The Vanishing Act (7 page)

Papa had worked hard too. But, of course, he was searching for Descartes’ absolute truth, the start of everything, the key, the explanation of it all.

I didn’t hear Papa come back from fishing until he opened the door to the blue room.

‘Papa,’ I said, surprised, closing my notebook.

‘How is he, Minou?’ Papa looked grey and tired under his fur hat.

‘You have to close the door, Papa. We need to keep him cold.’

‘You are right, Minou. You are right.’ Papa closed the door behind him. Then he walked slowly to check the temperature on the wall. He looked tired, as if all his energy had escaped him.

He had reached the beach and only caught a
couple of fish before realising that he didn’t want to be fishing at all.

‘The delivery boat is coming tomorrow morning, my girl. I need to work on the truth while the dead boy is still here. We have got enough fish to get by.’ Papa stood back from the thermometer. ‘Everything seems fine.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘I will fix the nets, and make some coffee. Then I will come and sit with him.’ And with that Papa left the room.

That was when I found it.

I went to my room to fetch a pair of red woollen socks that Uncle had left behind. The socks were too big for me and too colourful for Papa. The dead boy’s bare foot looked very cold under the frost, and I thought that he might like to wear a sock.

One of the ravens was perched on the bedhead when I returned.

‘Go away,’ I said in a loud voice, shooing it back onto the windowsill, quite certain that the dead boy wouldn’t like a raven right next to his head.

It was difficult to put the sock on the dead boy and it took several attempts before I managed to pull it gently over his black toenails and then, bit by bit, ease it on to his icy foot. I got his shoe from the floor. I twisted. I pushed. But getting it on seemed
impossible. I turned it around. There was writing on the sole. It said: ‘Montgomery’s best since 1840’ in faded gold lettering. I stopped to copy the words into my notebook and added, ‘His shoe smells of oranges too, Mama.’

I put my hand inside the shoe, I am not sure why. But right at the toe was something cold. The ravens looked at me as I brought the shoe to the window and peered into it. I couldn’t see anything. But with my hand back inside I felt it again, cold and hard. I edged my fingers around it and pulled and wriggled until it gave way.

It was a metal bottle the size of a small pinecone.

‘No wonder you lost your shoe, dead boy,’ I said.

The screw-on top was rusty and old, and made a scraping sound when I opened it. Inside was a rolled-up piece of paper. I turned the bottle upside down and shook it hard, but it didn’t move. It was only when I used the end of one of Mama’s paintbrushes, that I managed to tease it out.

I put the dead boy’s shoe back on the floor, and unrolled the paper. It was a postcard. On the front was a picture of a dark-blue ocean and light-blue sky. Distant on the horizon sat a rusty freight ship and out of its chimney came a swirl of stripy smoke.

I felt dizzy. Mama would like it very much. I turned the postcard over. Someone had written on the back. ‘What did it say, Minou?’ Mama would ask. ‘Hurry, hurry, tell me.’

I read the postcard standing next to the dead boy’s socked foot. It said:

I didn’t understand what it meant. Who were Levi and S? The words made me think of the raven skeletons that I had found at the beach, and of the time Peacock died of old age, head resting peacefully on the edge of the golden bowl. Mama had carried him to Priest, who dug a grave right next to Theodora and her goat.

That day I saw Mama cry in Papa’s arms. He kissed her, and sang to her in a low humming voice, as she buried her face in his jumper.

‘How cold my hands were, how horrible the war was,’ she cried. ‘Peacock was the only one who knew just how horrible.’ And then she sobbed again.

The night before Mama’s shoe was to be buried with Peacock I went to the church instead of the lighthouse. Light streamed from the church windows, illuminating the hole in the ground, and I knelt at the slippery edge and drew a picture of Peacock’s bones lying deep down in the soil. I thought that Mama would be happy to see what Peacock looked like as a skeleton when she came back.

I turned the postcard over again and attempted to flatten it. Papa would never approve of rolling up a postcard. He was careful with the ones he got from Grandfather, and he got upset if the boatmen accidentally damaged them.

The postcard might not have been addressed to the dead boy, but the name suited him.

‘Levi,’ I said out loud, and looked at him. ‘It’s a nice name.’

Then I got up to find Papa. I closed the door carefully behind me and went to the kitchen. But Papa wasn’t there. The nets lay in the middle of the floor next to the bucket, and Papa hadn’t made coffee or lit the fire.

I found him in the study, asleep on the floor with a pillow under his head. His fur hat was pushed to the side, covering one eye and most of his cheek. I stood uncertain in the doorway with the postcard in my hand. He was sleeping deeply. His shoulder lifted and fell like a wave, and with each breath the pretzels on the ceiling seemed to sway a little.

I looked at the postcards on the wall and then at the box on Papa’s desk that was filled with the ashes of Grandfather’s work.

When Grandfather was hit by lightning, his housekeeper wrote to us and said the weather had been terrible. But Grandfather, never one to miss his philosopher’s walk, had strolled out into a storm so fierce that the lightning looked like stick figures suspended in a crazy dance between earth and sky. His housekeeper even sent us a drawing of Grandfather knocked sideways, his walking stick suspended
in the air, as the tree next to him was struck by a gigantic bolt of lightning.

Grandfather must have expected something terrible to happen, because before his walk he took the thousand and seventy-seven pages he had spent thirty years writing and set them alight in the kitchen sink. The curtains caught fire and almost burnt the house down.

None of us went to Grandfather’s funeral. It was too far away. But several months later Papa received a box with a note taped to the top saying, ‘Your father’s life work.’ Papa opened the box at the kitchen table, but found only ashes and tiny bits of paper.

‘How am I going to find the truth now?’ he said, his voice creaking like the rusty gates in the morning. Then he turned to me. ‘I promise you, Minou, that when I find the truth, I will share it with you.’

‘And with Mama,’ I said, looking at Mama who was cutting bread for dinner, her back looking as hard as Turtle’s shell.

‘And your mama, of course,’ he said.

‘You should throw it out,’ Mama said.

‘Maybe,’ said Papa, nodding sadly, looking at the ashes. ‘There isn’t much left.’

‘The postcards too, all of it.’

‘But Papa needs them,’ I said, ‘Grandfather knew about the truth.’

Mama gave a sound that was half laugh and half snort.

‘He had two philosophical books published,’ Papa insisted in a weak voice.

‘And who were they published by?’ asked Mama, knowing very well that Grandfather had spent all his money publishing them himself.

‘Philosophy isn’t in fashion,’ said Papa.

‘I wonder why,’ said Mama, throwing the bread into a basket.

‘Papa is trying really hard,’ I insisted. ‘We should help him. He doesn’t think he is as smart as Grandfather was.’

‘Because I am not.’ Papa looked despondent.

‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘You are Descartes’ descendant too.’

‘Little one.’ Mama banged the butter dish on the table. ‘Your papa is a lot smarter than that hard-boned, small-minded man.’

‘But you never even met Descartes,’ I protested.

‘I am talking about your grandfather,’ she said. ‘And your papa should have told you a long time ago that Descartes never had any children.’

She put the dinner plates on the table hard and fast. ‘Now we will eat.’

We ate dinner in silence. The ashes of Grandfather’s truth still on the table, making everything taste burnt.

That night Papa tucked me into bed.

‘How can I be Descartes’ descendant,’ I asked him, ‘if he never had any children?’

‘We think he did, Minou, but it’s not official,’ said Papa. ‘You will have to ask Uncle for the specifics. The only thing I know for certain is that we have Danish ancestors. Olga Svendsen is your great-great-great-great grandmother. She lived on the west coast of Denmark where she ran an inn called The Wild Boar. We also know that Descartes travelled past her inn on his way to Sweden.

‘But how do you know he stopped at that inn?’ I was beginning to feel a bit doubtful about the whole thing.

Papa leant down and gave me a kiss on the forehead, ‘Your Uncle works for the university. He is a scholar and an excellent researcher. You can trust him. If he says we are related to Descartes, then we are.’
I didn’t wake Papa, as he slept deeply on his study floor. Instead I put the postcard in my pocket, feeling the curled-up corners against my fingertips. Then I tiptoed past him and pulled, as quietly as I could, Mama’s old atlas from beneath Papa’s collection of
Philosophy Today.

My hand was getting sore. It was late afternoon and I had been writing most of the day in the lighthouse.

I put the notebook aside and pulled the postcard from my pocket. I had read it several times during the day, trying to work out what it meant. I was smoothing the edges when the postmark caught my eye. It ran across a faded blue stamp. I could only make out the first two letters, GU. I put the postcard on the mattress and turned to the index of Mama’s atlas. There were so many cities beginning with GU. I turned the musty-smelling pages, looking up one after the other, and had almost given up finding anything interesting when I got to the city of Guilin in China. Beneath the map I noticed Mama’s handwriting. I pulled the atlas closer and read the tiny letters at the bottom of the page: ‘I solemnly swear to visit this magnificent country before I die.’

It was exactly what Grandfather had declared about the great coincidences. Suddenly I remembered what Mama had said to Boxman and me one
day when we were practising for the circus.

We had rehearsed almost every day. At lunch we sat on bales of hay in the yard and read Boxman’s magazines. One day Mama had found an article about China. It had two pictures. One was of the Sugartop Mountains and the other of a street in Shanghai where hundreds of birdcages hung like lanterns along every shop front. The cages were full of white and yellow birds.

‘Look.’ Mama showed us the pictures. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a birdcage just like that?’

‘And a bird?’ I asked and peered at the photo. The bird closest to the camera was a lovely buttery colour. It looked right into the lens with eyes that seemed both kind and intelligent.

‘No, little one,’ said Mama, ‘birds are not for keeping. They should be allowed to fly wherever they want.’

Boxman told us that he had travelled to China once. It had been a magnificent trip and he hadn’t wanted to leave. Everything was filled with magic and imagination, he said.

‘Are there any suitcases in China?’ asked Mama.

‘Yes, they sell them on just about every street corner. You should go!’

Mama laughed and said, ‘But don’t you need a whole year to see all those wonderful things?’

‘In fact,’ said Boxman, ‘a year would be just about right.’

‘It’s decided then,’ said Mama with a big smile. ‘I am going.’

I put the atlas down and looked out over the island. The sky was darkening and the snow fell thick and fast, collecting on the pines and burying the forest path. I closed my eyes and thought about Mama’s note. The heater rattled, and No Name barked. I thought about it for a long time, and when I finally opened my eyes I knew it to be true, clearly and distinctly. Mama had gone to China. She had gone to the Sugartop Mountains, and then to the street with hundreds of birdcages, and she was showing Turtle all the things we had seen in the magazine.

‘How wonderful it would be to stand on one of those mountains with the wind in your hair,’ she had said, looking at the pictures, ‘or to walk down a street with thousands of birds singing to you.’

I got my notebook and wrote:

I was contemplating whether I should show Papa the atlas, but decided to wait. Mama would explain it all when she came home. She would sit down at the kitchen table and tell us everything about China. And then she would show me her suitcase, new, blue and shiny like Peacock’s tail feathers. ‘It reminded me of him,’ she would say and point to the blue satin lining inside that matched the exterior leather. Then we would walk to church and dig up her shoe. On the way she would ask me if Priest was still scared
of the dark and in the same sentence, before I could answer, she would stretch her arms towards the sky and say, ‘Ah it’s good to be home, Minou. Your Papa seems changed, like a different person, so full of imagination. The whole island feels changed, so surprising, so interesting.’

I wished that I had come across Mama’s note before Uncle came to visit. Then he would surely have listened to me.

Papa and I got to the beach just in time for Uncle’s arrival. Remember this was the day after the shoe funeral. The house smelled wonderful and fresh. And at the last minute Papa insisted that I too should get clean. He wanted me to change into something that Mama would have liked, so under my coat I wore a red dress with puffy sleeves. I wasn’t pleased. I wanted instead to show Uncle the deep pockets in my green jumper.

The boatmen were unloading our deliveries into the dinghy, as well as a large box of light bulbs for Priest. I was looking for Uncle, suddenly scared he wasn’t on board. Priest stepped nervously from side to side, hands stretched in front of him as if to catch the box in case it dropped. We could see the
bold red letters in the distance: FRAGILE.

But then Uncle appeared, giving us a feeble wave before gingerly climbing over the railing into the dinghy. He was wearing a bowler hat and a black trench coat. Arriving at the shore he stepped out blindly, one long leg plunging knee deep into the icy water. He walked a few steps and then dropped into the arms of Papa.

Papa had to push him up the hill in the wheelbarrow that Boxman used for carting deliveries. I scrambled after them, carrying Uncle’s old and ample suitcase. Uncle’s head rested on the handle of the wheelbarrow, his body curled up the way Peacock used to lie in the golden bowl.

‘Oh
mon dieu, mon dieu
,’ he moaned, just like in his letters, while clutching a black machine tight against his chest.

‘Papa, what is that thing?’ I called out, while waving at Priest and Boxman, who were still at the beach with their deliveries, waiting for the wheelbarrow to be returned.

‘His ghost machine,’ said Papa.

‘Why is he holding it like that?’

‘It makes him feel safe.’

I was eager to speak to Uncle about ghosts and
our family tree, and most of all I wanted to show him my notebook and talk to him about Mama. But Uncle slept from the moment we got home, still wearing his trench coat and bowler hat, and woke up only to request one of the chocolates from his bag.

‘They are for you,’ he said to me, as I looked for them in his big suitcase, ‘but I dare not think what will happen if I don’t have one now.’

I found the box, fished out a chocolate and gave it to Uncle. He chewed on it and sank back into a deep sleep.

Uncle was eating breakfast the following morning, still in his trench coat and bowler hat. His ghost machine was sitting in the middle of the table surrounded by toast and coffee.

‘Pleased to meet you, young lady,’ said Uncle, biting into a piece of toast piled high with orange marmalade.

‘I was wearing a dress yesterday,’ I said, looking at him over the breakfast table.

‘You look delightful in that jumper, it goes well with your eyes,’ he said.

I looked triumphantly at Papa.

‘Have you found any ghosts yet?’ I asked, looking at the machine.

‘Let’s go for a walk before we check,’ he said, stretching his legs. ‘You can show me the island.’ Then he brushed his trench coat free of crumbs and got to his feet, marmalade still stuck to his chin, and with my notebook in hand I went ahead of him out the door. Uncle walked with a stick in one hand and his ghost machine in the other. He walked slowly and bent over, like an injured raven with very long legs. He was puffing on a pipe, leaving a trail of smoke and the scent reminded me of the time Mama burnt a pot of potatoes.

‘How old are you?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘A bit older than your Papa,’ he said. ‘The war did us both in.’

As we opened the gates, the wind took his hat and I ran as fast as I could and caught it only moments before it blew into the sea. Walking back to Uncle, I tried to measure his neck for a scarf. He looked pale and cold and I thought a bright red scarf might cheer him up.

‘The war steals years from you,’ Uncle explained, when I came back with his hat.

‘How?’ I asked.

‘I saw things nobody should ever see.’

‘But what, Uncle?’ I asked.

Uncle hesitated.

‘No one wants to tell me anything about the war.’

‘There is one thing. It is not the worst, not by any means or measure, but I keep thinking about it.’

‘What is it, Uncle?’

‘The war had finished, and I was coming home. Sitting on the train was difficult; I was very thin and tired.’

‘Across from me sat a woman, wearing a dress with small violet flowers. She didn’t look at me. She was busy eating strawberries from a packet folded out of newspaper. The strawberries were magnificently red. It felt as if I had never seen strawberries that red before. After she finished, even though there was one strawberry left in the packet, she scrunched it up and threw it on the floor. I wanted to eat that last strawberry so much.’ Uncle looked out to sea, leaning on his stick. ‘I remember everything about that train ride, the woman, the dress, the strawberry. It is the one thing that I can’t stop thinking about.’

‘The strawberry?’

‘Yes, Minou. It follows me everywhere.’

‘Like a ghost?

‘Yes, sort of like a ghost, but worse.’

‘I don’t really know what ghosts are,’ I said.

‘They are complicated creatures like us, Minou, some are good and some bad.’

I thought it strange that Uncle wasn’t searching for the truth like Papa. He was after all Descartes’ descendant and seemed to be fond of a walk. As we reached the northernmost tip of the island, I asked Uncle why he wasn’t a philosopher like Papa and Grandfather.

‘I had my own calling, Minou,’ he said, ‘and your grandfather and I have had quite a few disagreements about it over the years. He was a man purely of reason, not of heart.’

I glanced at Uncle, who slowly and carefully made his way along the beach. Papa was right. He did look both scholarly and trustworthy, although I couldn’t be entirely sure, as I had never seen a scholar before.

‘How do you know that Descartes had a child with a woman in Denmark?’ I asked.

‘Rigorous research,’ he said.

‘But how can you be sure?’ I asked.

‘There is plenty of evidence, dear Minou. It’s all written in the town hall archives. Olga Svendsen,
your great-great-great-great grandmother, had a drawing of Descartes hanging on her bedroom wall. It’s safely kept in the town archives today, of course. And I have to say, Minou, Olga was not only a good cook, she was an able artist as well. It only took her a few pencil strokes to capture Descartes’ distinct good looks.’

‘She might have just liked his philosophy,’ I suggested, trying to keep an open mind the way Papa had taught me.

‘Yes, Minou. But then there was the menu. She served a fruit-of-the-forest dessert with whipped cream, named
Descartes’ Passion.’

I nodded, pleased to hear that Uncle was good at research. The more he told me about Olga and Descartes, the more certain I was that he would be interested in hearing my argument for Mama still being alive. And I wanted to show him my notebook as soon as possible.

‘As a matter of fact,’ Uncle continued, ‘there was a wealth of information about all sorts of things in the archives. It was remarkable what they wrote down in those days. I even found a section on how to catch eels when you have a cold and need to keep one hand free for blowing your nose.

‘I stayed in the town for more than a week. On the last day they held a big party for me with lots of delicacies: herrings, rye bread and cheese, and the room was full of streamers. But I didn’t like the food much; I mostly eat toast and marmalade.’

I wondered why no one else knew about Descartes’ child, but quickly reasoned that if Descartes had died not long after arriving in Sweden, then Olga might not have had a chance to tell him that she was pregnant. Or maybe Descartes hadn’t given her the address of the castle. But, if he hadn’t given Olga the address, then maybe he was an awful person like Rousseau, who, Mama told me, went out into the world to serve the Enlightenment, leaving behind his wife and five children.