Complication (30 page)

“Second thoughts,” she said with a tired shrug. “Always so many second thoughts. And third thoughts. For years I wanted to tell your family. Always waiting for the right time. But there is no right time. Only the time we have. Does this make sense?”

It made sense. Not perfect sense, not even good sense. Just the kind of sense left to people like Vera and me. The kind of sense that remains when someone up and disappears. The kind of sense
I could live with as long as I didn't have to try to explain it to anybody else. And who else was left?

“When does your next treatment start?”

“Day after tomorrow. Tuesday it all begins again.”

In her letter she'd pledged to be at the Black Rabbit every day for two months. The time between her treatments, the only functional time that remained to her.

“You must be scared,” I said.

“Yes, I must be.”

I could think of nothing else to say.

Two figures on a bench under blue skies and the shade of old trees. I reached out a hand, put it on top of hers. She let it stay there. After a few moments she intertwined her fingers in mine. She turned away, and I couldn't see her face. I don't know if she cried. I don't know how long we sat there like that, unmoving and unspeaking, eyes elsewhere, hands clasped in her lap. There is a kind of time you can't measure. A kind you don't need to. Wouldn't want to.

And then the little girl was standing in front of us, the merest hint of a grin on her face as she shuffled from one foot to the next.

“Tik-tak,” said the girl.

Vera dropped my hand and looked up.

“Tik-tak,” the girl intoned, louder this time.

All at once Vera's jaw slackened, her eyes scanning the perimeter as she shot to her feet.

“Tomáš?” she called weakly. “Tomáš?”

I knew I'd seen the girl before when she smiled to reveal a toothless black maw.

Was-Kelley follows the crimson-clad, rot-mouthed Madimi across the tavern and down the worn stones leading to the cellar. He removes a torch from the cellar in order to see better only to find she has vanished. At the rear of the room, past the casks of wine, is a door with a bolt held in place by a large padlock. Was-Kelley hobbles over, finds the lock undone, and stumbles into a passage not twelve hands high, no wider than a confessional, and utterly without light. After a quarter of an hour of hobbling his legs fail, and he commences to crawling. He holds the torch aloft in his right hand, giving him only one arm and half a leg to propel him forward. The tunnel twists and turns, rises and suddenly falls. Another quarter of an hour passes, and the torch is extinguished for lack of air. Was-Kelley can hear the scuttling of rats moving over the floor. He can smell their damp fur as they brush against his face. As the rodents grow more brazen, he registers their claws digging into his arms, feels their teeth piercing the flesh of his face as inch by inch he pulls himself through an enormity of darkness. And when the passage grows too constricted to allow him even this meager movement, he feels the rats writhing beneath him in mass, bearing him from head to toe upon their hundred backs, conveying him towards a flickering light some ways distant. Closer he sees it is candlelight spilling from a crack beneath an iron door. The passage widens and the rats take their leave. He has reached the end of the passage. He clamors upright and leans upon the damp wall and listens but hears nothing, not the beating
of his own heart nor the wheezy bellows of his lungs, for since his resurrection the blood has been motionless in his veins.

Was-Kelley raps three times upon the door and waits.

With a great moaning the door opens, and before him is silhouetted a bent figure black robed and white of beard. As Was-Kelley's eyes narrow against the light he sees a second figure in the room, a young man no more than twenty reclining upon a table, his naked flesh glistening and wet. One arm dangles over the edge of the table, and drops of water roll off his pale fingers.

You took your time
, the white-bearded figure says. Only upon hearing the voice does Was-Kelley recognize him to be Jacob Eliezer, the Black Rabbi. The years have not been kind. His flesh has grown papery and spotted, his dark eyes further receded into his skull. His eyes are milky and unfocused.

Welcome to the Fifth Quarter
, says the Black Rabbi.

The Black Rabbi helps Was-Kelley to stand.
You are in the Chevra Kadisha adjoining the Jewish cemetery
, he tells him.
Here we cleanse the body before burial according to the laws of Halacha. Here is a sacred place. Here I sit nights as the shomrim, guarding against any who should endeavor to pilfer our fine and healthy corpses. A fit job for a blind man! I trust you have no designs upon them?

The rabbi laughs and Was-Kelley perceives three shapes laid upon another table at the far side of the room, bodies draped in sheets of white. A trunk in the corner is filled with bolts of fabric and a set of heavy iron shears for cutting. The room smells of soap and tallow and putrefaction. The Black Rabbi moves past Was-Kelly and closes the heavy iron door behind him. From inside the room the door is concealed, its surface overlaid with false brickwork. The mystery of the Black Rabbi's comings and goings from the walled Jewish ghetto years ago when he would secretly meet Edward Kelley to discuss gematria was a mystery no longer.

Forgive the foul stench
, says the Black Rabbi, moving with all the
speed of a wounded goose to a corner where sits the large trunk heaped with fabric.
You never grow accustomed to it, but some nights are worse than others. These fellows must be especially ripe.
After rummaging through the trunk's contents, the rabbi emerges with a parcel draped in a familiar swath of black.

Was-Kelley unwraps the parcel given him by the Black Rabbi and finds the Complication remains as it was the day he delivered it to his melancholy Emperor, unscathed, preserved in all its gilded glory, complete save the winding key. Was-Kelley gazes upon it for several moments then drapes the watch about his own neck and tucks the instrument safely beneath his mud-encrusted cloak. It warms his cold flesh as if alive.

Procuring the piece was no easy task
, says the Black Rabbi, his thick white eyebrows drawn together like clouds pushed by opposing winds. He produces from his robe a scrap of paper with listed figures and dates, but before he can present the bill to the resurrected suicide, Was-Kelley has withdrawn his means of payment.

With a single thrust to the Rabbi's throat he buries the gypsy dagger to its hilt. The Rabbi stumbles back and stammers in a garbled tongue as blood issues forth in a fountain of sputtering arcs. As his beard goes from white to crimson, the rabbi tries to steady himself on the table's edge but upsets its balance and dislodges the body thereupon. The corpse topples to the floor and the rabbi is not long in joining it. Supine, their splayed bodies offer a study in contrasts. Still one young, naked, and clean. Old one clothed, besmirched in gore, and twitching as the life pulses out of him.

Was-Kelley slumps heavy against the wall, his back sliding down until he is sitting with wooden leg and broken one both outstretched. He labors in undoing a series of buckles and straps at his knee and disengages the false limb. Taking the appendage in his hands, he runs his fingers over its length until they register
a slight ridge invisible to the naked eye. Was-Kelley digs at the seam with his fingernails until he has pried loose a hollowed compartment measuring the width of two fingers. The winding key, solid gold and inscribed with esoteric symbols, the same three-inch length of precious metal Rudolf had two years previously dispatched the entirety of his royal police in an effort to claim, tumbles out of its hiding place and clinks dully upon the floor. Was-Kelley inserts it into the watch's winding slot. The mechanism does not yield. The second rule governing the Rudolf Complication dictates that more is required.

Was-Kelly removes the dagger from the old man's neck and doggedly hacks at the right wrist of the Black Rabbi until the joint is a flayed and spongy mass. The dagger having proven sufficient for murder but too blunt for surgery, Was-Kelley employs the heavy iron shears the Jew had used to cut cloth for dressing the dead. The old man's bones snap between the blades and his detached hand drops to the ground where it lands palm up, fingers slightly extended as if in supplication.

Manipulating the Rabbi's disembodied hand Was-Kelley finds to be an awkward undertaking. Thick with viscous blood, the uncooperative and calloused fingers slide between his own, become at once limp and inflexible, refusing take hold of the winding key. But after much grappling, Was-Kelley is able to purpose the dead man's hand for turning the key, which at last turns with ease, and Was-Kelley turns it until it can turn no further, and then he tosses the lifeless appendage aside and listens. The watch begins ticking. Was-Kelley's heart beats back to life.

And in that moment is shown him one final revelation, a jumbled vision of his fate now written, the long thread of his future balled into a knot. Manifestations of Was-Kelley flash by, rich and poor, powerful and impotent, fat and thin, handsome and ugly, all engaged in lurid scenes of murder and degradation spanning
centuries untold. Madimi shows him murders ruthlessly efficient, murders whimsical and intricate, each ending with his fingers interwoven with those of dead men and dead women and dead children by the hundreds, some of Madimi's choosing, some of his own. Over the years he will fall into patterns unknown even to himself, and therein will be writ his destruction. He will lose the Complication in a single moment of carelessness but will go on killing past the point of its utility because old habits are the hardest to break. And then Madimi will turn her full strength upon him, abandoning his cause to aid those fated to destroy him. It may happen in five years, it may happen in ten. Time itself she would use as an instrument of torture.

Was-Kelley is lastly given a glimpse of his own end, an image so vague and fleeting he will guess upon its substance until the very moment of its arrival. He closes his eyes and releases his new-drawn breath, and the room is filled with a double ticking as the twin mechanisms of tiny gears and levers spring to life. After so many false starts his end is now beginning, his beginning is now over.

W
e scoured Stromovka for half an hour, frantically calling Tomášek's name as we charged through clusters of forest, over open spaces of patchwork grass, through a picnic area, and around the pond near the center of the park. Vera would stop pedestrians on the footpath to ask if they'd seen him while I stood mute and useless beside her, watching their startled reactions, scanning the distance for any sign of Tomášek or the little girl. The same girl who'd forced upon me
Prague Unbound
the night I arrived in the city.

The girl had disappeared as soon as she'd delivered her message, run off somewhere as I tried to go after Vera, to calm her down. There was no calming her down. Her pace increased with each stride and sweat darkened her purple scarf.

“Please tell me right now what the fuck is going on,” she said, suddenly grabbing my arm as we neared her car. “What have you gotten me into? Stop playing games and just tell me who you are and what is happening!”

“What have
I
gotten
you
into?”

“You are an insane person. Either you are insane or I'm going
crazy.” She unlocked her car with the remote on her keychain. “Maybe both. Get in.”

Last time someone was determined on taking me for a ride I ended up being catapulted through the windshield, but pointing that out now would probably just make me sound insane. I got in the passenger side and she slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door. We wound our way out of the little side streets and were soon ripping through the expressway, Vera weaving through traffic like a racecar driver who'd spent the last forty-eight hours smoking crystal meth. Racecar, another palindrome. It wasn't until we were back in the neighborhood near her apartment that she spoke.

“Where did you get that book?” she asked.

“The guidebook?”

“Guidebook!” She cursed under her breath, slapped her palms against the steering wheel. “That book, when I opened it, the book was . . . forget it.”

“What?”

“I'm
not
catching your insanity,” she declared between clenched teeth.

“Where is the book?”

“In the pond,” she said. “The book, your crazy Right Hand of God folder—I won't have these things in my life. They're a sickness. Just tell me right now what is happening and where I can find my son.”

Probably wasn't the best time to point out if she hadn't thrown the book in the pond, maybe it could've provided some guidance, some clue about what to do next. Because I certainly had no idea, and her only strategy seemed to be repeatedly questioning my sanity. Right then I'd have taken crazy thoughts, but in truth I had no thoughts at all. The mental silence was enough to make me want to rip my own brain out of my skull and scream at it.

“Where is my son?” she asked. “Tell me.”

Kick it, punch it. Try to beat some life into it.

“Do you know where he is, yes or no? Are you even listening to me?”

I nodded. Stomp on it. Drop-kick it.

“Don't nod! Speak! Tell me something goddamnit.”

“Don't nod is a palindrome,” I muttered.

“What? What does this mean?”

“You said to speak, so I'm speaking. I have no idea where he is, Vera. I'm sorry.”

“The police,” she sighed. “I'm calling the police.”

And now I had to be the one to argue against getting them involved. The man who'd followed her, the one she'd seen at the Black Rabbit, he wasn't a policeman like she'd thought. He was an ex-cop turned black sheriff who was now working for Klingáč. He had friends inside the force. Someone might tip him off; he'd give word to Klingáč. We couldn't risk it. These were the people who'd killed Paul, after all, and I'd witnessed other examples of their violence firsthand.