Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2)

by Laura Giebfried

  “You're right,” I said. “I'm your client.”

  “And you pay for conversation, but ask for none. I am wondering about you, Eh-nim.”

  I sat up and took one last breath from the cigarette, noting the way the man across the aisle from us had stopped typing on his laptop to glare at where smoke was dirtying the window, before putting it out against the side of the train.

  “No, I – I was just tired before. I want to talk now.”

  “Oh-kay. Go ahead.”

  She sat back and crossed her legs, seemingly preparing to listen as I carried on about anything and everything about myself, but I had no desire to share any of it with her. I stared at where the faint reflection of my eyes glared back at me in the black of her boots, my jaw tightening on its own accord to keep from speaking.

  “I … I don't really have anything to say.”

  “This makes conversation hard.”

  “No, I – I mean, I don't want to talk about myself.”

  “Why is this? Everyone likes speaking about self, yes?”

  “Not everyone, no.”

  She scratched her thumbnail along her lips as she watched me, contemplating something that I couldn't fathom. The makeup was still caked to her face and looked far worse in the daylight.

  “So what are you wanting to talk about?” she asked.

  I chewed the insides of my mouth, not entirely certain of the answer and unwilling to admit that I just wanted to fill the silence, and gave a half-hearted shrug.

  “I don't know. You could tell me about you, I guess.”

  Ilona made a face.

  “No, this is not good topic. I will bore you.”

  I ran my eyes over her overly-done face and odd attire, letting them rest on the spot where the burn that ran along her neck was hidden by her hair.

  “I doubt that,” I said.

  “But what are you wanting to know?”

  “Nothing – anything. Just what you do from day to day.”

  “I am prostitute – you are wanting me to tell you about this?”

  “Right, no, definitely not,” I said, quickly changing my mind. “I meant … I don't know. Tell me what your life was like before you … did this.”

  Ilona raised her eyebrows, but her expression was still otherwise unreadable. I chewed the insides of my mouth before trying again.

  “Where are you from?” I said.

  “I tell you: Holland.”

  “But where are you really from?”

  There was still something rather off about the passport that I had found in her cardigan pocket, though I couldn't place what it was. Her accent was almost too familiar and too unknown all at once, and though I knew what the words reminded me of, it was too much of a coincidence to be real, and the idea that she might be something other than what I thought she was stirred unpleasantly beneath my skin.

  “You do not believe me?”

  “No, I just ...” I shook my head as the reminder of the missing medication and Cabail Ibbot's hallucination came to my mind, forcing myself to prove that she was more than something sickly I had dredged up from my imagination. “Your accent sounded a bit Czech, that's all.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Czech?”

  “Yeah, just … just a bit.”

  “You are knowing what Czech accent sounds like? You are spending time there, maybe?”

  “No, I just …” I shook my head again, wondering how to explain the connection that I knew to be unprecedented. “There's an opera that I like – it's sung in Czech.”

  “Opera? You are liking this?”

  “Yeah, I … I guess.”

  I cleared my throat before I could feel embarrassed and straightened my collar in an attempt to feign that the idea was quite normal, but the knowing look on Ilona's face suggested that I hadn't been successful.

  “You are knowing Czech?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “But you listen to opera in Czech?”

  “Yeah. I … I mean, I know what it means and whatnot, I just don't speak the language.”

  “What is second language, then?” she said, taking another drag from her cigarette even though the man across the aisle from us cleared his throat loudly as she did so.

  “I … I don't have one.”

  “You have no second language?”

  “No. Well, I know Latin.”

  Ilona looked at me blankly.

  “You are joking, yes?” she said. “This is not only one.”

  “No, I'm not joking. Latin's the only other language I know.”

  “What use is this?”

  “It's … none, so far,” I admitted reluctantly. As she opened her mouth to express her disdain, I quickly cut her off. “What's yours, then?”

  She fixed her eyes on me to prevent from rolling them.

  “English, yes?”

  “Right. I meant, what's your first?”

  She smiled.

  “I know several. I have no order for them.” She brushed off her leg where ash had fallen from her cigarette, but it left a streak of gray against the skin. Rather than wiping it away, she turned to the window and said, “Ask me different question.”

  “Okay.” I ran my tongue over my teeth. “Why do you carry a letter-opener?”

  I asked it before I could stop myself, my curiosity getting the better of me. Ilona's gaze broke from the window as she turned to look at me, her brows descending over her eyes as she took in the question.

  “What are you asking?”

  “Your letter-opener. It – it fell out of your pocket before, when you were sleeping.”

  Her eyes narrowed to impossibly thin slits, barely showing from behind the thickly-coated black lashes, and the cigarette in her hand had burnt down until it was dangerously close to scorching her fingers.

  “It falls from pocket?”

  “Yes. While you were sleeping.” I paused as she continued to glare at me and quickly added, “I put it back.”

  “It is of no importance,” she said, waving the question off.

  “Right, only … it seems like it would be.”

  “Why is this?”

  “Nothing, just … It seems like a weird thing to carry around.”

  “It is not weird for me.”

  “Right.” I ran my eyes over her attire again. “Of course not.”

  “You ask many question, Eh-nim,” Ilona said chidingly. “Maybe you have concern?”

  “No, but … they did tell me you were dangerous.”

  “But you ask for company anyhow, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is this? Maybe you have something to hide? Maybe you are dangerous too?”

  I shook my head, but my voice faltered for a moment before I could give the lie.

  “No, I mean … you don't have to worry about me. I'm fine.”

  Ilona surveyed me carefully. It was impossible to know whether or not she believed me.

  “You do not look fine,” she said.

  I fidgeted with nothingness in my hands and shook my head, chewing the insides of my mouth as I searched for an answer.

  “No. I – I am. I'm not hiding anything.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She gave another of her disbelieving nods and crossed her arms, the cardigan now sitting in her lap rather than on the seat next to her for safe-keeping.

  “We are all bad on inside, yes?” she said. “Some of us just hide it better.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I couldn't help but think that whatever she was harboring beneath her cracking makeup and unsightly attire was far less severe than what I had buried beneath my skin.

  Ch. 12

  I wandered down the aisle and through to the next car to find the bathroom. Locking myself inside, I leaned over the tiny sink to stare at my reflection. My clothes were becoming wrinkled from sleeping in them and my hair was too straight and dry, causing it to stick up on the sides and flop into my eyes. I pushed away the thought
of what my father would say if he saw me and instead noted that Jack would be delighted to see me as disheveled as him for once.

  Pulling out the phone that Karl had given me, I switched it on and scrolled through the first screen. There were another half-dozen missed calls from him. The lone number lit up the screen to glare up at me, and I finally broke down and dialed the extended number that he had meticulously written down. Raising it to my ear, I listened to the sound of it ringing as the train swayed again on the tracks. It only took him a moment to answer.

  “Enim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God.”

  He barely let out his breath before plowing on.

  “Where are you? What hotel? Your father's been waiting to hear from you – he can go and pick you up immediately.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Do you have the street name?” Karl continued, acting as though I hadn't spoken. “Usually there's a notepad with the hotel address on it – check the desk drawer if you don't see it out in the open …”

  “I don't need to check the address, Karl.”

  “So you know it already? Good – that's good. Let me just get a pen to write it down with – hold on –”

  I sighed as he put the phone down, the sound of him rummaging through a drawer in search of a piece of paper and fumbling with the pen in his top pocket as he prepared for words that would never come echoing around his empty kitchen. He still thought that I was coming back.

  “Karl –”

  “Alright, what is it?” he asked, his voice poised and ready.

  “Karl, I'm not in Amsterdam anymore.”

  Now that I had made it to France and was well on my way to meeting up with Jack, it felt as though there was enough distance between both him and my father to let out the truth. The train jostled again and threw me sideways into the door, my arm banging loudly against the metal, and I moved the phone to my other ear so that I could hear over the echoing.

  “I’m in France.”

  “You're –?” His voice stopped abruptly. “What could you possibly be doing in France?”

  I ran my tongue over my teeth before answering.

  “I’m looking for Jack.”

  There was such a heavy, dead silence on the other end that for a long while I was certain he had stopped breathing altogether. I kept the phone to my ear nonetheless as I prepared myself for his reaction.

  “Enim, I don’t – I don’t even know where to begin with this,” he said at last. His voice was calmer than I had expected, and I eased my shoulders a bit when his tone didn't sound sharply in my ear. “You’re – why are you looking for Jack?”

  “Because I want to find him.”

  “I – I realize that, what I don’t realize is why.” He waited for the answer, but even if I could have explained it to him, he never would have understood. “I just … I just don't understand what makes you think that he'd be there.”

  “You don't have to understand; I do.”

  “Enim, if this … if this is part of some plan that you've formed in your head –”

  “If you’re just going to start telling me I’m insane and delusional again, I’ll hang up, Karl.”

  “No, no – that's not what I'm –” He quickly checked himself, halting his voice before it raised any further. “No, Enim, I … I just wondered, given that it seems rather obscure, why you would be looking for Jack in France of all places.”

  “It's none of your business. You wouldn't get it.”

  “I … alright, Enim. I wouldn't get it.”

  He paused, waiting out the time before he went on as though putting space between the words would make them any less accusatory.

  “Are you taking your medicine?”

  I shook my head at the familiar question, having expected him to ask it and yet allowing myself to be surprised by it even so. He needed me to confirm as much so that he could explain and justify my actions in the past few days, but doing so would only make him worry more about what I was doing, and I couldn't allow him to think that my plans were nothing more than delusions that had stirred up in my head. I wouldn't have him answering me with the same careful, calculated responses that the psychiatrists had used on me or the rest of the world had used on my mother.

  “Of course I am.”

  “Right. Of course you are,” he repeated. “I just … I just don't think that it could be working correctly, is all.”

  “That's your explanation?” I asked. “That the medication isn't working?”

  “What's your explanation, then, Enim?”

  “That there's a reason I'm in France, and that I know Jack's here and how to find him – and just because you don't know how doesn't make it any less real.”

  “Alright – alright,” he said, trying to stop the argument before it began. “I'm not trying to counter you, Enim, I was just surprised. Now … tell me where you are exactly.”

  “What? No.”

  “Enim, please tell me where you are.”

  “No.”

  “Enim – why not?”

  “Because I don't want you to know – I don't want you to find me.”

  “But Enim, you're – you're –”

  “I'm not confused!” I said angrily. “Not about this, not about anything! And if you had just stopped for a second to listen to me in February, then none of this would've had to happen –”

  “Of course. Of course that's what all of this is – that it's my fault for not believing you.” He had given up on trying to placate me, his voice edging into bitterness as he spoke. “I don't believe you, and no one else believes you, but you must be right because it makes sense in your head –”

  “I am right!”

  “He killed that teacher! He cut her to pieces and then took off when he knew the police were coming! Why can't you see that?”

  “He took off because he knew they’d arrest him without listening to us, and it was a good idea, considering that no one’s even bothered to look into it any further!”

  Karl took a long breath that he let out again as a heavy sigh, pausing before trying to make his point once again.

  “Enim, he’s guilty. I know you don’t believe me, but he is.”

  “Just because you think it doesn’t make it true, Karl.”

  “It is true.” Karl hesitated for a moment as though unsure of how to prove his point, but then plowed on. “There was a trial, and they determined that it was him.”

  “How could there be a trial if he wasn’t even there? You’re a lawyer, Karl: you should be able to think up a better lie than that.”

  “It was a trial in absentia. I trust that you took enough Latin to know what that means.”

  “Whatever,” I said. It didn't matter if they had tried him without being present: it only proved that they had gotten it every bit as wrong as Jack and I had feared that they would. Still, the idea that Jack had been prosecuted regardless of my plan to help him escape nibbled at my throat, even if I had had no plans to attempt to change anyone’s minds or return to the country. “It still doesn’t make you right.”

  “Enim, can’t you see what you’re doing? Can’t you see how absurd this is?” Karl’s voice had grown apprehensive as he tried in vain to persuade me to change my mind, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before I disconnected the call. “You’re ill. You’re very ill. You think that you’re on a mission to find Jack, but you’re not. You’re just confused –”

  “Don’t tell me that I’m confused again, Karl – just don’t.”

  “But you are! You can’t see it, just like your mother couldn’t see it! She would have rather been accompanied by her fantasies than alone with herself!” He took a short breath. “Jack killed that teacher, Enim, and you're in too much denial to admit it – just like you are with Beringer!”

  I sucked in my cheeks and bit down on them until they bled.

  “I know what happened with Beringer.”

  I hung up before he could answer and switched the phone
off to prevent him from getting anything more than a voice-mail when he tried calling back. As I shoved it back into my pocket, I shut my eyes behind my hands. He acted as though he was letting me in on a secret, but he didn't understand that I was already well-aware of everything that he was telling me, and knowing it made the distortions worse.

  Because I wasn't confused – I wasn't crazy. The music that I played was real, not in my head, and it wasn't an obsession so much as it was a longing. It was the same thing that Karl was doing: filling his house with the silence that her accident had brought, and the sweet smell of peppermint that he would otherwise never smell again. He was just as much obsessed and unwilling to let go as I was – more so, even – because I had at least pulled myself away. I was trying to move on, if only he would let me.

  And he didn't understand why I wanted to find Jack, because no one understood. Jack and I were tethered together by some thin, metal wire that had wrapped either end of itself around our wrists, and the further that we got the further it dug into the skin to slice at the veins and bleed us dry. And maybe they had never felt that way – Karl or my father or Fisker or Graves or Julian or Porter – maybe they could pick and choose and surround themselves with somebodies who ensured that they were never left alone with themselves, but we couldn't, and I couldn't bear to be alone with myself for a moment too long or else it became all too clear that there was nothing redeeming and nothing worthwhile pulsing beneath my skin.

  And though I couldn't deny that the recurring music and visions had had no other explanation, I refused to believe that he was right. He didn't realize that Jack and I had made plans to go to Nice, and he didn't know that I had received the brochure in the mail telling me to come. He was working with only a fraction of the information, and had he had it all, he would have understood that I wasn't the confused one.

  “You are all right?” Ilona asked when I returned to the seat across from her some time later. Though I had splashed cold water over my face and dug my fingertips into the corners of my eyes in an attempt to drive the tiredness from them, my appearance still betrayed everything that I felt.

  “I'm fine.”

  “You do not feel well, yes? This is murmuring heart?”

  “No, it's … it's fine, Ilona.”