The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook Read Online Free PDF

one arm always in front of his face: halting, hesitant steps which still didn’t protect him from the trips and bruises the forest sprung on him. The wind stirred the trees, and the trees stirred every fear men have had since they left the plains of Africa and penetrated the dark forests of the north.
    He thought of Dante.
    In the midway of this our mortal life,
    I found me in a gloomy wood, astray–
    How first I entered it, I scarce can say.
    Dante had found solace in a guiding star, he remembered. But when he looked up, the trees closed so tight they locked out the sky.
    And Dante had been going to Hell.
    From out in the darkness, he heard a bell ringing. He shook his head to make it go away, but the sound persisted, got louder. Not far ahead, down the slope, a line of yellow lights drifted by – like an ocean liner in the night. He stumbled on, tripping down the hill. The trees thinned. Suddenly, the world became real again. There was a road, and rails, and a tram disappearing round the bend still dinging its bell.
    Headlights swept up the road. He shrank back into the forest as a car passed.
    ‘What now?’
    Valerie pointed. A hundred metres up the road was a station.
    ‘You take the next tram to the Hauptbahnhof. I’ll hire a car and pick you up.’
    ‘What if someone sees me?’
    She shrugged. ‘Then it’s better if I’m not with you.’
     
    The famous station clock was striking eight when Paul dismounted the tram at Bahnhofplatz. The cold air hit him like a bullet, though that wasn’t what made him tense. He’d spent the ride hidden behind a newspaper; now, there was nothing to protect him. He braced himself for shouts, alarms, rough hands grabbing him.  
    Nothing happened.
    Zurich Hauptbahnhof was no longer simply a station: it was, the signs announced, ShopVille-RailCity Zurich. He’d always found it philistine, a hasty euthanizing of the last romance of rail travel by a world that always needed something to buy. Now, he was glad of the shops. He ducked into one and bought a scarf and hat, winding the scarf high and pulling the hat low. The assistant was telling her colleague a long story about her flatmate and barely noticed him.
    The commuters had gone home, but the shops still drew plenty of customers to the station. In the cavernous concourse, the lights were dim: they’d put up a screen and were showing an old movie. Paul skirted round the audience, row after row all staring forward at the black-and-white images projected on the screen. He might as well not have existed.
    He took an escalator down to the lower concourse. The bright lights and low ceiling pressed down on him. Penitential bars of black and white marble striped the walls. He felt a headache coming on. The rows of luggage lockers, efficient blue, blurred together. He had to read the number three times. 247 .
    He put his hand in his pocket and took out the cigarette case. The metal throbbed against his skin; he could feel the tablet inside like a beating heart.
    There is one condition.
    He thought of everything he’d suffered to get it. The life he’d lost. He thought of Ari. The injustice burned him, that Ari would win and he would flee into permanent exile.
    Everything’s hypothetical until you do it.
    He entered his combination, shut the locker and headed for the exit, head down, forcing himself not to run. He counted his steps. Ten. Twenty. Forty. Up the escalator, out of the concourse, into the bright shopping arcade. He must be almost there.
    ‘Paul?’
    He should have ignored it, carried on walking and pretended he hadn’t heard, that it wasn’t him. But he was primed. The switch tripped; he stopped dead.
    ‘Paul?’ said the voice again.
    He couldn’t pretend now. He turned, his face frozen. A tall, stooping man with brown floppy hair poking out from under a bobble hat was waiting for him.
    ‘Marcel?’
    ‘Trying to escape?’ His nose was too big and his mouth too wide: it made his smile vaguely grotesque.
    Paul