4

I told him, thought Jenny as she sat at the dinner table, doing her best to conceal her excitement. Her father shot her an enquiring glance, trying to tell if his daughter was all right after yet another of her countless fainting spells. On the wall next to the refrigerator, the cuckoo clock — which the Graver family had bought last Christmas from a vendor whose stand was just outside the entrance to Altona Coastal Park — said it was 8.40 p.m.

‘It seems to me you’re all better, Jenny,’ said her mother as she brought the roast to the dinner table.

‘Why don’t you let her say for herself whether she’s all better or not,’ Roger broke in. Clara only sighed, sitting down as if nothing had happened.

But Jenny wasn’t interested in what her parents had to say that evening. She couldn’t think about anything other than Alex.

It finally worked: I told him where I live.

She’d been trying to do it for what seemed like ages. Over the last year, she’d tried to communicate something about herself besides her name to him, but she thought it might be too hard. What’s more, she’d never really been willing to admit that the voice in her head might belong to another human being. And there was one other thing that had kept her from trying to communicate with him: the pain. Maybe the boy who had reached out to her with the name Alex didn’t feel the sheer physical pain that she did during the attacks, but for her it was torture. Each individual word perforated her brain, like a stab through her head from one temple to the other. This time, though, she was sure that she’d clearly enunciated the name of her city.

Jenny had only a very vague idea of the person she was contacting. His name was the only clue she had. His voice seemed to belong to a young person, probably someone her age, and during her visions she’d managed to glimpse his eyes, and make out the blond shock of hair hanging over his forehead.

There were times when she wondered if she wasn’t building a gigantic house of cards that was sure to collapse sooner or later, destroying all her illusions. Because that was what she feared the most: losing the sensation that had followed her through every moment for years now, the hope that the voice she heard might belong to another flesh-and-blood human being.

That night, she went to bed with a clear mind. She smiled as she looked up dreamily at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars that her father had put up so many years ago were still there, shining down for her as she dropped off to sleep. Cassiopeia, the square shape of Pegasus, Andromeda, and then there were Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Great Bear and the Little Bear, separated by the twisting body of Draco. A firmament all for her.

Jenny closed her eyes.

Alex was out there; she felt sure of it. He was somewhere on the planet. And they were somehow able to communicate. She couldn’t live without him any longer.

That afternoon, after gobbling down some quiche and a bottle of pear juice and killing an hour or so watching television, Alex decided to go to the library. There was a new building site across the street from his apartment block, and since that morning a crew of construction workers in fluorescent orange overalls had been drilling with jackhammers. The noise made it impossible for him to think. His mid-term exam in philosophy was getting closer, and he’d studied thirty per cent, at most, of the chapters that his teacher had assigned the class.

With his backpack slung over one shoulder, he caught one bus and transferred to another, getting off in front of the university library. He’d been there before: it was a quiet place, populated with older kids who were mostly attending the Politecnico. As he walked into the reading room, he scanned the tables for an empty seat and headed for the first one he found.

He half-heartedly started going over his notes, and then pulled out his philosophy textbook.

He was underlining in pencil a phrase from Kierkegaard when the usual shudder paralysed his back, immobilising every last nerve ending in his body.

Then something strange happened.

He looked around, waiting for the moment to arrive. He expected to fall out of his chair, but he didn’t sprawl out onto the floor at all. He remained seated, motionless, both arms on the table. He felt his body becoming heavier, but he was able to move his head and his neck muscles. Suddenly, he felt an overwhelming sensation of emptiness. He felt as if he were dangling in midair. As if a giant void had opened up underneath his feet and he were floating above it, without falling in. He could no longer see the familiar setting of the university library. All he saw was smoke and fog. And the void.

But his mind remained alert. He could feel that he still had control over his own body, that he wasn’t about to faint. He was awake: he was partly anchored to physical reality and partly drawn into the abstract setting of his vision. That afternoon, for the first time in four years, there were no background noises. Just a rustling, like a gust of wind. Alex could feel the cool air around him.

Is that you, Jenny?

A moment of silence followed, and it seemed interminable. Then came the answer.

Yes, Alex.

He was in the grip of a completely new feeling: a mixture of disbelief, joy, astonishment, and curiosity.

On the other side of the world, she too for the first time felt no physical pain during their contact.

Please, tell me you’re real, said Alex.

You know I am. And I know you are, too, said Jenny, in a voice that was delicate and familiar. To Alex, it seemed as if he were talking to someone who had always been at his side, as if he were communicating with her in a way that rendered distance meaningless.

Jenny, I’m going to ask you something that might sound completely stupid.

She said nothing. Alex went on looking into empty air, seeing nothing but fog.

Are you there, Jenny? I want to ask you —

A voice came out of the fog, interrupting him.

Robert Doyle.

For a few seconds, Alex sat breathless. Incredulous.

His name is Robert Doyle, she said again. Her answer seemed impossible to him.

Jenny … I hadn’t even asked you yet.

His words began to echo. Alex sensed that their communication was starting to fade. Their voices slowly drew further and further apart.

Yes, you did, she replied, and her words repeated themselves over and over in Alex’s head, before vanishing into the distance, fading into the sound of the wind.

Alex opened his eyes wide. He clenched his fists and pulled his head back, feeling nothing more than a faint tingling, just pins and needles.

Around him, in the reading room, there were two small knots of students, each occupying a table, while the librarian stacked reams of paper into a cabinet.

Alex mentally replayed everything that he and Jenny had just said to each other. He shot to his feet and almost fell over: his legs were still half asleep. He went over to the librarian, who had sat down at her desk and was lazily typing on a keyboard.

‘Excuse me,’ Alex said, ‘I wonder if I can ask you a favour. Is your computer online?’

The librarian, a woman in her early fifties with a wrinkled face and an enormous mole on her right cheekbone, looked him in the eye. She didn’t seem especially interested in helping him.

‘What do you need to do?’ she asked, lowering her glasses to the tip of her nose.

‘I just need to check one thing. It’s very important.’

The woman heaved a sigh and arched her eyebrows in annoyance. Then she nodded her willingness to grant this one request.

‘Could you type “Melbourne mayor” into Google and tell me what name comes up?’

The librarian opened a new window and, maddeningly slowly, she typed Melbourne mayor into the Google search window.

‘Robert Doyle.’

Alex looked at her in disbelief. ‘Are you sure?’

‘See for yourself,’ the woman said, turning her computer screen towards him. Alex could read the name as clear as day: Robert Doyle.

‘Then she exists … she really exists,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Who really exists?’

Alex smiled and said nothing in reply. He turned on his heel, threw his backpack over his shoulder, and headed quickly for the exit, a huge smile on his face.

Outside, on the steps leading down to the street, Alex Loria let out a shout of joy, indifferent to the passers-by who looked at him as if he were crazy.

Jenny really existed.