“Hans Brinker, a pleasure to meet you, Patrick.”
“Why is that name so familiar?”
“I don’t know why that should be.” Anika’s friend Hans spoke very limited English but smiled a lot and was extremely friendly. The conversation turned to mocha beans and I made a boastful claim about a method to make a special beverage from them.
“Like tea?” someone asked.
“No, not like tea, like coffee.”
Some minutes later Hans brought forth a small bag filled with dark beans.
“Just from the oven,” he announced.
I turned to Anika and they spoke a few words.
“He means to say they are roasted in the back room,” she translated. “And he says he’s counted every bean. They are worth more than gold, so don’t lose one.”
“I’ll try not to… I need a towel, or paper towels, a hammer or something heavy.”
“Ah, you mean to crush my beans then?”
“I do.”
“I have a grinder out in back, for pepper and spices.”
“That might be perfect.”
“Smoke, yes? I know people who do such… like tobacco.”
“No, no, not smoke. A beverage, my friend.”
“What is this?”
“You’ll see.”
I needed boiling water, a funnel and something to use as a filter. Anika explained for me and Hans obliged the best he could.
“Sugar,” I said, and then tried every other language I could think of, “Azúcar… zucchero… sucra…”
“Ah yes, a Dutch word: suiker.”
“You don’t mean zoete woordjes?” Anika asked and laughed.
“What?”
“Sweet nothings…”
“We also need milk… latte, leche, créme.”
“Ah, melk, or we say room for cream.”
I made a fairly large pot of strong coffee. It smelled perfect and I poured a cup. To this I added one sugar and some cream. I stirred. I savored the aroma and took a small mouthful. The group of friends were all staring. I gestured that everyone should take one sip and passed the cup around. They all tried it silently and then broke out into a flurry of conversation, laughter, and satisfied smiles. I got a few pats on the back and they all lined up for more. I poured out six small mugs.
Anika came to me a few minutes later with her empty cup and whispered, “Patrick, what an experience, it is a deja vu for me, or a deja goût.”
“A deja what?”
“How do you say? A smaak in Dutch… a flavor, a taste I’ve had before.”
Hans Brinker went to the back room and brought out another bag of precious beans. I repeated the process and he watched me very carefully this time. By the end of the night I had convinced Hans he was sitting on a gold mine. It turned out, he imported only fresh beans.
Anika translated for me: “Yes, fresh… green, alive, ripe berries…”
I explained that if he didn’t roast the beans, but found a way to cultivate them, he might do well for himself.
He turned to Anika for help and she translated. He stopped and thought for a while. “I will be a very rich man, yes?”
“Yes.” I laughed, and knew I had set the wheels in motion. I had blatantly altered this timeline. It could only be for the better.
***
On the walk home Anika admonished me: “Patrick, it’s embarrassing… How can you not speak French? Or Dutch or German for that matter?” She smiled up at me. “Surely you’ve had several lifetimes to learn them.”
“What?”
“Like father, like daughter,” Anika whispered in my ear, then laughed and pushed through the door into the apartment house. “I am also unique, like my father, and like you.” She stood in the middle of the hall. “Did you know I was adopted?”
“Your mother mentioned it.”
“I wonder from where? Or from when?” She laughed and twirled, almost like a dance. “I must also guess you are unique as well. Why else would you be such a good friend to my father?”
“Unique is a funny word to use.”
“Yes, a funny word… a terrifying word sometimes.” She pouted and beckoned me closer. “I will admit I feel most at home in the nineteen sixties.”
“Like nostalgia?”
“Well, if you must know, I spend most of my time there.” Anika wrapped her arms around my waist and put her head on my shoulder.
“The sixties? Why?”
“It’s the first place I traveled to… And it seems it’s the only place I’m able to go.” She pushed me away and sat on the sofa.
“What do you mean?”
“I built up some… what does my father call it? Consistency…” She paused. “I always return to there. I like the sixties, a much simpler time.”
“What do you do there?”
Anika raised an eyebrow. “I prefer not to say.”
“Oh.” I sat down next to her.
“Promise you won’t tell my father?” she asked with a coy smile.
“Of course.”
“I’m a burglar, a cat burglar.”
“What?”
Anika snuggled closer on the couch. “I’ve never told anyone before, not even my father’s horrid friends… though I think they may suspect something.” She gave me a searching glance. “Do you think less of me now?”
“Of course not.”
“I’m not like the others,” she began. “I am not able to control my comings and goings.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have no conscious will of my own. Rather, it is like I’m possessed by someone else.”
“Hmm, that seems very familiar somehow.”
“Does it?”
“I’ve gone through the exact same thing a couple of times.”
“Then you know… It’s as if I’m sleepwalking and I can’t stop myself. I seem to be fully conscious of my acts… yet, in the dead of night, I get up… walk to a particular statue in the park, climb up and leap off— then nothing… I remember nothing after that, until I find myself back at the apartment, or sometimes laying in the grass… and usually, I’m wearing new clothes.”
“New clothes?” I asked.
Anika rose abruptly and took me by both hands. She led me to her bedroom and opened a vast closet lined with various outfits. “These… all from the nineteen sixties. All sorts of clothes, evening dresses, elegant gowns, daywear, slacks, skirts, pullovers… and then there are these…” She opened a drawer full of black apparel.
“What are those?”
“The outfits that I find myself in. A ski-mask, stretch trousers and a pull-over, gloves as well, and black trainers.” She paused. “Often times I have ropes with me and sometimes these tools.” She opened another drawer filled with instruments I could not begin to identify.
“You are a burglar.”
“I am,” she said and laughed.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Where are the things you’ve… well, stolen?”
“Ah…” Anika smiled and took me to a large cabinet. She opened it with a flourish. Inside, the shelves were filled with jewelry, loose gems, semi-precious stones and strands of pearls. “A lot of it is paste,” Anika explained.
“Paste?”
“Costume jewelry, counterfeits. I don’t seem to be a very discriminating thief.” She laughed again.
“Are you still in the burglary business?”
“Now, in the present?” She seemed surprised by my question. “No, I only do that sort of thing in the sixties.”
“Why?”
“I can’t be bothered with alarms and computer surveillance. It’s become so complicated. All the fun is gone.”
***
The sound of Anika getting out of bed and rummaging through her closet for a pair of shoes woke me.
“Anika?” I called out but she didn’t respond. I got up and followed her since she seemed to be heading for the front door. “Anika?” I called again, but it was
as if I wasn’t even there. I stood in front of her and blocked her path, trying to make eye contact.
“The Anika you know isn’t here at the moment. You must let me pass,” she finally said in a perfectly normal tone of voice.
“Where are you going?”
“Back,” she said.
That I could guess. “Where are you coming from?”
“Far from here.”
I guessed that too. “How far?”
“Too far…” she replied and wavered a bit unsteadily.
“Why are you going back again?”
“We must find the kiku-ishi.”
“I just gave you the necklace… you’re still wearing it.”
“Oh…” This Anika looked down at her breast. Her hand raised and touched the odd gemstone. She started swaying. I caught her just as she fell, and carried her back to bed.
chapter eleven
tulip bank
“You wished to see me, Magistrate?”
“Yes, your treatment did little. I’m worse off than ever.”
“How so?”
“I haven’t slept in days,” I replied then lowered my tone as if someone else might be listening, “and the intruder in my mind is… well… he grows bolder.”
“Bolder?” the doctor asked.
“Perhaps that is the wrong word. I feel as if I’m being possessed.”
Doctor Pomodoro seemed surprised by my remark. “A demon, are you saying?”
“Nothing of the sort,” I shot back angrily. “My guest, the cohabiter of my mind is no demon. He is more like myself than anyone… and yet he shows me things that cannot be, and tells me stories too fantastical to believe.”
“Demons often employ such strategies, in my experience,” the doctor commented. “But such is beyond a physician’s realm. You are in need of spiritual guidance, I would say.”
“I only require your discretion, il mio buon dottore, for now.”
“As you say, my Lord Magistrate.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and drew his robes closer. “How is it I may help?”
“I thought a sleeping draught should remedy my situation. I am plagued with too many visions.”
“What sort of visions?”
“This other me, he shows me things from his memory. It’s difficult to make sense of them.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, conveyances of all manner, carriages without a beast of burden, moving along at impossible speeds… ships with no sails, indeed, even ships with wings that seem to take to the sky.”
The doctor said nothing, trying to keep his face as blank as possible.
“I know, such things seem incredible… but they have been shown to me,” I continued.
“And what stories does the occupant of your mind tell you?”
“Eh?”
“You mention, that he tells you stories.”
“Yes, but they are disjointed fragments, flashes and phrases; there is no narrative as it were.”
“What things have you been able to glean?”
“Maddening glimpses is all… I’ve been told we are at a special point in history… supposedly, a time when enlightenment will spread across the continent. Reading, indeed books are to become commonplace, religion will be supplanted…”
“Astonishing,” the doctor said in a whisper. “I consider it the work of the devil.”
***
The next morning I tried to make sense of Anika’s condition. She might be wrestling with herself. Or maybe, she had no idea what was happening at all. It did go some way towards explaining her malfunctioning memory. I reckoned it was someone from her future, soft jumping into her, but not fully taking over. It could not be easy.
“You seem different this morning,” I commented.
“Different? In what way do you mean?”
“I can’t quite put my finger on it. How did you sleep?”
“Fine… and you?”
“Okay, I guess… I’ve been having strange dreams lately.”
“Oh, I’m always having strange dreams, often about my father.” Anika paused; she looked a bit troubled. “Speaking of whom, I was expecting him for breakfast this morning but then remembered he wasn’t coming.”
“No,” I said gently.
“You did see my mother though?” Anika asked hopefully.
“Yes, two or three days ago. She seems very happy, but she misses you, of course.”
“I should visit more often.”
“She’d like that.”
“And my father… when did you last see him?”
“A week ago, I guess, but not in this timeline.”
“No?”
“We were all together in Sand City: you, your mom, and your dad…”
“Sand City, the beach house?”
“Yes.”
“Oh Patrick, it’s a terrible muddle for me. I can’t seem to get my memories straight.” She paused. “My best recollection of you seems to come from California… ha, you were a musician, I think.” Anika tried to smile but it did not come easily. “When was the last time you saw my father in this timeline?”
“I haven’t yet. That’s why I think he’s missing.”
“Has anyone seen him?”
“Well… some say about a year ago. He was investigating a murder.”
“Who was killed?”
“A mutual friend, a detective named Durbin.”
“Oh yes, I remember the man…”
“So, you were in Sand City?”
“Was I? No, I think father traveled there, maybe some sort of foreign exchange program for policemen.” She frowned with concentration. “And before that?”
“Before what?”
“When was my father last seen?”
“Oh, twenty-three years ago, nineteen ninety-two, in Pennsylvania.”
“Another murder case no doubt.”
“Yes, and he disappeared right afterwards.”
“Well, that couldn’t be right. I remember growing up in this very house with him here… and mother.”
I took a sip of coco and finished my ginger cake. “Have you ever been to a place where coffee is… well, popular?”
“Cafe, you are saying?”
I nodded.
“We were there just last night.”
“I mean, it’s commonplace, part of the fabric of everyday life.”
“You mean in the nineteen sixties?”
“I guess I do.”
“I will say from the taste, it was very, very familiar to me.” Anika sat across the kitchen table and sipped her tea.
“As much as you may not like your father’s unique friends, do you know any? Where they live?”
“Hmm… not really. Why?”
“They might be able to help us find him.”
“Oh, I know a place that will have some information…”
“Not a library, I hope?”
She looked up and smiled. “Not at all, more like a bank, I would say.”
“A bank?”
“Exactly that. When I need money, I go there and they give me some.”
“It’s open on a Saturday?”
“Oh yes, they’re open all hours; quite immune to the passing of time.”
“What’s the name of this place?”
“The Aldus Kenon Trust. It’s not far from here. Should we take a stroll, or would you like to borrow a bike?”
***
We walked along the faded red-brown brick pavement. I had never seen so many bicycles and sub-compact cars in one place. I looked out at the green-gray waters of a canal.
“I need an antiques store.”
“Whatever for?” Anika asked.
“To buy a cane, a walking stick.”
“Have you hurt yourself— or do you plan to?”
“Neither.”
“You are a very strange man, Patrick,” she said and stared up at me. Anika took out her phone and did a quick search. “Antiques… wandelstok… Oh yes, I know this
place. It’s quite near.”
It was an odd sort of shop selling odd sorts of things. It was dark inside, with the only light coming from the storefront window. Anika explained what I wanted and an eager old man led me to a case of exquisite canes, all neatly arranged and under glass. Worn brass handles glinted in the dim light. The man said something to Anika and she translated: “There are more canes with silver heads if you want.” The shopkeeper motioned to another case.
“No, these are perfect.” I was torn between a lion’s face and a bird’s claw, but finally settled on the former. “Ask him if it has a sword inside.”
***
Anika next led me to a nondescript building with a gleaming metal sign outside that read:
Aldus Kenon Trust
Private Bankers
Bankiersfirma
Amsterdam Branch Office
The inside was a different matter, certainly not nondescript, but lavish and ornate, though that was not immediately apparent. At first, we walked through a very long corridor, barely lit and with a low ceiling. The walls were lined with tiny metal doors, thousands perhaps. It reminded me of a giant post office. Our footsteps echoed until we finally entered the main room: a huge circular dome with a reception desk at its very center.
It was all very quiet, hushed. An almost eerie stillness pervaded the place. It seemed necessary not to speak above a whisper, and the only sound might have been pens diligently scratching across paper.
From the main room, three other enormous corridors went off in different directions and at right angles, presumably to the north, south, and east. Each disappeared into a funneling darkness, and I now guessed that the building must occupy at least an entire city block. I could also see dozens of offices in between the hallways, all with open doors, but it was difficult to get a good look inside.
The reception desk sat in the middle of this cross of corridors, under the highest ceiling I’d likely ever see, two or three stories at least. Hanging from the center was a huge tiffany-style lamp, though lamp was hardly an adequate word. It was patterned as an abstract mosaic with thousands of pieces of colored glass that glinted and reflected throughout the whole building. I also saw a spiral staircase leading up to more offices unknown.
Low City: Missing Persons (A Tractus Fynn Mystery Book 3) Page 14
