If people would only read the Book of Revelations,
They would really turn around and straighten out.
It’s all we need to do is get the Good Book,
Read it, put it to everyday life . . .
Sistas, Niggaz, Whiteys, Jews, Crackaz,
Don’t Worry! If there’s Hell below, we’re ALL gonna go!
—Curtis Mayfield
June 28, 1914. Later on.
Oh my God! What the hell have I done?”
He slammed the door of his dorm room.
He reached for a bottle of clear liquid, which made him retch as he glugged it. His eyes watered and then the whites turned scarlet.
He put his head in his hands and staggered to the mirror, blindly.
When his hip crashed violently into porcelain, he took his hands away and examined his face. Diverging veins stuck out on his neck, resembling a Vienna tram line. He still had splats of royal-bluish blood on his face—a face which no longer bore the innocence it had when he had washed it that morning, kissed his girl, and bade farewell for the day.
“Sweet Lord!” he screamed. “Noooooo! What the fuck have you gone and done? By Christ, you will pay for this!”
He took more of the clear liquid, coughed most of it out onto the floor. He heard voices in his head.
* * *
Two old ladies in their toothless seventies were cleaning the college dorms when they heard screams. One knocked on his door, and she dropped her metal bucket onto the clean corridor floor. The clatter echoed in his skull.
An ample matron of a woman squeezed into the frame of the door before she was pulled back by a woman who could have been her twin. They found an unblinking boy, crumpled against the far wall, saying the same words over and over. The two now took up a perfectly framed position in the hallway, completing a symmetry that seemed to mock Johan’s own mental state, for his previous desire to rush into the future was now met by a wish to return to the womb and the serenity of yesterday.
“It’s a microcosm of the Apocalypse. It’s a microcosm of the Apocalypse. It’s a microcosm of the Apocalypse,” ad infinitum.
“Has the poor dear gone mad?” the first woman wondered.
“No, no. Listen! I think he has a point,” said the second old crone with a nodding wisdom as she slowly closed the door.
“He may indeed have trodden in more than he can chew.”
* * *
Kaunitz, who had lost all his theatrical fluster, found Johan in his dorm after a brief search of the hotel. He sensed that Johan was itching to bolt, like a thoroughbred hoofing the turf with its front pins. For Johan, the path of least resistance would be to flee. The only option he had was to make Johan as comfortable as possible wherever this wonderful would-be disparu were to go. And the key to that was to protect his identity as the one whose error had led to the assassination, while still offering freedom of passage, food, shelter wherever he went.
Over the next day, Kaunitz managed to gather together a huge wedge of cash, some official-looking papers which would usually be months in the waiting and which had been hurriedly signed in Prussian and French scrawls, and a list of addresses pulled from a desk in the General’s office by a compliant assistant.
The papers bore no date of expiration. They allowed unlimited travel and guaranteed a welcoming ear at embassies and consulates across the continent. Kaunitz had even procured Müller’s help in requisitioning an embassy stamp, as well as the help of the visiting French diplomat, François Durand-Baudrit. Monsieur Durand-Baudrit, a stroppy, ignorant, short-tempered, garlicky, sweaty, stumpy Frenchman, and the Count were “acquainted” in their still-unholy version of the Masons. The love that dared not speak its name put its stamp on Johan’s passport to a geographical freedom.
Kaunitz also set about spreading the story that a drunken Franz Urban had been the driver. For those with an eagle eye who have been there to deny this, a second myth was circulated, that Leopold Loyka was to blame. Only an old Pathé newsreel offers any alternative theory.
An Austrian bankbook, offering access to an account laden with one hefty and recent deposit of an amount with six zeros, appeared by late Monday. With the collusion of the dean, the Count had obtained a spare latchkey to Johan’s chambers to prepare a kit bag for his pal, with its contents of paperwork, cash, bankbooks, valuables, a paperweight from Lorelei, his vellum-bound Kama Sutra, his letters, a cigarette case, and his El Capitán eau de cologne.
* * *
Johan knew he had used up eight of his nine lives already. He knew that his next, single brush with death would leave him with no further chance. He told himself, with some justification, that bullets flying past him by inches into the back of a Packard should be perceived as a near-death experience. He foresaw more bullets flying, and handcuffs clicking tightly onto his wrists.
“They will think I was in on it. They will think I am Black Hand, for how could anyone make such a dumb move and then be so unlucky as to meet the assassin?”
His mental machinations were given extra weight by his verbalizing them, clearly and at volume.
More calculus, more dy/dx’s, more sigmas. The odds were too long, given the constant volume k of the authorities’ paranoia.
He alone had been in charge of that car and (according to his own theory of the Universe) was directly responsible for the death of that wonderful couple in love and for the fact that their children were now orphans. There had been no fate, no master plan; just his huge error. He had spent his luck on surviving a fight with fourteen-blade antlers, and his brain had been further scarred by the reality-shifting devil absinthe.
His desire to love each moment on its merits (and to glide) had been more than pincered. It had been ruined—at least for now.
It was true; both his animal instinct and his highly tuned mathematical brain concurred:
“I am fucked. I have to run.”
* * *
On the way back to his dorm, Johan had stopped at the Hotel President, and there consumed a bottle of vodka under the watchful eye of Herman, the bartender, who had presumed a lovers’ tiff. Herman had been nearing the end of Anna Karenina when Johan had disturbed his calm. Johan scribbled on hotel notepaper, screwing up each leaf after a few seconds.
After an hour, tears almost in his eyes, he left.
Lorelei, not a hundred feet away, up in her suite, eagerly awaited his return, aching in a pair of his pajama bottoms. At around six o’clock, she came down, hoping to find him in the bar, all proud and full of tales. She was met by a sheepish Herman, dreading the sob story of a breakup. Herman was surprised to find a perky and cheery Lorelei, and, unable to marry the duo’s moods, he asked her about her beau.
“Is everything sehr gut now with Herr Johan?”
“Herman?”
“Well, he was in a bad way. I thought that you two must be, you know . . . I see it alles the time . . . I see everything from here, ma’am.”
“I’m here to meet him. You mean he was here before?”
“Yes, fräulein, since a couple of more hours ago. He was traumatized . . . Yes, this is the word . . . traumatized . . . Scheisse, my English is get good, stimmt?”
Lorelei turned on her heels to find Billy Cartwright in the doorway. He checked her face, which had lost its usual look of composure and confidence.
“Oh my God!” he said. “You have not heard, have you, lass?”
“Heard what?”
“Oh! Come here, girl.” Bill took Lorelei’s hand in both of his and came close to her. “He drove the car. He took a wrong turn. Ferdinand and Sophie were killed. I’ve been looking all over for him. Christ knows where he’s gone, but there was an empty bottle smashed on his floor . . . and blood.”
Lorelei’s dark skin turned a shade of pale.
They were about to leave together when Lorelei stopped and asked Herman what time Johan had left.
“When he ran out of paper.”
“What paper?” Bill said.
“All in die Mull, mein Herr,” and he gestured toward the waste bin behind his polished mahogany bar.
“Show me all of it,” said Bill.
Herman pulled up the bin. He emptied the contents on the floor.
Together they started to uncrumple sheets, most of them illegible or stained with olives.
Bill stopped when he found one addressed to him.
William Cartwright,
My best friend . . .
Always keep yer pecker up.
For the first time in his life, Bill looked embarrassed.
Lorelei found one to Johan’s parents, which simply read:
Mother, Father,
Thank you for everything.
I am so sorry. I love you both.
Always have; always will.
Please do not imagine that you are not going to be daily visitors to me.
Your loving son,
Johan
* * *
There was one left. Herman picked it up, unscrewed it, slowly read it, and passed it to Lorelei.
“I think this must be for you, fräulein.”
She turned the paper toward her. It was a short note.
To my delicious fire!
By George, have I messed up!
Cue frenzied worms.
Adieu. Adieu. Remember me.
Lorelei’s dark eyes welled up.
“Stupid bloody idiot!”
* * *
Insult was added to injury when she discovered that he had charged the vodka to her room.
Adieu indeed.