Angelika and the Forgers
AatF has a story involving mis-placed artworks, and this is one of them, entitled Fall.
Extract from a 2010 e-mail to a writer friend who had written what I privately felt was a rather uninspired story about a kid waking up from a coma:
'I think I may have mentioned to you once that I had started a novel about a woman who wakes from a five-year coma. It's called Angelika and the Forgers. That is a working title, and it sounds like a nod both to Tintin - Herge's unfinished Tintin book had the working title, in English, of Tintin and the Forgers, though it never got past the first 20 pages, and remained with the French title Tintin et l'Alph Art - and to the Angelique series of bodice-ripping pot-boilers around in the 50s and 60s; translated in German as Angelika. I know nothing about them apart from remembering their lurid-looking covers and, for some reason, have not tracked them down.
I began Angelika and the Forgers in 1990, wrote around 300pp, part 1 and most of part 2, and then abandoned it, for no particular reason - other ideas simply appealed to me more. It was the book that took up all my writing time in my two years in Istanbul. When I got to Poland in 1993 to spend my first 6 months there, I got carried away with the ideas I had accumulated in Istanbul, and began writing the equally mammoth-length Istanbul Song instead of continuing with Angelika.
For years it only existed as an old-fashioned typescript, though a few years ago I keyed all of part 1 and some of part 2 onto a computer. I recently found the remaining typescript, and found it interesting reading, firstly as a window into my thinking 20 years ago, and secondly seeing it almost as a disinterested reader might - I'd forgotten most of it. So I began working on it again recently.'
The novel was meant to be short, snappy, disturbing and Kafkaesque. Instead it turned into a Dickensian sprawl with lots of light-hearted moments and occasional slapstick. I can't even begin to sum it up right now, so I'm going to list the Wh- questions and see if they will prompt some short points.
What? A novel tracing the development and back-story of a girl who wakes from a coma.
Where? London, specifically Greenwich and SE London and somewhere near Old St. I have gone into extensive descriptions of places around Greenwich, and half-heartedly believe that if a disaster levelled it tomorrow, planners could read my book and rebuild at least some of it as it was when I wrote it. (I know they'd just stick up a few tower blocks and car parks...) The area around Old Street would now be utterly unrecognisable to anybody who knew it in the 1980s. The action moves to Karlovy Vary and Prague, then in Czechoslovakia, and now of course in the Czech Republic. Somewhat arrogantly, I'd never been to Czechoslovakia when I started the book, but by the time I wrote the relevant parts I'd been to both Karlovy Vary and Prague, on an insane trip with the friend on whom Don Darius (see Laikonik Express) is based.
When? 1990.
Who? Angelika Dormer, who is a bit of a celebrity patient when she wakes, at the age of 19 or so, from a six-year coma. Inevitably various doctors and psychologists feature. Angelika is informally adopted by a woman called Esther Valens, who knew Angelika as a child, and knew her parents briefly, though has no clue as to why they have disappeared. Anton Gabel is a private investigator with a very large family firm, and he is interested in Angelika's case. Various London people feature too, of course, flit in and out of Angelika's developing life. She gets a job as a clerk/dogsbody at a firm called Prevezer Import Export, and becomes very attached to its chief, Harald Prevezer, who knew Anton Gabel in Israel after the Second World War. She makes a close friend in a girl called Amy, who works in Tesco's at Surrey Quays, and she is befriended by a guy called Bogdan, who works in a travel agency that has something to do with Prevezer, and who may be involved in shifting dodgy passports around London. Meanwhile, in Karlovy Vary, Anna Gabel is seeing various psychiatrists - she has been very badly affected by something that she did in her past; Anna is Anton Gabel's daughter and, not so coincidentally, Angelika's school friend; their nail-bitingly intense friendship was curtailed abruptly one night about six years before, when their boarding school burned down.
How? Third-person narrative to cover the range of characters, the author - me, of course - trying to adopt different tones in which to tell different characters' stories, with questionable (I think) levels of success. But remember, most of this was done on one of those twentieth century artifacts, a typewriter.
Why? I suspect I'll never be able to answer that one. I have no recall of what prompted this story, other than - maybe - a desire to paint a picture of London and its people, and the relationship some of them will have to eastern Europe - I'd been interested in eastern Europe, its music, culture, politics, from my early twenties, at least. Angelika is described as looking like Vermeer's model for his painting The Girl With the Pearl Ear Ring, but that's so corny now after the book and the film (one of the worst I have ever seen), but she was also based on a woman called Angelika who ran the hotel in which I stayed in Berlin, New Year 1989 - however, I still don't remember thinking, 'I'll base a whole novel on this hotel-keeper...'
Despite the last line of my e-mail, I never did start work on it then - I read through the whole of it, but wasn't tempted to put it to the top of the pile, so I have no idea what will happen to it. I have recently been collating it all. For some reason, I started scripting and uploading the beginning of Part Two, then skipped to the somewhere in the middle of it, and started keying that in, then went to the end of it, and started doing that... I have no idea why. I think it was to do with the bits I could find in a very disorganised study. Like the other large novel I completed recently, I kind of know the ending, and always have, for the past 30 years or so, so there is no reason for me not to finish it. I feel another labour of love coming on - I think it's too big and quirky to get published - and can fit it in, I hope, around the other biggish things I'm writing.
'I think I may have mentioned to you once that I had started a novel about a woman who wakes from a five-year coma. It's called Angelika and the Forgers. That is a working title, and it sounds like a nod both to Tintin - Herge's unfinished Tintin book had the working title, in English, of Tintin and the Forgers, though it never got past the first 20 pages, and remained with the French title Tintin et l'Alph Art - and to the Angelique series of bodice-ripping pot-boilers around in the 50s and 60s; translated in German as Angelika. I know nothing about them apart from remembering their lurid-looking covers and, for some reason, have not tracked them down.
I began Angelika and the Forgers in 1990, wrote around 300pp, part 1 and most of part 2, and then abandoned it, for no particular reason - other ideas simply appealed to me more. It was the book that took up all my writing time in my two years in Istanbul. When I got to Poland in 1993 to spend my first 6 months there, I got carried away with the ideas I had accumulated in Istanbul, and began writing the equally mammoth-length Istanbul Song instead of continuing with Angelika.
For years it only existed as an old-fashioned typescript, though a few years ago I keyed all of part 1 and some of part 2 onto a computer. I recently found the remaining typescript, and found it interesting reading, firstly as a window into my thinking 20 years ago, and secondly seeing it almost as a disinterested reader might - I'd forgotten most of it. So I began working on it again recently.'
The novel was meant to be short, snappy, disturbing and Kafkaesque. Instead it turned into a Dickensian sprawl with lots of light-hearted moments and occasional slapstick. I can't even begin to sum it up right now, so I'm going to list the Wh- questions and see if they will prompt some short points.
What? A novel tracing the development and back-story of a girl who wakes from a coma.
Where? London, specifically Greenwich and SE London and somewhere near Old St. I have gone into extensive descriptions of places around Greenwich, and half-heartedly believe that if a disaster levelled it tomorrow, planners could read my book and rebuild at least some of it as it was when I wrote it. (I know they'd just stick up a few tower blocks and car parks...) The area around Old Street would now be utterly unrecognisable to anybody who knew it in the 1980s. The action moves to Karlovy Vary and Prague, then in Czechoslovakia, and now of course in the Czech Republic. Somewhat arrogantly, I'd never been to Czechoslovakia when I started the book, but by the time I wrote the relevant parts I'd been to both Karlovy Vary and Prague, on an insane trip with the friend on whom Don Darius (see Laikonik Express) is based.
When? 1990.
Who? Angelika Dormer, who is a bit of a celebrity patient when she wakes, at the age of 19 or so, from a six-year coma. Inevitably various doctors and psychologists feature. Angelika is informally adopted by a woman called Esther Valens, who knew Angelika as a child, and knew her parents briefly, though has no clue as to why they have disappeared. Anton Gabel is a private investigator with a very large family firm, and he is interested in Angelika's case. Various London people feature too, of course, flit in and out of Angelika's developing life. She gets a job as a clerk/dogsbody at a firm called Prevezer Import Export, and becomes very attached to its chief, Harald Prevezer, who knew Anton Gabel in Israel after the Second World War. She makes a close friend in a girl called Amy, who works in Tesco's at Surrey Quays, and she is befriended by a guy called Bogdan, who works in a travel agency that has something to do with Prevezer, and who may be involved in shifting dodgy passports around London. Meanwhile, in Karlovy Vary, Anna Gabel is seeing various psychiatrists - she has been very badly affected by something that she did in her past; Anna is Anton Gabel's daughter and, not so coincidentally, Angelika's school friend; their nail-bitingly intense friendship was curtailed abruptly one night about six years before, when their boarding school burned down.
How? Third-person narrative to cover the range of characters, the author - me, of course - trying to adopt different tones in which to tell different characters' stories, with questionable (I think) levels of success. But remember, most of this was done on one of those twentieth century artifacts, a typewriter.
Why? I suspect I'll never be able to answer that one. I have no recall of what prompted this story, other than - maybe - a desire to paint a picture of London and its people, and the relationship some of them will have to eastern Europe - I'd been interested in eastern Europe, its music, culture, politics, from my early twenties, at least. Angelika is described as looking like Vermeer's model for his painting The Girl With the Pearl Ear Ring, but that's so corny now after the book and the film (one of the worst I have ever seen), but she was also based on a woman called Angelika who ran the hotel in which I stayed in Berlin, New Year 1989 - however, I still don't remember thinking, 'I'll base a whole novel on this hotel-keeper...'
Despite the last line of my e-mail, I never did start work on it then - I read through the whole of it, but wasn't tempted to put it to the top of the pile, so I have no idea what will happen to it. I have recently been collating it all. For some reason, I started scripting and uploading the beginning of Part Two, then skipped to the somewhere in the middle of it, and started keying that in, then went to the end of it, and started doing that... I have no idea why. I think it was to do with the bits I could find in a very disorganised study. Like the other large novel I completed recently, I kind of know the ending, and always have, for the past 30 years or so, so there is no reason for me not to finish it. I feel another labour of love coming on - I think it's too big and quirky to get published - and can fit it in, I hope, around the other biggish things I'm writing.
One of the paintings that feature in AatF, described prosaically as 'a dog in a party dress'.
An excerpt from Part One, Chapter 6: Horses
Anton Gabel had hoped to see Angelika in the hospital, perhaps to catch sight of her ghost gliding down a corridor. He hadn't liked to ask to see her, was a careful man and remembered others when they asked questions like that out of the blue. Even in his time, men had hanged themselves through the careless fielding of such questions. He forgot the question he hadn't asked, creaked his way up dark wooden stairs, and in an arched doorway tripped over an unattended briefcase. Mister Gabel glared, and its owner retrieved it with an apology that sounded like a polite cough. He was in a busy restaurant at the edge of Covent Garden, and there wasn't enough light in the room; there never was. He squeezed himself into a chair and picked up a menu he knew off by heart. He looked at it anyway. In his background and foreground people moved, movements became postures as they froze into them. He saw dark, conservative clothes, the kind that, though their wearers were largely unaware of it, weaved in and out of fashion time after time, and for this reason the people there had a timeless look to them. He saw a purple, bulbous nose, yellowed whites of eyes framed in red. Dark blue veins stood out on a woman's chicken neck, and on the flecked and freckled backs of her hands. Mister Gabel saw the muck around a man's shirt collar, the same muck around another's cuffs, edged even though they were by an expensive cut of a coat. A woman pulled gloves on, or maybe pulled them off, bared cream-coloured teeth in an awful smile, brayed greetings or goodbyes like a donkey cursed with speech.
Mister Gabel's stomach rumbled loudly, and he seemed to ignore it, but thought immediately about starter, main course and sweet, some wine. He hadn't been able to see her, but he thought about Angelika as his face reflected the room and clouded over. He recalled her Mayday smile from the newspaper photograph. A waiter appeared, all frayed edges and teeth etched sharply with lines, hovered at Mister Gabel's side like some decrepit angel of the Lord, knew Mister Gabel was always ready to order. Some elderly hoorays, who might once have had something to do with Fleet Street, brayed in an alcove, their laughter full of drink, and Mister Gabel acknowledged them with a distracted shake of the head. One who didn't know him, or men like him, could be forgiven for stopping to wonder why he bothered going to such places, where the surroundings and the food and the people never changed, but then would miss the point completely. Men like Mister Gabel first of all felt at home in such places, with their lack of pretensions, and also needed such routines in their lives in order to anchor themselves into the same world as the rest of us. Mister Gabel's business took him here and there, from corner to corner, house to house, court to court, city to city, county to county, country to country, even, from high drama to trivial minutae. Men like Mister Gabel therefore fell into such routines to remind themselves of what day it was, and in which part of their lives and times. Others do it in reverse, do the same things at the same jobs all day in day out, and then vary the routine by going out to eat occasionally. Mister Gabel heard a man fall down the stairs. That was always happening. He noticed how dirty the waiter's nails were. He saw that the man at the next table had spilt rice pudding down his sombre tie, said, "I'll have the pate maison," and the waiter echoed him in a distant voice. "The roulades, and the... the tart aux pommes," Mister Gabel decided, and a half-bottle of the Moselle. And a Ricard. Plenty of ice. The waiter smartly sidestepped one of his laden colleagues, and disappeared.
Mister Gabel looked down at his place mat. It had stains that would never come out, was indented with the impressions of many a hot plate full of good food, basic, honest food. It was a sign of character; a lesser establishment would have brand spanking new place mats, and yet serve food which had been stuck in a freezer for too long. That depressed him about England; if you were a meat eater then, apart from seasonal game, you ate meat that had been killed up to three years previously. It wasn't the same on the continent, and even in Ireland it was different; they had laws against such things. He remembered suddenly, as a small boy on the outskirts of Paris, his father taking him to the horse auctions, and the nervous whining of the animals as they sensed the nearness of the Chevaline Boucherie dealers. Still he brightened up as he studied his place mat. Such things were the mark of a good English restaurant provided, of course, that the food was French.
The mats showed pastoral scenes in imitation of dull English artists. Mister Gabel wasn't sure if he approved of them, as art, or even as ideas, these scenes from an England that had never really been. He looked round the place settings at his table, saw a shepherd, the man who brought home the bacon, so to speak, a noble calling. The shepherd made it possible for him to sit at tables like this and reward himself for whatever efforts he was putting into his day. He saw a harvest scene, the people of England being provided”for. He saw a horseman dwarfed by the lowering majesty of the land.
He followed horse trails to Angelika; there she was, cut down to size by her surroundings, the grandness of England in the night. There she was, he saw her riding on, head held high. He saw her face cut by her open mouth, felt the acute calamity of her fall for a second. There she was, broken on the ground.
When the reports of his field staff had begun to come in on Angelika's case, he had felt the stirrings of a dark feeling about them. The search for her parents may well have been turning into a dead end, but daily they had lost their relevance, had been relegated to the sidelines. Each revelation had brought something dark closer to his door. As always, he was up to his neck in urgent cases, and he had kept his bland, professional face on, for at his age a man stepped out of character only when forced to. From very early on in the case, though, he had had few doubts that he was being led to Horsleydown Hall school, where he had sent his own daughter all those years before. Mister Gabel was an intelligent man, who had prided himself on his judgement; he had taken pleasure in new philosophies, in novel ways of seeing the world. There were no certainties in such ideas, of course, but Mister Gabel recalled with crimson face the smugness to which they had led him, the direction in which he had been sent by them. It was as if he had imprisoned his daughter in some high tower. In his dark self, Mister Gabel would never take pride in his judgement again. Too late, it was too late for red faces, and ideas in themselves could not be blamed. He saw his daughter washing her hands – always washing her hands, compelled by unseen forces to wash her hands, at any hour of day or night. He saw her face in his Ricard, and finished it at a gulp, spread his pate onto his melba toast and bit into it with teeth that suffered the sudden fragility of years. The pate didn't taste as it usually did.
He pulled out his own copy of the press cutting showing the Horsleydown children around their maypole. How happy they seemed to be with those smiles on their faces, and yet in their eyes Mister Gabel fancied he could spot the first signs of their imbalance. He knew about that. His lessons had been as brutal as anything Horsleydown Hall may have offered; his daughter had been talked about like something under a microscope, and he had learnt gradually about why she did the things she did, and why she wanted to do the things she wanted to do. He was familiar with doctors like Doctor Dufresne and Doctor Solana. Contrary to their assertions that all had died in the fire save Angelika, there had been another survivor, and that was Mister Gabel's daughter. How had she escaped those punishing flames? Nobody knew except her, and she, after all these years, still wasn't telling. The police had contacted Mister Gabel about a week after the tragedy, and announced that they had arrested his daughter for vagrancy. Having already mourned her, Mister and Mrs Gabel had not questioned the nature of their miracle until much later. By then, his daughter had begun on a trail of cosseted, institutionalised vagrancy. She was taken to every major clinic in Europe, in and out of every different school of analysis. Mister Gabel had always wanted her to travel, had promised her travel if she did well and fulfilled her God-given role as a gifted child. She had liked the idea, would indeed travel, would see magic cities, Cairo, Marakech, Rome, Madrid, Prague, Moscow, Constantinople. She had marked them all out on the map that hung on Mister Gabel's study wall.
“You can't see Constantinople,” he had said. “It isn't there anymore.” It didn't matter; she was a gifted child, would find it, see it all the same. She was twelve at the time, she was excited, was going away to a new school, a serious school that would bring out all her potential, bring it out shining into the light. She had certainly seen Europe.
“In Europe,” Mister Gabel always said to acquaintances when he bumped into them, for friends didn't ask. “In Europe.” It sounded romantic and exciting, even to him, sometimes, and then something would rise in his chest, make his heart stop for a second. She was in Europe, would end up in Siberia, like so many uncomprehending souls before her.
He looked round at the faces in the room. There wasn't enough light in there, but it was cruel to them all the same, and he wondered vaguely about his own, and whether it showed his failure as a father, his daughter somewhere in Europe. His wine tasted sour as it hit the back of his throat.
Mister Gabel thought again of Angelika. She was the same age as his daughter; they must have known each other, might well have been friends. They would certainly have shared all the core lessons, would have played sports, gone fit to kill each other in fierce competition, then would have forgotten about it as the whistle blew. They might have shared secrets together, the last ones of a truncated childhood, before they were forced to give them up into the communal spirit of the school, grow out of them. What kinds of secrets? His daughter was as full of them now as Angelika appeared to be. What on earth could doctors do with them? He thought again of Doctors Solana and Dufresne, remembered for some reason their absurd hairstyles. Doctors had never been able to get at his daughter's secrets, had never got anywhere near her past, couldn't see her future, saw only her present, staring blankeyed and mocking at them. Mister Gabel had finally agreed with them that her past was best left alone.
“Why did you run away from your school?” they had been asking her for years, at each stop in Europe.
“I saw the moon,” she always said. “I saw the moon.”
Anton Gabel had hoped to see Angelika in the hospital, perhaps to catch sight of her ghost gliding down a corridor. He hadn't liked to ask to see her, was a careful man and remembered others when they asked questions like that out of the blue. Even in his time, men had hanged themselves through the careless fielding of such questions. He forgot the question he hadn't asked, creaked his way up dark wooden stairs, and in an arched doorway tripped over an unattended briefcase. Mister Gabel glared, and its owner retrieved it with an apology that sounded like a polite cough. He was in a busy restaurant at the edge of Covent Garden, and there wasn't enough light in the room; there never was. He squeezed himself into a chair and picked up a menu he knew off by heart. He looked at it anyway. In his background and foreground people moved, movements became postures as they froze into them. He saw dark, conservative clothes, the kind that, though their wearers were largely unaware of it, weaved in and out of fashion time after time, and for this reason the people there had a timeless look to them. He saw a purple, bulbous nose, yellowed whites of eyes framed in red. Dark blue veins stood out on a woman's chicken neck, and on the flecked and freckled backs of her hands. Mister Gabel saw the muck around a man's shirt collar, the same muck around another's cuffs, edged even though they were by an expensive cut of a coat. A woman pulled gloves on, or maybe pulled them off, bared cream-coloured teeth in an awful smile, brayed greetings or goodbyes like a donkey cursed with speech.
Mister Gabel's stomach rumbled loudly, and he seemed to ignore it, but thought immediately about starter, main course and sweet, some wine. He hadn't been able to see her, but he thought about Angelika as his face reflected the room and clouded over. He recalled her Mayday smile from the newspaper photograph. A waiter appeared, all frayed edges and teeth etched sharply with lines, hovered at Mister Gabel's side like some decrepit angel of the Lord, knew Mister Gabel was always ready to order. Some elderly hoorays, who might once have had something to do with Fleet Street, brayed in an alcove, their laughter full of drink, and Mister Gabel acknowledged them with a distracted shake of the head. One who didn't know him, or men like him, could be forgiven for stopping to wonder why he bothered going to such places, where the surroundings and the food and the people never changed, but then would miss the point completely. Men like Mister Gabel first of all felt at home in such places, with their lack of pretensions, and also needed such routines in their lives in order to anchor themselves into the same world as the rest of us. Mister Gabel's business took him here and there, from corner to corner, house to house, court to court, city to city, county to county, country to country, even, from high drama to trivial minutae. Men like Mister Gabel therefore fell into such routines to remind themselves of what day it was, and in which part of their lives and times. Others do it in reverse, do the same things at the same jobs all day in day out, and then vary the routine by going out to eat occasionally. Mister Gabel heard a man fall down the stairs. That was always happening. He noticed how dirty the waiter's nails were. He saw that the man at the next table had spilt rice pudding down his sombre tie, said, "I'll have the pate maison," and the waiter echoed him in a distant voice. "The roulades, and the... the tart aux pommes," Mister Gabel decided, and a half-bottle of the Moselle. And a Ricard. Plenty of ice. The waiter smartly sidestepped one of his laden colleagues, and disappeared.
Mister Gabel looked down at his place mat. It had stains that would never come out, was indented with the impressions of many a hot plate full of good food, basic, honest food. It was a sign of character; a lesser establishment would have brand spanking new place mats, and yet serve food which had been stuck in a freezer for too long. That depressed him about England; if you were a meat eater then, apart from seasonal game, you ate meat that had been killed up to three years previously. It wasn't the same on the continent, and even in Ireland it was different; they had laws against such things. He remembered suddenly, as a small boy on the outskirts of Paris, his father taking him to the horse auctions, and the nervous whining of the animals as they sensed the nearness of the Chevaline Boucherie dealers. Still he brightened up as he studied his place mat. Such things were the mark of a good English restaurant provided, of course, that the food was French.
The mats showed pastoral scenes in imitation of dull English artists. Mister Gabel wasn't sure if he approved of them, as art, or even as ideas, these scenes from an England that had never really been. He looked round the place settings at his table, saw a shepherd, the man who brought home the bacon, so to speak, a noble calling. The shepherd made it possible for him to sit at tables like this and reward himself for whatever efforts he was putting into his day. He saw a harvest scene, the people of England being provided”for. He saw a horseman dwarfed by the lowering majesty of the land.
He followed horse trails to Angelika; there she was, cut down to size by her surroundings, the grandness of England in the night. There she was, he saw her riding on, head held high. He saw her face cut by her open mouth, felt the acute calamity of her fall for a second. There she was, broken on the ground.
When the reports of his field staff had begun to come in on Angelika's case, he had felt the stirrings of a dark feeling about them. The search for her parents may well have been turning into a dead end, but daily they had lost their relevance, had been relegated to the sidelines. Each revelation had brought something dark closer to his door. As always, he was up to his neck in urgent cases, and he had kept his bland, professional face on, for at his age a man stepped out of character only when forced to. From very early on in the case, though, he had had few doubts that he was being led to Horsleydown Hall school, where he had sent his own daughter all those years before. Mister Gabel was an intelligent man, who had prided himself on his judgement; he had taken pleasure in new philosophies, in novel ways of seeing the world. There were no certainties in such ideas, of course, but Mister Gabel recalled with crimson face the smugness to which they had led him, the direction in which he had been sent by them. It was as if he had imprisoned his daughter in some high tower. In his dark self, Mister Gabel would never take pride in his judgement again. Too late, it was too late for red faces, and ideas in themselves could not be blamed. He saw his daughter washing her hands – always washing her hands, compelled by unseen forces to wash her hands, at any hour of day or night. He saw her face in his Ricard, and finished it at a gulp, spread his pate onto his melba toast and bit into it with teeth that suffered the sudden fragility of years. The pate didn't taste as it usually did.
He pulled out his own copy of the press cutting showing the Horsleydown children around their maypole. How happy they seemed to be with those smiles on their faces, and yet in their eyes Mister Gabel fancied he could spot the first signs of their imbalance. He knew about that. His lessons had been as brutal as anything Horsleydown Hall may have offered; his daughter had been talked about like something under a microscope, and he had learnt gradually about why she did the things she did, and why she wanted to do the things she wanted to do. He was familiar with doctors like Doctor Dufresne and Doctor Solana. Contrary to their assertions that all had died in the fire save Angelika, there had been another survivor, and that was Mister Gabel's daughter. How had she escaped those punishing flames? Nobody knew except her, and she, after all these years, still wasn't telling. The police had contacted Mister Gabel about a week after the tragedy, and announced that they had arrested his daughter for vagrancy. Having already mourned her, Mister and Mrs Gabel had not questioned the nature of their miracle until much later. By then, his daughter had begun on a trail of cosseted, institutionalised vagrancy. She was taken to every major clinic in Europe, in and out of every different school of analysis. Mister Gabel had always wanted her to travel, had promised her travel if she did well and fulfilled her God-given role as a gifted child. She had liked the idea, would indeed travel, would see magic cities, Cairo, Marakech, Rome, Madrid, Prague, Moscow, Constantinople. She had marked them all out on the map that hung on Mister Gabel's study wall.
“You can't see Constantinople,” he had said. “It isn't there anymore.” It didn't matter; she was a gifted child, would find it, see it all the same. She was twelve at the time, she was excited, was going away to a new school, a serious school that would bring out all her potential, bring it out shining into the light. She had certainly seen Europe.
“In Europe,” Mister Gabel always said to acquaintances when he bumped into them, for friends didn't ask. “In Europe.” It sounded romantic and exciting, even to him, sometimes, and then something would rise in his chest, make his heart stop for a second. She was in Europe, would end up in Siberia, like so many uncomprehending souls before her.
He looked round at the faces in the room. There wasn't enough light in there, but it was cruel to them all the same, and he wondered vaguely about his own, and whether it showed his failure as a father, his daughter somewhere in Europe. His wine tasted sour as it hit the back of his throat.
Mister Gabel thought again of Angelika. She was the same age as his daughter; they must have known each other, might well have been friends. They would certainly have shared all the core lessons, would have played sports, gone fit to kill each other in fierce competition, then would have forgotten about it as the whistle blew. They might have shared secrets together, the last ones of a truncated childhood, before they were forced to give them up into the communal spirit of the school, grow out of them. What kinds of secrets? His daughter was as full of them now as Angelika appeared to be. What on earth could doctors do with them? He thought again of Doctors Solana and Dufresne, remembered for some reason their absurd hairstyles. Doctors had never been able to get at his daughter's secrets, had never got anywhere near her past, couldn't see her future, saw only her present, staring blankeyed and mocking at them. Mister Gabel had finally agreed with them that her past was best left alone.
“Why did you run away from your school?” they had been asking her for years, at each stop in Europe.
“I saw the moon,” she always said. “I saw the moon.”
