“What do you think?” said the Kraut, coming back with the coffee.
“This doesn’t sound like Orson.”
“It’s cribbed from someone better — Stevenson, I think, or Collins. But that’s not why I wanted you to read it.” She set the cup and saucer down. “Of all your father’s fiction, it comes closest to what I consider fact.”
“Fact?” I said. “This seems about as far from fact as anything he wrote. There’s no attempt at scientific—”
“Of course not, Waldy.” She shook her head impatiently. “That’s not the kind of fact I’m thinking of.”
Something in her voice made me uneasy. “I’m not sure what other kind of fact there is,” I said.
The expression on her face had settled as I read my father’s story — had grown both milder and more fixed — and I recognized it now for what it was. It was regret.
“It saddens me to hear that, Waldy. More than you can know.”
“For Christ’s sake, Ursula, just tell me what you mean!”
“Only that I look at that little fable from time to time, when I’m in a mood to consider the past. It helps me understand why Orson left. It’s about the lust for influence over the timestream, of course, but more than that: it’s about vanity, and arrogance, and the compulsion to turn inward, in pursuit of some private mystery, at the risk of everything that you hold dear. And if you don’t see your father in that, or your aunts, or your grandfather, or all the rest of that family you’re so obsessed with, then this can only mean one thing — you’ve fallen victim to the mystery yourself.” She knelt beside me now and took my hand. “That was one point your father and I always agreed on, even when things were at their worst. We wanted to keep you away from that mystery, Waldy. As far away from it as possible.”
It was clear to me now that she knew why I’d come. More than that: it was clear that she knew — or that she thought she knew — how the quest I’d set out on would end. Orson’s parable had been a kind of test — a test I’d evidently passed with flying colors. If I was my great-grandfather’s rightful successor, I was also his doomed and psychopathic son’s. Another willing vessel for the Syndrome.
“Listen to me, Ursula. This isn’t what you think. I’m not my father.”
“That’s right, Waldy. Or his father, either.” She let go of my hand. “Or the man you were named for. Please don’t forget that.”
She seemed frail to me suddenly, fragile beyond her years. I resolved to come clean about my hunt for Waldemar, no matter how severely it might shock her. But my chance came and went.
“Two men stopped by this morning. They were looking for you.”
“What kind of men?” I said, thinking right away of Haven’s goons. “Did they look at all Polish?”
“Everyone looks Polish in this city — or Hungarian, or Serbian, or Czech.” She parted the blinds and surveyed the street outside, surreptitious as a gangster in a noir. “These men had on trench coats and glasses and black leather gloves. They looked like officers of the Gestapo.”
For an instant I wondered whether the onionlike strata I’d peered into over the past few days had become permeable, allowing Nazis from 1938 to shadow me in the Vienna of the present; then I saw the Kraut smiling at me over her shoulder.
“They didn’t look like Gestapo, Waldy. Not really. Don’t take everything I say so seriously.”
Before I could answer her, Mrs. Haven — not that I had an answer to give — you made your ill-fated debut. You arrived fresh from the Graben boutiques, in a powder-blue trench coat and green loden jodhpurs and lipstick-colored knee-high riding boots. I’d longed for this meeting, as all lovers do, eager for my mother’s bright-eyed blessing; you hadn’t been there more than a minute, however, before I realized how vain my hopes had been. There was nothing I could do, at that point, but watch as you confirmed her worst suspicions.
“What is it you do?” asked the Kraut, after you’d told her how much you admired the carpet. You really were trying your best.
“I’m between jobs at the moment,” you answered. “I guess I’m your son’s bodyguard.”
The Kraut returned your smile gravely. “You’ll want to dress a bit more neutrally for that.”
“Not a Secret Service type of bodyguard,” you told her. “The personal kind. Personal bodyguards can wear anything they want.”
“Is that so?” said the Kraut, looking to me as if for confirmation.
We stayed a remarkably long time, all things considered. You were patient and gracious and friendly and brave. As we were leaving — you were ahead of me, Mrs. Haven, already halfway down the stairs — my mother caught me lightly by the arm.
“Don’t go to Znojmo, Waldy. There’s nothing for you there.”
“I’m not going to Znojmo,” I answered, though of course I was going to Znojmo. Znojmo is where everything begins.
“There’s nothing for you there,” she repeated. Then, more quietly: “You can still escape, you know. It’s not too late.”
“Walter?” you called from the courtyard.
My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we’d done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn’t — or mustn’t — be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way.
“Walter?” you called again.
“Don’t worry about me, Ursula. I’m trying to—”
“I’m going to tell you something, Waldy, and I want you to listen to me closely. I love you with all my heart, and I want you to live a long and happy life.”
“I love you too, Ursula. And I want you to know, no matter how I might sometimes act, that I—”
The Kraut shook her head and pressed a finger to my lips. “Watch that woman closely,” she whispered. “Don’t trust her an inch.”
I pushed her hand away. “Please, Ursula—”
“Don’t trust her, Waldy. Do you hear me? She wishes you ill.”
Monday, 09:05 EST
I found Waldemar on the kitchen counter this morning, legs crossed underneath him, humming to himself with a mouth full of sprouts. The sound had invaded a dream I’d been having — my mother singing to me while she iced an enormous jet-black, bell-shaped birthday cake — and I’d awoken with a jerk, slowly gotten my bearings, then noticed that the humming hadn’t stopped. I followed it cautiously out to the kitchen. Any lingering sweetness I might still have felt was expunged by the sight of my great-uncle perched on that counter like an opossum, munching and smacking his lips, with a look of craven pleasure on his face. Here is a man, Mrs. Haven, who can make even vegetarianism seem unwholesome.
“There you are, Nefflein. I was hoping I’d wake you.”
“I was dreaming.” I rubbed my eyes, still abstracted with sleep. “I thought you were my mother.”
“I’m flattered by the comparison. Charming woman, Ursula.”
That gave me a turn. “How would you know?”
“From your history, of course. Such a diverting read! I liked the honeymoon chapter especially.” He wagged a finger at me. “But you haven’t made the changes that I asked for.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
“Yes?”
“Sonja Silbermann didn’t go home with you that night. That was a lie, Uncle, and an obvious one.”