Bringing Back Daniel Cohen - Excerpt
*This chapter follows a prologue
Chapter 1
Friday, December 5, 2014
It was already getting warm outside when he made his way up the narrow dusty trail. His feet felt heavy and the ground beneath them was almost too hot to walk upon. He followed the spiral trail up on the steep ocean-facing cliff and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a stained handkerchief. The rays of sunlight, those endless sky-piercing swords, seemed to wink at him, as if encouraging him to continue climbing. The higher he climbed, the better he could see the ocean opening out before him. In this quiet afternoon hour, there was no living soul around. Now the ocean was his and his alone. When he reached the peak, the world he had once lost revealed itself to him in its renewed creation: a silent ocean, cloudless skies, and the lonely cliff under his feet. He sat on the edge of the cliff, his feet dangling in the air, and looked down at the deep abyss. Far below lay the ocean in its siesta-like stillness. Every now and again, a few hungry seagulls disrupted its slumber, diving into its waters and coming back up with fluttering fish.
The ocean made him happy. It always did. He took a deep breath as if it were his first in this world. A clean breath that felt so right. He heard heavy footsteps approaching. They crushed whatever came their way and grew louder and closer. The ground shook and started crumbling around him. He didn't need to look to know who was standing behind him. The air filled with the familiar stench of gin, a smell that would linger and linger and not go away even after he was long gone. As always, he managed to show up at the worst possible time and destroy his dream, the only undamaged possession he had left in this world, except for the white rabbit, of course.
He awoke to the sound of a phone ringing. Lerin wasn't surprised. Destroying his dream wasn't enough for General Dolen. Oh no. He sat up in the squeaking single bed at that cheap motel and stared at the phone. He hadn't seen a receiver phone for years. A strange feeling of nostalgia crept inside him for a moment, though he wasn't sure why. Or was it déjà vu?
“Couldn't you have waited for the morning to come?” Lerin moaned, picking up the phone. It was two in the morning. His skin was wet. Cold sweat. Again. If only it were a nightmare. Whenever he had to talk with him he felt weak and nauseous.
“I'd forgotten how grumpy you can be,” General Dolen said and laughed. He had the laugh of a heavy smoker. “I can control many things in this world, but when it comes to time zones I'm completely powerless, so it would be nice if you won’t hold it against me.”
Lerin could imagine him there, sitting in his office, wherever it was, his shiny black boots on the table, smiling his hideous smile with those yellow teeth. It made him shiver in disgust.
“Why are you calling me?”
“There's a tech issue with the website. It doesn't send automated messages to your email address once a client books your service. I'm on it, don't worry. It should be fixed soon.”
“Terrific,” Lerin moaned. The last thing he needed was to start receiving daily phone calls from the General. It was bad enough having him disrupt his dreams. “Where to this time?” Lerin asked, trying to keep it short. Every second he had to listen to the General's voice was torture.
Snap. The red wooden chest standing on the floor beside the bed suddenly opened.
“What is that sound? Is that the chest?” the General asked.
The chest! Lerin's heart sank as he rushed to the chest and closed its heavy lid, almost losing hold of the receiver. He sat on top of it, trying his best to use the weight of his this-time-around slim old body to prevent the stubborn pains trapped inside from breaking free in the room. How did he forget to lock it?
“No, it's just the window. My fault. Should have known better than to leave it half-open with those Patagonian winds out there,” he said, gasping for air from the effort of keeping the chest closed. Trapped pains tend to be persistent. All they want is to go back to their rightful owner, and they never stop trying.
“Are you sure? It sounds awfully like your chest,” the General said in his all-knowing voice.
“Yes, I'm sure,” Lerin muttered. Amazing. Nothing escapes his attention. He should have known better than to lie to the General. And now he's going to hold it against him for all eternity. Well, let him! That wretched magician's chest. How he hated it! For years, he had to drag it along wherever he went. That was part of the deal. It contained all the materials from which his magic was made: A black top hat, a blue blanket with which he could conceal things and bring them back with one hocus-pocus, two flying oranges, a camouflage net, and his magician's wand, which looked more like the baton of a conductor. That and the endless amount of trapped pains they had caught over the years. Luckily, the pains of all those thousands of people didn't take up volume and could be contained, but unfortunately for Lerin, they still had weight. He could never understand why he needed that big wooden chest. It wasn't like the trapped pains couldn't be carried in his backpack, as he did when he was required to take flights. But the General wouldn't have it, saying that the net with its trapped pains should be stored inside the chest whenever possible.
“Given the alternative of leaving the chest unattended in the airplane's baggage cabin, carrying the pains inside your backpack is the lesser of two evils,” the General told him only a few weeks after he had started working for him. He appeared in one of Lerin's dreams and his voice echoed inside Lerin's head, dictating the protocol. “But never forget a pain inside your backpack for too long, or it will lose its freshness. Pains which are not fresh are worthless to me,” the General added.
At least there was still enough room inside the chest to include the few clothes he had, so he was spared the inconvenience of an additional suitcase. The power of looking on the bright side. Yeah right.
“I'm disappointed, Lerin,” the General said. He didn’t bother hiding the smugness in his voice. Here it goes, Lerin thought.
“You’re always so cold and distant with me. Always straight and to the point.”
What? Was he not going to catch him in the lie? Well, that's a first. “You'll survive,” Lerin mumbled, a bit confused and surprised.
“How is that bunny of yours?” the General asked.
“Rabbit! Rabbit! Goddammit!” Moiko jumped out of his small basket on the carpet and onto Lerin's bed.
“Oh, relax you white furball,” the General said. “You are too sensitive for your own good. You should take care—all this stress could kill you one day.” The General laughed again. He sounded like a gruff donkey.
“Just tell us what you want, you bastard!” Moiko screamed into the receiver. Lerin hurried over and put his hand on the rabbit's nose.
“Are you crazy?” Lerin whispered, covering the receiver with his hand. “You can't talk like that.”
“That little guy always had character!” the General laughed.
“So where to this time?” Lerin asked once again, irritated.
“Well, I am willing to let it slip this time,” the General said, “but you should know that I'm already working with this HR specialist. We have an entire feel-good strategy we want to implement in the agency. This bad blood between us has been going on for too many years and it's not good for business. I am determined to change it.”
“Here's an idea—let us go,” Lerin said, muttering quietly but loud enough for the General to hear.
“Unfortunately, I can't do that and you know why.”
“Then please stop with all this 'feel-good' nonsense. You make it seem like you are an ordinary boss and what we do is normal.” Lerin sighed and looked at his wristwatch. It was already 2:10 a.m. “Nothing could make us hate you less, and you know it, so please, cut to the chase and let us go back to sleep.”
“Hell yeah!” Moiko said. He reached out his front leg and raised his paw in the air, shaking his small head from side to side. Lerin couldn't control himself and giggled. Ever since Moiko had seen this episode of Ricki Lake with those two women fighting over the same man and saying something like talk to the hand 'cause I ain't listening—Lerin couldn't remember exactly—Moiko would always do that gesture with his paw when he was trying to make a point.
“I see,” the General said. Lerin could tell from his voice that he was amused. How he hated picturing the General all smug.
“Feedback from my employees is always welcome. I'll take it into account.”
“Whatever. So what about it? You still haven't told us our next destination,” Lerin said, yawning. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. Oh, that goddamn Dolen! He always had the worst possible timing. He had clearly done it on purpose. Yet another of his torture techniques.
“Alright, alright. What's the rush? Hmm, let me see, ah, one minute,” the General said.
“Ah, here it is. Well, we have four bookings in Berlin. I'll send you an email with the details in a few minutes.”
“When do we need to leave here?”
“The first client booked Tuesday, which means you need to be there on Sunday. Taking some buffer time for orientation is always good. Besides, Berlin is such a great city! I love it so much, I'm thinking about heading there once the pension kicks in.”
“Ha, for some reason I can't seem to imagine you as a retiree.”
“That makes two of us,” the General said. “The problem is that I love my job too much.”
Lerin could hear him lick his lips and imagined the dry saliva forming at the edges. Ew yuck! If there was something he found absolutely repellent, this was it. And those thin lips of his. Even when Dolen wasn't smiling, his lips—nothing but a dry, thin line—seemed to be smiling, as if saying, “I will always be a step ahead. Don't bother trying.”
“I'm sure you'll manage to find something interesting to do there before the week begins,” the General added. “After all, it's Berlin we're talking about.”
“And how long are we supposed to stay there? A day? Two days?” Lerin was so sick of all these business trips around the world. He and Moiko spent more hours up in the air than they did on the ground.
“This time, it will be more relaxed,” the General said. “Eight days.”
“Moiko will be pleased to hear that,” Lerin said, more to himself than to the General.
“And the flights?”
“It's all taken care of.”
Lerin could hear the raven's loud purr in the background.
“Your flight is booked for tomorrow, 2 a.m., which means you need to take the 6 p.m. bus leaving here. Be sure to be on time. Those Patagonian roads...”
“Will do,” Lerin said. “Now, can we please go back to sleep? We worked until 11 p.m. last night and we are exhausted.”
“Of course,” the General said. “Then, I guess I'll be seeing you two in Prague once you are finished with your assignment in Berlin. I haven't seen you in person in ages and I would love nothing more than some good old catching up. How does that sound, eh?”
“Like a dream come true.” Lerin rolled his eyes.
“Cynicism doesn't suit you, Lerin. It makes you seem older and more bitter than you actually are.” He could hear Dolen pause and sip his drink. Probably his fruit-based gin. It was his favorite drink and he drank it as if it were water.
“But I am old and I am bitter,” Lerin replied, flat and emotionless. It wasn't really the case, though, seeing that he had been thirty-two years old for the last seventy years. What makes a person old anyway? Is it just his aging body? What about his dark thoughts? His dying dreams? His anger and disappointments? “I'll email you once we land,” he added.
“Very well. Then have a good night and a safe journey.”
“It's funny you say that, given the situation,” Lerin said, laughing bitterly.
“You know how much I value you, don't you?” the General asked.
“As long as you need me, I am of value to you.” Lerin didn't wait for a reply. He put the receiver down.
“You should go back to sleep, Moik,” he said. “Apparently, we have another long flight ahead of us this evening.”
“What's new?” Moiko said. “I don't think I can go to sleep now. I'm too upset.”
“I know. I feel the same way. But we really need to try.”
“Fine,” the rabbit moaned. He jumped off the bed and hopped into his small cushioned basket. They had found this basket at some Sunday market in Istanbul about fifty years ago and Moiko insisted on having it. He told Lerin that baskets make the best beds. It had been midsummer and unbearably hot. The small fan in the basic inn they were staying at just wasn't enough. Not when it was 104 degrees outside. So they left the room at noon and decided to visit a nearby market. The old peddler told them in his broken English that he had made all the baskets at the stand himself. He petted Moiko's head and laughed, revealing a toothless smile. Moiko dodged the peddler's sunburned hand in suspicion, pretending to be a regular rabbit like he always did. He wasn't supposed to talk in public places. Lerin had tried explaining to him time and time again that it was better that way. What if someone were to find out about Moiko and place mobile uploads of him on Facebook and YouTube? What if these digital-entertainment junkies discovered Moiko's potential and turned him into one of those circus animals, forced to entertain people for the rest of their lives? Moiko, for his part, didn't find the idea so awful. He needed that attention from people, being the aspiring actor that he was.
The cold Patagonian wind managed to penetrate the narrow crack in the window and make its way into the small room. Lerin also went back to bed, trying unsuccessfully to fit his long body to the sleep indentation in the middle of the mattress. Those awful metal coils. Who could sleep on such a thing?
“Are you asleep?” Moiko asked from his basket.
“No.” Lerin stared at the darkness surrounding him and listened to the strong winds howling outside.
“Me neither,” the rabbit said.
“Do you think we will ever be free again?” Lerin sighed quietly. Only in the darkness of night did he let himself cry soundlessly. No one could see him now, not even Moiko. His tired eyes filled with silent tears.
“Yes, I'm sure of it.”
“Then if you're sure, so am I,” Lerin said, even though he wasn't. He was tired. Really tired. Too tired to fall asleep. The irony. He soon heard Moiko's light snores. Despite Moiko's declarations of not being tired, here he was, sound asleep. Poor guy. How did Moiko put up with him? Lerin smiled sadly and looked at the starry night through the small window. Even though Moiko would never admit it, Lerin knew how hard it was on him. Who could have known things would turn out this way? Seventy years had already gone by since that cold winter day he stopped being Daniel Cohen and became Lerin, or John Smith, or Michael Richardson or whatever alias General Dolen chose for him. How could it be seventy years since he signed the contract and started working for the General? Seventy terrible and miserable years somehow had gone by so quickly. Time doesn't stop for anybody. It keeps on running no matter what happens. Maybe this meant that eternity wasn't as far away as he had thought.
Nighttime was always difficult. It was then, and only then, when little pieces of himself came back. Little pieces from the past. Fragments, not even fragments, but delicate, barely noticeable cracks of the person he used to be. Quick glimpses of the life he used to have before the war, before it all went to hell.
*
It was early evening in the small Patagonian town of El Chaltén. Despite the cold winds blowing outside, Lerin chose to stand at the entrance of the small central bus station. He feared his red magician's chest might raise the curiosity of the other people sitting inside and waiting, like him, for the 6 p.m. bus to El Calafate's airport. It was bad enough having to go through airport security. He tried telling himself, as usual, that there wasn't really any reason for him to worry—only he and Moiko could see the trapped pains inside the chest. No, it was better to stay outside. He still didn't like too many questioning eyes directed upon him.
A wandering magician—that was his cover, who he had been forced to become. How he hated that person. How he hated that he had become that person, despite his resistance. Yeah, that's him. Lerin the Fix-Wiz, the Quick-Fixer who will fix you in a heartbeat. What a joke! What a fucking sad joke! Welcome to the world of 2014. A world full of time-obsessed people, of gullible people, impatient people, lazy people always on the search for the easiest way out. It was definitely different from the world he had known back in 1944. Lerin glanced at his wristwatch. It was 6:15 p.m. and the bus still wasn't there. The cold wind sent shivers down his spine. It started raining. Even though it was just a light drizzle, he knew it was only a matter of seconds before it could turn into a Patagonian storm.
“Are you okay in there, Moik?” Lerin asked, making sure the rain cover was sitting firmly on his backpack.
“Hmm, let me see,” Moiko said from inside. “Even though it's warm and dry in here, it doesn't mean it's not stinky as hell.”
Lerin smiled. He couldn't have made it this far without Moiko. That capricious drama queen of a rabbit.
“Just so you know, to make it perfectly clear, it doesn't mean that I like one bit of it.” Moiko's voice was hoarse. The Patagonian winds were not good for him. “So many human rights are being violated here.”
“So it's a good thing you're not a human,” Lerin said and laughed. Many long and frustrating arguments in the past had led them to compromise and agree that Moiko was to stay put inside the green backpack while they were on the road. They couldn't afford to have unwanted attention directed at them. Of course, this compromise didn't come without a price. Not when it came to Moiko, being the attention junkie that he was. It cost Lerin an unprecedented amount of carrot cakes and other goodies. That was his future debt to the sugar-craving rabbit.
The bus finally came. Twenty minutes late. Lerin was already soaking wet. He squeezed his wet snarled beard and climbed onto the suburban bus, walking along the narrow aisle. He dragged the heavy red chest and took a seat in the back row. Luckily for him, it was completely free, with no nosy neighbor at his side. He placed his backpack on the seat beside him, opened the zipper, and looked inside. Moiko was asleep. Thank God he's dry, Lerin thought. He couldn't imagine what he would do, should Moiko become ill. Moiko was all he had left in this cruel, lonely world.
The bus took off, driving slowly on the pit-filled road. His stomach growled, but he couldn't eat a thing. The bumpy ride made him a bit nauseous. There were only a few other people on the bus— what a relief—most of them sat in the front, minding their own business, covered beneath their winter clothes and their thoughts. He hated drawing attention, and even more so being asked to perform magic outside of office hours. He looked through the tiny window at the world passing outside. The green cornfields, the barn houses, the flocks of birds in the skies—they were all just another passing landscape, a passing world he needed to leave, again. He moaned heavily. The heating in the bus stroked his face. It induced a distant pleasant feeling he must have felt once, long ago, when he was still a young boy, sitting in front of the fireplace in his parents' house. He couldn't explain it, least of all to himself, but he was sure the boy he saw was him and the blurry people next to him were his parents. Daniel's parents. It was one of those things the heart knew, rather than the mind. His eyes opened for a moment, trying desperately to translate those sudden flickering images in his mind to something he could hold on to, but there was no point. The black void in his head spread and swallowed any remnants of memories from that time. Another memory had tried to come back, but was pushed away forever. Clearly it was the General's doing.
Eight days in Berlin. Eight entire days. He wondered what it would be like. He hadn't stayed so long in one place for years. Most of his interactions with people were limited to his street shows, posing for pictures, saying hello to bus drivers and other passengers, or talking with waitresses in cheap diners. Throughout the years, he had seen many places in the world, but he hadn't been to Germany yet. He would have never thought about going there if it hadn't been necessary for work. Just thinking about Germany made him feel uncomfortable, as if they both had some unfinished business.
That Friday morning, after receiving the flight details from Dolen, Lerin sat down in front of the motel computer and tried reading a bit about Berlin. Apparently, most of the Internet in El Chaltén was provided via satellite, which made it painfully slow. Slow and expensive. According to the endless search results on Google, Berlin was the “place to be” in 2014, and “one of the hottest cities in the world.” That sure got him curious, well at least until he read about Berlin's weather forecast for the upcoming week: below freezing temperatures throughout the week. And that was during the day. Well, at least they'd have some time to recuperate from the long journey. He didn't even want to count the hours they would need to be on the road. From El Calafate's airport, they had to take a flight to Buenos Aires, and from there an early morning connecting flight to Madrid. But it didn't end there, oh no. There was still the need to wait for their connecting flight to Berlin.
Even after all these years he was still not used to this endless travel and he definitely wasn't immune to jet lag. Sure, flying was faster than traveling by those heavy ships they used during the last century, but it didn't change the fact that he hated being in the air. It felt so unnatural to him. And then there was the headache of getting on airplanes with a rabbit. All those quarantines, all those flights Moiko had to spend in a small cage in the baggage compartment. How he would complain afterward to Lerin, not sparing him any of his horrific ordeals with those savage mindless house pets; how nothing in this world could be worse than listening to their pathetic dog and cat chatter. And it was even worse when there were parakeets on board. Not only did Moiko have to hear the cats huff and puff, promising in their cat-like spoiled meows to leave their stupid owners once they land—they were too common for their liking—but he also had to hear those wretched parakeets repeat it all in their high-pitched screams. It was just too stressful and time-consuming, and so Lerin had no choice but to call the General and ask him for a favor. It must have been sometime in the early 1950s.
A few years before that, during World War II, Lerin and Moiko had traveled quite a bit throughout Europe. Many people were in need of a Quick-Fix. The war did that to people. Back then, their entire operation had been underground. They had to stay off the grid throughout the war. Despite having numerous fake passports and identities, Lerin would still be stopped from time to time, questioned by policemen or soldiers. It was absolutely nerve-racking. The hours spent in smoky interrogation rooms, the bizarre questions. Did he really look like a spy to them? With his ever-changing appearances?
Not wanting to further draw the attention of the authorities, General Dolen had given Moiko a special watch. This golden watch had a special feature: the Emergency Mode, which enabled Moiko to become invisible in emergency situations and showed him the exact amount of time he had left to remain invisible, down to the second.
“A man traveling with a rabbit? They will never understand it,” the General said.
According to Moiko, he had been almost eaten once, during an interrogation. The soldiers’ blood-thirsty Rottweilers, who knew he was inside Lerin’s backpack, were just waiting for their owners to give them the green light to tear the backpack to pieces—the backpack and Moiko along with it. At least that’s the version Moiko chose to tell the General, which had led him to add another feature to Moiko's watch, disguising Moiko's scent.
Moiko had always carried the watch in his silver sequined pouch and it proved to be quite handy in times of need. And there were too many of them during the war. Since then, Moiko couldn’t stop bragging about his newly-gained superhero powers, as he called them. But once the war was over and they started to travel by airplanes more often, the use of the Emergency Mode had been drastically limited. This meant Moiko was often caged in the baggage compartment with the rest of the animals.
After Lerin’s call to the General, yet another mode had been added to Moiko’s golden watch: the Flight Mode. Moiko could now become invisible and odorless not only in emergency situations, but also while flying in airplanes. The General usually charged the watch before each flight, taking into account airport security, travel time, and possible delays, but that was it. He didn't want them to take advantage of his generosity. Unlike the original Emergency Mode, which never contained any surplus—they never understood how the General managed to charge the watch, let alone calculate the additional time needed for unforeseen emergency situations—the Flight Mode did. When they arrived at the new destination earlier than planned, Moiko often tried to use the surplus from the Flight Mode just for fun, but as he quickly discovered, the watch didn't work upon arrival. Other than displaying the time, it was useless. Moiko’s disappointment was immense, of course. Lerin, for his part, wasn’t surprised. He knew how stingy Dolen was when it came to giving them magical powers—God forbid he should make their lives a tad easier.
Moiko had been using his special powers for more than fifty years, allowing him to sit with Lerin in the passenger cabin, run back and forth along the aisle, and eavesdrop on people's conversations. Despite the obvious advantages of airplanes, Lerin still thought it was quite a shame nobody traveled by ship anymore. As far as he was concerned, the only good thing about airplanes was that they didn't make Moiko sick. Who knew that rabbits could have such a severe seasickness? He could never forget the long and miserable hours they had spent on boats; he could never forget how much he feared losing the little guy to the sea. In fact, Lerin could remember everything that had happened since the day he had signed the contract: everything but his past. Everything but Daniel Cohen. When he didn’t blame the General, he blamed Google and Facebook and smartphones. They made that other world, the old one he was born into and grew up in, the one he fell in love and got married in, seem so far away, like an unreachable star.
A loud siren woke him up. He must have dozed off, he realized. It was quite dark outside as the bus entered El Calafate's airport. At the entrance stood about seventy taxis, which seemed odd for such a small airport. Some of the drivers were standing outside their cabs, having a smoke and drinking coffee. Apparently, the strong Patagonian winds didn’t bother them. He took his few belongings and got off the bus. Bright neon lights welcomed them as they entered the main hall. He hurried to look for a trolley. The chest was unbearably heavy. It was no wonder. By then, it contained the pains of thousands of people. Pains which had been captured throughout the years and wanted nothing more than to come back home, to their rightful owners.
His shabby black military boots led him, unwillingly, to the departure gate. There were only a few flights scheduled to leave that night, so it wasn't very difficult to find what his tired eyes were looking for: Flight 204 to Buenos Aires, one of two connecting flights on their long way to Berlin.