Читать книгу Save the Dragons! - Martin Berman-Gorvine - Страница 8

Chapter 4

It was not at all difficult for my parents and Jodie to note that something was bothering me all Union Day week-end. I had been taciturn ever since Tuesday evening, when I had stood and waited under the statue of Sir Andrew, the mighty conqueror of West Florida, for an hour and a half as the cold bit deeper and deeper at my fingers and the tips of my nose and ears.

Mum would have shouted at me for half an hour at least had she known that I had braved the cold without the mittens she had knitted me. She still wanted to protect her poor baby against the Arctic cold of a Philadelphia winter. Well, that may have been how she saw it, but what seventeen-year-old bloke is going to go out wearing handmade baby blue mittens, with little brown harry bears on them, yet? Nor could I explain that to her and hurt her feelings.

So instead I practically got frostbite waiting for this imaginary Teresa to show up, which of course she failed to do. The time passed slowly as I clapped my hands together and watched the M.P.s in their frock coats or long skirts and the Lords in their periwigs and ruffled shirts strut past, along with businessmen, tourists, and students like myself.

As a diversion I eavesdropped on a honeymooning couple from Louisiana. I am a good student in Madame Dantès’ class, but it is not her fault that she teaches Parisian, not the dialect they speak out West, which she calls with a sniff “Créole jargon.”

Some parts of their conversation I could understand fairly easily, while other times I could only make out maybe one word in three. Jean-Pierre could not find their passports, it seemed, and Anna-Louise berated him.

“We came all the way from Nouvelle Orleans to be arrested in Philadelphia?”

“Don’t be silly, girl, the British don’t arrest you for not carrying your papers. It is not the Imperium here. You know what they are like.” And he started talking through his nose, doing such a good impression of a Continental accent like Madame Dantès’s that he soon had Anna-Louise giggling. “Your papers, if you please, monsieur. Where do you think you are, among the red savages of the Grand Massif? This is a civilised country here, and you must carry your papers!”

But Jean-Pierre soon found the passports in his inside jacket pocket, and the two of them walked off happily arm in arm.

When Big Benjamin struck six-thirty, I gave up and made my way back to St. George’s. The streetcar was late and by the time I returned I was tired and hungry and ten minutes late for curfew, which is at seven o’clock on weeknights in winter. Worse luck, Hartles was on duty that night.

From half a block away I could see him skulking around the gate, just waiting to catch any unfortunate tardy soul, so I sneaked around to the back. Luckily for me, Curtis was there snogging Martha, and they helped me through a well-known gap in the stone wall, where the ivy grows thick and the streetlight has been out for months, if not years. Every time it is fixed somebody puts it out of commission again.

I was grateful, but before I could thank him Curtis sneered, “Out with a girl?”

“Actually, yes. I was out to meet a girl.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Martha cried, patting my arm. “What’s her name?”

“Teresa,” I said.

Curtis stared at me in open disbelief. “Indeed? What did you two do?”

“I met her in Parliament Plaza and we went to see ‘Florida Homecoming,’” I improvised. Which was the kinetoflick I had planned to see with Teresa, if she had kept our appointment.

Curtis would not leave me alone. “A war ’flick on a first date?” he said.

“Well, Teresa is no ordinary girl. Not that you are,” I quickly added for the sake of Martha, who proceeded to question me about what Teresa looked like, where she lived, where she went to school, and heaven knows what else. I cannot even remember all the lies I told. So when Thursday finally came and the family carriage pulled up at the gate of St. George’s, like a liberating armored chariot in the Latin Wars of Independence, I was not as happy as I should been. My little sister was first out.

“Hi big brother!” she cried, bounding right up, her dirty blond hair flying all around, as she threw her right arm around my neck. She didn’t have to reach up very far to do it, either. She had grown in the three months since I had last seen her, and now the top of her head was level with my nose.

“Hi Jodie,” I said and hugged her back.

“It’s Jo now,” she said, pulling away and planting her hands on her hips.

Mum rolled her eyes as she walked up and planted a kiss on my cheek. “That is all we have been hearing since the beginning of school term,” she said. “But even her friends forget sometimes. She was so angry at Marcia for calling her Jodie that the poor girl went home practically in tears.”

“Mum, you’re exaggerating. I just want to be treated like a grown-up.”

“Contractions, dear. What have I warned you about them?” Mum said. As a refugee from the Home Islands, where they speak an even worse Creole than the Louisianans, Mum is death on contractions and anything else she regards as not being the King’s English.

“Just because you’re getting so tall doesn’t automatically mean you’re an adult, pet,” Dad rumbled.

Mum winced at the contractions as he ambled up to shake my hand. He is a head taller than her, and three or four inches taller than me, and his grip is as firm and unyielding as the moving part on the school’s babbage I once caught my hand in.

Still, I was glad to see him. I was glad to see them all and hear that familiar soft Nanticoke twang, and I was only a little bit embarrassed. So what if Curtis or one of my fellow upperclassmen was lurking somewhere nearby, watching everything so they could make me pay for it later? It did not matter! For one whole weekend, I was going to stay with my family in the Franklin Inn, the fanciest hotel in town, founded by Sir Benjamin himself, and forget all about school.

But first we were going out to eat in a superb Siamese restaurant in Rittenhouse Square; Dad was really splurging. Over the Pad Siam, with its crushed peanuts and Gulf of Louisiana shrimp, I had to endure a much more thorough interrogation than Curtis and Martha had subjected me to on Tuesday night, though thankfully, more about my marks than about my nonexistent social life.

It is Dad’s dearest wish that I attend King’s College, Oxford University next year (the one in Nanticoke, of course, not the one in the Home Islands, which is officially called Université Louis-Napoléon) and then follow him to work at the Directorate Royal for Research in Aerospace and Ground Odysseys National at Wallops Island, an easy half-hour ferry ride from our home in Gingo Teag.

I do not know what career I want to pursue, but I am certain it is not that. While I am proud of Dad for all his work on heavier-than-air craft, a young fellow must have his own dreams, even if he is not quite sure what they are.

So I tried to muster as much enthusiasm as I could when Dad asked if I had my university recommendations lined up. “Well, the pastor will write me a nice letter of recommendation, of course,” I said, shifting in my seat.

“Yes, Geoffrey Marks is a good bloke,” Dad allowed. “But what about your natural philosophy master, what’s his name.”

“Mr Goldberg. Yes, he is pleased with my progress.”

“‘Pleased with your progress?’” Jo mimicked. “That doesn’t sound very good to me.”

I gave her a dirty look.

“Jo is correct, dear,” Mum put in. “and Michael, please set a good example for the children. Tom, you must ensure he is more than simply pleased. You need to have him write you a glowing recommendation so you can be admitted into Oxford’s technical program, the way your father was.”

Jodie made matters worse by prattling on about her latest achievements, such as the Rachmaninoff violin solo she had played for an audience in Baltimore, with the Duke and Duchess of Maryland in the audience.

“And did they bow and curtsey to you?” I snapped.

“No, but the duchess did tell me afterwards that she was moved to tears,” Jo said, immune as always to sarcasm.

Mum tactfully changed the subject to her community work. She is chair of the Gingo Teag Tourism Advisory Council, which may not pay much of anything but is a very important job in a town that has basically two industries, the DRRAGON base and the dragon herself, Assa Teag Ashley, in her lair across the channel on Assa Teag Island. Mum also serves on the Island Beautification Committee and is a longstanding member of the school board.

My mum can bake a carrot cake and brew cardamom-spiced coffee for a dozen people in our spotless living room in less than an hour, and she knows how to sweet-talk the mayor or a key school board member into giving her what she wants, which is always something good for the town. If she possessed any ambition at all she could be mayor herself, or the M.P. from Nanticoke’s Sinepuxent Riding, but she prefers to stay out of the limelight.

“I am grateful to Gingo Teag for taking me in, and Gingo Teag is quite big enough for me,” she always says in her salty Liverpool accent. And, she has recently been able to add, “Besides, Franklin University Press is going to publish my book on the birds of the Chesapeake Bay, and that takes up the rest of my time. When I am not picking up your dirty socks after you.”

Then too, perhaps she thinks it as well not to stir up ignorant suspicions, being a refugee from the Home Islands. Anyone who is not a native-born “from-here” from Gingo Teag itself, like Dad, is a “come-here” in some people’s eyes. Like rotten Johnny Dorsey, who taunted me in third grade about being the son of a “French whore” until I bloodied his nose for him.

All the villagers knew about Mum was that Dad had brought her here suddenly, at the age of twenty-two, in the middle of what was supposed to be his graduate year abroad at the other Oxford. Not that Jodie, excuse me, Jo and I knew much more than that.

“Oh, I rescued your mother all right,” Dad would drawl whenever we asked what had really happened. He would look her straight in the eyes, and they would both burst out laughing. We could no more pry any details out of them than you can pry a live clam open with your bare fingers.

So I was relieved to let her go on about the Council, which was already busy preparing for the pony swim next July, when the Dragonfire Club rounds up the wild horses that live on Assa Teag and herds them across the channel to Gingo Teag. It is a great tourist event that draws almost as many people as come to town in the spring, when Ashley goes hunting in the marshes.

For that event, the Council is ready years in advance, not that that kept Mum from grumbling about the Nanticoke House of Burgesses’ failure to pay for a bridge across the marshes from the mainland, which has been in the planning stages for the best part of a century.

“If we had the bridge,” she complained, “we could accomodate twice as many tourists as we do now to watch Ashley catch her springtime breakfast.”

“Yes Mum, but where would we put them all?” Jodie—all right then, Jo, I will get used to it—pointed out. “We barely have enough hotel rooms as it is to house all those who do come over on the ferry. And all that carriage traffic might disturb her, and we haven’t got near enough recharging stations for all their batteries.”

“Look who’s an expert in dragon biology and carriage engineering,” Dad said, smiling as he ruffled her hair, cutting short whatever remark Mum was about to make.

But Jo is really not such a spoiled little brat—at least, not most of the time. After Mum and Dad checked in at the hotel she told them she wanted to show me the ornamental fountain in the lobby—which really was very impressive, with jets of water playing over a flock of brass swans that looked ready to take flight.

“So what’s troubling you, big brother?” she asked as soon we were out of earshot.

“I am not much bigger than you anymore,” I sighed, tossing a ha’penny into the sparkling water. “And who says something is bothering me?”

“You can’t fool me, Tommy boy,” she said, flicking my earlobe with her fingernail.

“Ow! All right, I’ll tell you,” I said, and proceeded to lay out the whole story from my first sight of Gloria’s Gateway Books, to its strange, impossible books and phonograph records, to Teresa’s failure to appear in Parliament Plaza Tuesday afternoon. She looked skeptical at first, then interested, and finally amused.

“What is so funny?” I demanded.

She giggled, covering her mouth with her right hand. “Oh, Tommy. Don’t you see what happened?”

“Yeah, your dumb big brother cannot get the girl. Again.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all! You said that bookstore is called ‘Gateway Books.’ Think about it. That name must be significant.”

Jodie—Jo—likes using both big words and bad grammar. It can be very confusing! I squinted at her. “What do you mean?”

“You said the books in the store have strange, made-up histories in them, like something out of scientification—only not written like a scientification book,” she said as I wrinkled my nose in disgust, “but like a genuine, boring, academic history book. Right?”

“Yes?”

“Well then,” she said, folding her arms and smirking.

“Well what? So what?”

“So, why would a scientification author go to all the trouble of writing one of those silly books full of things like heavier-than-air travel to other planets but in such a boring way?”

“Why indeed?”

“And if someone was dumb enough to write an imaginary book that way, no-one would publish it! Unless it wasn’t fiction in the first place!”

“I do not follow you.” Not for the first time.

“It isn’t fiction, big brother, in some other world!”

My mouth fell open. “You mean that Gateway Books is a doorway to other planets?”

“More amazing even than that, big brother! Think of that letter Teresa wrote you. What’s a ‘cell phone?’”

“I asked her that myself, in my letter back to her.”

“You see? She’s from somewhere else,” Jo said in as dramatic a voice as possible. “Maybe she’s a ghost of some kind. A ghost from another version of Earth, an impossible one!”

“Ghosts cannot write letters,” I pointed out.

“Sure they can. I read a story by E.A. Poe once, ‘The Spectral Letter,’ which was about that exactly.”

“Well I am certain that E.A. Poe, whoever he is, is a great expert on ghosts.”

“Was. He was a great expert. He lived in the nineteenth century. You’re supposed to be the literature person.”

I sniffed. “Some trashy Gothic writer? I never heard of him. Anyway, I do not believe in spooks.”

“Listen to you. ‘I do not believe in spooks.’ You sound like the Fraidy Lion in ‘Dorothy, The Witch of Oz.’”

“Oo! I do believe in spooks, I do I do I do I do I do,” I imitated, making her giggle. We both love that kinetoflick.

I met Judy Garland once, when I was little, before Jo was born, and Mum and Dad took me on a trip to Hollywood. She was an old lady by then of course, living in a huge old mansion outside town on Lake Michigan, and we ran into her going for a walk on the promenade. But I remember how she smiled down at me when I asked if she had lived happily ever after with Auntie Em on that farm in Indiana.

“Well, regardless, I think the only way you’re going to meet this Teresa of yours is back in that old haunted bookstore,” Jo insisted.

“You may be right,” I sighed, more to shut her up than for any other reason.

“So let’s go there together tomorrow.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Any girl mad enough to want to go out with my big brother that bad, or at all, I just have to meet!”

That was too much. I grabbed for her but she skipped out of the way, and I was the one who went headfirst into the fountain.

* * * *

“It’s Jodie’s fault!” I spluttered as my mother stood with her arms folded and shook her head slowly back and forth. “She provoked me!”

“Are you five years old?” Dad snapped, grabbing me by the arm. “Do I have to put you over my knee and spank you?”

Little sister, of course, was laughing so hard her eyes were streaming and she could only make little squeaky noises. And of course I was the one who was confined to the room, with nothing but the kinetoscope for company, and I had already seen all the flip-pictures the hotel had, while that rotter Jodie went out for gelato and a walk along Boathouse Row with Mum and Dad.

And yet the next morning, while Mum and Dad were still sleeping, she woke me up in typical charming fashion by flicking my earlobes and putting her hand over my mouth so I could not protest.

“Shh! We have to go to Gloria’s Gateway Books so we can find your girlfriend, remember?”

“She is not my girlfriend. I have never even met her! She may not even be real!” I said in a furious whisper. “And you have a lot of nerve, after what you did yesterday!”

“Quiet, you’ll wake Mum and Dad,” she said. “I already wrote them a note that you’re taking me to the Franklin Institute to see Sir Ben’s inventions. You know, bifocals, the glass harmonica, the carriage battery—”

“The little sister strangulation device,” I said. “All right, fine. But dress warmly. It is a long walk from here.”

I was not about to admit to her that I did not actually remember where the bookstore was located. She figured it out soon enough anyway. We headed south and east, in the general direction of Parliament Plaza. Soon we were lost in an unfamiliar, deserted part of town. There were neither moving carriages nor street signs. But after two visits to the bookstore one would expect a familiar sight. I looked around with increasing nervousness for some kind of landmark.

“You don’t know where we are, do you, Tom?” Jo asked. She pressed herself against me.

I put my arm around her. “It’s all right, Sis, we shall find it,” I said, trying to sound more certain than I was. Although the sun had been shining when we left, the sky was now covered with a seamless layer of blank grey clouds the shade of the suit my father had worn to Granny’s funeral.

I shivered as the wind got under my coat collar, and, though most of my classmates would have mocked me for it, I tried to remember the prayers the pastor had taught us for times of trouble. But nothing came to me, and I found myself whispering a lullaby Mum used to sing. The lyrics were written by the father of a friend of hers back in Liverpool—Paul something. McCurry, maybe?

Courage, lad

You’ll need courage for the road ahead

For the road full of dread…

“There it is!” Jo exclaimed, pointing.

I rubbed my eyes. The friendly, dusty plate-glass window was patrolled once again by Tiferet, who meowed as we opened the door and walked in.

“I am sorry, Tiferet,” I said, reaching down and ruffling the short soft fur on top of her head, “I came as soon as I could.”

She trotted away toward the back.

“That is where I found the notes from Teresa,” I said, pointing where the cat had run towards the secret back room, “but first we should check the countertop.”

“Check for what?” Jo asked, adding in a squeal, “Peppermint tea! My favourite!” And there was my favourite Ceylon tea, in a mug right beside it. I picked up the note that the two mugs had weighed down. Jo peered over my shoulder.

“Do you mind? It is for me!” I said, snatching it away.

“Not just you. See, it says ‘Welcome Jo’ right there.”

And so it did.

Welcome, Jo. Tom, it’s good to have you back. I think this time, you need not take anything with you, except of course for the note from Teresa. Jo, when you find what you need, you will know what it is worth and what you must leave in exchange.

I hurried off toward the back room, while Jo, her eyes gleaming, began browsing the music section. I found Teresa’s letter and the books she had promised, and I only vaguely heard Jo’s exclamations, absorbed as I was in Teresa’s explanation, most of which I did not really understand. But, meet her here Monday afternoon? I would need the pastor’s permission to skip out on advanced Bible studies. Perhaps he would allow me a break, just this once.

There was a clatter and thump of books falling down in the next room, and then Jo burst in.

“Look at this! Just look!” She was panting, and there was a wild look in her eyes.

“Jo, what is it? What did you knock over?”

“Never mind that. Look what I found!” And she thrust an oversize book into my hands.

I glanced at the elderly periwigged gentleman on the cover and shrugged. “Yes? ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Later Symphonies and Sonatas.’ So what?”

“So what?” I have rarely seen Jo at loss for words, but she was positively spluttering. “Mozart died at age thirty-five, in 1791! There were no ‘later symphonies and sonatas.’ The man in the picture has to be what, at least as old as Granny when she died?”

I winced. Our grandmother had passed away the day after her eightieth birthday after complaining of a bad stomachache. She ate too many oysters at her birthday party, Dad had said. Mum had fried them for her, and she had done as good a job as any from-here. Better, even.

“Did it matter?” Mum had retorted. “She died happy, did she not?”

“So he looks old in this picture,” I said, annoyed at Jo for bringing up the unpleasant memory.

“So here are two complete symphonies that Mozart never lived to compose? This book has complete scores for Number 67, ‘London,’ and Number 82, ‘Undiscovered Worlds.’ In real life, Mozart’s last symphony was Number 41, ‘Jupiter.’ Plus there are four violin sonatas in this book, which I could play myself!”

“I suppose you could, but how would you explain where you found them? Who would believe unknown works by Mozart exist?”

She lifted her chin. “I could say I wrote them myself.” But she withered at the look I gave her. “No, I suppose I couldn’t. But shouldn’t I bring this music into the world somehow? And what about this book here, the one that talks about colonies on the moons of Jupiter! Don’t you think that could help get people excited about what Dad and everybody are doing at the DRRAGON base?”

I did not know how to answer so I changed the subject, showing her Teresa’s latest letter. Her face lit up as she read.

“See, I was right! She’s from a different world. Ooh, and look at this… Monday afternoon, huh? Tom and Teresa, sitting by the sea, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then they ride off in their ’lectric carriage… Ow!”

“Do Mum and Dad know you sing such naughty songs?”

“The main point is, I was right. She is from another world. You’re in love with an alien!”

“I am not in love with anybody. I have yet to meet this girl. She may not even exist.”

“Oh, she exists all right. Though her handwriting is pretty messy for a girl’s.” A mischievous look came into Jo’s eyes. “What do you suppose she looks like?”

“She is a tall redhead with jade-green eyes and long legs… No! I did not mean to say that!”

“That’s your ‘type,’ huh? Oh, I remember! That’s what Ginny Jones looks like.”

Ginny was in my class at Gingo Teag High School, before my parents sent me off to St. George’s. She was Miss Junior Nanticoke two years ago. As to her awareness of my existence, we might as well have lived in different universes rather than the same island village.

“It’s all right, big brother,” Jo said, giving me a hug. Clever—I could not hit her while she was hugging me. “I’m sure she’s beautiful, whatever she looks like. Hey, do you think I could convince Mum and Dad to let me stay here through Monday? No? Well then, you’re just going to have to send me a voice-gram as soon as you return from walking out with Teresa!”

“And what makes you think I would do that?” I said, pushing the annoying little pest away.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell Mum and Dad everything!” She squealed as I grabbed for her, ducking under my arms and scuttling off to the front of the store. By the time I caught up with her she was behind the counter, frowning thoughtfully at her reflection in the mirror. “What am I supposed to put in here that’s worth six unknown works by the greatest musical genius who ever lived?”

“I do not know,” I growled. “I do not think you own anything worth a farthing!”

“Now Tom, that’s just mean. You have to try for witty, big brother. Like, ‘I do not think you own anything that is worth as much as my life once Dad discovers that I do not want to become a DRRAGON engineer!’”

This time I actually tried to punch her in the nose, but I could not reach her over the counter. However, she ducked and, with a thump, hit her head on the corner of the counter.

“That’s it! I’m telling!” she howled.

“Go right ahead,” I said nastily. “And you can tell them where it happened, too, which is not where you said we were going in your note!”

We had both forgotten about Tiferet, who suddenly leapt on the counter between us and hissed, with her tail fluffed up and her teeth showing. We both started back. But instead of being afraid, we were both ashamed. Or at least I was, and Jo blushed. We both straightened up, Jo rubbing her head where she’d hit it.

“You’re not developing a lump, are you?” I asked uneasily. Mum would kill me if she heard me contracting my words! If she doesn’t kill me for what just happened to Jo!

“I don’t think so,” she muttered, avoiding my eyes. “Let me see what I have to leave.”

She spilt out the contents of her pockets on the counter. Some loose change, a miniature harry bear—one I had not seen before, so it must have been new, with its hopeful smile and little bow tie—and a tiny cobalt-blue whelk shell, worn smooth and bright from years of being carried around.

She had found it on a trip to Assa Teag. Only six or seven at the time, Jo was so proud when she found it out on Dragon’s Cove Hook, a long flat streamer of grey sand at the southern tip of the island. What she never knew was that I saw it first, rolling around almost invisibly in the swirling muddy water of the cove, and I picked it up and put it carefully down beside her when her back was turned so she would think she had found it. Now she looked at the shell, and raised her head, tears in her eyes.

“Shelly? I have to give up Shelly?” she whispered.

I shook my head slowly, not to say no, but because I did not know what to say.

“Can’t I give up new harry bear instead?” she pleaded.

I looked away so she would not see that my eyes were damp too. A moment later I heard a clatter from the register. Then she took my arm.

“Come on, Tommy, let us go find Mum and Dad now,” she said. She took Teresa’s letter out of my hand as we walked out the door into the grey cold. “Remember, big brother, not to worry about anything. As Gloria said, just relax and enjoy the walk.” Then she paused with a frown. “Who’s this ‘Einstein’?”