When the Kawaminami’s threw open the doors, accompanied by the Jennings’ Band’s rendition of “Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” (having exhausted their Sousa oeuvre), a remarkable transformation came over the town: in building Soame’s, The Pickle Factory had become the local equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and suddenly, the citizens of Silvertown realized that they all had golden tickets, good for admission whenever they liked from nine to seven-thirty six days a week, ten to six on Sunday. The truth about June and Fuji also came to light, courtesy of CNN.
It seems that the mildly unobtrusive Junichi was something of an engineering wunderkind in Japan, and had invented a green diode, or a blue diode, or whatever kind of diode it was that no one had ever been able to invent before. Apparently, this particular discovery was one that had been long lusted after by researchers around the world, and June knew it. He founded a company to develop his invention (the work for which was done entirely in graduate school), sold it, waited for his stock options to vest, and cleaned up to the tune of about sixty million dollars. He then moved himself and his bride to America, where he sought to build his particular version of The American Dream: a coffeehouse that could be converted to a showcase for his and Fuji’s shared twin passions—books, and the Italian Renaissance.
No argument to brook: in the interesting and eccentric race, the Kawaminami’s were a full nose ahead of the other wiener dogs in Silvertown.
The decor, layout, and name came from a remarkable museum they had visited in London on the way to the States. It had been built by a world-renowned architect in 1812 as his private residence and as a setting for his collection of antiques and works of art. The many thousands of visitors to the museum each year viewed a very wide variety of objects, ranging from two famous groups of paintings by Hogarth (‘A Rake’s Progress’ and the so called ‘Election’ Series), a superb Canaletto, and three fine Turners—to gems, silver, illuminated manuscripts, excellent sculpture, and some very presentable furniture. There were suits of armor, bejeweled elephant tusks, musical instruments, and, of course, books. The architect, however, always wanted his ‘Academy’ to be of use to the architectural students and scholars who lacked access to many materials which could improve their studies, and to that end, assembled models, casts, and fragments of extraordinary buildings from the six continents able to contribute. He also acquired 30,000 architectural drawings and built up a library of about 10,000 related books including a spectacular collection of 18th and 19th century technical pamphlets. Since his death, the Museum has honored these intentions, and the Research Library is regularly used by scholars and students, five days a week. The museum had also reinstated his Model Room so that the public could now also see the full range of his architectural models, which have been cleaned and repaired. June and Fuji, having spent as much time as was permissible wandering the rooms in fascination, carried the vision of the museum throughout their travels in Europe and America, to where they finally found the place and the building where it could be remade in their image.
Having been schooled at Oxford (through scholarship and the great efforts and gracious expense of her grandparents), Meredith had many occasions to visit the museum, and could well understand the Kawaminami’s fondness for the place. The architect’s name, by the way, was Sir John Soane, and the name of the museum, Soane’s, which differed from the name of the coffeehouse by exactly one letter.
Most patrons would never have connected the two establishments; those that may have, perhaps never noticed, as did Meredith (and never had the heart to mention), that the diminutive couple had spelled it wrong. On the other hand, when June serves the coffee with that tight, polite Japanese smile, she couldn’t help but wonder …
O O O
On the exterior, there was nothing really extraordinary by way of signage or ornamentation save for one thing—which was large enough that it didn’t really need accompaniment, and conversely, would have crushed any competition for attention wherever in town it might have been built: the dome.
For years, June had been somewhat obsessed by the Italian Renaissance, particularly by its luminous sons Leonardo da Vinci, and his younger Florentine contemporary, the sculptor Michelangelo Buonarotti; him most of all.
Underneath the massive canopy which soared some sixty feet into the air, Junichi and his burly crew had duplicated in twelve months and at a cost of several million dollars what Michelangelo had spent the last eighteen years of his life building, and for which he would accept no pay—The Dome of the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome. Like the Roman dome, Junichi’s was a labor of love; springing from sixteen pairs of giant columns atop The Pickle Factory, the dome soared with the line and grace of divinely inspired sculpture, bearing a progressively lowered pitch that presented a slow, generous curve of great beauty, both within and without. Wherever it would have been built, it would have been a remarkable achievement; it was also in violation of about eighty building and zoning codes, which pretty much explained why there had been so much secrecy surrounding it, and why Junichi had refused to lower the canopy until opening day. That it had never occurred to the Mayor or town council that the canopy and scaffolding for The Pickle Factory’s remodeling was approximately three times higher than the original structure was a mercifully avoided embarrassment, set aside in the avoidance of the even bigger potential embarrassment of closing for zoning violations a facility to which the Mayor himself had invited the whole town. (Later, in a secret meeting that had to be the worst-kept secret in St. Lawrence County, the town elders decided that if the plans for the dome happened to be stamped with the date from the original construction—1886—when there were no zoning laws, then they’d have covered their collective Khybers with no adverse publicity; as the town had embraced Soame’s as the best thing to come to the area since the Seaway, no one questioned it. Humanity’s shared fictions, it seems, are the strongest.)
As Michelangelo had believed that all the arts—painting, sculpture, and architecture—emanated from a common inspiration, that of drawing, Junichi had taken to the task of learning draftsmanship with a religious fervor; wherever he went in Silvertown, he could be seen carrying a small black sketchbook in which he seemed to be constantly scumbling in graphite everything he saw. When the doors to Soame’s were thrown open, it was evident what he had done with the acquired learning.
Above the second floor, which was galleried in oak and ran along the walls some twelve feet above the entry level, was another scaffolding which extended far into the interior of the dome, and the beginnings of the project to which Junichi intended to devote many years: his own interpretation of Michelangelo’s ‘The Last Judgment’ from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Not to be outdone, Fujiko had spent the last several months of construction designing the layout of the main floor, and learning how to make coffee. Having arrived two decades after the whole thing got underway, Meredith could honestly attest to two things—there was a reason that Michelangelo’s whole opinion of art was “it’ll be done when it is done”—after four-hundred and eighty or so months of labor, June was only about one-quarter of the way through the scene; and if you can’t make good coffee after a year, you’re never likely to be able to. After three years, Fuji finally gave up and hired a pleasant, chatty local couple, Glen and Delna Beecroft, to run the coffee shop, and she turned her attentions to her real love—old books.
The collections on display and for public perusal which lined the main hall were meticulously kept, and covered a broad range of esoteric subjects and themes. In the back of The Pickle Factory, however, was a three-story addition constructed specifically for two reasons: to be used as the Kawaminami’s personal residence, and as a secure facility to house the private collection—Fuji’s closed stacks. It was rumored she had pieces that were coveted by no less prestigious and influential establishments than The Huntington Library and The Smithsonian Institution, and was just as reluctant to lend anything out, or even afford a look. Only
three other people even had access to the closed stacks—their personal librarian; June; and the heir to the family legacy, Shingo.
O O O
June had covered the expenses of Meredith’s moving from Vienna to attend to her father’s funeral and affairs, as well as her rent and medical needs when she was unable to work after the accident; he also never let her pay a check at Soame’s (which she suspected was probably the main reason Harald preferred to have assignment meetings there, as he was always completely tapped). It seems that about two years after the coffee shop opened, June was up on the scaffolding working on Moses or someone of similar import, when a section of the supports twisted apart and began to collapse. This meant that June would in all likelihood fall to his death, but worse to him than that was the realization that the entire structure was toppling towards the counter where Fuji was working—one structural flaw was going to kill them both.
Almost instantly, a large burly fellow, who was dressed in rough, dark clothes and had been nursing a single cup of coffee all morning at a table near the counter leapt to his feet and forced himself under the collapsing scaffold. Muscles straining, he slowly straightened his back and forced it aright, allowing Fuji to move from harm’s way, and June to climb to a more solid section of bars and planks. Several other patrons and passers-by, drawn by Fuji’s shrill cries, rushed in and helped to support the structure until June could manage to repair the flaw and secure it with bracing. It was only then that they realized a two-inch wide steel pipe had been driven into the big man’s neck, and had forced its way straight through to the other side. A fraction of an inch to the left or right, and he would have bled to death, or had his spine severed. As it was, he did not flinch or cry out until the paramedics arrived and cut the bar from the frame, all the while marveling that he was still alive. They then loaded him gently onto a gurney and rushed him to the hospital, where after a short time, he recovered fully, and took his place in the community as an honored hero.
That man was Meredith’s father, Vasily Strugatski.
Little more than a year later, they had a son, and in gratitude offered to name him for their rescuer. He thought Vasily would be an awful thing to saddle a child with, particularly one whose ethnic heritage would already set him apart, and so suggested an alternative. When he first had come to America, Vasily was still a bit of a scoundrel, and passing through a suburb of Phoenix decided to climb a fence around an office complex and root around in the offices for something he could hock. The security guard nabbed him, but instead of turning him over to the police, he offered the large young man a job as the assistant-security guard of the complex (reasoning that if he got in, then security was not up to snuff); he also took him home for dinner, bought him some clothes, and loaned him some walking-around money.
Vasily didn’t actually stay long in Arizona, and he certainly didn’t abandon his scoundrel’s nature, but that incident changed his outlook on people and civilization in a very fundamental way, and he never forgot the lesson.
He suggested that June and Fuji name their child after his benefactor in the desert, as both a favor and a tribute—they thought the idea very apt and honorable, and so the child was named: Shingo Earl Kawaminami.
O O O
Pushing through the broad, etched-glass double doors at the entrance of Soame’s, Meredith saw Harald sitting at their usual table beneath the Tintorrettos, and headed over to sit down. As far as Meredith knew, she was the only one who knew him who actually just called him Harald. Except for their editor at The Ontario Daily Sun, Mr. Janes, who alternated between Van Hassel and VanHasselyouidiot, all one word—everyone else called him Weird Harold. He didn’t seem to mind; Meredith even suspected at times that he began the nickname himself, just for kicks.
It wasn’t as if the name weren’t applicable, considering the unique facets of his work were as likely to involve Alien bovine abduction as they were a story about Yeti in Cleveland—which he figured was the only place left to look for Yeti, since his Pulitzer-nominated report of the year before had proven the Himalayan Yeti to be large polar bears, much to the Nepalese’ dismay—not to mention changing the spelling of his name every couple of weeks or so. When he and Meredith first met, it was just plain Harold, but that was only because she met him in the middle of a cycle. Often, he was Harald, as he was the previous week (and probably was still); sometimes it was Jerald, heavy on the Latin accent. And sometimes, he even just goes by H—one letter, and that’s all—like some sort of James Bond villain (a weak comparison, actually, since it was Bond’s superior who was named Q; Meredith was glad she never mentioned the villain thing to Harald—she wouldn’t want him worried that she thought of him as a bad guy or anything).
As for himself, the only description he claimed even remotely accurate was also the title printed on the business cards he silver-tongued out of The Daily Sun: Zen Journalist. He claimed that by applying the Zen practice of attempting to view the world just as it is, which was achieved only with a mind that had no grasping thoughts or feelings, and a state of consciousness wherein thoughts move without leaving any trace, could those events and objects of real value be connected, viewed, and reported on. His connections were wrong often enough that Mr. Janes automatically popped one of his heart pills whenever Harald came to the office, but he was right often enough for Mr. Janes to secretly keep his home number on speed dial. Neither state of being earned him much more than the disdain of his colleagues, which for that matter could easily have been misplaced envy; Harald didn’t know which—but then, neither did anyone else, which delighted him more than he cared to admit. Zen Journalist: zero; disgruntled mass of humanity: zero. The blank page is the definition.
“Hi, Harald. What is it this week?” Meredith offered, swinging briskly through the doors of Soame’s.
“Greetings, Reedy,” Harald said, snorting a not-drunk swallow of coffee and half-standing in a clumsy, gentlemanly sort of way. He was the only one who called Meredith “Reedy”––her grandmother called her Nadia, which she’d hoped Meredith’s parents would name her. Everyone else stuck to Meredith. She figured that anyone who got saddled with a nickname like Weird Harold deserved to call people anything he wanted, especially since he was a genuinely nice fellow. Meredith pulled up a chair as he sat down and waved at Delna to bring a cup of her usual poison.
“What was it you were saying?” Harald asked, sitting.
“Your name. Aren’t you due for a change right about now?”
“Oh, it’s Hjerald, thanks for asking.”
Meredith blinked, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “That’s a new one.”
“Not really,” he replied, shrugging. “I just haven’t used it that often. This week, though, it seemed appropriate.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it’s kind of Euro—Y’know, like Bjorn Borg? And,” He leaned towards her, hunched over, voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve got a lead on a big one, this time, that happened two days ago—so we’ll have to bust our butts to get on top of it. I got the original source off the newswire from Europe, then followed up with some contacts of my own at the hospital.”
“Hospital? What, did somebody die?”
“Yeah, but he’s not important. The guy what killed him, though, he’s a real piece of work. It seems he’s actually the chief administrator for the University of Vienna …”
Meredith felt a slight twinge—her stepfather taught at the University; the stepfather she wasn’t on speaking terms with. Best not to mention it, else Hjerald will be pressing her to use him as a source.
“… And he went bonkers in this Bavarian town called, er … Um … Baywatch, or something.” He started swearing under his breath and digging into his overstuffed bag; not that it mattered—Meredith had stopped listening, still frozen on the last word he’d said.
“You mean ‘Bayreuth.’”
Hjerald stopped rooting. “Huh? Yeah, that’s it. I forgot you’re from over there, Prawn or s
omewhere.”
“You mean Prague. I’m from Vienna, actually. What is it about Bayreuth?”
“Well, this guy, see, he was watching this opera at the festival—you know, the one about Rings, and Nibelungs, and Valkyries and stuff? Like Elmer Fudd in that cartoon—‘I’m killing the waa-bit, I’m killing the waa-bit, I’m killing the WAA—’”
“Hjerald, if you don’t shut up and tell me what you’re talking about I swear to God I’m going to pull your lungs out through your nose.”
After she said it Meredith instantly regretted doing so—Hjerald looked pretty abashed. “What I mean to say is, that sounds fascinating—tell me more.”
“All right, all right—shee. You don’t have to be patriotic, Reedy.”
“You mean patronizing.”
“Yeah. Thanks—I think.” Hjerald shuffled around in his rat’s nest of papers for a few seconds more before coming up with the newswire clipping. “Here it is. It says this University guy barged onstage and began making like he was playing a character called ‘Hagen’, and he gets to the part in the opera where he’s supposed to kill the hero, right?”
“Siegfried.”
“Yeah, him. Anyway, this ‘Hagen’ guy actually kills him. Freaked everyone out, got himself taken to the local asylum, and pretty much shut down the festival. But that’s not the good part.”
Mythworld: Invisible Moon Page 2
