Remembrandt Read online

  The first emperor of the Roman Empire seemed to be eyeing me with curiosity, his usually calm lips appearing to be upturned in a sneer. Maybe it was because his prosthesis wasn’t quite like the original. I recalled a picture of the original statue in Rome, Caesar’s right arm in rhetorical adlocutio pose, his pointer finger extended as he addressed the troops. Or maybe it was because his prosthesis was pink—hot pink.

  William leaned in closer to the statue. “The hand, that’s the best part.” He pointed to the Roman’s new hand gesture. “I mean, Rock On? These pranksters sure do know how to make a statement.”

  I bit my lip as I remembered Casey’s agony over getting the index and pinky finger to look just right.

  “Yeah,” I said as calmly as I could.

  “I wonder how they got it to stick. It must be pretty light. It sure did take some kind of genius to come up with that. Only at Brown, I guess.” He shook his head in apparent awe. I wanted to tell him the whole process, but held my tongue. There was no way to let him in on the secret without giving away how I was involved.

  “Yep, only at Brown.” I smiled to myself, still trying to decide if I was embarrassed or proud. Either way, I was glad Casey had asked me to help, if for nothing more than to keep my mind off home and the things I missed.

  “Well, I’d better get to my dorm. Wayland House is just here.” I pointed to my building across the Quad. “Thanks for walking me home.”

  “No problem.” William looked down and began tapping his foot on the ground. “Maybe I’ll run into you again . . . or maybe you’ll run into me.” He smiled.

  My face burned as I nodded my head in the affirmative, turned, and raced up the steps. I didn’t care how much my leg muscles ached. I didn’t want him seeing how much my clumsiness bothered me.

  I made it to my room as Casey was getting ready to leave. “Alex! I was just about to talk to the hall advisor. Where have you been?” she said in her older-sister voice. “I totally thought something had happened to you. Then I was worried you somehow got busted.”

  “Sorry. I ended up going a lot farther than I planned. And then I thought I was being chased and I was running for my life from my soon-to-be killer and then we talked and he walked me home from Blackstone Park and . . .” I finally took a breath.

  “Wait just a second here. You were being chased? And your killer walked you home?” She looked confused and scrunched up her little face.

  “No, No. I thought I was being chased so I ran faster and got away. He found me after, and it turned out he was just trying to catch up to me. And since it was dark, he offered to walk me home.”

  “What were you thinking walking home with a stranger?”

  “He didn’t look like a serial killer and it wasn’t like it was the first time I’d seen him.”

  Her whole countenance changed, and she plopped down to a cross-legged position on the carpet. She was already in her pajamas—silky, leopard-print culottes and a spaghetti-strap tank set, more lingerie than sleepwear. Good thing there were no boys on our floor.

  “So you had your first date here at Brown. I knew you couldn’t turn all the guys down. Wish I could have seen it.” Casey reached for a tube of lotion on the floor and started rubbing it on her legs. The fruity scent made my stomach turn again. It hadn’t yet recovered from the run.

  “It wasn’t a date. And he totally thinks I’m a klutz anyway. I only met him earlier because I toppled over him in the Barus-Holley Building before class. I really don’t want to talk about this,” I said uncomfortably. I grabbed some clean clothes and headed to the bathroom down the hall.

  Casey thought every person at Brown should be in a relationship. I came to college to find my niche in the world. That is what I wanted to concentrate on right now. With so many interests and successes in varying areas of study, I needed to worry about where my life was headed, not with whom.

  After a quick shower to rid myself of the sweaty stench, I joined Casey in a late night of studying. She didn’t bring up my serial-killer person of interest again, which I was glad for, and I didn’t offer her any more details of my encounters with William. I did mention his opinion on our hot-pink appendage, and Casey had a smile on her face for at least half an hour.

  I listened to her turn pages in her American History book while I lay on my bed and flipped my own mental pages, making sure I understood the content of each textbook in my head—Physics, World History, Advanced Russian, Anatomy, and Calculus. I’m sure Casey thought I was daydreaming for a while, at least until I pulled out my Calculus notebook.

  I didn’t advertise my memory; in fact, my family was the only one who knew the extent of my genetic mutation. As a kid, I would play games with my dad. He would give me one of his historical textbooks to read. Although I didn’t understand everything I read, when he would ask me what was on page 47, I could describe the photo of John Adams or quote the second paragraph.

  At first my mom thought it was somewhat disturbing, then just astonishing, and eventually even she and my brother, Tanner, grew accustomed to my memory. They often said I had a photographic memory, but later I discovered there was a term that more accurately described my ability. Eidetic memory. My mind had the ability to re-experience events or objects I had previously seen, felt, tasted, smelled, and heard.

  I could see all the images and numbers from that Calculus textbook perfectly, but I still needed to make sure I understood the content and could do the problems. As for Russian, I would have to run by Golkov’s office in the morning to practice my oral skills. Just because I knew what every Russian word looked like, didn’t mean I could say them correctly.

  I completed my last math problem and glanced at my alarm clock. After two in the morning. I was beat—I don’t usually run at a dead sprint for over two hours every day—so I turned over to say good night to Casey and found her already asleep, hugging her Physics book.

  Exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally, I closed my eyes and waited for the dream memories to come, waited for the DVD player of my brain to begin playing home movies. Sometimes my unconscious mind would rewind to replay a scene again, but most of the time I could count on my mental DVD player to play in sequence when I dreamed.

  3

  What is Truth?

  “Do you ever wonder if Mom and Dad keep secrets from us?” Tanner said as he took off his sneakers and dropped them on the orange-and-green shag carpet. Even though I frequently complained about the 1970s’-inspired basement décor, I secretly hoped it would remain even after I left home.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” I replied while lounging on the overstuffed couches in our family living room. My brother and I had just gotten back from his last football game of the season, and even though most of his friends were still out partying from the victory, he and I tended to stick together and had left early. “I mean, you still haven’t told Mom about the little scratch on the back of the Volvo.”

  He sat straight up. “Lexie, don’t tell them!” He always called me that. My birth certificate carried the name Alexandra Lydia Stewart, but parents and teachers were the only ones who called me Alexandra anymore. Most people just called me Alex, but since Tanner was my only sibling, I allowed him to nickname me Lexie. “They’ll totally take the car away.” His worried voice faded into his manipulative one. “Besides, who’ll drive you to school or take you to your friends’ houses?” He tried to rub in the fact that I still had another few months before I finished Driver’s Ed.

  “ You stink! Figuratively and literally. Go take a shower!” I threw a pillow at his face, hitting him square in the nose. His straight blond hair fell into his eyes as the pillow tumbled to the floor. He brushed the strands away.

  “I knew I could count on you, Sis.” He jumped up from the couch to head upstairs. Before he reached the doorway, he stopped abruptly and turned. His eyes flashed an uncharacteristic seriousness, and for a brief moment I thought he might say something more. Instead, he just gave me a cocky smile and headed to his
room.

  An alarm buzzed in my ears as the movie in my head paused like it did most nights, so it could pick up again where it left off the next time I slept. I wiped at my eyes, ignoring the moisture that came back on my fingers. I needed to put the past where it belonged. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t suppress the memories, but I could compartmentalize them. I pushed Tanner and home back into the deepest drawer in my mind.

  Casey mumbled something about coffee as she dragged herself from bed. I watched her hit the off button on her alarm. It was seven thirty. My Russian professor would be expecting me in thirty minutes for our first official session of private tutoring. As Casey rummaged through the closet, I rolled out of bed.

  “Ow!” I screamed when my feet hit the floor. I fell onto our soft, furry rug. My quadriceps and calves burned from the buildup of lactic acid during the night.

  Casey peeked around the closet door. “Stub a toe again?”

  “No, my legs are killing me. Guess I pushed a little too hard on my run.”

  “Which is why you should take my advice and exercise as little as possible.” She threw some clothes onto her bed that I thought clashed, though I was sure when she put them on she would somehow look like she’d walked off the cover of a trendy magazine.

  “Says the girl who has yet to break into the triple digits on the scale,” I said. “We can’t all be naturally skinny.”

  I sat stretching my legs for a minute and then tried to stand. After a few steps I found I could walk without wincing if I did it slowly. I changed into my favorite skinny jeans and a black ruffled shirt approved by Casey. She threw me a wide belt with a large silver buckle before she rushed out the door. “This will look great with that shirt,” she said.

  I quickly put on the belt and some black ballet flats. I didn’t have time to do my hair, so I just pulled it back in a messy bun and ran out the door too. Well, I didn’t actually run, but I limped as quickly as possible to Marston Hall. I arrived at Professor Golkov’s office a few minutes after eight.

  “Welcome, Alexandra,” he said as I walked in. “I wondered if you were still coming this morning. Here, help me with these while we talk.”

  We corrected the Russian 101 papers while he told me stories of his worldwide travels. I told him about my favorite places to visit and eat in Seattle. We spoke only in Russian. Talking to Golkov was like conversing with a friend, and even though it wasn’t in my first language, it seemed so easy to me.

  Every few minutes, he would correct my pronunciation. I didn’t mind, because I really wanted to perfect the language. I had studied French and Spanish at the community college back in Washington. In fact, I could say many phrases in several different tongues. But my mom’s grandparents had come from Russia, so I felt like I had a special connection with the language.

  The time passed so quickly that I didn’t even notice we had been talking for almost an hour.

  “I still have some notes to put together for my senior seminar before our class,” Golkov said as I stacked the last test on the corner of his wood desk. “If you wanted to remain, you could . . .”

  I stood up mid-sentence and walked past him to a strange, old cupboard in the back corner of the office. Its antiquity intrigued me so I reached out to touch it. To most people it probably just looked like a garage-sale find that should’ve been tossed long ago and didn’t really suit a Brown professor’s office.

  It hung on the wall at eye level above a small granite counter. The dark mahogany stain was fading on the edges, and I noticed letters engraved on squares on the bottom of each cupboard door— fourteen letters on each side. On closer inspection, I realized the letters were actually cubes set into the wood. I touched the first letter and was surprised that it could spin. Each cube had a different letter on each side—four in all.

  I looked at the cupboard and back at Golkov. “Могло я? Can I?”

  “Of course.” He squinted his eyes a bit, curiosity covering his face.

  As I began to turn the letters, I found that the left cupboard cubes couldn’t spell anything in English. Russian was out of the question too, because the letters were not Cyrillic. Latin. Something in me knew it was Latin. I had taken an online Latin course when I began studying the romantic languages. The words came to me before I could finish turning the letter cubes: QUID EST VERITUS.

  I knew the reference and thought it was unusual because Professor Golkov didn’t come across as religious, though the Rembrandt painting on his back wall was of a Bible scene. Something about that painting never quite looked right to me. The reference came from John 18:38—yes, I had read the Bible, too. Pontius Pilate had used the phrase when questioning Jesus’ claim that he was witness to the truth. Pilate had asked, “What is truth?”

  The letters on the second cupboard door were similar to the ones on the left. I turned the cubes until they matched the other side. QUID EST VERITUS.

  And . . . nothing happened. I don’t know what I had expected, but I felt disappointed. I let my hands drop to my sides.

  “Don’t worry, Alexandra. None of my students have quite figured out how to get that thing open. The fact that you figured out one of the doors is very impressive.” I almost didn’t hear him. My mind continued to work on a different way to solve the puzzle. I couldn’t stop something I had started.

  A flash of memory came over me, halting my fingers from turning the cubes. I could see in my mind the phrase my mom painted above the door at our Washington home: “The eyes— they see.”

  Tanner and I saw these words every time we left the house, a reminder to make good choices because someone was always watching us. It took me a few months of seeing that phrase before I realized the first two words had the same letters as the last two words. That was when I discovered anagrams.

  Golkov’s cupboard had to be an anagram! I just had to rearrange all the letters to make a new word or phrase. My favorite game of all time was Boggle. I loved taking letters and trying to see what words I could spell with a jumble of them. This was going to be more difficult because it had to be in Latin; and with all the letters, it was probably another sentence. Since each cube only had four choices and I had already seen them, I closed my eyes and saw them in my head. I moved the letters around in my mind like rearranging photos in an album and I finally saw it: “EST VIR QUI ADEST. It is the man who is here.”

  When I turned the last letter, a click vibrated through the wood and the cupboard popped open.

  My shoulders fell. It was empty. Was I expecting the secrets of the universe to suddenly appear inside an antique cupboard? I don’t know. At the least I expected to see a stash of candy or maybe a live, tiny Indian. Obviously, I did way too much reading.

  I glanced back at the professor. The disappointment on my face was the very antithesis of the shock and excitement on his. He recovered quickly and smiled.

  “No one has ever opened the cupboard, so I never thought it necessary to put something inside. I apologize.” He got up from his desk and joined me in front of the cupboard. “Have you heard that phrase before?”

  “I knew quid est veritas. It means ‘what is truth?’ I’d have expected to see it in a religion or philosophy professor’s office. I’ve never seen the anagram of it before. I know the translation, but I’m just not sure what it means.”

  “Est vir qui adest.” Golkov’s Russian accent was gone, and even though I had heard few people speak Latin, I was quite sure he spoke it perfectly. He went on. “The sentence has several interpretations, but I will let you think on those.”

  Always the teacher, I thought. The good ones never gave all the answers.

  He stood up. “I have a quick errand to run before class,” he said as he escorted me out of his office and into the hallway. “I will see you there?”

  “Yes,” I replied. He locked his office door and disappeared around the corner.

  An air of mysteriousness remained in the hallway after he left, and I stood by his door for a few minutes pondering the
meaning of the cupboard phrases. For the remainder of the day, I constantly thought about Golkov and his cupboard. Solving the puzzle on the cupboard doors exhilarated me. I couldn’t wait until the next tutoring session.

  Over the next few weeks, I went to his office each morning to practice conversing in Russian. During this time, he became more than just a professor to me, and I looked forward to our time together. At the end of each session, he would allow me to open his secret cupboard. Unlike the first time, something always awaited me inside.

  They were all puzzles. Some were wooden manipulatives; others involved mechanisms that when put together created a small machine. Though some of the puzzles were like the Rubix and I had seen someone once solve it, most of them required more than just recalling an image in my mind. I had to find connections and search for solutions in my image library. Each time it was like my brain was a large bulletin board. I stretched a string from one pin to another, creating a web, and the answer would come together. It was challenging, to say the least, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

  Each day when I solved a puzzle, Golkov would just smile and place the solved puzzle on the top of the old cupboard, almost like he was decorating his office with pieces of my determination. I never told him how I could see the solutions in my head or that my mind recorded everything I saw.

  “I think that is enough for today,” Golkov remarked one Friday morning in October. He set down the untranslated copy of Anna Karenina we had been discussing. “There are a few minutes before class.” He winked and looked toward the cupboard.

  For the last hour, I had been staring in the same direction. I was hoping not to be disappointed. I turned the cupboard letter cubes to complete the anagram. Quid est veritas. Est vir qui adest. The antique doors opened to unveil a new puzzle. Most of the previous puzzles had been physical mind games, where I had to manipulate the pieces with my hands. Today’s puzzle was a manila folder with a stack of papers inside. I grabbed the folder out of the cupboard, figuring the sheets contained complicated anagrams or maybe something mathematical.