The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook Read Online Free PDF Page B

opened his own mouth, but no sound came out.
    ‘The late antiquity colloquium.’ Marcel tapped him too-familiarly on the shoulder. ‘Hey, me too – it’s my fucking supervisor giving the talk, right?
    He doesn’t know , Paul thought. His legs turned to water.
    ‘Where are you going?’ was all he could manage to say.
    ‘Beckenried. My girlfriend got a free pass. Ten centimetres of powder, this late in the year, it’s a crime to miss it, right?
    Paul forced a smile. ‘Right.’
    ‘What’s your excuse?’
    Another moment where time seemed to stutter. He tried to see a departure board, but there were none in sight. All he could think of was the last train he’d taken.
    ‘I’m going to Paris.’
    From the corner of his eye, he saw two policemen slowly circuiting the station, submachine guns cradled in their arms. Sweat soaked his scarf; he edged around so that Marcel was between him and them.
    Marcel had said something he hadn’t heard. He was frowning. Is there a problem?
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Didn’t you go there like a month ago?’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Paris.’ Marcel’s eyes twitched, trying to follow Paul’s gaze over his shoulder. Paul forced himself to concentrate on Marcel.
    ‘The museum asked me to go back.’ Inspiration. ‘They want me to do a piece comparing our new Aphrodite with the Venus de Milo.’ He checked his watch. ‘In fact, I really ought to get on the train.’
    ‘For sure. Give my love to Venus, OK?’
    ‘Enjoy the skiing.’
    Ten paces on, Paul looked back. Every fibre in his body warned him he’d see Marcel staring at a TV in a shop window, or getting the news on his phone, accosting a policeman and pointing him after Paul.
    But he was gone.
     
    The pressure release when he got in the car was so much he almost threw up in the footwell. He slumped down in the seat, head barely above the window.
    ‘Someone recognised me.’ He told her about Marcel. ‘The moment he sees the news, he’ll report me.’
    ‘He’ll tell them you’re going to Paris.’ Valerie crossed the river and piloted the car down a canyon of long, high buildings. She drove awkwardly, moving the gear stick with abrupt jerks, turning the wheel in short, angular motions. Paul guessed she was used to being driven.
    ‘Where are we going, anyway?’ she asked.
    ‘Frankfurt.’
    She turned into a tunnel. ‘You have a friend there?’
    ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I did an exchange there, so I know the city. And I speak German.’ That was all true. Also true: it’s connected with the whole of Europe . An easy place to leave. He didn’t say that. Now they were leaving Zurich, his terror was boiling away. What it left behind was hard, dry realism, no trace of sentiment. You must open your mind . Was this what she’d meant?
    ‘Are you excited?’
    ‘What kind of question…?’
    ‘About the future, I mean. Becoming someone else.’
    ‘Exciting’s not quite the word.’
    ‘You’re getting what everyone longs for, deep down. New life. Forgetting who you were.’
    He remembered the way she’d caressed the statue in the museum, her ear pressed against the cold bronze. The sound of immortality, she’d said.
    And maybe she was right. If he picked up the life he’d shed and examined it, was there anything there he’d miss? Work? Family? Colleagues? Not really – it was just an empty husk. Yesterday, that thought would have prompted hours of loathing self-analysis. Now it didn’t matter.
    ‘It’s not me who has to forget the truth. It’s everyone else.’
    Valerie shook her head. ‘The truth is only what people remember. They will forget you. So, all that is necessary, the one remaining spark of evidence, is for you to forget yourself.’
    ‘OK.’
    The tunnel ended and spat them out onto a dual carriageway heading east. He found a wheel that reclined the seat and dialled himself back.
    ‘You seem to know Zurich pretty well, considering you just arrived yesterday.’
    ‘I was here for finishing