Angels and Exiles (34 page)

Johann Havel, with heavy steps, went to a chest of drawers, pulled a drawer open, and took out an object carefully wrapped up in rice paper. “Do you remember?” he asked Pieter, showing him the mechanical elephant nestled within the paper.

“Elfy. My first toy.”

Johann turned the key in the mechanism and put down Elfy on top of the chest. The little gray elephant began to walk forward, its trunk swinging rhythmically from side to side.

“I have lived all my life for you,” said the old man in a voice that broke. “All I have invented, all of my endeavours, all that is nothing to me beside the toys I built of my hands for you, beside the games we created together on winter evenings. I would give anything if you could be, for just one more day, the little boy I took in. But I can’t make it so. Forgive me.”

And Pieter had to hold him up in his arms, for Johann Havel had begun to weep, as old men do when they remember that the pattern of their lives is done and that there is nothing left for them to await.

For three days, Anna’s parents screamed the same reproaches, tore their hair, sent fine china plates crashing against the walls as if they had been vulgar tin dishes. Anna observed their hysterics with a detached gaze, as if she watched a ballet. Several times, if only to get five minutes of quiet, she tried to explain to her mother what was about to happen, but her mother would not listen. For three days, Anna remained a prisoner of the house on the Sommerstrass, while parental recriminations made the glass panes shake in their lead.

Finally, the letter came. Sealed with the crimson dynastic wax, it surrounded itself with an aura of silence. Anna shook it under her mother’s nose, then her father’s, and when their mouths had shut at last, Anna broke the seal and read what she had no need to read. Then she opened the finely worked box that accompanied the letter, and in a rage put on her finger the second seal, the silver ring of her betrothal.

The news spread through Wessendam as a drop of water wets a square of cloth. An incredible number of young women were revealed as long-time friends of Anna Holtz, eager to visit her in her house on the Sommerstrass; the whole of the aristocracy could no longer conceive of a soirée that did not include Herr and Damme Holtz.

Radulf himself only came to visit Anna a week later. They were left alone. Anna was sitting on the same armchair from which she had welcomed Radulf the first time. Radulf, sitting on the divan Anna’s father had occupied, offered her a half-dozen compliments as if choosing them from a previously written list.

“I beg you, Highness,” Anna finally said in a toneless voice, “take back the ring. I am not the one you desire. I am incapable of ever loving you.”

“That matters not at all to me,” answered Radulf.

“But why?” asked Anna, desperate. “Why me?”

At these words Radulf grew pale, rose abruptly and took his leave. Anna, incredulous, had been able to read on his face that he did not know himself.

The next day, Anna learned from her father that harsh controls had been established at the gates of the city: it had become an ordeal to get in or out, and merchants complained bitterly about these unforeseen restrictions for which no reason had been given, only the two words “dynastic orders.” She went to her bedroom window and pulled the curtain aside. On the pavement of the Sommerstrass, below her, a man stood staring insolently at her window. His cloak was bordered by a crimson line.

Anna went to see Stefan. “Do you know where Pieter Havel lives?”

“Yes, Damoiselle. At the house of the inventor Johann Havel, on the Ligeiastrass. I have the address.”

“I will go there this hour, but you mustn’t accompany me. I have accounts to settle with Pieter Havel, and I believe I do not have much longer to do so.”

She went out of her house. The servant of the Dynasts followed her without bothering to be discreet. Anna had hidden her hair under a shawl and wore her dullest garments.

She walked up the Sommerstrass and crossed the Gartenplatz at the top of the hill, then took a transversal street that led to the Ligeiastrass. Once she had reached number thirty-seven, she knocked on the door. Radulf’s agent observed her as he leaned against the house across the street.

It was Pieter who opened the door.

“May I come in?” asked Anna softly, and Pieter withdrew to let her pass.

“I am happy to see you’re healed,” said Anna. “I’ve come to apologize; I troubled you when I should have been letting you recuperate from a shock.”

“Damoiselle Holtz,” said Johann Havel, who was coming out of a room giving on the entry hall.

“Herr Havel. I am glad to meet you. Pieter will have told you what happened?”

“Indeed. I’m most grateful that you rescued him, Damoiselle. . . . And my best wishes of happiness on the occasion of your betrothal.”

Anna’s smile shattered. “Thank you,” she said in a muffled voice.

“You have the eyes of a caged beast, Damoiselle. Must I conclude that you are not totally happy at the thought of this union?” Johann’s tone was quietly assured, almost sarcastic.

“Don’t mock me, Herr Havel,” a livid Anna warned him. Pieter looked at his adoptive father with a scandalized expression.

“You do not wish this marriage, Damoiselle, nothing could be more clear. You wish to flee, but nothing can take you beyond Radulf’s attentions. Am I wrong?”

Anna shook her head, mutely.

“Come with me, Damoiselle. You too, Pieter.”

Pieter followed Johann and Anna. A whiff of roses and jasmine came to him; the thought that the Dynast’s son could own Anna without her consent dizzied him.

Johann took a large key from his pocket and opened the door to his private workshop, where not even Pieter had ever been allowed. The young man held his breath as he entered this sanctum for the first time. There were too many things scattered on the shelves fixed to the walls for him to distinguish them one from the others. In the centre of the room was a vast construct of chains and gears, behind which a
trompe-l’œil
painting of a cloudy night sky had been set up.

“What is this, Herr Havel?”

“A time machine, Damoiselle. Your way out, if you wish it.”

Anna raised her eyebrows, ready to laugh. “You’re joking,
mein
Herr!”

“No, Damoiselle. I have been working on this machine for twenty years, and now it is ready. Use it, and you will vanish within the flow of time. For all of us here, including His Highness Radulf, you will have disappeared forever.”

“But how can you be sure that it works?”

“Oh, believe me,” said Johann Havel, “it works. And it’s at your disposal, Damoiselle.”

Anna knew the inventor’s words could not be true; yet she believed them. Because nothing mattered anymore, because whatever happened she would find herself wed to a man she would hate more and more every day of the rest of her life—why not believe, why not be happy for a few days, before everything came apart?

“Let me return to my home, to get what I shall need. I will see you again tonight.” And she left.

She came back at sunset. Wearing a servant’s clothes, carrying a purse filled to bursting with kröners. Johann went to open the door before she knocked.

“I’m ready, Herr Havel,” she said. “I have bid my parents goodbye, even though they didn’t understand me. There is nothing to hold me back. I have brought what I hope will be enough to pay you. I must warn you I have probably been followed here, even though this time I saw no one.”

“I don’t fear the son of the Dynast,” said Johann Havel. “And I want no payment. Come.” He took her to his workshop, where Pieter waited, pale and tense.

“Damoiselle Holtz,” said Pieter, “you can’t leave alone. I’m ready to accompany you.”

“Why bother yourself with me?”

Pieter looked her in the eyes, ready to lie, but once again Anna’s gaze tore the truth from him.

“Because I want to be with you.”

“It’s true I shall need a friend over there,” said Anna, lowering her gaze.

“Then take your places,” said the old inventor. Anna and Pieter sat down side by side on the black leather seat. “Pieter, turn the pedals, as you would for a bicycle. Yes, like that.”

The horizontal gear pivoted above their heads and the shining metal comets, suns, and stars spun slowly. “Look carefully at the painting!” said the inventor. Docilely, Pieter and Anna gazed at the large canvas.

The illusion came into play: for an instant Pieter thought to see the true sky and clouds; the whirl of the metal ornaments suddenly dizzied him. . . . He let the pedals and the gears grind to a halt. Pieter took his gaze away from the painting. Nothing had changed: his adoptive father still stood there. Anna, seated next to him, was biting at her lower lip. The only strangeness was that he had trouble keeping his concentration, as if he were emerging from sleep or about to enter it.

“Nothing is happening,” said Anna. “Herr Havel! Your machine—”

“ . . . is working perfectly, Damoiselle. Your trip has already begun. Leave the house and fear nothing. Farewell, Pieter, my son.”

Anna and Pieter climbed down from the machine. Anna wanted to ask for more explanations from Johann Havel, but at that moment Pieter touched her arm and she staggered, reeling with vertigo.

“It is time to go,” said Johann softly. Pieter and Anna opened the front door and took uncertain steps down the Ligeiastrass in the light of the setting sun. Johann Havel watched them leave, but his eyes were blurry with tears, and he did not see them reach the end of the street.

Pieter’s vertigo increased at every step. When they had reached the end of the Ligeiastrass, where it leads onto the Mittelstrass, he had to stop. Anna held him by the arm and complained: “Pieter, this is insane, this invention did nothing. . . .”

Pieter stepped sideways and felt something cold and wet. He had put his foot into a small patch of snow, in the shadowed corner of a wall.

He spoke to a small boy who watched them curiously. “Will you tell me what day this is?”

“Well, March the sixteenth, Herr-und-Damme.”

Pieter began to laugh. “And the year? What year?” When the bewildered child had answered, he took Anna’s hands.

“Eighteen years back, Damoiselle. I never doubted my father.”

“Neither of us has been born, Pieter. I am nothing and no one, here.” She began to smile. “I am nothing!”

“Damoiselle—”

“No. Anna. I am a girl like any other, now and forever. Come, evening is falling, we have to find somewhere to lodge for the night.” She took him by the hand and together they went, indifferent to those who watched them from the high windows of their houses.