Venice, 1973
As the young man walked towards the imposing marble building, his heart started beating faster. He paused in the colonnade to collect himself, smoothed a suddenly sweaty palm over his unruly dark hair. He took a deep breath, shook himself gently. Today was the day. He just had to follow the plan.
Wyluzuj, Marius, he told himself, giving himself a light shake. Możesz to zrobić. He pushed through the heavy double doors determinedly.
Immediately, the heat and hubbub of the Piazza San Marco was replaced with coolness and quiet. The sunlight that out in the square had seemed as heavy and cloying as olive oil, hung in the airy hallway of the Marziana library light and fine as silver dust. Tense as he was, Marius felt some of the calm of the place settle upon him as he walked toward his usual table in the main reading room, pulled a book out of his battered brown leather satchel and made as if to read. In fact, the text – a philosophic meditation on the nature of a just war – might as well have been written in Arabic for all the Polish scholar was taking in. His eyes were fixed on the enquiry desk, waiting for the moment when a certain young woman would come and relieve the doughty Italian matron currently filing her nails at it.
She appeared at last, touched the other woman on the shoulder, shared a quiet colloquy with her in Italian, and then assumed her seat. Marius's pulse quickened. The moment had come – but in spite of his commitment to his mission, he was tempted to abandon it, to just continue watching her, this girl he had been watching for two months and more. In spite of all that scrutiny, she was in so many ways a mystery to him. She was a paradox – at once seemingly so open, with her gentle manner and ready smile, and yet something was always held back, hidden. Even her eyes; she always met his gaze candidly when he had had cause to speak to her – a word or two, no more, as he collected reserved books, please and thank you and once an inconsequential remark on the flooding – but between the tinted tortoiseshell glasses she always wore and the dim light of the ancient library, he still couldn't say if they were a brilliant green as he'd first thought, or as they sometimes seemed a rich red-brown, or some murky comingling of the two.
She seemed to be absorbed in re-binding a book, so he was able to indulge himself in a good long look. A mystery, he thought again. She didn't look much older than twenty, but had an air of quiet wisdom to her that belied her youthful appearance. Her dark hair was thick and full, but restrained in a thick braid that ran down her back, given away only by bouncing bangs that touched the tops of those tinted tortoiseshell glasses. Her face was an oblique window into her thoughts - she was given to sudden smiles and frowns, as if always having an ongoing inner conversation with herself. But she said very little, even to her colleagues in the Library. Well of course she does, he reminded himself. It's a library.
In some ways, he felt like he had known her all his life, had just been waiting to meet her to resume a friendship that transcended time (he was mortified to hear himself thinking this way, of course – he wasn't some idiot adolescent). In others, she seemed even more remote to his understanding after weeks of observation than she had the first day he had entered the Library, seen her sitting at the enquiries desk, and fallen hard.
He knew her name, at least, that much he knew. Ruth Xavier. He thought she was American, but couldn't be too sure, as her Italian accent was faultless – better than his own, certainly. And he knew – had known almost as soon as he saw her – that she was the woman he was made to love.
She looked up suddenly, as if sensing his gaze upon her, and he ducked his head guiltily over Thomas Aquinas. Fool, he thought, as the schoolboy blush crept up the back of his neck. She barely even knows that you're alive yet, she might think it a little bit odd if you march on up to the desk and declare your undying. Let's just start with 'hello' and take it from there, shall we? With a deep inward breath, he gathered his books and papers and crossed the reading room to stand over her.
She looked up with an expectant smile.
"Ciao, Signor Marek, Come posso aiutarla?"
He smiled back, his name in her mouth turning his own suddenly into cotton wool.
"Ciao signora – ahm, signorina. Io… Io, ahm.." he stopped, helpless. Marius had studied Italian for four years before coming to study his PhD at the Ca' Foscari university, understood and spoke it well enough to participate in seminars on quite abstruse points of martial philosophy. But in the face of her expectant smile, it had all deserted him. Green, he thought stupidly. Her eyes are green.
She eventually took pity on him.
"In Inglese, forse?"
He nodded gratefully. English was as good as a second mother tongue to him, although he knew he spoke it with a heavy accent of Carpathia, his mountain home.
"Thank you, yes. This is your native tongue, yes?"
She nodded amiably. "That's right." Definitely American, he thought, and felt unwontedly pleased with the small discovery.
"But your Italian, it is excellent." She beamed.
"Thank you. I find languages very easy, very fun. I don't know any Polish, though. I'm sorry."
He inclined his head.
"My country's tongue is not one many foreigners have reason to have learned. And anyway, my family live in Israel now, so we are used to speaking many languages-" he stopped abruptly. What did this woman do to him, that he would let his Jewishness slip out so soon? He couldn't be sure how people would take it, even now, so long after the war that his parents didn't like to talk about. You had to be careful. But she was smiling.
"You come from Israel? I know some Yiddish-" He smiled, relief and curiosity rising together at her eagerness.
"I do not speak Yiddish myself. I was born in Poland, so I speak Polish, and we moved to Israel when I was just a boy, so I have some Hebrew, some Arabic – and English of course; it is the language of the world. My parents know Yiddish, but they never speak it to me and my brothers and sisters, just to one another. They did not want to risk it slipping out in the school yard." She frowned. But surely she must know what he meant? He leant forward and whispered confidentially. "You know Yiddish; are you Jewish yourself?"
He was praying she would answer yes. Religion meant little to Marius; he liked to think of himself as a modern. He suspected that his father had lost any faith in a benevolent God while his childhood died by inches in Auschwitz. But his mother was a traditionalist; it would be difficult to reconcile her to a wife who wasn't Jewish, to her grandchildren being gentiles by default.
O jeny, he thought ruefully. This is only our first conversation, and in my head I'm already introducing her to my parents.
Ruth was shaking her head; there was something sad in her eyes that hadn't been there before.
"No, I'm not Jewish. I used to have a friend who was. He taught me." The tender sadness in her voice made Marius prickle, first with jealousy, then with anger at the 'friend' the mention of whom brought such shadows to her eyes. Whoever he was, he was a fool, the young man thought, this man who made you unhappy. He changed the subject, hoping to chase the shadows away, to make her smile again.
"I am sorry to have bothered you. But I am going now, you see, and I wondered – I thought perhaps-" He listened to his own babbling with increasing dismay. This was the moment; he had her attention, they were having a pleasant conversation, and all he could do was stammer like a schoolboy! She inclined her head encouragingly, the desire to be helpful written all over her face. O Boze, te oczy, he thought desperately, then with a huge effort pulled himself together. His proposal came out sounding horribly formal, but at least it came out.
"I am wondering if you would wish to accompany me to dinner. Tonight. Or some other night. When you are free I mean. If you would like."
The smile on her face froze, and her eyes closed up. He knew instantly that this had been a bad idea. She opened her mouth, and he started babbling to forestall her.
"Or not. I'm sure you are very busy. Forgive me, I should not have been asking-" he was backing away as he talked, and she stood up, looking distressed.
"Please, Mr. Marek – Marius. Please don't be embarrassed. You're very kind to ask me. And I'd love to, really I would, but I can't. I'm sorry."
The sincerity of her regret was hard to doubt, and his humiliation gave way to curiosity. He stopped backing away.
"Can I ask you why not?" he said, lowering his voice – although neither of them had been loud, their byplay was beginning to attract the attention of one or too studious members in the reading room. She drew closer and lowered her own voice, cheeks flushing scarlet with embarrassment. She looked even more lovely than usual, he couldn't help but notice, even as she dashed what was left of his hopes by shaking her head regretfully.
"I can't. I'm very sorry. Please try to understand, I just can't."
Something about the way she said it made him afraid for her. She made it sound as if she was somehow cursed, imprisoned. His wounded pride was suddenly nothing compared to his yearning to help her.
"Please, do not be distressed," he murmured. "It is perfectly alright. But I may speak to you again here? Tomorrow, perhaps? On my honour, I will not overstep again. I just want to get to know you better."
She dropped her chin at that, and whispered:
"No you don't. Trust me. I'm sorry, I have to go."
And with that she turned her back, leaving the enquiry desk unattended, and fled. Against his better judgment, he hurried after her, hoping to catch her outside – but in the hustle of the Piazza, she was just one of a hundred slight, dark-haired figures swirling the square and spilling into the byzantine alleyways that threaded through the city. She was gone.
The girl made her way from the library, across the Piazza, hopped a vaporetto to Guidecca where she had taken rooms on the upper floor of an old converted grain-store, now turned over to accommodating students, migrant workers and others trying to make La Serenissima their home with limited funds. Normally when she got home she would linger on the steps in front of the building, exchange nodded greetings with her neighbours as they set about their evening passeggiata, enjoy the sunset going down over the Doge's palace across the water. Tonight, she went straight to her room, shut the door behind her and leant against it, shut her eyes and tried to still the pounding of her heart.
Stupid, stupid, STUPID, she scolded herself, taking a deep breath and trying to banish the guilty memory of Marius's kind, handsome, face, the look of hurt confusion in his eyes as she ran away from him. Tried too to quell her own regret, her yearning to have said yes to his invitation, to even now be walking with her arm tucked in his through the streets to some trattoria, to listen to his sweet, shy conversation over wine and pasta, to feel for once like part of the human race instead of suffering the loneliness of her self-imposed isolation.
And when he wants to know about you, 'Ruth'? She heard her own chiding thoughts say. Where do you come from? Why did you come here? Who are your family? Do you have any brothers or sisters? She screwed up her eyes against the onslaught of memories, memories she had spent the last ten years running from. She strode across the room and picked up the bottle of whisky on the side table next to her narrow bed, spilled a short measure into a pretty blown blue glass she had bought from Murano and sipped at it, both hands wrapped tightly round it to still their shaking.
She sank into a rattan chair by the window, watched the rosy light of the sunset on the domes and spires turn to dusty violet as night came on. The drink hung forgotten from one hand as she stared unseeing out into the night, turning over thoughts that made her eyes darken. He's better off. If he knew what I was – if he knew even half the things I've done – he'd run. Screaming.
As the bells started to chime midnight, she bestirred herself, crossed the small room to where a transistor radio sat on a mantelpiece over the empty fireplace. She flicked it on and turned the volume down, not wanting to disturb those in the rooms on either side. A sonorous British voice murmured soothing nonsense: "Viking, Cyclonic 3 or 4, becoming north 5 to 7, perhaps gale 8 later. Slight becoming moderate, becoming rough later…" She sloshed the remains of the whisky round the bowl of the glass to revive the flavor, then raised it.
"Here's to you Charles. Here's to all of us. May we all be forgiven." She tipped the glass down her throat, rinsed it in the laver of water by the window and set it on the ledge to dry. She undressed, and was just about to turn the radio off when something in the news that followed the Shipping Forecast brought her up short, standing stock still in the darkened room with her hand reaching out for the button.
"…now returning to our coverage of the strange events at the Hotel Majestic in Paris yesterday, where world leaders had gathered to witness the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Shortly before noon the city was stunned by the appearance of several individuals who appeared to have supernatural abilities. One female individual, who appeared to change her appearance at will, was wounded in the ensuing conflict, shot in the leg by a male who has been identified as the recently escaped high security prisoner Erik Lensherr. He was attacked in his turn by an unidentified blue creature. All three individuals escaped capture and are still at large.
"Rumors of the existence of such individuals, described as 'mutants' by conspiracy theorists, have been in circulation since the 1960s when several superhumans were supposed to have taken part in resolving (or causing, depending) the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, the government still strenuously denies any knowledge of humans with supernatural powers; a spokesman for the Pentagon also refuted claims that the three creatures witnessed today are escaped extraterrestrial subjects."
The girl sat down hard on the bed.
"He's alive. He's alive."
And then she began to cry.
For a long time there was no sound but soft weeping. Then suddenly, it stopped with an indrawn breath.
"Raven. Erik, what have you done?"