The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [88]
Phoebe sank into a state of trancelike absorption. Faith in Paris, choosing oranges at a market; in an old-fashioned bathtub, her dark hair tumbling from a clip, breasts floating a little, like fish. Phoebe forgot where she was, drifting with Wolf and her sister among a shifting panoply of stoned-looking strangers who gazed deadpan from kitchens and parks and train compartments, blinking through clouds of opalescent smoke. The bleached colors lent a pale, celestial aspect to these pictures, as if starry white light were flooding from some hidden source, dazzling them all into blissful oblivion.
A single picture jerked Phoebe from her reverie.
She rose from the floor and held it under the light. It looked completely unlike the others, its colors stark and crisp as if a different camera had been used, though the effect was that of a strong, merciless light. In the picture Faith’s hands were knotted uncertainly at her waist, the smile wavering on her face as if it were a strain to hold. At first glimpse Phoebe thought her sister’s hair had been pulled back into a ponytail or a bun, the kind she’d used to make with a white porcupine quill. But Faith’s hair was not pulled back, it was short. Someone had cut it off, Phoebe thought, for the cutting seemed a thing inflicted upon her sister, blunt, uneven, as if she’d fought it, as if someone had held her down and done it by force. It made her look older, broken somehow. Or maybe it wasn’t the hair, for her eyes, too, seemed off, not stoned so much as bruised, narrowed against the light. Faith stood uneasily, a hand half raised to her face, surrounded by a formal garden not unlike the Hofgarten, where Wolf had taken Phoebe the day before. There was even some kind of domed building behind her. Phoebe flipped the picture over. “Munich,” it read. “Oct., 1970.”
Wait a minute, she thought. How can that be?
She examined the picture again, but closer inspection confirmed that the park where Faith stood was indeed the Hofgarten, its flowerbeds empty, trees bare of leaves, but the same dome, a fat black pearl in the sunlight. Yet hadn’t Wolf said clearly that Faith never came to Munich? Perhaps someone else had taken the picture, given it to Wolf later? But then he’d still know Faith had been here; why make such a point of saying she hadn’t? And something else, too—the longer Phoebe stared at the picture, the closer Faith’s location seemed to the place where she herself had been standing the day before, when Wolf dropped to one knee and seemed to leave himself.
It was obvious: he’d lied. Phoebe reached this conclusion, then waited in the bath of greenish light to discover her reaction. She felt a wave of fear, then tentative outrage—How could he lie? Why would he lie?—but these emotions were borne away almost instantly by a stronger feeling of promise, a swell of possibility that seemed almost to lift her from the bed. Wolf knew more than he’d told her! What yesterday had seemed a blank, impermeable wall now had sprung wide to reveal—what? Anything. Anything at all, Phoebe thought; what did it matter as long as there was more? This reprieve, this hope, it was all she needed. Like finding out that Faith was still alive.
Feeling manic, almost high, Phoebe slid back to the floor and sifted quickly through the remainder of the snapshots, more bleached-out scenes from Amsterdam and Belgium and France, but these no longer interested her. She’d found what she was looking for. Then another picture caught her eye, and again she set down the pile and lay on the bed, holding the picture in the bath of light from the desk. Faith and Wolf sitting on the brick steps of the O’Connor house, a tiny Phoebe wedged between them, barefoot in her white nightie. They each had an arm around her, leaning in so protectively they might have been her young parents. Phoebe looked at her own small face, the smile modest but certain, as if a giant happiness were pushing out from behind it. She felt a surge of longing disbelief—where had that moment gone? Gazing into the camera, smiling