Multiversum (6 page)

Was this the power that linked them together? Was this their gift?

Jenny had already come across the word ‘telepathy' in movies and books, but it was always a power that could be used in a specific place and time, with a person who was present and within immediate range of the telepathic subject. In her case, the most difficult mystery to explain was the enormous distance that separated her from Alex.

Jenny slipped into a tracksuit, slid her diary into a drawer and out of sight, gave Alex one final lingering thought, and got ready to go downstairs, where her mother was waiting for her.

I wonder when he'll get here …

Alex slept at Marco's house on Thursday and Friday night, and on Saturday morning he booked his flight to Melbourne. A one-week stay, not counting travel days. He decided that that ought to be long enough for their first ‘date'.

On Sunday morning he had another telepathic encounter with Jenny, and by now it was quite clear that something had changed in their interaction.

Alex experienced a very strange sensation before establishing contact with her. He felt as though he'd
called
her. That he'd captured her frequency, as if his mind, or his soul, were an antenna of some kind.

Did you hear it too?
Alex asked, positive that Jenny would understand what he was talking about.

I recognise the sound of you … No, it's not a sound, it's like a light, something that appears inside my mind. I don't even know how to put it into words
.

I'm sure I called you
.

I know
.

In two days I'll be in Australia, Jenny. I'm scheduled to land at ten in the morning
.

Just then, Alex sensed a new vibration and the noise of a storm drawing nearer. A thunderclap exploded between the walls of his brain, but it caused no pain. In fact, it gave him an odd sense of power, as if it had somehow expanded his mind, as if the thunder had burst his skull wide open.

Tell me where I can meet you
, Alex added, as another booming roar drowned out their conversation.

I don't know
.

Just tell me the name of a place, any place at all, somewhere we can meet
.

She hesitated for a few seconds before answering.
Altona Pier
.

What's that?
asked Alex, but at that very moment he lost contact with her.

Alex opened his eyes wide. He was stretched out on the sofa in Marco's living room. His friend was a couple of metres away, looking at him curiously.

‘Were you with her?' he asked.

Alex looked around the room for a few seconds, to re-establish contact with reality.

‘I need to check something,' he said, sitting up. ‘I have to see whether there's such a place as Altona Pier. And find out where it is.'

‘We can find out right away.' Marco went over to his computer and quickly typed in the name his friend had just told him. From a quick glance at Google Maps, it appeared to be a pier on the bay, in a quiet neighbourhood in the south-west of Melbourne.

The following morning, while his parents were at work, Alex threw together some clothes, a book, and his trusty iPod, and stuffed everything into the backpack he usually took to school. Before he left, he wrote a short note and left it on the kitchen table.

Dear Mamma and Papà,
I'm going on a trip. I won't be gone long, don't worry about me.
Everything's fine, I just can't tell you what it's about. You wouldn't understand. I can't put this off any longer, and it wouldn't have made any sense to ask for your permission.
I love you
.
Forgive me.
ALEX

With his backpack slung over one shoulder, Alex went back to Marco's to spend one last night on his sofa. His flight took off the next morning at seven o'clock.

‘I'm jealous of you, you know that?' said Marco. He was arranging slices of prosciutto on a piece of bread to make a toasted sandwich.

‘Why?' asked Alex as he sat down to eat. His friend pushed a blue button on the back of his chair. In just seconds, a gap opened up in the table where his guest was sitting. A wooden surface emerged, with a glass, a set of utensils, and a napkin all neatly laid on top.

‘Simple. Someone out there needs you and can't wait to meet you.'

‘Yes, someone who's been talking to me for the past four years through a series of epileptic fits …'

‘Cut it out. You know she exists,' said Marco in a determined voice. Then he looked down at his useless legs. ‘Nothing like that is ever going to happen to me.'

‘Don't be an idiot. Sooner or later it's going to happen to you too. You just have to wait for the right time.'

Marco bit into his sandwich and went on talking with his mouth full of food. ‘I'm handicapped.'

Alex poured himself a glass of water, shaking his head. ‘You're a genius, Marco. You've got a brain that's out of this world. And, fine, you don't have a pair of working legs. There are plenty of people with legs who can't find their way in life, and just sit there vegetating.'

‘Maybe you're right … sooner or later I'll find some poor loser chick willing to spend the rest of her life with a guy on two wheels.' Marco laughed. He was always self-deprecating, and Alex had gotten used to it. ‘Are you ready? We'll set three alarm clocks for tomorrow morning.'

‘Yes.' Alex closed his eyes and imagined himself flying around the Earth, heading for Australia. ‘I'm ready. If you want to know the truth, I'm nervous as a kitten.'

After they finished dinner, the two friends sat in the living room for a couple of hours, chatting and watching TV, before going to sleep. As they expected, Alex's mother called Marco's house in a state of panic. He played his part perfectly, telling her that he'd tried to call Alex's mobile phone too, and that he was just about to call the house. The performance seemed to have worked: they weren't going to come looking for him, at least not right away. Or at least that's what they hoped.

The next morning, the alarm clocks rang at four o'clock. The journey was about to begin.

9

Alex took off from Malpensa Airport at 7.12 a.m. on 28 November 2014. In less than ninety minutes, he was scheduled to land at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, the first of two stops on the trip.

Thanks to Marco, he'd been able to pay for the whole trip with the debit card. More than a third of the funds had been eaten up when he'd made the reservation and paid for the plane ticket. Part of what was left would pay for a hotel in Australia, unless Jenny had some way of finding him a place to stay. But the idea that someone who had been little more than a hallucination until just a few days ago might be able to offer him hospitality in her home struck him as a remote and unimaginable prospect.

He had three and a half hours to wait before he could board his second flight. For the first hour, Alex wandered aimlessly through the airport. He stopped in only one shop, where he bought a new pair of headphones for his iPod, then he took a seat in a bar and pulled a book by Andrew Klavan,
True Crime
, out of his backpack.

He looked around, every now and then. There was a continuous coming and going of people, either tearfully hugging each other goodbye or rejoicing at seeing each other after all this time.

They're all lines
: the thought occurred to him, and he started to see each of those people as a line traced on an imaginary map. A giant tangle of paths that intersected, brushed past one another, merged, and then extended into the distance. Out there, on the streets of the world, were billions of lines, billions of interwoven lives. Billions of routes and directions. Turns that were made, unexpected swerves, sometimes journeys suddenly cut off halfway. He thought for a moment that a pair of lovers might not be anything more than two journeys tossed together by fate. They could follow the most ridiculous routes on the globe, go anywhere on Earth, and never meet at all. Or they could cross paths multiple times and never recognise one another. They could catch the same bus every morning and never find out a thing about each other. And so on until the end of their days, without ever interacting. But it could take so little: a short exchange, a passing comment, and the two lines would magically merge. From the grey lines of a solitary journey, they'd become a single path.

At noon, as scheduled, the Paris–Kuala Lumpur flight took off.

They were expected to land at 6.35 a.m. local time. On the Malaysia Airlines flight, Alex managed to get a little sleep. When he woke up, it was only two hours to arrival.
Even if I'd taken a sleeping pill, I'd never have slept that long
, he thought to himself, while a few rows back a baby in its mother's arms cried and cried.

This time, he had a pretty long wait before boarding his last flight. He'd have to spend almost an entire day in the Malaysian capital, with fifteen hours between landing there and taking off for Melbourne.

The sheer size of the airport was what astonished Alex. It took him nearly twenty minutes to get to the exit. He was also impressed by how tidy and clean the place was. Even though tens of thousands of people moved through it every day, there wasn't a scrap of rubbish on the floor, and the vast windows overlooking the runways were practically invisible: that's how clean they were.

With his backpack slung over his shoulder, Alex reached the automatic doors and left the airport. A sudden wave of tropical heat washed over him. The humidity was as unpleasant as it was unexpected.

He had no idea how to kill the time. He walked out along a wide roadway without much traffic. The first thing he saw was a sign for the Sepang International Circuit, which was practically next door to the airport. He'd seen a number of car races on that track — as a fan of video games, he actually knew its layout pretty well. He'd mastered it over numerous occasions, often at Marco's, during their PlayStation duels. He decided to head in that direction.

The racetrack was closed for repairs, but with his basic English, Alex managed to ask a construction worker if he could direct him to a place to eat and relax for a couple of hours. Then he caught a bus that took him to the coast. When he saw the beach appear at the end of the road, he got off the bus. He was at Bagan Lalang Beach, a beautiful stretch of sand that lay between the Sepang district and the Indian Ocean. As he crossed the street, a row of bicycles shot past, passing him on a bike path that ran alongside the roadway. Then he reached a low wall, beyond which extended the magnificent sandy beach, with waves that were too sluggish that day to give the surfers much of a workout.

Look at where I am … it's just crazy!
he thought, as it dawned on him that he was on the other side of the planet, travelling all by himself for the first time in his life.

The atmosphere of Bagan Lalang Beach was magical. The silence and tranquillity of that place seemed like the perfect soundtrack for all his thoughts. He could sense that his life was about to take a new turn, even if he couldn't even begin to imagine where it was going to lead him.

After walking about a hundred metres, he found himself at a bar with outdoor seating. The sign said
Chuck Berry's
, and on a pillar out the front there was a poster for one of the American singer's best-known singles, ‘Johnny B. Goode'.

Alex sat down at a table outside, set his backpack down on a chair, and waited. When the waitress brought him a menu illustrated with photographs of the dishes, he was immediately drawn to one called
ikan bakar
, and he ordered it without a second thought.

It was a grilled fish, a local delicacy, and Alex ordered a side of French fries to go with it.

The girl who was serving him seemed to take a liking to him, and she confided in him, for no reason he could see, that the hotels and chalets in the waterfront area, and all along the Sepang Goldcoast, were besieged throughout the year by tourists from the furthest corners of the Earth.

After lunch, Alex continued walking, and he found an attractive little café on the coast. He spent a couple more hours there reading until the jovial manager, a stout, olive-skinned man with a bushy black moustache, struck up a conversation. The sun was blazing, and the day had grown muggy and unpleasant.

‘You are looking for a girl, aren't you? That's the reason why you left Italy!' the man joked, after listening to Alex's mangled English. The manager had taken a wild guess at what was running through Alex's head, and hit the bullseye. Alex said nothing and only laughed in reply, turning his head away, scanning the horizon.

Back on the street, while he was trying to figure out what route to take to get back to the airport, Alex walked by a man sitting on a wooden chair on the pavement.

‘
Italiano
? I read hand for you.'

‘No, thank you,' replied Alex, heading off in the opposite direction.

‘Just five minutes.'

‘I don't have time, I have to catch a flight,' said Alex, hoping to bluff his way out without stopping.