The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
. . .
i don’t know what would have happened had I said nothing. Tonu
thought that Jaan kept the Tablet in his office in Wickenden, so after he finished
in Lincoln that night, that’s where he went. But the Tablet was back in
Lincoln. By the time he got back, it was nearly daybreak, and he wanted to
wait until nighttime—until the early-morning hours—to sneak into Jaan’s
house again. Unfortunately, by then I had already reported his death, and
Lincoln’s policemen were already there. Joseph Jadid’s suspicion that the
police never drove by at night was wrong: he did, and irregularly, too. Sometimes
the policeman stopped the car and shone a light through the windows.
Tonu would have waited until he lost interest, but Paul started digging
around, and more policemen got involved, and it became obvious—clear and
ironic, Tonu said—that he did not have the leisure to wait. So we set a corner
of my apartment on fire, called the local police, and when we saw them go
into my house, we went into Jaan’s and finished the job.
The one unexpected thing that happened to me in all of this was that
Tonu could see that I was conflicted still, and in pain. He invited me to take
Jaan’s place as one of the Tablet’s guardians. He told me that I understood
the sanctity of every life on earth, but that I also understood that sometimes
lives have to be taken. He told me that my grief was a sign of my goodness.
He gave me the chance to belong to something greater than myself, the
chance to dedicate my life to something more important than anything I
could have dreamed of.
that is how I find myself here. And “here” is a city you, reader, have
probably never visited, but I still see no reason to name it. It could be anywhere,
really. And here is where I will wait for Tonu. And here is where I,
where Hannah Rowe, will disappear. She will have come here after a trying
week. She will have come for peace and introspection: there are forested
mountains laced with trails just outside the city. Perhaps she’ll have a hiking
accident on a winding path high above a river. Perhaps she’ll leave a bar with
371