Ink

by Hal Duncan

  “Do you know what we are?” says Jack.

  Seamus takes the top from Jack and screws it back on the bottle.

  “No,” he says.

  “But we're different, aren't we?”

  Seamus nods, then shakes his head.

  “It's not us, Jack. It's not us that's different, but…”

  He hands the bottle back to Jack. He looks at the two of them in the warped glass of the mirror, attenuated things with heads too small, stick creatures, like a child's drawings or paintings on a cave wall. A reflection changed by a word.

  “Ye know what I see when I close my eyes, Jack? War. An endless fookin war and us fighting in it, killing in it, over and over and over again. But it doesn't make sense, Jack. Some of it just doesn't make sense. Oh, I can tell ye that ole Joe and Adolf are about to sign a fookin pact to carve up Europe between them. I can tell ye that it won't hold because the both of them are fookin cunts. But… I used to think it was the future I was seeing, ye know? But I'm not so sure now. Some of it doesn't seem like this world at all, Jack. There's these little creatures, see, these little black creatures crawling over everything and—Jesus, I'm as fookin mad as you are.”

  Jack runs a finger through the powdered glass, brushes it off with his thumb.

  “I don't think we're mad at all,” he says. “I think we've been given … a gift. That we have a duty to use.”

  Jack's warped reflection stares out at Seamus from the mirror.

  “If we can change things,” he says. “If we can change things …”

  TO CHANGE HISTORY

  “The world,” says Jack. “The past. The future. Everything, man.”

  Seamus flicks his cigarette ash into the steel sink and turns the tap on. There's no ashtrays in the kitchen and he's hardly going to drop it on the floor, sure, so he watches the clear stream of water battering the paper and tobacco apart and spinning it away down the plughole. He turns off the tap when the last of it is gone. Upstairs there are voices, high-pitched giggles and squeals, stomping. That'll be the Frenchman's wife and kids; they met her briefly when she opened up the back door to them, took one look and called for her husband. Seamus crosses to the door leading out into the hall and pulls it closed, muffling the sounds. He's not sure how much of it is for secrecy's sake and how much of it is just to close the door on something he knows that he'll most likely never have himself.

  “You Anglaise …” the Frenchman is saying.

  “Irish,” says Seamus.

  “That doesn't matter,” says Jack.

  “The fook it doesn't,” says Seamus.

  “My friends, I don't understand how this … book could change … the world? I think perhaps you have been drinking, non?”

  “Not since this morning,” says Jack.

  The kitchen is small but clean and well stocked, pots and pans hanging above the iron range, bowls of fruit and baskets of fresh vegetables on top of the cupboards. The air is filled with the scent of herbs and smoked things—fish or sausages, cheeses—onion and garlic of course, from a pot of stock simmering on the range. Sure and Seamus would give his right arm to have this man's quiet life of domesticity.

  “Monsieur Reynard,” he says, “all that matters is … you know that Hitler won't stop at Czechoslovakia.”

  Reynard nods and Seamus joins them at the kitchen table, the solid pine block of furniture that takes up most of the center of the room. Reynard sits in a chair at the side nearest the door into the hall and, beside it, what must be the door into a pantry tucked under the stairs. Seamus can smell the aroma of good food coming from it. Jack sits at the end nearest the range, a pile of francs on the table in front of him, pitifully small but all that they've got. Seamus picks the seat facing Reynard.

  “All that matters,” says Seamus, “is that there's a war coming and we might be able to stop it.”

  “To change things,” says Jack. “All we're asking you to do is use your skill.” Seamus looks at the leather satchel hanging over Jack's shoulder. He spotted it a few times back in the Ebro, sticking out of Jack's kit bag, and never got round to asking about it. Sure and it never seemed important, just a wee satchel like that, hardly big enough to hold anything of value. Now that he knows what's in it, by Jesus but it's another story. They must be fookin mental. If we'd won the war in Spain, Jack had said. If the fascists were… divided somehow. If it wasn't for Stalin and Chamberlain, and their Moody deals with Hitler… You have the Sight. You can see what changes need to happen. I know the language, but… neither of us have the skill for it.

  “Yer the best man for the job, so we hear,” he says. “The only man for the job.”

  “But this, Monsieur Carter, Monsieur Finnan”—he picks up a couple of notes—“this is an insult. Enough for only … un passeport, a diploma. You are asking me to create a book, for this?”

  “You don't understand what's at stake here, man,” says Jack. “You—”

  Seamus puts his hand on Jack's arm.

  “Sure and I know it's nothing. I know it's a fookin joke. But it's all we can give ye but the shirts off our backs, and I'll give ye that if ye fookin ask for it. I'll work me fookin fingers to the bone as yer slave if ye'll do this for us. I swear on me mother's grave and Jesus Lord Almighty hisself. Look into me eyes, Monsieur Reynard, and spit in me fookin face if I'm not telling the truth.”

  Reynard holds his gaze for a second then looks away.

  “I believe you, Monsieur Finnan. I believe you are an honest man. A poor, honest man, unfortunately, but then most honest men are.”

  He drums his fingers on the table, the long delicate fingers of a pianist, thinks Seamus, or a jeweler. Or a forger. Eventually, it seems, he comes to a decision.

  “I do not promise anything,” says Reynard. “But … show me these … scriptures you wish me to copy, please. Let me see how much work would be involved.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Reynard says quietly. “Mon Dieu. line cigarette, s'il vousplait?”

  Jack pulls the pack from his breast pocket, passes one to Reynard and one to Seamus, pats at his jacket. Seamus takes his own lighter out and flicks it open, lights his fag and passes the lighter still lit to Jack. Jack lights his own cigarette and snaps the lighter shut and open again, sparks it back up with a flick of his thumb and lights Reynard's cigarette, all in what's almost one swift motion. Old habit.

  The contents of the leather satchel lie spread across the table, squares and rectangles of treated skin, of dried hide, of vellum, golden brown and so thin they're almost translucent. Reynard holds one up to the lamp and it seems to glow, the gravings on it so intricate, so subtle that they look like filigree, the work of a needle rather than a brush. Sure and they should do, thinks Seamus.

  “The craftsmanship is beautiful,” says Reynard. “Formidable.”

  He turns the page over to look at the reverse.

  “My friend, this is a challenge I would dearly love to take but what you want is … to forge something like this, I mean. The ink is in the vellum, you understand? This is not painting, not drawing but… I do not know the technique. If anything, I should say these look like tattoos.”

  ‘? pin instead of a pen,” says Jack. “Couldn't you create the same sort of stain?”

  “But even the vellum. What is this? Calfskin? Pig? It is so beautifully cured. Feel the texture, the suppleness.”

  “You would have to use the back of these … pages.”

  Reynard raises an eyebrow.

  “With the true script right there on the other side. I don't understand. If this is to fool some private collector—”

  “It's not,” says Seamus.

  “But do we have enough here, to create this book you wish?”

  “If you need more, by God,” snaps Jack, “I'll give you the skin off my own back.”

  Seamus kicks him under the table, as Reynard gives Jack a worried glance and takes another look at the page in his hand. He holds it up to the light again.

  “Where did you get this?”
he says, quiet but firm. “What is this … ?”

  “I will not do this! It is an abomination. Brute! Bete!”

  “You will,” says Jack. “All you have to do is write what we tell you. You don't understand what's at stake here.”

  ‘? petty fraud,” says Reynard. “And a sick one. Your collector is some deviant, some beast, non? He would have to be to want this—this travesty.”

  “This is about the future of the world,” says Jack. “You need proof?”

  “Jack, wait,” says Seamus.

  Jack grabs the francs off the table, throws them at Reynard.

  “This is not about money. It's about this—”

  And he spits a word out of his mouth that lifts Reynard up into the air and holds him there like a puppet on a string. Seamus can see the total panic on the man's face, absolute horror at these creatures with their satchel full of human skin and their magic words and, Christ, he'll never do it now. Seamus punches Jack full in the face with everything he's got and he goes down. Reynard crumples to the floor.

  “Listen. Wait. No, wait.”

  Reynard scrabbles back away from him.

  “C'est diabolique! Vous etes le diable. You are the Devil!”

  And then Seamus is grabbing hold of the man, he is, and he's got him by the front of the shirt and he's dragging him in toward him, Jesus, maybe he is the Devil, because sure and he feels like a man possessed, with the roar in his head as loud as it's ever been, in the Somme or in Inchgillan or anywhere, as he pulls the man close and hisses something in his ear, not even knowing what it is he's saying, but it's such a word, oh Christ, that Seamus burns his mouth on it, he feels it ripping out of his lungs and ringing in his head, and then he's screaming and, fook, did he pass out then, did he?

  What did he say to the man? What did he fookin say?

  Reynard is at the sink. He retches, vomits.

  “I'm sorry,” says Seamus. “I didn't mean to. I didn't mean it. I don't know what… What did I say to you? What did you see? Oh Jesus, I'm sorry.”

  “Six—six—six,” stutters Reynard.

  Let who hath wisdom count the number of the Beast, thinks Seamus. Oh Jesus fookin Christ and it's the fookin apocalypse it is, then. Is that the bit of the future I can't see? Can't face.

  “Six million,” says Reynard.

  “I don't understand.”

  Reynard throws up again.

  He stands over the sink, just panting, spitting every once in a while as Seamus leans back against the pantry door, saying nothing. Jack lies on the floor in a heap. Looks like Seamus broke his nose.

  Reynard pulls a chair across from the table to sit down on it, still right beside the sink. He looks long and hard into Seamus's eyes. Upstairs one of his children is crying, disturbed by the noise perhaps. Reynard nods.

  “You say that with this book you can change things?” he says.

  four

  DEATH'S RELEASE

  A New Sparta, A New Athens

  ou're crazy,” I say. “I mean, the army I can just about understand, but the SA? They're thugs, plain and simple. Brutal, sadistic vermin. What is it, the pretty uniforms?”

  He bristles, eyes narrowed with resentment and defiance, and I regret my words instantly, knowing that where he might have listened to me before, it will be useless to talk to him now. I sigh and turn back to the display cabinet where all of Mother's precious knickknacks seem so fragile now, so delicate, the Dresden china that was never to be actually used, the ceramic clogs from Antwerp, the framed pictures of my brother and myself. The cabinet itself is so terribly solid in comparison, Chippendale or somesuch, if I remember right, brought over from England when we left.

  What will we do with all of her things now, I wonder.

  “Jonni,” I say more gently. “Jonni.”

  He sits on the piano stool, one finger plinking on the same black key; we were never very good students, either of us, he too easily distracted by the sunshine outside the window, while all I ever wanted to do was play the razzling dazzling jazz music that I listened to on the radio. He rakes his fingers through his corn-blond hair. His mother's golden boy, his father's little soldier… I wonder why I never felt jealous of their pride in him, only ever protective toward his … innocence. It is ironic, really—my elder brother, dynamic, athletic and more than capable of looking after himself in a fight, and I feel protective of him. And angry, yes, because I know what attracts him to this fascism nonsense, under it all.

  “Take some time,” I say. “Come back to Nice with me. Or we'll go to Berlin and I'll show you the nightlife. There are clubs I know of. You don't have to …”

  I tail off into an old, old silence.

  “Times are changing, Reinhardt. I know—I know that some of them are thugs. I know that some of them just want to throw firebombs at Communists and Jews. But that's just now. This is just the start.”

  “That's exactly what worries me, Jonni. Who's next?”

  I'm worried about you, I want to say. You.

  “The Futurists,” he says, “are the real threat, to our whole way of life.”

  “Come to Berlin with me,” I say weakly.

  “Come back to Strann with me,” he says.

  I close the safe and turn the dial, hang the painting back on its hook. For the thousandth time, I think how much I despise the print but, as it's a present from my brother, I can't insult him by not hanging it in pride of place behind my desk, over the wall safe. One of Herr Hitler's dreadful Teutonic Knights series, all gray and monumental, the angles and curves, the cogs and wheels of some unspeakable mechanism, it tries to blend the shining, articulated armor of some Siegfried with a robotic imagery redolent of Lang's Metropolis. All it succeeds in doing is looking monstrous and overblown. I sit back down in my chair, the Eye of the Weeping Angel in my hand, trying to think of what to say next.

  “Did you ever really like that thing?” I say, beckoning over my shoulder.

  He looks at his feet.

  “I'm not an authority on art,” he says, “but I thought, well…”

  “If it was Hitler's, then it must be good, yes?”

  He looks uncomfortable. Good, I think. He should be.

  “What do you think of it now?” I say.

  “I don't know. Look—”

  “No, you look,” I say. “Look at it and tell me what you see. You don't think it looks a little Futurist?”

  “Yes, yes,” he snaps, “so Hitler betrayed us, yes. I know.”

  “But fascist too,” I say. “Is it armor or is it armament, man or machine? It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. It's hard to tell the difference, I'd say. Fascist or Futurist, Jonni—what is the difference?”

  “Germany!”

  He thumps his fist on the desk.

  “The difference is that we believe in something. We believe in this country, in the people, in our heritage, our history, in …”

  I shake my head. I lay the jewel on the desk and slide it across to him.

  “Romantic lies,” I say with a deep weariness. “Take it and go.”

  “Come back with me,” he says. “You'll see, I promise you. When you see, you'll understand.”

  “I don't think I'll ever understand,” I say.

  “I don't think I'll ever understand you,” I say. “As long as I can remember all you ever wanted was to go to Heidelberg, to become an officer, and now… now you throw it all away to join these maniacs.”

  He closes the piano's keyboard lid and swivels round on the stool.

  “Believing in something greater than yourself doesn't make you a maniac. Yes, right now the SA is full of … wild young men. They come from the Freikorps, yes, a lot of them come from the street, and they're not educated, not like us. They haven't had our privileged lives, but they're the front line against communism and—”

  “What? International Jewry? Zionist conspiracies? You don't really believe that rot. I know you don't.”

  I walk over to the window, pull the
lace curtain aside and point along the street.

  “Is Herr Hobbsbaum a Zionist conspirator? Does he deserve bricks through his windows? Dogshit on his doorstep? Slogans in pig's blood?”

  “No, of course not. There are good Jews, Reinhardt—you and I know that— but… you can't expect the man on the street to understand. The discipline will come, though. Things will settle down. We'll get the … fire under control. Yes. Right now, it's like a fire, Reinhardt, it's sweeping across Germany, and it's going to transform it, but once we get it under control… we'll be a new Sparta, a new Athens. Brothers-in-arms, that's what it's all about. That … simplicity, that honor and nobility.”

  I walk back to the display cabinet and I pick up the photogram of my brother in his Wandervogel outfit, standing there against an alpine backdrop, mountains and meadows. Is it a contradiction in his character, I wonder, that before that trip he was obsessed with old revolutionary heroes, communists, anarchists and republicans, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Danton and Robespierre, with little understanding of the actual ideologies they stood for? Or does it make perfect sense, like this new sacrifice of Reason to Romance?