48.
Dirk started, jolted by the hand on his lapel. The forest was gone. Its intensity, its panorama turned inside out—a landscape of hills and wildness brushed up close, as close as clothes—it was all gone.
He felt raw and empty—not as if he had voided himself, but been extruded from—from something. From the forest. From life. An all-too-familiar malady.
A hand on his lapel, gripping, shaking it, another touching his face.
“A happenstance such as would delight von Kleist, or that American, Washington Irving. Those who object to the coincidences that drive a romantic novel should think again!” said Stahlbaum.
He was on his hands and knees in the snow, roughing blood back into Dirk’s cheeks. Laughing. Now talking not to Dirk but over his shoulder to someone else, calling something. Now turning back.
“Are you alive?” said Stahlbaum. Stahlbaum—oh, Felix. Yes. Felix.
“What is happening?” muttered Dirk.
“The collapse of Icarus, brought down not by sun but wind and snow. It’s a mercy we weren’t killed. You, too, as we all but ran roughshod over you. Think of the odds!” Felix waved one hand behind him. Now the snow was thinning. The squalling clouds hastened eastward. A wasted light returned through paler, higher clouds. Off to one side of the square lay the remains of a large wickerwork gondola and what looked like gently burning sails subsiding into the snowy gutters.
“We were air-ballooning, Kurt and I. We launched from the von Koenig place outside ?berlingen in hopes of crossing to Switzerland, but scarcely had we risen above the roof-beams of the estate barns when a brutal storm rushed in from the Untersee. It pummeled down the valley and caught us sideways, sweeping us into Meersburg—exactly where we didn’t want to go. Then, I don’t know, perhaps we got punctured on a steeple. We could see nothing!—we were twirled about like mad Viennese waltzers!—and we buffeted against cornices and slid down the roofs, ending quite by accident in the square. Catching you on the side of our downed runaway chariot in the bargain. You! It might have been anyone in town, it might have been no one. For all I know you provided a brake in our velocity, though you took quite the thumping for your kindness. Now what do you make of that? Destiny or accident?”
Dirk was sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Irregular rips in the cloth of cloud showed ribbons of mocking blue. He could see the younger von Koenig, that university friend, dashing his boots against the cobbles and tearing at his hair. People were emerging from doorways, laughing and pointing. A white collie raced up to the impromptu bonfire, wagging its tail in delight and leaping like a witch at Walpurgisnacht.
“I thought . . .” said Dirk, and stopped.
“What did you think?” Felix looked at Dirk with the same sort of expression that the dog was giving to the conflagration; there was appeal and puppyishness.
“I thought you were in the basket.”
“But I was. Until it tumbled me out on my hinterbacken. Look, are you really all right? I’m afraid we smacked into you pretty hard. You went over like a tree felled for a ship’s mast. You look in shock.”
Dirk shook his head.
“And I was going to try to run into you—！ Though not today. I got a note from the Doktor who said he was looking to talk to you. I was going to alert you.”
“I’ve already been to see him—he was saying things—”
“Oh? You surprise me. He alluded to a surprise or two, and wanted you to come back, but he didn’t know where you lived. He didn’t think you’d come back on your own, as you left so suddenly with Nastaran.”
“I wanted you to pull me up. To take me with you.”
“Too late for that. I’m not going anywhere now. The heated gas has all escaped. Look, Kurt is having a fit. I should help him.”
“Did you ever hear of someone—called—the Pythia?”
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Where is the forest?”
Felix rocked back on his heels, pursed his lips. “Maybe you should see a physician? Or down a stiff cognac?”
“Maybe I should return to Mesmer.” Dirk began to cry. “I left in disarray.”
“It’s being startled, it’s nothing, there now, straighten up, man.”
Dirk stood on weak knees; Felix leapt to support him. “I’ll take you back. Least I can do after smacking into you. Anyway, I’m curious; Mesmer may be Herr Doktor Quack, but he always turns over a bright thought or two despite himself. Wait here, hold on to the wall while I go tell Kurt what I’m doing. He can manage on his own. He’ll hire someone to clear away the mess. What that boy won’t do for a lark! The Baron will beat him silly with a cane. His father meant that hot-air assemblage for a gathering of scientific enthusiasts this weekend, I think. And it was hard to acquire, and dear. It came from Paris. We were taking it on a trial run. Without permission.”
Dirk watched Felix walk away. The young ’cellist was hobbling a little, too; he was hiding his own bruises in the interest of taking care of Dirk. The tears began to seep again; Dirk hid them in his collars two or three at a time, and had dry cheeks by the time Felix returned, offering an arm.
49.
“Are you willing to try again?” asked Mesmer. “If you can attain the proper calm and detachment after your hard knock in the street, I shall interview you.”
“I’d like to stay,” said Felix.
Dirk shook his head. “But don’t go far. Come back in when I say.”
Felix left the room and the Heilig-Geist Spital, looking for a coffeehouse and a broadsheet, and promised to return in an hour. Mesmer again lowered the drapes, and did something with glass balls that made a shimmering sound, like rounded prisms if there were such a thing, and in terrific curiosity and fear Dirk closed his eye.
When he opened it, Felix had returned, and the Doktor was drawing back the drapes with a palsied hand. “Do you want to say what you saw?”
Dirk shook his head. “I have no words for it.”
“You had many words for it half an hour ago, but I don’t know what they mean. I believe you mentioned the Pythia.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
Mesmer glanced at Felix, who obliged. “The Oracle of Delphi,” said Felix. “The famed seer of ancient Greece—”
“I never heard of such a creature—”
Felix rushed on. “She foretold the fates of kings and men, and spoke in riddles or spoke in plain tongue, as her visions allowed. Why did she speak to you? Frankly, I’m cut to the quick.”
“Stop, young man,” said Mesmer. “We must proceed with diligence. Reticence. Which means let him tell us.”
Dirk grimaced. “I’m not sure what an oracle is.”
“Or Pan?” asked Mesmer.
“Pan?”
“A sort of satyr, as you described him, half goat, half youth?”
“He was no youth! Old as a dwarf in the Black Forest.” These words spilled from Dirk’s mouth. They were almost the most definite thing he had ever said aloud. His eye widened at the sound of them.
“You have seen them before,” said Mesmer. “When you died as a child.”