by Ann Gosslin
‘What a shock it was to get your letter,’ she said, pouring the coffee into white demi-tasse cups. ‘When I was a girl, our family lived in this same quartier, not far from here. A few months after I married, I moved to Lyon with my husband, but after he died I returned to Paris. It was a stroke of luck to have found this flat. This neighbourhood has always felt like home to me. My three sisters moved abroad years ago, seeking their fortunes elsewhere. Strange, isn’t it, how children born of the same parents can turn out to be so different from one another?’
Gessen perched awkwardly on a cream-coloured settee, while Madame Chabon reclined in the shadowy recesses of a yellow wingback chair. On the table between them lay a bulky portfolio with a faux leather cover stamped with gold lettering. It looked like a photo album or scrapbook, and he could hardly contain his excitement. Perhaps this was it: proof that this woman’s brother, Vidor Sovàny, was the man known to the world as Vidor Kiraly. In which case, the young Vidor must have faked his death and adopted a new identity.
‘So, you’re a psychiatrist?’ Madame Chabon tilted her head and fixed him with an inquisitive stare. ‘How interesting.’ Her face was lined and spotted with age, but the dazzling energy of the young girl she once was sparked in her eyes. ‘I once considered training to be a psychologist, but I was a dreamy child and the thought of spending long hours with my nose in a book had little appeal.’ She waved in the direction of the piano. ‘Instead, I studied music and made my living as a piano teacher, like my mother. I suppose I was lucky to recognise my limitations at a young age, so as not to waste time chasing a dream that might never pan out.’
She turned her face to the rain-streaked window. ‘Vida was the scholar in the family. Bright. Ambitious. Fizzing with energy. He was the light of my mother’s life. But look where that got him. Soaring through the sky, too high and too fast. Like that boy in the Greek myth, what was his name?’ She stirred her coffee with a tiny silver spoon. ‘That was our Vida. Always chasing the sun.’
Gessen studied the shifting planes of her face as she talked, the interplay of light and shadow. He sensed she hadn’t spoken of her brother in years. ‘Tell me about him.’
Her lips twitched into a smile as she hesitated, but with little encouragement it all spilled forth. The flight from Budapest. The awful moment when their father turned back at the border. The refugee camp in Austria, and the early years of struggle after they finally settled in Paris. She became a second mother to Vida, while their own mother was away from the flat all day, working two jobs to keep the family afloat. In this household of women, their darling Vida was pampered and fussed over like a beloved pet. As he grew into adolescence, he increasingly resembled the father who’d disappeared from their lives and was never heard from again. Long presumed dead, it was as if the father had returned to life before their eyes. A popular boy, Vida excelled at school and had masses of friends. Not especially athletic, though he enjoyed kicking around a football on the playing fields. Everyone doted on him, and great things were expected of his future.
She paused and turned to the window. ‘He did have his moods, though. Flashes of rage or periods of darkness, when he changed into someone I hardly recognised. I suppose, nowadays, you would call it depression.’ She gave him a questioning glance. ‘An anger turned inward, perhaps, at the father who’d abandoned him to a household of women.’
Gessen held still, afraid to move and break the spell.
‘After earning his baccalaureate,’ she said, looking down at her hands, ‘ he was all set to start at the University of Nantes in September. But then he…’ her voice faltered, and her eyes grew misty. ‘Then he disappeared.’ She searched Gessen’s face. ‘Just like our father. There one minute, gone the next. As if…’ She dabbed her nose with the handkerchief tucked in her sleeve. ‘Do you believe in fate, Dr Gessen?’
‘I do, actually.’ He leaned forward and looked into her eyes.
‘I still get teary when I think about it. Forty years ago, it was. But the pain is as fresh as if it were yesterday. Odd to think he’d be nearly sixty now if he had lived. No doubt with a lovely family of his own. When Vida hit his teens, the girls swarmed around him like bees. He could have had his pick of any of them, but now we’ll never know what might have been. He’s trapped in time, isn’t he?’ Her eyes sought his. ‘Like any young person cut down too soon. He’ll always be that bright and charismatic boy whose future was snatched away.’
She followed his gaze to the photo album on the table. ‘I dug that out of a box in the cellar when I knew you were coming. The face of an angel, Vida had. Would you like to see some photos?’
38
With his pass from Dr Lindstrom clutched in his hand, Vidor felt a renewed vigour as he strode towards the main gate. His minder for the day out, a scrawny fellow with frizzy hair and spotty skin, followed close behind. If Vidor had a mind to flee, he could easily overpower him. But for the moment he was content to have the man believe he was as meek and obedient as a baby lamb. But once they reached the village, he would allow his instincts to guide him. The anticipation of this microscopic taste of freedom, a twenty-minute trip down the mountain by funicular to the small village in the valley, made his blood tingle.
The skies had cleared, though it was still too chilly and grey for anyone to be out on the grounds where the powdery snow was covered with a layer of ice. The high mountains all around them were cloaked in white and the the valley filled with snow. Pretty enough, he supposed, with its fairytale charm, though the thought of spending the winter here made him uneasy. Trapped in close quarters with the others for months. Cut off from civilisation by endless storms, and forced to fend for themselves like rats in a cage. His house attendant had assured him the clinic was well equipped to survive for weeks at a time with no need for outside assistance. A full larder and a backup generator, with plenty of fuel stored in an outbuilding, could get them through the entire winter, if necessary.
The attendant opened the gate and beckoned for Vidor to follow. His wrist monitor must have been deactivated. Otherwise, wouldn’t it set off an alarm? They walked single file to the funicular, only to find no one about. Smoke curled through a blackened stovepipe poking through the little hut at the railhead. The driver must be inside, huddled by the woodstove for warmth. The attendant knocked and waited until a gnarled old man appeared in the doorway. He stared at them with rheumy eyes, a plug of tobacco stuck inside his cheek.
After examining the letter Vidor showed him with a suspicious squint he grunted for them to follow. Vidor and his minder climbed into the funicular and waited for the man to start up the engine.
‘Good thing you got yerself a pass,’ he said, ‘or they’d come after you.’ He snorted and tapped his nose. A veritable Charon to guide them across the Styx, the alcohol on the man’s breath would knock over a mountain goat. Though it wasn’t the underworld they were headed for, Vidor thought, with a flicker of excitement, but the real world. A kingdom without restrictions and rules. A marvellous land of clocks and calendars, with the regular arrangement of time, and normal people going about their business.
The funicular rattled and lurched as the cogwheel mechanism shunted them down the mountain. Vidor toyed briefly with the idea of doing a runner. Why go back to that nonsense when he could taste freedom in every breath of the pine-scented air? It might unleash a frantic chase down the mountain by the Swiss version of a SWAT team. But better to take a stand than wait for Gessen to let him go. With the tendrils of lassitude infiltrating his brain, any day now he would sink into a torpor, unable to summon the energy to speak or move. Gessen’s insistent prodding and probing was herding Vidor down a dark passage he had no wish to explore. If he didn’t get away soon, inertia and rigor mortis might keep him here, a fly trapped in amber.
As the funicular ground through a gap in the trees, the branches of the pines smacked against the windows. Strange that he had no memory of coming up the mountain. Had he been unconscious at the time, or sedated? Dark th
oughts scuttled through his head, as he questioned whether he had, in fact, agreed to be transferred here as Gessen claimed. And the business about attacking that man in Copenhagen. Most certainly staged, and the video a fake. Even the clinic might be nothing more than an elaborate stage set, and the other patients, actors. All in a ruse to extract information only he possessed. But what did they want? State secrets, or his special knowledge of the brain?
He was too smart for them, of course. Gessen would have anticipated that Vidor might guess it was a scam. That Egyptian boy must be in on it too. How could he be sure he was really dead? Where was the proof? Gessen’s word was all he had. Wasn’t it only yesterday, just before dusk, that Vidor had seen Ismail lurking at the edge of the Zen garden, partly concealed behind the boxwood hedge? It wasn’t a ghost. When he looked up and saw Vidor at the window, the boy had taken flight and vanished into the trees.
Sweat soaked through his shirt. Blood beat in his neck. As he lurched from his seat to open the window for air, the attendant’s head snapped up, mildly alarmed. But the windows were shut fast. Air. He clawed at the zipper of his jacket. He needed air. Darkness closed upon them as they entered a narrow chasm where water gushed through cracks in the rock, and pine branches scraped the window. By the time they finally ground to a halt, Vidor had pulled off his coat and hat. When the driver cranked open the door, he stumbled from the car and flung himself into the frigid air, gasping for breath.
The attendant stared at him goggle-eyed. ‘Shall we go back? You don’t look well.’
‘No.’ Vidor coughed and straightened up. ‘I’m all right.’ He clumsily patted the man’s shoulder. ‘Just a touch of… never mind. I’m fine.’ And he was, more than fine, now that he was away from the suffocating pall of the clinic and once again in the bracing sphere of normal life. The contrast so great that only now did he realise how badly the atmosphere of the clinic had crushed his spirit, as if he’d been forced to live and breathe the fetid air under a bell jar. No amount of gourmet food and luxury accommodations could make up for that.
He stepped off the platform and headed into the village, a place he’d only glimpsed from the clinic’s eyrie high above. A scattering of houses with steep roofs and painted shutters. A narrow road that snaked through the valley, hemmed in by pines. Up ahead, not thirty metres away, the red-and-white sign of the national railway shone in the grey light. Bless the industrious Swiss for building a railhead in the back of beyond.
As he hurried into the street, the hapless attendant in tow, he could sense the local villagers and shopkeepers turning their heads to stare at him. Wondering, perhaps, what flavour of crackpot he might be. Debilitated and dangerous, or merely deranged? There was nothing up the mountain but the clinic. Dressed in their standard-issue clothing, his status as a patient would be obvious to all. The jacket and trousers he wore, even his socks and underwear, were courtesy of Gessen, as if the man owned his very skin.
As they approached the station, a whistle shrieked, and the train pulled away from the siding. Exactly on time, surely, as the minute hand on the clock moved to 2.37. He closed his eyes and savoured the words, two thirty-seven. Too late to have given his minder the slip and make a run for it. Couldn’t this one train, out of thousands in this clockwork country, be delayed for half a minute? Perhaps even the village and all its inhabitants were puppets under Gessen’s control, with everyone conspiring against him.
He lingered in front of the departure schedule, his face bathed in the glow of the Christmas lights strung in the kiosk. With an hour to kill and not a cent in his pocket, there wasn’t much he could do here. Would it be impertinent to ask the attendant for a few francs? Perhaps if he pressed his face against the bakery window, the red-cheeked woman inside would take pity on him and hand over a coffee and a pastry. But when he stuck his head inside the door and gave her a pitiable look, she shook her head and frowned.
Mist clung to the pines above the deep layer of snow. Frigid snowmelt gushed out through fissures in the rock and roared through a viaduct, draining the runoff from the mountain. Now that he was in the midst of it, the village seemed less idyllic than he’d imagined from the view above. Much of it lay in the damp shadow of the mountains, and the few desultory shops held little of interest. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat and bent his head into the wind. The attendant followed behind. Ahead, the high peaks of the mountains loomed. He passed a ski shop, a tavern, a kiosk. Hungry for news of the outside world, he scanned the headlines in French and German. No English papers, though hardly a surprise in this hamlet in the middle of nowhere.
Would there be an item on his disappearance? Missing: Eminent Cambridge don. Believed kidnapped. Or was he just a footnote now in the dusty archives of the university? No one was looking for him, as far as he knew. His coded letters to Magda had failed to induce his would-be rescuers to storm the clinic.
When he came out on the other side of the trees, the landscape opened up to reveal a farmstead halfway up the hill, where goats munched silage under a gloomy sky. Two children, bundled in bright parkas, sped past him on mountain bikes. No school today? Though it could be Saturday or a holiday. Stupid not to have noticed the date on the newspapers. At least he’d spotted the time on the station clock. Just the sight of those numbers had provided a calming effect. As if newly born, his arms and legs tingled, thin-skinned and raw. Thrust into a world he’d nearly forgotten. The freedom to do as he pleased, to go where he wanted, without being observed and monitored. How could he get back there? That seemingly mythical place he’d once inhabited, fast receding in the mists. Lost in the woods, indeed.
He crouched on the path and pretended to study a clump of mushrooms growing from a rotten stump. His mind urged him onward. Run, run. But where would he go? He glared at the attendant, who stuck to him like a burr. ‘I’m still here. You can relax now.’ The sharp wind froze the skin on his face and neck. He zipped his parka and spun on his heel, keeping his head down as he plodded back to the village. A long slog to civilisation, such as it was. For a brief moment he longed for the warmth of his room.
So much for his big adventure. That was likely Gessen’s plan all along. Give him a day out beyond the gates to discover the truth: there was no ‘out there’ as opposed to ‘in here’. Wherever you go, there you are. But Gessen was wrong, and his little plan had failed.
As he passed the news kiosk, a man emerged from the shop. Solid as an oak, his weather-worn brow creased in a frown as he stared at something in his hand. Dark green parka. Hobnailed boots. Vidor stopped in his tracks. That face… so oddly familiar, he’d seen it before. But where? His heart juddered as it came to him. His life-long nemesis, in the guise of the man from the prize ceremony. What was he doing here? How had he known where to find him? His wily, relentless foe, returning to haunt Vidor from his purported grave. He glared at the man’s bent head and crossed to the other side of the street. When the man followed, Vidor quickened his step. Behind him, the hobnailed boots struck the pavement. Clack, clack, clack.
Panic gripped his throat. He darted across the street and quickened his pace. The train station. He’d be safe there. Vidor pivoted on his heel, but still the man followed. Clack, clack, clack. His muscles tensed as he awaited the murderous blow to his neck.
The station hall was empty. Not the safe harbour he’d hoped for, but he crouched in the corner away from the windows and held his breath. No sign of the golem. He breathed out. But the door creaked open, and the man stepped inside, blocking the only exit as his eyes, aglow with the flames of hell, raked Vidor from head to toe.
‘Stay where you are!’ Vidor backed against the wall. ‘Leave me alone.’
But the man advanced, his nailed boots ringing out as he crossed the stone floor. The sound was deafening, but Vidor refused to be cowed.
‘You’re supposed to be dead.’
But the man kept coming, his fiery gaze fixed to a point on Vidor’s chest, as if seeking the exact spot to rip out his heart.
&nb
sp; ‘Stay back.’ Terror gave strength to Vidor’s shaking limbs. The blood rushed to his face with the force of a volcano. With a cry, he leapt at the man’s throat and knocked him to the ground. ‘Monster. Traitor. Why aren’t you burning in hell?’
The dark-eyed man, fiendishly strong, flung Vidor off like a sack of turnips. Two men in uniform burst through the door and pinned Vidor to the ground. This is it, he thought, the violent death that had stalked him all his life. Crouched in the shadowy cupboard in his bedroom. Lurking in the empty stairwell. Haunting the corpses, stacked like firewood, under the great city. The intricate dance of predator and prey.
And having pursued him across the infinite distance of space and time, Death had found him at last.
39
He opened his eyes to the dark. His head ached, and when he tried to sit up he fell back with a groan. A door opened, and a woman in a white smock appeared at his side. It felt like he’d been out for days. Skimming high above a blackened forest, tracing a path through the trees, where far below, in a grove of dark pines, an ogre crouched and waited.
Lights flickered overhead. The sharp odour of antiseptic stung his nostrils. As awareness slowly returned, Vidor blinked and tried to focus. Where was he? Not at home in Cambridge, or his bedroom in the chalet. This room was smaller, with pale yellow walls and acoustic tiles on the ceiling.
‘Would you like to sit up?’
A sharp pain stabbed his temple. ‘Where am I?’ It came out as a croak.
The woman pressed a button on the wall to raise the bed. ‘You’re in the infirmary at Les Hirondelles. I hear you had quite an adventure yesterday.’
An adventure? What day was it? He closed his eyes. Sleep was all he wanted. A dreamless sleep. His brain stuttered with the effort of recalling the specifics of his life. Name, age, date of birth. What happened yesterday? What was today?