The Reincarnationist Papers

by D. Eric Maikranz

  “Yes, I thought I was going crazy.”

  “It is always such a confusing time. You just get used to the changes in your teenage body, and then those memories come flooding back, and you are not sure of who you are or who you are going to become.”

  “I am still wondering who I will become,” I answered.

  Poppy continued, “I like it that each time there is always an intermission, an amnesic period, I like to call it, from when you come into a fresh body until you begin to remember. I don’t know, it’s sort of nice to feel innocent and free for a while before you have to face your past again. Were you happier before you began to change?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said without thinking; I didn’t have to.

  “Hmm, I suppose I am, too, most times. Have you ever tried Iranian caviar before?” she asked, placing a dollop of tiny black eggs on a cream cheese covered wafer.

  “No.”

  “Really? Over one hundred years old and you’ve never had this,” she said, handing it to me. “You are lucky I found you.”

  I took a small bite. It tasted strongly of fish and salt. “It’s good.”

  “Another?”

  “Please. Speaking of finding me, how did you know I was like you?”

  “I knew the first night.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise as I took another cracker from her.

  “Yes, the first night. I suppose after so long, I know what to look for. You may not remember—you were in pretty bad shape after you fell down the stairs—but you basically told me. Just as I was about to shoot you, at your request I might add, you told me that you would probably just come back anyway.”

  “I remember, but could you tell from just that?”

  “I suspected after that. I knew after I gave you a cigarette. You don’t speak, write, or read Turkish, do you?”

  I was lost by her line of questioning. “I know a few sayings. I had lived in Istanbul for a while, before this life I mean.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said excitedly. She reached inside her purse and removed a fresh pack of Lendts. “Can you read what this says?” she asked, pointing to the small Turkish script under the English.

  “No, I can’t read it. I’ve never been able to read it, but I know what it says.”

  “Do you?” she asked, challenging me.

  “It says Centuries of Flavor.”

  “That’s when I knew. It used to say Centuries of Flavor. They changed the slogan in the late 1960s, before you would have been born this time. I was pretty sure after that, but I used the book to bait you even further. I had no doubt after your reaction. I don’t think there is anyone alive who would stay up all night reading McTaggart unless they were like me. The man’s writing style is so stilted and dry, it can be maddening to read even a single chapter.”

  I guess she did know what to look for. I had no idea I had given any clues. “What does it say now?” I asked, pointing to the pack of cigarettes.

  “The Pride of the Turks or something like that. I can’t read it either, but I remember when it changed. These have been my brand for a long time.”

  “You know, I started to sense something was up after Antonio brought the books down. Your bait, as you called it, seemed too much of a coincidence.” I was beginning to feel much less at a disadvantage.

  “You saw that coming, huh?” Poppy smiled sheepishly.

  “A little bit.” I returned her warm smile.

  “I also had you checked out, just to be sure,” she added defensively.

  “What are you talking about?” A lump of concern began to rise in my throat.

  “I researched your medical records for any history of mental illness. Confiding your true nature to anyone normal could easily get you diagnosed as schizophrenic, delusional, or any number of other things. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing, no history. Should I have found something?”

  “No, I never told anyone except my family.”

  “And now me,” she said, placing her soft hand in mine. “Tell me about Istanbul.” Her eyes lit up as she squeezed my hand.

  “All right, but I should go back a little farther to preface the story. Pour me some more wine, would you?”

  Poppy refilled my glass and prepared more crackers as I began. I was anxious to tell my story to someone, anyone, and not see my own face reflected in a mirror, mouthing the words.

  “I was born in 1892 as Vasili Blagavich Arda in a small Bulgarian farming village northwest of Varna. He was—I was—an only child of a farmer, so there was never any question as to my future. I worked with my father until I was twenty-three, when Bulgaria entered the war against the allies and all the single men in my village were pressed into service. I was in the army until the Great War ended.

  “My father and I worked together for two years after the war, until he died. The land was mine after that, and I found a wife the following year, Vanya. She and I lived and farmed peacefully for the next twenty-five years until the end of the next war when the communists forcibly took our land and put us both in prison. She didn’t survive. I was released in 1948 and managed to reach the Turkish border later that year. I lived in Istanbul for the last years of that life.”

  “Did you and Vanya have any children?” Poppy asked as soon as I took a break.

  “No, we were unable . . .”

  “What did you like about the city?”

  “Life in Istanbul was a shock after coming from rural Bulgaria. It’s a lot like LA, I suppose. Everybody’s hustling or working some kind of angle, and it’s very much a cultural mixing pot. I think that helped with my initial loneliness. There was a large Bulgarian expatriate community in the oldest section of the city next to the strait, that’s where I spent most of my time. I remember there were lots of boats around—small fishing boats mostly.”

  “If you were so attached to Istanbul, it makes sense that in this life, you were drawn to LA,” Poppy said.

  “Once you’ve seen Istanbul, you’ll never forget its skyline. The city is built around seven hills, each topped with an opulent mosque. From where I used to live, the entire skyline consisted of tall minarets and colorful domes. At night and in the early morning when the city was quiet, you could hear the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer.”

  “Sounds beautiful.”

  “Yes, it was nice, but anything was nice after prison.”

  “Would you like to go back there again someday?”

  “Yeah, I’d like to see it again, go back to where I lived and see how things have changed. Knowing Istanbul, I bet they haven’t changed very much. But where I would really like to go is back to Bulgaria. I want to read street signs and speak with other Bulgars. I miss the language.”

  “I’ve never been to Bulgaria. What’s it like?”

  I ate another cracker and thought about her question. “The farmland looks a lot like Idaho.”

  I took the bottle and refilled her glass. “That’s enough about me. I want to hear something about your history.”

  “All right,” she said, looking up at the skylight. “I was first born five hundred miles east of here in a small pueblo village. It’s in Arizona now.” She stopped for a moment to take her glass back, and I used the break to pry deeper.

  “Have you ever gone back there?”

  “Yes, twice.” She pointed to the Bando plaque on the wall behind her. “I went back in 1540, on my second trip, to rejoin them, and I went there again in 1854 when this area of the world was being settled.”

  “What was it like to go back?” I asked as I thought about my old Bulgaria.

  “It was bittersweet—things change, you know.” She paused and took a drink. “Anyway, the first two times, I died so quickly I didn’t have a chance to do much. The third trip I
tried hard to live a normal life. I was married into an affluent family in Persia before I was old enough to realize who I was. But the fourth trip is the one that changed me forever.” She stopped, dipped her middle finger in the wine, and ran it around the rim of the glass. A haunting high note began to sing from the glass on the second revolution. “It was then, as Marco, that I learned about glass.”

  “Wait a minute,” I interjected, “you’ve been both male and female?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s all up to chance,” she said, chuckling.

  “I didn’t mean to distract you, it’s just that, I haven’t . . . so it never occurred to me that it was possible.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll come back as a girl too—the odds will even out. After you have been both a man and a woman, things like gender tend to become more fluid, less defined by hard lines. You’ll see in time. It’s cool to be both. It offers an interesting perspective.”

  I’d often thought about the idea of coming back again and remem­bering this life the way I remembered the others, but the matter-of-fact way she said it like it was a foregone conclusion made me begin to think about it more as a probability than a possibility. If we were alike, she had been in this situation many more times than I had, enough times that it had become a foregone conclusion. The ringing from the glass continued for a few seconds after she removed her finger. “Please, continue . . . You were talking about Marco.”

  “Yes. I was born for the fourth time, in 1630, as Marco Parcalus on the island of Murano. Murano is a small island near Venice and was home to the city’s glassworks.8 I was born into a family that had lived and worked on the island for generations, each father passing the secrets of Venetian glass to his son. The finest glass in the world came from that island, and I became the best craftsman that ever worked their furnaces.”

  I could tell that Poppy remembered this life fondly, and I wanted to know more. “How old were you when you began learning glass?” I asked her.

  “My father started teaching me when I was old enough to hold a blowing tube—five or six, I think. He taught me about plate glass, leaded glass, colored glass, mirrors, and cristallo, like this,” she said, looking at me with one eye through her wine glass. “At sixteen, I was already a master craftsman. I could achieve any color, thickness, texture, or shape, and could make plates of glass half again as large as anyone else on the island.

  The families of Murano were very close. They had to be, because once you were born into a family, you were also born into the art of glass, and you were never allowed to leave the island.”

  “Never?” I asked, dumbfounded by the idea that a whole society would abide by such strict rules.

  “Never. I stayed for a while, but you must keep in mind that I had just spent a long, frustrating life trying to pretend I was normal. The idea of doing it again left me no choice but to risk escape.”

  “Wait,” I said, looking around the vault. “These people are the same ones in the stained glass scenes at your church aren’t they?” I asked as I made the connection.

  “Yes, but as I said before, I am those people, the scenes are from my own lives.”

  “Right, Marco is the one rowing away from the island.”

  “Yes, I eventually escaped on a small boat. Only official Venetian ships were allowed into the port on Murano. The ships brought supplies to us and carried away vast inventories of window glass, mirrors, and cristallo to Venice for trade and export. There were ten or fifteen soldiers on each ship that checked for stowaways when they counted the cargo in port, and it was the job of the island governor to get a head count of all the island’s inhabitants after each ship left. On the two occasions that there were escapes, both men were eventually hunted down and killed by assassins hired by the Doge of Venice.9 They brought back their bodies tied to the prows of the ships so that everyone on Murano would know what became of them. This stranglehold on the island kept a European glass monopoly in Venice for centuries, but it also allowed me my chance at fortune and comfort later.”

  Poppy paused for a sip of her wine, then continued. “The whole plan took about a year. There were two main ships that visited the island for pickups. They alternately came every two weeks, except for special projects.”

  I nodded, completely enthralled in her story.

  “Loading cargo was not my assigned duty, but the porters never seemed to mind an extra hand down at the dock. I helped with the loading for months, until my face was known to everyone on both crews. It was only then that I made my next move.

  “The crews used the same crates over and over, and we would always unload the empty crates back into the island’s warehouse so they could be used again for the next outgoing load of finished glass.”

  She paused for a moment, looking off into the distance as if overtaken by the memory. “My main duty was to blow and shape glass, which I did with extreme care and craft. I made museum-quality pieces by the dozens; flowers, orbs, vases, statues, then carefully packed them in straw-filled crates so that each piece lay exposed on top. I then secretly placed all of these crates in an unused part of the warehouse and waited for my ship to come in.

  “When the church bells announced its arrival, I made my way to the dock like normal, unloaded the empty crates like normal, smiled and said hello to the crew members like normal. Then, when it came time to load the ship, I brought out my masterpieces. I carried every fifth crate that came out of the warehouse, only I grabbed mine off of my special pile in the back. The crates the other four carried had a layer of straw on the top, but mine were open to the sun which brilliantly illuminated each piece. I studied the face of each guard as I passed with my crates. After the sixth trip, I knew which guard it would be. His eyes lit up, and he craned his neck to look at each piece as I went by. He stopped me on the next trip and picked up a large purple-tinted swan I had completed just four days before.

  “I talked with him for several minutes and told him that I had made the pieces he had been admiring. He praised my skill and said he would like to see more of my works the next time they came to port. I knew what to do after that.

  “During the day, I worked on the regular quota of mirrors and plate glass, and at night I would fire up the furnace alone and work on my own pieces. I worked alone at night for the next month. The final product was nineteen pieces, including an incredibly difficult mirrored glass ball about the size of an orange. When the boat returned, I carried my special crates from the back of the warehouse again. The guard stopped me on my first pass and told me to place my crates in the back corner of the ship’s hold. He went below and inspected each piece in every crate as I carried them in. He admired each work covetously and seemed blind to his position and responsibility while he held them. I sat down and made my pitch after I carried in the last crate.

  “I offered him nineteen pieces of better quality than the ones he had arranged on the crates around us, in exchange for a small boat to be brought to me at midnight three weeks from that night at the west end of the island. He would pick up his pieces when he delivered the boat. He looked at the glass around him. We both knew it was worth a king’s ransom in any other Mediterranean city.

  “I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the mirrored ball. His eyes glazed over when he saw it. ‘Three weeks from tonight at midnight. Don’t be early, don’t be late,’ I said to him as I placed the ball in his hand.

  “I completed a piece a night, every night, until the night I left. The twenty pieces fit in five crates, which I hid in some underbrush at the shore. I had told my father and the other blowers that I was experimenting late at night. They grew used to seeing the furnace smokestack belching red embers into the night sky and usually left me alone. On my last night on the island, I stoked up the furnace as usual but left my tools in their racks. I sat on a high stool in front of the furnace and pulled on the rope that moved the bellows. The only possessions I had with me were my
clothes, some small pieces of gold from the shop, and the journal I had kept through my seventeenth and eighteenth years.

  “In those years I had begun writing down the scraps of memories and experiences that came to me when I began to remember, in hopes that I could make some sense out of them. I did, of course, realize again what I was. I stoked the fire until I had enough light to read. The heat from the hearth was intense. I untied the leather straps that bound the loose pages and read each one before throwing it into the mouth of the furnace.

  “I was waiting in the bushes next to the crates when I heard the sound of oars breaking the water. I called out to him several times before he came to shore. By the moonlight, I could tell he had a companion that rowed the second boat. He greeted me warmly, then inspected all twenty works by holding them up to a lantern. There was no question about their quality. To this day they were the most exquisite things I have ever produced.

  “The two men left quickly, and in the darkness, over the sounds of their rowing, I thought I heard him yell back ‘Buona Fortuna.’ I followed the light of their lantern until I picked up the outline of the Italian shore in the morning sky, then veered west and went ashore and on to what I thought would be freedom beyond Venice.” She finished the last of her wine and placed the glass next to me.

  I opened the red bottle and refilled both glasses. “That’s an incredible story, Poppy. In the stained glass, there was a man with a knife stalking Marco, was he an assassin?”

  “She,” she corrected, “was an assassin and killed me in the streets of Prague three years later. It didn’t matter in the end. In my next life, I took the secrets of Murano and made a fortune. I still live off that fortune today. I’ve worked with stained glass since then just to keep in practice.”