Part 18 (1/2)

I took another early and deserted train to Hyde Park the following morning.

The deep and fresh snow made everything, from our backyard all the way to Hyde Park, look beautiful. Untouched. Peaceful.

I was reduced to being thankful I could still identify something to do with peace.

No Volvo. No answer. No lights. The same mail in the same place.

I skipped breakfast and sat on a bench in the middle of the University, starting and restarting a poem I didn't like in the leather notebook Brennan had given me over the weekend.

I ignored the curious glances from the pa.s.sing university students as my wheels spun almost out of control, retracing the past few weeks in my mind with nearly possessed detail, sitting alone and out of place in a Gothic courtyard that would seem haunted, if I had taken the time to notice.

I broke off a large, round piece of ice from the side of the bench, and held it in my bare hand, squeezing it until my hand and arm shook from the effort. It was too thick to break. The cold water dripped out of my frozen fingers and down my wrist and s.h.i.+rt sleeve, until the ice finally melted into a shape that collapsed under the pressure of my grip.

My hand still hurt after I put it back into my gloves, but not as badly as my heart did, turned inside-out by the conclusion I found inescapable.

G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Felix.

The entire cla.s.s looked at me strangely as I walked into Mister Granger's room after the bell had rung, a few seconds before. I was never late. None of us were ever late. I didn't even show up in the two cla.s.ses before that, which was unheard of. Felix didn't look at me, Granger barely so, a brisk nod that understood, forgave, and forgot, in one fell swoop.

Forgiveness...I wondered what that was?

Our Literature teacher had published a gripping and horrific fictional memoir of his service in Korea a few years ago, but kept teaching while he toiled over his follow-up novel. He had wound imagery and gestures into his storytelling without a shred of effort, and demanded the most out of our readings and writings. Every cla.s.s was an emotional roller-coaster, but it was so real, so visceral, whenever his wide, rounded eyes scanned the room while Granger's rich baritone voice began discussing or reading something.

We had come to Richard III.

”It's time to read. Anyone?” He avoided my side of the room, even though I was the only guy to raise his hand. Of course Kim raised hers. Felix looked like he was about to raise his hand.

”I'd like to read.” I met Felix's eyes very hard. The room was uncomfortably silent. Granger finally acknowledged me with another clipped nod. He sat in his seat like he always did, with his elbows dug into his knees, his face resting on his folded hands, his eyes half-closed, in order to take in the reading fully. ”Read to the cheap seats,” he would always say.

But I was reading for only one seat. Each syllable and phrase hissed through my clenched teeth and jaw. The words became forever, and mine.

”Now is the winter of our discontent...cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up...since I cannot prove a lover...I am determined to play a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days...”

The emotionless, icily enunciated reading I gave rumbled in the cla.s.sroom long after Mister Granger raised his palm and brought me to a halt. A strange, exciting power had flooded through my senses as I read, making those centuries-old words fly off of the typeset pages in front of me and into the collective consciousness of my cla.s.smates and teacher. I took my time before I sat back down.

Granger coughed twice to clear his throat. ”What did you hear in this Richard,” he asked? The responses given by my fellow cla.s.smates gratified me.

”A lot of pain.”

”Someone crushed by their separateness.”

”Defiant hatred.”

”Consuming emotions.”

”Loneliness. He's so lonely from the rest of the world, he wants to destroy it.”

”Sadness turning into something else.”

”An unjust life being rebelled against.”

”The pain everyone feels about their place in the world.”

”The edge of madness.”

Personally, I heard myself. And I dared Felix to look back at me.

When I went to Nicolasha's apartment after school, the mail had been removed, and, from the front porch, I could see his entire living room had been, too.

He was long gone.

X X.

Rude am I in my speech,

And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace.

Oth.e.l.lo It was Friday night. I had spent all week trying to make contact with Nicolasha. His landlady had no idea where he had gone, and seemed concerned about how he was acting before he disappeared into the evening sunset. Basilio kept denying he knew anything at all, and hung up on me after I called the fifth time. n.o.body at school would even talk about it, except to say that Mister Rozhdestvensky had resigned. I even tried to contact his parents in Was.h.i.+ngton D.C., but they were on tour with the National Symphony somewhere in Europe. I left a message, along with all the others I had spread out across the city of Chicago.

It was Mister Granger who told me what had happened, hidden in the privacy of the Pilot School's ancient library stacks during lunch period.

A student claimed he had been molested by Nicolasha during a visit to his apartment, and another anonymous note professed that an attempt was made on him, as well. A faculty Board of Inquiry refused to take a position, citing inconsistencies in the stories told by the students interviewed. Evidentally, the entire Junior-level faculty backed Nicolasha. In a million years, I could not picture Messieurs Abbado, Clive, Granger, Tanaka, and Wheatley, our highly eccentric calculus professor, agreeing on anything, above and beyond what day it was (and, even then, Wheatley would probably cite some astronomical anomaly to suggest it was in fact Wednesday...). Nicolasha had burst into tears during his ”questioning” by Gruppenfuhrer Connelly, and withdrew on the spot, unwilling to confront the charges in another forum.

I asked Mister Granger why he was telling me things I was clearly not meant to know.

”Because I don't think Nicolas did anything, either.”

The phone rang twice. I leapt at it each time.

Uncle Alex would finally arrive Sunday morning, flying down with his easels, oils, and steamer trunks. It sounded like he had a send-off party going on in the background, so the conversation was short.