The window rattles as the train tunnels down the tracks. Tikkatikka-tikkatikka-tikkatikka-tik.
The heat inside our car is sweltering. The young woman opposite me cools herself with a crinkled fan of fine Chinese silk and tugs delicately at the collar of her black bustle, which is buttoned up to her pointed chin with small silver pearls. Although she hides most of her face behind a sheet of thin black mesh, I see her forehead is slick with sweat. Raven-black ringlets unfurl from the brim of her large feathered hat; if I look close enough, steam whorls from the curls as though she is evaporating in the afternoon sun.
To my far right, there is a door with one round window, which is foggy with the sweat of the car’s passengers. Behind that door, there is an interpolation of rapid-moving iron track, and then the door to the car behind ours. There are one hundred of us riding on this contraption. One hundred sweating pigs. A baby on my left is crying into his mother’s breast; she searches frantically in her knapsack for formula, but my altruistic nature leads me to suspect the child is in need of water more than food. I press my lips together and keep silent, though. There’s a fair chance the mother is like me and doesn’t like being told what to do. She may think I’msuggesting how to raise her child. She may slap me into next week, and I wish that was a figure of speech.
Plus, formula is warm and milky and holds potential to upset the boy’s tentative stomach. If we must endure the remainder of our journey with the smell of sun-fried vomit in the air, I’ll have more passengers than his mother to fend off.
Tikkatikka-tikkatikka-tikkatikka-tik. Rolling hills of striated vineyards surge past in a blur of green and wine-red and gold.
It is hard to remember when I last visited Italy. Some of my more recent memories are decades old, like my last gondola ride through the rivers of Venice; others, like the time I shook hands with composer Vivaldi, date back as far as the seventeenth century. Time muddles together, but either way you slice it, I owe the birthplace of my fellow treasure hunters a visit.
Venice, specifically, is mindboggling. The city on the water snakes and turns, and its allies stretch on forever before they end abruptly at stone walls or riversides. For centuries, its clustered layout has been the epicenter for treasure hunters who slink through the shadows likeparasites in search of heirlooms, jewels and historical artifacts. Venice is crawling with preciousvaluables. One of them I hold in my pocket, where it burns into my conscience like a smoldering coal. My heart flutters in its presence. Soon I realize that what I’ve noticed about the train—the fogged windows, the sniveling, blubbering, innocent child—have been noticed in an attempt to scorn the paranoia burbling within me. To forget about the stolen pocket watch I carry in my trousers.
The watch that the Raven-Woman across the aisle ogles with black, cavernous, enrapturing eyes.
Paranoia is a locomotive that cannot be stopped. It is the devastating weapon of the treasure hunters’ enemy: the time traveler. Paranoia lurks in the dapples of sunlight in the streets of disorienting cities like Venice, in the plazas which the hunters deliberately avoid, partly because the sun is unbearable on their caramelized skin and partly because light causes thieved goods to glimmer. Paranoia, the fear of being caught, is the only force in the universe that can make a hunter surrender his wares. That’s why it’s imperative to ignore the tingle you get when you stroll through town hoisting sacks of relics over your shoulders, trying to play them off as bags of grain. Invisible or not, no eyes are more important than yours, staring straight ahead.
Nevertheless, I stare at her, spellbound, as the Chinese fan flaps to and fro. With each swipe the scalloped serpents harden into points, and the chopsticks holding the fan together lengthen into knives, and the swish created by the motion of her hand whispers in a voice not unlike…
The car erupts into altercation. Thick and thin fabrics ruffle around me, engulfing me in the sight and sound of conflict as the mother to my right and a man on my left lurch to avoid the daggers that soar above our heads. The blades ricochet off the window behind me and land with a clatter on the seat. It is when I move to bat them away that a claw-like hand takes hold of my sleeve and drags me to the floor.
