Multiversum (10 page)

Alex opened his eyes wide in horror. That was her. Sitting at her desk, with her head resting against the palm of her hand, her books spread open before her eyes and the highlighter clenched in her teeth, Jenny had heard Alex's thoughts loud and clear. But she had rejected them.

She'd concentrated and made an effort to think nothing at all. It had been incredibly hard. After a few minutes, she hadn't been able to keep it up. She'd shouted ‘That's enough' and then she'd run into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes, and climbed under a boiling-hot shower, doing her best to focus on nothing but the sound of the spray on her scalp.

Alex lurched back in panic. The shout echoed for a few more seconds inside his skull as he jerked to his feet. Then the telepathic contact faded.

‘What the hell …' he cried out loud, looking around him. ‘What's happening? Why would she do that?'

Alex moved slowly away from the bench. His legs were aching, and the effort it had taken to establish contact with Jenny had left him weakened. He headed for the main shopping strip, slipping into one of the cross streets that ran through Altona, leaving the ocean behind him.

I travelled around the world for you, Jenny … I won't stop till I find you.

‘This should be it,' Alex said as he looked at a hotel sign glowing at the end of the street.

The sign said
St James
, followed by three stars. As he walked up, the automatic doors swung open and he entered the lobby. In front of him, a German couple was doing their best to make themselves understood by the man behind the reception desk. They seemed to be upset. Off to the right, in the distance, he spotted a television set and went over to it. There were a number of sofas and armchairs arranged in a semicircle around a Samsung plasma TV. Alex sat down, glad to be free of the backpack's weight. The evening news was on.

All of us in great danger … You important.

The words of the Malaysian fortune teller suddenly surged back into his mind, and it was as though the man was sitting beside him, with his enigmatic smile and the cards in his hands.

Alex's head jerked around, as if to check that everything was all right. As if afraid that the man might be right behind him, following him like a silent shadow. He looked at his right hand. It was shaking.

When he turned around again, he saw that the German couple had just left the reception desk and were walking towards the door. It was his turn now.

‘Stay calm, Alex, stay calm,' he repeated to himself in a low voice before going up to the counter and asking if there was a single room available. Perhaps because he was so young, or because he was a foreigner, the man looked at him suspiciously. He asked to see his ID and a credit card. After taking down his details, he handed him a magnetic key-card and pointed him to the elevators.

Jenny shut her book at a quarter past seven.

Her parents had just come home. Clara was setting the table, and Roger was in the bathroom. Jenny emerged from her bedroom, still a little dazed after poring over logarithms for hours, and went downstairs. She stopped for a second in front of a small picture frame that hung on the wall, halfway down the stairs. It was a photograph of her grandparents. They were laughing heartily, arm in arm. Her grandfather had his hand on her grandmother's. It was a wonderful picture and she adored it. She preferred confiding her innermost thoughts to them in front of that framed photograph, rather than kneeling on the gravel at St Kilda Cemetery.

‘Darling, would you come give me a hand? Dinner's almost ready,' called Clara from the kitchen.

‘Give me ten minutes,' Jenny answered as she paced back and forth in the living room and then flopped down onto the sofa. She felt exhausted and would have given anything to be able to eat right there, on the couch, comfortably seated with her plate balanced on her knees.

‘In ten minutes I'll be finished doing it myself. Couldn't you come now?'

‘Okay, okay, I'm coming.'

Jenny stretched out her arms to motivate herself and rose from the sofa, but her arms felt heavy and dull. She needed to get some sleep, even just five minutes of sleep. Her eyelids felt as heavy as boulders. In the space of an instant, everything went black. When she opened her eyes again, she couldn't say whether she had slept, or for how long.

She got to her feet, ready to be told off by her mother. She leaned over to look inside the kitchen and saw that it was empty. Could her mother have possibly let her sleep without calling her for dinner?

She started walking slowly towards the kitchen, but a painting on the living-room wall, right next to the sofa, caught her eye. It depicted a man in a jacket and tie, sitting in a black leather armchair. The expression on his face conveyed self-confidence, his gaze was intense, and his hair was neatly combed. Her mother must have just bought it.

‘Who on earth is this?' she wondered aloud. ‘Mum, where are you?'

A noise at the front door tore her eyes away from that portrait, which she had no memory of ever seeing. A few seconds later, the door swung open and her mother came into the house.

‘Here we are,' said Clara as she set down three large bags of groceries.

‘But … Mum?' Jenny stared at her. Her mother had a different hairdo. ‘How long have I been asleep?'

‘How would I know? Were you asleep? I just got home. Is everything all right?'

‘But, dinner … you were …' Jenny stammered in confusion. ‘When did you hang up that thing? It's hideous.' Jenny indicated the painting with a toss of her head.

‘Connor's portrait? If he hears you … What kind of crazy questions are you asking today? We hung it there last Christmas. You helped me yourself. Tell me, you haven't been drinking by any chance, have you?'

Jenny looked around without answering, because other details had caught her attention in the meantime. A lamp that was two metres tall, a white piece of furniture that took up the entire wall facing the front door, as well as a Persian carpet and a black office fax machine, which had replaced her beloved purple cordless phone. Everything had changed in the time she'd been asleep on the couch.
It just doesn't make any sense.

‘Where's Dad?'

Clara put her bag down on the sofa and walked towards her daughter. She caressed her face, then laid both hands on her shoulders.

‘Darling, what on earth's come over you?'

‘Nothing's come over me,' said Jenny, who was starting to feel deeply uncomfortable. ‘Where's Dad?'

Clara lifted a hand to her mouth, as if to conceal a sudden burst of emotion. ‘Your dad's no longer with us. You know that, my darling.'

‘What did you just say?'

‘Oh Jenny, why do you do this to me? It's not any easier for me than it is for you, believe me. But it's something we have to accept. Every so often I find myself unable to believe it. Sometimes, I see him everywhere too.'

Jenny sat motionless for a few seconds, almost immobilised by her mother's embrace. A knot sat in her throat. Then she suddenly broke free, turned her back on Clara, and ran for the stairs. She took them two steps at a time, heading for her bedroom. She ran in, slamming the door behind her. Just as she was about to throw herself facedown on her bed in despair, she saw it: a framed photograph of Roger, on the highest level of a podium after coming in first at a swimming meet. Beneath him, in red, was written:
I miss you every day, Dad. Jenny
.

When she opened her eyes, she was still on the couch.

‘Well, do you want to come to dinner or not?' Clara was shouting from the kitchen.

Jenny leaped to her feet, panting. She looked around.
My purple cordless …
The images from the dream crowded her mind, like so many photographs tossed onto a table.

Jenny got up and looked around for the portrait of that mysterious man in a suit and tie. It wasn't there. In its place, where it always had been, was the poster of
A Beautiful Mind
, one of her family's favourite movies. She went into the kitchen.

‘Daddy!' Jenny exclaimed when she saw Roger at his usual place at the head of the table. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around him, planting a kiss on his cheek.

‘Hey, what's up? You need to borrow some money?' her father joked.

‘I had the most horrible nightmare,' she replied, her eyes downcast and pensive. ‘You were …'

‘What was I, Jenny?' he asked, apparently amused by his daughter's odd behaviour.

‘Nothing, nothing. It was just a dream.'

But it seemed so real …
she thought to herself.

Alex emerged from the shower, lay down on the bed, and turned on the TV. It was the first time he'd ever had a hotel room all to himself, and he felt as if he were the king of the world.

He dried off and got dressed in just a few minutes, determined to go out as quickly as possible to find somewhere to get a bite to eat. He left his room at around eight o'clock and went downstairs in search of the dining room. When he found it, at the end of a long hallway lined with pictures of the great jazz musicians of the past, he saw that the place was practically deserted. There was a single waiter serving a piping-hot bowl of soup to an elderly gentleman, seated at a table at the far end of the dining room.

Alex sat down and started looking at the menu. While he waited for his order to be taken, the noise of the old man slurping his broth caught his attention.

‘It won't hurt to try,' Alex told himself, and then he went over to the old man's table.

‘I'm sorry, sir,' Alex began, with some embarrassment. ‘Do you know a family' — and here Alex stopped to make sure he was using the right words — ‘called Graver?'

The man looked up and frowned. For a moment Alex felt uncomfortable, but then the man started speaking, carefully enunciating in elegant English that had no trace of a local accent or inflections.

He told him that while he didn't know much about the family, he certainly remembered good old Roger Graver, champion of the local chess tournament for three years running. He and Roger used to belong to the same club. To the best of his recollection, the family lived on Blyth Street — the number must have been 21 or 23, or something like that. One reason he remembered this was that he'd often send him invitations to various national tournaments. And there was one other detail he recalled: the Gravers had a young daughter.

‘
Grazie!
' Alex exclaimed, beaming, completely forgetting to speak in English. Then he half bowed and clumsily waved goodbye to the man who had provided him with the most precious information. He'd spoken to half the suburb and wasted an entire afternoon without coming up with a single lead, but all he'd had to do was walk into the hotel to find the right person.

There was no doubt about it. The following day he'd talk to Jenny.

14

Alex slept through the night without a single dream. Or if he'd dreamed, his brain was too tired to remember it when he woke up.

At ten o'clock the next morning, he was back on the street he'd walked down the previous day, and he turned from Pier Street into Blyth Street. He'd picked up a local map in the hotel and, as he'd been able to determine, the street was very close to the Esplanade.

When he had almost reached number 23, his heart started pounding even harder in his chest. Alex was craning his neck to see over the gate when he heard the sound of a bicycle bell coming from behind the house. He didn't even get a chance to ring the buzzer. A girl with long chestnut hair with reddish highlights suddenly appeared and came to a halt right by the house's front door. The only thing separating them was the driveway on the other side of the gate.

‘She's my age … my God … it's her,' Alex whispered to himself as he shyly raised his hand to get her attention.

The girl turned, saw him, and frowned.

Alex spun around, staring out at the road in embarrassment. He stood there for a few seconds with his back to the house, his eyes screwed shut.

What am I thinking? I just travelled around the world for this very moment …

Shyly, he faced the gate again, and saw the girl in the distance as she got off her bicycle.

‘Jen …' Alex started to say, but the rest of the name caught in his throat. What issued from his mouth was a hoarse choking sound, as if he were coughing.

The girl turned away again as she pulled a small key out of her jeans pocket and fitted it into the padlock on the chain. There was a frightened look in her eyes, like someone who felt defenceless, someone who thought she was being watched and threatened.

Damn it, I'm behaving like a complete lunatic!

Alex looked away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl lean her bike against a wall and start to back away.

‘Mum?' she said timidly, into a small window overlooking the front yard.

Suddenly, the door of the house flew open, and a woman wearing a yellow apron came out.