Chapter 51
Davian
Typewriter Key
I didn't know how I had survived the last two weeks.
Everywhere on campus, people were walking around with copies of my book, and Arnold had now instructed his son to post ban notices and confiscate books, as if we had slipped back a century.
He wasn't the only one who had thought the situation would blow over. I, too, was surprised that the number of readers on this forum website was still growing and that the discussions about what I had put on paper in my madness seven years ago were not subsiding.
The temptation to read through this forum in search of answers to questions I had been trying to answer for a decade lurked insidiously in the depths of my troubled mind, but so far I had pulled myself together.
“I hate to interrupt your daydreaming, but the birthday boy has forty-two candles to blow out.”
Breakfast At Tiffany‘s
Deep Blue Something
Only now did I realize that I was standing in front of the mirror by the front door, staring at the empty vase on the dresser.
What had I wanted to do again?
Confused about myself, I turned to Quill, who, as always, was wearing one of those blue knitted sweaters, her hair simple and loose.
In this garish world, she seemed so inconspicuously timeless, as if she didn't want to attract attention – if one ignored the hand on which new ink notes kept sneaking on –, yet my gaze kept lingering on her freckles, or on the gray crystals behind which worlds that were anything but inconspicuous lay hidden.
Soft blue circles rested under her eyes.
She had bad dreams. And if it had been a one-time thing, I would have pushed it out of my mind. But almost every night she tossed and turned restlessly in her bed, startled awake abruptly, and I was powerless to help her.
Only now did her words reach my mind, which had long since failed to function properly.
“You make me feel old.”
A lie. I had never felt younger in the presence of anyone else.
She smiled back at me, intensifying it.
“Age suits some men.”
She pressed her lips together, smiled, with that goddamn twinkle in her eyes, and I tried not to let on how flustered her comments could sometimes make me, as Tony entered the hallway behind her.
“Besides, you should be glad you made it to your forties.” She grinned. “Old man.”
That was personal. And I wanted to give her a playful glare, chase her through the whole house for it, but not only did we have to play our roles in front of Tony, or that Monica and my daughter were in the next room, but also the fact that I could never let something like that happen again made me press my lips together bitterly.
Tony stared at his sister as if she had lost her mind.
“Quill,” he cleared his throat with a serious expression and looked apologetically at me first, then seriously at her again. “That’s not how you talk to your mentor.”
In fact, my student-mentor relationship with Joseph had been different, developing more on a level of mutual respect, with Joseph always taking an authoritative, albeit less dominant, role. Was it because I had submitted to him without exception?
Until that eye-opening dinner at his estate, I had been sure we had built a strong bond.
And sometimes I actually reveled in thoughts of the past, when he had taken me to golf and tennis courts and introduced me to important people, letting me in on the corrupt secrets of the most conservative and bizarre lawyers, and taught me lessons for life.
He had led me to believe that we were both caught between the fronts, trying to unite conservatives and liberals. Unsuccessfully.
Now I refused to touch the coffee cups he brought me every Wednesday, ignored his calls, and waited for him to give up, but this man clung to me as if I really mattered to him. And to make matters worse, he was now using Anthony as his middleman.
How could I get rid of these feelings of guilt? For cutting ties with someone who had treated me well my whole life, but had caused other people pain? Was what I was doing here even right?
One look at Quill, who disappeared into the kitchen with a mischievous grin, gave me all the answers I needed. I wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing again and again.
“Interesting that you invited her.”
Tony also watched her until she disappeared around the corner.
He had talked me into attending both galas – one at the end of November and Joseph’s New Year’s Eve gala. And it made my stomach churn that Quill hadn’t even hesitated in her response to Tony’s plea.
It was enough for me that she attended Joseph's lectures after I learned from third parties that he had torn up her writing.
This man was not the man who had taken me in, and yet I was gradually seeing all the inconspicuous patterns of behavior and beliefs that he had embodied and preached. Clues that should have given him away.
Every time he had spoken badly about artists, about destitute people... about my mother.
I had never met her. Neither had he. Yet it was known that she had left me at the orphanage. The only person I would be as disappointed in as Joseph for the rest of my life. Both had let me down in two different ways.
“Joseph always invited me too,” was all I could say in response to Tony's words before Monica came around the corner with a cake laden with burning candles, a gleam in her eyes that I only knew from her when one of the three of us had a birthday.
She had never had children, and I had often asked her why not, but she always said that life was complicated sometimes and that her career as a lawyer, her work on the Ethics Committee, and her job as a professor of legal history were her priorities. Besides, she had us.
“Forty-two candles?” I raised both eyebrows, and Lara stepped out of the kitchen with Quill behind Monica. “Seriously?”
“It was Quill's idea,” Lara laughed. “And I don't think it's a bad one.”
Tony patted me on the shoulder. “Well then. Make a wish before you embarrass yourself blowing them out.”
All these years, I had made wishes for Lara. That she would have a good year in my care. That I would manage to be a good father, teaching her things that would be useful in life. That I would make it another year for her.
Lara was my big girl now. As much as it hurt, I had to let go of her hands and let her learn to walk on her own in this dreary world. In the hope that she would learn to walk better than I had.
I had long since buried my own wishes for my life in the same quicksand that had engulfed me until the day I had fallen into the painfully comforting arms of Quillon Veritas.
Before I could question my wish or feel selfish, I blew out the candles, fighting hard not to meet her watchful gaze as the other three applauded.
I had only one wish.
I didn't want to lose her. Ever.
Wonderwall
Oasis
Lara and Monica had conspired and bought us three matching dinosaur socks – an idea that could only have come from Lara.
And while I stared at the blue, white, and orange dino socks, and Lara pressed a pair of green ones against a laughing Tony's chest, so that his amused laughter died, Quill watched us four with a grin.
After we had eaten cake while listening to Tony’s ’80s record, and – coerced by Monica and my daughter – I had unwrapped a few presents, I had helped Monica prepare dinner in the kitchen while Lara and Quill, along with Tony and Streusel, had disappeared into the garden in their winter coats.
During dinner, it had been amusing to watch Tony and Quill try to keep up their facades in front of Monica. Quill was definitely skilled at lying, but Tony was in desperate need of learning to control the blood flow to his face.
If I were Monica, I would think Anthony had inappropriate sympathies for Quill.
Grinning, Lara and I had cleared the table, during which Tony had accidentally knocked a plate off the table.
I will never forget the look on Quill's face the moment the shards had shattered on the floor. All color had drained from her cheeks.
“Don't be so jumpy,” Lara had laughed before sweeping up the shards, and I had watched Quill force herself to smile, eager to take her in my arms, but that luxury was not mine to have. Not in front of the others.
And so I had disappeared into the kitchen, followed by Streusel, who had proudly carried a sausage in his mouth, which only Quill could have secretly slipped him.
She and that dog had formed a secret alliance against my house rules and Lara's dog training rules.
When I had returned to the living room, Lara had immediately held up a stack of German board games – that Monica had given us all over the years – with an euphoric grin and had turned the evening into a game night.
My time to retreat to the workshop, where I was already trying for an hour to put together the geometric pumpkin birdhouse for Lara. Something she wasn't supposed to know about.
With the new Oasis CD Lara had given me playing in the background, I sawed the precisely measured pieces to size and threw them onto one of the workbenches, next to the sandpaper.
“You're running away from your own birthday party?”
Atlas, Eyes
Illuminine, Will Samson
Startled, I looked up and paused for a moment with the saw.
Quill gave me a smile before closing the door behind her and setting a cup of coffee on the workbench.
“Thanks.”
I tried to concentrate on the object in front of me, but a damn piece of wood was the least of my distractions from the warmth of having her near me.
“The others are used to me retreating at some point, and have their fun.” I put the saw back to work and began sawing the next piece along the pencil line. “Let me guess. Your brother is beating everyone at rummy?”
Quill wandered through the workshop with a smirk, inspecting my somewhat organized tools on the walls, as well as the woodworking projects I had never finished, which were now more or less gathering dust under new sawdust.
“Monica beat him at Mensch ?rgere dich nicht before that.”
Of course she had. Monica was the most competitive woman I had ever met.
“May I?”