back to him.”
The waiter brought their plates, and if David hoped this might change the direction of the conversation, he was wrong. Olivia dug in without missing a beat.
“Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer, he was also a great believer. He paraded his troops through the streets of Berlin dressed as Teutonic knights and the people of Germany loved it! The Nazis believed in a super race, an Aryan race, a race that had been pushed aside, or buried in the earth, or corrupted by mixing with impure blood. There were many theories, but they all agreed that this race was going to rise again. It was going to purify itself, and it was going to create a new Reich, which was supposed to last for a thousand years.”
David was listening carefully, but given his search for La Medusa , he felt his stores of credulity were already sorely depleted. And much as he respected Olivia’s scholarship, all of this was still sounding a little too close to those preposterous theories about Hitler possessing the Spear of Destiny, or conjuring up some Satanic power to wield control over the masses. David didn’t need any supernatural explanations for evil; as someone who had studied history all his life, he knew it sprouted up as easily as weeds, anywhere. All it ever needed was a little irrigating.
“But what’s this got to do with the library cards?” David asked, pouring the last drops of the wine into Olivia’s glass, who thanked him, then signaled the waiter to bring them each another glass.
Gulping the wine, but eager to continue her story, Olivia said, “There was one man that Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, all relied on when it came to the occult. He was a famous professor in Heidelberg, a man who had written books on pagan worship and sun signs and what they used to call the ‘root races.’ His books were bestsellers, and his lectures were always packed.”
“Would I have heard of him?”
“Probably not. His name was Dieter Mainz. And on every one of those borrower’s cards,” she said, rapping a knuckle on the table with each succeeding word, “I found his signature.”
At last, David could begin to see the connection she was making.
“He had requested every one of those books, including the Cellini manuscripts. In certain circles,” she elaborated, “Cellini was as famous for his magic as for his art. Just think of the passages from his autobiography, where he describes going to the Colosseum at night, with a sorcerer named Strozzi, and conjuring spirits?”
David remembered it well, but in the published version, the incident had ended rather anticlimactically. After a host of demons had been summoned, Cellini asked for news of a woman he had once loved, and was told he would see her soon. And that was about it. It ended as abruptly as if it had been cut with a sword.
“And think of the journey as he describes it in the book you have shown me, The Key to Life Eternal.”
There, he continued the story-in an unexpurgated, and seemingly fantastical, fashion. When Olivia had first read it in the alcove at the Laurenziana, David had watched in amusement as her eyes grew progressively wider.
The waiter returned with their wine. A small man, thin and pallid, had unobtrusively taken the seat at the opposite table and was bent over a book and a bowl of vichyssoise.
“The Nazis knew that there were many drafts, many versions, of Cellini’s autobiography,” Olivia said, “and they thought the full story might be told in one of them. What they did not know about was the Key.”
No one had, according to Mrs. Van Owen. If she was to be believed, hers was the only copy of the book in existence, and judging from the smoky smell that still clung to it, even hers had been barely rescued from a fire.
“But they thought he might have concealed the secrets of his occult knowledge in his art. After all, no one at that time could have conceived of something so grand and so exquisitely made as the Perseus . Since he had achieved miracles in his art, the Germans thought he might have uncovered other great secrets, too.”
“Such as immortality?”
“Exactly,” Olivia said. “Just as he proclaims in the Key.”
“Immortality,” David said again, letting the word roll around his tongue. He had shared so much with Olivia. But he had yet to tell her the real reason he was so desperate to find the mirror. Was this the time?
“If there was one thing Hitler coveted,” she continued, “that was it. He didn’t just want the Reich to last a thousand years, he wanted to be there-for a thousand years and more-to rule it.”
“It must have been a great disappointment to him when the Red Army took Berlin and he had to blow out his brains in the bunker.”
Olivia sat back, with an unpersuaded expression on her face. “The body, you know, was never found.”
“Sure it was,” David said, “along with Eva Braun’s. Burned in a ditch.” That much he knew.
“ Remains,” Olivia said. “Only remains were found. By the Russians. And they claimed they were the Fuhrer’s. But no one else ever had the chance to test them; no one else even had the chance to see them. The Russians said they were incinerated outside a little town called Sheck and the ashes were thrown in the Biederitz River.” She drank some more of the Bordeaux. “And we know how trustworthy the Russians are.”
The waiter appeared and asked if he could clear the table. David, trying to digest all that he had just heard, not to mention what he’d had to eat and drink, leaned back as the waiter picked up their plates. The man sitting across the aisle was smiling at him through thin lips and gray teeth and said, with what sounded like a Swiss accent, “Forgive me for intruding, but are you honeymooners?”
Olivia smiled, and David said, “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Oh,” the man said, embarrassed at his faux pas. “Please pardon my mistake.”
“No problem,” David replied, secretly pleased that they made that kind of impression.
“I had taken the liberty,” the man said, “of ordering a round of a special schnapps, made in my hometown, and traditionally used to toast a bride and groom.”
“That is very kind of you,” Olivia said, beaming at David.
“So perhaps you’ll allow me to wish you well, all the same?”
He gestured at the three small glasses, which were lined up on his table. Extending two of them, he said, “It is made from the wild cherries that grow in our valley, and we’re quite proud of it. I think you’ll see why.”
Although another drink was the last thing David needed, it would be too rude to turn it down. Olivia thanked him, too, and after a few minutes of conversation-the man introduced himself as Gunther, a salesman of medical supplies from Geneva-they shook his hand and excused themselves.
David, his valise slung under one arm, was halfway down the aisle when he realized just how much he’d had to drink, and how exhausted he really was. Olivia seemed to be feeling the same way. They were nearly staggering by the time they got back to their compartment, and he fumbled at the lock.
Any dreams David had had of their first night together would just have to wait. Olivia flopped onto the lower bunk without so much as pulling the blanket back, and David tossed the valise onto the upper berth. Stumbling into the tiny bathroom, he looked at his face in the mirror. His expression was weary, almost blank, and the taste of the cherry schnapps was still strong on his tongue.
Turning out the light and closing the flimsy door, he laid Olivia’s coat over her. Then he clambered into the upper berth, which, in his present state, felt like the best and softest bed he had ever been in. All he wanted to do was sleep, and the gentle, constant rumble of the train was like a lullaby. One arm rested on the valise, the other dangled off the side of the bunk.
But his thoughts were restless, and he entered into that strange state where he could not be sure if he was dreaming or not. He thought of the salesman with the gray teeth, and pictured him picking cherries and putting them in a basket.
He thought of Olivia’s old boyfriend, Giorgio, his face smeared with blood, his mouth gagged, but in the dream he was trying to tell David something urgent.
He pictured a parade of knights on horseback, crossing the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, with Hitler himself leading the procession. Torches were lighted all along the way, and in the fiery glow David saw his sister, standing on the other side of the bridge. Why was she there? Her hair was still gone, and she was dressed in a blue hospital gown. She was watching the knights, a look of horror on her face, and David was trying to run to her. But the horses were in the way and though he kept shouting her name, she could not hear him. The horses and riders kept nudging her closer and closer to the edge of the bridge. She was about to fall off! David was pushing his way through the knights-Nazi pennants were flying from their lances-but he couldn’t make any progress. Someone, or something-a horse’s muzzle?-was nudging his arm… moving it, very gently, to one side.
