Beneath the signpost on the road to Regensburg, Germany, Coal stood staring down at the old thief lying in the road amidst shards of broken glass. Though he was dead as a stone, the man’s eyes were wide in astonishment. After most of a lifetime preying upon travelers on deserted byways, he had finally picked the wrong man to rob.
A dark drop splashed down into the dust between pieces of glass. Reaching up, Coal found a cut on his forehead where the thief had struck him with his pistol. His fingers came away black and shiny.
As he did every few years, Coal had come to the town of Frauenau, deep in the forest in eastern Bavaria, to visit the glassworks there.
For ages, he’d kept what he called his “bug collection” in little wooden boxes. But he’d never been satisfied with the containers. Eventually, the hinges rusted. And even a hardwood, like an Indian Ebony or African Blackwood, over time, could be clawed through—if the thing inside wanted out badly enough.
But glass, with a good solid stopper or a hinged lid, might last, if not forever, for at least a very long time.
That was what Coal had been carrying under his arm that day. Little jars, a whole crate full, with a brand new design for the seal. He thought them wonderful. The man who’d been waiting at the crossroads all day was not so enamored of them. When he found that Coal—in his fine suit and bespoke shoes—was carrying no gold or wallet, just empty bottles, he struck him across the brow. The box slipped from Coal’s arm and crashed to the ground.
• • •
Wooden hangers clattered as Coal shoved them aside to peer into the back of his wardrobe.
Not one suit remained. He could’ve sworn at least one was left.
When Coal found a suit he liked he usually ordered a half dozen or so. Going through them all was one of the ways he reminded himself of the passing of time. Though running out of them always seemed to happen at the wrong time.
He pulled off his coat.
“Ow!”
He stuck a finger through the rip in the cloth where the girl had struck him the night before. He’d thought his shoulder merely scraped. But as he removed his shirt he felt cotton threads tear out of a deep gouge. Looking around at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror, he poked at the spot with a finger. “Ow,” he said again. The hook of the poker had sliced into the top part of his back. He stared at it for a moment, disconcerted when he saw that it wasn’t healing.
Kneeling down, he pulled out the bottom drawer of the cabinet. “At least there are shirts.” Taking one, he stood up, and found himself leaning against the cabinet as the room spun around. He pushed his thumb up under his eyebrow.
Teetering around a pile of shoes and stacks of dirty dishes, Coal maneuvered toward his makeshift desk spread on top of a concert grand shoved into the corner of the room. He sat down on his high stool and leaned his head on the piano, waiting for it all to stop spinning.
Recovering, he began to rifle through stacks of documents searching for the name of that tailor in . . . Paris? Luxembourg, maybe? A shoe, serving as a paperweight, fell off the edge, scattering papers and correspondence across the rug. Picking through the remaining pile, he flicked them away across the room one after another, until he spotted a letter with a Zurich return address.
“I should open my mail more often,” he said, tearing the end off the envelope. He pulled out the letter.
“August 1911. I reckon Dr. Bleuler thinks I need to open my mail more often, too.”
He skimmed the first few lines and then skipped to the end. Dr. Bleuler was suggesting he return to the clinic.
“I like Bleuler.” Coal slipped the letter back into the envelope. “He’s the only one who ever understood the notion that if you don’t have a lot of little wars, you end up with an unmanageably large one. Not to mention, the turtle doves outside my window every morning. So soothing.”
Trying to stow the letter somewhere, he looked around, as if only now noticing the clutter. The piano was covered with dishes and ashtrays, piled on top of papers and history textbooks. There was a bucket on the piano bench; a leak in the ceiling had filled it near to overflowing. The rest of the room was no better—random furniture and boxes, fused together with dust and cobwebs. In a birdcage perched on the edge of the piano, Coal saw the remains of two tiny birds nestled together on yellowed newspaper.
Coal reached for his watch, but found it missing, reminding him, again, that this digression was the girl’s fault.
He ran the back of his fingers down the keyboard and then played a little melody from something. “Why didn’t you drop her dead? Like that thief on the forest road, all those years ago. When was that? On the way to Leipzig, when Napoleon’s Grande Armée had been getting itself blown up on the bridges.”
He stopped playing and banged shut the fallboard. He couldn’t imagine why he’d thought he had enough time for this foolishness. Feeling a bit steadier, he got up.
“Doesn’t matter. She—and this idiotic game—will be over and done in a day or two.”
He looked out the window at the dawn light gilding the tops of the trees. “I’m late.”