She pushed her glasses up on her nose. The island she had just landed on was at the edge of the archipelago surrounding Babel, whose aqueducts and rotundas could be seen as distant silhouettes distorted by the heat of the afternoon. The splendor of the city hadn’t extended this far. The houses were all piled up, one against the other, like a single block of granite, with not a garden or fountain to soften the general effect. Neither were there cobbles on the roads, whose red dust, lifted by the wind, sizzled like embers. There was, however, an entire population of dodos waddling around the street, with the gait of obese pigeons.
Until then, Ophelia had asked her way to public signaling guides, but here she found no statue-automaton even remotely resembling one.
“Professor Wolf’s house, please?” Ophelia had addressed a passerby, who looked her uniform up and down before pointing out the direction to her without saying a word. She soon noticed that the locals turned as she passed, looking hostile. They all wore togas and turbans that would have been white had the surrounding dust not turned them red. They were the powerless. She was struck at seeing so many youngsters among them, sullen and idle, playing dice on the doorsteps. They were a startling contrast to the hyperactive automatons of the city center.
Ophelia had to keep asking the way until she finally reached a dilapidated building shrouded in creepers. A toucan, perched on the handrail of the front steps, screeched loudly as she approached, and a dozy old lady opened the door. Ophelia’s uniform had the effect of a bucket of water on her.
“Mademioselle?” she asked, staring wide-eyed.
“I’m looking for Professor Wolf.” Ophelia hadn’t managed to stop her voice betraying the emotion she had, however, been trying to curb since her conversation with Octavio. That was a hope she just mustn’t allow herself.
“I’m his landlady,” the old woman replied, now looking bored. “He has his own entrance around the back, but I don’t mind warning you: he’s an awkward customer, that lodger.”
Ophelia ignored as best she could the cramp that had just wrenched her stomach. “Is he at home?”
“Oh, yes, mademoiselle, that he is. Even a bit too much, in fact. He never goes out any more since his accident. What a shame, such an intelligent man!”
Another cramp gripped Ophelia’s stomach. “His accident?”
“It’s not for me to tell you, mademoiselle. Just go around the house and knock on his door. Maybe he’ll open to you. Maybe not.”
Ophelia went to the back of the building. The creepers were even more abundant here than at the front, to the extent of having entirely covered the closed shutters of the ground floor. A veritable plant prison.
‘A hiding place,’ Ophelia couldn’t help but correct, swallowing what little saliva she had left. There was no plaque, no letter box to indicate the identity of the place’s occupant.
She jumped. Barely had she neared the door than the knocker had struck it to announce her arrival. It had animated itself.
The smallest noise, from the other side of the door, indicated that someone had lifted the spyhole cover. Ophelia stretched as high as she could to be seen. After a long silence, the door opened barely a crack, restrained by a chain. The man didn’t show himself. He said nothing, either. Only his breathing—tense, deep—testified to his presence.
He was waiting.
Incapable of uttering a word herself, so tight was her throat, Ophelia slipped the Good Family’s administrative reference through the crack. She saw long, gloved fingers snatch it before disappearing into the darkness.
A rustling of paper. Another interminable silence.
The man slammed the door shut, released the security chain, and opened to Ophelia.
Barely had she set foot in the hall when the door closed itself behind her. The many bolts instantly slid into place themselves with a series of resounding clicks. Still dazzled from the sun, Ophelia and her glasses took a while to get used to the nocturnal atmosphere that prevailed inside. For now, the man was just an anonymous shadow, tall and stiff as a hat stand. The floorboards creaked beneath his wary steps. His eyes, like two small, nervy sparks in an oven, kept darting back and forth, from the paper he was holding to the uniform of his visitor.
“Gloves, h’m? There’s an uncommon request.”
Ophelia agreed, forcing herself to smile politely. Professor Wolf was gradually revealing himself to her. His hair, eyebrows, and goatee were as black as his skin was pale. Lines furrowed his forehead and around his mouth, giving him the appearance of a prematurely aged forty-year-old.
It wasn’t Thorn.
She had spent the day forbidding herself from hoping. So why did she suddenly feel like leaving with a slam of the door?
“Are you mute, as well as everything else?” Professor Wolf’s accent was neither entirely Babelian nor really Animist, but a singular mix of the two. Perhaps because he no longer left his home, he didn’t respect the city’s dress code: his suit and his gloves, also black, resembled those worn by the scientists at Anima’s great observatory.
“No,” Ophelia finally muttered. She didn’t know what his “everything else” referred to, and she didn’t care. This man wasn’t Thorn, nothing he might think of her interested her.
“If I’m to believe your document, you are yourself a reader,” Professor Wolf continued, curling his lips on the last word. “A reader who goes about with bare hands, moreover. What have you done with your gloves?”
Ophelia wondered what business it was of his, but she needed him too much to be disagreeable. “They were, unfortunately, mislaid. I am here for your help in procuring me a new pair. The Good Family will take care of all expenses.” And I’ll repay that debt in extra chores, she refrained from adding.
Professor Wolf looked skeptically at Ophelia’s hands. His extreme stiffness was accentuated by a wooden brace enclosing his neck and, combined with his pointed chin, made his head look like a pickax. Was that due to the accident the landlady had mentioned?
“Follow me,” he barked, begrudgingly.
The professor led Ophelia from the hall to the living room, where the same twilight prevailed. The daylight glimmered weakly through the slits of the shutters. The air was unbreathable. The room’s fan dispersed neither the sweltering heat nor the musty smell. Behind the dusty windows of the stacked-up display cases, one could just make out bones and fossils, making her feel as if she had entered a particularly morbid cabinet of curiosities. She was disconcerted when the chairs, tables, and chests drew back as she passed, like timid animals; Professor Wolf must truly have a wary nature for his Animism to have permeated his furniture to this extent.
Ophelia’s surprise increased when she discovered, among the finds from archeological digs, a very impressive collection of military weapons. “Your research is on the wars of the old world?” She realized too late that she had let slip the forbidden word. Professor Wolf, busy rummaging in a drawer, threw her a dark look.