Dragging the trunk downstairs, he had started to empty it, glancing again at old photographs unseen for many a year, and putting aside items which might be useful at school (several old text-books, for example) until he’d come across a large leatherbound notebook full of notes and jottings in his father’s hand. Something about the pattern and layout of his father’s work had held his eye for a moment . . . until it dawned on him just exactly what it was – or what he thought it was.
In the next moment that awful inexplicable chill had come again to strike Hannant’s spine, causing him to tremble where he sat holding the book open in his lap, stiffening his back with shock. Then … he had snapped the book shut, carried it through to his front room where a coal fire blazed beneath the wide chimney-piece. There, without even glancing at the book again, he thrust it into the flames and let it burn.
That same day Hannant had collected Keogh’s old Maths books from the school for forwarding on to Harmon at the Tech. Now, taking the most recent one, he let its pages fall open for one last glance, then closed it with a shudder and let it join his father’s old book in the flames.
Prior to Keogh’s – awakening? – his work had been scruffy, lacking in order, by no means precise. Afterwards, for the last six or seven weeks . . .
Well, the books were gone now, roared up in a sheet of flame and lost in the chimney, lost to the night.
There was no comparing them now, and that was probably the best way. To consider that there might be any real comparison would be too gross, too grotesque. Now Hannant could put the whole thing out of his mind forever. Thoughts like that had never belonged in any completely sane mind in the first place.
Chapter Four
It was the summer of 1972 and Dragosani was back in Romania.
He looked very trendy in a washed-out blue open-necked shirt, flared grey trousers cut in a Western style, shiny black shoes with sharply pointed toes (unlike the customary square-cut imported Russian footwear in the local shops) and a fawn-chequered jacket with large patch pockets. In the hot Romanian midday, especially at this farm on the outskirts of a tiny village some way off the Corabia-Calinesti highway, he stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Leaning on his car and scanning the huddled rooftops and snail-shell cupolas of the village, which stood a little way down the gently sloping fields to the south, he could only be one of three things: a rich tourist from the West, one from Turkey, or one from Greece.
But on the other hand his car was a Volga and black as his shoes, which suggested something else. Also, he didn’t wear the wide-eyed, wary/innocent look of the tourist but a self-satisfied air of familiarity, of belonging. Approaching him from the farmhouse yard where he’d been feeding chickens, Hzak Kinkovsi, the ‘proprietor’, couldn’t make up his mind. He was expecting tourists later in the week, but this one had got him beat. He sniffed suspiciously. An official, maybe, from the Ministry of Lands and Properties? Some snotty lackey for those stone-faced bolshevik industrialists across the border? He’d have to watch his step here, obviously. At least until he knew who or what the newcomer was.
‘Kinkovsi?’ the young man inquired, eyeing him up and down. ‘Hzak Kinkovsi? They told me in lonestasi that you have rooms. I take it that place – ‘ (a nod towards a tottering three-storied stone-built house by the cobbled village road)’ – is your guesthouse?’
Kinkovsi deliberately looked blank, feigned a lack of understanding, frowned as he stared at Dragosani. He didn’t always declare his earnings from tourism – not all of them, anyway. Finally he said: ‘I am Kinkovsi, yes, and I do have rooms. But – ‘
‘Well, can I stay here or can’t I?’ the other seemed tired now, and impatient. Kinkovsi noted that his clothes, at first glance smart and modern, actually looked crumpled, much-travelled. ‘I know I’m early by a month, but surely you can’t have that many guests?’