‘A tape,’ I said.
Rustling. ‘Nathan?’
‘A … God. A … tape. Zeno.’ Nina was breathing heavily, in and out. She let go of my jacket and leaned back, I heard the dull groan of wood.
‘Who’s there?’
I stood up and walked down the stairs. It was a while before I found the burner: I had to feel my way along the cold marble, listening to the escaping gas. I turned off the valve and inspected the lantern – the glass was cracked, the tank dented. I let out a thin stream of gas and lit a match. The white light shot up again. High above me I heard the distorted voice still intoning its fractured sentences. Who’s there. Who. Nathan.
When I got back to Nina, I saw the glistening snail’s trail of a tear along her nose. I reached out my hand, towards her arm, but she turned away. Her back was tall and straight. I put down the lantern and began furiously throwing down tables and chairs.
For half an hour, three quarters of an hour I was at it and all that time I heard the questions that Zeno kept asking me from the other world. If the voice hadn’t been drowned out every so often by the sound of shattering wood, I would have fled or, in a blind rage, seized my axe and leaped into the tangle of chair legs and armrests, chopping like a madman until I had found the tape recorder.
When we were back in the library – I had added more wood to the kitchen stove and the fire in the hunting room – we stood for a while in front of the hearth.
‘How long will that tape keep on playing?’
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘We’ll just have to wait until the batteries run out.’
‘N? What’s going on here?’
I stared into the flames and tried to remember whether she used to call me that in the past, when she was a child. N. All the members of my family did, had done, though I never knew why. No one had ever addressed Zoe or Zelda or Zeno as Z.
‘You tell me,’ I said.
She didn’t answer. Only the greenish-blue gleam of her eyes, the perfectly tranquil face and the red wreath around it.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t recognize this house at all anymore.’ I saw her gaze grow vague. ‘It’s as if I’ve woken up after being asleep for a hundred years and I look around me and there are things I recognize, but everything is different, just different enough to make me doubt what I thought I knew.’
There was a silence. Now and then a piece of wood snapped in the hearth, or part of the burning pile caved in with a sigh.
‘How did that tape get there?’
‘I really don’t know. What’s the matter? Do you think I planned all this? Nathan Hollander’s mystery weekend?’
‘A film,’ she said. She lowered her voice slightly: ‘He’s searching for the secret of his past, but the past doesn’t want to be found. Coming soon, to a cinema near you: Nathan Hollander, the movie.’
‘Starring …’
‘Dustin Hoffman, as Nathan Hollander.’
‘I’m twice his size.’
‘Okay, Jack Nicholson then.’
‘I don’t have those acrobatic eyebrows. Besides, then we’d need a love interest.’
She looked at me for a while. ‘I don’t know any red-haired actresses.’
‘Hordes,’ I said. ‘Nicole Kidman. Lucille Ball. There’s also this slightly whorish, but very charming redhead I once saw in the film version of Hotel New Hampshire. And there’s a beautiful Italian woman. The same hair as you, that fan of red curls. What was her name? Domenica … She played in that Tarkovsky film and at one point she begins to unbutton her dress and you see this magnificent alabaster breast. My God.’ I stared at the fire.
‘I think we’d better forget about that love interest. I haven’t got magnificent alabaster tits and your eyebrows can’t dance. Let’s do something.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Don’t you have anything in mind?’
I shrugged.
We fell silent. ‘The fairy tale writer doesn’t know,’ said Nina. She sat down and stared into the fireplace. I smiled wrily. She drew her legs under her and settled back into the chair. Then, her face raised to me, like a sleepy cat, her eyes narrowed, she said: ‘I expected you to at least tell me a fairy tale about it.’
‘I thought you wanted to know why we were here.’
‘I don’t want to think about the snow. I don’t want to think about that tape. Or about the barricade. Or about all that food.’ She opened her eyes until they were so wide that it was impossible for me to miss the import of her words. ‘And I don’t want to talk about Zeno, either. Didn’t you say this was a great opportunity for you to read me Uncle Herman’s biography?’
‘Out loud? I thought I’d just hand you the manuscript. It’s a long story.’
She smiled.
‘And a tall one.’
She nodded.
‘It’s all about arrival and departure and Zeno …’
Nina’s gaze strayed to the fire.
‘… and the atomic bomb and …’
‘The what?’
‘The atomic bomb,’ I said, ‘I know everything there is to know about that.’
‘The atomic bomb … You say it the way most people would say: I know everything there is to know about cars. Or football. Books, even.’
I could feel the wine, and the glow of the hearth.
‘Are you going to keep avoiding this? I told you before: do your Decamerone, give me the Canterbury Tales, unexpurgated. You’ve promised me stories galore, but so far all I’ve had are coming attractions. Please begin. What is the beginning, anyway?’
‘The beginning,’ I said. I went to the reading table, behind the chairs, and opened my bag. The packet of paper I had printed out the week before felt cool, almost as though it didn’t belong to me.
‘Should I get some more wine?’
I nodded. The beginning. I sat down, the manuscript on my lap, and stared into the flames.
Here I am, I thought, a fairy tale writer. A memory that stretches back to the seventeenth century, though I myself was born midway into the nineteen-thirties. Son of an inventor, who was the son of a physicist, who was the son of a clockmaker, whose forefathers had all been clockmakers, ever since the invention of the timepiece. Nephew of Herman Hollander, the Herman Hollander, nephew and sole heir. Brother of Zeno Hollander, the
