He finishes the piece, picks up a coffee at his neighbourhood Timothy’s and takes the subway to Caryn’s place. The house is in darkness and there is no car in the driveway. He wanders around the neighbourhood for half an hour or so, but when he returns there is still no sign of activity at the house. An hour later he calls it quits, and posts the story online.
In Sydney, several hours ahead of Toronto, Zach reads the story and is knocked sideways by it. The irony, he thinks, the crowning achievement of his life undone by a nincompoop with an unfulfilled fixation on the hostess of a sushi bar. He phones Rachel on her mobile, and without apologizing for waking her up asks her to quickly find copies of the Eileen Keane books Prescott is referring to and compare them to Storm of Angels to make sure the claims are inalienable. He tries calling Caryn in Toronto and gets her voice mail; he keeps trying but after leaving her five messages he gives up.
A few hours later he is talking to his boss in London. Hayley Caldwell hears him out, and says the allegations will have to be brought to Mortimer’s attention; the crisis is too big for the London office to handle. He spends a couple of tense and anxious hours, and then phones Caryn again. Still no reply, she is probably on holiday. He has no idea what he is going to say to Mortimer. He supposes he could say, plausibly enough, that no one could have read every book on angels there is; that the author, or in this case the translator, warranted to them that the book was an original work and that they had had no option but to take her at her word. Publishing lacks the resources to undertake independent fact-checking, it’s a business that has historically been based on trust, and if there are a few rotten apples who breach that trust from time to time, that’s just plain bad luck – there is little anyone can do to prevent or anticipate such deception. He recalls his slight concern about the difference in style between this manuscript and the preceding books in the series and wonders if he should share that bit of information with Mortimer. Would Globish’s president pin the blame on him? Zach dismisses the concern; they are all in it together, and no matter what people have said to him about Mortimer’s reputation for letting his people down, and his initial misgivings at their meeting at Frankfurt, the Globish boss has been nothing but supportive in the past few months. He will share his suspicions with him about Caryn. What made her do it? Vengeance for being cheated out of what was rightfully hers? A fanatical desire to carry on the Seppi legacy at any cost? An attempt to show that she was a creative artist in her own right? Although he is extremely upset with her, the more he thinks about it, the more his anger is mixed with sorrow. He remembers the charm and the wry sense of humour that emerged from behind the iron veneer she presented to the world. How lonely she must be feeling right now, how besieged, he must not be too harsh on her!
But no matter how humane his and the company’s treatment of her, she will have to be held to account; reparations will have to be made. Caryn and Giuseppe did sign contracts vouching for the authenticity of the work, but if Litmus sued, how much money would they be able to recover? And if any members of Eileen Keane’s family sued for copyright infringement, who would pay? And what of all the publishers Litmus has sold rights to? It can return the advances, and not all forty-eight have published yet, but still … And that doesn’t even start taking into account the Seppi fans who have bought the book, close to two million of them already. Will any of them sue? What of Litmus’s reputation? His head aches from the sheer immensity of the problem, the myriad ramifications that he is sure haven’t occurred to him yet. While waiting for New York to wake up, he calls the airline and books a flight back to London that evening.
His phone call to Mortimer is uneventful. Mortimer tells him, his voice neutral, that he too will fly to London as quickly as possible so they can plan a strategy to deal with the fallout of the plagiarism.
Mortimer seems calm when they meet in the office he uses when he is in London. Hayley is present but Morty does all the talking. He asks Zach to take him through the entire situation, from the time he met Caryn in Toronto, all the way to the first intimation that something was very wrong. When Zach comes to the end of his account, he says quietly, “We’ll have to find Caryn as soon as possible; I’ll talk to our office in Toronto. We will also have to get in touch with all the publishers we have licensed rights to, say that we will repay every cent of every advance paid to us. If necessary we will make a public apology to all Seppi fans, hopefully that will mollify them. We will say we feel as aggrieved as any of them but we must stress that we acted in good faith. For now, I would like you to hand in your resignation to Hayley. I’m sorry, we have given this a lot of thought, but for an error of this magnitude we have no choice but to let you go.”
Mortimer’s decision slams into him, terrorizes him briefly; his job is one of the two most important stanchions that support his life. But there is nothing to be said; the firing has taken him completely by surprise, and he could not have mounted a defence even if he were thinking lucidly. It is clear the meeting is over. He gets up, as does Mortimer, who walks him to the door. They do not speak. As the door closes behind him, he thinks Gabrijela wouldn’t have hung him out to dry; she would have stood by him, fought through the crisis with him. But Gabrijela is no longer here; he will need to deal with the situation as best he can. To his surprise, even though the worst thing he could think of has taken place, after the initial moments of panic he is calm; although he isn’t thinking clearly yet, he believes he can handle the situation. And he certainly isn’t going to get down on himself because of someone like Morty. Fuck him, he thinks, and walks down the corridor to the bank of lifts.
After Zach and Hayley have left, Mortimer sits at his desk for what seems to him a long time but is only about five minutes, looking out the window, not particularly focusing on activity in the street outside. Firing Zach hasn’t left much of an impression on him, to be honest he hardly knew the guy; Zach was a means towards an end, he screwed up therefore he had to go. Mortimer didn’t even have to practise his sad face before the mirror, something he usually does before firing someone. He makes a few notes on his laptop about practical matters that will have to be acted upon immediately: he will draft the press release announcing Zach’s resignation; Hayley should be the point person for the media and the publishers they have licensed rights to; he will get Frank to take charge of the hunt for Caryn. He closes the computer and thinks about what else will need to be done to contain the situation. This is a blow that he will not find it easy to recover from, he had taken a big gamble when he overpaid for Litmus. Now it will be difficult for Globish to make its numbers over the next two quarters and, more worryingly, the media storm will have an effect on the parent company’s share price. He has done what he can to protect himself – the firing of Zach, the attempts to head off lawsuits – but these actions will not be enough when he is called to account by his boss, because in the world of business, as he knows only too well, any prolonged downslide of performance, especially in times like these, will not be tolerated. Unless he has a killer Plan B up his sleeve, which he does not have, he might survive for a little while but he will have to start looking for his twelfth job soon, unless by some miracle Globish turns in a stellar performance this year or at least the next. Except Mortimer does not believe in miracles. He picks up the phone to call Monterey.
When Zach gets home, Julia meets him at the door. He isn’t expecting to see her, he thought she would still be at work where he had phoned her with his news, but he is enormously glad she is here, for the strength she gives him by just being around. Nothing is ever lost, he thinks, when you have someone you love and trust to fight your corner.
The news of the Seppi fraud makes the front pages of every US and UK paper the day of Zach’s meeting with Mortimer. Unusually, the story makes the front pages the next day as well, because of a tragic update: the body of a forty-four-year-old woman identified as Caryn Bianchi, a Montreal native, has been found in an upscale Bermuda hotel room. Preliminary investigations rule her death t
o be suicide from an overdose of sleeping pills. There is no suicide note.
Within forty-eight hours of the story breaking worldwide Storm of Angels begins to slide off the bestseller lists, and within a week it has fallen off the Amazon Top 100 and keeps heading downwards. Globish’s reps countrywide in the US, and other major markets are besieged with phone calls from all their accounts seeking to return stock earlier than usual for full credit. All requests are acceded to. The media refuses to let go of the story, despite the best efforts of the in-house marketing and publicity department and of the high-powered spin doctors Mortimer has hired. The share price of Globish’s parent company, Amadeus, starts to slip almost immediately, losing a dollar and a half, before rebounding slightly to settle at a full eight points lower than its level before the scandal broke. Mortimer flies to Monterey for an unpleasant meeting with Greg Holmes; he is not fired as he was expecting but he is put on notice that unless the company posts increases in both revenues and profits throughout 2011, he should not expect his contract, which comes to an end that year, to be renewed. It is better than he had hoped for, certainly better than the treatment he has meted out to Zach. He has time to come up with something and he is sure he will.
PART THREE
Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey;
Without her you wouldn’t have set out on the road …
And if you find her poor, Ithaca didn’t deceive you.
As wise as you will have become, with so much experience,
You will understand, by then, these Ithacas; what they mean.
– from “Ithaca” by C.P. Cavafy
8.
ITHACA
A month later, on an idle afternoon, Zach watches a documentary about a Slovenian man called Martin Strel whom he has never heard of before. A difficult childhood had led to a life lived on the margins until one day Strel decided to start swimming the greatest rivers in the world. He began with the Danube. A few years later he swam the entire length of the Mississippi. Next, he tackled the Yangtze, one of the most polluted rivers in the world, and nearly died. Finally, in his fifties, fat and washed up, he decided he would swim possibly the most dangerous big river in the world, the Amazon, a feat no one had ever attempted before. He was no Michael Phelps, he had high blood pressure, his resources were meagre, his training poor, and he fuelled himself with wine and beer while he swam. His son, who narrates the story of the quixotic feat, says the reason his father made up his mind to swim the Amazon was because he wanted to stop the destruction of the rain forest, but nobody quite knew how he intended to do that. If Strel knew, he wasn’t explaining it very well to his people. Everyone thought he would die, his doctor made him sign a waiver saying she would not be responsible for the consequences if he went ahead. Strel signed, and by the time he got to the end of his journey he was almost out of his mind.
He returned to Slovenia and the destruction of the Amazon rain forest went on. We are not told if this disheartens Strel, the only thing we are told is that he is done, his days as the Big River Man are over. There is no real point to this story, except that you probably shouldn’t swim the Amazon on cheap Slovenian wine. All it illustrates is that as we make our journey through life, deep down we have no real idea of why we do what we do and even less control over what the outcome will be. All we can do is make the journey.
9.
ENDS AND BEGINNINGS
In the old house in Yercaud, midway up the hill, with its timbered rafters, tiled roof, uneven floors, and its immense character, well remembered from the years he spent growing up there, Zachariah Thomas sits at an octagonal teak table in the glassed-in front verandah, drinking tea and looking out at the mist sculpting a fantastical bestiary out of the trees and shrubs in the garden. There is work to be done on the house and the garden, and he will also need to settle his parents’ affairs, which he has been guilty of neglecting. All this will take at least three months if not longer.
It’s been almost six months since he was fired from Globish. At first he did very little, simply mooned around their London flat, reading, listening to music, or watching incredibly violent Hong Kong cop movies in Mandarin (a language he does not know) without subtitles, which he found oddly soothing. Lately though, Julia and he have begun trying to figure out the future. For the moment their finances are holding up, but it is clear he will need to find a job fairly quickly. The big decision is where that job will be – in London where the publishing industry is tanking, or here in India where the prospects are much better? But if he were to move to India, would Julia give up her job or would they have a long-distance relationship? They haven’t really talked about it, it is not a question that lends itself to easy resolution, especially so soon after their rapprochement.
He has been up since dawn, when he drove out to the cemetery to tend to the graves of his parents. And although the place could be better maintained, their final resting place is well chosen, with its long view of the hills and the mist rolling in over the trees. He has found the cemetery conducive to silent reflection, and has visited it often since coming to the Shevaroys a fortnight ago. In this quiet place, he has found that the anger and dismay that have corroded his life for much of the past six months are slowly seeping away. This morning, as he was sweeping fallen jacaranda flowers off his parents’ graves with an improvised broom of twigs, he had wondered, as he has done often since returning, about the trajectory of his life, the odd symmetry of it. Would it end here, where it had begun?
Manjula, the housekeeper, comes into the room and announces that he has a visitor, Nagesh, the postman. Nagesh has been retired for decades now, but he’s continued to keep in touch with the family, with his parents when they were alive, and now Zach whenever he visits. The invisible network of watchers that records all the comings and goings in this small town had alerted Nagesh as soon as Zach had returned, but he had been busy with workmen the last time the old postman visited. This time he offers him tea, gives him his full attention.
Nagesh was an integral part of his adolescence when his parents first came to live in this corner of the Shevaroys. At the corner of the driveway, where it takes a sharp turn to go downhill, stands an old cypress with a branch that sticks out just low enough for a teenage boy to rest his forearms. From this vantage point he would look out across the valley to the winding road that led to town. At some point in the morning, depending on the number of stops he had had to make that day, the tiny figure of the postman would come into view, sliding jerkily down the road like a dun-coloured beetle, the bearer of good news, bad news, and all the neighbourhood gossip.
It is hard to tell how old Nagesh is, the broad flat planes of his face are only lightly dusted by wrinkles, but one eye is clouded with cataracts, and he tells Zach that his once powerful legs, which used to carry him effortlessly over the hill roads, have given way; he is practically crippled by arthritis in the winter, and he finds it painful to walk even on the good days. He has had to make the journey from Yercaud town, where he lives, by bus, where once he would have walked.
Nagesh reminisces about Zach’s parents, and then tells him about his own family, his children, and his grandchildren. The visit stretches on, but Zach is in no hurry – he realizes with some surprise that this is probably the longest he has ever spent in the company of Nagesh. It is no imposition, he has the time, but more than that he finds himself genuinely fascinated by the stories the postman has to tell, real stories of triumph and tragedy, of lived lives, not stories strained through the filter of fiction, which has been his preferred way of seeing the world for far too long.
In the old way of the hills, Nagesh lets it be known that he has heard of Zach’s misfortune only towards the end of his visit. He leans forward, earnestly takes Zach’s hand in his own, and quotes a Tamil proverb: “The letters of fate are written on your head, you cannot escape your fate even if you shave your head.”
Ah yes, Zach thinks, fate or karma or kismet, or whatever you choose to call it, that old standby
to explain why things do not work out as expected or when your life is dramatically altered. At one time he would have cast such reasoning aside, but who is he to scoff at the wisdom of the ancients, especially when it is relayed to him by a man who has had a deep and intimate view of the lives of others?
Nagesh gets up to leave, puts his hands together in a namaskaram. Zach returns the greeting and they walk down the driveway together. When they reach the old cypress on the corner he tells the postman about how he would watch out for him every day. “I know you did,” Nagesh says with a smile. “My eyes were very good back then.” Before he goes, he has one more thing to share. “I know these hills better than anyone else,” he says with pride, “from walking up and down them every day of the week. Sometimes though, because of a sudden storm or landslide or accident, I would find the road blocked, and I would have to patiently find another route to complete my rounds.
“You cannot escape your fate,” he continues, “but your journey hasn’t ended. All that has happened is that you have been pointed in a different direction – keep on, keep on.” One more namaskaram and a refusal of Zach’s offer of a ride home, then the old man makes his way slowly down the hill.
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