This Monstrous Thing(18)
Bavaria was all gray rolling hills and ghostly forests, with black pines that dropped snow on us from above and bare cedars wrapped in thorny mistletoe. We plodded across it for two days beyond the border before Ingolstadt appeared on the road signs. I was shattered from all the travel and the constant worry about being caught, but my exhaustion faded as the houses spotting the hills began to multiply and the white spire of the university approached on the horizon.
There were no guards at the city limits—something that I once would have given no thought to, but after three years in Geneva it seemed a wonder. Clémence climbed onto the driver’s seat to talk with Depace, leaving me to stare out the back of the wagon at the copper-capped buildings passing by.
Ingolstadt was a small town, and the mechanization that had shaped Geneva had hardly touched it. There were no clockwork carriages or cogged omnibuses. No looming clock tower or industrial torches to illuminate the night. No prowling policemen either, and I spotted a few men with mechanical arms and legs walking unveiled. No one crossed to the other side of the street to avoid them or spit on them as they passed. Perhaps not a paradise, and not full equality—I didn’t think the world would ever reach that point—but Ingolstadt could be close. It felt for the first time since we’d left Geneva like the danger had truly passed, and I could breathe again.
The university sat in the town’s center—a monument to which every other building seemed to bow. Clémence directed Depace to stop at the gate; then she hopped down and I clambered after her, my spine cracking loudly as I stretched. We stuck out sorely among the students crossing campus, wrapped up in velvet cloaks and amber furs, but if we got curious looks, I didn’t notice. I was too busy staring openmouthed at the stonework, the stained glass, the tapestries that lined the walls of the colonnades. I felt the pull again—the want I’d nursed since childhood, to study here with Geisler—so strong it hurt. I tried to imagine myself as a student, swapping test scores with mates as we crossed the snowy courtyard to the next lecture, but as hard as I squinted, I couldn’t do it. Perhaps because whenever I tried to picture anything ahead of me, it was with the nagging notion that Oliver would always be nearby, holding me back.
Clémence led me into a gray stone building and up three flights of stairs before she stopped in front of a wooden door and knocked.
“Enter,” called a voice.
Geisler’s office was neat to the point of manic tidiness, with books on the shelves sorted by color and subject before they were finally alphabetized, and quill pens laid out by size, in descending order. The weak sunlight rippled through the green glass windows, casting a sickly shadow over the whole room that made me feel as though I were standing in the emerald cover of Frankenstein. A single beam fell through a clear pane at the top, illuminating the man himself, bent over a stack of parchment at his desk.
I had known Geisler since I was a boy, and in all that time I swear he’d never aged. I had watched Father go gray around the temples, then the eyebrows, then start wearing his spectacles permanently, but Geisler was just as I remembered, redheaded, with a thick beard bearing a single swatch of white down its center.
He looked up as we entered, and his eyes bugged at me through the fickle light. He whipped his spectacles from his face and stood up, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Dr. Geisler,” I said, when Clémence didn’t make a sound.
As soon as I spoke, his face lost its glow and his eyes returned to their usual size. “Alasdair Finch,” he said, his French edged by German vowels I assumed Ingolstadt had given him. “It’s been some time.”
“Some time,” I repeated stupidly. With Geisler staring at me, I felt like a boy again.
“It is . . .” He polished his spectacles on the tail of his jacket, then placed them back on his nose and squinted at me. “Quite extraordinary, I must say, to see you standing here before me.” He inched closer, still examining me with a tight scrutiny, as though making sure I was truly who he thought I was. “You have grown,” he said at last.
Clémence snorted, quietly enough that only I heard. I swallowed a terse remark in favor of a cordial “Yes, sir.” If I was going to be enjoying Geisler’s hospitality in Ingolstadt, I had to keep a civil tongue, though that had never been the struggle for me that it was for Oliver.
“You look . . .” He stared at me for a moment longer, then removed his spectacles again and tucked them in his pocket. At last he looked me in the eye in a manner that suggested conversation rather than inspection. “Remarkably like your brother.” His smile lines creased.
I swallowed hard. “So I’m told.”
“I thought for a moment you were he. It startled me.” He clapped me on the shoulder, hard enough that my knees buckled. “Alasdair, I’m very pleased you’re here! We have so much to discuss. So much.” He bustled back to his desk and rooted through a drawer for a moment before producing a copper kettle. “Tea, perhaps? Or something stronger?”
“We should go home,” Clémence interrupted. She was standing soldier straight, hands behind her back. “We’ve had a journey.”
Geisler frowned at her. “Are you speaking for our guest?”
“I was thinking of him,” she replied, her chin dipping to her chest. “He must be tired.”