This Same Earth
Page 89

“I think you need to see a few things on the bookcase.”
She sighed and hugged him closer. “Just give me a minute.”
They stood holding each other for a few more minutes in the empty bedroom. She heard the trickle of a stream running outside the terrace doors. Eventually, she took Giovanni’s hand and walked back out to the living room and the wall of books.
“Here.” He pointed toward a corner of the room. “These are textbooks for the study of old Arabic and old Persian. It appears he taught himself how to read both.”
“Why?”
“Alchemy. Remember what Tywyll said? The manuscript was about alchemy. Much early medieval alchemic work was done in the Middle East, so if he wanted to learn more, he might have started there.”
She paged through the books, looking at her father’s familiar scrawl in the margins of each volume. Most of it, she couldn’t understand.
“Aristotle,” Giovanni murmured, dragging his finger along the spines. “Zosimos, Mary…did your father read classical Greek?”
“A little,” she muttered, paging through a dense history of the burned library of Alexandria in Egypt.
“He appeared to be well-versed in Greco-Roman roots of alchemy and was studying the work done in the Middle East. Khalid ibn Yazid. A lot of Geber.”
“Who?”
“Ah…he was known during my time as Geber, but he was a Persian, possibly Arab, medieval alchemist. Jabir ibn Hayyan was his Arabic name. It also appears he was looking into Bön, Spagyric—”
“What?” she asked with a frown. “I haven’t even heard of those.”
“Bön is an ancient Asian belief system. I’m only familiar with it through Tenzin. Spagyric refers to a subset of alchemy, plant alchemy. Again, Tenzin studied it at one point.” Giovanni stepped back and shook his head as he surveyed the wall of books. “What were you up to, Stephen?”
She looked through the section in front of her. “I’m also seeing stuff on Newton and Boyle. I know Newton, who’s Boyle?”
“Early modern chemistry.” He walked slowly, his head cocked to the side as he moved down the wall.
“So, chemistry, languages, philosophy, religion…what wasn’t he studying?”
He snorted. “Alchemy is a very twisted subject. It blurs lines between science and superstition. Chemistry and magic.” He heaved a sigh, and she could see the air stir in the light of her small flashlight.
“Gio?”
“Sì, tesoro?” he asked, absently bending down to the far corner where something appeared to have caught his eye.
“Why don’t we—”
“Beatrice, look at this.”
She walked over and knelt down next to him.
“What?”
Giovanni pulled out a small book. It was a black and white composition book, like the ones she remembered using in high school. It had no label, only the number “1” written on the front cover in black marker. She pulled it from his hands with trembling fingers, knowing somehow that this book was different from the others.
Beatrice sat on the floor, cross-legged in the corner as Giovanni knelt next to her. She opened it to the first page.
“‘August 20, 1996,’” she read in a shaky voice. “‘Dear Mariposa, I had to say goodbye to you tonight—’” She choked on the sob that tore from her throat and before she could blink, Giovanni had picked her up and was rocking her in his arms on the floor of the lonely cottage.
Beatrice wept, deep, gut-wrenching sobs that tore at her heart and shook her small frame. Giovanni held her as she emptied her sorrow, fear, and frustration into his chest. He didn’t try to calm her, only stroked her back as she let six years of anger and grief pour out into the still night air.
“Why isn’t he here?” she finally choked out. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he dead? Is he hiding again?” She shook her head and clutched at his neck. “I want my father! I want all this to be worth it, somehow. Carl and the other bodyguards, and—and the blond girl in Greece. And all the people he killed. And Ioan and Jean’s granddaughter and who knows how many other people who had nothing to do with this,” she practically yelled. “Why is this happening to me? To us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?” She raised her tear-stricken face to him, but he could do nothing but cup her cheek and wipe at the tears that fell fast and hot. “I’m past sad. I’m just pissed-off now! I want this to end so I can get on with my life—with our life. Is this ever going to end?”
“Yes,” he pressed his cheek to hers. “This is going to end. I told you six years ago that I would find your father, and I will, Beatrice. We will find him.”
She sniffed, and he reached down to hand her a handkerchief from his pocket.
“Why do you always carry handkerchiefs? You never need them.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could feel him press the cloth to her cheeks as she lay her head on his shoulder and allowed him to hold her up.
“Beatrice, don’t read the notebooks here,” he murmured. “There are too many of them. Take them back to Houston. I know your grandmother would want to see them, too.”
She clutched the notebook to her chest and nodded. “Okay.”
“We should go. I don’t think there’s anything more.”