Sleeping in Flame (31 page)

Written below one drawing was the quote from the Jon Silkin poem I'd given her.

_And I shall always fear_

_The death of those we love as_

_The hint of your death, Love._

Under another, a drawing of a church, was written "The opposite of love was always disappearance." Patricia Geary.

Both Maris and I were inveterate quotation collectors, but what did this one mean? I wanted to turn and ask, but she wasn't there. She wasn't there and never would be again in my life if I did what my father demanded.

How would he make me "die"? What would Maris do after that? Was he to be believed when he said she'd remain true to me for the rest of her life? At first the thought was comforting, but then I realized how utterly selfish it was to desire that. Did he think I would be at peace knowing the person I

loved most was living out the rest of her days on "hold," believing there was no other possibility of fulfillment for her?

What a hateful, evil being he was.

I kept looking at the drawings until I got tired.

"One more."

That "one more" was so interesting that I looked at three more.

The fourth would have been the last, but the fourth was the fruit. The fruit that, once inhaled, gave off an answer the way an orange explodes from a color into a world of smells once you have punctured its skin.

It was a drawing of a city. A medieval city, or perhaps one much older.

I have never been very good at history, but this city I knew. It was the Vienna "Papa" had alluded to in the bookstore.

"Another city. A city you have forgotten."

I knew the streets, the buildings. I knew the sounds in the air that were the city on any summer day. Her drawing was a series of lines and curves, pillars, statues, fountains, buildings. It was _my_ city and where it had come from in Maris could only be attributed to love.

When you love someone deeply, you know secrets they haven't told you yet. Or secrets they aren't even aware of themselves. I had used no magic on Maris. Not that I knew how to use the meager powers I still unconsciously held. This I knew for sure. I'd not bewitched or bedazzled her into loving me.

I'd only hoped and worked for her love, knowing that that is the hardest work in life. I loved her for what she was, I loved her for what she was becoming.

I couldn't imagine a time in life together when I would turn and think "This is wrong. She isn't the person I loved. She isn't the person I hoped she was."

Maris was the person I wanted to share my life with. She was also the person I
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wanted to share the trivia of my life with, because that too is part of the magic of concern: Whatever you live is important to them and they will help you through it.

Because I knew her so we'll, I was sure this was how she felt, too. The picture in front of me attested to this, and if our world hadn't already been so filled with equal measures of wonder and abomination, I would have been a very frightened man because of what I saw on the monitor.

She had entered a part of my mind that even I owned no key or code word to.

The drawing took up almost the whole screen, but typed small in one corner were the words

"Breathing you on your birthday, Walker. I love you." It was the city she'd meant to build for me as a birthday present. What she didn't know was she'd created the city where I had begun. Her love had taken over, however unconsciously, and showed me not only the city, but where to walk through it to find my father's name. My second father.

I had one more dream before I left Vienna.

My father had rented a villa on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy for the month of July. It was an old sunny house with balconies off every bedroom and a wide veranda that looked out over the lake below. Whenever I wanted, I was allowed to walk down the dirt path to our private dock.

We had no boat, but the concrete finger that jutted out into the water was a perfect place for looking at fish and dreaming. I had a lot of freedom that summer and used much of it sitting on the dock, feeling the sun on my shoulders and cooling my feet in the brown water.

If I looked hard I could see the train far across the lake winding its way in and out toward Stresa and then the Swiss border. Daddy was reading a novel called _A Farewell to Arms_, and one day he read the part to me about the man and woman in love living in the hotel in Stresa.

I'd discovered how fashionable a suntan was to the big kids. So since there wasn't much else to do, I sat a long time in the sun trying to dye my skin as brown as possible and look to see if I knew anybody on the boats whizzing by. We only had a month on the lake because Daddy had to be back at work the beginning of August. I made a promise to myself that I would read three books and get a great suntan before we went home.

Even though the weather was usually nice and sunny in the day, everything changed at night.

There were thunderstorms all the time like I'd never seen before. You could hear them coming sometimes two hours before they hit, outside our window. Whenever I heard the thunder rolling in or saw the scary white lightning over the mountains, I'd pick up whatever I was doing and run for the living room.

The room was yellow. All the furniture was yellow, and I think even the lights were yellow.

Daddy said the furniture was by Art Deco, but I didn't know who that was. The important thing was every chair in there was fat and round and friendly. You could fall into them from any position and be comfortable. My favorite I'd secretly named "Sinbad" and everyone knew it was my chair. People even got up and gave it to me when I came in. Sinbad and I were friends. When the storms were blowing and hissing like a monster, we'd leave the doors to the patio open because Daddy liked to watch the rain go sideways, not down, outside. The wind blew it in all kinds of crazy directions and sometimes I got scared, but not really.

The best part of the storms was when they got really bad, Daddy always came into the living room, and sitting down at the piano there, would begin playing along to the rain and thunder.

He played the piano very beautifully and knew thousands of different songs and classical music.

With every bang of thunder he banged out something nice on the piano. When the rain or the wind blew the curtains up high, he played music by a man named Delius who wrote music that sounded like the rain. Daddy said playing the piano like that was taming the storm, and I never had to be afraid of any storm he could play to.

Since I was always the biggest scaredy cat about the storms, I was always the first one in the living room with my comics or coloring book or whatever I was working on at the time. But sooner or later my brother Ingram, or Mommy, would come in too, and all three of us would
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listen to the rain and

Daddy playing the piano, and it would be like living in heaven for me. There we all were -- safe and protected and cozy in the middle of the storm, surrounded by yellow light and my Daddy's music. That was the best part of the summer.

"How long will you be gone?"

"I think only three days. It depends on the production. They told me three days."

She looked at me accusingly. "What if I have problems?"

"I'll be on the next plane. I'm only going to Germany, Maris. They're paying me a couple of thousand dollars to hold up a champagne bottle. It's sort of hard to say no."

"I've seen those champagne ads. Lots of beautiful girls in low-cut dresses."

"Are you being serious or just grumpy?"

"Grumpy. I know you have to go. This hospital isn't cheap."

"Don't worry about that. You know we've got plenty of money from the film."

"Plenty of money lasts an hour when you've got someone in the hospital.

I don't want you to go because I'll miss you. No other reason. Even if you're not right here, knowing you're in town makes me feel better. Is that babyish?"

"I love it. I love you too for feeling that way. Listen, I wanted to ask you a question about something else. Did you and your family ever spend a summer on Lake Maggiore in Italy when you were little?"

She nodded. "Yes, near a town called Laveno."

"Do you remember much of it?"

"Pretty much. Why?"

"Do you remember 'Sinbad'?"

"Sinbad? No. What are you asking?"

"I had a dream about you last night. I dreamt I _was_ you in that house in Italy."

"You _were_ me?"

"I was you, and I was in that big yellow living room where you all went when thunderstorms came at night. Your father played the piano to tame the rain."

She sat up fast. "That's _right_! Oh, Walker, I'd forgotten all about that. It's so mystical. Tell me the whole thing immediately. Every detail."

When I had finished her cheeks were flushed and she wore the biggest smile I'd seen in days.

"That is so . . . It gives me little shivers all over. Sinbad! How could you know about Sinbad?

You know why I called it that? Because sometimes I'd pretend it was my sailing ship and I was off on an adventure. Sailing past the

Island of the Sirens. I would hold my ears and think I needed lots of wax to hold off their screams. My favorite movie when I was growing up was _The 7th Voyage of Sinbad_. Did you ever see it? With the cyclops and the princess who was shrunken down by the evil magician? I even remember the name of the actor who played him. Torin Thatcher."

"You sound like Venasque. He knew the cast of every film made."

"Sinbad. I saw that movie six times. Whenever they asked the genie in the lamp to do something, he'd bow and say 'I shall try, my master, I shall try.'

"You were me as a little girl in Laveno. Walker, that must mean something good. Maybe it's a turning point. All your other dreams were so strange and disturbing. This one is only childhood and magic."

"_Your_ childhood. That's the kicker."

"No, that's the beauty! Wouldn't it be something if that happened to us forever? Dream each other's dreams? We'd know each other so well we could be

--"

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"Identical twins."

"Ha ha. Not funny."

"How do you feel today?"

"Good. Especially after hearing that. I'm sad you're going away, but I'm okay. Listen, there's one thing, though. You don't have to call me from there as much as you do here. It'd be sweet, but eleven calls a day from Germany wouldn't help our bank account."

"There's a lot to talk about when I'm away."

"That's true. _How_ long will you be gone?"

"Three days. I'll take the night train back Tuesday."

"Okay, then five times a day is enough."

The night train to Cologne is strictly business. Night trains to Italy are full of excited tourists and lovers off for a weekend in Venice at the

Danieli. Trains north, especially to the heart of German business, are quiet and full of tired men in rumpled suits with their neckties pulled down, looking wanly through their briefcases.

I was in a first-class compartment by myself until a few minutes before the train was due to leave.

I had the German edition of the fairy tales on my lap but only because I wanted to read some of the other stories. I had no further need of reading "Rumpelstiltskin."

The compartment door slid open and a woman walked in. When I saw her I thought of a line my college roommate had once said when we were gassing about women.

"Sometimes you see one on the street who's so beautiful you want to walk up to her, put your hand over her mouth, and just whisper 'Don't talk. Come with me.' You take her immediately to bed, never letting her say a word.

Because no matter what she says, it's going to spoil that first beauty you saw in her. You know what I mean? Silent, she's perfect."

The woman across from me was that kind of perfect. Dressed in a shimmery black leather coat and skirt, she had a small Oriental face that held a stunning mixture of voluptuous child and innocent woman; long straight hair fell down over her shoulders like a black waterfall. I smiled at her and turned back to the window.

"Is this seat taken?" She spoke English in a high voice.

"No. Can I help you with your bag?"

"That would be very nice."

She was already sitting when I stood to put her Louis Vuitton suitcase onto the rack above. She seemed very used to men helping her through life.

"Thank you very much. You speak English?"

"Yes."

"That's so good. I'm so tired of speaking other people's languages. Are you going to Frankfurt?

It's a long trip, isn't it?"

An hour after the train started, Kiko had told me all about her modeling jobs in Europe, an Italian boyfriend who didn't appreciate her enough, and how lonely her life was. She asked if she could sit on my side of the car, and after she did, every few words were accompanied by a touch on my hand, my knee

. . .

If it had happened before Maris, I would have been a happy man. As it was, I smiled and was a sympathetic listener, but made no attempt to reciprocate her warmth. Plainly, she wasn't used to that, and her face grew more and more puzzled. After another ten minutes of long looks and long fingernails on my knee, I touched her hand and said I was married.

"So? Is your wife on the train?"

"No, but she's in my mind and that's enough."

Angry as a swatted bee, she stood right up and went for her suitcase. I
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offered to help, but she gave me the evil eye and said no thanks.

She was a small woman and had to reach all the way up to get hold of the suitcase handle. Giving one hard pull, the bag came flying off the shelf, knocking her back against the opposite wall head first. The bag hit the floor.

She cried out and slumped crookedly into the facing seat. She'd cracked the back of her head against one of the metal coat hangers screwed into the wall.

Blood was everywhere -- dripping down the leather, spotting her white hands, the gray silk blouse.

Her eyes were closed and she mumbled in either shock or pain. I leaned over, put my hand on the top of her head and said _it_. One moment I felt warm blood and wet sticky hair under my fingers. The next moment I felt only warm, dry hair. I pushed her head up and told her to open her eyes, everything was okay.