The Ninth circle

10th October

Casey’s advice worked. Although the pain lingered for a good twenty-four hours, it only felt unbearable for a few of those. I’ve never known anything like it. If Casey hadn’t realised I was having a migraine attack I would have thought I was dying — having a brain haemorrhage or something. I checked my cupboards the next day and found migraine medicine in there, so I clearly have had migraines before. I don’t know how often I have these attacks but I sincerely hope they don’t occur often.

I couldn’t even sleep. I wish loneliness could be the way it’s portrayed in romantic comedies. When the lovely heroine feels lonely, she goes to her best friend for comfort, the friend gives her a tub of ice-cream and this very often seems to quickly solve the problem. I wish real loneliness was like that; I wish it really could be solved with ice-cream. Since I remember neither Nicky nor Luke, you’d think I wouldn’t miss them as badly as I do.

What will happen when I am an old man, unable to take care of myself any more? There will be no children, no younger relatives to come to my aid. There will be no one. I will have to move myself into an old people’s home. Still, at least I would be living with other people again; I wouldn’t be on my own any more… But that’s many years away yet. Perhaps I should ring some retirement homes and find out what the minimum age of admittance is, to know how long I will have to wait before I can go to one. But this is hardly the attitude, is it? I’m sure that, by then, I will have married again. I will have other children and grandchildren to care for me by that time.

I slept in late this morning, not getting out of bed until gone nine o’clock. By the time I had showered and eaten something, I was feeling much better so I caught the metro to the Castle District and walked to the Hilton. Of course, I didn’t know if Stephomi would be in when I got there. But it was still quite early, only just gone 10 a.m., and there was the chance that he would still be in the hotel. I wanted him to fill in the blanks for me about my family. I wanted to know what Nicky, my wife, had looked like, how we had met… I wanted to know about my son… I wanted them to be real to me so that I could grieve for them, say goodbye to them, and move on. Only Stephomi could give me that.

It wasn’t until I arrived at the Hilton that I realised I didn’t know which hotel room Stephomi was staying in. I went to reception and asked if they could ring to Zadkiel Stephomi’s room and let him know I was there. The woman behind the reception desk typed something into the computer, fingers flying over the keyboard before her.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but Mr Stephomi has a Do Not Disturb request on his room. I can’t phone up to him.’

‘But I need to see him!’ I said agitatedly, running my hand through my hair in frustration. ‘Please, isn’t there any way you can get a message to him? Or give me his room number?’

‘I most certainly can’t give you any of Mr Stephomi’s private details, sir,’ she said, looking alarmed. ‘And I can’t phone his room until the Do Not Disturb request has been removed.’

I argued with the woman for a little longer, even though I knew it was useless.

‘Oh, all right,’ I said in the end. ‘Can you take a message for me and pass it on to him when you can? Can you tell him that Gabriel Antaeus wishes to-’

‘Antaeus?’ the woman broke in sharply. ‘Why didn’t you say? Mr Stephomi left orders that we might bypass the request for privacy if it was on your behalf. He is in the presidential

suite at the top of the hotel, sir. I’ll just phone to let him know you’re coming, shall I?’

But I was hardly listening to her. I was already striding for the elevators with my bag firmly clamped under one arm. But as I got off the elevator and approached the room, I was surprised to hear thumping and muttered cursing from within.

‘Stephomi?’ I called, hammering on the door.

The scuffling abruptly stopped and the door was pulled open a bare few inches, showing half of Stephomi’s face as he peered at me from behind the door. There was stubble on his chin and dark rings under his rather bloodshot eyes.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ I asked in surprise.

‘I’m sorry, Gabriel, but this really isn’t the best time.’

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘There isn’t somebody in there with you, is there?’

Stephomi gave a wry smile and swung the door open wide for me to see the empty living room within. ‘No one here but me,’ he said.

‘Well, I need to talk to you,’ I replied, pushing past him and striding into the room.

It was large and spacious with a cream couch and matching armchairs, a low polished wooden coffee table, a wide-screen TV and a dressing table. Another door led to the bedroom and en suite bathroom. I threw my bag down on the couch and then turned to face him as Stephomi resignedly closed the door.

‘Why aren’t you dressed?’ I asked, only just realising that Stephomi was wearing a Hilton bathrobe.

‘I only just got up. The receptionist’s phone call woke me.’

‘But it’s almost eleven o’clock!’

‘Yes, I know. I had a late night.’

And that was when I noticed some of the odd things about his room. There was a great crack down the centre of the large mirror over the dressing table, and strange, jagged grooves, almost like claw marks, in the wooden edges of the couch and coffee table as well as ripped tears running down the fabric of the curtains. A broken wine glass lay on the floor with a red wine stain on the carpet beneath it, and the room had a strangely chilled air. There were signs of black fur on one of the cream armchairs, as if a large, black dog had been allowed into the suite, and a slightly acrid scent hung about the room. And there.. on the floor against the wall, lay the broken pieces of what had once been a rather beautiful violin.

‘What happened?’ I asked, staring at the instrument. It looked as if someone had taken the violin by its neck and shattered it forcefully against the wall. Even with my distaste for violins in general, I found the sight of the broken instrument upsetting.

Stephomi sighed and ran a hand through his tousled dark hair. ‘Visit from an old friend,’ he said with a shrug. ‘He’s not too happy with me either, it seems. I lost something of his, that’s all. And,’ he gestured towards his broken Amatis, ‘as you can see, he shared your dislike for my instrument of choice.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, gazing at him anxiously, remembering what he had said of his love for the instrument and the monumental level of its financial value.

Stephomi shrugged, but I noticed that he couldn’t bring himself to look directly at the shattered violin. ‘Really my fingers are too long for violins anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d be better suited to a viola. So what can I do for you today, Gabriel?’

My gaze fell on the coffee table once again and I saw that there was an expensive bottle of red wine standing on it, one glass placed alongside. The wine inside the glass was frozen. Frozen solid. I leaned down, picked up the glass and tipped it over. The frozen liquid inside remained glued to the glass.

‘What the hell is-’ I began, but Stephomi walked over and took the glass from my hand, picked up the bottle and moved them both to the nearby dresser.

‘Look, I hate to sound impatient, Gabriel, but what is it exactly that you want? Like I said, this isn’t the best time and I-’

‘How did that wine get like that?’

Stephomi sighed. ‘The wine cellars of the hotel are kept under ground and apparently the generator malfunctioned last night and the temperature in there dropped to well below freezing. Hence…’ He waved a hand at the frozen wine. ‘The steward who brought it up last night didn’t notice. Now, what can I do for you?’

‘Well, I… I just came to tell you that I know everything.’

Stephomi smiled wryly as he dropped down into one of the cream armchairs, crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in it, somehow managing to look elegant even when wearing only a bathrobe.

‘Everything, Gabriel? Well done. You’ve achieved what mankind have been trying to do for centuries. Will you let me in on these secrets of the universe?’

‘I meant that I know what happened in my past and why you tried to keep it from me,’ I said. ‘Look I’m sorry about everything I said to you before. I understand now that you really were just trying to be my friend.’

He continued to regard me in silence and I could tell that he didn’t completely believe me. Perhaps he thought I was trying to trick him into telling me about my past.

‘I know about Nicky and Luke,’ I said, to prove that I was telling the truth. I threw my bag over to him. ‘It’s all in there. I know that I inherited the money from my last surviving relative. I know about my wife and son. It was a car crash. There’s no one here because there’s no one left. All the people I cared about are dead.’

I sat down on the couch while Stephomi flicked through the papers in my bag.

‘I’m sorry,’ Stephomi said at last. ‘How did you find out?’

I explained about the safety deposit key. Apart from the birth, marriage and death certificates there had also been an envelope full of rejection letters from agents and publishers for the book I had found in my desk as well as others. I really was a writer, or at least a would-be writer.

‘Well, I’m sorry you had to find out that way,’ Stephomi said again with a sigh.

‘I’m sad that no one else is coming,’ I said. ‘But at least I won’t be waiting for nothing now. At least I know for certain. I can

… I can throw away the fish food. I can start to make some new life for myself here now. Maybe one day I’ll marry again. But I can’t grieve for strangers. I need you to make them real for me, Stephomi.’

He looked uncomfortable at once. ‘I’m not sure that I can.’

‘Please. Give me something. I can’t say goodbye to people I don’t know.’

‘I’m a traveller, Gabriel. You were only married a few years. The truth is, I never saw all that much of your family. All I know is what you told me in your letters.’

‘Just tell me anything you can remember,’ I pleaded. ‘Just one or two personal things about them are all I need.’

‘Well… Nicky was a teacher of religious studies. You met at a religious lecture. One of my lectures, actually. She had dark blonde hair and so did your son, Luke. You told me once that she liked walking outside when it was raining and her favourite drink was an apple martini. What else…? Well, she was Christian, of course. I think you said she could play the piano… I’m sorry, Gabriel, I can’t think of much more, I only met her a few times. As for Luke, I saw even less of him, but I remember you being very indignant when he was cast as the goat at his nativity play last year. You thought he should have been starring as Joseph. And he wouldn’t eat spaghetti unless it was Postman Pat spaghetti, as I remember. Is that enough, Gabriel?’

‘I suppose it’ll have to be. Thank you.’

‘That’s the trouble with constant travelling — you don’t always get to be in the lives of your friends as much as you’d wish.’

‘How did the car crash happen?’ I asked.

‘That I can’t tell you,’ Stephomi said. ‘You couldn’t talk to me about it at the time.’

‘But you must know something about it,’ I pressed. ‘Was it an accident?’

‘Of course it was an accident!’ Stephomi said sharply.

‘Was I driving?’ I asked.

Stephomi hesitated.

‘Oh God, I was, wasn’t I?’

‘Look, it’s not what you think. It wasn’t your fault. Someone drove straight into you. They were speeding. There was nothing anyone could have done about it. The roads were icy.’

‘Well, you seem to know a lot about it, given that I wouldn’t talk about it,’ I challenged. ‘You’re just making it up to make me feel better, aren’t you?’

‘No! I’ve told you the truth.’

‘But how do you know if I didn’t tell you?’

Stephomi sighed. ‘I was with you when the police came a few weeks later and I learned about it from them.’

‘Why were the police there? I thought you said it was an accident? ’

‘It was,’ Stephomi said. ‘But the police still have to investigate these things, Gabriel.’

‘What did I do about this other driver?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did I kill him? Did I make him pay for it?’

‘No,’ Stephomi said patiently. ‘You’d hardly be sat here like this if you had, would you? Although I admit that for a while I was worried that you might be moved to try and do something like that. There will always be pain, Gabriel. There’s no way of avoiding it unless you become a monk or a hermit.’

‘Did you come to their funeral?’

‘Of course I came. The rest of your family were there to support you too but you, ah… weren’t well, you see, and I had to take your place with the pallbearers.’

I felt shame at that, of course, but at the same time I felt incredibly lucky to have someone like Zadkiel Stephomi in my life, and the gratitude I felt towards him in that moment was something I would never have been able to express with words.

‘Thank you,’ I said, trusting he could hear in my voice what his friendship meant to me. ‘I’m so sorry for the way I treated you before, Stephomi, when you wouldn’t tell me what had happened-’

‘Don’t apologise to me,’ Stephomi said hastily. ‘Please, Gabriel. I know you would have done the same in my place.’

Now that I know the truth, I feel worn out. Burned through. But, at the same time I feel better than I have since all this began. It’s exhausting, coming to terms with the truth like this. But now at last I know, and it is a relief to know, to hit rock bottom knowing I won’t stay there. Not with a loyal friend like Stephomi to help me up again. Nicky and Luke are gone. There’s nothing I can do to bring them back. Now that I know about them, I can move on. And I don’t need to fear myself any more. There’s nothing sinister about me. I’m a writer, an academic… that’s all. Now I know who I am, where I stand and why, I am free to continue with my life.