Mirror. Three hundred twenty-nine: a sharp disciplinarian. Or: those exhausted by hunger. Or: in the land beyond the sea. In Hebrew, ????, which adds to fifty. Unwedded. Completeness. A citadel.
This is what you’ve wanted all along: freedom from what’s trapped you in this world. Freedom from yourself. At the end, they say, your whole life’s supposed to flash before your eyes. Flash: that’s the word they always use. You hope like hell it isn’t true. It’s been a long time since looking last held any interest. Lately, what jazzes you is what you can’t see: the way the spell of vision gets broken, the way your breath fogs the glass when you get too close. All these years, dragged around by your eyeballs: you’ve had about enough. A goddamn slideshow! What the hell kind of death is that for a person? You don’t want it. You’re ready for whatever’s next.
Eye. Four hundred ten. A mounting-up of smoke. To be hindered or restrained. To lay snares.
That was Crivano’s escape: it says so in Welles’s book. Took you long enough to figure it out. Part of you wishes you’d brought The Mirror Thief along—although that’s silly, sentimental. Curtis will take care of it; here it’d just get thrown away. Besides, it’s not like you don’t remember every word. Over the years you have become the book: a lifetime of dreams and memories, braided through its lines.
In a way, it’s not so bad that the trail in the Biblioteca ran cold. Isn’t that exactly what you wanted to hear the night you stalked Welles on the beach? That he’d made Crivano up? That the world of his book overlapped with the real world hardly at all? Finding out otherwise became a problem for you, one you’ve been working for years to solve. But even if Welles did lie, even if Crivano never really existed, this trip hasn’t been a waste of time. There’s something here: you’ve felt it, even if you haven’t seen it. Can’t somebody still be a ghost, even if they were never born? Why not? Who made up that rule?
Yesterday, a final clue. You mentioned the name of the ship to a librarian—the ship Crivano escapes on—and she came back with something: a letter from a young merchant captain to his father, bringing news from the Dalmatian coast. Very bad are the uskok pirates, the librarian translated. Last month they robbed two small ships en route to Spalato, and they burned a trabacolo—a trabacolo is a boat, yes?—that fought them with great valor.
The Lynceus. You kept the girls busy till closing time, but they found nothing else: neither the date the ship was lost, nor where it had sailed from. It might have already stopped at Split, let Crivano off. Maybe, as its wreck lit up the ocean, he was already intriguing his way through the Croatian port, dodging the Council of Ten’s assassins, seeking passage to Turkish lands. No doubt that city would have felt dreamlike to him: both strange and familiar. Diocletian’s ancient palace was the model for this city’s Piazza; the belltower in this city’s Piazza is duplicated there. You would like to have seen that, too. But no matter. Cities appearing in other cities: a map of echoes, a pattern you know well.
You prefer to believe that Crivano burned. It’s an end that fits him, a doom you can imagine. Trapped belowdecks, flames arcing overhead, his mind would have returned to Lepanto: what he did there, what he did not do. His lonely secret life would have seemed a peculiar circuit, beginning and ending in the hold of a burning ship.
With nothing to do but await the agonies—the blistering flesh, the smothering outrush of air—how would he have passed his final moments? Tincture of henbane, probably: to slow his pulse, to dull his senses, to free his mind to wander. And the magic mirror, of course: the trick he taught you. To meditate upon the talisman—to gaze upon the mirror’s surface—is to arrange your mind to resemble the mind of God. You pass through the silvering, beyond all earthly torment, into the realm of pure idea. At last, all mysteries become clear.
By that point, you imagine, it’ll be hard for you to care about any earthly thing: hard to convince yourself to come back, to finish your remaining task.
But when Damon returns to his own hotel, you’ll be waiting. It might take him a moment to notice you, especially if he’s avoiding his reflection; you’ll bide your time until he does. With the benefit of perfect knowledge, you will not be unkind. If he shoots out the glass—as well he might—you will remain with him, even in the fallen shards. There was a time not long ago when you felt something for him akin to love.
Only one result is possible, so you hope it will come easily. Your ghost-hands will guide the pistol to his mouth, then steady it while his thumb locates the trigger.