“I live by day, full of faith.”
Faith, for a ghost? “And by night?” I asked as I turned on the hall light and walked toward the kitchen, since I needed something to eat before I got dressed for the evening.
“And every night I die in holy fire.”
I pulled out the butcher’s knife and started to slice some ham off the joint to go with the cheddar. Carolynne drifted toward the door, then slipped out of sight. I looked at the knife. I couldn’t very well avoid knives, but I could understand her revulsion at the blade.
After I cleaned up the dishes and retrieved a bottle of wine from the cellar for later, I went up to the bedroom to dress. First I tried the light gray suit, but that didn’t seem quite right. So I settled on the dark gray pinstripe, the one I’d worn the day I’d resigned as Minister of Environment. The suit seemed looser. Had I lost weight, or was I just in better shape?
“How I loved you even as a child,” offered Carolynne, in words that felt more sung than spoken as she appeared in the doorway.
“You are a shameless ghost.”
“Ways will I elect that seldom any tread.”
“Sorry.”
“Never will love be satisfied. The heart will become more thirsty and hungry.”
“Are you talking about me, or you?”
“Will she change what she enjoyed?”
“She? Llysette? Are you talking about Llysette?”
“Your splendor is dying on yonder hill.” She winked out, probably going back to her lodestone for a recharge, or meal, or whatever.
I shivered at the warning, for it was clearly a warning. Why was I doing this? Was it a last attempt to do what was right? Was that the reason I’d kept persisting with the ghost caricature of justice and mercy? After everything, could I do less than try to set things right?
My stomach tightened more, and my heart raced. Was I having a heart attack? No … just an anxiety attack. I took a deep breath.
Before I left the house, I quickly pulled one of the disassociators out of the closet and tucked it in the foot well of the difference engine stand, in case I needed it for demonstration purposes later.
When I got to the university, I parked the Stanley at the end of the row that held Llysette’s Reo, and took just about the last space in the faculty car park, although a number of the cars did not have faculty tags. After locking the steamer, I walked down and across to the main entrance. Under the heavy overcoat I was actually too warm, and I wiped my forehead before I walked up the stone steps into the building, unbuttoning the overcoat as I did. I did keep an eye out, just in case I ran into one of vanBecton’s “legacies.” Then again, if they were good, I probably wouldn’t see them until it was far too late. And, who knew, I wondered if that might have been better. I tried to keep upbeat and shook my head, pushing away my fears.
I was earlier than usual, maybe twenty-five minutes before the curtain; except, even in Dutch New Bruges, the curtain never rose on schedule. Only a scattering of people crossed the foyer toward the ramps. There wasn’t a wait at the box office, and I showed my faculty card and paid my two dollars.
“It’s supposed to be good, Doktor Eschbach.”
“I hope so.”
After climbing the ramps to the main door of the theatre, I took the program from the usher, a woman student I’d never seen, and glanced at the title page:
HEINRICH VERRÜCKT
OR
THE TRAGEDY OF HENRY VIII
BY
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN
AN OPERA IN THREE ACTS
I paused at the back of the theatre, two-thirds of the former gymnasium. The renovation had been thorough enough to put in inclined seating, a full stage, and some acoustical renovation, including dull-looking hangings, but Llysette had still complained that the sound reverberation was uneven and that she had to watch for dead spots on the stage.
I settled into a seat halfway back on the left side, right off the aisle, and wiped my forehead again. I was definitely not in top shape, however much I had played at Spazi agent in the weeks preceding. It was a miracle I hadn’t gotten killed.
While I waited, I read through the program. I didn’t really know any of the cast, except by name. By the time the lights went down, Llysette’s players had almost a full house, even if two-thirds of the audience consisted of friends just wanting to claim they’d seen the opera.
The first act was all right—still some jitters in the cast even though Friday had been opening night—but they all settled down in the second act. The student who played Henry was good; he was a solid baritone, and he had Henry’s total arrogance down pat.
At the end of Act III, of course, Henry was imprisoned in the Tower, foaming at the mouth and singing fragments of the same aria that he used to proclaim himself as the supreme head of church and state. Beside him were the ghosts of Anne and Catherine, who continued to plead endlessly in their separate songs. None of the three heard the others, just as they hadn’t all along. In the foreground, Mary lifted the cross and sang almost the same words as Henry, thanking God for delivering the crown to her. Yet it wasn’t chaotic, but a deeper harmony that was almost eerie.
The curtain fell, and the applause was instantaneous. I applauded with the rest. Especially with a student cast, Llysette had done a magnificent job.
As I clapped, my eyes saw a familiar figure down the aisle—Gertrude, the zombie lady. She wasn’t applauding, but sat there wracked with sobs. I stopped applauding before the others, puzzling over her reaction. Gertrude, for whom every day was a good day, sobbing? Gertrude attending an opera? Especially an opera by Beethoven?
What had touched her? In a way I envied her, even as I pitied her. That direct expression of feeling was so foreign to all of us more sophisticated souls.
After the initial crowd dispersed, I made my way backstage, noting that I didn’t see Dean Er Recchus; but, then, she would have made her presence known on opening night.
Again I realized that I should have brought Llysette chocolates, but I hoped she understood that I had had a lot on my mind in the past several weeks.
I still had to stand in line as a dozen or so admirers told Llysette what a wonderful job she had done. In a green velvet dress, she was stunning, as usual, and her warm professional smile was firmly in place as she responded to each compliment.
“Congratulations,” I finally said, giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t know how you did it, but it was wonderful.”
“The sound, how was it?”
“The acoustics? You had them standing in the right places. I could hear it all clearly.”
“That is good.” She shifted her weight from one foot to another, then returned a wave to one of the students, the girl who had played Anne, I thought.
“Are you about ready to go?”
Llysette pursed her lips and nodded. “I will just follow you. Tomorrow, I must sing for the Anglican-Baptists.”
“Again? You don’t want me to drive?”
“Better it would be for me to have my own vehicle, I think.”
After I helped her into her coat, and after we gathered up all her material, we walked out to the car park. I opened the Reo’s door, then set the heavy bag behind the seat, and kissed her before closing the door. Her cheek was already cold from the wind.
“You are always gallant.”
“I try.”
The Stanley was ready several minutes before the Reo. Before long Llysette would need to have the burner assembly retuned, I suspected, but I hadn’t said anything because she would have pointed out, most logically, that her income was far from astronomical, while steamer repairs were more than astronomical.
Once she waved, I pulled out of the car park—we were the last ones there—and headed down and around the square. We had to wait for a watch steamer to cross the River Wijk bridge, but saw no other cars on the road.
Llysette was out of the Reo by the time I had opened the car barn and pulled the Stanley inside, a
nd her teeth were chattering even after we got inside the house. I hugged her for a moment, then turned on the kitchen lights. After her shivering stopped, I helped her out of the heavy coat and put it in the closet.
“I assume you would like some wine. Or would you like something warm like chocolate or tea?”
“The wine, I think, that would be good.”
“Do you want anything to eat?”
Usually she didn’t, at least not right after a performance.
“I think not, but you are kind to ask.”
I opened the bottle—still Sebastopol—and brought down two glasses. “We can go into the study.”
Llysette nodded and followed me.
As I passed the difference engine I flicked it on. I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but a demonstration might not hurt. Then I set her glass on the low table in front of us and half-filled each glass. I bent down and let my lips brush her neck. “I missed you.”
“You also I missed.”
I shook my head. Where could I begin?
Llysette looked somberly at me. “You are serious.”
I nodded. “I’d like to talk about our future. It’s past time we laid the tarot cards down and set our own futures.” I sat next to her. I knew I was rushing things, but if I didn’t, I’d lose my nerve, and I was tired of living lies, even partial lies, that were tearing me apart.
“Tarot cards?”
“Fortune-telling cards. People believe them when they really need to plan their own futures.”
“An illusion that is. It is one all you of Columbia share, that of choice.” Llysette’s voice was sardonic.
“We can choose.” I didn’t want to ask her to marry me, not until I had explained. “Neither one of us is innocent.”
She stiffened.
“I have done terrible deeds, and so have you.” I frowned. “I don’t know whether it’s better to bury the past unrevealed or to face it and then bury it.”
Llysette put down the wine glass. She had not even taken a single sip. “Too much truth, I doubt it is good.”
“In that, we’re different, but I don’t know that I can be other than what I am. When I play at something else … Hell …” I took a deep breath. “All my life I’ve been talking around things, dealing in suggestions and implications, but I want to stop that with you.”
“Why is that?”
“Because neither one of us is innocent, and I don’t want to be tied up with a woman who wonders about my past, and I don’t want you to have to wonder whether something out of your past will separate us.” I could see her lips tightening. “Is honesty so bad?” I asked with a forced smile.
“Honesty? Johan, you do not wish to be honest with me. Yourself you wish to be honest with. An excuse am I. Never have you said you love me, except in the bedroom. That is honest?”
I took a deep breath. “I suppose not. But I am trying to change. And I do love you.”
“So … now it is convenient to admit that?”
I took a deep breath. “I am trying. It’s been hard for me. How do you think I feel about loving someone who committed a murder? You killed Miranda. Why, I don’t know, but I, fool that I am, shielded you. The timing I gave the watch was wrong, and you knew that. Doesn’t that show something? That I care, that I love you?”
“In sex and in murder, you love me?”
“I said I wasn’t perfect.” I tried to force a soft laugh, but my throat was dry.
Llysette stood and so did I.
“You do not understand, Johan.” She half-turned toward the window, to the almost ghostly light of the moon on the lawn outside.
I moved toward the desk, bending and tapping the keys on the difference engine to bring up the program.
“I think I might.” In fact, I was afraid I did understand, all too well, but I did not reach for the Colt in the drawer, the more fool I.
“No. No one understands.” Llysette turned, and I faced a Colt-Luger, a small one but with a long enough barrel to ensure its accuracy. She had it pointed at me, and the barrel was steady.
“Why?” My voice was surprisingly calm. At least the calm was surprising to me, in finding my lover with a gun designed to drill holes in me.
“Because you remember everything and have learned nothing, Johan. Power must be countered with power.”
“So … the poor psychic Miranda knew that you were an agent for the Austro-Hungarians … the convenient fiction of all that money from the Cultural Foundation.”
“The Foundation, it is real.”
I was very careful not to move, even though both my own Colt and the disassociator were almost within reach. I still had hopes. Stupid of me.
“You know I could have …” I swallowed. If I had turned her in, then the blame would have gone to Ferdinand, and if I hadn’t, I would have been framed, and the Speaker would have had a chain of evidence pointing straight to the President’s office. Either way, vanBecton would have gotten me, or Llysette, or both of us.
“You do not comprehend, Johan.”
“I understand everything—except why you agreed to serve Ferdinand.” I knew that, too, but I wanted to hear her explain it.
“Ferdinand’s doctors, they are masters of torture. To the last drop of pain they know what will free the soul and what will leave one tied to a screaming body. This I know. You do not.”
Thinking of those thin white lines on the inside of her thighs and under her pale white arms, I shivered. No wonder she would not speak of the scars or let my fingers linger there. And yet I had said nothing when it could have changed things. Why was I always too late?
“I need to show you something,” I said gently. “After all, that’s what Ferdinand hired you for, and what the New French were blackmailing Miranda to find out.”
“Miranda, she was not just a meddler?”
“Her son is being held in New France. He was an importer. She would have done anything, I think, to get him released. Could I sit down?”
The Colt-Luger wavered for a moment, but only for a moment. I slipped in front of the keyboard, keeping my hands very visible.
“How did you know this?” she demanded.
“Her other son told me about the detention. He also told me that she was a witch-psychic.”
“She was a witch. That I know. She said that she would tell you, and that you would turn me in. Because you were a Spazi agent still. I wanted to love you, Johan. I love you, and you said nothing. Why did you not tell me?”
“I told no one.”
“That, it does not change things.”
“I am trying to be honest. I retired from the Spazi years ago.”
“An agent, he never retires.”
She was right about that, and I was wrong. Lord, how I’d been wrong. “Let me touch the keyboard. Maybe this will help. First I’m going to make a ghost appear—even around you.”
Llysette raised her eyebrows, and I noticed the sheen of perspiration across her forehead. Damn vanBecton! What I’d done to him hadn’t been near enough. And Ralston—threatening her just to move me around.
“That is supposed to prove what?” The muzzle of the Colt-Luger didn’t waver, and she was standing just far enough away that I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“If you are going to shoot me, then you should have something to give to Ferdinand. This is what he wants. The way to make and unmake ghosts. I love you enough to give you that.” I lifted my fingers from the keys to the flimsy directional antenna. “Now I need to point this. I won’t direct it anywhere near you.”
“What are you doing?” she asked, adding in a colder tone, “It does not matter.”
“Creating a ghost.” I turned the trapezoidal tetrahedonal antenna in the general direction of the couch and the mirror and punched the last key to bring up the Carolynne duplicate. The white figure in the recital gown appeared before the love seat, wavering more than I would have liked, but it was only a rough duplicate, a far too simplified version of the real singer, just a caricatur
e of Carolynne.
Llysette looked at me. “I am waiting, Johan.”
“Don’t you see?”
“See what? That mist?”
Partial ghost-blindness? Was Llysette sensitive only to the strongest ghosts? She’d said ghosts didn’t appear around her, but had that just meant she did not sense them? Was that what the torture in Ferdinand’s hands had done? I was in trouble.
“Let me try again.” I swallowed and touched the keys to the difference engine and called up the justice-and-mercy ghost caricature, hoping my latest efforts had made it very strong indeed. My knee rested against the disassociator, but I didn’t want to think about that, not even then.
The wavering figure of justice appeared next to the faint duplicate of Carolynne, and I could feel that one-dimensional sense of justice—almost a cartoon version of the man with the scales in his hand.
“Justice must be done.” The ghost voice was a whisper, but a strong whisper. “Justice must be done.”
“Something there is. You make images … How will they help?”
I wasn’t sure anything would help. Was she programmed to kill me as a form of suicide? Or herself? Neither alternative was going to help us.
The justice figure drifted toward Llysette.
“Justice must be done …”
She edged back, as though even she could feel the merciless singleness of that judicial caricature.
“No! Stay away! Johan, I will kill you!”
I ducked and snatched for the disassociator.
“Johan!”
I swung the disassociator toward her and twisted out of the chair, just as a third flash of white appeared behind Llysette.
Crack. I could feel the first small-caliber shell rip through my jacket shoulder. I tried to drop behind the difference engine, but Llysette kept firing the damned Colt.
Crack! Crack!
“Llysette!”
“No! No one’s puppet … will I … be.”
Crack!
I pulled the spring trigger on the disassociator and held it, then jerked it sideways. Not another murder. Not another lover dying because of me. My head felt like it was splitting apart, like a crowbar was being jammed into my skull and twisted.
Ghosts of Columbia Page 35
