GLASS SOUP Page 24

  “Everything has been a message to you since you were brought back to life, Vincent. The food you ate, the color of the clouds, my autograph on that tree… The list is very long.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “That’s all right, because now you do.” Kyselak’s voice was jovial and unconcerned.

  Ettrich lifted his chin toward the name on the tree. “Did I find this just now or did it find me? I mean, did someone steer me here or did I find it on my own?”

  Kyselak crossed his legs. “Totally on your own. That’s what they wanted to find out—whether you are really awake now. It’s clear by this that you are.”

  Vincent’s nose itched. He took his hand off the tree to scratch it. The moment he did, Kyselak disappeared. Like that he was gone. Ettrich’s reaction on seeing this was no different from Flora’s out on the autobahn when she saw that Isabelle was gone. The difference between them was Ettrich, unlike Flora, knew exactly what to do in response. He put his hand back on the tree and Kyselak promptly reappeared, still sitting on his rock.

  “Very good, Vincent. Very, very good.”

  Ettrich looked at his hand against the tree. He understood that by making contact with it, he touched the tree’s entire history. He had brought it all into this moment to see, including Kyselak who had carved his name into it so long ago.

  Ettrich tried something like this earlier when he showed Isabelle her hand’s past, present, and supposed future. But now that he understood how to do it properly, he knew it was not possible to show the future because it doesn’t exist yet, not even in time. Isabelle’s missing finger was only one of many future possibilities for her.

  What a person could do was see the past and present at the same moment if he knew how to perceive time the correct way. Ettrich was doing it right now: here he was, talking to a man who had cut his name into this tree almost two centuries ago.

  “Can you do it to yourself now?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Kyselak stretched his arms behind him on the stone and leaned back on them. “What you’re doing with the tree—experiencing its whole history, seeing everything about it. Can you do that to yourself?”

  The question frightened Vincent. “I think I can but to tell you the truth, the thought scares the shit out of me.”

  “You don’t want to see what made you what you are? You don’t want to see your life as it really was, or is?”

  Despite his anxiety, Ettrich half smiled when he remembered something. “The truth mirror.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I had a teacher in high school who used to talk about a truth mirror. He told us to imagine a mirror that when you look in it, it shows you the absolute truth about who you are—both the good and the bad. It was like God—it knew everything about you and wouldn’t lie. We talked about it a lot in class. Then he asked how many of us would want to try it. Not many raised their hands.”

  “Did you, Vincent?”

  “No.”

  “Ramses the Great of Egypt had a tame lion named Slayer of His Foes. Did you know that?”

  Ettrich was taken aback. He had no idea what Kyselak was talking about. Ramses the Great? A tame lion?

  “No. Uh no, I didn’t know that.”

  “He did and so do you. You have a Slayer of Your Foes too. A very powerful one.”

  Ettrich spoke carefully. “I’m not getting this. I don’t really understand.”

  “You have a lion too, Vincent; it’s in you and part of you. A Slayer of Your Foes. That lion led you to this place in the forest. It told you to touch my autograph on the tree and then how to summon me. It can do miraculous things if you learn what else it is capable of doing; if you learn what you’re capable of doing. Bringing me back now is only a sample of that.

  “But your lion doesn’t come when you call. It’s not tame yet. To make that happen, you have to look in your truth mirror and see who you really are. There’s no other way, Vincent.

  “You can’t know what you’re capable of if you don’t know who you are. You know what life is and you know what death is. You even know what Glass Soup means. It’s time to learn what else Vincent Ettrich knows in every corner of his soul. Get past the good and evil in you. That’s the small stuff. Find the immortal parts.”

  It didn’t take long. It took no time at all to do what Kyselak recommended. A short while later Vincent Ettrich walked out of the forest near where he had entered it. He saw that his car was gone but that didn’t disturb him. He knew Isabelle was with Broximon and that she was safe for the moment.

  He walked onto the road and turned right in the direction of Weidling. It would take him about fifteen minutes to walk into town but that was good. It would allow him time to organize his thoughts and hopefully figure some things out now that he saw the world and his life with new eyes.

  He walked on the shoulder of the road with his head down while the occasional car drove past nearby. He did not notice the lovely small Jugendstil villas tucked away among the trees, or the centuries-old wood-and-stone farmhouses that were a reminder that these surroundings had once been rural countryside, easily a day’s journey from Vienna. If he had wanted to, Ettrich could have stopped at any of those buildings and by touching a wall seen what life had once been like there.

  In the courtyard of one small farmhouse, he could have witnessed the winter day in 1945 when invading Russian troops shot the thin family horse and then feasted on its steaming body. Or several houses down, Franz Schubert sitting in the lush garden on a sunny day, feeling peaceful and well for the first time in months. Ettrich was able to see such things now but knew he must concentrate on how best to save Isabelle and Anjo from Chaos.

  A taxi driver who lived on that road was just beginning his shift and driving to Vienna. He was surprised to see a man in a dark suit waving him down. People who lived out here didn’t often wear suits or use taxis. They either had their own cars, bicycled, or walked. The driver was delighted when this customer with the American accent said in good German that he wanted to go to the airport. A long ride from there, it meant a fat fee. This was a nice way to start off the day.

  The driver, whose name was Roman Palmsting, would begin to regret this ride about halfway through it. As they passed the Urania Theater in downtown Vienna on the way to the airport, the passenger began talking to himself.

  Palmsting had lousy hearing because he spent too much time listening to loud vintage heavy-metal music on a cheap Walkman. When he first heard the man behind him mumbling, he thought he was being given instructions. The driver resented it when a fare did that. Because he prided himself on being honest. Never once in a fifteen-year career had he taken the long or wrong route anywhere just to make a little more money on a fare.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, glancing in the rearview mirror. The passenger was looking out the window and saying something. Palmsting raised his eyebrows and looked back at the road. He assumed that if this guy really wanted to get his attention then he would repeat what he’d said.

  Until two minutes ago Ettrich had forgotten about the set of keys Isabelle had given him to her apartment and car. Because they were the only thing of hers he carried with him, he took them out of his pocket and held them in his hand like a good luck charm while he looked out the window.

  Almost immediately information came to him like signals on a radio so powerful that it receives too many stations at once. It sounds like gobbledygook until you fine-tune it. Ettrich realized that when he took the keys in hand, he was wondering where Isabelle was and what she was doing. He was finding out now, but there was so much Isabelle coming in that he could only decipher a fraction of it.

  All of this was so new to him. It would take time to learn all that he was capable of doing now. He wanted things to stop or at least slow down so that he could get his bearings. But from all indications it appeared that it went at its own speed and too bad if you couldn’t keep up.

  Something came to him that was so strange
he had to say it out loud just to hear it. “Zi Cong Baby Palace.” Ettrich enunciated each word slowly and crisply. Then he said them again, this time as a question. “Zi Cong Baby Palace? What the hell is that?”

  The taxi driver looked at him for a long time in the rearview mirror.

  Images rushed through Ettrich’s mind in the course of a few seconds: a small hand patting a bare stomach. An Oriental woman in a white doctor’s lab coat. Some other Caucasian woman dressed in beige. A hand on a white table. A vivid shade of green. A photograph of Simon Haden. The woman in beige again, only now she was crying.

  “I don’t get it. I don’t get it.” Ettrich raised a helpless hand to the car window, as if gesturing to someone on the other side of the glass to wait a minute.

  Roman Palmsting looked in the rearview again and pursed his lips. He began figuring out what to do if this passenger was crazy and started acting weird or dangerous or worse. A traffic light ahead turned from green to yellow and he shifted his attention back to the street. He didn’t see Ettrich’s mouth drop open and then the man slump back against the seat, defeated. But Palmsting did hear the other squawk in dismay, “No! She didn’t go there; she can’t.”

  Several minutes later Ettrich told the driver to pull off the autobahn behind a Range Rover that was parked at a strange angle on the shoulder of the road. Palmsting was happy to oblige and once paid, happy to drive away. The last picture he had of this strange passenger was of the man in a suit leaning on the open door of the Range Rover, talking to someone inside. But from what Palmsting could see, there was no one inside that car. This lunatic was just talking to himself again. Naturally the taxi driver could not see the very small man sitting on the dashboard of that car, listening intently to Vincent Ettrich.

  John Flannery was writing in his journal when the doorbell rang. He stopped, capped the silver fountain pen, and read what he had just written: Up close, most women’s pussies look like a piece of chewed gum.

  Flannery liked keeping a daily journal and had been doing it for years. He saw himself as a flaneur, a boulevardier, a keen observer and appreciator of life on earth and mankind in particular. He liked people, he really did. He had no hesitation killing any of them or making their lives miserable, but generally he got a big kick out of mankind and had no complaints about working with them.

  Behind him he heard the Great Dane walk to the door and wait there as it always did when someone rang the bell. Flannery despised that dog more every day but there was nothing he could do about it. When he’d been assigned here, Luba had been sent to accompany him as a so-called partner. It meant that they still didn’t trust him fully although he had never done anything to merit their distrust. He was a good soldier—followed orders and never complained. But what was his reward? A dog the size of an aircraft carrier that watched Flannery’s every move and tattled on him at least once a month. Luckily Flora Vaughn detested dogs so she’d never seen this one when she came over.

  John Flannery kept two apartments in Vienna: the small place near the Danube Canal where Leni visited him. And this one, in a different district three miles away, which was leased to Kyle Pegg. Pegg’s place was much nicer and he spent most of this time here. It was on the top floor of a nineteenth-century building with a wide view of the eastern part of the city. He had arranged his desk so that it faced that panoramic view. He often just sat there with a glass of whiskey looking out the window, a perfectly contented man.

  Standing up now to answer the door, he wondered who was there. Flannery couldn’t think of anyone in particular. Leni didn’t know about this apartment and besides, she was dead. Flora was at home. It was too late in the day for the postman to be delivering the mail. Maybe it was religious fanatics going from door to door selling their always engaging version of God. He always enjoyed zealots.

  The dog was blocking enough of the door so that there was no way Flannery could open it. This had happened before. It was almost like the animal was mocking him with its size. He longed to kick the damned beast in the ass to get it to move out of the way but knew if he did, that juicy piece of information would get back to his boss and only cause more trouble.

  “Could you move?”

  They locked eyes but the dog did not move.

  “Please?”

  Luba moved just enough inches for him to maneuver.

  “Thank you.” He opened the door. Vincent Ettrich was standing in the hall. Still dressed in his funeral suit and tie, he could easily have been mistaken for one of those religious nuts. Flannery was genuinely startled.

  “Mr. Flannery or Mr. Pegg—which would you prefer I call you?” Vincent’s voice was relaxed and secure, not the slightest trace of fear in it.

  A big smile grew on John Flannery’s face. What an impressive opening line! He had never imagined Vincent Ettrich would be so collected when they first met, but bravo. It made things much more engaging than if this man had only been a cowering little mouse.

  “I prefer Flannery, if you don’t mind. Will you come in?”

  Ettrich strode into the apartment, took one look at the large black and white dog, and kept moving into the living room. Flannery was again surprised. When most people saw Luba for the first time they either hesitated or grinned uncertainly at the behemoth. Ettrich did neither. He looked at the dog as if it were a side table and walked past it.

  In the living room he went to one of the windows and stared out at the impressive view. Flannery came in and stood behind him but said nothing. He was fascinated to see how Ettrich was going to play this one. If he knew that John Flannery and Kyle Pegg were the same person then Ettrich knew a great deal, yet he showed no fear.

  “Did you get my address from Flora?”

  “Yes. I just spoke with her,” Ettrich said without turning around.

  Which was seriously rude. Flannery’s smile fell. He didn’t like that. Ettrich should have turned and faced him, answered his question, and then turned back to the nice view. This was Flannery’s home and Vincent Ettrich was an uninvited guest.

  “Did Leni ever come here, Mr. Flannery?”

  “No.”

  “Only Flora?”

  “Yes.”

  Ettrich reached forward and with two fingers touched the brass turn on the window. For a moment Flannery thought that he was going to open it.

  “You killed Leni.” It was a statement, not a question.

  There was no reason for Flannery to lie or be evasive. “Yes. I suppose you could say I did. Yes.”

  “Would you have killed Flora too to make Isabelle go over there?”

  Flannery answered cheerfully, “Maybe, but I never really thought about it.”

  Luba walked into the room and over to a large foam-rubber bed made up for it on the floor below one of the windows.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” Ettrich’s voice was still easy and conversational. There was no anxiety in it, no desperation.

  “Not at all. Would you like something to drink? Coffee?”

  “No thank you. I’d just like to sit.” Vincent moved from the window over to a slinky black leather couch Flannery loved. It was one of the only pieces of furniture in the room. He had searched for months and only found what he wanted at a showroom in Udine, Italy. It had cost seven thousand dollars. It was beautiful and sexy and comfortable and perfect. He almost hit Luba the day he came home and found the dog stretched out asleep on it. When he pushed it off, there were white spots on the couch from its dried drool and (he assumed) urine that had to be carefully scrubbed off.

  Sitting down on it now, Ettrich said, “I want to talk about cancer.”

  The statement was so bizarrely out of context that Flannery stopped and stood there, thoroughly confounded. “Cancer?”

  “Yes.” Vincent put both hands flat on the couch.

  This was getting more interesting by the moment. Flannery sat down on the other end.

  Ettrich continued, “Tell me something. You should know about this; it’s right up your alley.”
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  Their first meeting wasn’t turning out the way Flannery had planned, but it certainly was different.

  “I don’t understand cancer.”

  Flannery looked to see if Ettrich was putting him on. Was there a catch in his voice or a smile in his eye to indicate he was bullshitting?

  “What’s not to understand?” Flannery tried to modulate his voice so that it sounded serious but not too serious, just in case.

  “Whenever cancer destroys a body it also destroys itself.”

  Flannery nodded.

  “Which means that cancer is either suicidal or suicidally stupid. Because the result is the same—it dies when the body it attacks dies.” Ettrich’s voice rose in annoyance.

  “I never thought of it that way but you’re right, Vincent.”

  Luba came over to the men and laid its big head on Ettrich’s lap. He didn’t appear to mind. But did he know this dog was cognizant? Did he know it understood everything he said? Flannery looked at Ettrich and wondered just how much he did know and why he’d really come here today.

  “Chaos is like cancer, isn’t it, John?”

  Head still on Ettrich’s lap, Luba shifted its eyes to Flannery.

  “Why do you say that?” John’s voice remained neutral.

  “Because whenever chaos comes, it destroys and then disappears too. It doesn’t have much of a half-life. Disease, asteroids hitting the earth, plane crashes… You kill things and then you die, or whatever happens to chaos after it’s finished. Like cancer.”

  Flannery shook his head. “Those were the old days, Vincent. Things have changed. We’re very aware of what we do now. Chaos doesn’t come at random anymore—there’s always a reason. Using your analogy, it’s as if cancer specifically chooses its victims.”

  Ettrich petted the dog. “But you haven’t mentioned one important thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your history, what Chaos used to be like. Back in the bad old days when you didn’t have brains and just destroyed things. That part is still in you, John. You can’t get rid of it, anymore than I can get rid of my gene sequence. The problem with being conscious is your past always lives on somewhere inside of you. Take a dog—if you corner it and it gets scared, it reverts back to being a wolf and bites you.”