The Stolen (26 page)

 

Matthias paced Helen's study, too agitated to keep still.

‘The use of the symbols must be a cipher of some sort, maybe a guide to the location of these valuables? And then the last symbol, specifically marking the statuette, the hourglass. Suggesting what?'

‘Time?' Helen said, leaning forward.

‘It is the centre symbol in the shield for the medieval guild of watchmakers,' he told her, still wary of admitting the complete truth about his real father.

‘I suspect there's another, less literal connection; holy relics often have legends or myths attached that might relate to a certain era or an epic event in which they come into their own power. Usually this root myth is built around a catastrophic prediction or event. Like the 2012 Mayan calendar or Judgement Day. Cult leaders are forever exploiting such superstitions.'

‘And you think the Nazis would have had an inkling of this?'

‘Absolutely. They were fantastic propagandists. To own and be able to manipulate relics from across the world as a means of control would be a great investment for the future of the thousand-year Reich. Hitler, more than anyone, knew the influence of such artefacts. The symbol for infinity, standing on its end, might have a link to the myth attached to your statuette,' Helen concluded.

‘How?'

‘The goddess Kali is considered to be the goddess of both Birth and Death – and the “blessing of Kali” alluded to in the historical records of the statuette is somehow ominous, don't you think?'

‘I suspect that's a deliberate ploy to deter people from seeking out the statuette. But then, I'm a non-believer, and it's certainly not going to stop me finding it.'

‘Matthias, you should be careful. As an anthropologist I've learned that sometimes belief alone can empower an object – infuse it with certain energy.' She pulled an open book towards her. ‘I quote from the
Mahanirvana Tantra
, a Hindu religious text: “At the dissolution of things
…
”' she continued, ‘what Christians would know as doomsday… “it is Kala (Time) Who will devour all, and by the reason of this He is called Mahakala, and since Thou devourest Mahakala Himself, it is Thou who are the Supreme Primordial Kalika. Because Thou devourest Kala, thou art Kali, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and devourest all things Thou art called Adya. Resuming after Dissolution thine own form, dark and formless…”
In other words, Kali embodies the void before creation and the void after creation. This way Kali becomes both the goddess of energy, of change, destruction and time. She is beyond Time.'

‘Is there anything in the Kali myth that is predictive – a doomsday date, a future time when the goddess will unleash her deadly fury upon the world?' Matthias was struggling for a connection, anything that might link the statuette's location to something tangible.

‘Well, Kali is also known as the liberator of souls, a conduit to free oneself from one's ego. A devotee of Kali would not be repelled by the traditional manifestation of the goddess with her necklace of severed heads and skirt of dismembered arms. Instead they would use this image to transcend the notion of their own mortality – to rise above the ego. But you could argue that because she is traditionally associated with battlefields or the edge of Hindu society she would be a herald of doomsday or the moment the world decides to hurtle itself into an end of time.' As she spoke Helen had that distant look he recognised as a trait of his own – the ability to be transported by one's own rhetoric. ‘But there's something else – the manner in which the statuette has been written about and treated suggests that it might embody a great destructive power – and that would fit with the Kali myth.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘I did a little research. Working on the theory that this statuette might actually be from the region the Roma started their great exodus, I started to look at any writings from Rajasthan from the third century onwards. I found nothing that early, but there was a later mention of such a statuette by the eighteenth-century Kali devotee Ramprasad Sen.' She pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘He tells us there was a holy relic that was meant to have been housed in a temple of Kali in Rajasthan during the third century – it's in English. Shall I read it for you?'

‘No, my English is good.' From the style of the lettering Matthias guessed that the photocopy must have been taken from a fairly old book. He walked over to the window, holding the page up to the thin wintry sun that was filtering in from outside.

‘Impressive research,' Matthias said when he'd finished.

‘Thank you, but the people you should really be interviewing are the guardians of the relic itself, your Kalderash family. I'm sure your mother would have stories about its power, its history.'

He studied her, the desire for a confidante who wouldn't judge him now overwhelming.

‘What are you doing later?'

 

 

Destin watched Matthias and his auburn-headed female companion cross the floor of the busy restaurant. They had that kind of smug oblivion of the outside world all lovers had – at least at first, Destin noted bitterly, the kind of tunnel vision sex and emotional projection induced – when all the hypocrisy, all the ugliness of humanity fell away. The original garden of Eden – a fool's paradise
.
He had experienced it himself once: the only pure thing that had ever happened to him and he would have married the woman except a landmine had put an end to that. His lover's pointless death had left him furious at the world, at Love itself. His reverie was interrupted by a peal of laughter from the woman. Matthias von Holindt's patent naivety annoyed him – enough to make him want to wipe the scientist's future away, the way his own had been wiped out.

 

Matthias, cradling a whisky soda, sat opposite Helen. The meal had been superb and she, in an environment that was so much more luxurious than her usual one, had amused him with an unexpected bashfulness. She'd already told him about her past, how her early marriage had ended in bitter divorce and how, afterwards, she decided to run away and had applied for the post in Zürich. A new start, she told him, a new continent, a new hairstyle and a new identity, but then wryly concluded that it was impossible to escape one's own history. There was a brittleness about her Matthias recognised; both of them were bad at hiding their grief. And, for once, he'd met a woman who shared the obsessive's passion. He knew she would understand where he went in his mind, that particular absence of self, and would not be threatened by it. Not even Marie had understood that.

‘I was just thinking how familiar you feel, yet I hardly know you at all…' he ventured.

‘Perhaps it's because we are both observers, both a little guarded, a little deranged – maybe fanatical.'

He laughed. ‘You make it sound so attractive. You sure you want this monster?'

‘Takes one to know one: my personal monster has horns and she's going to circle and circle before deciding it's safe to lie down and show her belly.' It was a confession of sorts. Flushed, she poured herself another glass of wine.

Matthias leaned closer. ‘You should know you're the first woman who has even got my attention in three years, so I'm happy to keep trailing after you, horn, snout and tail at stiff attention.' He grinned wickedly.

‘More dirty talk like this and we'll be under the table, and dessert is still to come,' she retorted, trying to regain some equilibrium. ‘So, Herr Professor, superconductivity?'

‘It's my life's work – to be able to offer the world a superconductive material that can function at standard room temperature. I'm only months, maybe even weeks away from reaching it. Helen, I feel it. There's always a certain amount of serendipity. I love that. It's like a kind of magic. Often you get solutions in the least expected ways – you might be pursuing one angle and the result of an experiment suddenly illuminates a whole other area that you hadn't even calculated into the equation.' He sat back, self-conscious of his own fervour.

‘And it must be so inspiring to be working in a material field, with results that are immediate. My subject is theory applied to fieldwork – research to support a hypothesis. Knowing the cultural ramifications of enforced settlement, particularly of the Roma, never seems to change political policy no matter how hard I campaign. No results there.' Helen sounded both frustrated and a little sad.

‘But you're chronicling events for future generations and that's just as important, right?'

‘I guess so.'

‘Actually, I now think I was drawn into physics because, unconsciously, I was looking for a way of impressing Christoph by carrying his watchmaker's obsession with minuscule engineering one stage further. It was hard having such an accomplished father, except he's not my father, is he?'

‘Not your blood father,' Helen answered carefully.

‘It was incredibly difficult confronting him – it wasn't just the discovery of his Nazi background, it was the sense that he'd betrayed me.' The words were a revelation that could either topple into an embarrassment or become another thread of familiarity between them, but it was a gamble Matthias was prepared to take. ‘It's almost impossible to accept I'm the product of rape and there is no way of coming to terms with that, except, perhaps, understanding the tremendous courage it took for my natural mother to finally seek me out. I feel like her desire to acknowledge me legitimises my existence. It's hard to explain. And so new it's bewildering.'

He faltered, wondering whether he was being too intense. It felt like he hadn't stopped talking for the last hour, as if he was using her as a way of finding a structure, a narrative by which he could understand the recent shifts in his life. It was the most intimate conversation he'd had since the loss of his wife – an unstoppable deluge that had a momentum of its own, each revelation more personal than the last. Sensing his trepidation, Helen reached over and took his hand. ‘Ultimately we are who we choose to be – don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Our actions, opinions, even the way we love, shape us as much as our genetics. But it's easy for me to say that; I haven't gone through what you must have gone through.'

‘In a painful way it was liberating.' He dragged his gaze away from hers, searching for a neutral space to hide his emotions. He was falling in love and he knew it and yet he couldn't shake the sensation of vertigo.
Is this what I want?
He forced himself back to the moment. ‘It explained traits in me: a rigidity, a drive to dissect, to analyse, traits I never saw in my so-called parents, a drive to find the place I fitted – as if I always had an unconscious sense that I didn't quite belong to these two people. But I always felt I was loved. I think that's one of the hardest things – to equate the loving, nurturing man I knew as Father with the fascist doctrine of the Nazi regime. And he's completely unapologetic about his beliefs. And yet I am half-gypsy and he loves me. He sees no paradox.'

‘That's dogma for you. Are you really leaving for East Germany tomorrow?'

‘Helen, I have to.'

‘Sleep with me tonight,' she murmured, lust shooting through her body.

‘Is that what you want?'

‘You know it is.'

 

Destin watched them leave the restaurant, burying his face in a menu as they walked past. Three minutes later he followed.

 

Helen pushed open the door of her apartment and paused on the doorstep. ‘It's small, but functional,' she said as they both stared in at the tiny living room with a couch and armchair and fold-out dining table, beyond which lay a balcony with an abandoned Christmas tree still in its pot, a bent foil star Sellotaped to its tip.

‘Looks like heaven to me,' he told her, smiling.

She swung back to him and with both hands pulled him into a deep kiss. Matthias's brain emptied of all thought, the frigidity of his intellect finally evaporating in pulsating desire, and he started to push her skirt up.

‘No, not here,' she moaned, leading him into the bedroom. A bedside lamp illuminated a single bed, above it a poster advertising
Three Days of Peace and Music
at the 1969 Woodstock festival. Opposite was a bookcase crammed with papers and books, a beanbag pushed up in one corner, with an abandoned magazine lying on top of it. Surprised by the transient, student-like décor, he hesitated.