Danyl swallowed the last of the muffin and decided he would not be drawn. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Ann. ‘I can’t accept. I don’t need a place to stay. I’m going to find my girlfriend today. I hope you find your …’ He gestured at the horrible teenager in the photograph. ‘Thing. And thanks for breakfast.’ He brushed the muffin crumbs from his beard and stood and walked to the door. He was almost there when the treasurer spoke.
‘Danyl?’ Her voice was low. Ominous. He turned. Ann steepled her fingers. ‘You’ll never find Verity by yourself. But I know where you can start looking.’ She nodded at the photo. ‘Find Sophus. Then I’ll tell you. Otherwise you could look forever and ever and find … nothing.’
4
The Free Market
Danyl had thought about Verity a lot in the days since he had released himself from the hospital. What happened? Where did it all go wrong?
One afternoon stood out in his memory. About a month after Danyl moved into her house, Verity came home early from work and suggested they go to the market together. ‘It’s in Aro Park,’ she explained, pulling open the curtains while Danyl sat up in bed blinking in the flood of late-afternoon sunlight. ‘It’s called the Free Market. It’s subsidised by the council. They wanted to give the residents of the valley an alternative to global capitalism so they set up stalls where people can barter for goods and services as equals in a trusting, loving environment.’
‘Do they sell food?’
‘Yes, but you don’t want to eat anything from there. And stay away from the organic beetroot juice. I’ve heard stories.’
Danyl sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, watching Verity as she moved around the room. She was in her late twenties, average height but small-framed so she seemed shorter than she was. She was pretty but not as pretty as she could be, Danyl felt, if she grew her hair longer and dyed it blond, and wore makeup and short skirts and tight tops instead of jeans and T-shirts. Her shoulder-length black hair fell over her face, which was pale even in summer. Her eyes were green. Or maybe brown; it was hard to tell in the bright sunlight. He reminded himself to look at Verity’s eyes more.
‘Get up,’ she ordered, moving to the window overlooking the street. ‘I want to get photos of the fair before everyone goes home.’ She pulled up the blind and then hissed and stepped backwards.
‘What’s wrong?’ Danyl sensed danger; he started to climb back beneath the bedclothes. Verity stared, a shocked expression on her face. Her eyes flashed—they were actually kind of grey —and she scanned the road, her hands on her hips.
Danyl asked, ‘Did you see something?’
‘I don’t know. There was someone standing on the corner of Aro Street looking at our house.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re gone now.’ She smiled at him. ‘Probably just a ghost.’
There were dozens of stalls. Hundreds of people browsed them, or danced in the middle of the park to the band who played ‘Three Little Birds’ over and over again. The smells of cinnamon and cannabis and burnt halloumi hung heavily in the air.
Verity and Danyl walked through the crowd. Danyl looked for a book stall. Verity took photos. She had another exhibition coming up but she didn’t know what it would be about. Her last photography exhibition consisted of gloomy monochromatic photos of the Aro Valley, and it won an award for Most Troubled Young Artist. ‘I don’t know what to shoot,’ she complained. ‘It can’t just be Te Aro again.’
They passed a stall selling handicrafts: children’s toys, drug paraphernalia, woollen hats. Then a stall selling organic beetroot juice. A sign above it read: The Rumours are TRUE! A long queue of silent, expectant men stood waiting. Verity put her hand around Danyl’s arm and hurried him on.
The next stall sold more toys, bongs and woollen hats. So did the stall after that. But at the end of the row was a drab canvas tent with a blackboard in front of it reading: Fortunes Told! Secrets Unveiled! Beware! Dr Zuzanna’s Cards Predict a 20% Chance of Rain!
‘A fortune teller!’ Verity turned to Danyl. ‘Do you want to go first?’
‘I’m not going in there. Don’t tell me you believe in this nonsense?’ Danyl and Verity hadn’t been a couple for very long and they were still learning things about each other, not all of which were pleasant. Verity was unhappy to learn that Danyl couldn’t cook or clean while Danyl was appalled to discover that Jane Austen was Verity’s favourite author. And now this. She believed in psychics and he didn’t.
She said, ‘It’ll be fun.’
‘Fun? These people are frauds. Is it fun to give your money away to someone who tells you lies?’
‘Yes,’ Verity replied. ‘It’s fun. It’s a fantasy. And how do you know they’re frauds? I’ve seen some strange things in my life. Things that defy rational explanation.’
‘Ha! So you do believe in them! You’re like a child, Verity. What if—’ He held up a cautioning finger. ‘What if the fortune teller tells you something that you’ll do in the future and you decide to do the opposite? Boom. Paradox.’
Verity did not acknowledge the metaphysical consequences of this question. Instead she said, ‘I’m going in. Here’s your spending money.’ She took five dollars from her wallet and handed it to him; Danyl accepted it with dignity. ‘I’ll meet you by the feminist cake stall in twenty minutes.’ Then she disappeared inside the tent. Danyl glimpsed a candle-lit interior and a framed degree from the Royal Oxford University of Astrology in Lagos hanging on a coat stand. The flap closed.
The second-hand book stall was at the far end of the market. It consisted of a dozen tables with books laid out in packed rows. More books spilled out of cardboard boxes nested beneath the tables. A sad, tired-looking man with white hair sat under an umbrella at the back of the stall. A handwritten sign beside him read Books $5. The only other customers were a man and a woman huddled together by the self-help section. They wore wrinkled clothes and looked pale and unhealthy. Danyl turned his back to them and inspected the fiction shelves.
Danyl had once worked in a second-hand bookshop; he’d found it very calming to browse around stacks of old, forgotten books—flipping through manuals for obsolete technology, the vanity-published memoirs of businessmen and the forgotten bestsellers of the 1950s. He did so now, and a clever idea came to him: Verity was getting her fortune told by a psychic. Well, Danyl would tell her fortune too, via bibliomancy. He would buy a book at random and whenever Verity cited her fortune teller, claiming that some random event in her life was foretold by the cards, Danyl would flourish his randomly chosen book, read a passage from it and improvise an equally plausible forecast. He cackled to himself. His five dollars would buy him hours of joy.
He stood between two tables, closed his eyes and, smiling, spun about in a circle then reached out, groping for a book. His fingers danced along the spines, waiting for an impulse to pick one. In his mind he was already anticipating the way in which he’d torment Verity if the book was a dictionary. Or a poetry collection. Or, best of all, a romance novel. He grinned, blindly extended his fingers and reached out.
A hand gripped his wrist. Danyl gasped and opened his eyes. The unhealthy couple now stood on the opposite side of the table glaring at him. The woman held Danyl’s hand; she shook it and croaked in a flat, oddly accented voice, ‘These books are not for sale.’
He snatched his hand free and puffed up his chest. ‘Of course they are,’ he replied. ‘Ask the shopkeeper.’ He pointed at the sad, white-haired man, but he was gone. Vanished, along with his chair and his umbrella. In his place were three more pale, wrinkly clothed figures. They were moving books from the tables into cardboard boxes then loading the boxes on a trailer.
‘These books are not for sale,’ the woman said again. ‘These books are ours now.’
‘Who are you? What’s going on here?’
‘We are the Cart—’ the man began, but the woman raised her finger to his lips, silencing him. ‘We are nobody,’ she intoned. ‘Just some friends out for a walk who decided to purchase t
his entire stock of used books. Is that so suspicious?’
‘I guess not.’ Danyl smiled at the woman. ‘I just need one book,’ he explained. ‘To play a joke on my girlfriend. Any book. I’ll pay.’ He flourished his five-dollar note.
‘We don’t want your worthless money,’ the man replied. He had a triangular face, four very large front teeth and a truncated nose. He looked like a goat, and now he reached across the table and shoved Danyl’s shoulder. ‘Spend it on something else,’ he sneered. ‘While you still can.’
All his life Danyl had been a coward. And, like all cowards, he could sense greater cowardice in others. The goat-faced man was afraid, putting on a show of bravado to impress the woman he was with. So Danyl stepped back to the table, picked up a book and jutted out his chin.
‘I’ll go. And I’ll take this with me,’ he said. ‘Unless you think you can stop me.’
‘Careful,’ the woman said, laying a hand on the Goatman’s shoulder. ‘We can’t cause any trouble. It’s not time.’ She looked Danyl up and down, bathing him with her hatred. ‘Yet.’
‘That’s right. It’s not time.’ He smirked at the Goatman then glanced down at the cover of his new book. It was a guide to beautiful French Kampuchea.
Then someone poked him in the back and he dropped it. He turned, ready to fight or run, probably run, but the person behind him was Verity. She looked serious. She said, ‘We have to go.’
‘I’m just arguing with these cave fish,’ Danyl replied. He gestured at the Goatman and his associate, who stood watching him, hostile and silent. ‘They won’t let me buy this obsolete guidebook, but I say—’
Verity cut him off, poking him in the belly this time, making him squeal.
‘We need to go home. Now. There’s someone waiting for me there.’
‘How do you know? Did the fortune teller tell you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oho! Well, I have a fortune for you!’ Danyl fumbled for his book but the Goatman snatched it away. Danyl lunged for it. The Goatman stepped out of reach, then Verity grabbed Danyl’s arm and dragged him away from the stall. She pulled him into the crowd; the last thing he saw was the Goatman grinning in triumph, his huge square teeth gleaming in the sunlight.
‘The fortune teller said that an old friend was looking for me.’
‘So?’ Danyl and Verity walked along the old road leading to their backyard, shading their eyes from the glare of the sunlight. Verity hurried; Danyl trotted behind her putting on little bursts of speed to keep up. ‘I thought you said it was just a bit of fun?’
‘You remember earlier when I looked out the window? I thought I saw an old friend. Someone I thought I’d lost forever. That can’t be coincidence.’
‘Who is this friend?’
Verity didn’t reply. She stepped through the hole in the fence leading to their backyard, and stopped.
The yard was a field of midday summer sunlight. The shrubs and trees glowed. The back of their house was a white plane with the sun reflecting in the windows. At the base of the plane was a black rectangle: the door leading into their kitchen. It was open.
‘Didn’t we lock that door?’
Verity didn’t answer. Instead, she said, ‘She’s here,’ and moved towards the open doorway as if in a trance.
‘She?’ Danyl followed, nervous but curious.
‘Someone I grew up with,’ Verity replied. ‘We were close when we were teenagers.’
‘Very close?’
‘Not like that, idiot. We ran away from home together. We were looking for something, but we fought about the best way to find it. When she left I thought she’d gone forever.’
They were close to the kitchen now. The darkness unknit itself: through the door they saw a suitcase, the dim outline of the table, a chair facing the doorway and a pair of bare, tanned legs extending from the shadows into the light.
‘What were you looking for?’ Danyl said.
‘We were looking for a great man,’ said a voice that came from the shadows about the chair. It was confident and amused, but at the same time hostile and cold: like a receptionist in a doctor’s office. The legs uncrossed. Danyl noticed tattoos around each of the ankles. Complex spiral patterns.
‘We were looking for a great man,’ the voice repeated. ‘One of the greatest who ever lived. And you found him, Verity. You found him, then you abandoned him for the sad little creature beside you.’
5
Eleanor
The rain had stopped. The wind blew sprays of icy mist up from the puddles and down from the trees, aiming it directly at Danyl. He stood on the street outside Aro Park, remembering the Free Market and the terrible events that came after it.
He sighed. He knew where to go next. The one person in the valley likely to know Verity’s whereabouts. But he hesitated. Surely there was another way. Someone else? Anyone?
He looked around for inspiration. The sun was a vague grey blur just above the horizon. It was about nine in the morning. People should have been stumbling home from parties or making the way up the hill to the university, but there was no one about. Danyl was alone. There was no alternative.
The house was nestled between two apartment buildings. It was an old bungalow, handsomely refurbished with leadlight windows and fresh white paint. A sign on the door read: The Dolphin Café is closed until further notice.
The front windows were dark. Danyl pressed his nose against a frosted pane of glass. From deep inside came a faint glow of electric light.
His memory stirred. The Dolphin. How many times had he come here with Verity, laughing as they walked through the door; holding hands at a cosy table, taking their time over a romantic dinner before hurrying home to make love? At least twice. He sighed and tried the handle. It opened.
The hall was dark. There were three doors spaced evenly along the left-hand wall. They led to the dining room, the kitchen and the manager’s office. The light came from the office.
Danyl softened his footfalls. He looked into the dining room. It was empty: chairs stacked on wooden tables, dusty wood-panelled walls receding into shadows. A sliding door in the opposite wall led into the service alley behind the restaurant. It was open: a confusion of muddy footprints criss-crossed the floor, leading from the alleyway to the waiter’s entrance to the kitchen. He heard a clatter of bins coming from the alley. Three large men passed back and forth carrying sacks of rubbish.
He moved on before any of them glanced his way. He passed the kitchen—the door was ajar; the space beyond looked chaotic. More footprints criss-crossing the floor, several large basins stacked in a mound on the bench.
He reached the end of the hall and gave the office door a nudge. It swung inwards, revealing a cramped room dominated by a cluttered desk. A thin woman with a narrow face and huge black eyes sat at the desk. Instead of her customary white chef’s apron she wore a sea-green bathrobe with a matching towel wrapped around her head. She rested her bare legs on the top of the desk. Spiral tattoos snaked around her ankles.
Eleanor.
Oh yes. Eleanor and Verity were old friends. They grew up together. They ran away from home together. Then they parted ways, forever, or so Verity thought, until that sunny afternoon two years ago when Eleanor appeared in their kitchen. Tanned, thin but muscular from her endless hours of yoga, with long straight hair and a face that looked serene and jolly until she looked at Danyl.
She’d been living in a Taoist monastery someplace in Asia, she told them. The Golden Pavilion of Complete Perfection. She ran the kitchen there and spent the rest of her time meditating on the nonexistence of reality, until one day an electrical fuse blew, plunging the Pavilion of Complete Perfection into darkness. Eleanor trudged down the mountainside to buy a replacement fuse at a nearby town. While she was waiting for the electrician to open his shop, she sat in lotus position in the dust beside a noodle stand, flipping through international magazines. She came across a story about Verity’s photography award. ‘There was a picture of you,’
Eleanor explained from the dark interior of the kitchen. ‘And there was this.’
She took a piece of paper from her pocket and laid it on the kitchen table. It was a crumpled reproduction of one of Verity’s acclaimed Te Aro photos. It showed a hillside dotted with half-ruined buildings. It was taken from the bottom of the hill looking up. A gravel driveway flanked with weeds wound up the slope, terminating at a house at the top of the slope, perched on wooden pilings. Behind the house a bare stone cliff loomed out of the frame. Verity looked at it with a grim expression. Then she turned to Danyl and said, ‘Can you give us a minute? Ellie and I need to talk.’
And that was the beginning of the end. Eleanor moved in with them. She slept in their spare room. She ignored Danyl, and he did his best to ignore her. He pretended she wasn’t there, pretended she wasn’t doing nude yoga in his backyard every morning to greet the sun, and whispering, always whispering to Verity.
The house filled with these whispers. Danyl heard them in the middle of the night when he woke to find Verity’s side of the bed empty; Verity in the spare room sitting cross-legged on the end of Eleanor’s cot, whispering. They always broke off when he entered the room. He overheard fragments of conversations: words that meant nothing to him at the time: the city, the chemist, the conduit, the spiral.
Then one happy day, Eleanor left! She bought a crumbling old house on Aro Street and converted it into her restaurant, She worked all hours to build a kitchen, convert the dining room and garden, and recruit staff; occasionally she slept on a couch in her office. She was still on the periphery of Danyl’s life: a darkness on the horizon, still encouraging Verity to leave him, and trying to make him feel bad about himself because she was building a successful business out of nothing while he spiralled into depression and total financial dependence on Verity. But at least she wasn’t living with him anymore. Life went back to normal. For a time.
Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley Page 3
