Katherine Neville - The Fire

As for inviting this ‘new neighbor’ that Rosemary had mentioned – what on earth was Mother thinking? – she’d never fraternized with the locals. This birthday bash was starting to sound more and more like the makings of an Alice in Wonderland party: Anything might crawl out from under the nearest teacup.

And the next message – the unfamiliar voice of a man with a German accent – only served to confirm my worst fears:

‘Grüssgott, mein Liebchen,’ the caller said. ‘Ich bedaure sehr…Ja – please excuse – my English is not so good. I hope you will be understanding of all of my meanings. This is your old friend Professor Wittgenstein, from Vienna. I am in great surprise to learn of your party. When did you plan it? I hope you will receive the gift I sent in time for the important day. Please open it at once so that the contents do not spoil. I regret that I cannot come – a true sacrifice. For my absence, my only defense is that I must attend the King’s Chess Tourney, in India…’

I felt that old danger signal coming on again, as I pushed the machine’s Pause button and glanced up at Lily. Fortunately, she seemed, for the moment, completely at sea. But it was clear to me that there were a few too many dangling key words here – the most obvious, of course, being ‘chess.’

As for the mysterious ‘Professor Wittgenstein of Vienna,’ I wasn’t sure how long it had taken Mother to catch on, or how quickly Lily would guess. But, accent or no, it had taken me exactly twelve seconds to ‘understand all of his meanings’ – including who the caller actually was.

The real Ludwig von Wittgenstein – the eminent Viennese philosopher – had by now been dead for more than fifty years. He was famous for his incomprehensible works like the Tractatus. But more to the purpose of this message were the two obscure texts that Wittgenstein had privately printed and given to his students at Cambridge University in England. These were in two small notebooks bound with paper covers – one colored brown and the other blue – which were ever thereafter called ‘The Blue and Brown Books.’ Their main topic was language games.

Lily and I were acquainted, of course, with someone who was an obsessive devotee of such games, and who’d even published a tractatus or two of his own, including one on the subject of these very Wittgenstein texts. The clincher was that he was also born with the genetic idiosyncrasy of one blue eye and one brown one. This was my uncle Slava: Dr Ladislaus Nim.

I knew that this tersely worded phone message in disguised voice from an uncle who never used phones must contain some critical kernel of meaning, which likely only my mother would understand. Perhaps something that had caused her to depart the house before any of her eclectic assortment of guests arrived.

But if it was so upsetting or even dangerous, why would she leave the message on the machine instead of erasing it? Furthermore, why would Nim allude to chess, a game that Mother despised? A game she knew nothing whatever about? Given the clues he had left, what else could it all mean? It seemed this message wasn’t meant just for my mother – it must also be intended for me.

Before I could think further, Lily had hit the Play button on the answering machine again, and I got my answer:

‘But as for lighting the candles on your cake,’ the voice I now knew as Nim’s said, in that chilling Viennese accent, ‘I suggest it is time to hand the lighted match to someone else. When the phoenix rises again from the ashes, take care, or you might get burnt.’

‘BEEP BEEP! END OF TAPE!’ screeched the creaky answering machine.

And thank God, because I really couldn’t stand to hear any more.

There could be no mistake – my uncle’s passion for ‘language games,’ all those cleverly calibrated code words like ‘sacrifice,’ ‘King’s Tourney,’ ‘India,’ and ‘defense’…No, this message was inextricably connected with whatever was going on here today. And missing his point might prove just as final, as irrevocable, as making that one fatal move. I knew I had to get rid of this tape right now, before Vartan Azov, standing just beside me – or anyone else – had the chance to figure out the connection.

I yanked the cassette from the answering machine, went over to the fire, and tossed it in. As I watched the Mylar and its plastic casing bubble and melt into the flames, the adrenaline started to pound behind my eyes again, like a hot, pulsing ache, like staring into a fire that was far too bright.

I squeezed my eyes shut – the better to see inside.

That last game I’d played in Russia – the dreaded game that my mother had left for me here, only hours ago, inside our piano – was a variation universally known in chess parlance as the King’s Indian Defense. I’d lost that game ten years ago, due to a blunder arising from a risk I’d taken much earlier in the game – a risk I should never have taken, since I couldn’t really see all the ramifications of where it might lead.

What was the risk I’d taken in that game? I had sacrificed my Black Queen.

And now I knew, beyond doubt, that whoever or whatever had actually killed my father ten years ago – somehow my Black Queen sacrifice in that game was connected. It was a message that had come back to haunt us. At this moment, something had become as clear to me as the black-and-white squares on a chessboard.

My mother was in truly serious danger right now – perhaps as grave as my father’s ten years ago. And she had just passed that lighted match to me.

Like all other associations, the Carbonari, or charcoal-burners, lay claim to a very high antiquity… Similar societies arose in many mountainous countries, and they surrounded themselves with that mysticism of which we have seen so many examples. Their fidelity to each other and to the society was so great that it became in Italy a proverbial expression to say ‘On the faith of a Carbonaro.’…In order to avoid all suspicion of criminal association, they employed themselves in cutting wood and making charcoal… They recognized each other by sign, by touch, and by words.

– Charles William Heckethorn, The Secret Societies of All Ages & Countries

Among the secret societies of Italy none was more comprehensive in its political objectives than that of the Carbonari. In the early 1820s they were more than just a power in the land, and boasted branches and sub-societies as far afield as Poland, France and Germany. The history of these “Charcoal-burners ” , according to themselves, started in Scotland.

– Arkon Daraul, A History of Secret Societies

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one.

– Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto X

Viareggio, Italy

August 15, 1822

It was the heat of the dog days. here under the blazing Tuscan sun, on this isolated stretch of beach along the Ligurian coast, the pebbled sands formed a griddle so intense that already now, at mid-morning, one could bake pané upon its surface. In the distance across the waters, the isles of Elba, Capraia, and little Gorgona arose like shimmering apparitions from the sea.

At the center of the crescent of beach, enfolded by its high surrounding mountains, a small group of men had assembled. Their horses could not bear the scalding sands and had been left within a nearby copse of trees.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, waited apart from the others. He’d seated himself upon a large black rock lapped by the waves – ostensibly so that his famous Romantic profile, immortalized in so many paintings, would be silhouetted to best advantage against the backdrop of the glittering sea. But in fact the hidden deformity of his feet since birth had nearly prevented Byron, this morning, from leaving his carriage at all. His pale white skin, which earned him the nickname ‘Alba,’ was shaded by a broad straw hat.