“Okay. When do we get to the part that’ll convince Mr. Janes to sign our vouchers?”
“I’m coming to that. You’re gonna love this, Reedy.”
Hjerald was really getting worked up, realized Meredith. Bless his heart—this was his element. The one saving grace in being assigned as his partner is that at the very least, the stuff he came up with was interesting—even if most of it was somewhere to the left of reality.
“Well, I found out which hospital they took Hagen to, and as it turns out, he escaped just this morning, and with the help of one of the doctors to boot.”
“Really? A Wagner groupie?”
“Something like that. A friend of mine out of a news bureau in Munich got me a transcript of the doctor’s notes. Apparently, this guy believed he really was Hagen—and more, that he could prove it by leading the doctor to the lost treasure of the Nibelungs, which was supposed to have been thrown into the Rhine. I guess he did a pretty good job of it, too—there’s been no trace of them.”
“No trace of the Nibelung?”
“No trace of Hagen or the doctor. The way I see it, he’s either legitimately crazy, or he really is Hagen—and if that’s true, then maybe the treasure is real, and that’s where we find a story.”
“Hjerald, Mr. Janes is never going to let us go to Germany …” Meredith began in protest, when just then, a cappuccino was placed in front of her—and its Heavenly aromas dispersed and banished any placebo-editorial vitriol she was about to conjure. “Thank you, Del. It smells wonderful.”
Delna Beecroft was a roundish woman with close-cropped red hair and a cheery smile. Her husband Glen was much the same—sort of what you might get if you pumped two hundred pounds of helium into an honest-to-God leprechaun and added a real estate license. They collectively ran everything at Soame’s having to do with customers, and they excelled at it. If not for them, June and Fuji would have been reduced to living off of the interest of whatever millions they had left; which is not to say the Beecrofts—particularly Glen—didn’t have their quirks.
“Sure, my duck. If you need anything else, just let Glen know.” She bobbed her head back and forth and winked at Glen at his post over near the counter. “I’ve got to pop out to Hatch’s—we seem to have misplaced the paper this morning.”
“You rancid wheelbarrow full of pus-filled armpit hair!” spouted Glen.
Delna smiled cheerfully. “He found a book of insults compiled by Harvard students while going through June’s refuse pile,” she said by way of explanation. “He’s never been happier.”
Hjerald and Meredith waved in greeting. “Hi, Glen.”
“Fart-collecting outhouse-sniffers! How are you kids? Get you anything? Got some new biscotti, baked fresh.”
“We’re fine, thanks.” Meredith nodded.
“Sure?” Glen replied. “Okay. Just holler. Snot-squirting lint-eaters!”
“It’s a phase,” said Delna. “He’ll be through it by tomorrow.”
“That’s probably good,” said Hjerald, casting a sympathetic eye at the hapless fellow buying a soda.
“You-who-are-the-name-of-the-moment-when-dogshit-turns-white, thanks for visiting Soame’s,” said Glen, handing the confused man a bag as Delna held the door open. “Come again.”
Meredith turned back to Hjerald. “You haven’t said what we’re going to do about this assignment …”
“I’ve got it all figured out. See, if they’re missing anyway, then no one else is going to get anything direct from the source, right? So there’s no point in our going to Bayreuth. Instead, we can just write the story from here, and flesh it out with research and stuff. And we can just use the photos from the wire service. I’m certain I can sell it to Mr. Janes.”
“Bacon-swilling Francophilic newsprint-biter,” said Glen helpfully.
“Thanks a lot, Hjerald.” Meredith said angrily. “If we’re not going anywhere together, and you’re going to use stock and wire photos, then what did you call me down here for?”
“Probably,” came a smooth voice from the curtained side door behind her, “because one, he knows if he’s sitting with you, he’ll get free coffee; and two, if you’re here, then I’ll probably show up sooner or later, and if I’m here, the two of you can probably get access to mom’s closed stacks.” The curtains parted and the Kawaminami’s son, arms laden with T-squares and rolls of vellum, stepped into the main hall. Tall and slender, he was an architecture major whose main preoccupation seemed to be reading in his parents’ library and taking exams; and when he wasn’t taking exams, he was usually taking Meredith.
“Hi, Meredith,” he said gaily, kissing the top of her head. “That was the plan, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly,” said Hjerald without a trace of shame. “I figure that with the resources in your library, and my grasp of the cloud in the sky and the water in the jug, we can at the very least put together a better mythological and historical angle than any team in the country.”
Shingo blinked. “The cloud in the sky and the water in the jug?” he asked, looking to Meredith for an explanation.
Meredith bit back an amused grin. “It’s a Zen thing,” she said, shrugging.
He was right about the usefulness of the library—the books at Soame’s that lined the main hall where the coffee shop was located contained an extraordinary number of the very kind of books they needed, and really was the kind of invaluable resource similar to what Sir John Soane had intended for the original museum. But the closed stacks that was another thing altogether.
June spent millions of dollars reconstructing St. Peter’s dome; Fuji spent a similar amount buying books. She didn’t discriminate much, either—not in buying. That, she left to the sorting, buying up whole libraries of books, sometimes entire auctions, then trucking them back to Silvertown to be sorted. The much-coveted personal librarian job (for which Hjerald had filled out some fifteen applications, all rejected politely) was handled by a tall, mustached former printer they’d hired, a prim, buttoned-up fellow named Rod Bristol. Bristol was thorough and efficient, culling only the best books for Soame’s, and simply (as per Fuji’s instructions) donating the rest to the local library and school. This largesse had an unusual side effect, in that for years since, anyone attending a Friends of the Library book sale had a good shot at seeing 15th century incunabula sitting side by side with James Herriot books and Tom Clancy thrillers.
Anyone who would put those kind of books in the discard pile had to have a very impressive collection—and of that collection, only a tenth was actually on display, including several leaves of a Gutenberg Bible, which were on display because they were the spares.
Of course, Meredith always had been curious about the closed stacks, but she’d never presumed to ask. Hjerald, though, was a different kind of hamster.
“No need to ask,” came a voice, ghostly from somewhere above.
The omnipresent scaffolding rattled as June descended to the floor level. He had apparently been painting above them the entire time they had been talking; and, to Meredith’s chagrin, listening to everything they’d said. Shorter than his son by several inches, he still had the good looks and vitality of youth, as well as the interest and curiosity of the engineer he still was.
“Hi, Pop,” said Shingo.
“Earl,” said June, approaching. “Hard at work, I see?” he said, pointing at the vellum. Only his parents called him Earl—to everyone else, he was Shingo.
“Sure am,” he said leaning back in the chair next to me. “Doing studies on Roark this week. It’s fun, but tough.”
“June,” Meredith began, half in apology.
“Shh,” he said, shushing her and taking her hands in his. “For the daughter of Vasily Strugatski, anything.”
At this, Shingo looked vaguely uncomfortable, but Hjerald jumped up immediately, saluting and bowing simultaneously.
“Yes sir, thank you sir,” stammered Hjerald.
“Weird Harold,” June said patiently, “you are also
welcome—provided you stop saluting.”
“Yes sir,” said Hjerald, hand half-raised. Instead, he whipped it downward and stuck it in the front of his pants.
“Chicken-choking keyboard-abuser,” offered Glen. Shingo smiled and squeezed Meredith’s thigh under the table. June merely smiled. “Waffles,” said Hjerald.
He wasn’t called Weird Harold for nothing.
O O O
“Say,” Meredith ventured to Hjerald as they got up from the table to follow June into the back rooms, “do you know what that administrator’s name was—the guy who thought he was playing Hagen?”
“Something-Gunnar-something. It didn’t come out too clear on the fax.”
“Mmm. And how about the guy he killed, the Siegfried performer?”
“Sure—it’s right here. Langbein. Michael Langbein. The newswire said … Reedy? Meredith? Are you okay?”
She had begun to wonder when the other shoe would drop—and after waiting for more than six months, there it was.
If it was possible to love and hate a person in equal parts, then perhaps Meredith Strugatski’s feelings for Michael Langbein could be described in words; while he was alive, anyway. Now, all she could think about was that the only person who had a significant reason to want her father dead, the only possible suspect not living in or near Silvertown, the man who had married her mother and raised Meredith as his own, was dead himself.
Michael. Oh, Michael, she thought as the room swayed around her.
Fade to black.
***
Chapter Two
Tiu’s Day
Meredith didn’t know if she was awake or asleep; she saw as if awake, but her vision was clouded, indistinct. Clouds, blue-black and softly billowing, roiled before her, and in them appeared the Serpent. Twisting elegantly against the background of sea and sky, it appeared to struggle, the waters lashing against the land; she realized its grace was a furious effort, a mighty attempt, writhing in fury, to come ashore. A part of her wanted to deny it, to force it away. But another part, a deeper part, wanted only to embrace, to draw it and its terrible spitting venoms to her bosom. Stretching her arms, Meredith reached out to it …
… And woke up.
She was lying in a huge, soft bed in the Kawaminami’s residence. Above her, on the canopy, was a beautiful embroidery of a dragon, sleek and red and terrible.
It didn’t look anything like the serpent in her dream.
Seeing Meredith was awake, Fuji, who had apparently appointed herself her nurse when she passed out, stepped quickly over to the bed. “Here, Meredith. I have green tea—it will restore your strength.”
She helped the younger woman sip at the tea, then propped her up with several pillows from the divan next to the bed. “Thanks,” Meredith said weakly. “Um, what happened?”
“I think,” said Fuji, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth, “that your mind decided to take a brief sabbatical, and did not inform your body beforehand. You must have needed it—you slept all afternoon, and throughout the night as well.”
Meredith groaned. “Great. Just great.”
There was a tapping at the door, which opened slightly, and the concerned faces of June, Shingo, and Hjerald poked in. In answer to June’s raised eyebrow, Fuji motioned them in. Shingo and June both kissed Meredith on the forehead, and even Hjerald gave her an affectionate pat on the shoulder.
“Geez, Reedy, you scared us to death!” said Hjerald. “What happened? Are you sick? How are you feeling?”
“No, no. I was just …” Just what—startled to hear that her stepfather had been killed while acting in a play? Overworked? Both?
“I think,” began Fuji, “that you are not having someone to properly look after you. When was the last time you did this?” she said, making the motions of turning on a faucet and then drinking from a cup.
“Water? Oh, I don’t … Wow. I guess it has been a few weeks,” Meredith admitted.
June and Fuji nodded in unison. “Dehydrated. Too much cappuccino, not enough water. You drink this tea, then take some bottles from Mr. Beecroft downstairs, and make sure you drink some every day.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Shingo, arms folded pensively, shook his head. “No, that wasn’t it—not all of it, anyway. You were telling her something,” he said, gesturing to Hjerald, “and she looked as if you’d run over her dog, then she fainted.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Hjerald. “We were just talking about our story, and a guy that got killed over in … Oh, geez, Reedy—he wasn’t your boyfriend or something, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t my boyfriend,” she responded plaintively, noticing Shingo stiffen slightly. “He was my stepfather.”
O O O
Meredith’s parents, that is, her mother and Michael, met in Vienna, but he was originally from Linz, where his great-grandparents had moved their family a century before from the Saxon city of Dresden. Michael was raised in Austria, but spent a great deal of time in Germany—he loved the Wagner festivals, and made plans every year to include a trip over to Bayreuth. He’d always asked Meredith to go with him, but she was always too busy, or at school, or just too focused on her own independent streak to really care about what would make someone else happy; Michael understood—it was the province of a child not to notice a parent’s existence until the mid-twenties.
All things being even, Meredith couldn’t have cared less for what Michael wanted; but it would’ve made her mother happy if she had gone, and Meredith knew that would weigh heavily on her for a long time.
Her father (speaking of Vasily this time) met her mother when he was well past being barely a gangly, girl-shy youth adjusting to the body of a man, but his manner and countenance were still those of one who never lost the innocence of childhood. Farmers, he and his parents lived in the smallish German city of Bingen on the Rhine, where centuries before their forefathers had settled after making the long journey across the continent from the Ukraine. But, mid-century Bingen was a poor era for crops and vineyards; and years of drought and scrabbling in the dry earth, which produced less and less each year, had convinced them that farming was not the best of occupations. Thus, they moved lock and stock to Vienna, where (in a move that can best be described as horizontal, career-wise) Meredith’s grandfather took up a job in a slaughterhouse. It was a place where her grandfather had friends, and he hoped, a chance for a new beginning for the family.
Perhaps in other places, the relentless processing of animals into foodstuffs had been automated to a degree, but in Vienna in the 1970’s, it was still a matter of brute force, applied with human hands. The way it worked was to have the cattle led from their pens into a narrow, fenced passage, where, one at a time, they were restrained, then clubbed brutally in the head with a sledgehammer. Meredith’s grandfather never believed that there would be a worse job than crushing the animal’s skull; he was wrong. It was far, far worse to be the one holding the terrified beast as it awaited the blow, screaming, eyes bulging in fear. Every night, Vasily said, her grandfather would come home, face and arms streaked with gore, and would spend hours over the washtub, scrubbing, as her grandmother filled and refilled the tub with steaming water boiled on the stove. Sometimes, Meredith was told, he kept scrubbing, even when there was nothing left to wash off.
Meredith’s father met her mother at the open-air market, where she was selling assorted weavings; he bought a shawl, because he thought his own mother would like the delicate pattern, and overpaid for it, because he liked the face of the shy girl who sold it to him.
Her name was Elena, and she was as drawn to the big, clumsy farmer’s son as he was to her. Unfortunately, there was a problem—not so much for Vasily as for his parents; Elena was a Gypsy, and on the steppes of the Ukraine, as well as across all the lands where the Strugatski’s had traveled, it was known that these people could steal your house and make you smile at them as they did so. Never mind that this was a generalization or at worst a cliché
—this was what Vasily’s parents believed.
For Vasily’s part, he had already decided that Elena could have whatever she wanted, and he would freely give to her all that he had, if she asked.
They were married, and Meredith’s father built an addition to her grandparents’ house for their own, then took a place in the slaughterhouse opposite her grandfather in order to support his new wife. Day after day, the two men looked into each other’s eyes as an endless procession of livestock took the place between the leather straps, which tightened just before the hammer fell. Each night, the two men would come home, streaked and splattered, to bathe.
Elena’s acceptance by Vasily’s family was evident through two signs: her husband’s mother would (not often, but sometimes) purchase a scarf or shawl from Elena’s mother at the market, and would only haggle a little over price; and her father didn’t take so long to bathe, anymore.
Years later, Meredith’s grandmother told her it was because he was happy—he worked side by side with his son, who was married to a woman who loved him, and had fine, wide, childbearing hips; he had food on his table, and a roof over his head. He was happy.
For a year, he was happy.
When Meredith’s father left Vienna, he did so with little notice; he told his mother, so she would not fear her son was dead. He said he would write (a promise he kept, faithfully, until his death), although he only wrote to Meredith and her grandmother—never to Elena.
Meredith’s grandfather found out his son was gone when he arrived at the slaughterhouse and no one was in the stall opposite him to hold the straps. He worked alone that day, holding the cattle, trying not to wipe at his tearstained eyes with hands flecked with gore.
One other thing of significance occurred the night Vasily left—his wife gave birth, to a daughter.
Her father saw Meredith once, and then left forever. Six months later, her mother married Michael Langbein.
O O O
Long legs (Langbein means ‘Long Leg’ in German), as her grandmother came to call him, was only somewhat accepted into Meredith’s mother’s circle of friends. Elena’s family accepted him readily enough, and Vasily’s mother accepted him for the sake of the child and her mother. Her grandfather never spoke to him, or even acknowledged his presence during one of their infrequent family visits to her paternal grandparents’ home.
Mythworld: Invisible Moon Page 3
