"Did you do that to Lillis?"
"Yes. You have a minute and a half."
"What if I go with you?"
"First you die here. We get out of this world and take you back where you belong. Then I'll have to show you again how to become your real self. The self you should be."
"You said in one of the dreams that our place is Vienna!"
"Another Vienna, Walter. A city you've forgotten. You've been back here so many times. Every life you've felt a pull to live here, but never once have you understood why. Vienna is your father's city. One more question."
"What if I say no?"
"You won't. You love Maris too much. That's one of the good parts in you. Once you realize there's no choice, you'll come home."
"What will happen if I don't?"
"Maris will die and I'll take the child. There'll be nothing you can do about it, either. Bye-bye.
"No, don't touch me! Until you know my name, your magic only works on them. Sometimes. That once in my room when I couldn't see you was a joke. Don't take it as any sign. That's why I want you to come home. I want to teach you all the things you've forgotten." He touched my shoulder gently. "The first lesson will be to find out what Papa's name is."
"How long do I have?"
"A month."
"Will you leave us alone until then? Completely alone. No tricks, no spying . . ."
He looked at me. "Yes, that's fair. I'll leave you completely alone. No, I'll give you until your birthday. That's twenty-six days. I'll give you twenty-six days alone to say good bye. That should be long enough."
I carried the new monitor into the living room and connected it to the computer. I went through the box of discs looking for the word-processing one again. I hoped that turning it on wouldn't bring a repeat of what had happened the last time.
The names of the computer programs sounded like buzz words on the Starship Enterprise: "V-Ram." "Copy Star." "Signum."
"I think we should put up the V-Ram shields, Mr. Spock. We're coming to Signum."
"It's only a copy star, sir. Nothing to worry about."
In the middle of these space names appeared "DEGAS."
"'DEGAS'? What are you doing here?"
I fed the disc into the computer and turned it on. It was one of Maris's art programs. After much fiddling around I managed to bring up from its memory drawings of buildings and cities she'd done.
What talent she had! Talent and humor and a truly distinctive way of interpreting the world. She didn't like to show work that wasn't finished and would have been angry if she knew I was snooping in her files. But I excused myself on the spot and continued looking.
I had never asked if she wished she were an architect and not a visionary in miniature. You always come up with questions to ask when the person isn't around to answer. She believed in magic and she believed in God. But what did she think of heaven and hell? Did she want a boy or a girl for her first child? What things did I do that got on her nerves but she never told me about? What could I do to make it better?
There was a drawing for a clown museum in the form of a magician's hat, a villa by the sea shaped like a woman's hand opening toward the water.
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 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.