by Jeremy Bates
“Have you seen it?”
“That’s where I’m from, Katja. I live there.”
She seemed stunned by my response. Her brow knit. “You are not telling me the truth.”
“Yes, I am. I live there. My friends too—”
“You’re a liar! No one lives on the surface.”
“Yes—”
“No!” She snapped to her feet.
“I can show you, I can take you—”
“You’re a liar! My father told me you would try to lie to me. That is why I am not supposed to talk to you.”
“I’m not lying, Katja. Your father is lying to you—”
“Stop it!”
She scooped up her candle and dashed toward the exit.
“Katja!” I shouted desperately. “Don’t go! Come back!”
She didn’t.
I lay awake in the dark for a long while. I didn’t bother to test my restraints. I didn’t have the strength to. Instead I focused on the questions buzzing around inside my head. Why were Katja and Hanns and everyone in her so-called family carved up like they were? Why was Katja so different than the rest of them? Who was her father, and why had he told her nobody lived on the surface? Where did she think I came from if not the surface? Why did the mention of her father instill such fear in her? Why had she come to see me if she was forbidden to do so? Why had Danièle been moved to a different room while Rob and I remained here? Was Danièle really okay? Was Rob really still in this room? Was I really safe for the time being? Was any of this really fucking happening?
I took a deep breath. It came out shaky. I took another and another until I was breathing evenly. I rolled onto my side to relieve pressure from my burning shoulders. This proved extremely uncomfortable, so I returned to the supine position. I closed my eyes, opened them, closed them, opened them. I felt as if I were floating. I felt as if I were in eternity. I closed my eyes and imagined I was in deep space, floating, as light as a feather, floating through space, floating with no worries, floating, no up, no down, no direction whatsoever, floating and floating and floating…
I was inside my bedroom closet in the fraternity house. Danièle was with me. We were hiding, but from what I didn’t know. Neither of us spoke, and the silence dragged on. Then I heard movement. It was Danièle. She was moving closer to me. I wanted to tell her to stop making so much noise, but my mouth wouldn’t work. She placed her hand on the top of my thigh. She left it there for several long seconds before moving it onto my crotch. I became aroused. This embarrassed me because I wasn’t sure Danièle knew where her hand was. It was dark. Maybe she thought her hand was on my knee, or on my hip. If she realized I was turned on, she would likely think I was a depraved pervert. This wasn’t the time or the place for sex. We were in danger, we should be focused on survival—
Her fingers worked the button of my jeans. They were strong, dexterous, efficient. They pulled down the zipper. They gripped my erection and moved up and down, slowly at first, experimentally, then faster and with more friction, faster until my heartbeat raced, faster still, faster until I groaned—and that sound shattered the dream, because it hadn’t come from the dream.
I opened my eyes and discovered Katja bent over me, her fist pumping quickly.
I cried out and jerked away from her. She yelped herself and fell backward onto her rear.
“What the fuck?” I blurted, my breathing coming in gasps.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought—” She seemed about to flee.
“Wait, it’s okay,” I said, keeping the revulsion from my voice. “I was just surprised, that’s all.” I wiggled myself to my elbows, then rocked forward, so I was sitting upright. My shirt draped my genitals. “I’m glad you came back,” I added just as genially as if we’d bumped into each other in the park.
“I thought you would like that,” she said. Her teeth were white in the candlelight, in contrast to the bubblegum pink of her gums. She wore the same too-large Icelandic wool sweater and charcoal tights.
“I did. I do.” I cleared my throat. “I—I was just surprised. I was dreaming.”
“Do you want me to finish?”
“No, not now. Maybe later.” Maybe later? “Where did you go earlier?”
“I returned to my room.”
“Did you go to sleep?”
“I tried to, but I couldn’t.”
“What time is it? Do you have time here?”
“Of course we do.” She pulled up her sleeve, revealing a yellow Timex wristwatch. “It is four thirty in the morning.”
“That’s a nice watch.”
“My father gave it to me,” she said happily. “Do you have time where you’re from?” She folded her legs beneath her, planted her elbows on her knees, and cupped her chin in her hands. A sweet farm girl from a Norman Rockwell painting—on Halloween night.
“Yeah, I do,” I told her. “What time does everyone here wake up?”
“Whenever they want to.”
“You have a rooster? I heard it…yesterday?”
“His name is Colin. Have you read The Secret Garden?”
“No… Have you?”
“Yes! It is one of my favorite books. There’s a girl in it, her name is Mary, who has to go live with her uncle Archibald Craven at his home called Misselthwaite Manor. When she’s there, she hears someone crying in the middle of the night. It turns out this is her cousin Colin. He has some problem with his spine that causes him a lot of pain and to cry out. When I read this, I thought of the rooster, which always makes noise in the early morning. That’s why I named him Colin. We also have six hens. We had seven, but one died last week.”
“I…okay.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. This was too bizarre. “So you eat eggs for breakfast?”
“Sometimes. Do you?”
“Sometimes. Katja?”
“Yes?”
“What’s going to happen when your father wakes up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is he going to want to speak to me?”
“I imagine so. But remember, you can’t tell him I visited you. You promised.”
“I know. I won’t say anything. Do you know what he will want to speak to me about?”
“Where you came from, probably.”
“Where—where did I come from?”
Her brow knitted. “I do not think you are well. I think you need to rest.”
I licked my lips. “Katja, I think I lost my memory when your uncle hit me in the head. I…I can’t seem to remember anything before I arrived here. I’m really confused.”
She issued a high-pitched sound, and I realized it was laughter. “That is why you thought you lived on the surface!” She clapped her hands.
“Yes…so…can I ask you some questions? They might sound strange, but they will help with my memory.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What year is it?”
“I’m not sure exactly.”
“Can you guess?”
“Twenty ten? Twenty fifteen?” She shrugged.
“Why do you live underground?”
“For the same reason you do.”
“Why is that?”
She gave me a skeptical look. “You really don’t know?”
“I told you, my memory…”
“Paris was destroyed in the war.”
“What war?”
“World War Two, by nuclear bombs. No one can live there. Acid rain falls from the sky, and the air is filled with radiation that is invisible, but it can kill you in minutes.”
“But it doesn’t kill your father? You said he goes to the surface.”
“He has a special suit.”
I nodded. A special suit. Why the fuck not. But at least it was all starting to come together—well, some of it. “Haven’t you ever wanted to see the surface for yourself?”
“The suit is too big for me. But my father promised me he will find a way to take me one day.”
“Katja,
what would you think if I told you Paris wasn’t destroyed in World War Two by nuclear bombs, there is no acid rain or radiation, and there are in fact several million people living there right now?”
Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “I would think you really need to rest.”
“You said you read The Secret Garden,” I said. “What other books have you read?”
“Oh, too many to count. I have a bookcase full of them.”
“What kind of books?”
“Mostly novels. But I have a lot of language books too. My father says learning languages is one of the best ways to pass the time and keep your mind sharp.”
“Were any of these books published after 1945?”
“1945?”
“After Paris was destroyed.”
“Of course not. That would be impossible.”
“But have you checked?”
“How would I check?”
“Inside each book there is a publication date on one of the first few pages.”
“Really? I have never seen those. But, no, none of my books would have been published after 1945. Like I said, that would be impossible.”
I eyed her wristwatch, thinking of telling her it was less than ten years old. But there was no date stamped on it. To her, that was simply what watches were like pre-1945.
I ground my jaw in frustration. How did you convince someone, without any physical proof, that an entire alternate history existed?
I said, “How did World War Two end?”
“The United States developed the nuclear bomb and dropped a lot of them on Paris.”
“Why would they do that? The French were on the Americans’ side.”
“But the Germans were in Paris and they wouldn’t leave. It was the only option.”
“So what about the rest of the world?”
“What do you mean?”
“The entire world wasn’t destroyed, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“How could I? I can’t go check.”
“You father could with his suit.”
She shook her head. “It only protects him for a short time. He wouldn’t be able to leave Paris.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere with this line of reasoning. The worldview fed to her presumably by her father was a simple one, but the logic was sound. My only option, it seemed, was to tell her the blunt truth. Only how would she react to this? Accuse me of lying again and run off? I couldn’t afford that. I needed her. She was, I believed, my only chance of escape. She painted her father to be a just man who would keep me safe, but just men didn’t live underground with murderers and disfigure and brainwash their children.
I said, “Katja, can I tell you a secret?”
She leaned forward. “Yes?”
“Do you promise me you won’t call me a liar?”
She knitted her brow suspiciously. “I don’t know…”
“I promised you that I wouldn’t tell your father we’re speaking. You can at least promise me you won’t call me a liar.”
“Well, okay, I guess.”
“Not all of Paris was destroyed in the war. Most of it was,” I added quickly. “And you can’t visit it without a suit because of the acid rain and radiation. You’re right about that. I remember all of this now. But I also remember there is another part of Paris where the radiation isn’t bad and you can see the sun and you don’t even need a suit. Not many people know about it. Your father probably doesn’t know either. But my friends and I found it. We’ve seen it.”
She stared at me for a long moment, the way a child might when trying to figure out whether you’re pulling his or her leg or not. And that’s what Katja was, wasn’t she? A child. She might have the body of a young teenager, but she was intellectually stunted. Everything she knew came from the books she’d read, or word of mouth from her father. It was all taken on blind faith. Nothing was grounded in gritty experience.
Slowly, she began shaking her head. I was losing her, I realized, if I’d ever hooked her to begin with. “Katja—”
“You’re a liar!”
“Katja, you promised you wouldn’t—”
She backed away from me. “Liar!”
“Look at my skin! It’s not like yours. It’s dark. That’s from the sun.”
She hesitated.
“Katja, I’m telling you the truth! And I can take you to the surface. I can show you it without a suit.”
“Stop it!”
“Please, Katja. If you free me, I’ll take you, I’ll show you—”
“You’re tricking me!” she yelled. “You just want to escape! You’re a liar, and I hate you!”
She fled, sobbing, into the blackness.
Chapter 52
KATJA
She should have listened to her father, Katja decided as she slowed to a walk. She should never have visited Will.
Originally she had only wanted to see what he and his friends looked like. She had not planned on speaking to any of them (and in this way she wouldn’t really be disobeying her father’s orders, would she?). Even when they spoke to her—the woman in French, Will in English—she had not replied. She had wanted to, because Will had fascinated her. With his dark hair and dark eyes, and his nose and mouth, he was how she imagined Prince Caspian to be in The Voyage of the Dawn Trader. Also, after that first encounter, feelings—strange, warm feelings she’d never experienced before—came to life inside her. She had not been able to stop thinking about him, and she’d even imagined she would marry him and become Queen of the Catacombs, just as Ramandu’s daughter married Caspian and became Queen of Narnia.
So eventually, inevitably, she had gone back to see him again, and even when he lied to her, she had gone back yet again. And she had touched him. That memory shot a shiver of pleasure through her body, made her inner thighs go tingly, though this was quickly followed by a cloud of dejection. Because why had he wanted her to stop? Her uncles touched their penises all the time, and it always made them happy. Had she done something wrong then? Had she hurt him?
Katja reached her room and rubbed the drying tears from her cheeks. A tarpaulin with “Building Site, No Access” stenciled across the front of it covered the doorway. Her father had installed it there so she could have more privacy. Sometimes her uncles not only touched their own penises, but they wanted her to touch them too. She never felt an urge to do this like she had with Will, however, and during these occasions she would take refuge in her room, where they knew they were not allowed. Before the tarpaulin was in place, they would remain in the doorway and tell her to watch while they played with themselves. Now they left her alone for the most part—except for Hanns. He would simply push the tarpaulin aside. All she could do was turn her back to him and cover her ears with her hands and wait until he left again.
Inside the room Katja considered going to her bed and lying down, but she still wasn’t tired. Instead she went to her bookcase. She set the candle on a shelf and plucked free one of her favorite books: Anne of Green Gables. It was the longest book she’d ever read, and she was always proud to feel its weight in her hands. She opened the cover. The first two pages displayed the table of contents, while the first chapter, “Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised,” began on the third page.
Where was the publication date Will mentioned?
Katja returned the novel to its spot on the shelf and plucked free her next favorite story: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A quick look revealed no publication date. She checked a third novel—The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe—and frowned.
The second page, it seemed, had been torn out. A sliver of it, the edge jagged, poked out from the glue.
Feeling suddenly sick with something she didn’t like, she opened two dozen other books—The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, The Velveteen Rabbit, Peter Pan, more—and they all had pages torn out. She had never noticed this before because you really had to look closely to tell.
&
nbsp; Had these missing pages contained the publication dates that Will had mentioned? Who had torn them free? Her father? But why? Because the books had been printed after 1945? But that would mean Paris wasn’t destroyed—or at least some city somewhere wasn’t destroyed. Why would her father not want her to know this?
Then she recalled what Will had said: Katja, what would you think if I told you Paris wasn’t destroyed in World War Two by nuclear bombs, there is no acid rain or radiation, and there are in fact several million people living there right now?
Katja went cold all over. She didn’t want to think about this anymore. But she couldn’t stop herself either.
Paris had been destroyed. It was filled with radiation and acid rain.
It had to be.
But what if it wasn’t?
She was tempted to go and wake her father right then, he would have an answer to why the publication pages were missing, he had answers to everything, but she didn’t go and wake him, because that feeling she didn’t like was still inside her, it was oily and nauseating and she didn’t like it one bit, and it took her a long time to attach a name to what it was: betrayal.
Katja studied the poster on her wall. Her father had given it to her several years before. It showed Paris in ruin. All the buildings were destroyed and covered in snow, and the Eiffel Tower was broken in half. Along the top of it were the words: “The Day After Tomorrow.” Her father said that’s what people called the day the United States dropped the bombs on Paris. She never understood why it would be called The Day After Tomorrow. Didn’t that mean it happened in the future? Anyway, she never questioned him—and she never questioned why the bottom section of the poster had been torn free.
Katja stood outside the door to her father’s quarters and listened. She didn’t hear him moving about inside, but that didn’t mean he was sleeping. He could be sitting at his desk, reading. Still, she had to take a chance. She felt as if she were falling apart inside, and she needed to know who to believe, what to believe. She needed to know the truth.