The hostess patiently explained to him that there was no direct flight to Da Nang, but that it was necessary to go through Hanoi. The old man raised his voice a notch further.
Max smiled at the hostess who was handling his tickets and said, “What a jerk.”
The hostess scoffed, “Oh, that’s nothing. If you only knew what we hear. Rich people like him think they can buy anything. Would you prefer an aisle or window seat?”
“Aisle, please. I have a leg injury and would like a bit more leg room.”
“That’s not a problem, sir. Let me have a look if we have something by the exit.”
“Thank you,” Max said gratefully, trying to ignore the deplorable show that played out next to him, but he couldn’t help but listen.
A manager had come to the hostess’s rescue and was trying to calm down and accommodate the old man who was demanding to leave immediately for Vietnam. Suddenly, Max heard a name that froze all the atoms in his body.
“I am Alfred-Jean de Stehl. If you don’t find a direct flight, you’ll hear it from my lawyer, I promise. You and your pathetic company – ” Max turned around slowly, a burning wave running through his whole body.
The old man then grumbled, “Livia! Livia, darling, give me the small suitcase.”
Livia, Max thought.
His mind repeated the name a hundred times, and with trembling hands, he tried to find his phone in his pocket. He quickly found the photographs of the granite slabs they had found in the tunnel and his eyes widened.
There it was.
Alfred-Jean De Stehl – Livia Minore 201
The young woman handed the small suitcase to her old companion and he took out a bundle of money which he slammed loudly on the counter.
The hostess didn’t take her eyes off her screen. She found a direct flight to Hanoi that left within the hour and on which there was still room for business-class passengers. The old man grumbled that despite him taking those seats, he would still complain to the company. He kept repeating his name.
Alfred-Jean de Stehl.
At these words, Max said to the lady in front of him, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Please, please.”
Max’s hands were sweaty and his mind worked at full speed. Their names on the granite plaque. They were the next victims!
What were they doing here?
Max remembered Naya, the gradual collapse, Florence, the transmission of the BBC video, the chaos around the pyramid. No one would be buried there anymore.
Did Alfred-Jean de Stehl have to change his plans because of them?
But then why were they going to Vietnam?
Was Livia the next Sixtine?
With drops of sweat beading on his forehead, Max observed the young woman. She was very beautiful, adorned with precious jewelry, perched on high heels. Her long black hair fell down on her hips as a white lace summer dress molded her curves. She seemed embarrassed by her companion’s behavior; and yet, she clung his arm. She seemed even younger than Sixtine. She couldn’t be older than twenty years old?
Max couldn’t help but see Sixtine, naked and almost dead in his infrared monitor in room X.
A lady behind Max grumbled that she had a plane to catch.
“Mr. Hausmann,” the hostess kindly said. “Do you want me to finalize your reservation?”
Max stammered an incomprehensible answer, he put his hand on his forehead, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said, “No. Is there still room on the flight to Hanoi in an hour?”
“In business-class only.”
Max rummaged through his briefcase and took out several credit cards and spread them on the counter with shaky fingers.
This time, he was going to make a difference.
He was going to save someone.
BOOK III - Darkness Springs Eternal
I
1
What a beautiful day to die.
The pink and blue sky had painted the ocean with a silvery purple as the light of dawn graced the world. The quiet waves caressed the cliffs in perfect rhythm, each time adding touches of foam to the black rocks. Never the same, yet always the same. No matter which tragedies played out in men’s lives, the waves would always return to the cliffs.
Tonight, night would extinguish this painting of radiant clarity.
Tonight, Gigi will die.
Sixtine stepped away from the window to return to her great-aunt’s bedside, as the embroidered veil covered the sea, imperceptibly darkening the room. The old woman slept with her mouth slightly open, the outline of her eyes hollowed out and dark. Her head rested on a soft pillow, and the worn out sheet hid her chin, the heavy feather down erasing her silhouette.
Yet Gigi was more present than ever, despite the gray veil which enveloped her whole being, like a shroud of ether.
It took three deaths for Sixtine to understand. She was able to see what was invisible to others.
Three hours earlier, Han and Gigi’s arrival had woken her from her sleep and Thaddeus’s arms. They had returned earlier than expected, Gigi complaining of pain in her arm.
“I have to go home,” she had said.
In the pale light of the kitchen, Sixtine had seen the gray veil around her great-aunt. Her heart had gone wild, as did her head. She wanted to leave immediately for the hospital, but Gigi had put one hand on her arm.
“I just want my bed, my darling,” she said, out of breath with a forced smile, but it soon vanished. What could be seen on her blind face erased all the explanations, all the excuses, all the illusions.
Gigi knew she was going to die.
The gray veil was still there, barely disturbed by the old lady’s breath. Sixtine had not found the courage to leave the room, but footsteps from the attic resonated in the low ceiling.
Thaddeus was up.
A burning wave ran through Sixtine’s stomach. Was he going to leave? She walked through the room with felted steps. It was important to explain the situation to him, and to ensure his presence at her side. They still had so much to talk about.
Sixtine’s hand was already on the door knob when she glanced at the bed. Gigi’s eyes were open and stared at the window, in the direction of the ocean. That was impossible, of course. She had lost her sight seven decades earlier, at the liberation, after the war. The day she witnessed the orgy of revenge in which her beloved brothers had participated.
Sixtine rushed to her bedside. “Gigi, how are you feeling?”
The old lady’s eyes were always resolutely turned towards the window. Her eyelids moved slowly, and her mouth tried words, in vain.
Sixtine stroked her cheek, and whispered to her, “Don’t tire yourself out. Are you cold? Do you want Han – ”
“Your mother…” Gigi interrupted in a whisper.
Sixtine felt her heart beating in her temples and throat lined with cold.
“She left too soon.”
“Yes, she did,” Sixtine whispered, blinking back the tears that had come too quickly.
“But that was where she wanted to be,” Gigi continued.
Silence strangled her voice, paralyzed that of Sixtine. Then the old woman, slowly, looked into her niece’s eyes. “She wanted to be with you, Sixtine.”
“Yes, I know. I never doubted that she loved me, you know. It was a disease. She never wanted to leave me.”
But Gigi didn’t understand, she frowned. “She’s very close, have you seen her?”
Suddenly Sixtine was dizzy: Gigi could see her, she was sure of it! She approached the wrinkled face again, lifted the sheets to grasp her hand and pressed it against her own face.
“Can you see me? Tell me you can see me!”
Something happened deep inside the blind eyes. It was not a burst, but rather a brighter presence that enlarged her gaze. Like a door that opened, and let in a new communion between them.
“You are beautiful, my dear. You look so much like her,” Gigi whispered, amazed, with a trembling smile.
Sixtine kissed
her forehead, bathing it in tears. “Look, Gigi, the sea. Did you see how beautiful it is?”
She tried to lift her head, but there was no power left in the old body. Life was giving them one last gift, but it was time to say goodbye.
“The next world, my Jessica, is not to be feared. Your mom wasn’t afraid of it. And neither am I now. It’s just one more step. I’m not going far, it’s very close. Did you know that this is the bed I was born in?”
“Yes, I knew that.”
“Let me go back home.”
Sixtine’s mind had already understood, but it took a moment for her conscience to accept it.
Gigi was on her way home, where she came from. Before she was born. The old woman’s face seemed to gain in clarity. Or was it the gray veil that was dissipating?
Sixtine tried to smother a sob, but to no avail. The little cry, sharp as a bird’s song, cut off the silence.
In a considerable effort, Gigi whispered, “Your mother had a lot of secrets. I understood it as soon as you came back from the pyramid. The secret is in your name, Sixtine…”
A ray suddenly illuminated a corner of the room, coloring the birds on the wallpaper with an orange glow. Sixtine remained motionless by the bed. There was no more veil, no more breath.
No more hope, either.
She remained there, without moving. The tears dried, leaving a trail on her pale skin. The sun emerged from the ocean, radiating the horizon. And finally the light, orange as the sand of Egypt, came to caress Gigi’s face.
2
Sixtine wandered in the silence of the house, then went down into the kitchen.
Everything seemed to be asleep.
Yet, everything was still alive. Things were in suspense, waiting for the truce to end. The teapot always hot. Gray hair tangled in a brush. An open Braille book. A carpet left on the washing line, dancing in the breeze.
Yet life would go on without Gigi.
Sixtine could not stay inside, as the emptiness Gigi had left was still present. She put on an old vest and went out the back, towards the dunes. That’s where she used to run when she was a child. She spent entire afternoons there, imagining worlds, battles and romances. It was the landscape of simple days.
Sixtine filled her lungs with the scent of wet sand and moss and sank nostalgically into the dune.
A child’s cry made her turn around.
A little girl, about five years old, played, jumped over the grass, talking to herself, stopping to pull out a piece of moss and extract the small insects. Happy. Sixtine smiled, but the child did not look at her.
The little girl disappeared. Sixtine turned to look for her. It was in front of the house she had left behind that she found her.
The little girl ran towards her parents. Sixtine and Thaddeus.
Sixtine remained motionless, facing these distant specters that radiated happiness. She held her breath out of fear that it would make this sweet vision disappear. The three of them, in this simple and sublime setting. Far from the fortunes, far from the pyramids, far from posterity and darkness. Where it all started. Together, on this beautiful ordinary morning.
The little girl’s laughter was still echoing through the air when they disappeared into the wind.
Sixtine waited for their return. In vain.
Like Gigi, she finally saw.
She finally knew what her heart wanted most in the world.
3
“Your mother had many secrets. I understood it as soon as you came back from the pyramid. The secret is in your name, Sixtine…”
Gigi’s words kept repeating in Sixtine’s mind, like a chorus driven by grief. To console herself, she thought of the little girl from the dunes. Sitting on the floor under the bare lightbulb in the attic, leaning against a gaping trunk, she rubbed her eyes. Her mother had nothing but she kept everything. When she died, what was left of her was stuffed into a shabby trunk. It was full of badly cut items, anonymous postcards, envelopes with exotic stamps and empty notebooks.
Sixtine had peeled all their pages with the voracity of despair. The notebook she had in her hands was filled with shopping lists. She threw it onto a messy pile near the trunk, then grabbed a photo album. She had already looked through it a thousand times, but this time, perhaps, the secret would reveal itself to her.
She had been trying to figure it out since the day her mother’s body was found on the beach, at the bottom of the cliffs.
The secret is in your name, Sixtine…
Suddenly she stopped on a picture. She must have been ten years old, and her mother about thirty. They both leaned against an old fairground carousel; little Jessica had put her arm around the head of a painted wooden horse and held an ice cream in her other hand. Sixtine squinted to study her mother’s face. She seemed happy. However, the photo must have been taken only a few months before her death.
Sixtine turned her attention to her younger self. Her mother, especially near the time of her death, often called her Sixtine and Jessica had gotten used to this nickname. Her mother had never hidden the fact that she preferred that name.
During her pregnancy, she had seen a report on the chapel on television and was amazed. Ultimately, the baby was named Jessica, at her father’s insistence. Her parents had separated a few weeks after the birth, and Jessica had never known him.
Sixtine’s vision blurred as she looked at her own face on the past colored photograph. She recognized herself, of course. Like everything else around, this wooden carousel on the village square, the taste of caramel ice cream. She remembered the yellow sweater she wore with a dolphin on the front, which Gigi had given her. The particular brand of clothing was raging at school but it was too expensive for her mother’s modest budget, and Jessica had been so proud to receive it on her birthday. Yes, she remembered everything, and yet why did Sixtine feel like she was looking at someone else?
They had warned her at the hospital. An experience like hers – a flat encephalogram for several days, the proximity of a decomposing body and, of course, a major emotional trauma – was not survived without significant psychological and neurological effects. She had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which explained the nightmarish visions as soon as she was in the dark. As well as, according to the psychiatrist at the American Hospital in Cairo, this feeling of dissociation from her previous life, reinforced by her amnesia. Believing that her ordeal had been experienced by someone else allowed her to take the necessary distance to be able to continue living.
Her unconscious had remembered Sixtine, the nickname used by her mother, and had appropriated it. The fact that the stay in the pyramid naturally thinned her body to the point of changing her facial features that the shock turned her hair silver: all this reinforced the illusion that she had become someone else. The psychiatrist told her that her survival instinct was strong, that she was lucky.
“You’ve come a long way,” she had said.
This did not explain why she had green eyes when the child in the picture had blue eyes. This did not explain why she had seen a gray veil around the airport man, around Yohannes De Bok and around Gigi – each time just before they died.
Nor why she already seemed to know all those things she had never seen before.
Her eyes dragged across the trunk to the pile of things she wished to keep. Inside a time-softened kraft envelope were shards of paper. The only ones who piqued her curiosity.
“Sixtine?”
The sound of her name startled her and she glanced over her shoulder. Thaddeus emerged from the narrow staircase that led to the attic, and when she saw him, Sixtine’s stomach turned. She had exhausted so much energy and so many months burying this forbidden desire that she had not yet gotten used to the idea that she was free to love him. And the vision in the dunes made her even more fragile.
He had spent the whole day helping Han. Probably out of modesty in the face of death, and not to force him to feel vulnerable in front of her.
“C
an I come in?” he asked.
“Yes. Just watch the last step, it’s broken.”
Thaddeus moved with a very particular grace, almost feline, and in a few silent movements, he was crouched down beside her. Tenderly, he pressed his forehead against hers.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.”
He stroked the line of her jaw, and it erased the pain from Sixtine’s body. She loved his hands: thin, but rough and scratched with scars, which was in contrast to its smooth and calculated elegance.
Artist’s hands.
Sixtine turned her head back towards the trunk and said, “I don’t know what secret Gigi wanted – ”
Thaddeus gently leaned in and kissed her and a burning current crossed the young woman’s spine and her mind. Every move she made evaporated her bitter thoughts and illuminated the hours to come. A twilight ray made the dust particles dancing around them sparkle. Suddenly there were no more contradictions between the profound bliss that radiated from Sixtine’s body and the sorrow that always pulled at her soul. Thaddeus’s kiss, with its taste of hope, had restored the order of things.
“Stay with me,” Sixtine whispered.
“Where?”
“Here.”
“A step back, or a leap?”
“A new beginning.”
Thaddeus smiled shyly, but it wasn’t happiness she was reading there, or even curiosity. It was a mixture of sadness and resignation. He wanted to talk, but changed his mind, fleeing his gaze. Then he sat on the ground, against the railing of the stairs.
“This house is the only treasure I have left.”
“And this trunk, apparently,” Thaddeus pointed out with a slight grin.
Sixtine was relieved to see that Thaddeus was smiling again. This time with more warmth. And hope, too.
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 48