Amiens - Verne's prompt as ever

"Bon sang! Who the hack bully me by yanking Storitz out from my armpit?”

Chiding and frowning, Liz Croy-Chanel is facing the French windows of the ground floor at Jules Verne boulevard in Amiens, France.

Her fingers tighten her grip on the book under her armpit: the secret of Wilhelm Storitz.

- Bon sang! I must discover it either on the ground floor or in the attic. How the hack did Verne know so much about Hungary?

Liz enters the main gate and hurries up the stairs to the entrance of this Maison des Illustres.

She has no time to speculate on forking or not out the 7,5 euro fee because the beak nosed Usherette with her white grin is snatching the money out of her fingers at the iron framed front door.

Among the mahogany chairs, tables and wainscoting redolent with the thick smell of olio paglierino, she feels alone. As far so good Lis is getting closer to ask Jules Verne himself.

Not only because the environment reduces her to speculation, much rather because Verne as well as Shakespeare were wrong in Central European geography.

Did he fail to roll the globe on his desk? Sure, he was weary of traveling around the Globe in 80 days. How could a Master of geography shuffle a Hungarian town to a town fictional? Zimony to Ragz?

- He irritates me more than the good old Bard did with his bear walking on the Bohemian seacoast!

Though entombed long ago, Verne still irks the Hungarian affiliated Liz.

Despite of her entailed Hungarian origin, Liz practices kinesiology as an international coach in Amiens. Her unique study is the kinetic energy of objects.

Exactly this book, the Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, has persuaded her to visit the House of Verne at the boulevard named after the Master.

As a diviner, the book is pulling her now to judgment and leading her from room to room until she gets at the desk where the artworks of Verne were born. An embossed globe stands on desk corner what Liz positions to desk center to give place for the book .

The book, two days ago already, magnetized her already in the Aragon library. Dog tired she flopped down into the library chair after her dull shoulder blade exercises with her afternoon client. Futile attempts sometimes to bring home for one how to let shoulders lax or have them flex.

Very likely forgotten on the library table, the jacket of a book startled her. Liz saw then a man in his cavalry pelisse fighting a duel only with a sword.

- En conséquence, the swordsman conceals himself! But needs must, because the devil drives.

Liz judged the picture at its first sight. But more perplexed she became when the random page she thumbed up, introduced a certain Vidal, saying:

“I myself was very interested in the land of the Hungarian people, especially in its history. To the history of the Hungarian people, which is full of heroic, courageous, generous actions and exciting events.”

- Alors, I must discover whatever this invisible swording is about.

As soon as her mental energy leaked, to her surprise, a soft female whisper swam into her ear as if one sat by her.

- “Help him, please.”

By choice Liz would have screamed aloud. None although would be pissed at it in the room because even the librarian walked out to have a fag.

She quickly turned pages hoping to shoo her fright like an irritating fly, but hard cheese, the page she turned up had her knocked down again with this paragraph:

“And then I heard clearly someone speaking in German behind my back: - Woe to Marc Vidal and woe to Maria Radvanszky! They will be unhappy forever if they dare to marry! I turned. My breath also stopped in horror. I stood alone, completely alone. No one was behind me.”

That was a long shot for Liz. Not only in the novel speaks someone to certain Vidal from behind, but someone also does it to her in the library!?

She slammed the book and with a stern determination she borrowed it to pull this weirdness off.

- Bon sang, I wanna ask Verne himself.

For Liz to try to come to a decision has always been the first step, to cast the die the second, then to do it eventually, is for her the last.

This last step is her standing now at Verne’s desk with the embossed globe on it where she is placing the book on. Nowhere is the peak nosed Usherette, the scene for the action is perfect.

- Even the smallest kinetic energy of the book may have that girl talked again.

She soliloquizes with bated breath, placing the opened book on the desk.

- And if I was delusional? I was not dreaming for sure. What I heard was a fact. If I was not dishonest to myself then who else were to me? Therefore it was either a self-deceptive delusion or the voice was that of a girl who asked me to help. But to whom to help? And why?

The book again reveals a page. This time the last one.

Her eyes quickly scan these concluding words:

“…some sort of physiological phenomenon might possibly occur, or even whether the simple passage of time might bring back her lost visibility; whether, one day, Maria might finally reappear before our eyes, radiating with her youth, grace, and beauty? The future might well decide in the end…”

- Alors, Verne is himself twirling the pages now or he foresaw me standing now at his desk?

Liz, a coach being a coach, is turning herself inside and concentrates herself on her own mind. She sighs deeply.

-”Come on Liz, what the mind feels, the body feels.”

Feeling is a mood, a willingness to engage in cognitive work.

- Enfin, let me get my mind cells into motion.

Her brain cells sum up now the theory. A theory presents a concept or idea that is testable. Esoteric ideas on paper are turning into experience now how Liz exercises paresis.

Her lax neck muscles radiate self-confidence, her lax vocal chords emit voiceless words. She is transferring her mental energy forms into kinetic when turning her pupils up and looking at Verne’s desk only with her whites.

As a surgeon gets giddy when testing his own operating skill on his own blind gut, vertigo gets Liz dizzy also. This touch is moving and wants Liz to keep moving. A lullaby too rough. From her skull’s interior emanates a female voice whispering spectral information into her ears.

- “Wilhelm Storitz got his monkey up because my family spurned his marriage proposal. With his streak of cruelty he locked me into my internment of invisibility.”

- “Germans fancy internments.”

The whites of Liz's eyes begin to vibrate before she whispers into the void.

- “How would you like me to help when I do not even know who you are.”

-”I am Maria Radvanszky. Verne left me in this invisibility wandering among courageous, generous, heroic Hungarians of past centuries. My kindest gentleman friend is Andrew, the Arpadian Prince.”

-”The Arpadians are extinct since 800 centuries.”

-”His own apprehension has been compelling him to prune and polish his life events to his satisfaction.”

-”Reconstructing history is unusual if not impossible.”

-”Impossible indeed, especially if even during his lifetime, rumour had it that he died.”

-”And did he not?”

-”Yes, he did, but not there and where and how.”

-”What clues to start to go upon?”

-”A sword of Chinese hilt. Hidden below the effigy of Jean d’Alluye.”

-”Qui est Jean d’Alluye?”

This time no reply comes about.

Liz sighs in exasperation, relaxes and returns. Her eyes let her pupils come into sight.

On the desk the old embossed globe starts into a swish and rustle with its whirling as if a hand rotates it again after many decades.

With eyes wide open Liz stares at the name of the town it stops whirling at: New York.