by James, Mark
Little Sarah slid under the coffee table, turning when she realized the glass couldn’t hide her. She looked up through it, smiling, asking for the third time that morning, “Grandma, is mommy still coming? You said maybe today.”
How long could she put them off? Even children begin to see at some point. Was it a psychotic break? Had Dan left them and now Jenny too, only in a different way?
She looked back at the TV, the recording timed out and a show she’d never seen before popping on. It was another one of those morning ‘talk-fests,’ some psychiatrist talking about something he had no idea on, she was sure.
On the show, the host leaned over, “But there are so many?”
The psychiatrist smiled, “Mass hysteria, my dear, nothing more. One person says to another that they’ve had this dream, that person then tells another, it gets tweeted all around, the cable shows run little quips and, suddenly, everyone thinks they’re seeing stars! Trust me, the academic literature is replete with such examples. No more than a mass-induced, subconsciously suggested fad…”
She changed the channel, not liking the psychiatrist’s squeaky voice. She then leaned forward, squinting at the screen as a newscaster from Beijing began talking in urgent tones, something about a breakdown in negotiations between the U.S. and China. Disgusted, she turned it off.
Sarah and little Dan Jr. ran back in front of the TV. She looked up and caught her refection on the now-dark screen, an unfamiliar face staring back. She pulled back into herself, put on a smile and ran after them. “Here I come!”
†
Lani was intrigued by Monsieur Johannes Engel; about his past, the things he would not say.
In some ways, he reminded her of her father. Not in appearance, but manner; so close, so far away. “Call me Lani,” she’d said, almost as soon as they’d met. He was like a creature whose nature it was to be secret, like a chameleon changing colors. As she watched them discuss the Croatian plans, it was something that hovered about him, like an aura of where he’d been throughout his life, his experiences clinging to him and he unable to be apart from them, even out here on this perfect island, in this perfect valley.
Yes, she thought, some old ways never leave us…
They were upstairs for the evening and Jack went into the bathroom. She paused at the bedroom door, “I’m going down for some water. Do you want one?”
“Sure, thanks.”
She walked down the stairs, her socks slick on the worn wood and stepping like a geisha. She rounded the corner towards the darkened kitchen and a wedge of light caught her attention. She walked over, seeing the door barely open and leading to the basement. Jack had investigated the basement earlier, before Engel arrived, “Padlocks, lots of them, nothing more.”
She began down the stairs, careful in the dark. The light was emanating from below, off to the right.
“Come in,” a voice rose from somewhere. “Lani, is that you?”
She looked into the room and saw Engel at the far end of a table, removing a jeweler’s scope, “How did you know it was me?”
“Soft steps,” he smiled. “A woman’s steps.”
“Maybe I was one of those others you mentioned? The ones who haven’t forgotten. They could have sent a woman.”
He laughed, “No, I don’t think so. They’re too chauvinist. Sending a woman, well, that would be beneath them. Trust me, Neanderthals all.”
She moved into the room, seeing rows of Japanese woodblock prints hanging on both sides.
“Can I get you some tea?” he asked. “I brought down a pot. Green, though. Some don’t like it – say it tastes like bilge water. They have a point, but it’s still great for the digestion. And, of course, for the Chi.”
“The what?”
“Life-force; the energy underneath, beneath the power of your muscles. It flows in all things, goes from you and out into the world.”
She looked down at his desk, all types of small instruments and brushes precisely arranged. “What’s this?”
“I do restoration work for some people. From all over the world, actually. It’s one of my last hobbies. Keeps me busy.”
She looked along the walls, the images of mountains and clouds and running water and still water all seeming from the same hand.
“Who’s the artist? I don’t know anything about these.”
“Hiroshi Yoshida. He was a painter until he found printing. What do you see?”
“They’re like jewels, suspended in time. They have a quiet energy.”
“Yes, it’s infused in them. Yoshida wanted to be an impressionist painter, studied all of the Europeans. But looking at others’ paintings and painting them are not the same thing. Finally, at the age of forty, he was hired as a woodblock printer and learned the craft. Two years later, a great earthquake hit Japan and all of the blocks in the studio were destroyed. Yoshida decided to go on a quest, into the world he’d always wanted to see – India, Hawaii, the Alps, Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon. When he returned, he opened his own studio. But, unlike all Japanese woodblock artists before him, he decided to do all of the work himself – the cutting of the blocks, the administering of the myriad dyes, the pressing of the blocks onto paper. From 1925 to 1928, he turned out these, pouring his soul, his genius, into them.”
“Like Van Gogh in Arles?”
“Yes, but Yoshida didn’t go insane over it. Unlike Van Gogh, Yoshida lived to see the people recognize him. He became successful, mostly selling prints to Americans. And yet, it is in these early ones where he is most present.”
“That have the most…Chi,” she smiled.
“Exactly, they have the most energy within them, like a transmission across time. I’m glad you see it. I’d hoped you would.”
“What happened to him?”
“After 1937, he mostly let his children run the business. Then, in 1950, restless again, he set out to complete his grand opus, A Hundred Views of the World. He began traveling to find the sights he would capture, but became ill and was forced to return to Japan, where he died. He never completed another print. He’d waited too long. These are what we have left of him. I work to pass it on. A worthy hobby.”
Lani heard a creak in the house from the wind upstairs and turned to the sound.
“Go on now,” Engle said, smiling. He began sitting back down, replacing the magnifying spectacle.
“Thank you,” she said, “for sharing this. They’re really beautiful.”
“Like your mother’s clouds, no?”
She smiled at the memory, “Yes, just like that.”
She paused, wondering if she should say something else, then turned and climbed back up the stairs, to where Jack was waiting for her.
36
Jack woke with a start, staring around the room. There had been a far off sound in his dreams, pulling him awake and then this – the darkened room and Lani next to him, a hazy moon through the window. Had it really been in his dreams?
There it was again, almost a vibration, coming from the southwest…no, directly west.
The alarm clock on the bed stand suddenly went off, screeching loudly. He reached out and yanked the cord.
“Lani, up!” he shouted, shaking her shoulder while he continued to look towards the window.
“What…” she mumbled.
“Sorry. Clothes on! We need to get downstairs. Now!”
He opened the windows and listened. The cold night pulled at the warmth of the room.
Sitting up, Lani looked over, only seeing Jack’s silhouette against the moonlight in front of the window. She quickly began looking for her pants and shoes.
There it was again, growing.
“Throw the toiletries into the backpack, grab some more clothes if you want, but fast. Leave the suitcases. They’ll only hold us back.”
“Jack, what is it? What’s coming?”
He didn’t answer and grabbed the backpack and took her quickly down the stairs. At the bottom, she broke away.
“Lani,
don’t! We don’t have time.”
She went to the top of the stairs and yelled down, “Johannes! Johannes!”
There was no answer and she started down the stairs as Jack caught her from behind on the second step. “Stay here,” he said and went down, disappearing into the darkness. A few seconds later he bounded back up, “No one down there. All locked up. Let’s go.”
She didn’t have time to protest as he grabbed her arm and they moved to the back of the house. At the back door, he paused, listening and scanning across the lawn that led to the trail and the woods. She looked back towards the basement a final time as they went out the back door.
The moon went behind a cloud, the yard falling into greater darkness as they crawled across the grass towards the wild brush and the woods, the lawn cold and wet from the dew.
From the far end of the valley and tracing down its middle, a strong light appeared, surrounded by a heightening roar. Beneath them, they could feel the ground tremble. Halfway across the lawn, Jack turned to see her falling behind. The beam started cutting a swathe through the ravine of the valley, straight towards the house.
She reached the brush edge where Jack was waiting and he grabbed at her and pulled her into the high grass as the beam hit the lawn. The initial beam was joined by others as they swept in crisscross arcs across the lawn and the roof. A dark helicopter hovered a hundred feet above, looking like some gothic creature. As they crawled through the brush, they turned to see ropes descend and dark forms sliding down.
“Faster!” Jack whispered.
In a rush of wind and sound, the black forms landed on the roof and lawn and began taking up positions at all of the doors and windows. The lead soldier silently motioned instructions and the others began entering from all sides.
Jack and Lani could make out the tree line and scanned for dark forms ahead, for still darker shadows against the silhouettes of the trees. Behind them, they could hear hushed yelling from inside the house. Jack scanned from where they’d come and saw the wild brush lying flat from their bodies. Farther on, he saw the lawn where they’d crawled, like a snail’s trail through the dew. Would the soldiers see it?
The soldiers were milling about on the porch, talking urgently to each other and into their headsets. If they’d captured Engel, she thought, he must still be inside. Lani turned and saw a flicker deeper in the forest ahead and it froze her. Should they go forward, or change course and skirt along the trees in another direction, trying to get behind the soldiers?
“We’d never make it,” Jack whispered as they both watched the small light in front of them go dark. “We need to make it to the mountain, then over it. It’s our only way.”
They crouched and ran towards the back of the woods, their eyes darting left and right for the source of the small light. They reached the edge and everything remained silent. Behind, most of the soldiers had moved back into the house, deepening their search, as others began searching the grounds. Jack focused on the dew trails in the lawn.
Suddenly, they heard a whistle and jerked around. A form began moving towards them from the direction of the mountain. They crouched lower. “What?” Lani whispered.
The form came closer – grey hair, moving like a…
“Hello, you two,” Engle said, scooting up beside them. “I saw you scamper out, saw you on my cameras. I set your alarm off. Glad you made it!”
Engel was smiling as if amused by it all. “Gets the old juices going, doesn’t it?” He set down the two large backpacks he’d been carrying.
“How did you get here?” Lani asked. “And how did you hear them coming all the way down in the basement? Jack went down there. You were already gone.”
“Radar unit in the attic,” Engel said with obvious pride. “State of the art – thermal, seismic, you name it. And my tunnel. It has a small electric trolley. I merely laid down and pressed a button. The tunnel runs right under where you were crawling. You were above, I was right below.”
“We need to get out of here,” Jack said. “This can only be the GMA. Which means, there’s more coming. Besides, take a look, those soldiers are starting to move to the edge of the lawn.”
“One last thing,” Engel said, removing a small object from his pocket. “Here…”
He raised his hand and pushed a button. Suddenly, hundreds of strobes lights and lasers flipped open from hidden compartments under the eaves and music began to blare, the yard frantically awash in red, white and blue.
Lani and Jack looked at each other – it was Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the orchestra hurtling towards the rolling cannon shots.
The soldiers on the lawn looked up, confused, the helicopter pilot momentarily startled as the craft banked, as if from a gust.
Lani looked coyly at Engel, “Is that what I think it is?”
“I know, a bit dramatic. But one should have fun in one’s work. Now, watch closely…”
Jack and Lani leaned forwards. As the canon shots began, Engel depressed another button. Suddenly, they were blown backwards by a concussive wave as the entire house exploded, ripped apart as if by a tornado, the helicopter caught in the climbing fireball. The sound was deafening, the explosion echoing across the nighttime valley in thundering ripples.
“Holy shit,” Jack whispered as the helicopter emerged from the top of the fiery mushroom cloud and paused, as if gasping for air, then fell back into the column of fire and finally into a hole where the house had once been. When the helicopter hit, it threw another fireball skyward, joining the first.
“Back to hell…” Engel whispered.
The soldiers who’d been thrown from the lawn and into the wild grass were starting to move, trying to balance themselves and falling back down. One of them groped for his weapon.
Engel touched Lani’s shoulder, “Agreed, time to leave.”
Engel started to pick up his backpacks and Jack took the heavier one from him, handing Lani the other. “You saved them!” she beamed, feeling the print frames.
Engel smiled, “I’d never leave without them. My only children, you know.”
Lani looked once more towards the billowing fire, “But your beautiful house…”
The Frenchman looked for a last time, “An illusion, I would think. One that I needed for a time. I have others. Everything changes.”
They turned and began moving through the woods.
“Where are we going? The cars are gone,” Lani said.
“Ah, chère, I have a habit that never leaves me: always have ten backup plans.”
Halfway up the mountain, Jack and Lani turned to see the sun cresting the horizon, the morning glowing around the edges of the mountains on the far side. Below, through the mists, they could only see the outline of a blackened scar where the house had once been, small forms wandering on the littered lawn, the soldier’s uniforms returning to camouflage with the rising light.
37
In her dream she could see all of the symbols at once, all of their signs: a crescent moon with its star, the Christian cross, the Star of David, the swastika. Each was a crystal goblet, clear and floating above a crystal table. Abruptly, the symbols dropped, slamming down and shattering into shards.
Lani awoke with a jump. The hike over the mountain had been exhausting and she’d fallen asleep as soon as she’d hit the car seat. She looked out the window at the rushing scenery: green and grey fields and white farms, rain in the distance. In the front seat, Jack and Johannes were talking low, trying not to wake her. They quietly laughed about something she couldn’t quite hear.
Jack turned around, “Hey there. Feeling better?”
“Sorry, all that mountain air,” she said, yawning and stretching.
Earlier that morning, as they’d ascended the mountain and climbed down its far side, they’d found themselves in yet another valley. “Couvrir Voile Valley,” Johannes had called it. “It means, Cloud Veil.” As they climbed down, they could see that at the base of the mountain was a house, more like a vacationer’s
cabin. But when they removed the locks and opened the door, they saw that this was only its shell, for inside there were no dividing walls, only a refrigerator and some camping supplies stacked against each other in a corner and this dusty, nondescript car.
“How long was I out? I had the weirdest dreams…”
Jack looked at his watch, “Four hours, fifty two minutes. A new record.”
She laughed, “Hey, I’m a girl – need my beauty sleep.” She pulled up on the seatback, “So, that means we’re almost there. Johannes, you said about six hours, right?”
“Almost,” Engel said. “Twenty miles and we’ll be at the coast. We’ve already seen a gull or two.”
The next twenty miles were the same: no talk about what was coming, only stories that made them smile, an insulation from where they were.
She opened the window and could smell the ocean: its life, its salt, the cool humid air.
“Here we are,” Engel said as they pulled into an empty parking lot, its asphalt cracked and buckling. At the far end was perched a crumbling stone building, its windows broken out years before.
They exited the car and Engle went into the trunk, found what he was looking for and walked to the edge of the lot. He raised the binoculars and looked out to sea. “Not here yet,” he said.
“Well, we’re an hour early,” Jack said. “Given who these guys are, I wouldn’t expect them early.”
Below, the coast was rocky, the beach wide and windswept. Lani looked down the chalky face of the ridge to the beach below.
Engel looked through the binoculars again, “Hold it, that could be them.” He passed the binoculars to Jack. There was a transport freighter moving towards them, still a speck, negotiating choppy seas.
“When you said the ship might be in rough shape, it didn’t quite sink in.” Jack said, thinking of Lani. He turned and looked down at Engle and laughed, “That’s just more bitching, isn’t it?”
“Well,” Engel said, “in life we take what comes along, make what we can of it. All I know is that it gets you to Croatia. That was the design brief. You’re right, though, the accommodations may be...” he chuckled for a moment, “um, a bit on the Spartan side. Who knows, maybe they’ll let you upgrade to more leg room?”