29 June, 3:12 PM , Czernograd, Hotel Casino
With the daylight-saving time taken into consideration, it was a seven-hour difference between Czernograd and New York. He called his parents after 3 in the afternoon, to make sure they were up and about.
His father picked up at the other end. The line was as clear as if he were next door, not thousands of kilometres away. And in another dimension.
“How are you dad?”
“Oh, you know, the doctors and your mother are driving me crazy,” but he sounded a bit wheezy and subdued, so maybe they had good reasons to drive him crazy. “How are you?”
“Still waiting.”
“Damned officialdom,” his father coughed. “Sorry, Jake; I don’t think any one of us realised this would turn out to be such a hassle.”
As if claiming a fortune ever would, Jake thought. Long live the sunny optimism of long-disappointed heirs, until confronted by the reality.
“Don’t worry dad, I... we’ll get there.”
“Good, good. After that, we will put the whole sorry saga to bed, forever.”
A pause.
“Dad, I’ve been thinking. About grandfather.”
Another pause.
“Oh,” his father said quietly. Jake could not pick if his father was surprised or disappointed.
“I’ve been sitting here and waiting... and thinking,” Jake went on. “Thinking how little we know about him.”
“Well, he didn’t exactly help us on that account, did he?” his father said. Disappointed.
“I know,” Jake said, “but still... Had he ever told you about where he came from, his childhood, youth?”
“You know as well as I do that this whole Ruthenia and Galicia thing came as much of a surprise to me as it did to you and everyone else in the family. I asked him once, and he said that there were too many things he would rather not remember. Then he changed the subject. That’s how it was with him. Everything on his terms only, including conversations. It’s a miracle he made it in business...”
Jake heard his father take a sip of something – probably water – and swallow audibly.
“So you just assumed that he came from somewhere in Eastern Europe, and that was it?” Jake asked.
“Well, it was a pretty safe assumption. People have always been coming over here from Eastern Europe, a lot of them, for all sorts of reasons, not wanting to remember things. Give us your poor and the wretched and all the rest escaping their pasts.”
His father wasn’t exactly Emma Lazarus, but now Jake had a picture of him as a Statue of Liberty, greeting migrant ships to the left of Manhattan.
“What about his life in the States? His business?”
“What do you want to know, Jake?” his father said. “You know everything there is to know about the old man. Made his money in property development. If he had spent a fraction of the time and given his own family a fraction of the loving attention he gave to his business and to making money I’m sure we would not be now in this... stupid situation. Poorer but happier for the fond memories, as normal families are supposed to.”
If there is such thing as a normal family. The conversation was not helping Jake. “Anything strange?” he asked.
“Strange?” his father huffed. “Where is this all leading to, Jake?”
There was a woman’s voice – his mother’s, he guessed – in the background, some hushed exchange he couldn’t quite make out, and then everything muffled, as his father must have covered the phone with his hand.
“Jake, what on earth are you doing?” now it was his mother at the other end.
“Just asking some questions of-“
“Jake,” she cut him off, “you know your father is ill, and you know what the doctors said. Now you’re getting him all agitated and upset. Do you want to give him another heart attack?”
“Mum-“
“And you’re bothering him about one topic that you know he would rather not talk about. What is it all about, Jake?”
“I’m just stuck here indefinitely waiting to get the damned ashes back,” Jake snapped back. “I’m bored and just curious about the man I’m supposed sprinkle around here.”
“Oh, have some manners, Jake. There’s no reason to be so... flippant about it.”
“Flippant? I’m the one who’s doing us all a favour-“
“You’re a martyr and a hero, Jake,” she interrupted him again. “I’ve got to go now to make sure your father is OK after your little interrogation. Speak to you later.”
“Yes, mother,” he said, but by that stage she already hang up.
The dirty little secret of the Voynich family: the dysfunction did not stop at the grandpa; it got passed down from generation to generation. But it was always easier just to blame the absent old man rather than face the unpleasant truth: they were all crazy. No wonder Jake wanted to get out as long as he could remember and did so as soon as he was able. It was the easy option too; an escape instead of a solution.
Next he dialed his sister.
The phone must have rang up at least a dozen times, and he was about the hang up, when he heard the line connecting, some fumbling and then a voice of someone seemingly only just brutally yanked from the embrace of sleep.
“Jackie,” she mumbled. Yes, his parents were very original.
“Rise and shine, I’m sure it’s a beautiful day in New York City.”
There was a grunt at the other end.
“What do you want?” she moaned. “It’s early...”
“It’s eight thirty,” he said. “And I already managed to have an argument with our mother.”
“Congratulations. What does it have to do with me?”
“Remember?” he said. “Grandpa, the will, his last wish, ashes, money? Your cut?”
“Get lost, Jake,” she said. “You’re making me sound like some mercenary bitch, like the rest of our fabulous family.”
They were all mercenary bitches, no exceptions. He chose to move on. “I need your help.”
“You always do, brother,” Jake heard her yawn and stretch.
“It’s about grandfather.”
“But of course.”
“Do you have any photographs of him?”
“I don’t know, maybe. What is it all about?”
“You’re the third person who has asked me this question this morning,” Jake sighed. “Please try to find a photo of him. Not as an old man. The younger the better. Scan it and email it to me.”
“I’ll try,” she said, “but let me repeat, what the hell?” She sounded quite awake now.
“I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell the parents-“
“God, this sounds so grade eight,” she sighed. He could hear her light up a breakfast cigarette.
“I’m serious,” Jake said. “I got into enough trouble just for trying to talk about the grandfather. If they knew this, father would really have another heart attack and mother would kill me.”
“Gosh, melodramatic,” Jackie said. “You sure you haven’t read too many airport thrillers on your flight down?”
“Haha. You want to hear it or not?”
“Oh, go on.”
“Remember, promise this stays between us?”
“You’re such an old man, Jake... Promise.”
“OK, this is going to sound a bit weird... but, when I came out of the airport someone tried to run me down and-“
“What?” she squealed into the phone.
“I said, someone tried to run me over.”
“What do you mean someone tried to run you over?”
“Jesus, just listen to me,” he said. “I came out of the airport and was going to get a taxi when this car seems to have been aiming straight for me.”
“So you’re trying to tell me it wasn’t an accident?”
“I thought so initially, but neither my taxi driver, who by the way probably saved my life, nor the police-“
“The police?”
“Yes, the police... they all seem to think it wasn’t an accident. And since then someone has searched my hotel room twice. And I have been followed.”
“You’re shitting me, aren’t you?”
“I wish I was, but something’s going on here. Either someone has mistaken me for somebody else, or it has something to do with the grandfather.”
“That’s totally crazy. After, what, sixty years?”
“Well, you tell me,” he said. “What do you really know about our grandfather? What do any of us really know about the grandfather?”
“Is that why you need his photo? You’re doing some detective work over there?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “I’m trying to.”
“My God, Jake, I let you out of my sight for a few days, and you get yourself into your very own boy’s mystery adventure.”
“You’re not taking it seriously.”
“Neither are you. If you’re really in danger – for whatever reason – you would be barricaded in your hotel room until the Customs give you back the ashes instead of trying to play a private investigator.”
“Thanks for your concern, sis,” Jake said. “Will you try to find me these photos?”
“You are scaring me, Jake,” she said, sounding unsettled, as if she had just woken up in a nightmare. Possibly his.
“I’m scaring myself,” he said.
Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash
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