Rendezvous with Hymera (8 page)

“Can you manage with these?” she asked him, tightening the belt of her robe, after she put the
sheets and pencil on the table, in front of him.

“Why not? Come and sit by me,” he indicated with his palm the still warm seat she had
occupied on his left.

Clara hesitated.

“And how do you think this thing is going to help us?” she asked, skeptically.

“First of all,” he answered, grabbing the pencil, “we’ll both have an image of her. We could show it
to Rose. Maybe someone saw her, maybe she stayed here at one time or another, maybe she disappeared here or... perhaps she was killed or drowned in the lake.” Colin looked seriously, straight in her eyes.

“There are many hypotheses, unlimited possibilities. Let’s start with the first step,” he said, kissing her
gently on the forehead.

Clara, who had gone waxy hearing his assumptions, wet her lips and closed her eyes, trying to bring back
in her memory the phantom-like apparition of that night.

“I only saw her from semi-profile, but I think she had a rather triangular face, with a sharp chin and
maybe also a sharp nose. She had remarkable eyes, big and very dark,” Clara continued, “and a cascade of blond, wavy hair.”

She supporte
d her chin on Colin’s shoulder, while he began to hum something incomprehensible but pleasantly monotone, watching both the face that took shape on paper and also the artist's hands, with long, skilled fingers, which he used from time to time to create or blur shadows and contour effects, spreading delicately the pencil marks. Caught in a trance induced by the network of lines and shapes, she vaguely remembered stories of her father, with whom she used to spend hours watching him paint. He had once told her interesting things about some artists’ hands, about the extraordinary force of Leonardo Da Vinci, who could break a horseshoe with his bare hands, about Alexandre Dumas-père, who had a tremendous power in his fingers, and about the ambidextrous Michelangelo, who could draw well with both hands.

Lost in the intimate domesticity of those memories, Clara was restored to present by the suddenly
installed silence, and focused on the sketch, on which Colin was making the finishing touches, rubbing the paper with his fingers to fill or shadow a contour. Born from coal and recollections, the image of the woman watched her with the deep eyes which reminded her of that strange night.

“It’s starting to look like her!” she exclaimed, animated. “The cheekbones a little fuller and the
hair more... curly and thick.”

Carefully following her indications, adding from instinct and experience details she hadn’t seen in the dark,
such as the eyebrows and the shape of her lips, Colin made a pretty accurate sketch of the nocturnal apparition.

“It’s her!” Clara declared, studying enthusiastically the portrait. “You have an
extraordinary talent,” she said, theatrically applauding.

“Thanks, but it’s not that difficult when you’ve got someone to give you a detailed
description.”

“I never thought you were modest,” she said laughing.

“Nor am I,” he answered, winking, a gesture that she’d come to anticipate and adore. “I don’t know the definition of the term.”

“Thought so...What do we do now?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but jerked defensively when a hairy golden sphere slid through his legs.

Morris jumped gracefully directly on the table, covering, with his impressive posterior and fluffy tail,
the drawing made by his master.

Colin stretched his hand and scratched him behind the ears, receiving in exchange sounds like a powerful
engine coming from the ecstatic cat.

“You’ve met, right?” he asked Clara, who was watching him indignantly.

“Yes, but I haven’t noticed he was so rude!” she exclaimed frowning.

He roared with laughter.

“Be my guest and attempt teaching him some manners,” he said ironically.

“You have to be firm and bossy, show him you are the superior being and he’s got to listen to you,” she
said, with the air of a prickly teacher. She raised her index and told Morris, on an authoritarian tone, “You’re not allowed on the table, cat! Get down immediately!”

Morris stared at her sulking for a few seconds, then collapsed on one side, raised a golden paw in the air
and meticulously began washing his testicles.

Colin bit his lower lip in a vain attempt to control laughter, while Cla
ra darted him with a sour look, sending a clear message:
Don’t you dare laugh!

He noisily cleared his throat, without managing to mask his amusement, and, taking her hand, rose.

“If you’re finished your good manners class,” he said, simulating seriousness, “let’s take a shower and get to work. Morris is a lost cause.”

***

Despite the strange circumstances, neither of them had ever been so happy, so fulfilled, so... complete. It felt like they had been a couple for a lifetime, communicating even only by gestures.

Mirror-spirits
, thought Clara, looking at him, recalling a poem in which she had used the same metaphor, dedicated to a faceless entity, which was now standing right in front of her.

After taking a quick shower, while they dried and dressed, they put togethe
r the sketch of a plan. He said:

“We need to get to my office. One of my colleagues has open doors and connections everywhere. He
could help us to obtain a list with the names of missing persons, let’s say, in this area, for starters.”

“Yeah, that could be a start, but in what length of time?” she replied, putting on a pair of jeans and a
white T-shirt. “We don’t know anything about her, not even if she’s indeed missing, not when, where, if she’s alive or not...”

Only thinking of this last hypothesis provoked in her a cold shiver, like a shock wave.

“We should show the sketch to Rose. Maybe she recognizes her, or maybe she stayed here.

Otherwise, what reason could there be for her to appear... to manifest here?” she added.

“Yeah, this could be a first step...”

Colin hesitated.

“Who knows? We’ll do some research. Does she have internet connection here?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”

Downstairs was quiet. In the garden, Tony was chasing butterflies, under Morris’ aristocratic nose, who was watching him with cat-like superiority from the height of a window sash on which he sat perched.

After they made sure
the beasts
, as Clara called them, had everything they could possibly need, armed with the mystery woman’s sketch, they left the cottage, locking the door.

Rose was watering the flowers in front of the shop, chatting with Mr. Garcia, who was puffing from an
antique-looking pipe, sending blue-grayish smoke rings into the already hot air. Clara recalled how Mr. Garcia had told her that the pipe, from which he never parted, he had carved himself, many years ago, from the wood of a cherry tree under which he and his lover – who had later become his wife – used to meet. An endless sadness shadowed the old man’s eyes every time he talked about the one who had been his life partner for too short of a time, one of the countless innocent victims lost in the horrors of war.

Clara fostered compassion and an affectionate sympathy to this kind, gentle old man, a living relic of a
bygone era replaced by a society without any scruples or moral and ethical standards.

The old man’s eyes illuminated when the two youngsters approached. With his specific gallantry,
Mr. Garcia kissed Clara’s hand and politely shook Colin’s when the introductions were made.

“Rose,” Clara addressed the old lady, who was speculatively studying Colin, “do you have internet
connection here? I didn’t think to ask you until now.”

Rose watched her over the top of her eyeglasses.

“This might surprise you,” she answered sarcastically, “but I ain’t senile, nor am I broken from reality. I know how to send an e-mail,” she continued with faked arrogance. “And,” she went on, winking at Colin, “I regularly surf dating sites.” Colin’s jaw went slack, and Clara dropped the sketch. Mr. Garcia coughed noisily, not managing to disguise his amusement.

Rose laughed until tears actually came into her eyes, then she took off her glasses and wiped them
with a handkerchief.

“I guess that answers my question,” said Clara smiling widely. “Um... we have another question,” she
added, recovering the fallen sketch. “Do you by chance know a woman who resembles this one?” she asked, showing her the drawing.

Rose studied the image carefully, while the young woman watched her expression. Nothing but
concentration. Her gaze moved to Mr. Garcia, who quickly looked away from the woman’s drawing. Clara thought, for a fraction of a second, that she noticed a change in the old man’s eyes. Recognition? Fear? The change had been so rapid and subtle she wondered if it wasn’t just a mistake, an inaccurate perception. The old man was puffing on, gazing absently – or so it seemed – to the lake.

Rose interrupted her reverie of speculation.

“I might,” she said. “The figure looks familiar, she has something unique... I’m not absolutely sure, but I think maybe she had stayed here some time ago. Maybe a little more time. If you could show me a photo, I could give a more definite answer.”

She looked at her with incisive curiosity.

“Who is this woman? And why are you asking me about her?”

Clara hesitated a fraction of a second, but Colin intervened in the discussion.

“Clara thinks she saw here someone who looked approximately like that,” he said, indicating the coal-made image, “about two days ago. We thought it could be an ex-tenant,” he added, on a deliberately indifferent tone.

“Did you make this?” the old lady asked him.

“Yes.”

“You’re good. Very good,” she remarked, continuing to analyze the drawing. “She seems
familiar,” she repeated, “but what would anyone do here without my knowing?”

“Good question,” he replied.

“Rose,” said Clara, “if I’d ask you to give me a list with your tenants in the last...” She stopped, putting a hand to her forehead, as if remembering something. “How long have you had this place?”

“For about three years, since my man had the nerve to die, leaving me all alone.”

Despite the inadequate joke, for a moment, the old woman’s eyes darkened with traces of unspilled tears and painful memories. Blinking rapidly, she refocused her attention on the youths, regaining her brisk tone:

“What about that list? Why do you need it?”

“We still don’t know if we need it...”

Suddenly, Clara’s face brightened.

“If you have an internet connection, it means you’ve got a computer upstairs, right?” she said, and after Rose nodded, continued, “Don’t you also have a computerized database with the tenants list?” Clara asked hopefully, thinking of the huge register book in which she herself had scrawled her signature only three days before. “It would ease our searches a lot.”

“There’s nothing safer than paper, especially since some things could be erased by accidentally
pressing some keys,” answered Rose, still watching her above the eyeglasses with amused suspicion.

“You still haven’t told me why you need my tenants list.”

Clara gazed at her meditatively, then consulted her watch.

“I’ll tell you when we get back,” she said and, taking Colin’s hand, headed to the parking
lot, on the run, saluting Mr. Garcia, who had remained withdrawn and silent.

They got into Colin’s car and started toward the city.

“Do you think it’s wise to tell Rose about it?” he asked.

“I don’t see what harm it could do. Besides, there’s no other way we can obtain that list. By the
way, what the hell do we do next?”

He smiled.

“For now, we’re going to the newspaper where I work. With a bit of luck, we might still find Nicholas. He’s one of my colleagues, who has long-time connections in every important institution, including the men of the law. He could get us a list with the missing persons in this area in the last period. Let’s say, three years, since Rose has bought the cottages. Then we compare the names on Rose’s list with the ones on the list Nick gives us and we see if there’s a common one.”

Clara muttered:

“Do you realize what this means?! There probably are hundreds of names and if there
aren’t any which coincide, we’re digging in vain,” she said, gesturing with the sketch in her hand.

Colin seemed extremely calm, at least judging by the tone of his voice.

“Small steps, my love. Even a ten thousand miles road begins with the first step.”

***

Although it was almost four o’clock, the office was buzzing with activity. Desks covered with papers, the monotonous purring of computers, the sounds of printers, and editors, who were spinning among all this, formed a charming and perfectly lucrative disarray.