Multiversum (11 page)

‘Susan, you're finally here!' the woman exclaimed. The girl shot Alex one last mistrustful glance and then hastily stepped inside.

Alex had an idea. He took out his mobile phone and surreptitiously shone it inside the mailbox. Holding his breath, he read the name on the topmost letter. ‘Weller,' he whispered.
Wrong again.

The old man in the restaurant had been quite sure about the name of the street, but he wasn't positive about which number it was. Alex walked over a little closer to number 21. The houses were lined up side by side, just like the American suburban neighbourhoods in television series. He peeked inside this letterbox, too.

‘Thompson,' he read aloud. ‘This house belongs to the Thompson family. Damn it … this isn't the right address either!'

Alex thought it over for a minute or so, and then decided that he might as well try asking the Thompsons if they could provide him with any information. The old man couldn't have dreamed up the whole thing, and if there was anyone who could give him a lead on the Gravers, he imagined it might be a family who lived on the same street where they had once lived.

The gate swung open. Alex walked hesitantly up the path, which ran across a small lawn that was practically identical to the one next door, and then he approached the white wooden door. He climbed the two front steps and rang the doorbell.

The Graver family might well have moved away, he thought. That was certainly a possibility. At that thought, Marco's words about infinite possibilities echoed in his mind. Alex shook his head and focused on the more practical matter of what the old man had told him: a street name and a house number.

A shortish, stout woman with curly red hair, who looked to be about fifty, opened the door and looked out.

‘Who are you, young man?'

‘I'm sorry, madam,' he replied, with a nervous catch in his voice. ‘I guess this is the wrong address.'

Alex tried to pretend it was an honest mistake. He did his best to communicate in English, but his accent was unmistakeably that of an Italian. The woman asked him who he was looking for, and Alex avoided the question by introducing himself as an old schoolmate of a girl named Jenny Graver. He'd moved from Australia to Italy when he was eight years old and hadn't seen Jenny in all these years. He'd held on to this address ever since and had hoped he'd find her still living here. It was the simplest story he'd been able to come up with in his attempt to pry some information out of the current resident, whoever they might be.

The red-headed woman let him finish, then gave him a suspicious look.

‘Oh, I speak Italian myself,' she said with a strong Australian accent, giving him a hard stare. ‘Why don't you come in for a minute?'

Alex was intimidated by the woman's invitation. He suddenly seemed to lose the bold determination that had brought him this far.

‘I don't want to be any trouble … I …' he said, starting to back away.

The woman stared him right in the eye with a decisive glare. ‘No, I really think you'd better come in.'

Her words no longer seemed like an invitation. This was clearly an order.

Alex accepted, but was baffled. He wasn't at all sure he was doing the right thing. The woman turned her back to him and went inside, taking it for granted that he would follow her.

‘My name is Mary Thompson. Why don't you sit down in the living room,' she said as soon as Alex came through the door.

The walls of the spacious front hall were completely covered with paintings in heavy gilded frames. His gaze lingered on a canvas that depicted the Earth as seen from the moon. The lunar surface resembled a broad roadway that had been left unfinished, running straight into the void, while the shape of the Earth loomed in the distance, enormous and sumptuous, three-quarters illuminated by the sun.

‘Take a seat, young man,' the woman said again. Alex took a step towards the living room but remained standing by the doorway. ‘What's your name?'

‘Alex. Alessandro.'

‘And when did you live … here in Australia?' The tone of voice in her question was that of a police interrogator.

‘I lived here from when I was born until I turned eight.'

‘I'm making some tea. Do you like tea?'

‘Yes. But please, I really don't want you to put yourself to any trouble —'

‘No trouble at all, young man. I've wanted to have a chance to practise my Italian again for years now … I had just put a tea bag in the teapot when you rang the doorbell. It's as if you were supposed to come.'

‘What a coincidence …' said Alex, trying to sound friendly, even though he was rather put off by the woman's attitude. She was alternating between cordial smiles and inquisitorial glares, reminding him of his Latin teacher at exam time.

‘There's no such thing as a coincidence! There are numbers, and there are signs,' said Mrs Thompson in a firm voice. Alex looked at her curiously, and she responded with a smile.

‘I'm astrologer,' she added. ‘The sky is open book to my eyes. I spend my nights on roof looking up … I own powerful telescope, you know.'

Alex nodded awkwardly. He didn't know what to say.

‘But back to matter at hand.' The woman's tone suddenly changed, and she got a serious look in her eyes. ‘Do you remember what this friend of yours, this Jenny, looked like?'

Okay. Now I'm screwed
. ‘It's been so many years, I don't remember all that many details. She was a very clever girl, very nice … I just wanted to see her again, since I was here in Australia on holiday with my family, and I happened to have her old address. Clearly, she's moved away.'

‘Girl was very smart, this true. And very nice.'

‘Did you know her?'

‘Of course.'

At once, Alex's body stiffened. He started looking wildly around the room as if searching for a way out. The woman was staring at him with an icy glare.

‘I see,' he mumbled.

Mary Thompson wiped her mouth with an embroidered linen napkin, her eyes still on her guest. ‘I was her nanny.'

Great. I'm really in deep shit now
.

‘Oh, really? Then maybe you can tell me —'

‘Cut it out,' she interrupted brusquely. ‘Stop lying to me! Tell me why you really here.'

Alex was on the ropes. It was obvious that his flimsy story had fallen apart. Maybe the best thing to do was to come clean.

‘Well, ma'am, I really did come to say hello to Jenny … I thought that …'

‘I give you one last chance to stop trying to trick me, boy. You want to take chance I give immediately, or you prefer continue with this show?'

For a second, Alex considered telling her everything. Then he realised it wasn't a good idea.

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Thompson. The last thing I wanted to do was make you angry, but I only have vague memories from when we were seven … or eight years old. Maybe I have it all wrong and —'

‘Jennifer Graver died at age six,' said the woman. Her words reverberated in Alex's head. So Jenny was dead? How could Jenny be dead?

Mary caught the bewildered look in his expression and interpreted it as a confirmation of her suspicions.

‘I was her nanny from day she born. Gravers picked me in first place because I speak Italian.'

Her eyes reddened. She pulled a handkerchief out of her blouse pocket and dabbed at a tear that was rolling down her cheek.

‘The family stayed on for year after that,' she went on in a voice racked with emotion, ‘but in end they gave house to me and moved away to Brisbane. Jenny was smart girl. Nice, smart girl. Always she smiled. Then one day she died before my eyes. Just a second before, she was helping me to bake biscuits, one second later she flat on ground, eyes wide open. Now, you tell me how you have this address, who you are, and stop saying that when you were eight you went to school with her. She never lived to be eight years old.'

Alex listened, paralysed by the woman's words.

Jenny was dead. Then Jenny existed — or perhaps he should say she had once existed. Then who had he talked to? That voice couldn't have belonged to a ghost. For the hundredth time since he'd set out on that journey, Alex wondered if he'd lost his mind.

Mary picked up the cup of tea and sipped at it, slowly regaining her composure. He sat in silence, lowered his head, and rested it on the palms of his open hands.

‘Now, you must tell me everything. The truth, this time.'

‘I …'

‘How the devil you find my house?'

‘Thanks to Jenny,' Alex replied. The words poured out of his mouth and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. If Jenny was dead, nothing made sense anymore and the whole thing had become absurd. ‘I've never actually seen her. I was never a friend of hers. I've lived my whole life in Milan: this is the first time I've ever been in Australia, and I didn't come here on holiday with my parents. I'm here all alone. I took three flights, I transferred in Paris and Kuala Lumpur, I landed in Melbourne, and came to Altona Pier. I did all this to meet Jenny. We'd arranged a meeting …'

‘Nothing you're saying makes any sense!' the woman exclaimed. Now she really was angry.

‘I know.'

‘Then try to tell me something that makes some sense! Ever since I opened my front door you've been making fun of me! I don't accept games and playing when we're talking about my little girl. She was dearest thing to my heart in whole world. The Gravers were my family, I was a member of that family. Everything ended when Jenny died. They went away and I've lived alone ever since, till today. Can you tell me how it's possible that you come here now to tell me that you were supposed to meet Jenny at the pier, in 2014, if she went away in 2004?'

Alex took a deep breath and mustered his courage. He felt like an animal trapped in a cage that was too small even to breathe. His eyes found a window that looked onto the street, and he saw a bicycle shoot past on the asphalt. Then, with renewed confidence, he looked into the woman's eyes.

‘I talk to her,' he confessed.

Mary Thompson set down the teacup she'd held in her hand until that instant. ‘You talk … with Jenny?'

‘Yes.'

‘What are you, a medium of some sort? A seer?' Mary raised her voice.

‘I don't have the slightest idea!' Alex leaped to his feet. ‘I don't know what I am or why all this is happening to me. I'm upset, I'm confused, I don't have any answers. Answers are what I'm looking for. That's why I rang your doorbell in the first place.'

Mary looked at him in amazement while Alex stared at the pictures on the mantelpiece in the living room. A number of pictures showed the woman when she was young; a few others were more recent. Others, in black and white, seemed to be vintage photographs. There wasn't a single photo of a six-year-old girl.

‘I have to go,' he finally said. He couldn't breathe: he felt as if he had been trapped in a nightmare, and there was no way to wake up. He picked his backpack up off the floor and headed straight for the front door.

15

While Alex was leaving Mary Thompson's house, Jenny was being sent back to her seat after taking her French test.

A complete disaster. She went back to her desk after being made to look like an idiot in front of the whole class. Her eyes were glistening, her nerves on edge. She felt like running away, bursting into tears. It wasn't like her to fail so utterly in front of everyone. Her marks lay in ruins. As the teacher summoned another classmate, she asked permission to go to the bathroom.

Once she was in the hallway, she went over to the window overlooking the school courtyard and pounded her fist on the windowsill. A group of kids was playing soccer in the open area. Technically that was against the rules, but most of the students at St Catherine's ignored that one.

Jenny headed for the toilets.
It's a good thing there's no one else here
, she thought to herself as she splashed water on her face, looking into the mirror that reflected a horrible sight. For years she had fooled herself into believing that there really was someone on the other end of that telepathic bridge. But there was no one, no one at all, and now she was paying the price.

She took a few steps back and leaned against the wall, then slid to the floor and covered her face with both hands. She sobbed. No one could hear her.

All at once her head grew heavy, and Jenny felt an overwhelming exhaustion. She shut her teary eyes, but instead of darkness, she saw a tunnel of blurry shapes and colours. Cries and moans rose up around her before she could understand or remember any of it.

Then, suddenly, complete silence.

Jenny opened her eyes again and shook her head, as if to chase away all those distorted images. She felt a sensation that wasn't entirely new to her.

She picked herself up from the floor, left the toilet, and went back to her classroom. She opened the door, her eyes downcast, and walked back to her seat.