Voice of Our Shadow by Jonathan Carroll Page A

surprise?”
    India told the driver to go to the first place on their list.
    The champagne lasted until the end of the ride, which turned out to be Schloss Greifenstein, a huge and wonderfully forbidding castle about half an hour out of Vienna. It is perched high on a hill overlooking a bend in the Danube. There’s a splendid restaurant up there, and that’s where we had my birthday dinner. When it was over, I really had to work hard to keep from crying. What special people. I had never had a surprise like that in my whole life.
    “This … this is some night for me.”
    “Joey, you’re our boy . Do you know how much you helped us when we first got here? There’s no way in the world we’d let you get away without a party tonight!”
    India took my hand and held it. “Now, don’t get all worked up about it. We’ve been planning to do it forever. Paul thought up the idea of coming here for dinner, but that’s nothing. Wait till you see what I —”
    “Pipe down, India, don’t tell him! We’ll just go.”
    They were already standing, and I hadn’t even seen anyone pay the bill.
    “What’s going on? You mean there’s more?”
    “Damned right, buddy. This here’s just the first course. Let’s go — our big silver bullet’s waiting.”
    More turned out to be three chocolate sundaes at McDonald’s on Mariahilferstrasse, with the Mercedes waiting for us outside. India bought the driver a sundae, too. That was followed by a long coffee at the Café Museum across from the Opera, and then adjoining rooms for the night at the Imperial Hotel on the Ringstrasse. If you haven’t been to Vienna, the Imperial is the place where the likes of Henry Kissinger stay when they’re in town for a conference. The price of rooms begins at a hundred and forty dollars.
    When we were properly installed (and the bellboy had given us all an angry, insulted look because we had no baggage), and we’d bounced on each of the beds, Paul opened the door and paraded into my room with a Monopoly game he said he’d bought fresh for the occasion. We finished the night playing Monopoly on the floor and eating a terrific sacher torte ordered from room service. At four in the morning Paul said he had to go to work that day and had to get at least a little sleep.
    We were all ruffled, frazzled, and giddy as hell from no sleep, being silly, and laughter. I hugged the two of them when they went off to bed with a force I hoped told them how much the night and their friendship meant to me.

3
    “What was your brother like? Like you?”
    India and I were sitting on a bench in the Stadtpark, waiting for Paul to join us. The leaves had just begun to turn color, and the sharp, smoky smell of real autumn was in the air.
    “No, we were incredibly different.”
    “In what way?” She had a brown paper cone of warm chestnuts in her lap, and she peeled the shell off each with the utmost care. I liked watching her do it. The chestnut surgeon.
    “He was clever and cagey and sneaky. He would have made the world’s greatest diplomat if he hadn’t had such a bad temper.” A pigeon walked over and snatched up a cigarette butt at our feet.
    “How did you feel about him after he died?”
    I wondered if I would ever be close enough to her to tell the real story. I wondered if I wanted to tell anyone the real story. What would it accomplish? Would it truly make things better? Would I feel less guilty after I’d given someone else the truth to hold with me? I looked hard at India and decided to test some of that truth on her.
    “Do you want to know something? I felt worse when my mother was committed to the insane asylum. My brother, Ross, was bad , India. By the time he died he’d done so many mean things to me I felt like a punching bag. Sometimes I don’t think he cared if he was my brother or not. He was that cruel, or sadistic, or whatever you want to call it. So in my heart of hearts I was glad I wasn’t going to get hit anymore.”
    “What’s so