In Babylon. Marcel Moring

got up from her chair and started pulling on the socks that were still on the floor. ‘I lost my shoes.’

      ‘I’ll catch a goat tomorrow and make you a new pair.’

      ‘Very funny.’

      I grinned. ‘Uncle Herman used to have a pair of those indestructible hiking boots. They’re around here somewhere. If you wear two pairs of socks, they should fit you. He didn’t have very big feet.’

      ‘There’s no light in the hall, is there? Are there any flashlights?’

      ‘None that I know of.’

      ‘Why exactly isn’t there any electricity?’

      ‘I had it disconnected, years ago.’

      Nina shook her head. ‘If you’re not here and you don’t use anything, it doesn’t cost anything, either.’

      I was silent. Suddenly I thought of the calor gas burner that I had seen in the cellar. It wouldn’t give much light, but certainly more than a candle. Nina could hold it up while I wrenched loose part of the barricade and threw it downstairs.

      ‘Was there a lamp fixture?’ she asked, when I had explained my plan. She got up from her chair and came walking towards me.

      ‘A what?’

      ‘You use that sort of burner when you go camping. If you attach a lamp fixture, you’ve got a lantern.’

      ‘I don’t know. Didn’t see any.’

      Nina picked up a candelabra and followed me. There were four of us in the hall. To our left, against the staircase and the high white walls, huge, misshapen shadows walked along with us. I heard Nina shudder. ‘It really does look like a haunted house,’ she said. ‘All we need now are a couple of burning torches and some creepy organ music.’

      ‘Or a corpse in a closet.’

      ‘Hey! Would you stop that?’

      ‘You don’t have to be scared of the dead,’ I said. ‘The living are much worse.’

      ‘God. You really know how to put a person at ease, don’t you?’

      In the box of gas canisters Nina found a wide glass tube and a burner with a kind of wick. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘You attach it to the bottle and then …’

      ‘… there is light.’

      She observed me for a while, then smiled.

      At the foot of the stairs I attached the lamp to the gas canister. Nina held the candles and gave instructions. I put the canister down on the stairs, turned on the gas, and held up a match. The burner started raging and cast a blinding white light all around us. ‘Isn’t this cosy,’ I said. ‘I suddenly remember why I never liked camping.’ Nina blew out the candles, put the candelabra on the floor, and picked up the lantern we had made. I grabbed the tools, the axe and the sharpened hoe, and we walked upstairs. My shadow glided across the ceiling, the brightly lit staircase, the hole in the barricade. When Nina came and stood next to me, the black figure shot away to the side of the hall.

      ‘What’re you going to do?’ she asked.

      ‘I think we should go left.’

      ‘What’s left?’

      ‘Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. My bedroom and my bathroom.’ I stared at the heap of chairs and tables. ‘And this.’

      ‘Not much wood,’ she said.

      ‘No. I’m counting on the bedrooms. If we can reach even one of them and chop up a bed …’

      ‘Isn’t there any other way to get wood? There are such beautiful things here. Can’t we save any of it?’

      I shook my head. ‘We’ve got to hurry. It’s much too cold here. We have to think of ourselves first. If we start lugging all those beautiful things downstairs, we’ll never keep the fire going. The only other choice is to burn up the library.’

      Nina looked at me. ‘Uncle Herman’s library.’

      ‘And mine,’ I said. ‘And Zeno’s.’

      Her face clouded.

      I stepped forward and pulled a chair out of the pile that was blocking the way to the bedrooms. Nina came up behind me with the lantern. Shadows wheeled around us, patches of black leapt up between the chairs, cupboards, and other pieces of furniture, and disappeared once more. When she was standing beside me, I raised the chair, a fragile affair on slender legs, and threw it down. It crashed against the marble stairs, the sound of breaking wood ripped the darkness below us.

      ‘What’s that?’ whispered Nina.

      In the distance was a faint rustling noise. ‘An echo,’ I said, ‘the echo of …’

      The rustling came closer.

      ‘Who’s there?’

      We both ducked. The lantern went clattering down the stairs. In the sudden darkness we heard the voice for the second time, a voice from the depths of something dark and far away.

      ‘Who?’

      A rustling like the sea.

      ‘Nathan?’

      My heart exploded in my head. I reeled and stepped into the emptiness above the stairs. As I began falling, my right hand felt for something to hold on to. My fingers groped about in the void, where once the sideboard had stood, but found nothing. Then I felt Nina’s hand. She grabbed hold of my sleeve and pulled me up.

      ‘Who’s there?’

      I could smell Nina’s hair. Cinnamon, I thought.

      ‘Nathan, for God’s sake … What …’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘What?’ I cried.

      ‘Nathan?’

      A rustling like the sound of the wind in your ears as you fall and …

      I could feel Nina shivering beside me. ‘Zeno?’

      ‘Who’s there?’

      I relaxed. I put my finger to my lips. ‘Listen,’ I said.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘A tape,’ I said.

      Rustling. ‘Nathan?’

      ‘A … God. A … tape. Zeno.’ Nina was breathing heavily, in and out. She let go of my jacket and leaned back, I heard the dull groan of wood.

      ‘Who’s there?’

      I stood up and walked down the stairs. It was a while before I found the burner: I had to feel my way along the cold marble, listening to the escaping gas. I turned off the valve and inspected the lantern – the glass was cracked, the tank dented. I let out a thin stream of gas and lit a match. The white light shot up again. High above me I heard the distorted voice still intoning its fractured sentences. Who’s there. Who. Nathan.

      When I got back to Nina, I saw the glistening snail’s trail of a tear along her nose. I reached out my hand, towards her arm, but she turned away. Her back was tall and straight. I put down the lantern and began furiously throwing down tables and chairs.

      For half an hour, three quarters of an hour I was at it and all that time I heard the questions that Zeno kept asking me from the other world. If the voice hadn’t been drowned out every so often by the sound of shattering wood, I would have fled or, in a blind rage, seized my axe and leaped into the tangle of chair legs and armrests, chopping like a madman until I had found the tape recorder.

      When we were back in the library – I had added more wood to the kitchen stove and the fire in the hunting room – we stood for a while in front of the hearth.

      ‘How