The City of Mirrors
Page 216

She emerged just a few yards from the boats. Behind her, the Bergensfjord was in flames, a huge cloud of black smoke soaring skyward. Caleb helped her in.
“That was a nice dive,” he said.
She sat on the bench. The Bergensfjord was sinking from the stern. As its bow lifted clear of the water, exposing its massive, bulbous nose, shouts went up from the beach; the children, thrilled by the marvelous display, were cheering. When the hull reached a forty-five-degree angle, the ship began to slide backward, accelerating with astonishing speed. Lore closed her eyes; she did not want to witness the final moment. When she opened them, the Bergensfjord was gone.
They rowed back toward shore. As they approached the beach, Sara came jogging down the sand to meet them.
“Caleb, I think you’d better come,” she said.
—
Pim’s membranes had ruptured. Caleb found her underneath a tarp hung between trees on one of the thin mattresses they’d stripped from the Bergensfjord. Her face was calm, though damp in the tropical heat. During the last few weeks, her hair had grown incomparably thick, its color deepening to a rich chestnut that flared with red in the sun.
Hey, he signed.
Hey yourself. Then, with a smile: You should see your expression. Don’t worry, I’ll be done in no time.
He looked at Sara. “How is she really?” He was signing simultaneously; no secrets, not now.
“I don’t see any problems. She’s only a little short of her due date. And she’s right: for a second birth, things tend to go faster.”
Theo’s birth had taken forever, nearly twenty hours from the first contraction to the last. It had just about crushed Caleb with worry, though less than a minute after Theo hit the air, Pim was all smiles, demanding to hold him.
“Just hang around,” Sara told him. “Hollis can look after Theo and the girls.”
Caleb could tell that there was something the woman wasn’t saying. He moved away, Sara following.
“Out with it,” he said.
“Well. The thing is, I’m hearing two heartbeats.”
“Two,” he repeated.
“Twins, Caleb.”
He stared at her. “And you didn’t know this until now?”
“Sometimes it happens.” She reached out and took him by the upper arm. “She’s strong—she’s done this before.”
“Not with two.”
“It’s not so very different until the end.”
“Good God. How am I going to tell them apart?” A foolish concern, and yet it was the first thought to enter his mind.
“You’ll figure it out. Plus, they might not be identical.”
“Really? How does that work?”
She laughed lightly. “You don’t know the first thing about this, do you?”
His stomach churned with anxiety. “I guess not.”
“Just stay with her. The contractions are still far apart, there’s really nothing for me to do at this point. Hollis will keep the kids amused.” She gave him a parental look. “Okay?”
Caleb nodded. He felt completely overwhelmed.
“Attaboy,” she said.
He watched her head down the beach and returned to the shelter. Pim was jotting in her notebook. It was one he hadn’t seen before, handsomely bound with leather. A bottle of ink sat on the sand beside her, as well as a pile of books from Hollis’s stash. Pim looked up, closing the diary with a muffled clap as Caleb sat on the sand.
She told you.
Yes.
Pim, too, was grinning at him in a manner that verged on laughter. He felt like he’d wandered into the wrong room at a party, one in which everybody knew everybody else and he knew exactly no one.
Relax, she signed. It’s no big deal.
How do you know?
Because women know. She drew a sharp breath, her face scrunching with pain. Caleb saw it in her eyes: her lighthearted attitude was a cover. His wife was steeling herself for what would come. Hour by hour, she would go further away from him, into the place where all her strength came from.
Pim? Okay?
A few seconds went by; her face relaxed as she expelled a long breath. She tipped her head at the pile of books. Read to me?
He lifted the first volume from the pile. Caleb had never been much for reading; he found it tedious, no matter how much his father-in-law had attempted to persuade him otherwise. At least the title made sense to him: War and Peace. Perhaps, contrary to all his expectations, it would actually be interesting. The book was enormous; it felt like it weighed ten pounds. He opened the cover and turned to the first page, which was covered in dispiritingly minuscule print, like a wall of ink.
You’re sure about this? he signed.
Pim’s eyes were bright, her hands folded together over her belly. Yes, please. It’s one of my father’s favorites. I’ve been meaning to read it for ages.
Full of dread, yet anxious to please her, Caleb sat on the sand, balanced the book on his lap, and began to sign:
“ ‘Well, prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family. No, I warn you, that if you do not tell me we are at war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all the infamies and atrocities of this Antichrist (upon my word, I believe he is), I don’t know you in future, you are no longer my friend, no longer my faithful slave, as you say.’ ”
And so on. Caleb was totally baffled; nothing seemed to be happening, just obscure conversations that went nowhere, full of references to places and characters he couldn’t keep track of, even a little. The signing was laborious; many words he did not know and had to spell out. Yet Pim seemed to be enjoying herself. At unforeseen moments, she would issue small sighs of pleasure, or her eyes would widen with anticipation, or she would smile at what Caleb supposed was the book’s equivalent of a joke. It wasn’t long before his hands were exhausted. Pim’s contractions continued, the gaps between them shortening over time while their durations increased. When this happened, Caleb would pause in his reading, waiting for the pain to end; Pim would nod to tell him it was over, and he would begin reading again.