by Zoe Drake
Among the seventy subjects on the project’s books, it was only natural that Nozaki would have his favorites. One such individual was number twenty-seven, Atsuto Ishida.
Ishida had worked for a large part of his life in Tokyo, as a director for Asahi TV, before hitting ‘burn-out’. Exhausted mentally and physically from the long hours of overtime and the pressure from his superiors, he resigned and moved up here to Aomori. He now worked as a telecommunications engineer, installing cable TV and broadband networks into people’s homes.
The engineer usually dressed in a mix of casual and formal wear, shirt and tie beneath a light summer jacket with the logo of the cable TV company printed on the back. Medium-length black hair curled softly away from his delicate ears and deep-set, expressive eyes. It always amused Nozaki that Ishida habitually wore three old-fashioned cellphones, each one on a strap around his neck, and they would clatter together like jewelry whenever he moved. Part of the job, Ishida had explained with an apologetic shrug. At least they were all switched off during debriefing.
Ishida had come to the project to try to resolve a specific problem. He had lost family members in the devastating March 11th tsunami, and he was still plagued by recurring nightmares. He thought the Sleep Modulator was one way he could come to grips with his bad dreams and eventually dispel them.
“Could you tell me more about the place where the dream occurred?” Nozaki was asking. He shifted in his chair, bringing his clipboard up so that he could make notes on his specially designed questionnaire.
“I was in a tent, out in the open air. It was a big tent, rather like a marquis. I heard voices so I looked outside…there were other tents all around. It could have been the back of a circus or a big rock festival. I was with some friends, I think, standing by their car.” Ishida coughed, licked his lips, flicked his eyes around the room uncertainly. “Then it started to rain.”
“I see.” In the box at the bottom of the sheet, Nozaki wrote; recurring images; water. Rain. Floods.
“I got in the car as fast as I could. The rain started pouring down in a torrent. Bits and pieces of the tents were blowing away in the sudden wind. And I felt something, something like an earthquake…there was a deep, steady tremor from beneath…and…”
“And?”
He sighed, shaking his head. “The rain…turned into a thick grey mist, coming down over all the tents. I remember worrying that the fog was going to get into the car, and…that’s all I remember. I must have woken up then or shortly afterwards.”
“I see.” Nozaki finished scribbling upon the clipboard, then set it down on the glass table between him and the subject. “Let’s get down to details. After tonight, the first thing to work on is remembering your dreams. After that, you should be able to progress to other things.”
“Like lucid dreaming? Maybe being able to change the dream?”
“Yes, but first things first. You have to make sure you get enough sleep.”
Ishida laughed. “You make it sound so easy! I come back late every day, and I’m up early the next morning. I’m exhausted.”
“Well, please do the best you can. We can’t loan out the Sleep Modulators from here, you see – not yet! Keep the dream diary by your bed, record every dream you can remember, even if it’s only bare details. Even if it’s an image, a person’s face, or a vague, general impression.”
“Even if it’s only a mist coming down in front of my eyes?”
Nozaki nodded. “Write it down.”
It was a pleasant schedule for Nozaki.
It was also a pleasant journey home, a relaxed drive through the warm Aomori countryside in his fully air-conditioned Nissan Otti minicar. It was important to keep his mind on pleasant things, to be positive. As a graduate of Tsugaru University, he had jumped at the chance of taking up a research post under the well-respected Dr. Kageyama; if the doctor was disgraced, then – most regrettably – Nozaki would be, too.
But there was no need to worry. The inquiry was over.
Aiko was waiting for him back in the house that they rented. She was dressed for her part-time clerical job, in her crisp white blouse and short skirt, her short black hair in a shining bob.
“Tadaima,” he called. I’m back.
“Okaerinasai,” she replied. Welcome home. “How are all your sleeping beauties?”
“All well-rested and refreshed, I’m glad to say.”
“I wish I was! Why don’t you help me with the housework sometimes?”
Nozaki bowed his head, gave an embarrassed grin, until he saw the twinkle in Aiko’s eyes that meant she was joking.
They had a light lunch together before she left, after which he soaked himself in the warmth of the bath she had drawn for him, and then lay down in the Japanese-style tatami room to sleep.
As he drifted off to sleep, he thought of the sleeping faces of the subjects again, how tranquil and childlike they always looked. Their faces filled him with a deep, profound pleasure. The readouts on his computer screens would display their progress; the slowing of the brain waves in NREM sleep stage one, followed by the spindles and K-complex patterns of stage two, the rhythmic slow-wave frequencies of stages three and four.
Then the silent, desynchronized mysteries of REM sleep. The EOG recorded the rolling of their eyes in their sockets, the electrodes under their chins picked up the blips of brief but intense muscle activity. From the cameras, in close-up, he could see it. Beneath their eyelids, their eyes darted back and forth and up and down. The arms and legs would twitch occasionally, breaking the muscle paralysis.
Night duty filled Nozaki with such deep satisfaction that he sometimes wanted to giggle aloud. But there was also the sense of anxiety and embarrassment that tempered the confidence, that gave him the feeling of being in the presence of something awesome. Truly, a third state of existence; waking, sleeping – and dreaming. As an undergraduate, he had come across a quotation from the writer Marcel Proust, something to the effect that a true voyage of discovery was not to travel to a hundred different lands, but to see your own land with a hundred different pairs of eyes. And at the hospital he had his seventy pairs of eyes. What did they see? What shadows did those rapid eye movements follow?
But despite his happiness, there was one face that he was trying not to think about.
The face of that girl. The face that had looked so peaceful, so beautiful in repose, the face that had given him so much pleasure as he stared at it on the monitor screen. Until the night she opened her eyes, and looked straight into the camera – as if she could see right through the screen, into his head, and know what he was thinking.
Nozaki shivered and rolled himself tighter in the futon. Try to forget her, he told himself, this is not healthy for you. It’s all been settled. You must try to forget her.
And try to forget her screams.
Chapter Nine
Broken Vessels
San Stae, San Marcuola, Ponte delle Guglie. The waterbus cruised smoothly towards the wharf, past lines of glossy blue gondolas bobbing and glittering in the sun. On each side of the Grand Canal the buildings of the Cannaregio district loomed about them, plaster peeling from facades of white, magenta and salmon-pink, the sides of the canal punctuated with blue and yellow striped poles jutting up from the water, color partly rubbed away by the calloused hands of generations of gondoliers.
Three of them stood in the prow, Weiss, Sinclair, and Julia holding Elemanzer’s travel-basket. She wore sunglasses and she was smiling, but Weiss could feel her tension. They’re sensing it too, he thought. Something in the shadowed alleyways. Something stirring.
The boat pulled in to the jetty. Along with the tourists, they walked out onto the streets of Cannaregio. Ahead through a tangle of obscure streets lined with grimy, decayed brick houses, lay the Jewish Ghetto.
Overhanging stonework blocked out the sunlight and darkened the narrow alleys. Sealed wooden shutters blinded the windows, plant pots hung overhead from wrought iron balconies.
“It’s like wal
king through history,” Sinclair commented.
“But you have to be careful where you walk.” Julia waved her hand at the street around her. “The last time I was in the Palazzo Ducale, the paintings shook when the tourists passed by. You can imagine if all the city’s school kids got together and jumped up and down at the same time, well, that would be it. No more Venice.”
“No joke,” observed Weiss. “Take a look at the Ashkenazi Synagogue. The floor’s on a slope now, and they’re trying to figure out how to save the foundations.”
The sun was setting as they walked across the ancient stone bridge and came out into the brooding, weathered square of the Ghetto Nuovo.
Weiss led them to the Holocaust Memorial on the wall to the left. He walked straight towards it, and beneath the large plaque written in both Italian and Hebrew, he put his hands to the wall, resting his forehead against the cool stone, his eyes closed. As he prayed, Weiss felt a wave of nausea spread out from his stomach, but steadfastly ignored it.
This was the place that had given the world the word ‘ghetto’ – taken from the Italian word for ‘foundry’. Six hundred years ago, the Italian authorities had started confining Jews to this area. In 1938 the Fascista had imposed more racial laws, segregating them from the rest of Venice. In 1943 the Nazis had taken over the city, and started deporting Jews to Poland as part of the Final Solution.
So many vessels broken. So many sparks to be gathered, so many flashes of divine light to be brought home. Now Eric Mendelson was one more spark. I always thought you would be here when it happened, Ayin, thought the Professor, I always thought we’d see the end of exile together.
‘And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and it was not toward him as before. And the Lord said unto Jacob, return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred; I will be with thee.’
Behind him John Sinclair coughed discreetly. The Professor turned, something in his gut flaring. “I know, I know,” he said. “George is waiting.”
They walked through the Ghetto Nuovo and over another bridge, through a tiny alleyway where the cornices of the old stone buildings almost met above their heads. They came to a softly glowing window half way down the alleyway, books resting upon a sombre display in subdued orange light. Doorway to the Ages, said the sign above the window, and the logo showed the silhouette of a man carrying a burden of books under his arm. Weiss found the handle of the aged wooden door and pushed his way in.
George Cairncross, the owner of the Doorway to the Ages bookshop, was indeed waiting for them.
Getting up from his desk as the group entered, he beamed at them all in turn. “Welcome back to the Ghetto, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It’s a shame that we’re meeting under such…sad circumstances.”
He was a man in his late fifties, wearing a brown sweater, striped blue shirt, black denim jeans. His light curly hair was beginning to recede; his nose was fleshy; his eyes, behind the rimless spectacles he wore, were watchful and cautious.
Cairncross indicated the shop behind him. “Go through to the back, will you? I’ll close up here.”
He turned the key in the lock and reversed the ‘open’ sign on the door. The shop had hardly changed since the Professor’s last visit. Paperbacks and recent publications at the front, collector’s items and the more esoteric volumes at the back. Stacks of books covered George’s desk and were arranged precariously on chairs, on the floor, on the two antiquated wooden trolleys. Weiss closed his eyes for a moment and breathed it in; the smell of the ink, the binding, the onion-thin paper. He thought of secret vaults and libraries with shelves running back into dust-covered darkness. The sensation always felt like coming home.
They went through into a small office at the rear of the shop. Three young men were also waiting for him, three men who respectfully got to their feet in greeting. They were the Carbonari, the affiliated members of the Lamed Vav who had assisted Weiss with the recovery of Mendelson’s body – something that still made Weiss sick when he thought about it.
“Vittorio Schiaffini,” the man in the lead introduced himself. “This is Paolo Mancini, and this is Gianni Amato.”
All three of them were darkly handsome, their clothes fashionable but not overstated, their expressions calm and serious. Their leader, Schiaffini, wore a tiny silver badge in the form of a hatchet on his lapel. Weiss had a hard time adjusting to how young they looked.
“We apologize for bringing you here at such short notice,” Julia said in fluent Italian.
Schiaffini shrugged. “It concerns Poveglia, yes? So we should be here.” Then he switched back to English; “We came as quickly as we could.”
George Cairncross switched on the kettle, spooning tea into the warmed teapot. “I must say, I’m truly sorry about Professor Mendelson. This is a very sad business, you know.”
“Were you good friends?” Sinclair asked.
“It was Ayin who recruited me after the Acqua Alta incident back in 1966. He helped me set up this shop, in fact.”
Julia grinned and gave an exaggerated sigh. “I think I was born too late, I always wanted to be part of the Sixties. It must have been like having your life written by Kenneth Anger.”
“Yes, you should have been with us, my dear. I could have shown you glories!”
John Sinclair, sitting between Julia and the Professor, signaled his need to get on with business. “We’ve got about a million questions for you, gentlemen. Most of them concern Poveglia.”
“There is a problem,” the leader of the Carbonari began. “We don’t actually know much more than you do. After the war, all records were thought to be too dangerous, and were officially destroyed.”
Weiss leaned sideways, his comments delivered directly into Sinclair’s ear. “Well, what a surprise. Who could possibly have done that, do you think?”
“We’re talking about the Thirties, Benjamin. You can’t expect me to know about something that happened before I was born.”
“Marcus does.”
“That’s not fair,” put in Julia. “Nobody knows when Marcus was born.”
“He wasn’t really born at all, was he?” Sinclair said acidly. “Not in the sense we know it. Anyway, if Marcus does know something, why didn’t he tell us at the meeting?”
“I wouldn’t like to speculate on why he does what he does,” Weiss mused.
Cairncross got up from his desk and started to pour hot water into the teapot. He looked over at Julia, nodding towards the cat’s carry-basket. “Um, can I get anything for…”
“That’s very kind of you.”
He took a tin can from one of the cupboards at head height, opened it, and handed it to Julia. She bent down, spooned some of it into a saucer, opened the basket door to let the cat’s head out. Elemanzer replied with a loud mewl.
“Gentlemen,” Weiss said, leaning towards the Carbonari, “There are several strands in this business. There’s Fra Mauro, Isola de San Michele, Poveglia, and the Book of the Veils. Mendelson’s notes indicate that they all fit together somehow.”
The cat looked up from its meal, staring at the three young men, then at Weiss. His skin prickled briefly under the close, impersonal stare.
“Tell us what you do have on Poveglia.”
At his leader’s nod, Mancini leaned forward, began to speak in slightly accented English. “Hitler sought Mussolini’s help on Germany’s union with Austria. But Italy also borders Austria, you see, and so the two leaders regarded each others as rivals.”
Cairncross moved back to the counter, pouring tea into the china cups, handing them over to the guests on a tray. He lifted a book that had been lying on a nearby desk, opened it and laid it in the centre of the table. Occupying one full page was a photograph Weiss remembered well. Venice, June 1934. The famous shot taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine. Two men shaking hands, in profile against a military airplane: Mussolini in full military garb, Hitler in a drab woolen overcoat. The Fuhrer’s hair was parted ruthlessly to the side and he had a
n embarrassed smile beneath that familiar mustache, because he’d been ridiculously upstaged by Il Duce.
It was the last time Hitler would ever appear in public in civilian clothes.
“The meeting was a disaster,” Amato continued. “Mussolini couldn’t speak German well, but he was too proud to use an interpreter. Hitler kept quoting long passages from ‘Mein Kampf’, which bored the Italians to tears.”
“Afterwards, Il Duce called the Fuhrer a monkey,” put in Mancini with a grin. “He said Hitler was a gramophone with just seven tunes – once he’d played them, he started playing them all over again.”
“Mussolini supported the current Austrian government,” Amato resumed, “but at the same time, he didn’t want an open break with Hitler. So they came to a compromise. Hitler would help fund the Poveglia experiments, and if they showed results, Mussolini agreed that they would be used to destabilize the Austrian Government and the Dollfuss administration. The Carbonari could not allow that to happen. A week after the summit, we sent in our agents, killed the doctor in charge and destroyed the equipment.”
“What about the people who’d been experimented on?” Sinclair asked.
Schiaffini shook his head. “I’m not sure, but our elders told us…all evidence was destroyed.”
Julia stared back at them. “That’s horrible.”
Weiss fidgeted in his seat. “We can’t afford to judge, my dear. Those people who went in knew the stakes they were playing for.”
“Three weeks after the experiments were destroyed, Hitler took matters into his own hands,” Schiaffini continued. “Dollfuss was assassinated by Nazi agents. German support for Poveglia was withdrawn, and Hitler looked for new weapons. He turned to the Danilov project and the expedition to Iceland.”
Weiss rubbed his temples in thought, glanced at Sinclair’s impatient face to the side. “Gentlemen,” he asked, “have there been any indications of something wrong here in Venice? Eric told me that people have been seeing things above the skies of San Michele.”