The Cusanus Game

  I went back to bed and stared into the darkness. Where was I? Was I being fooled by a tenacious dream? Or had I ended up in another universe? Stranded in a parallel world? Perhaps in a distant time? I shouldn’t stray too far from myself, Heli had warned me. I was as helplessly at the mercy of the gravity centers of the courses I was traveling as she had been when she had to follow a long detour to return to earth.

  Suddenly the light came back on. A bare lightbulb hung on a wire from the burst, stained ceiling. I closed my eyes. Nearby a muezzin sang the subuh, the first prayer of the day. What a horrible, godforsaken place—and yet its residents praised the Almighty.

  I felt dizzy. I opened my eyes. Darkness surrounded me. Then I heard nearby the whistle of a locomotive. The train station—I must have returned.

  * * *

  WHEN I WOKE up, it was broad daylight. The sun shone over the eastern flank of Mount Vesuvius. Shouts rang out from the street. On the sidewalk stalls had grown out of the ground overnight like mushrooms after a summer rain. The umbrellas stood close together, and traffic struggled through a jumble of parked delivery vans and two-wheeled carts that were being unloaded. The glass facades of the Centro Direzionale glistened, and on the square and in the train station itself crowds were already gathering. Where were these travelers heading? The route to the north would be impassable for months. The trains had to be diverted to the east coast.

  I heard voices out in the hallway and the closing of the door to the next room. I stood up quickly, opened my door a crack, and peered out. Two people were walking down the hallway to the elevator: a short man wearing a natural linen suit and a panama hat and next to him a dark-haired woman of my height and about my age in a light red minidress with a straw hat hanging over her arm.

  The lovers had apparently not departed yesterday after all, but had spent another night in the next room. The two of them entered the elevator. Inside it the rectangular mirrors set in polished brass moldings reflected a distorted image, so that I could not make out the faces. Was it the couple I had seen sitting in the lobby the previous evening? Had another version of me, one of my shadow sisters, had fewer scruples in another universe and…? No, I told myself. I would never stray so far from myself.

  * * *

  “BUON GIORNO, SIGNORINA,” the young man behind the counter greeted me as I passed reception on my way to breakfast. My gaze happened to fall on the calendar on the wall. It showed the date to be September 16.

  “The calendar…” I said, and stopped.

  “The calendar?” he asked. “What about it?”

  “Today is the seventeenth…”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken,” he replied kindly but firmly. “Today is the sixteenth.”

  “Is that really true?” I asked.

  Frowning, he looked at me over his narrow glasses, then pushed the latest newspaper across the counter to me and pointed to the date. I cast a timid glance at the headlines. Not a single one mentioned the terror attack on the Rome express. Not a line about the more than five hundred victims who had met their death in the tunnel. Nothing about the Mondragone disaster … Of course not, if today was only the sixteenth.

  “I must have been mistaken,” I said tonelessly.

  Dizziness overcame me. I held on to the counter and took a deep breath.

  “Are you all right, signorina?” the receptionist asked with concern.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him, even though my legs almost gave out.

  What had Ernesto said to me? “You might be among those who no longer need our technology.” But, for heaven’s sake, how could that be possible?

  The reaction of the boutique owner … And then the woman on the platform … Father was still alive; he was out there somewhere in the city. All the people who had boarded the train were still alive. I had a second chance! A world opened up before me, a new day, a new universe! I could have cheered with relief. So I still had more than seven hours. This time I would set to work more carefully …

  On the spur of the moment I decided to skip breakfast. I hurried to the boutique on Corso Umberto Primo and bought the miniskirt I had noticed the previous evening in the display window. It was the last one.

  “I admire women who have the courage to wear something like that,” the owner said with a smile that turned somewhat wry.

  “I know it’s terribly tacky. It’s intended as a party gag,” I replied.

  “Then have fun with it!” she purred, puttering around busily.

  I returned to the hotel, put on the skirt, and looked at myself in the mirror. No way! I quickly took it off again, grabbed my travel bag, and paid my bill. One night less was listed on the bill—a night that had gotten mysteriously lost. I then strolled to the train station and took a look at the places where I had failed on the first try.

  As Napoli Centrale is U-shaped in front, the stream of passengers moving in from the spacious Piazza Garibaldi was first pooled as if by the grating of a weir, then channeled together into the ticket hall through funnel-shaped openings between large glass facades, and from there relayed to the platforms. That structure was functional and undoubtedly worked flawlessly at normal crowd levels; but when the onrush increased and greater masses of people tried to get into the building and to the trains, that design was disastrously hazardous. The funnels between the glass facades formed dangerous bottlenecks, which could provoke panic. When those confined spaces were cordoned off as well, in order to prevent people from reaching the ticket hall and the platforms, the concentrated onslaught would surge against those very glass walls, which were not shatterproof. Panic among people who felt helpless and driven into a corner and injuries from the bursting of the panes were thus preprogrammed. In addition, one floor down there was a quite similar system of funnels from which stairs and escalators led up—the metro in the underground level and the connection to the Circumvesuviana—which doubled the pressure on the entry points to the ticket hall.

  So far the police had withstood the onslaught of travelers who wanted to leave the city, but the glass panes had not. There had been dozens of injured. But even passengers who had permission to travel north, I learned in the hotel, had been unable to reach the passages designated for them, because they had been wedged in by the surging crowd. This had apparently been going on for days. For glaziers, business was booming.

  Shortly before noon I managed to enter the ticket hall. I inquired about the possibility of getting a seat on the Rome express at 4:49 P.M. It was hopeless, even though I had a valid return ticket. The train had been booked up for days. I mustered all my charm—to no avail.

  Somehow I had to get onto the platform, but a glance at the grim faces of the police officers controlling access told me that there was no way through there. They were young men who were highly motivated but a little bit anxious. Pale, they stared out from under their visors and put up with the abuse with which people bombarded them.

  I returned to the piazza in front of the train station, where the wild dogs, unmoved by all the excitement, lay in the shade of the concrete columns of the entrance area. I saw the large gray dog in his spot. He raised his head and looked at me with his beautiful brown eyes, while his gnarled tail stump tapped on the asphalt. Hey, I thought, how do you know me? We never met before. Or do you live a little bit in my crazy world too? Do I remind you of the taste of chocolate? He stood up slowly, stretched, and shook out his frayed, drooping ears. He approached me and sniffed my hand, then walked past me, stopped after a few steps, and turned around to look at me, as if to say: “Well, come on!”

  The dog trudged ahead, and I followed him. He pissed casually on the post of a no-stopping sign and turned around again as if to make sure that I was still behind him. He approached a gate at the east wing of the train station; behind it were a small yard and a counter for freight and express goods. He sniffed at the gate and waited until I was beside him. I tried it; the gate opened with ease. He looked at me with his gentle brown eyes. “There you go,” he seeme
d to be saying. “And thanks for the chocolate.”

  I squeezed through the gate and closed it behind me. The gray dog stayed outside and gazed after me. The entrance was indeed unguarded. Three railroad employees sat in the area behind the counter, watching a bicycle race on television. They were talking loudly and took no notice of me.

  I was in the train station! Now I only had to make it through the time until the Rome express was ready. I was glad that I had at the last minute decided against the miniskirt, which would have attracted all eyes to me. Why had I bought that tacky thing in the first place? I wondered in confusion. Okay, the idea of arousing his attention with that skirt had become fixed in my mind. But I knew that plan would fail. Yesterday my father hadn’t taken the slightest notice of the young woman on the platform.

  Soon more and more passengers crowded onto the platform, and finally the express was ready. I noticed a young man who lifted a heavy aluminum suitcase from his luggage cart and got into the first car. A few minutes later he came out again—without the suitcase—and took a seat on the local train on the opposite track, which departed shortly thereafter. I stepped into the car and searched it, but couldn’t find the aluminum suitcase anywhere. I walked through the whole car twice and looked in every compartment. Some of the passengers eyed me suspiciously. No trace of the suitcase. Had he lugged it into the second car? I couldn’t find it there either.

  “Did you lose something?” the conductor asked me.

  I told him what I had observed. He gave me a troubled look, but nonetheless took on the task of checking with me once again in every compartment, on every luggage rack, and even under the seats. We found nothing. By the third car it finally became too much for him.

  “You must have been mistaken, signorina,” he said with a shrug, when we were standing again on the platform.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to alert the security authorities?” I suggested.

  “Mother of God,” he murmured, rolling his eyes; then he gestured with a nod to the police barrier at the access to the platform and the pushing mass of people behind it. “They’d be all we need. Besides, we’re departing in five minutes.”

  Suddenly I saw Father all the way at the end of the platform. He had loaded his sample cases on a luggage cart, which he was pushing in front of him. On his arm hung a young woman wearing one of those animated Korean miniskirts. Both of them boarded in the middle of the train. The conductor helped them lift the cases into the train. Father tipped his hat in thanks.

  We departed on time.

  In the first twenty-five minutes the high-speed Naples–Rome express set only a moderate pace. It rounded in a wide curve the northeastern outskirts of the city: Casoria—this time it didn’t stop—Frattamaggiore, Aversa, San Marcellino, San Cipriano d’Aversa. I had in the meantime fought my way through the third car and looked in every compartment—without any result. The train was full; passengers stood in the aisles; luggage was piled everywhere. Many people had managed to board without a reservation, even though reserved-seat tickets had been mandatory. Well, I had managed it too.

  Mothers with children sat tightly packed in the compartments. The men stood in the aisle, smoking, debating, and only grudgingly making room.

  After the bend at Villa Literno began the first high-speed stretch toward Rome …

  I squeezed through the vestibule to the fourth car …

  The express now accelerated within five minutes to a speed of 220 miles per hour …

  … the second, the third, the fourth compartment, mistrustful, hostile looks …

  … which it reached near Falciano …

  … the fifth, the sixth compartment—nothing. In front of me a pile of suitcases and tied-up boxes, on which children clambered around. There was no way through.

  Shortly thereafter, the train crossed under the viaduct …

  Shouldn’t I pull the emergency brake? But to do that, I would first have to get to the end of the car.

  … the viaduct of a road from Carinola to Mondragone …

  “Please let me through!”

  … then it shot in a low concrete trough …

  The door to the next compartment was open …

  … in a low concrete trough across the Fontanelle …

  There I saw the large aluminum suitcase up on the overhead luggage rack. Next to it two sample cases …

  … and sped …

  In the window seat sat a middle-aged man in an elegant natural linen suit with a bow tie and opposite him a dark-haired woman in her late twenties. They were holding hands, and both of them stared at me silently.

  … sped toward the entrance of the tunnel through Monte Mássico …

  Struggling for breath, I stood in the doorway and looked into strange faces. It was as if time were standing still, as if I had before me an old photo that had captured a moment long past. A chance constellation of frozen movements, a stochastic pattern, burned in by the photon flood of a flash washing back. Fossil time.

  Aghast, I retreated into the aisle. The end of the car was still two compartments away. I would no longer make it.

  “Please let me through!”

  Suddenly the four or five men who had blocked my way and, burning cigarettes in hand, turned around questioningly toward me, flew away from me down the aisle. I was swept off my feet and plunged after them, clinging to pieces of luggage, which were sliding as well in the direction the train was moving. Suitcases and bags tumbled from the luggage racks. People flung up their arms to protect themselves and screamed. The chaos culminated in an infernal screech, which penetrated from outside. Suddenly there was darkness, as bursts of sparks streamed past the windows. Finally, after seemingly endless minutes, the train had stopped. We were in the tunnel. Deepest darkness. This was the moment when the explosion occurred. But nothing happened—silence. The people were in shock. Then I heard the weeping of children. Names were called. Worried voices. Agitated voices. Outraged voices. Loud tumult. Finally the emergency lighting came on. It smelled of charred plastic and hot metal.

  “Please accept our apologies,” said a voice straining for calm from the loudspeakers. “We had to carry out an emergency stop.”

  Not a word of explanation. The outrage grew.

  My God, I thought, there’s a universe in which all of you are at this moment nothing but a hot sludge of coal tar. I don’t know why, but you escaped that fate by a hair—the all-scorching lightning that would have brought about your transubstantiation.

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES LATER the train began to move backwards; at a crawl it rolled out of the tunnel tube into the concrete trough across the Fontanelle and stopped. The sun shone low in the west. Helicopters circled the train at a low altitude. The men of the antiterror unit, who were combing the terrain along the railroad line and had taken position on the viaduct, looked in their ceramic armor equipped with antennas like bizarre, upright crustaceans.

  I was giddy with happiness. I had done it. Apparently my warning had reached the right place at the last second? But I had conducted that telephone conversation on that imaginary day that didn’t even exist in this universe. Nonetheless, in the universe in which I was now, the attack had been thwarted and the lives of more than five hundred people saved.

  But where was Father?

  III

  Exit Roads

  The heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its inhabitants die like flies.

  ISAIAH

  Shortly thereafter—and yet years later—I ran into my father again in Rome. I was sitting in the lobby of the Vatte hotel on Via Cavour, where I was staying, when he suddenly came in through the entrance. Hesitantly he stopped when he saw me, placing his hand on his forehead for a moment. He walked with a bit of a stoop and was no longer quite as elegantly dressed as I remembered him. Then he came up to my table, took off his sunglasses, tipped his straw hat, and asked me with a polite bow whether he might sit down with me.

  “Of course,”
I said.

  How strange he had become to me. He pulled up the creases of his somewhat threadbare dove gray gabardine pants, took a seat in the chair across from me, and laid his hat on the chair next to him.

  “May I ask you something, signorina?” he asked with a soft voice.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have we met before?”

  Oh God, please no!

  “Not that I recall, Signore…”

  “Ligrina. Jacopo Ligrina.”

  “… Signore Ligrina.”

  “Remarkable,” he said, scrutinizing me intently with his dark brown eyes. “The resemblance. It’s been several years, but I remember quite clearly, because it was the day an attack was planned on the Naples–Rome express, which was foiled at the last second.”

  Growing curious, I said, “Go on.”

  “Signorina, I don’t want to offend you. But the resemblance is really striking. I had been in Naples for a few days on business and had a reservation for that very train. Then I met an extremely charming young woman in the lobby of the Grand Hotel Terminus.”

  “Just like we’re meeting now…”

  This couldn’t be happening!

  He gave me a flustered look, then smiled wistfully and went on, “No, no. I’m sorry, the circumstances were completely different. We drank a bottle of champagne at the bar and got along fabulously right away. To make a long story short, she agreed to have another drink with me in my room.”

  “Do you really want to tell me this? Is this going to be a confession?” I asked emphatically.

  “Oh, there were no intimacies. Probably she was married or engaged.”

  “But she went with you to your room anyway?” I prompted.

  He shrugged. “As I said, we got along well.”

  “And you have the impression that I have a great resemblance to that … lady?”

  He gave me a dismayed look. “No, no. Really only purely externally! Nothing could be further from my mind than…”