The Mirror Thief(200)

Patterns: that’s what you’re best at. Seeing the figure in the tealeaves. You could spot it—you’re sure you could—if you had a little more to go on, a few more dots to connect. Vettor Crivano flees this city one thousand lunar years after Muhammad leaves Medina: some kind of echo there. Ezra Pound is released from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital a few weeks after you depart the shoreline; he dies and is buried half a mile from here, at San Michele, the same year Veronica is born. John Hinckley, Jr. watches a movie, shoots a president—launching Curtis on his own funny trajectory—and then gets locked up at St. Elizabeth’s. All of this must add up to something, must spell something out. You’re running out of chances to put it all together, to see it whole.

Or maybe soon you’ll see everything.

At the desk downstairs there’s only the proprietor, visible through the window from the street; Damon shouldn’t find it hard to get around him. You hope he’s careful enough to take that extra step. He’ll lean over the wooden counter, match your name to your room number, and soon he’ll be on the stairs, fixing a suppressor to a pistolbarrel, hiding the weapon with a glossy newsmagazine. The lock—quaint, old-fashioned—won’t slow him down. The well-oiled door will swing open, and he’ll see the neat berm your legs make on the bed.

By then, of course, you’ll already be in the mirror.

It’s not easy, but you’ve practiced. Quick trips at first: a few seconds, in and out. Then longer stretches, deep dives into un-space. Not unlike learning how to swim. What you recall from the other side is the hugeness of it. And the unity: coming back, the idea of separateness becomes laughable. If passing through is hard; returning is much harder. Because, why bother, frankly?

But you do come back. Surfacing in Curtis’s suite, in Veronica’s room, in the suite at Walter’s joint. Letting people see you when you got confident enough. Their startled reactions proving that what you felt was true. Proving something, anyway.

This time will be different. More like learning to breathe water. You have been very patient. You have waited a long time.

Damon will stand over your body for a while. Sniffing the shitty air. He’ll step to the bedside, sit lightly on the mattress. Watching you. Then he’ll set his gun on the stacked blankets and flick a finger hard against the tip of your nose. He’ll find a penlight in his coat, lift your eyelid with his thumb, and shine the beam into your slack clammy face. Then he’ll sigh, and turn, and look out the window at the campo below.

Eventually he’ll stand, pick up the pistol. He’ll press the thick barrel against your head, resting it in the orbit of your left eye, and he’ll hold the newsmagazine above it, opened to catch the spatter. Der Spiegel: you’ll be able to read the cover over his shoulder. In G?ttlicher Mission, it says.

He’ll shoot your eyes out, one at a time. He’ll drop the wet red magazine on your chest, wipe his hands on the blanket. On his way to the door he’ll pick up the passport that he had his friends in D.C. make for you: it’s on the chest of drawers, easy to find. On his way back to his own hotel he’ll drop it in a canal, fastened with an elastic band to a palm-size chunk of stone.

You will not get the chance to make those two calls.

If Damon looks in the mirror on his way out of the room—is he the sort of person who would?—you won’t let him see you. Not just yet.

Mirror. Three hundred twenty-nine: a sharp disciplinarian. Or: those exhausted by hunger. Or: in the land beyond the sea. In Hebrew, ????, which adds to fifty. Unwedded. Completeness. A citadel.

This is what you’ve wanted all along: freedom from what’s trapped you in this world. Freedom from yourself. At the end, they say, your whole life’s supposed to flash before your eyes. Flash: that’s the word they always use. You hope like hell it isn’t true. It’s been a long time since looking last held any interest. Lately, what jazzes you is what you can’t see: the way the spell of vision gets broken, the way your breath fogs the glass when you get too close. All these years, dragged around by your eyeballs: you’ve had about enough. A goddamn slideshow! What the hell kind of death is that for a person? You don’t want it. You’re ready for whatever’s next.

Eye. Four hundred ten. A mounting-up of smoke. To be hindered or restrained. To lay snares.

That was Crivano’s escape: it says so in Welles’s book. Took you long enough to figure it out. Part of you wishes you’d brought The Mirror Thief along—although that’s silly, sentimental. Curtis will take care of it; here it’d just get thrown away. Besides, it’s not like you don’t remember every word. Over the years you have become the book: a lifetime of dreams and memories, braided through its lines.

In a way, it’s not so bad that the trail in the Biblioteca ran cold. Isn’t that exactly what you wanted to hear the night you stalked Welles on the beach? That he’d made Crivano up? That the world of his book overlapped with the real world hardly at all? Finding out otherwise became a problem for you, one you’ve been working for years to solve. But even if Welles did lie, even if Crivano never really existed, this trip hasn’t been a waste of time. There’s something here: you’ve felt it, even if you haven’t seen it. Can’t somebody still be a ghost, even if they were never born? Why not? Who made up that rule?

Yesterday, a final clue. You mentioned the name of the ship to a librarian—the ship Crivano escapes on—and she came back with something: a letter from a young merchant captain to his father, bringing news from the Dalmatian coast. Very bad are the uskok pirates, the librarian translated. Last month they robbed two small ships en route to Spalato, and they burned a trabacolo—a trabacolo is a boat, yes?—that fought them with great valor.