Hot chocolate.
5
“We might have a long night of walking, Jem,” my dad said, sipping at his chocolate. “We should try to get out of the city as fast as possible. I don’t like the way people keep looking at us. Once we get into the countryside we can go easier.”
“Are we going anywhere in particular?” I asked.
“That’s an important question,” my dad said. “I want to head north of the city and explore around. It’s important for my next project.”
“Uh oh,” I said. “I hope you’re not going to turn me into anything.”
“Don’t be silly. I hope I’m turning you into a creative and imaginative person. The next project will be a wonderful and amazing adventure, Jem. I always wanted to visit the final resting place of Leonardo.”
“You want to drag our wagon to Italy? Won’t the Atlantic be hard to get over?”
“Very clever, smarty. He didn’t die in Italy. He died in America.”
“Dad! He died in Amboise in 1519.”
“Jem, you’re amazing. You remember me telling you that?”
“You only told me about thirty times,” I muttered.
“Oh, ha ha. The truth is, Jem, I’ve been studying notebook 217A, and I think he staged his own death in Amboise, and came over to America. Here, look. . . .”
He slid his foot out of his boot to take hold of one of his drinks. The toes on his feet, of course, were flexible and almost as good as fingers. Then with his free hand he reached behind him into the wagon and rummaged in one of the boxes of papers, which he had packed conveniently close to the edge in case a sudden inspiration came over him.
“Look.” He smoothed a piece of paper on his lap. It was a photocopied page of one of Leonardo’s notebooks. “Plain as plain. Can’t you see? Look at that line scribbled in the corner.”
“I can’t read it,” I said.
“Of course you can’t,” he said. “It’s mirror writing. He always wrote in mirror writing. Bizarre, isn’t it? If he was alive today, how fast do you think he’d get fired from his job? Here, I always keep a mirror handy.” He rummaged in the box again and took out a little vanity mirror. “Now take a look.”
“Sorry, still can’t read it.”
“Well sure,” he said. “It’s in Italian. But I never go anywhere without my Italian English dictionary. Let’s translate the thing word for—”
“Dad, just tell me what it says.”
“Right. It says, ‘A farmer, who looks just like me, has died and his body has been brought to me for anatomical studies. In my examination of this body,’ get this Jem, he says, ‘In my examination of this body, the amazing coincidence of similarity has brought to my mind a new plan.’ That’s all he says. But what else could the plan be? It’s perfectly clear. He staged his death. He propped the farmer up at his desk, dressed him up in his clothes, his hat on his head and his pencil in the man’s hand, shoved a carrot stick down the man’s windpipe, just to make the thing look plausible, and then snuck out the back door. That’s what happened. I’m telling you. He was only sixty-seven. He had ten more years in him, at least.”
“I can see your point,” I said, “but Dad, it seems like kind of a stretch. Maybe he only meant to play a joke on a friend. Maybe that was the plan. Was he into practical jokes a lot? Because he might have—”
“Jem! Practical jokes? Lenny? You think he had time to worry about practical jokes? He was too busy trying to figure out how the world worked. I’m telling you. He saw his chance and got out of dodge. He went sight-seeing. And he filled up another fifty notebooks that nobody’s found yet.”
“Well,” I said skeptically, “it’s interesting all right, but, to be honest, it’s not a lot to go on.”
“It isn’t,” my dad admitted. “And a year ago when I read that sentence, I didn’t think too much about it. I filed it in the back of my mind. I decided it probably meant nothing. But it had a way of coming back to me now and then, when I was going to sleep at night. I’d gaze up at his picture. ‘Leonard,’ I’d say to him, ‘Leonard, what—’ ”
“Okay Dad, I get the idea. You found something else in the meantime.”
“That’s exactly right. Last month I found this.” He rummaged around in the box again and took out a stack of papers, photocopies of what must have been an old and crumbling book. “Now!” he said, slapping the papers onto the curb between us. “Take a look at that and see how far your practical joke gets you. Huh?”
“Is that in his mirror writing too?”
“Mirror writing? No! It’s Spanish. It’s a ship’s log. The Santa Torpedo. It sailed from Spain in 1519, the year that Leonardo died. Or pretended to die. Spooky coincidence, isn’t it? Look. A list of the sailors, with a brief description of each one. Notice this fellow. ‘Old but immensely strong Italian.’ That’s the description. His name? ‘Leonardo Vince.’ What do you think of that, Jem?”
I began to see what he meant. A prickle went down my spine. I couldn’t read Spanish, but I could read the name all right. “You think he signed on as a sailor?”
“Of course he did. He wanted to see the world from a new perspective. His mind was wide open, I tell you. The Santa Torpedo landed just north of Manhattan Island. It wasn’t called that at the time, of course. I’ve only just started to translate the log, but I expect there’s a lot more information in it. Jem, we’re going to explore around, do some detective work, and track down Leonardo’s final resting place. We’re going to hunt for his last notebook.”
“Dad,” I said, “I like it. I do! I think we should start right away. Especially since it’s, um, getting kind of cold here on the curb.”
We drained the last of our hot chocolates into our gullets, Dad pulled his boot back on his foot, and we set out on our journey, Dad pulling the wagon, rolling side to side because of his orangutan gait, me striding along beside him, the snow sifting down around us, and the city gradually falling as quiet as it ever gets at night. To tell the truth, I didn’t believe a word about Leonardo in America. I thought it was just my dad being nutty. But a quest is a quest, and I was as happy as a ten-year-old boy could be.
