The Valley of Unknowing by Sington Philip

Author:Sington, Philip [Sington, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

* * *

32

The following September a package arrived at my apartment building by the same mysterious means as Theresa’s other communications. For the preceding two months she had been at home in the West. Her student visa had expired and her studies in East Berlin had not yet commenced. The package contained a hardback book with a glossy black dust jacket, on the front of which, in raised metallic type, was the title: SURVIVORS. Beneath the title was the silhouette of ruined buildings – skyscrapers and tower blocks – against an orange fireball of a sky. In the corner, in italics, was the solitary word: Roman; and along the bottom of the page, reversed out of the ruins in small, widely spaced capitals, was the author’s name in arterial red: EVA ADEN.

Eva Aden? Who exactly was Eva Aden?

I stood in the dim light of the hallway, blinking at this strangely terrifying volume. I opened the book and scrabbled my way to the first page of the text: They kept always to the edge of the road, where their shuffling, silent progress was hidden among the shadows of the trees.

I flung open the door, just so I could examine the cover in daylight. The artwork was striking, but ineffably vulgar by the usual literary standards. The title was completely new to me. Theresa had once told me that ‘the Bernheim people’ weren’t happy with The Valley, but the subject had never come up again. It seemed a decision had been made in my absence, but that wasn’t what angered me. What angered me was the name underneath: Eva Aden. Eva was my mother’s name, a fact Theresa knew very well. Without any thought of consulting me, she had stamped it on this fraudulent volume – a work, to all intents and purposes, stolen from the dead – where it would remain for ever, guilty by association. What right had she to do that? Had I asked her to intrude on my past, to play games with my mother’s memory? I turned and hurled the book across the hallway. It smacked against the banisters and fell to the floor, the dust jacket flapping like a broken sail. Why couldn’t Theresa have used her own name? Why the sudden need for anonymity?

On one of the floors above a door opened. The noise had made somebody curious. As I closed the front door, I noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor. I realised that it must have fallen out of the book when I opened it. It was a note from Theresa. It said only:

Dear B,

By the time this book reaches you it’ll be in all the shops. Survivors was Herr Falkner’s idea. Should I have said no?

There’s a lot I have to tell you, but now isn’t the time. In the meantime, let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I hope you’re happy.

With love,

T

PS Eva Aden was my idea. I wanted there to be something of you in this book, some element of the Krug name.

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