Multiversum (7 page)

‘You have plenty time. Your flight leaves this evening.'

Alex froze and stared straight ahead for several seconds. Then he slowly turned his head without uttering a word.

‘You intelligent,' said the man, trying to butter him up. His hair was tangled and grey, his clothes were stained, and his legs were crossed under the little table. He had a deck of cards at the ready, and his hands were poised to shuffle them.

‘So you think I'm intelligent?' asked Alex sarcastically. ‘Then you really do know everything.'

‘I know everything. Come, take card.'

Alex hesitated, but his curiosity got the better of him.

‘This one,' he said, picking one at random from the deck.

‘Keep card with you, no say nothing.'

It was a king of clubs. The card was plastic-coated, bigger than the ones that Alex was used to seeing, but the fascinating thing was its design. It seemed more like a tarot card than a normal playing card. The king seemed to be looking him right in the eye.

‘I see you take great leap.'

‘Oh, really?' said Alex sceptically.

‘You take great leap in black ocean.'

‘And I suppose you want some money in exchange for these amazing revelations.' Alex decided that he was wasting his time.

The fortune teller stared at him with an enigmatic smile, then he pulled out a card and showed it to him. It depicted a white and black rectangle slashed diagonally by a yellow bolt of lightning.

‘All of us in great danger,' he went on. ‘You important.'

And you probably drunk
, thought Alex, but he said nothing. He stood up, grabbed one of the straps of his backpack to sling it over his right shoulder, and started walking away.

The fortune teller sat there, looking straight ahead, the same smile stamped on his face, his left eyebrow arched. He didn't watch Alex walking off. He merely said: ‘
Buon viaggio
, Italiano, take my regards to girl in Melbourne.'

Alex spun around to look behind him. The man couldn't possibly know that. Not that. His eyes swept up and down the waterfront, searching for the fortune teller.

The man was no longer there.

‘Where the hell …' Alex looked in every direction, but the man had vanished.

‘Crazy. How could he have disappeared so fast?' he said, shaking his head. Then he ran his hand through his hair and moved on.

It was six in the evening by the time he got back to the airport. Take-off for Melbourne was scheduled for 9.35 p.m. Jenny was getting closer and closer and Alex could hardly wait. He tried to forget what had happened with the fortune teller, to stop himself getting dragged into a web of paranoia. He wished he could fall asleep during the flight and just wake up at Tullamarine Airport the next day. His excitement only increased as the hours went by.

But the flight seemed to go on forever. Alex watched four movies in a row, each worse than the last, with a pair of very uncomfortable Malaysia Airlines earphones on his head. He also tried to go on reading the novel by Klavan. As gripping and exciting as it was, he found himself reading the same lines over and over. It was impossible to concentrate.

At 9.50 in the morning on 30 November 2014, two days after his departure from Milan, Alex landed in Melbourne.

He turned on his mobile phone after clearing customs. The flood of notifications on the display came as no surprise: fifteen missed calls from his mother's number. For a second he felt guilty about worrying his parents, then he turned the phone off again and hid it in an inside pocket of his backpack.

I'm finally here
, he thought, as the airport's automatic doors swung open and he passed through.

He had arrived. He was there. Just a stone's throw away from Jenny.

10

Jenny kept looking at herself in the mirror. After getting too little sleep the night before, she'd luxuriated in a relaxing hot bath at about 8.30 that morning, scented and soaped by the praline-and-honey bath gel she'd dissolved in the water. Then she'd spent half an hour straightening her chestnut hair, which was usually wavy. Her parents had left the house at eight and by now they were already at work. While they thought Jenny was at school, in reality she was picking out what to wear to her date.

She had never been so excited in her whole life, and she did her best to keep from thinking about the absurdity of it all.

She put on one of her favourite dresses — off-white, knee-length, with rhinestones in the shape of a comet on one side. Then she put on a pair of brown boots and a light-coloured jacket over a pale-blue T-shirt. Out of the corner of her eye, she kept glancing at a wall clock in her bedroom. It was almost ten o'clock. Alex must have landed by now, and right then he was probably on his way. The airport was about thirty kilometres away from the beach, while Jenny lived only five minutes from the pier. Still, she'd decided to give herself plenty of time to get there. She couldn't wait. It was impossible to stay at home any longer.

She had to get out of the house.

The Gravers' house was on Blyth Street, two streets back from the Esplanade, which ran along the waterfront. A short distance away, Pier Street ran straight down to Altona Pier. Once she'd crossed the intersection with Queen Street, Jenny started to feel her heartbeat increasing in intensity and frequency.

A bicycle whizzed past her and made a sharp turn onto the Esplanade, giving her such a fright that she jumped back. She was as tense as a violin string. She took a deep breath before crossing the street.

The pier was right in front of her.

She was there early, and she was well aware of the fact.

She climbed four steps and found herself on Altona Pier. With her hands on her hips, she took a few steps, stopping now and then to lean against the railing, and watching as the cool wind kicked up gusts of sand as it went. She walked the entire length of the wooden pier and finally decided to turn back and sit on the steps that ran down to the beach. That's where she'd wait for him. Alex should almost be there. Jenny tried to relax, letting the sight of the waves lull her. She often did this when she needed to think: she would go down to the beach, lie down close to the water, and let herself be transported by that magical sound, a sound that hypnotised her and swept her mind up and took her elsewhere.

Jenny's heart was racing. It was almost time.

The taxi that took Alex to Altona was driven by a guy in his early thirties who talked non-stop from the airport to their destination. He filled Alex's ears with tourist information, while Alex looked out the window, nodding or grunting every so often. The taxi driver did ask him a question or two, which Alex dodged by saying he didn't really speak English. In fact, at school he had a pretty good average in English, and he got by in conversation too, but he had no desire right now to waste time in idle chitchat.

At around 10.40, the taxi turned right from Millers Road onto the Esplanade, where it drove past the water, heading for the pier. Alex was thrilled to see the broad blue ocean.

By now, it was a matter of minutes.

The taxi pulled over, he paid the fare, and driver and passenger said farewell. The man nodded in the direction of the pier, but Alex had already spotted it from the taxi window.

Here we are.
Alex crossed the street as the taxi was pulling away. The pier itself was nearby. All he had to do was walk past an ice-cream stand with a sign that read
Ice-Cream Paradise
. As a group of kids went by on bicycles, racing along the beachfront, Alex went past the little kiosk and reached the beginning of the jetty. Then he took his first few steps on Altona Pier.

The only person in sight was an evidently male figure walking towards him. No sign of a girl his age. Maybe Jenny just hadn't gotten there yet.

Alex walked a few more metres onto the pier, hesitantly. On his right, next to a lamppost, he noticed a flight of steps leading down to the beach. He went over to it. Sitting on one of the steps was a person with long brown hair, looking out to sea. Shyly, with his heart beating feverishly, Alex put his foot on the second step.

Then he screwed up his courage and called her name.

‘Jen … Jenny?' His voice caught in his throat. The person spun around.

‘What do you want?' said a boy with long wavy hair hanging halfway down his back. He glared at Alex.

‘I'm sorry …' Alex apologised.

The boy stood up and went down the steps to the beach. Alex watched him as he walked away.

Where are you, Jenny?

At 11.15, Jenny started to wonder if she'd gotten her hopes up for nothing. After all, how could any of it be possible?

Perhaps she really was schizophrenic. Perhaps the voices that she heard, the pictures that she saw, were all the product of some mental illness.

She was barely able to hold it together. There was no sign of Alex on the pier. While she was waiting, she'd encountered a woman taking her labrador for a walk, a couple in their thirties holding hands, an old woman accompanied by her carer, and a few kids who were evidently skipping school that day, just like her. Not the slightest sign of Alex.

Jenny waited until 11.30, then remembered the words Alex had uttered during their last conversation. He'd been able to call out to her, to contact her through sheer willpower. It wasn't an attack anymore, the way it had been in the first few years; no longer the sudden, helpless, trance-like state of the past few months. A genuine call, at his brain's command.

Where are you, Jenny?
a voice in her head asked at that exact moment. It was Alex's voice.

In an instant, the pier disappeared and once again Jenny felt a powerful vibration, a force enveloping her and sweeping her away, as if she were a boat caught in a huge storm at sea.

She closed her eyes and focused on a point in her mind. All other thoughts vanished.

Alex
, Jenny thought, timidly.

Their words rang out like church bells. Out of nowhere came the roar of thunder and the crackle of lightning, an electric discharge.

A chill spread through her body. Jenny tried to shut her eyes, but she couldn't. She sat motionless, staring at the ocean. In her brain, the sound of the waves crashing in front of her began to echo.

Alex …

I can hear you, Jenny
.

Alex, where are you? Don't tell me that you're not real, I beg you
.

I'm right here
, said Alex.
I'm real. I've come all this way
.
I've come just for you
.

Where are you?

I'm right here, on the pier
.

That's not possible, Alex. I've been on the pier for more than an hour now, and there's not a single person on it. Are you sure you're in Altona, just off Pier Street
?'

Yes, Jenny. I'm about twenty metres from the street, on the first part of the pier. I'm looking straight at a lamppost, and I'm near a staircase that leads down to the beach
.

Alex fell silent, as a new fear surfaced in his mind.

Jenny?
He took a deep breath. He was afraid of losing contact any minute.
Can you still hear me?

Alex, I'm looking at the same lamppost, and I'm right next to those steps. Exactly where you say you are
.

11

Slowly, Alex sank to the ground. Jenny's last words continued spinning through his head for several interminable seconds.

Exactly where you say you are
…

He placed the palm of his hand on his right temple, where he felt a sharp, penetrating stab of pain. Then he looked around in confusion, blinking his eyes continually because of the migraine.

At that moment, the pier was deserted. The waves were starting to kick up, the strengthening wind, now harsh and chilly, churning a series of whitecaps.

‘This doesn't make any sense,' he said aloud. He repeated it three times. ‘I'm losing my mind. That's the only explanation. I'm going crazy and I just don't want to admit it.'

He looked at his backpack, lying abandoned on the pier, next to the railing.

He reached out a hand to grab it, pulled it towards him, and opened it. With one hand he reached in and rummaged around, retrieved his phone from an inside pocket, then turned it on and selected
Marco
from the address book.

His friend was awake, as always, even though it was 3.30 a.m.

‘Alex!' he replied, surprised by the unexpected ring of his mobile phone. In front of him, the three computers were running under the dim light of a desk lamp. The blue neon lights on the wall were turned off, just then, to keep them from overheating.

‘Sorry, Marco. Were you asleep?' The monotone in his voice was already evident to his friend.

‘Sleeping? Hardly. I'm busy cracking a system. I've managed to get into the databank of a chain of video-game shops, and if we're lucky I should be able to get a copy of the new
Call of Duty
delivered to my front door by tomorrow morning. Free of charge, it goes without say —'