In the nights that followed, I began to dream about my real father. Sometimes I was kneeling at his grave, and I tried to make out the letters on the stone, but they shrank as I studied them or became a different language or were lost in the dark. Sometimes he was standing over my shoulder, and I could feel his breath cold on my neck. I would turn, too late to see him as he vanished, the breath becoming no more than a draught around the window. I went on dreaming even after my mother recovered. The midwife would not let her go back to work, but she sat in the shop instead. None of us could stop her. My grandmother cooked richer and richer meals every evening, adding expensive cream and lard to the stews in an effort to fatten up the baby. It only succeeded in taking away my mother’s appetite altogether.
Then, in the last week of November, a letter arrived in Michael’s writing. Jasmine came running up the stairs and shoved it into my hand, saying, ‘Open it, Anselm! Open it!’
I did not know, until I had that letter in my hand, how heavily the anxiety had been weighing on my heart. I could not open it. I just stood and stared at the envelope until Jasmine snatched it from me. ‘Hey, Jasmine!’ I said, and took the letter back and opened it. ‘Anselm,’ it read. ‘My parents are in the south of the country. I have gone north. I can’t say anything else. I’ll try to send word to you. Michael.’
‘What does that mean?’ said Jasmine.
I did not know. But at least it was something. I checked the postmark – he had sent it four days ago. I read it several times and put it in the inside pocket of my jacket. Four days ago, Michael had been safe. All through school, the corner of the envelope rested against my chest, along with those papers of Leo’s that were in my jacket pocket. It was a good sign, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that Dr Keller had ordered us to leave the shop by today, and we did not have the rent he had demanded. I still had not told the others about his letter. I was praying that some chance would come to save me, though I didn’t know how.
‘Anselm?’ said Jasmine that evening. ‘People sometimes die, don’t they, when they have a baby?’
‘Not often,’ I said. ‘Jasmine, what has brought this on?’
She wandered away across the room. I watched her go. We were down in the shop. I was trying to sort through the mess in an attempt to find something that might sell in the markets. I had thought about parting with one of the things Aldebaran had given us, after Jared Wright talked about it. I had even taken my medallion to the pawnbroker’s to ask. But the woman there flatly refused to believe it was his. And so far, our searches in the shop had unearthed nothing of any value.
‘Not often,’ I said again. ‘Hey, Jas? Don’t worry.’
She gave me a weak smile.
‘Mother is better from her fever,’ I said. ‘And the midwife says the baby is still all right.’
‘How often do they die?’
‘Hardly ever.’
‘If a hundred women had a baby, how many would die?’
‘I don’t know. Less than one.’
‘Less than one is one,’ said Jasmine.
‘No, it’s not. It’s not the same. It means if two hundred women—’
‘Oh, shut your mouth, Anselm!’ she said. ‘There’s still a chance, isn’t there?’
I could not blame her. We were all worried, and my own replies sounded heartless and inadequate.
‘What if Mama dies?’ said Jasmine, half crying now. ‘Papa has already gone. Then we’d just be left here, us two and Grandmama.’
‘It’s not going to happen,’ I said. ‘She’s better, and the midwife is looking after her now.’
‘If we don’t have enough money, will the midwife stop coming? Grandmama said—’
‘Don’t listen to Grandmama.’
But I could not help asking, in the silence that followed, ‘What did she say?’
Jasmine brushed away a tear and sniffed. ‘She said she didn’t know how we would find the money to pay for the midwife, and if we didn’t, she would stop coming, without any doubt.’
‘It will be all right,’ I said. ‘She won’t give up on us just like that.’
‘And Mama said we hadn’t paid the rent,’ said Jasmine. ‘She was worried about it.’
‘We’ll pay the rent,’ I told Jasmine. ‘You’ll see.’
‘How?’
‘I have a plan.’
‘What is it?’ said Jasmine.
‘It’s a very good plan, only I can’t tell you about it, because I haven’t completely worked it out yet. Not completely. But you’ll see.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
Jasmine watched me for a moment. Then she sighed and raised her eyes to heaven before trailing upstairs, leaving me alone in the shop. There was no point in lying to her, though we all still tried it. She always knew.
‘Jasmine,’ said my mother that Sunday evening. ‘Get out the Advent lantern.’
Jasmine ran to the cupboard to get out the lantern we had been saving, then set it carefully on the table in the back room and lit it with Leo’s matches. Last year came back to me clearly as she did it. Jasmine had climbed onto a chair to light the lantern, and Leo had put his arms around my mother’s waist and kissed her hair, in one of his fits of lightheartedness. I saw that moment as clearly as if I had fallen back into the past to stand there again.
‘Anselm?’ said Jasmine. She was leaning with her head on the table, watching the flame. ‘Anselm, by the time the candle burns down, what will happen to us all?’
‘The baby will be nearly born,’ I said. ‘Or maybe born already.’
‘And Papa will be back?’
‘Come on, Jasmine,’ said my mother. ‘Five minutes and then it’s time for bed.’
My mother slept early, but Jasmine was pacing about her room all evening; I could hear her light footsteps on the floorboards and her quick impatient sighs. She came trailing into my room at ten o’clock, demanding a story.
‘Where is Mother?’ I said.
‘Asleep. And Grandmama is doing some important sewing and doesn’t want to be disturbed.’
‘A quick story, then,’ I said. She climbed onto the end of my bed and pulled the covers over her. I had been studying the words Leo wrote, but I set the pages aside now and turned to her. ‘What story shall I tell you?’
‘One about us.’
‘You mean our family?’
‘Yes. Tell me about Mama and Papa and you and the places where you used to live, and about when I was born.’
‘All right, I’ll try.’
I made it into a fairy tale. There were all kinds of stories I could tell her about her own life, made fascinating by the fact that she no longer remembered them. Like how when she was four years old, she used to dream about Aldebaran, and the next day he would confirm every detail, the colour of the ink he had written in or the time he had lit the fire. And then I told her about the night that she called us to the window to look at angels over Malonia. Though they were just bedraggled geese flying south, we all saw them transfigured by her powers. ‘I was silly then,’ she said, laughing at that.
‘It was only a few years ago. And you weren’t silly.’
‘I was small, so I didn’t know any better. When you’re small, having powers makes you see things differently.’
‘How?’ I said.
‘Well, you see an old dead leaf, but you think it’s maybe a bird. Or you see clouds, and you can read words in them. It’s like’ – she formed the word carefully – ‘like imagination.’
‘Well, that’s the best part of the story,’ I said. ‘The part about you.’
‘How does it end?’ she said.
‘The king wins the war,’ I said. ‘And the baby is born. And we are all back together again, on Holy Island.’
‘Tell me about what it’s like there,’ she said.
I had only the few stories Aldebaran had told me. ‘It never snows,’ I said. ‘And there are mountains, and cliffs, and long beaches running along the coast, w
here you can walk for miles. And no fighting.’
‘I wish we were with Papa. Will we ever see him again?’
‘Yes. Of course we will.’
‘Anselm?’ she said. ‘Do you miss your real father? I mean, not Papa but the other man?’ In the lamplight, her grey eyes were just like Leo’s. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Do you?’
‘How do you know about my real father?’
‘Mama told me, ages ago. Anselm, do you miss him?’
‘It’s different. I never even met him.’
‘But don’t you ever think about him?’
‘He never did anything for me. Not like Leo.’
‘What is so good about Papa?’ she said. ‘He’s gone away and left us.’
‘It was not his fault. Jasmine, don’t talk like that about him when …’
‘When what?’
‘Nothing.’ I had been going to say, when anything might have happened to him. Because still he had not sent word.
‘Tell me about your real father,’ she said. ‘Tell me the story.’
I started to say that I did not know it. But that was not true. I had the tale that I had made up when I was a little boy. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Listen carefully. This might not be exactly true, but it’s a story.’
‘No stories are exactly true,’ she said.
‘All right, so long as you remember that.’
She leaned on one arm, gazing up at me intently. ‘Once there was a young man,’ I said, ‘who fell in love with a beautiful girl, Maria Andros. She was the daughter of the richest man in the country.’
‘Is that part true?’ Jasmine demanded. ‘Our grandfather was the richest man in the country?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘One of them anyway.’
‘That man in the picture in Grandmama’s house?’
‘Yes. Julian Andros, the owner of Andros Associates, which was the main bank in the square before I was born.’
‘What is it now?’
It was the question we always asked about this city; every building seemed to change hands so fast. ‘Now?’ I said. ‘A pawnbroker’s and a restaurant and a theatre that closed down. But it was a grand place back then. And Julian Andros was a man of some importance. He had two hundred people working for him. He had a white marble office in the heart of the building, where people came to talk to him about borrowing and lending money and putting all their fortunes into the vaults there. And he had a paperweight made out of melted-down gold coins, so heavy you could hardly lift it.’
‘How do you know?’ she said.
‘Mother told me when I was a little boy.’
‘Go on.’
The story was making my heart ache less badly – the story and Michael’s letter in my pocket. ‘Well, my real father was a soldier and a reckless man,’ I said. ‘He met Mother at a ball.’
‘What was a soldier doing at a ball? That doesn’t sound right.’
Jasmine was an expert on matters of court; I always forgot that when I made up stories for her. ‘He had been given a lot of medals for bravery,’ I said, and the story invented itself now without any effort. ‘So he was invited because of that. But it is true – he felt out of place there. He did not know who to talk to. And then one girl, the beautiful Maria Andros, came over and spoke to him. He fell in love with her straight away; he did not even think about it. She loved him, too, and they used to meet often. At those balls, there were always people watching, so they used to pass notes to each other as they sat eating dinner or stood out on the terraces of the big houses. Then Maria learned that the soldier was going to be sent away.’
‘What was the soldier’s name?’ asked Jasmine.
‘Raphael,’ I said.
‘That’s your middle name.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what happened?’ she said, tracing the worn-out pattern in the blanket. ‘Was he really sent away? Just like that, when they were in love?’
‘He had to go. And what was worse, on the day before he left, they had a bad argument. Afterwards, Maria wanted to set things right. But she could not leave the house because …’ I frowned. ‘Because …’
‘Was Grandmama stopping her?’ Jasmine asked. ‘I bet that was it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s right. Grandmama secretly didn’t want them to be together, so she kept Maria inside until she knew the regiment had set off for the border. But what the soldier did not know was that Maria was going to have a baby.’
‘Baby Anselm,’ said Jasmine. ‘You.’
The lamp guttered in invisible draughts. Jasmine drew the blanket closer around her.
‘Maria kept trying to send word to the soldier,’ I said. ’But Grandmama stopped her and took away the letters she wrote.’
‘So did he ever get them?’
‘Only after the baby was born. That was just before the revolution, and the soldiers could not leave the border. It meant desertion, and that was a very serious crime. But Raphael wanted to make amends and see his child. He put on his overcoat and boots and began to walk back to the city.’
‘How far?’ said Jasmine.
‘Two hundred miles,’ I said, though it was barely fifty.
‘Did he walk all that way?’
I nodded. ‘He got within sight of the city. He could even see the lights of Cliff House, where the beautiful Maria lived. Maybe he saw her crossing the window with the baby in her arms. But then fighting broke out close by. The soldier did not know what to do. A band of rebels had attacked a group of villagers, and if he did not go to help them, they might be badly hurt. He had to choose between saving them and going to see his child.’
‘What did he do?’ asked Jasmine in a whisper. The snow rattled the glass of the window and hissed in the dying fire in the living room. It was always snow these days. I was sick of the heavy sound of it as it threw itself against the walls.
‘He went back,’ I said. ‘He helped the villagers. And he was shot, with a bullet through his heart. He never reached the city.’
Jasmine looked so downhearted that I wished I had made the story less melancholy. ‘What did Maria do?’ she asked.
‘She mourned for him for a while,’ I said. ‘The soldier had left a great fortune for his son, buried out in the trenches at the Alcyrian border, and people went to search for it. But it was never discovered. And when Mr Andros suddenly lost his money a few weeks later, the family had to move to Citadel Street and forget about their rich life. But Maria never forgot that soldier. She gave the baby Raphael as his middle name. And moving to Citadel Street was not all bad, because there she met Leo. He took the baby as his own son and helped to bring him up. So neither of them lost everything.’
‘Is that really what you believe?’ said someone, and we both started. I turned round. My grandmother was standing in the doorway. ‘Is that really what you believe about your real father?’ she said again. And I saw suddenly that she was trembling with anger.
‘It was just a story,’ I said.
‘Anselm, someone needs to put you right.’
She advanced towards us. Jasmine sat up and reached for my hand.
‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t suppose you did! Let me tell you, Maria was more than half to blame in the whole affair. Do you really think that was why we lost our money – by chance?’
‘People rise and fall,’ I said.
‘Market traders rise and fall. Secondhand dealers rise and fall. Not bankers with millions of crowns to their name.’ She stood there glaring and waited for me to say something.
‘No,’ I said. ‘All right.’
‘And you were not born in Cliff House,’ she continued. ‘You never saw it. You were born in a temporary apartment in Paradise Way with cockroaches running up and down the walls. Your father knew full well that you existed. If he hadn’t, we might still be rich now.’
‘I don’t understand what I have to do with—’
‘Why do you think we lost our money? Becau
se Maria had the nerve to get involved with a powerful man and then refuse to marry him. Because you were born. He was Lucien’s right-hand man, and we lost everything. Our house was seized, Anselm. Can you imagine? Soldiers marching in and taking everything we owned. I was a rich woman. Your grandfather was a man of importance. What do we have now? He was sent to the border, and he fell very sick, and now he’s dead. His chest was never right after that spell out in the trenches. And I’m an old woman working at a market stall, and we can’t afford a midwife for your mother’s baby, and Leo has gone and left you all, as I always said he would—’
‘Don’t talk like that about him,’ I said, rising to my feet. Jasmine did the same.
‘Leo didn’t think much of your real father either,’ retorted my grandmother.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘They never met.’ My grandmother was nearly laughing now, or nearly crying, with a kind of wild fury. ‘Who was he?’ I said. ‘Tell me his name.’
‘De Fiore,’ she said. ‘Jean-Cristophe Ahira de Fiore.’
‘I have never heard of—’
‘Yes, you have,’ she said shrilly. ‘Yes, you have, Anselm. You know him as Ahira.’
We stared at each other. I could see her nostrils flare as she breathed and the tears of fury shining in her eyes.
‘Who?’ I said. She did not repeat it. ‘You’re lying,’ I said.
‘I am not lying. Why would I lie? She was a stupid, stupid girl, and she didn’t know what she was doing. I wanted her to marry him, of course, but no one listened. Not even your grandfather. And here we are, Anselm. Here is what we have to show for it.’ She gestured around the room. ‘When you fall in the world, you never rise again. Never. Sixteen years of struggles – that’s all I’ve had. Struggles and poverty and Julian dead and Maria lost to me. And look at you, Anselm. You are so like him. So much like him.’
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