Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
I push the barrel of Liam’s rifle out of the way as I make my way up the small steps that lead to the stage. As I approach him, my father stands to face me.
He looks nothing like my father. Nothing like the man I remember. Not upon casual observation. But looking deeper, staring into his eyes, I see him. I see inside. I see the man who looked me in my own eyes and told me that the world was mine. I see the rogue who scared me. The monster who haunted me. The antihero I strove to be like.
And I feel… nothing.
No fear, no sorrow, no regret, no love, no hate, nothing.
It’s not an act. It’s not designed to elicit a response. It’s simply reality.
“Why Austria?” I ask. I didn’t plan to ask it, but I find myself genuinely curious. Either he or I will not be leaving this place today. I have made my peace with that. I may as well get the answers to as many unresolved questions as I can.
“You know how I love the opera,” he says, cheekily.
I nod. “Why all the guards? That seems very much unlike you.”
“Perhaps,” he says. “But things change. I know I certainly have!” He laughs an orgiastic, phlegmatic laugh that well attends his poisonous spirit. “Besides, Zander van den Berg made a grave mistake not maintaining a security force, as it turns out. Alexei Gorny is not keen to replicate those types of errors in judgment.”
I laugh a bit as well and shake my head.
“I’m glad you can see the levity in this, my dear Alec,” he says.
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
“The name.”
“What about it?”
“If Christine hadn’t lost her memory, she would have surely told me about this ‘Alexei Gorny’ at some point.”
“And…?” He says it expectantly. Like he’s prompting me.
“And I would have known.”
He smiles. It’s gruesome to look at. “Of course you would, my seun. It is exactly why I chose it.”
I’ve said before that I’m not that bright. And it’s true. I’m not. I’m no Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot or any of those dead clever detective-type okes. But, as I’m also quick to note, I did attend some lekker academies as I was growing up. Schools that taught any number of esoteric and, ultimately, probably useless things, but things that might perhaps come in handy in certain equally esoteric situations.
One such thing was a linguistics course I was once offered.
I’ve always been fascinated by language. Mostly because I think language is a terrible tool for communication.
When we explain ourselves using language, there are myriad opportunities for confusion. We can, for example, offer a lengthy diatribe on a set of beliefs we hold, end the confessional with a phrase like, “Do you know what I mean?” and assume, if someone says, “Yeah, I do,” that they actually can. They can’t. They can’t possibly. Because thoughts and feelings do not translate well into something as prescriptive and limited as language.
The only true way to convey thought and feeling is through behavior. Through action. We place so much faith in our ability to believe one another via the things we express, but at the end of the day we must watch what we do with each other, not what we say to each other. That is the only true measure of intention.
But still… when wielded well, words can be fokken aces, man.
So, I took a linguistics course. And I learned a fokken ton about etymology. From whence words are derived and how they came to mean what they mean. And not just in English, or Afrikaans, or Zulu, or Xosa, or French, or Spanish, or Russian. But in all of them. Certain things translate. Certain things don’t. The Na language of the Mosuo people has no word for ‘jealousy,’ for example.
Conversely, Tamil, an official language of both Sri Lanka and Singapore, has over fifty words for ‘love.’
I find that kak fascinating.
So, I happen to know that Zander is Afrikaans. Its meaning? Defender.
Van den Berg. Dutch. Meaning? From the mountain.
Zander van den Berg. The defender from the mountain.
Alexei Gorny. Russian. Meaning?
The exact same fokken thing.
Had Christine been able to recall the meeting she had and relay it to me at some point, I would have known. I would have known my father was still alive. Maybe not right away, but if I had thought about it, I could have put it together. Or I assume that was his hope.
But he didn’t play the same game with Lars. He brought him in, as he said.
Why?
“Why did you involve Lars at all? Why couldn’t you have left him out of it?”
“The same reason you couldn’t. Because he is a van den Berg.”
I pause. “You couldn’t have saved him? In England?”
“I probably could have,” he says. “But I didn’t know what that Lynch fokker was going to do.”