The Book of Lost Things

by Cynthia Voigt

  The truth was that whatever Joachim was doing, he wouldn’t want to answer the door.

  Max found Joachim in the studio, in front of an easel that held one of the paintings Sunny had ruined. His teacher ran a dry brush along the streaked lines her tail had made on wet paint, imitating the strokes. Then he dipped his brush onto his palette and, using the same long, stroking gestures, painted over a canvas on another easel, a fresh painting of the flowering branch of an apple tree. He put his glasses on to see the effect more clearly; he took his glasses off to perceive the effect more feelingly. He mumbled to himself and called to the dog. “Sunny? Come here, girl.”

  The dog rose from where she lay on the stone floor and padded over to Joachim, her tail wagging gently. “Good dog, good dog,” the painter said, studying the movement of her tail. He turned back to his easels, the dog returned to her original place and position, and Max cleared his throat.

  The dog raised her head and wagged a welcoming tail, but Joachim ignored him, so Max went out to the kitchen, where he deduced from the lack of dishes that Joachim hadn’t yet eaten lunch. Neither had he, so he heated a vegetable soup he found in the icebox. He set a loaf of bread and two spoons out on the kitchen table, filled two bowls with the hot soup, and not until then did he go back to the studio door to announce, “There’s lunch ready.”

  Joachim sighed deeply, put his brush into a jar of turpentine, and took off his smock. “Shouldn’t you be in school? Because this is the third day you’ve been here this week. Sunday, Monday, and now again today.” In case Max couldn’t do the math, Joachim concluded, “That makes three days.”

  Max waited until Joachim had eaten half of his bowl of soup before saying, “I need to ask you—”

  “Are you here for your lesson?”

  Max had forgotten about his lesson, and he welcomed the distraction. “Yes!”

  “You didn’t bring supplies,” Joachim pointed out. “I gather your parents don’t want a dog? Not that I blame them, and especially a large dog, but if they are changeable enough to cancel this long tour, which I thought everybody was so excited about, and cancel it at the last minute, can’t they change just a little more?” Joachim demanded.

  Max almost laughed.

  Joachim looked at him suspiciously. “You told me you were leaving the city.”

  “They left,” Max said.

  “Without you? I don’t believe it.”

  Max set down his spoon, took a deep breath, and told his teacher what had happened. It was not, after all, a very long story. Joachim spooned soup into his mouth and listened. At the end, he looked up at Max. “It’s not good,” Joachim said. “It can’t be good.”

  For some reason, that gloomy prophecy allowed Max to hope that the best was just as possible.

  Joachim mopped up the last of his soup with a thick slice of bread and ate it slowly, bite by bite. When at last he spoke, he was concerned about Max, not Max’s parents. “The city authorities will want to send you to an orphanage.” Before Max could say anything, Joachim conceded, “Maybe they wouldn’t be able to, maybe they’d have to let you live with a blood relation. But your grandmother is old—”

  “No older than you,” Max protested.

  “—and there are laws about these things, there are laws about everything having to do with children. You know, if they can put you in an orphanage, the city authorities will be able to sell your house, and the theater. They’ll say it’s to cover the expense of keeping you, and educating you, feeding and clothing you, training you for some work. Somehow, when the authorities get involved, they end up a little richer.”

  This was terrible. “But it’s my parents’ house and their theater, too. That makes them mine now.”

  “I’m not saying they will do that. I’m just saying they might want to. I suppose your grandmother could hire a lawyer, but lawyers don’t come cheap, and librarians don’t earn much.”

  Max couldn’t argue with that.

  “So whatever you do, you don’t want to let anyone know your situation,” Joachim advised.

  “I don’t plan to.” Max had never thought of any danger to him personally. Had Grammie? He hoped not. She already had more than enough to worry about.

  “But only for a few years, only until you’re sixteen. So it’s not for that long.” Joachim got up to ladle more soup into his bowl. For him, the subject was settled; he’d said all he had to say on it.

  Max, on the other hand, had lost his appetite. New worries and fears washed over him. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Exactly,” Joachim agreed. He ripped a chunk off a slice of bread, dipped it into his bowl, and offered it to the dog. “Sunny? Try this.” Tail wagging, the dog padded obediently over to accept the treat.

  To distract himself from the dismal possibilities Joachim had introduced into his situation, Max said, “Sunny? Come,” and patted his thigh. To his surprise, she obeyed, settling her head where his hand had indicated. Without thinking, he began to rub at the bony top of her head and pull gently on her ears, which for some reason soothed him. He could feel his anxiety easing as he stroked her floppy, soft ears. Then he wondered, Why did the dog refuse to come when Clarissa called her?

  “What about Sunny?” Joachim demanded now. “Where did you get the dog?”

  “From two elderly sisters. On Hilliard Road,” Max said.

  “I know who you mean and they never had a dog.” Now Joachim spoke sternly. “Unless you can swear to me that wherever she came from wasn’t a place she wanted to escape from,” he said, “or the people, too—it’s people and place that make a home—I won’t have Sunny taken back there. You’re going to have to think of something else.”

  “That’s what—” Max began.

  “What’s the truth about her?”

  “Her owners hired me to find her when she disappeared from where she was tied up, outside the little girl’s school,” he said.

  “Tied up? Why at a school? Don’t they know anything about dogs?”

  “The little girl likes to take her to school,” Max explained. He didn’t want to go into the whole long story. “She’s not the only one. It’s … it’s a kind of contest, I think, a way of showing off, like … like talking about your marks on a test.”

  Joachim thought about this and decided, “You can’t take her back to those people.”

  “But I accepted the job.”

  “You’re a detective now? You have a license?”

  “And I need the money, or I will need it. They paid me twenty-five.”

  “I’ll loan you money if I have to. Even better, here’s what I’ll do,” Joachim offered, and for him, Max knew, it was a sacrifice, “I’ll give you lessons for nothing, and that’s as good as putting coins in your pocket. Pay me back when you can. If you ever can.”

  “But the dog does belong to the girl.”

  “Only legally.”

  “The law is important,” Max said. He thought but did not say—not ready to argue this point with Joachim right then—that just because a law didn’t always seem fair to you personally, or wasn’t working in your favor, that didn’t mean law wasn’t necessary.

  “What about what’s good for the dog? The law doesn’t protect the dog, so we have to. Don’t tell me you want to give Sunny back to her.”

  Max stroked the golden head and agreed, “Of course not. But is it right not to? Isn’t that stealing?”

  “It’s right for the dog,” Joachim said. “Sometimes you have to break one law to obey another, more important one.”

  “I don’t want to be someone who breaks any law,” Max said stubbornly.

  Joachim ignored this. “Can’t you keep her yourself?”

  That would be unwise, Max knew. “They might see her with me, for one thing. For another, I’m often away from home, and I don’t see that being left alone in a house is much better than being left tied up to a fence. At least tied up near the school there were other dogs around for company. And besides,” Max concluded, �
�how can I earn my living finding things for people if I don’t succeed? I’ll get a bad reputation.”

  “You’ll be lucky to get any reputation at all,” Joachim pronounced gloomily. “And anyway, you’re no detective.”

  “I know I’m not,” Max agreed unhappily. “I don’t know what I am. What am I?”

  Surprisingly, Joachim laughed, although it was not a cheery sound. “You’re in trouble, that’s what you are, and I don’t know how you’re going to get yourself out of it. What could your parents have been thinking of, going off without you?”

  “They wanted me with them,” Max said.

  “Although it may be a good thing you aren’t,” Joachim announced, rising from the table to take his soup bowl to the sink. “Did you ever think that it might have been your lucky day when you missed that boat?”

  No, Max hadn’t, and he didn’t now. “I’m going to see what Grammie says about the dog.”

  “What does she know about dogs?”

  “She knows about right and wrong,” Max said stubbornly. “I trust her.”

  “She looks like a trustworthy type,” Joachim admitted.

  Max planned to put the Sunny problem to both Grammie and Ari that evening over supper. Knowing his next step made him feel a little better—despite feeling a lot more worried about what could happen to him—so when he got home he settled down to his schoolwork first and then more eagerly to another attempt at a windy skyscape.

  Max might have had his own plan, but that evening, standing at the stove, her back turned to her two guests so they couldn’t see her face, Grammie announced, “I had disturbing news today. And a very odd visitor. At the library.” She turned around then and came to sit at the table. Looking at Max, she said, “I think we ought to tell him. If he’s going to live in your house, I think we have to.”

  Max stood up. He walked to the kitchen door and looked out. Now he was the one with his back turned, concealing his face.

  “Tell me what?” Ari asked. “What’s wrong? What news?”

  “Tell you about …,” Grammie began. “About the … the situation. My daughter and her husband … They’re actors, the Starling Theatrical Company.”

  “The Starling … Your daughter? They’re Max’s parents? Which explains the posters,” Ari said.

  Max went to the stove and pretended that the dinner needed his attention. He picked up a long-handled wooden spoon and stirred at a pot of boiling noodles. Behind him, Grammie told Ari about the letter from a nonexistent Maharajah, the strange note left for Max when they sailed without him, the possibility that the unpleasant Madame Olenka was somehow connected, and how she and Max had decided that they had to wait, for a few weeks at least, to see if they heard anything from William and Mary Starling. “When you don’t know anything, it’s often better to stay still, stay put, and find out what you can,” she explained.

  Max took down three dinner plates.

  Ari protested, “But anything could be—” and fell abruptly silent. It was as if his thoughts were so dark and unpleasant that he didn’t want Grammie and Max to even know he was thinking them.

  Max carried the noodle pot over to the sink and drained it, listening.

  “I never guessed,” Ari said to him. “I never even thought of anything like this. How old are you, Max?”

  “Old enough,” Max answered, and quickly returned to the stove, carrying the colander of noodles.

  Ari looked from one to the other of them. “You must—both of you … You must feel …” He couldn’t find the word. Max didn’t want to hear the word, whatever it might have been. “No wonder you look so tired, Mrs. Nives.”

  “We do,” Grammie assured their friend. “I am. Max?”

  Max was serving noodles onto the plates and didn’t turn around, but Grammie knew he was listening.

  “I heard from Cape Town,” she said. “I cabled city librarians around the world about the ships,” she explained to Ari, “and today I got my first answer. Storms at sea have delayed shipping and the Miss Koala is two days overdue. They assume she was driven off course, and he’ll cable me when …” Her words faded off. Shipwreck was always a possibility, even with the larger, safer, steam-powered ocean liners.

  Max spooned the goulash over the noodles and set the three plates on the table, along with a bowl of buttered brussels sprouts. All three ate slowly and thoughtfully for a few minutes, fortifying themselves with hearty food against the news to come, because Grammie had not yet explained why her visitor had alarmed her. “Now Ari knows the background,” Grammie said at last. “That catches us all up to today.” She took a deep breath. “Today …” But that was all she said.

  “What’s happened?” Max asked. Had a city official come to inquire about him?

  “As I said, I had a disturbing visitor at the library today. Late this morning, just before we closed for the lunch break. There was a man.” She looked significantly at Max. Max looked to Ari, who just shook his head. Neither of them had any idea what Grammie would say next.

  “When he got to the front of the line, he had a book. I think it was an atlas, anyway it was a reference book, and you know those are never loaned out. It’s library policy.” She chewed and swallowed a bite, remembering. “I had just started telling him that when he leaned over, close to my face, as if he didn’t want to be overheard. He was interested in local theaters, he said, and he had heard there was a good theatrical company here, in the old city, and could I tell him anything about it. That was when I looked at him.” She watched Max. “Really looked.”

  Max had a mouthful of food, but he stopped chewing. What had she seen? To upset her?

  “He was an ordinary-looking man, middle-aged, short gray beard, curly gray hair, brown eyes, chunky, muscular. He wore trousers and a jacket, but it wasn’t a suit. He looked like just anybody. Except—he had rather long ears.”

  Relieved, Max swallowed. This wasn’t the worst possible news. When you’ve been fearing the worst, something that’s merely worrisome is almost good news. He asked, “You mean long earlobes?”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Madame Olenka,” Max explained to Ari, “had very long earlobes.”

  “Not a common characteristic,” Ari pointed out.

  “It isn’t,” Grammie agreed.

  “An inherited characteristic,” Ari added. “It’s a recessive, not dominant, gene and therefore, according to Mendel’s findings—”

  “Exactly,” Grammie said again. Turning to Max, she explained Mendel’s experiments with beans and their results.

  Max could draw the conclusion. “You think they’re probably related, this man and Madame Olenka.”

  “If that’s anybody’s name at all,” Grammie said.

  “What did you tell him?” Ari asked.

  “I was so surprised, I didn’t say anything. So he kept talking, ‘The Starling Theater,’ he said. I asked him to step aside so the person behind him could check out and he did, but he stood there, waiting. While he was waiting, I checked books out, and thought.”

  “That was smart,” Max said. He had gone back to eating; the goulash was very good, meaty and flavorful and rich with sour cream. He suspected that his dinner might not taste nearly as good if he waited until the end of Grammie’s story to eat it. Ari apparently thought the same, because he, too, had recommenced his meal.

  “Well, I needed my wits about me if I was going to find out anything from him and keep him from learning anything from me. When everybody else had gone, he stepped up right in front of me and asked, ‘Is the theater ever going to reopen?’ ‘Why ask me?’ I asked him, and he said, ‘Librarians know everything.’ ”

  “So he knew it was closed down,” Ari observed.

  “He also knew your parents were out of the city. He said someone had told him that. Your father talks entirely too much,” she said to Max.

  “My father likes to be larger-than-life,” Max explained to Ari. “More vivid, more … My father always wants things to be adventur
es, and he makes adventures out of everything.”

  “He must be a lot of fun,” Ari said. “I’d have liked that when I was a boy, someone dashing and flashy, someone everybody noticed and—probably—enjoyed,” he said wistfully.

  “He’s not a bad father,” Grammie allowed. “And he’s a good husband, too. But he does talk too much. People know too much about him. Or, and this might be more dangerous, people think they know about him. This man today, he said he wondered if the theater needed a watchman, or if the house needed guarding or caretaking. ‘Starling is a wealthy man,’ that’s what he said, exactly. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said, and opened my drawer to take out my purse and lunch. I swear he followed me to the door, as if he was going to follow me out to the garden and sit down right beside me, hanging over my shoulder while I ate. So you know what I did?”

  Grammie looked at Max and Ari with mischief in her eyes and the kind of smile Max had not seen since his parents disappeared. Max and Ari shook their heads, they didn’t know, they couldn’t guess.

  “I went into the ladies’ bathroom. And I stayed there for a long time. When I came out, he’d gone away, I don’t know where. So, what do you two think?” Before either one of them could speak, she added, “I’m not ashamed to tell you, he was a little frightening. Or, maybe, more accurately, alarming. Whatever has your father gotten himself mixed up in? What do they want, those Long-ears? Do you think it has something to do with this fraudulent Indian escapade?”

  Those questions drove the problem of the dog entirely out of Max’s mind. The three of them spent the rest of the evening trying to guess who the Long-ears were and what they were after and if they might be connected to the phony Maharajah of Kashmir.…