The Book of Common Dread

by Brent Monahan

  CHAPTER SIX

  December 17

  Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil…

  -Isaiah 5:20

  The main stairs of the Vanderveen mansion creaked like a set of old bones. Even over the sizzle of butter in the frying pan, Simon heard each step of Frederika's descent. His stomach tensed with the expectation of the first moments, but the sight of her relaxed him. She was again bundled in her ratty old bathrobe and had her hair pulled up into a ponytail. He faced the stove quickly and busied himself sliding the turner under the pancakes.

  "Smells great," Frederika said.

  "Thanks. You want some?"

  He heard one of the kitchen chairs scrape along the tile floor. "That's okay. Maybe I'll eat this."

  A large lazy Susan sat in the middle of the table. On the side away from Frederika, a solitary fudge-topped walnut brownie beckoned from under a glass bubble. When Simon turned, he saw her inching the dessert toward her with the tips of two fingers. He reached over, stopped the lazy Susan's circuit and removed the brownie.

  "Wrong," he said. "Physical laws make bad breakfasts."

  "Physical laws?" she obliged.

  Simon piloted the dessert and its container onto the kitchen counter, well out of her reach. "Surely you've heard of Brownian movement?"

  Frederika's expression was pure blank. "No."

  "Some guy named Robert Brown discovered the random motion of molecules in a liquid. Brownian movement. Ergo, this is brownie in-"

  "I get it," she said, resting her head on her hand. "It deserves death, but don't torture it."

  Simon went back to his pancakes.

  "You are strange," Frederika pronounced, after a moment of silence.

  Simon glanced over his shoulder at her. Her chin still rested on the back of her hand, as she studied him. She looked like one of the placid young matrons in Mannerist paintings. He realized that this was the first time she had bothered to truly see him. The relationship had changed. In spite of her pronouncement about him, her expression was relaxed and mildly curious.

  "Strange… c'est moi," he admitted.

  "That's all right," she granted. "So am I."

  "There's plenty here," he offered, flipping two silver-dollar-sized pancakes at once. "I always make extra. Did you know you can freeze batter?"

  "I'd heard. You didn't seem to believe my gratitude last night. I meant it."

  "You're welcome."

  "I didn't see your shining armor when you moved in."

  Simon flipped a pancake high into the air, made a sloppy catch and watched it land cooked side down on the griddle. "That's because I don't own any. Don Quixote was the last true knight. I'm just an ordinary madman."

  "Mad perhaps, but not ordinary," Frederika returned, rising. "Where's the syrup? What kind of a greasy spoon diner is this?"

  The breakfast conversation continued with tea-specifically the cure which Frederika finally admitted having visited an herbalist for the previous night. She belittled the herbs' powers, however, guessing that what she had had was "one of those viruses that last forty-eight hours and disappear." The brew had probably quieted her cough and opened her nose long enough for her to get the night of sleep she needed. Simon made no comment.

  Once she had amended the explanation of her disappearance, Frederika moved immediately to the subject of the university's main library, prodding Simon into dialogue with innocuous questions. Looking for a reason behind her changed attitude in him, he waited in vain for a charged topic which never came. They were like strangers attempting a first dance together, stiffly formal and behind tempo. Before the subject had exhausted itself, however, shared tastes in books and reverence for the printed word started a free flow. The rhythm of their dialogue accelerated. Eventually, Simon's growing ease prompted him to enthuse about the Schickner Collection.

  "It really is a coup for the university, isn't it?" Frederika asked.

  "Yes. Especially the Akkadian scrolls. Reverend Spencer… he's the expert translating them…"

  "I think I saw him waiting in front of the doors the other morning. An old man with frizzy white hair?"

  "He's the one," Simon said, captured again by her blue eyes but noting this time the depth of intelligence radiating from them. She was not the only one seeing afresh with the new day. "He… what was I saying… oh yes. He calls them the Ahriman scrolls."

  "I'd heard of them," said Frederika.

  "From The Chronicle or the New York Times," Simon supposed.

  "No. From my roommate… the one you made the translations for… she told me about them."

  "Really?"

  "They're supposed to have a passage on necromancy somewhere in them."

  Her words, though casually delivered, fell on Simon's ears like a mallet blow. He held on to his smile with difficulty. "That's interesting. When did she tell you this?"

  "Yesterday," Frederika said. She lied with the effortless grace of a deer eluding a clumsy stalker. While he enjoyed the improvement in their relationship, he also saw that she was not about to invest trust in him. At least not right away. She was steering the conversation purposely into the Stygian waters of necromancy, her quest for dialogue with the dead undeterred.

  "She called when you were out, to thank me for the translation you made," Frederika continued. "Then she told me she'd read about the scrolls arriving at the university. I don't know how she knows about the necromantic passages, but she ended up begging me to do whatever I can to see if she can get a copy."

  "What about her advisor going on sabbatical?" Simon asked.

  Frederika's reply was immediate and unhalting. "She's willing to push back her graduation for this. She's sure her thesis would be publishable if she could get the passages."

  Simon shook his head gravely. "Reverend Willy's a nice man, but he'd never allow his thunder to be stolen by a girl pursuing a master's degree."

  "What if she could persuade her advisor to come here on her behalf and read the passages?"

  "That's even more remote."

  Frederika's bright demeanor dimmed. "I'm sure it's only a couple paragraphs in the whole thing. You don't read Akkadian, do you?"

  Simon shook his head impotently. "Not one word. Even if I did, it's Reverend Spencer's baby. Besides, I can't even open the storage vaults without him or Dr. Gould. The system requires two keys and two people simultaneously pressing buttons on opposite ends of the room to take them out."

  "Damn." Frederika looked crushed.

  Simon enjoyed his newly gained favor too much to lose it so soon. There was also the possibility that a few well-chosen words from him might keep her waiting for a skeleton key into the next world rather than running back to the man on Park Place for help. Before that happened, he hoped to know considerably more about her and her mysterious need to speak with her dead father. "Maybe Willy wouldn't mind," he retrenched. "He and I are getting to be fast friends. At least I could ask him if he's found any spirit-summoning passages. If he has, I'm sure he'd show me his translation."

  "That would be wonderful!" Frederika enthused. Even without makeup her skin glowed. She possessed naturally a blush that less blessed women emulated with rouge. The blue of her irises seemed flecked with sparkling slivers of ice, making them fiery and cold at the same moment. Simon decided that she had perhaps not given enough credit to the herbal tea's curative powers. He could not remember seeing anyone so imbued with health.

  They chatted on for a while longer about books, each wanting to end with something less charged than the subject of the Ahriman scrolls. Frederika volunteered to scour the griddle if Simon did the rest. While they worked, Simon remembered the Christmas tree, leaning in a bucket of water in the foyer. They decided to decorate it immediately.

  Frederika brought Simon down into the basement to fetch the tree base and lights. While he finished securing the lights to the upper branches she descended again, for the last of the ornaments. She had still not returned when Simon finished, so he refocused his at
tention on the Steinway grand near the front window. He sat, lifted the lid, and, with his forefinger, plunked out the melody of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." In spite of the magnificent piano's exquisitely maintained exterior it was badly out of tune. Its insides had evidently not been cared for since Frederik Vanderveen had died. Or, Simon mused, perhaps since the father had shipped Frederika off to school in Switzerland.

  Simon unboxed decorations while Frederika did the hanging. He found a cache of genuine Victorian ornaments. They were meticulously painted blown glass, imported from Germany and Italy in his grandparents' day-silver-scaled fish, fat-faced cherubs, angels, lambs, faded St. Nicholases, and mirrored balls shameless with glittering detail. Then, while he secured the last of them on the tree's upper branches, Frederika sat on the floor patiently stringing popcorn. He turned on the ladderstep with a thought. "I assume you're Christian."

  "I was raised Dutch Reformed," she answered, not looking up from her work.

  "And do you still practice?"

  "No."

  "This is just a celebration of season."

  "At least for now," Frederika said. "God will have to come to me if he wants my attention. And you?"

  "I don't deny God's existence; it's just that right now I feel the need to seek earthly things much more than heavenly ones. The same as you, I expect."

  She did not deny his supposition, but he was convinced her obsession took no earthly fix at all.

  The glowing cheeks, flowing blond hair, and graceful arms of the Italian crowning papier-mache angel presented more than a passing resemblance to Frederika. Simon had almost secured it to the top of the tree when the telephone rang.

  "It's for you," Frederika announced.

  Simon accepted the outheld phone sheepishly. He muttered a hello.

  "Simon, it's Rich." His doctoral candidate friend from the physics department.

  "Yes, Rich."

  "I want to let you know I'll be hanging around town for the holidays." Rich's voice had a disquieted edge.

  "Really? What happened?"

  "Professor Gerstadt died in a fire last night." Gerstadt was Rich's advisor.

  "My God!" Simon reacted. "How horrible!"

  "Somebody in physics knows a volunteer in the fire department. He said it started in their bedroom. Probably from a cigarette. Gerstadt smoked like a chimney. He wasn't the easiest guy to get along with, but he didn't deserve that. His wife died, too."

  "Terrible. What does this do to your dissertation?"

  "I don't know," Rich said. "I'll just keep slogging through the holiday. I could have some definite results by New Year's. Maybe Professor McCarthy will take pity and pick me up."

  "Merry Christmas," Simon wished, ironically. "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Just be willing to hear me bitch. I'm gonna need to pause and unwind every few days. Will you be around?"

  "Sure. Count on me. Let's have dinner tomorrow night."

  "Sounds good. At the Annex, so we can drink."

  "The Annex is fine. Let's make it six-thirty." Simon watched Frederika sitting crosslegged like a squaw, stringing popcorn and pretending not to listen. "Call me tomorrow at work," Simon suggested. A few moments later the conversation reached its natural conclusion and he hung up.

  Simon picked up one of the decoration boxes and gathered the strewn tissue paper into it. "I gave a couple people your number," he admitted. "I hope you don't mind. It didn't seem to make much sense getting my own phone for two weeks."

  "It's okay," Frederika said. "You couldn't get a phone installed quickly this time of year anyway. What happened?"

  Simon summarized the conversation. Frederika clucked sympathetically. For a time, each worked within the silence of private thoughts. Simon mused on the sudden, violent deaths of two university employees. Tommy Wheeler's suicide had not yet made the biweekly Princeton Packet, but it would. Gerstadt's death and life would no doubt be chronicled. Simon had a bad feeling about the deaths. Common superstition predicted such ill-fated events occurring in threes. He had chosen a new path for his efforts just the night before. Linking himself to Frederika Vanderveen, even tenuously, seemed a dangerous undertaking. He hoped fervently that while she was seeking the dead, Death was not even more relentlessly seeking her.

  ***

  DeVilbiss turned the page of the Sunday New York Times. On the floor next to his easy chair lay editions of the London Times, Le Figaro, La Stampa, and Die Zeit. The most convincing evidence of little Princeton's global urbanity was the international news gazebo on Palmer Square. The Dark Forces required two perpetual activities of DeVilbiss: the first was to report on the rise of any individual who might contribute significantly to peace and the betterment of the human condition (which made that person likely prey); the second was to watch for the appearance of any book that translated, quoted from, or even mentioned the contents of the scrolls attributed to Ahriman. For his own very private purpose, he also needed a daily copy of the most influential newspaper of the particular country he happened to be in.

  The page that DeVilbiss scanned was filled with news of the former Soviet Union and the violence that arose from its restructuring. He was certain that thousands reading the same article would be telling each other they had not dreamed of living to see this day. Such a phrase would never spring to his lips; he expected to outlive not only Soviet communism but United States democracy and whatever regimes replaced both. He had lived through the culmination of the Renaissance, the discovery of the New World, the Classic era, Biedermeier culture, the French Revolution, Napoleon, Romanticism, the Industrial Revolution, Darwinism, the Jazz Age, Hitler, and the Cold War. Every race and age strove mightily, driven mad by the relentless ticking of clocks-both natural and of their own fashioning. He watched the human tectonic upheavals-violent revolutions springing from hope and despair-and waited for what he trusted would be the most important of ages: that of his inevitable freedom. He patiently rode the waves of the decades, anticipating the discoveries of those few more bits of knowledge that would free him forever.

  From the kitchen, the relentless Fortspinnung of Bach's d minor piano concerto unwound. The music made him yearn for his grand piano, stored in Zurich. The fingers of his left hand tapped out the bass line of the piano part. Of all the languages he had learned, music spoke the truest, the most eloquently. In spite of his own athanasia, he often found himself jealous of the immortality a work of genius earned its creator. He was certain that, in spite of his gift of incorruptibility and his own particular genius-survival-the works of Bach, Shakespeare, and Michelangelo (and therefore part of each of them) would outlive him.

  The telephone rang. He lifted the receiver and identified himself.

  "Vincent, it's Frederika."

  "Frederika, my dear," he purred. "What glad tidings do you bring?"

  "I'm almost positive I can get what you need. Eventually."

  "What we need," he corrected. "How?"

  "My friend in the Rare Manuscripts Preparation section is becoming close to the scrolls' translator."

  "We don't need the translator. I can find what we need," DeVilbiss affirmed. "Can you at least play on your friendship enough that he'll get me inside?"

  "It wouldn't be possible when the translator's there. And after hours they're locked in steel cases. The safeguards are unbelievable," she told him. He believed. "You'll have to be patient. It will take time."

  "I have time," he assured her. "You're the one who needs to relax. Why don't you let me help? May I take you out to dinner and a movie tomorrow night?"

  "That would be nice."

  "Any time after six," he said. "I shall be here." They said their good nights.

  Replacing the phone handset, DeVilbiss thought about Miss Frederika Vanderveen. He knew that he wanted more than the scrolls from her. And he would have it. Hers was a classic physical perfection, transcending the tastes and biases of particular countries or centuries. His greatest weakness had always been for things of timeless beauty
, a concupiscence beyond that of normal men to touch, to possess, to surround himself with nonpareil objects. In his youth he had mortified his flesh to sublimate the desires, hoping to substitute visions of invisible, intangible perfections. But the pleasures of the flesh had proven too irresistible. This woman also possessed a rare reach of intelligence, but one hobbled by something he did not yet fully understand. It was a need that mastered her and impelled her on a naive (and what he knew to be a futile) search. It was true that his paramount need for her was as the latest guinea pig in his quest for freedom. But he also wanted her, for both the rareness of her physical perfection and the mystery of her spiritual imperfection. She, as much as any other thing on earth, represented the reason why he still lived. And why he still paid the terrible price. When he was young, the writer of Ecclesiastes had told him that "desire shall fail" when man grows old. He had lived twenty-five score years, but his desire, if anything, had increased. When he was three hundred and fifty, Lord Byron had written, " 'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it." It was because he had chosen the philosophy of the English rake over that of the biblical poet that he had lived to read Byron's words.

  DeVilbiss went back to his newspaper. He yawned grandly and stretched out like an old tomcat; every day, life was going more his way.