The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

I meant was, how could Pandora and Laf have stayed in that luxurious apartment in Vienna all during the war—I’ve been there myself, so I know what it’s like—and lived such a lavish lifestyle? How could she have mingled with Nazis and such? I don’t mean just being able to pass herself off as an upper-class Viennese rather than a Gypsy. I mean, how could she have permitted herself to stay here in Vienna when her own people were being”—I dropped to sotto voce—“I mean, how could she have stayed on here as Hitler’s favorite opera star?”

Dacian was looking at our wineglasses as if he’d just noticed they were empty; he replenished them himself. Knowing the punctiliousness of Viennese waiters in such matters, I could only assume he’d instructed them all to stay away.

“Is that what you’ve been told?” he asked, as if to himself. “How interesting. I should like to know where you heard it, for it appears this tale must have been the collaboration of a number of creative minds.” He looked at me and added: “Very creative. Completely appropriate for a descendant, such as yourself, of a family line originating in the constellation Orion.”

“Are you saying none of it is true?”

“I am saying that every half truth is also a half lie,” he said carefully. “Never confuse people’s beliefs with reality. The only truth worth exploring is one that leads us closer to the center.”

“The center of what?” I asked.

“Of the circle of truth itself,” Dacian replied.

“So are you going to help rid me of those half truths and beliefs I’ve collected, and shed a little light on my own reality?”

“Yes—though it’s hard to answer questions properly unless they are put properly.”

Unexpectedly, he reached out and put his hands over mine, which rested at either side of my plate. I felt electricity moving into my flesh, my bones, suffusing me with warmth. But before I could speak, he motioned for the waiter, rattling off something in German I couldn’t make out.

“I’ve ordered us a sweet,” he said, “something good, lots of chocolate. It’s named for a famous Gypsy violinist of the last century, Rigo Jancsi, who broke the heart of every noblewoman in Vienna—and not only by his playing of Paganini!” He laughed and shook his head, but as he withdrew his hands from mine, he seemed to be observing me closely.

Without a word, he took something from his inside vest pocket and gave it to me. In my open hand lay a small gold locket, oval in shape, etched with an animal-bird design similar to the one on his vest. There was a hinge at either side; when I clicked the pin one side of the locket popped open. Inside was a picture, quite old—a shimmering hand-tinted photo on metal like the platinum-coated tintypes from around the turn of the century. But unlike many photos of that era, whose subjects had the glassy expression of sockeye salmon, this picture with its lifelike tints had the freshness of a recent snapshot.

The face in the oval was clearly the young Dacian Bassarides. I regarded with a kind of awe that magnetism everyone had described; in this time capsule from his youth, his elemental primitivity leapt out like a force of nature. His loose black hair was swept back and his shirt was open to reveal his bare chest and powerful neck. His handsome face with its straight, slender nose, intense dark eyes, and slightly parted lips exuded a wildly breathless essence that called to mind Laf’s steaming jungle panther—companion to the god.

But when I pressed the pin again and the other gate opened, I nearly dropped the locket. It was like looking into a mirror at my own reflection!

The face within the locket had the same pale-tinged “Irish” coloring as mine, my unruly mass of dark hair and pale green eyes. But also, each detail—even to the identical cleft in the chin—was a flawless match. Although the clothes were of another place and time, I thought this was how one might feel walking down the street and unexpectedly meeting his own twin.

Dacian Bassarides still watched me closely. At last he spoke.

“You are exactly like her,” he said simply. “Wolfgang Hauser had warned me, but still I wasn’t prepared. I watched you from the back of the restaurant for some time before I could bring myself to come to this table and meet you. It’s hard to say what it’s like for me—like vertigo, like falling through a tunnel in time.…” He drifted into silence.

“You must have loved her very much.”

As I said it, I was only just realizing myself, with full and painful impact, exactly what issues that raised about him and the role he’d played regarding my family. But brutal though it might be, it couldn’t be helped. I had to ask.

“If you and my grandmother grew up together and loved one another, if she was carrying your child, why did she marry Hieronymus Behn? I thought she despised him. And then, why would she run off with Lafcadio after the child was born, abandoning him too?”

“As I said earlier, it’s hard to answer questions unless they’re put properly,” he told me with a wry smile. “You mustn’t believe whatever you hear, and least of all from me—after all, I am Rom! But I’ll explain what I can, for I believe you’ve every right to know. Indeed, you must know everything, if you expect to protect those papers you have in your bag there under the table—”

Somehow a swallow of wine seemed to have been sucked down my windpipe. I was choking and reaching for the water as I wondered if he had X-ray vision or, perhaps, could read my mind.

“Wolfgang Hauser told me of them when we passed in the kitchen,” he said, reading my mind. “When he saw your bag examined by two customs authorities and by security at the IAEA, he found it strange that you should be carrying so much paper only for