THE INVISIBLE FRONT

TSARGRAD

Night. Again. And once more, sleep eluded her.

Alexandra lay rigid in the dark, eyes open, staring at a ceiling she couldn’t see. She turned on her left side and blinked, for she felt a pressure behind her eyes. For a second, it seemed as if the shadows in the room moved but she dismissed them. They always moved when she was tired. The rest she so desperately needed hovered just beyond reach, a cruel mirage. Her mind refused to quiet when the city slept, yet in the morning Morpheus held her fast in his warm, relentless grip. It was fortunate she worked as a private language tutor; her days never began at the crack of dawn. Still, the lost morning hours gnawed at her. There were so many things she might have done. In truth she simply rearranged the day. Every chore that belonged to the morning she performed in the small hours instead. She lost no time — she merely lived by a different clock.

Alexandra had always been a creature of the night, even as a child. Her best ideas arrived unbidden in the deep quiet after midnight. Those were the stillest, purest moments she knew. When darkness fell, she felt alive, sharp, fully herself. Sleeping pills she refused. Counting sheep brought only irritation. So, what remained? To live with it, she supposed.

Every night Alexandra fell asleep the same way: exhausted by the flood of thoughts and unfinished information she had failed to process during the day. Only rarely did she slip under without first dismantling every ordinary problem in her head. Her sleeplessness never truly worried her. Sometimes she even counted it a quiet blessing. In a world full of people who never questioned anything, she was one of the few who still asked what was possible and what wasn’t, and who still recoiled from the idiocy around her — even if those same thoughts refused to let her rest.

Alexandra was a striking presence. People felt drawn to her. She was breathtaking, eccentric, and frankly bizarre. Yet few dared speak to her or meet her gaze for long. Her dark eyes resembled a stormy night sea — deep enough to drown in. That depth kept strangers from staring, though they wanted to. She was aware of the effect and made no use of it. She simply had no time for such things.

Study claimed the greater part of her life. Even after graduating, her hunger for knowledge remained unappeased. History, geography, religion, literature, technology, science — everything interested her. Languages above all were her passion, and they paid the bills. She gave private lessons in the Western tongues in Tsargrad. She spoke six of them fluently: Pan-Slavic, Anglo-Saxon, Gallic, Lowlandish, Castilian, and Almain. Having spent most of her life in West-Lowland — the old West-Gaul — she was a sought-after expert and teacher in the city. The work paid well and she loved it.

That didn’t stop her studying every day. Most often she worked at home, but sometimes she travelled to the State Library, a masterpiece of post-constructivist architecture. The metro journey took a good half-hour, yet she gladly spent the time among its thirty-four beautifully appointed classical reading rooms.

An elderly black Bombay cat and a young pepper-coloured scamp of a Pomeranian kept her company in the flat. She never felt lonely. She had her parents, her animals, the new friends she had made in Tsargrad, and her studies.

Alexandra admitted freely that she was something of a sociopath. She blamed the years spent among the Gauls. As a foreigner — especially a foreign woman — you either flattered them, slept with them, or counted on very little success in their society. She hated the Gauls, and she had reasons enough. The damage they had done to her social instincts was only one of them.

And though the worst of that bitterness lay behind her, she couldn’t let go off the rage and hatred. Which also brought headaches. Today was one of those days. Her skull felt as though it were being crushed from the inside; the veins at her temples pounded as if they might burst.

“Alexandra, do tell — who is this handsome admirer of yours?”

Alexandra started violently. She had been sitting for some time at her favourite window desk in the library, the one with the green leather top and the individual lamp, lost in thought. She hadn’t heard Klava approach and quietly pull up a chair.

“Klava! You nearly stopped my heart,” Alexandra whispered. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh, come off it. Don’t play the innocent. Nearly every member of staff — including me — has been buttonholed by this mysterious Andrey. He was asking for you on Saturday, but you had just left.”

Alexandra frowned, searching her memory for any acquaintance named Andrey. Nothing came.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” she said shortly.

“If I were you, I would remember both the man and the name. Most impressive. About forty-five, I would say. Dark brown wavy hair, grey eyes. Beautifully dressed and looking specifically for you. What more could a girl want?”

“A lot of things and a man is on the very bottom of that list,” Alexandra replied crankily.

“Oh, right. Easy there, suffragette,” Klava rolled her eyes. “But I promise you, Andrey is a stud!”

“I genuinely have no idea who he is. Perhaps a courier with a delivery?”

“A demigod pizza boy who tracked you all the way to the library?” Klava laughed under her breath. “Don’t make me laugh.”

It was a quiet Monday morning and only a few pensioners sat some tables away, casting disapproving glances at the two women.

“If he comes again and I’m not here,” Alexandra whispered, careful not to disturb the older readers, “would you ask what he wants and whether he’ll leave his details so I can contact him — if it’s important?”

“All right, I will… though I would contact him anyway, important or not,” Klava murmured, and vanished between the stacks.

Klava was a lively young woman with red hair always pinned in a messy knot on top of her head. She worked at the library. Her bright dark eyes seemed permanently on the lookout for drama. She was one of the new friends Alexandra had made on a grey afternoon while waiting in the foyer for the rain to stop. Klava’s hungry curiosity could be exhausting. She knew something about everyone in the building and naturally shared it all. Alexandra was careful how much she revealed in return; she knew Klava would gossip the moment there was anything worth telling. The girl meant no harm — she simply loved to talk, and gossip had always been the best conversational currency in every age and culture.

A flush rose in Alexandra’s cheeks. The library felt stifling; the air hung heavy and still. Combined with the relentless headache, it made breathing difficult. She rose and walked to the recessed window between two tall bookcases that overlooked the vast, busy street below.

Leaning on the sill, she thought of the mysterious Andrey. Part of her was intrigued. Another part felt distinctly uneasy. The idea that an unknown man knew her name and had come looking for her in a place she frequented stirred a quiet alarm. She tried to picture him but couldn’t imagine anything except for his grey eyes. For some reason, a particular set of grey eyes formed in her mind and didn’t disappear as long as she focused her thoughts on his name.

Studying had become impossible. A faint nausea, almost like hunger, settled in her stomach though mealtime was still far off. She packed her notebooks and pens into her mustard-yellow suede bag and decided to go home.

Outside, the afternoon light had turned strange — too sharp, too colourless. As she stepped onto the pavement a tall figure in a dark coat stood across the street, perfectly still amid the moving crowd. Grey eyes met hers for a single heartbeat. Then a delivery van passed, and when it was gone the man had vanished as if he had never been there at all.

She knew it was Andrey. Those were his eyes, although she had never met him. Alexandra’s pulse hammered in her throat. Somewhere behind her left shoulder, too close for comfort, she thought she heard a voice — soft, almost amused — whisper a single archaic word she almost understood but couldn’t place.

Instinct told her not to look back. She walked quickly towards the metro. At the top of the underground steps, she reached into her bag for her ticket, but her fingers closed instead on the sharp edges of a card that didn’t belong there. She drew it out.

On the face of the card a colourful image showed a carefree young man striding forward with a small bundle over his shoulder. Across the top, in clear lettering, were the words:

The Fool.