The Reincarnationist Papers Page 10

  I took a small bite. It tasted strongly of fish and salt. "It's good."

  "Another?"

  "Please. Speaking of finding me, how did you know I was like you?"

  "I knew the first night."

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise as I took another cracker from her.

  "Yes, the first night. I suppose after so long I know what to look for. You may not remember, you were in pretty bad shape after you fell down the stairs, but you basically told me. Just as I was about to shoot you, at your request I might add, you told me that you would probably just come back anyway."

  "I remember, but could you tell just from that?"

  "I suspected after that. I knew after I gave you a cigarette. You don't speak, write or read Turkish do you?"

  I was lost by her line of questioning. "I know a few sayings, I had lived in Istanbul for a while, before this life I mean."

  "That's what I thought," she said excitedly. She reached inside her purse and removed a fresh pack of cigarettes. "Can you read what this says?" she asked, pointing to the small Turkish script under the English spelled 'Lendts'.

  "No I can't read it, I've never been able to read it, but I know what it says."

  "Do you?" she asked, challenging me.

  "It says 'Centuries of Flavor'."

  "That's when I knew. It used to say 'Centuries of Flavor'. They changed the slogan in the late 1950’s, before you would have been born this time. I was pretty sure after that, but I used the book to bait you even further. I had no doubt after your reaction. I don't think there is anyone alive who would stay up all night reading McTaggart unless he was like me. The man's writing style is so stilted and dry it can be maddening to read even a single chapter."

  I guess she did know what to look for. I had no idea I had given any clues. "What does it say now?" I asked pointing to the pack of cigarettes.

  "'The Pride of the Turks' or something like that. I can't read it either, but I remember when it changed. These have been my brand for a long time."

  "You know I started to sense something was up after Antonio brought the books down. Your bait, as you called it, seemed too much of a coincidence." I was beginning to feel much less at a disadvantage.

  "You saw that coming huh?" She smiled sheepishly.

  "A little bit." I returned her warm smile.

  "I also had you checked out, just to be sure," she added defensively.

  "What are you talking about?" A lump of concern began to rise in my throat.

  "I researched your medical records for any history of mental illness. Confiding your true nature to anyone normal could easily get you diagnosed as schizophrenic, delusional or any number of other things. It wouldn't be the first time it had happened."

  "What did you find?"

  "Nothing, no history. Should I have found something?"

  "No, I never told anyone except my family."

  "And now me," she said, placing her soft hand in mine. "Tell me about Istanbul." Her eyes lit up as she squeezed my hand.

  "Alright but I should go back a little farther to preface the story. Pour me some more wine would you."

  She refilled my glass and prepared more crackers as I began. I was anxious to tell my story to someone, anyone and not see my own face reflected in a mirror, mouthing the words.

  "It started in 1892 with Vasili Blagavich Arda in a small Bulgarian farming village North West of Varna. He was--, I was an only child of a farmer so there was never any question as to my future. I worked with my father until I was twenty three, when Bulgaria entered the war against the allies and all the single men in my village were pressed into service against the Greeks. I was in the army until the Great War ended.

  "My father and I worked together for two years after the war until he died. The land was mine after that; I took a wife the following year, Vayna. She and I lived and farmed peacefully for the next twenty five years until the end of the next war, when the communists forcibly took our land and put us both in prison. She didn't survive. I was released in 1948 and managed to reach the Turkish border later that year. I lived in Istanbul for the last years of that life."

  "Did you and Vanya have any children?" she asked as soon as I took a break.

  "No, we were unable..."

  "Hmm, what is the city like? I've never been there."

  "Life in Istanbul was a shock after coming from rural Bulgaria. It's a lot like L.A. I suppose. Everybody's hustling or working some kind of angle and it’s very much a cultural mixing pot. I think that helped with my initial loneliness. There was a large Bulgarian expatriate community in the oldest section of the city next to the strait, that's where I spent most of my time. I remember there were lots of boats around, small fishing boats mostly.

  "Once you've seen Istanbul you'll never forget its skyline. The city is built around seven hills, each topped with an opulent mosque. From where I used to live, the entire skyline consisted of tall minarets and colorful domes. At night and in the early morning when the city was quiet, you could hear the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer."

  "Sounds beautiful."

  "Yes it was nice, but anything was nice after prison."

  "Would you like to go back there again someday?"

  "Yeah I'd like to see it again, go back to where I lived and see how things have changed. Knowing Istanbul I bet they haven't changed very much. But where I would really like to go is back to Bulgaria. I want to read street signs and speak with other Bulgars. I miss the language."

  "I've never been to Bulgaria either. What's it like?"

  I ate another cracker and thought about her question. "It looks a lot like Idaho."

  I took the bottle and refilled her glass. "That's enough about me I want to hear something about your history."

  "Alright," she said, looking up at the skylight. "I was first born five hundred miles east of here in a small pueblo village. It's in Arizona now." She stopped for a moment to take her glass back and I used the break to pry deeper.

  "Have you ever gone back there?"

  "Yes, twice." She pointed to the Bando plaque on the wall behind her. "I went back in 1540, in my second trip, to rejoin them and I went there again in 1854 when this area of the world was being settled."

  "What was it like to go back?" I asked as I thought about my old Bulgaria.

  "It was bittersweet, things change you know." She paused and took a drink. "Anyway, the first two times I died so quickly I didn't have a chance to do much. The third trip I tried hard to live a normal life. I was married into an affluent family in Persia before I was old enough to realize who I was. But the fourth trip, that one changed me forever." She stopped, dipped her middle finger in the wine and ran it around the rim of the glass. A haunting high note began to sing from the glass on the second revolution. "It was then, as Marco, that I learned about glass."

  "Wait a minute," I interjected, "you've been both male and female?"

  "Yes of course. It's chance,” she said chuckling.

  "I didn't mean to distract you, it's just that I haven't..., so it never occurred to me that it was possible."

  "Don't worry you'll come back as a girl too, the odds will even out."

  I'd always rolled around the idea of coming back and remembering this life the way I remembered the others, but the matter of fact way she said it, like it was a foregone conclusion, made me begin to think about it as a probability instead of a possibility. If we were alike, she had been in this situation many more times than I had, enough times that it had become a foregone conclusion. The ringing from the glass continued for a few seconds after she removed her finger. "Please continue, you were talking about Marco."

  "Yes. I was born for the fourth time, in 1630, as Marco Parcalus on the island of Murano. Murano is a small island near Venice and was home to the city's glass works[9]. I was born into a family that had lived and worked on the island for generations, each father passing the secrets of Venetian glass to his son. The finest glass in the world came from that island
, and I became the best craftsman that ever worked their furnaces. My father started teaching me when I was old enough to hold a blowing tube, five or six I think. He taught me about plate glass, lead glass, colored glass, mirrors, and cristallo like this," she said, looking at me with one eye through her wine glass. "At sixteen I was already a master craftsman. I could achieve any color, thickness, texture or shape and could make plates of glass half again as large as anyone else on the island.

  "The families of Murano were very close. They had to be, because once you were born into a family you were also born into the art of glass, and you were never allowed to leave the island.

  "I stayed for a while but you must keep in mind that I had just spent a long frustrating life trying to pretend I was normal. The idea of doing it again left me no choice but to risk escape."

  "Wait," I said, looking around the vault. "These people are the same ones in the stained glass scenes aren't they?" I asked as I made the connection.

  "Yes, but as I said before, I am those people, the scenes are from my own lives."

  "Right, Marco is the one rowing away from the island."

  "Yes, I eventually escaped on a small boat. Only official Venetian ships were allowed into the port on Murano. Each ship brought supplies to us and carried away vast inventories of window glass, mirrors, and cristallo to Venice for trade and export. There were ten to fifteen soldiers on each ship that checked for stowaways when they counted the cargo in port and it was the job of the island governor to conduct a head count of all the islands inhabitants after each ship left. On the two occasions that there were escapes, both men were eventually hunted down and killed by assassins hired by the Doge of Venice[10]. They brought back their bodies tied to the prows of the ships so that everyone on Murano would know what became of them. This stranglehold on the island kept a European glass monopoly in Venice for centuries, but it also allowed me my chance at fortune and comfort later.

  "The whole plan took about a year. There were two main ships that visited the island for pickups. They alternately came every two weeks except for special projects.

  "Loading cargo was not my assigned duty but the porters never seemed to mind an extra hand down at the dock. I helped with the loading for months until my face was know to everyone on both crews. It was only then that I made my next move.

  "The crews used the same crates over and over and we would always unload the empty crates back into the island's warehouse so they could be used again for the next outgoing load of glass.

  "My main duty was to blow and shape glass, which I did now with extreme care and craft. I made museum quality pieces by the dozens; flowers, orbs, vases, statues, then carefully packed them in straw filled crates so that each piece lay exposed on top. I then secretly placed all of these crates in an unused part of the warehouse and waited for my ship to come in.

  "When the church bells announced its arrival, I made my way to the dock like normal, unloaded the empty crates like normal, smiled and said hello to the crew members like normal. Then when it came time to load the ship, I brought out my masterpieces. I carried every fifth crate that came out of the warehouse, only I grabbed mine off of my special pile in the back. The crates the other four carried had a layer of straw on the top but mine were open to the sun which brilliantly illuminated each piece. I studied the face of each guard as I passed with my crates. After the sixth trip, I knew which one it would be. His eyes lit up and he craned his neck to look at each piece as I went by. He stopped me on the next to the last trip and picked up a large purple tinted swan I had completed just four days before.

  "I talked with him for several minutes and told him that I had made the pieces he had been admiring. He praised my skill and expressed interest in seeing more of my works the next time they came to port. I knew what to do after that.

  "During the day I worked on the regular quota of mirrors and plate glass, and at night I would fire up the furnace alone and work on my own pieces. I worked alone at night for the next month, producing nineteen pieces including an incredibly difficult mirrored glass ball about the size of an orange. When his boat returned, I carried my special crates from the back of the warehouse again. He stopped me on my first pass and told me to place my crates in the back corner of the ship's hold. He went below and inspected each piece in every crate as I carried them in. He admired each work covetously and seemed blind to his position and responsibility while he held them. I sat down and made my pitch after I carried in the last crate.

  "I offered him nineteen pieces of better quality than the ones he had arranged on the crates around us, in exchange for a small boat to be brought to me at midnight three weeks from tonight at the west end of the island. He would pick up his pieces when he delivered the boat. He looked at the glass around him. We both knew it was worth a king’s ransom in any other Mediterranean city.

  "I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the mirrored ball. His eyes glazed over when he saw it. 'Three weeks from tonight at midnight. Don't be early, don't be late,' I said to him as I placed the ball in his hand.

  "I completed a piece a night, every night until the night I left. The twenty pieces fit in five crates, which I hid in some underbrush at the shore. I had told my father and the other blowers that I was experimenting late at night. They grew used to seeing the furnace smokestack belching red embers into the night sky and usually left me alone. On my last night on the island, I stoked up the furnace as usual but left my tools in their racks. I sat on a high stool in front of the furnace's open frowning mouth and pulled on the rope that moved the bellows. The only possessions I had with me were my clothes, some small pieces of gold from the shop, and the journal I had keep through my sixteenth and seventeenth years.

  "In those years I had begun writing down the scraps of memories and experiences that came to me when I began to remember, in hopes that I could make some sense out of them. I did, of course, realize again what I was. I stoked the fire until the orange glow filled the room with enough light to read. The heat from the hearth was intense. I untied the leather straps that bound the loose pages and read each one before throwing it into the hot hungry mouth of the furnace.

  "I was waiting in the bushes next to the crates when I heard the sound of oars breaking the water. I called out to him several times before he came to shore. By the moonlight I could tell he had a companion that rowed the second boat. He greeted me warmly, then inspected all twenty works by holding them up to a lantern. There was no question about their quality. To this day they were the most exquisite things I have ever produced.

  "The two men left quickly, and in the darkness over the sounds of their rowing I thought I heard him yell back 'Buona Fortuna.' I followed the light of their lantern until I picked up the outline of the Italian shore in the morning sky, then veered west and went ashore and on to what I thought would be freedom beyond the Republic." She finished the last of her wine and placed the glass next to me.

  I opened the red bottle and refilled both glasses. "That's an incredible story Poppy. In the stained glass there was a man with a knife stalking Marco, was he an assassin?"

  "She," she corrected, "was an assassin and killed me in the streets of Prague three years later. It didn't matter in the end. In my next life I took the secrets of Murano and made a fortune. I still live off that fortune today. I've worked with stained glass since then just to keep in practice."

  I nodded and handed her the glass, noticing the tattoo. "I have another question for you Poppy."

  "Yes."

  "That symbol tattooed on your hand, it's above the doors on the outside of this vault too. What is it?"

  "Oh this," she said, turning her hand so that she could see it, "this is called an 'Embe'. It's a tradition with us."

  8

  "Us?" I asked confused. "Us who?"

  "The others like you and I."

  "There are others?" I asked, raising my voice.

  "Yes," she nodded, "but much older."

  I didn't know what
to think. I couldn't think. My mind reeled with the possibilities. "How many more?"

  "Twenty eight, including me. I'm one of the younger ones."

  Twenty eight. Each question she answered prompted ten more. "How old are they?"

  "Well if you come back once you will continue to come back. It's the same for all of us, so some are quite old." She looked up as she did the math. "The oldest one dates back to the first century A.D., forty or so incarnations. The rest started at all dates between then and now. You would definitely be the youngest."

  "Tell me about them," I said, smiling enthusiastically.

  "I can't," she said firmly. "I know it's cruel to be so close to the truth about yourself and not be able to touch it, but there are good reasons--."

  "What, what good reasons?" I said irritated. "Can't you ever answer a question clearly?"

  She sat calmly and looked up at me. "As I was saying, all of the members of this society, all twenty eight of us, are sworn to secrecy by each other. They will only share their identity with you once you are accepted."

  "Accepted? Into what?"

  "That's one of the things I can tell you. The twenty eight of us are an extended family of sorts, we all formally belong to a society formed centuries ago by the first ones like us to find each other. This society is called the Cognomina. It's a Latin term that means to remember the same name[11]. The tattoo," she said, rubbing a thumb at it, "is worn by all of us in each successive life after we go through the Ascension."

  I gave her a questioning look.

  "The Ascension is like a trial all of us must go through in each successive incarnation before we reenter the Cognomina. Basically, you have to prove to the others that knew you before that you are the same person in this new body, hence the name, Cognomina."

  "Then how can you be accepted if they don't know you?"

  "Well," she said laughing, "it's certainly easier than it used to be. In the old days, before my time, the members would face the candidate and one would run him through with a spear. The candidate would only be accepted when he came back in his next life, if he came back, and picked out his murderer. These days you simply have to convince a panel of judges that you have lived before; names, dates, places, things that can be verified. It's most difficult the first time."