On the train, somewhere in Europe
I ’m fidgeting in the seat next to the Pillar and slightly rocking to the train’s movement. He doesn’t pay attention to any of my questions, but stares at a paper he’s discreetly pinned into the back of the woman sitting in front of him. She has bushy hair and probably hasn’t washed it for some time, so she doesn’t feel it.
“Aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask him, disappointed that I’ve failed to solve the puzzle.
“We booked two tickets for Croatia, didn’t we?” he says, still staring at the paper, which reads, Miss Croatia 1454 .
“I know, but this couldn’t be so easy.”
“The puzzle says Croatia, so it must be,” he says. “All we need is to figure out what 1454 means. Could be an address.”
“You mean a street or house number? Come on, he said only a few people will be able to solve it. That doesn’t sound like a puzzle designed for a few people to get.”
“I agree, but I can’t solve it. Let’s stick with the Croatia idea. What do you think the numbers are?”
“Coordinates?”
“I checked. It’s not.”
I let out a sigh. Today seems to be the day of disappointments. Earlier, I couldn’t defend myself against the Reds, and now I am clueless to this puzzle. “Are you sure this isn’t a Wonderland puzzle? Something Lewis Carroll wrote in his book?”
“I am. Lewis only left England to travel to Russia. I doubt it if he’d ever known anything about Croatia.”
“Not even the 1454 number?”
“Nah, but wait.” The Pillar waves his gloved hands in the air. These are new gloves the woman at the hospice gave him with her phone number on the back.
“What is it?”
“1454 is a year.”
“I thought of it, Googled it, but found nothing of importance.”
“Not even in Croatia?”
“I don’t think Croatia existed in 1454,” I say, wondering if he is testing me. Usually, he knows more, though today he strikes me as a little off-balance with his worrying about dying within fourteen years. I wonder about the real reason he visited the hospice. I wonder if there is still a part of what he saw in the future that he hasn’t told me about. And I hope he isn’t really dying because I am not sure what I’d do without him.
The Pillar pulls out a marker pen and stretches his arm forward, then crosses the word miss out. Instead, he writes, Ms.
“What difference does it make?”
“All the difference in the world.” He looks like he’s got something.
Then I get it. It only takes a minute to see it, and I am proud of myself. “It’s an anagram.”
“Indeed,” he says. “The words ‘Ms. Croatia’ are meant to be shuffled and changed to give us another word.”
“The Chessmaster is brilliant. In order to make sure very few can solve it, he made it harder by substituting ‘Ms.’ with ‘Miss.’”
“I wouldn’t say that,” the Pillar comments. “He said Miss Croatia, never wrote it. So it was up to us to interpret it the way we want.”
“But now that we know ‘Ms. Croatia’ is actually the word…” I am trying to figure it out without pen and paper.
“Marostica,” the Pillar says. “I am beginning to think I’ve underestimated the Chessmaster.”
“Marostica?” I Google it. “That’s in Italy.”
“Yes, it is.” The Pillar pulls the paper back and the woman flinches, glaring back at him. The Pillar sticks out his tongue like a kid, making her feel uncomfortable, she looks away immediately.
“So the message is Marostica 1454?” I whisper to him. “What happened in 1454 in Marostica?”
“Something beautiful,” the Pillar says, booking train tickets to Italy on his phone.
“Something beautiful?” I squint. “I doubt the Chessmaster is inviting us to something beautiful.”
“Dear Alice, buckle up and take a deep breath,” the Pillar says. “The Chessmaster might be some sort of Wonderlander after all.”
“I’m not following.”
“Let me put it this way: in the year 1454 in Marostica, Italy, the first chess game in the history of mankind was played. Something Lewis had been very fascinated with.”