Marcel Moring - In Babylon

‘What’re you going to do?’ she asked.

‘I think we should go left.’

‘What’s left?’

‘Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. My bedroom and my bathroom.’ I stared at the heap of chairs and tables. ‘And this.’

‘Not much wood,’ she said.

‘No. I’m counting on the bedrooms. If we can reach even one of them and chop up a bed …’

‘Isn’t there any other way to get wood? There are such beautiful things here. Can’t we save any of it?’

I shook my head. ‘We’ve got to hurry. It’s much too cold here. We have to think of ourselves first. If we start lugging all those beautiful things downstairs, we’ll never keep the fire going. The only other choice is to burn up the library.’

Nina looked at me. ‘Uncle Herman’s library.’

‘And mine,’ I said. ‘And Zeno’s.’

Her face clouded.

I stepped forward and pulled a chair out of the pile that was blocking the way to the bedrooms. Nina came up behind me with the lantern. Shadows wheeled around us, patches of black leapt up between the chairs, cupboards, and other pieces of furniture, and disappeared once more. When she was standing beside me, I raised the chair, a fragile affair on slender legs, and threw it down. It crashed against the marble stairs, the sound of breaking wood ripped the darkness below us.

‘What’s that?’ whispered Nina.

In the distance was a faint rustling noise. ‘An echo,’ I said, ‘the echo of …’

The rustling came closer.

‘ Who’s there? ’

We both ducked. The lantern went clattering down the stairs. In the sudden darkness we heard the voice for the second time, a voice from the depths of something dark and far away.

‘ Who? ’

A rustling like the sea.

‘ Nathan? ’

My heart exploded in my head. I reeled and stepped into the emptiness above the stairs. As I began falling, my right hand felt for something to hold on to. My fingers groped about in the void, where once the sideboard had stood, but found nothing. Then I felt Nina’s hand. She grabbed hold of my sleeve and pulled me up.

‘ Who’s there? ’

I could smell Nina’s hair. Cinnamon, I thought.

‘Nathan, for God’s sake … What …’

‘ Who? ’

‘What?’ I cried.

‘ Nathan? ’

A rustling like the sound of the wind in your ears as you fall and …

I could feel Nina shivering beside me. ‘Zeno?’

‘ Who’s there? ’

I relaxed. I put my finger to my lips. ‘Listen,’ I said.

‘ Who? ’

‘A tape,’ I said.

Rustling. ‘ Nathan? ’

‘A … God. A … tape. Zeno.’ Nina was breathing heavily, in and out. She let go of my jacket and leaned back, I heard the dull groan of wood.

‘ Who’s there? ’

I stood up and walked down the stairs. It was a while before I found the burner: I had to feel my way along the cold marble, listening to the escaping gas. I turned off the valve and inspected the lantern – the glass was cracked, the tank dented. I let out a thin stream of gas and lit a match. The white light shot up again. High above me I heard the distorted voice still intoning its fractured sentences. Who’s there. Who. Nathan .

When I got back to Nina, I saw the glistening snail’s trail of a tear along her nose. I reached out my hand, towards her arm, but she turned away. Her back was tall and straight. I put down the lantern and began furiously throwing down tables and chairs.

For half an hour, three quarters of an hour I was at it and all that time I heard the questions that Zeno kept asking me from the other world. If the voice hadn’t been drowned out every so often by the sound of shattering wood, I would have fled or, in a blind rage, seized my axe and leaped into the tangle of chair legs and armrests, chopping like a madman until I had found the tape recorder.

When we were back in the library – I had added more wood to the kitchen stove and the fire in the hunting room – we stood for a while in front of the hearth.

‘How long will that tape keep on playing?’

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘We’ll just have to wait until the batteries run out.’

‘N? What’s going on here?’

I stared into the flames and tried to remember whether she used to call me that in the past, when she was a child. N. All the members of my family did, had done, though I never knew why. No one had ever addressed Zoe or Zelda or Zeno as Z.

‘You tell me,’ I said.

She didn’t answer. Only the greenish-blue gleam of her eyes, the perfectly tranquil face and the red wreath around it.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t recognize this house at all anymore.’ I saw her gaze grow vague. ‘It’s as if I’ve woken up after being asleep for a hundred years and I look around me and there are things I recognize, but everything is different, just different enough to make me doubt what I thought I knew.’

There was a silence. Now and then a piece of wood snapped in the hearth, or part of the burning pile caved in with a sigh.

‘How did that tape get there?’

‘I really don’t know. What’s the matter? Do you think I planned all this? Nathan Hollander’s mystery weekend?’

‘A film,’ she said. She lowered her voice slightly: ‘He’s searching for the secret of his past, but the past doesn’t want to be found. Coming soon, to a cinema near you: Nathan Hollander, the movie.’

‘Starring …’

‘Dustin Hoffman, as Nathan Hollander.’

‘I’m twice his size.’

‘Okay, Jack Nicholson then.’

‘I don’t have those acrobatic eyebrows. Besides, then we’d need a love interest.’

She looked at me for a while. ‘I don’t know any red-haired actresses.’

‘Hordes,’ I said. ‘Nicole Kidman. Lucille Ball. There’s also this slightly whorish, but very charming redhead I once saw in the film version of Hotel New Hampshire . And there’s a beautiful Italian woman. The same hair as you, that fan of red curls. What was her name? Domenica … She played in that Tarkovsky film and at one point she begins to unbutton her dress and you see this magnificent alabaster breast. My God.’ I stared at the fire.

‘I think we’d better forget about that love interest. I haven’t got magnificent alabaster tits and your eyebrows can’t dance. Let’s do something.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Don’t you have anything in mind?’

I shrugged.

We fell silent. ‘The fairy tale writer doesn’t know,’ said Nina. She sat down and stared into the fireplace. I smiled wrily. She drew her legs under her and settled back into the chair. Then, her face raised to me, like a sleepy cat, her eyes narrowed, she said: ‘I expected you to at least tell me a fairy tale about it.’

‘I thought you wanted to know why we were here.’

‘I don’t want to think about the snow. I don’t want to think about that tape. Or about the barricade. Or about all that food.’ She opened her eyes until they were so wide that it was impossible for me to miss the import of her words. ‘And I don’t want to talk about Zeno, either. Didn’t you say this was a great opportunity for you to read me Uncle Herman’s biography?’

‘Out loud? I thought I’d just hand you the manuscript. It’s a long story.’

She smiled.

‘And a tall one.’

She nodded.

‘It’s all about arrival and departure and Zeno …’

Nina’s gaze strayed to the fire.

‘… and the atomic bomb and …’

‘The what?’

‘The atomic bomb,’ I said, ‘I know everything there is to know about that.’

‘The atomic bomb … You say it the way most people would say: I know everything there is to know about cars. Or football. Books, even.’