shopping bags off my arm and unlock the front door. Stomping down the hall, I plonk the groceries on the nearest surface, which is the big oak desk where Guido is working. Little bits of paper spray up like confetti and settle in different patterns across the table.

  'Uffa, what are you doing?' Guido shouts. 'You've destroyed the natural order!'

  Guido's 'mosaic' poetry. For most of the day Guido has been sitting in the silence of the house, writing words on scraps of paper, sometimes whole sentences, then randomly throwing them together. The unconscious will be present in these random combinations, he says. Silvia, his 'talented' Italian student, told him so. She claims he will be able to contact his deepest self by following this process.

  I bend down to pick up one of the scraps. 'She opens her mouth and there is a lid over mine,' it says. I suppose he had to do something new. After the first couple of poetry books, which enjoyed great critical acclaim, there seemed to be not much call for Leopardi poetry. Three more volumes were published but now the first book is out of print. 'Is the trouble with this country,' Guido told his publisher, Sandra Farfalle, 'is so shallow. There is no commitment, no tradition, always they must try something new, as if being new is everything, fantastic! Where is the slow cooking of ideas, references to history and culture that are traced to find meaning? In this country, Umberto Eco is out of print!' But she remained unmoved, even when he dedicated a whole book to her. She explained that in the real world, almost no one can live off poetry. Even the best-known poets' books are published in the hundreds, not thousands. She wishes it weren't so too, but it is. So he increased his number of students instead, which, it seemed to me, made him happier as well as wealthier.

  'You are very late with the shopping,' Guido says, moving the bags of groceries carefully onto the kitchen bench. Grains of dirt and leaf from the doorstep speckle the tabletop.

  'Yes, I was working too, at the library. I didn't realise the time.'

  I didn't tell him the real reason I was running late. Or how my heart had lift ed this morning at Baudelaire's as I spied the lovely leather restraints and straitjackets and rows of shiny tools. If only I could spend my entire life mooching around in a place like that, I bet the sliding sensations would cease. What I had been looking for was a going-away present for Clara. But then Baudelaire came over and dragged out a Bohemian Torture Crib that had just come in and I got distracted. It really was a powerful-looking piece of equipment – a two-metre-high board shaped like a casket lid. Once the performer is standing against the board, chains are threaded across, locking him in. You have to obtain slack in order to get out.

  Guido is sorting his pieces of paper into a neat pile in the middle of the table. I wonder what he'll do now, close his eyes and drop them in a random unconscious manner perhaps, like that game of Pick-up-Sticks I used to play with Clara when she was little. Only we didn't have to sort out the meaning of the pattern, just pick up one stick at a time without touching another. Although Clara didn't know it, this delicate game was excellent training for her fine motor skills, used in so many activities, including lock picking.

  In high school Clara preferred to do her homework at this very table, radio blaring, so that she was near the kitchen as I cooked dinner – she used to love chewing on diced carrots that were going into the stir-fry, even rings of raw onion and slivers of garlic. 'I like intense flavours,' she announced once. 'That's the kind of person I am.' My heart stings at the memory. Tomorrow, this time, she will be gone.

  'That plumber was sniffing around again today,' Guido said.

  'Yes, I asked him to fix the toilet.'

  'Can't he do that outside?'

  I sigh as I go into the kitchen to unpack the groceries. Guido hates 'strangers' entering the house, always thinking handymen are casing the joint, preparing for a later invasion. 'The tap in the kitchen is loose too, but I forgot to tell him,' I say. 'I don't suppose you did?' No answer. I call more loudly through the archway. 'I gather Clara is still at Saraah's? Has she finished her packing?'

&
nbsp; Guido gives a short bark of a laugh. 'Clara tells me that when Saraah went overseas, 'er mother gave 'er an excellent suitcase. Proprio bella. Such a useful gift . But Clara doesn't own a suitcase like this, so she 'as to go to 'er friend to borrow it.'

  I turn on the oven and start stuffing the veal with knobs of garlic and rosemary. Guido doesn't even like Doreen or her mothering. I've never heard him say one positive thing about her or the way she's so heroically brought up her daughter all alone. I think of the gift I'd ended up buying at Baudelaire's this morning and a brief guilty pang shoots through me – would Clara really want to take this to Italy? But the gleaming little tool set, with its six picklocks, pair of tension wrenches and pert array of shims, had proved too tempting. I'd planned to give them to Clara tonight at dinner, but I was so excited by my purchases that I slipped home quickly to wrap them, and found sleepy Clara just getting out of bed.

  'Come and see what I've got for you!' I said before I could stop myself, and patted a spot on the sofa next to me. As she slumped down, I placed the tools carefully in her lap. We both looked at the leather case, bristling with sharp hooked instruments, nestled between her knees.

  'You mightn't think so now,' I said quickly, 'but this set could come in handy, what with all that kidnapping in Italy.' I reminded her that back in her father's time, there'd been a lot of kidnapping going on. The Red Brigade went in for that sort of thing, stealing the children of the wealthy, or members of the right-wing government, and demanding enormous ransoms. Back in 1972, the prime minister, Aldo Moro, was abducted and locked away in some old house in the country for months, then finally murdered. If he'd had lock-picking skills, the shape of history might have been different. And then of course there was the Mafia. They did a lot of locking up and throwing away the key, too.