A Beggar's Kingdom Page 32

  “If you want to keep him in your life, turn around, Z.”

  “He told me he loved me.”

  “How long has he been telling you this?”

  “Over four years.”

  Julian nodded. “He will love you less in twenty minutes. He made a stupid but honest mistake in his schedule. For this you want to wreck his life.”

  “I don’t want to wreck it. I want him to live it.”

  Julian bowed his head. “That fight might be worth having. Just not now.”

  “What do you think I should do, Julian? Nothing?”

  “Z, you’ve been coming to London in secret for years, you’ve been staying with us for months. Ashton’s been out, been asleep, been in the shower. You haven’t once asked me what you should do. Why start now?”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks.

  “Please, Julian, what should I do?” Zakiyyah whispered.

  The bag was down. The purse was down. They sat side by side on the stairs. Julian took her hand in his. “It’s hard to accept that the person we love will not change,” he said, his voice breaking. “Not in this life. And possibly not in any other. Our love is so strong that we think it can change things. It can change the world, can beat back death, can change the man we love.” Or woman. “Because our love has changed us.”

  “Yes,” said Zakiyyah.

  “It’s not enough.”

  “You don’t believe that. You of all people.”

  “I do,” Julian said. “Me of all people.”

  “Tell me the truth. Do you think he will ever change?”

  For a few moments, Julian sat without answering her.

  He and Ashton were the Faces once. They were the chosen ones. They had floated through their charmed GenX twenties in a heated pool of girls and fun. Everything good was placed on a buffet in front of them. Here, feast, Life said. What’s not yet yours is waiting to be yours. The meal is served, the parade is on, the sails are in the air, and the girls are pretty. Taste and see.

  Of late, Julian had been waiting to become philosophical about his crushed dreams, his wasted life.

  He was still waiting.

  What was the point of falling in love if you stayed exactly as you were?

  That was Zakiyyah’s fateful question.

  That was Julian’s fateful question.

  “No, I don’t,” Julian said. “Ashton will never change.”

  “You don’t know!” she cried. “You don’t know anything. Look what you’ve done with your life.”

  “Why is everyone attacking me? What does Ashton have to do with what I’ve done with my life?”

  “He’s only in London because of you!”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Zakiyyah frowned as if she didn’t understand and didn’t want to.

  “Are you sure he’s not here because he’s been trying to hide you?”

  She grit her teeth. “He would never have moved here if it wasn’t for you.”

  “Ashton is not my fault.” God!

  “Well, whose fault is he? You’ve lied and protected him his whole adult life!”

  “Because he is my friend,” Julian said, “not because he is my fault.”

  “He said he loved me!”

  “He does. But he says it because he knows you want to hear it.”

  Zakiyyah exhaled like the balloon of her heart had popped. The air leaving her lungs in a grieving hiss, she stood up, staring intensely at Julian still drooped on the stairs. She glanced up to one more landing, one more flight, to the open door of the apartment beckoning her, the open door beyond which was Ashton, his handsome face, his harmless ways, his pure, delighted sparkling smile despite his damaged life. Grace, and smile. Endure it, and smile. Grit your teeth, and smile. Break your heart, and smile. Who wouldn’t want to be around someone like Ashton? He was everyone’s favorite person. Until now he brought joy to everyone who knew him. The terrible struggle shrank Zakiyyah’s frame, inverted her shoulders, hunched her back, made her less beautiful.

  “I will never love again like I love him,” she said hoarsely, barely getting the words out. “There will never be another man for me in my life, never.”

  “I know,” Julian said. “But like from black tar heroin, you can turn your back and walk away cold turkey, go through withdrawal and find yourself another man.”

  “That man is upstairs.”

  Julian shook his head. “Accept him or leave him, Z.”

  With hope in her voice, she said, “How do I accept him? Turn around, go home, come back next weekend, like nothing’s happened?”

  “Correct.”

  “Can I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Only you know what you can and can’t do.” From his own experience, Julian would say human beings were capable of a lot.

  “Mia was completely wrong for you, and you didn’t care.”

  “I cared. But she died before I could act. She left me no choice. But you still have a choice, Z.”

  “You think I have a choice?” Zakiyyah laughed coldly. “Could you have left Mia?”

  “No.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  “And she was faithless, too, and lied to you, said things to you that were untrue.”

  “Her heart was true.”

  “Like Ashton’s?”

  “Yes. Like his is true.”

  “She was living with another man, Julian! For three years, she was engaged to another man, and you didn’t care! But you’re telling me to care.”

  “No. I’m telling you to decide what you can and can’t live with and then act accordingly.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Absolutely,” Julian said. “That is what I do. I can’t live without Mia. So I act accordingly.”

  It was a cold waterfall, standing on the stairs watching a gorgeous girl, her ebony face streaked with tears, rend her robes in turmoil, looking up, looking down, in a suspended moment in time, a still frame in the middle of her gusty ride, trying to decide what the story of her life would be, how the poetry of her days would play out. Could it continue even with the ugly, could it reform without beauty, would it break apart? In front of Julian on the painted stairs, Zakiyyah set fire to herself, laid siege to her desire, to the vanishing dream of a life which had in it one man and one man only. In that waterless minute Zakiyyah had to imagine a different life than the one she’d been living: wandering around London, riding the Circle Line in rings of hope and sorrow, in an endless yellow loop of longing and enchantment, waiting for Ashton to become the man he would never be.

  It was as if Zakiyyah too was in a rowboat on the black river of lament, and the cyclone had swallowed her.

  “Can I do it?” she whispered. “Turn around, walk away, and know that I will never see him again? Never touch him again? It’s like death. I can’t. I can’t!” Her fists were clenched so violently, her nails dug in, broke her skin, made her bleed. Small red droplets fell on the gray stairs.

  Life ground down to cold slow motion in front of Julian, and then stopped.

  ∞

  Soon Julian wasn’t on the stairs anymore with a crying woman, but in the cave of faith, leaping across the blackest sea, traveling down a calm unruffled river, clutching the crystal, his other life fading and receding, Zakiyyah, Riley, Devi, even Ashton. Only his own dark future lay ahead of him. Everything else was fog and forgotten. How could he know how Zakiyyah would choose when he didn’t know how he himself would choose?

  Zakiyyah had mangled Leonard Cohen, grabbing Julian’s hand on the stairs. To love each heart will come, she said, but like a refugee. Julian wanted to tell her that sometimes not even then, but her heart was broken enough.

  Part Three

  Lady of the Camellias

  “Oh, I would give ten years of my life to weep at her feet for an hour.”

  Alexandre Dumas, La Dame aux Camélias

  28

  Airy’s Transit Circle

/>   TO GET TO THE LIGHT, JULIAN CLIMBS A FAMILIAR-LOOKING iron staircase, narrow like a ladder. When he pops open the grate and climbs out, he finds himself back in the Transit Room inside the Royal Observatory.

  “Ashton?” he calls out. How could it not work! Julian had been drifting down the river for so long. But it’s unmistakable: though the window to the courtyard and the roof are closed, the familiar telescope is in front of him, and the black stairs flank it. Ashton is nowhere to be found. Neither is Sweeney.

  Nope, that’s not true. There’s Sweeney. First the shuffling of torpid footsteps, and here comes the heavy man, huffing and panting. He’s dressed more formally than a minute ago. He wears a funny hat.

  “Sweeney,” a crushed Julian says. “It’s you.”

  “Who else would it be,” Sweeney says. “I’m the caretaker, I’m always here. And who might you be?”

  “It’s me, Sweeney. Where’s Ashton?”

  “Who’s Ashton? And who the bloody crickets are you?”

  Before Julian can answer, a gray-haired, dapper man in his fifties—wearing no less than a frock coat and top hat—enters the Transit Room. “Mr. Sweeney!” the man exclaims. “Did you see the sun flare just now? I was nearly blinded. That was the largest one yet. Do you have my pen? I must record it in my notebook—” He spots Julian and stops speaking. Turning sharply, he glares at the caretaker. “Mr. Sweeney! I thought I had made it abundantly clear. There are to be no visitors at my Observatory before noon, and certainly not at any time near my telescope.”

  “It is noon, Mr. Airy.”

  Mr. Airy! Could this be George Airy, Britain’s most famous Astronomer Royal? George Airy not only invented Julian’s mystical telescope but presided over the reorganization of the Observatory during the period that just happened to coincide (or correlate?) with Britain’s unmatched navigational prowess. Under Airy’s watch, Britain became the most powerful empire the world had ever known, largely due to the expertise of its navy.

  The cranky genius has big gray sideburns and a bulbous nose. He is dressed impeccably in tails, like a prince dressed by others. If there’s a daytime ball somewhere, George Airy is ready to attend it. He carries a stack of papers under one arm and a cane in the other. He already has a significant stoop.

  Once a relieved Julian realizes the vortex has worked, he relaxes. To stop upsetting the great man, he takes a few steps away from the precious telescope. No protective railing has been built around the Transit Circle (not yet anyway; leave it to Julian to alert George Airy to the necessity of a fence!).

  “Yes, it is noon at this precise moment, Mr. Sweeney,” George Airy says, “noon on Thursday, August 3, 1854”—(look at that; Julian didn’t even have to ask! Well, he’s come to the right place to know the correct time, and to the right man, for that matter)—“But the question before us is not what time it is now, but what time was it when the good gentleman got here? That’s assuming he did not materialize at my telescope spontaneously—during the sun flare perhaps? We are assuming that, are we not, Mr. Sweeney?”

  Sweeney stammers in shame.

  Setting down his cane, the astronomer pulls out his gold pocket watch and studies it intently. “To arrive here at noon, the gentleman would’ve had to walk through the gate down at the foot of the garden by 11:55 or 11:56 if he’s a fast walker and a tireless climber. That sounds like before noon to me, Mr. Sweeney, does it not?”

  “I didn’t let him in through the gate, sir. It wasn’t me. I come back and here he was.”

  “Come back from where, good sir?”

  A flushed Sweeney has no response, as if he can’t admit what he was up to.

  Julian had suspected he might head into 19th century London. 1603, 1666, 1775. Now 1854. London, always London. He tried to prepare for it. While Ashton was busy loving not one but two women, Julian read War and Peace to learn about Austerlitz and Waterloo, Pride and Prejudice to familiarize himself with the manners of early 19th century England, Jane Eyre to absorb how women were treated, and most of Dickens to familiarize himself with all life. He even read Karl Marx when he couldn’t get to sleep. “Everything in existence is worth being destroyed,” Marx wrote, a true modern prince of darkness. Julian thought the economist identified most strongly with Mephistopheles in Faust, which Julian also read.

  Yet here Julian is, wedged into a dinky year he can recall nothing about, a year after the European unrest but before the coming of electricity. Gas lamps abound in 1854. The railroad is running. What else? Any epidemics, any wars?

  While Julian’s thoughts are thus occupied, George Airy makes a noise of exasperation. So far, the scientist has barely glanced Julian’s way—as if Julian is superfluous to his mounting irritation. “It’s Mirabelle, isn’t it?” the astronomer says. “She is always to blame. She was supposed to be here at noon to mark the angle of the sun. Was she here? No. And she always forgets to lock the gate, no matter how many times I remind her.” Critically Airy looks upon Sweeney. “Is the widow Pye the reason you weren’t at your post?”

  “I—I—I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Airy, sir,” Sweeney stammers.

  “My niece can hardly be expected to follow the rules,” George Airy says haughtily. “After all, she is a woman. Her career as an astronomer is limited by virtue of her sex and her general inattention to detail. But we men must adhere most strictly to the procedures I’ve spent two decades setting before us. Otherwise the world is going to dissolve into chaos. It’s headed that way already, Mr. Sweeney, what with the damn French daring to take credit for spotting the irregularities in the motion of Uranus. The irregularities that led them to posit that there might be a new, massive body, a planet they wish to call Neptune! The insolence of the French never ceases to gall me. Did they forget that the only reason they noticed the planetary anomalies in the first place is because of the data I provided for them? I supplied them with the very particulars they now use to belittle me with! Without me, there would be no data! And therefore, there would be no discoveries of planets, large or otherwise!” George Airy gathers steam, pointing in Julian’s direction. “Or the chaos might be this dummerer, this odd mute gentleman in the room with us. How did he get inside my Transit Room? Who is he? As you see, Mr. Sweeney—except for my square of the observable universe—everything is sheer disorder. I beg of you, do not let our small bastion fall into anarchy. We men must hold steadfast.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do not open the gate before noon. Ah-ah—no more defending the indefensible. Please go and get Mirabelle for me. I must speak to her immediately.”

  A voice sounds. “No need to get me, Uncle George. I’m here.”

  Julian grabs at the non-existent black railing. He teeters out of balance. A tall, statuesque woman appears at the far end of the Transit Room, framed by the white casing of the interior door. She is dressed in a navy-blue linen skirt and a maroon jacket. Her white collar is at her neck, her sleeves have no frills, no embellishments. She wears no jewelry. Her dark hair is braided and twisted into two large pouffes at her ears—a Victorian Princess Leia. But inside the sensible dress is the most stunning rendition of Josephine Julian has ever seen. She is a princess, a painting, a beauty queen. Mirabelle. Miri but with belle there, too.

  From across the room, Mirabelle casts her polite gaze on Julian. He stands as straight as he can, the wetsuit clinging to his strong frame, his wavy hair damp, the dark stubble on his pale face grown messy by an infinity of sunless days, his deep-set kaleidoscope eyes—green blue brown—reflecting off her shine. He can’t help himself. The relief and happiness must be plain on his face, in his incongruous half-smile. Pulled down to his Adam’s apple, the small round bulb of the headlamp pulses the last of its white LED light. Julian knows what he looks like; the question is, what does Mirabelle see? He lowers his gaze, feeling awkward and self-conscious.

  A second girl jams in under her elbow. Short and dark-haired, she is embellished with all the baubles the tall girl lacks. She’s heavy with jewelry a
nd ribbons, with gold pins and pink beads.

  “Hello, Mirabelle, hello, Filippa,” says Airy. “Nice of you to finally join us.”

  “I came as soon as I heard my name, Uncle,” says Mirabelle. If only Julian could have such an effect on her. He is glad her gaze is not on him anymore. He feels like the gawky speechless kid at recess all those years ago.

  “We did nothing wrong, Mr. Airy,” Filippa says, holding on to Mirabelle’s arm while smiling flirtatiously at Julian.

  “I’m talking to my niece right now, Filippa, not you. Mirabelle, why weren’t you at the Transit Circle at noon? Without a careful observation of planetary trajectories, our work here cannot be successful.”

  “Yesterday you told me not to touch the telescope, Uncle, because it needed recalibrating,” says Mirabelle.

  “Ah, yes.” Airy proceeds without pause. “I shall attend to that summarily. But also—I’ve told you time and again, the gate to the Royal Observatory is to stay latched until noon.”

  “It was. As far as I know it’s still latched.”

  “Do you see this gentleman in the room with us?”

  “Yes, Uncle George. He is difficult to miss.”

  The floor, Julian! The floor is very interesting.

  “How did he get here if the gate was locked?”

  “And I would know this how? Perhaps you should ask him.”

  “Why, oh why, can’t women follow the most basic rules!” George Airy exclaims.

  “I can follow the most basic rules,” the young woman says calmly. “Shall we take a walk down to the gate so you can see the status of the latch for yourself?”

  “What you’re saying cannot be, Mirabelle,” the irate astronomer replies, “for there’s a gentleman in this room who had no way of getting here except by that gate. As you yourself confirmed, we all see the gentleman, do we not? He’s not a mirage, is he?”

  “No, Mr. Airy, he’s definitely not a mirage,” says Filippa. Mirabelle elbows her friend.

  “Can you explain him to me, Mirabelle?”

  “I cannot. I shall not endeavor to explain any man.”