Janus by John Park Page B

return, and you don’t look as though you do. Five or ten lab days’ worth? No, I didn’t think so. Let’s see. The paper might be a better bet than the ink. We don’t turn out that much white paper, and it sounds as though there was a fair number of sheets in this run. Try Raul Osmon, down in Hut Seven. He runs the paper mill. He might remember something.”

    Hut Seven gave out the smell of strong chemicals and the sound of orchestral music. The first Elinda assumed were needed for bleaching. The music stirred something within her, uncomfortably, but eluded her memory. Even after the darkness outside, the interior of the hut was dim, leaving her with an impression of grey, galvanised tanks like large bath tubs and bulky machinery with hoppers and pumps. Working on a machine part was a squat man with brown hair straggling over his eyes.
    He straightened up as she came in, and she recognised him as the part-time technician who worked in Barbara’s lab.
    “Why, yes, hello,” he said. “Aren’t you the friend of Ms. Evans? I’ve seen you there, haven’t I, often enough to remember your face. And how can we help you now?” His eyes were pale and deep set, under almost invisible eyebrows. He looked to be in his late thirties. “Raul Osmon, that’s me. Always glad to assist.”
    Elinda brought out the leaflet and repeated her request. He took the sheet to a desk in the far corner. When he sat and switched on an angle lamp, he saw that she had remained by the entrance. He beckoned. “Come. Come. Sit here. You like Rachmaninov?”
    She picked her way between the machines and the arrays of tools in meticulous rows where repairs were evidently continuous. She realised she had been beating time to the music. “Is that who wrote it?” she said. “I didn’t recognise it.”
    “The third piano concerto: Kusinov and the Montreal symphony under Feinstein. Just before the assassinations. But I can see you don’t remember. Does that mean you’ve lost music along with everything else? Dreadful, dreadful.”
    “Perhaps I’d never heard it before.”
    “No, no, not you. You’re a musical person. I could tell as soon as I saw you. A young woman like you—let me see your hand. There, very fine, very strong. But not large—a real woman’s hand. You’d be a string player—a violinist for sure. Not a violist, scraping away buried in the depths of the orchestra. And never a bassist, heaving that black coffin about like a vampire. You might have played the cello, I think: I can see you have dark soulful stream of song within you. But I think the violin is yours. You were meant to soar above the herd, to point us toward the light. Or maybe you were a soprano.”
    “I don’t sing,” she said brusquely. “I don’t like singing.” In a different mood, she might have found this line amusing, but now she was getting impatient. Before she could stop him, he was off again.
    “My own hands,” he said “Unfortunately, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is strong. Not weak. Never think that the flesh is weak. It has its own intentions and it can enforce them. Look at these hands. Good for nothing but the bass drum. I might as well hope to play the violin with a pair of shovels. But strong. Yes, strong. I’ll look up my recording of the violin works for when you come back. Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn. Perhaps the Brahms, the Beethoven. Yes. String music for your next visit.”
    “In the meantime,” she said heavily, “can you help me find where this paper came from?”
    He rubbed the sheet between finger and thumb. His hands were large, his fingers thick and blunt, the nails surprisingly clean and well-trimmed. Holding the paper against the light, he peered at it, then sniffed it delicately. “I don’t keep samples from earlier runs, you understand,” he said. “There just isn’t the need for that sort of record-keeping. Otherwise I’d probably be able to match this up straight away.”
    “It’s from here,