Chapter 3
Standing rooted to the spot, Erik gaped at the boy, transfixed. For an instant his mind went completely blank. He remained motionless in deathly still, as though all his senses were shut down, as though they were all dead to the world.
‘What did you just say?’ he forced the words out. His voice was nothing but a hushed whisper, drifting, dreamlike, and so unreal, as if coming from afar. It was so hard a struggle even to breathe normally, let alone speak. It felt like trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. But he had to bring himself to do this.
‘Apocalypse is my half brother.’
Erik breathed a resigned sigh. ‘Peter.’ said him sternly, this time with more resolution.
‘Fine.’ Peter mumbled, rolling his eyes. ‘It turns out, well, Mags, you’ve got yourself a useless son, congratulations!’ he let out an almighty shout of insincere exhilaration, accompanied by a loud handclap. But neither seemed to be able to wake Erik up from this prolonged, rigid stillness as he stood stock-still against the wall, dumbfounded.
How could this be? How was that even possible? After he buried his wife and daughter in that secluded village, he knew that he was all alone once again and that a happy family life had long since forsaken him, but now, all of a sudden, he had an adult son, who appeared out of thin air, forcing his life to take a sharp swerve, right when he was about to let down the past and was ready to live all by himself ever since. It was like winning the lottery. A timely gift from heaven. However, having been tricked by fate for so many times, he didn’t know if it was indeed a gift bestowed by god or a curse.
Gift or not, it was too much for me.
Preoccupied, Erik still remained silent. Not a sound could be heard. Not a move could be spotted. He stood frozen, as though petrified.
All this time Peter held himself perfectly aloof but as time dragged by, when Erik was still unresponsive, he started to get unnerved, slowly coming unglued as various of possibilities came and went through his flashing mind. Biting his lips, tentatively, he murmured, ‘Well, um, I know you might be disappointed. That’s quite relatable. Cause I’m only a sop and it surely is a hell of a disappointment if you are after the first prize from the outset–’
‘It’s ridiculous.’ retorted Erik immediately. ‘You are gifted with such stunning talents, anyone would be honored to call you their son.’
‘Right, gifted.’ Peter sniffed, plopping down on the bed. He cleared away the piles of old junk he had previously sorted to make room to recline comfortably. Peering unseeingly at a creased poster of Rush on the opposite wall, quite gloomily, he muttered, ‘sounds like the comments those good-natured teachers from my primary school would generously leave on the dismally-marked papers.’
‘You think that was only a perfunctory remark?’
Peter merely snorted by means of a response, but later he promptly added, ‘Or are you trying to recruit me to the Brotherhood? Raven told me a lot about… well, some of your magnificently glorious deeds in the past.’ He explained, not bothering to hide the heavy sarcasm in his voice.
Huh, so she knows. That explained all those filthy looks.
‘Anyone else knows about this?’ Erik decided to change the subject. On hearing this Peter made a funny face,
‘Anyone else? Pfff, that’s a long list. So… first we have Raven,’ he counted, ‘and then she told Ororo. Jean accidentally busted in my head once so she also knows, and later she confided it to Scott. And, oh, almost forgot – Hank and Moira also know about this. I breathed a word to Kurt some weeks ago cause I don’t want him to feel left out, you know. Being cast out of our secret ‘Peter’s Parentage’ club’, so not fair.’
‘Does Charles know about this?’
Peter gave it a quick thinking before he opened his mouth with a hint of uncertainty, ‘Dunno. But, well, he can read minds so my bet is that the answer is a big fat yes. I probably already projected it into his head at some point, when I’m dreaming, most likely.’
‘Yeah… probably.’ Erik agreed, thinking back on the smile spreading on Charles’ face earlier today. That was a knowing smile, a significant one, in full bloom. Yet he was blind to it. In fact, he had shut his eyes for so many times that he was oblivious to the facts plain as a pikestaff. What Raven said during their encounter back in Cairo… the boy’s hesitation… All those clues, leading to one, and only one simple conclusion, yet every time he chose to neglect it. The missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle was right under his nose all this time, however he just let it slip through his fingers, so rashly and so foolishly. Sheer folly, actually. Twice the boy saved his butt and how he got paid? He was left there to die, tortured, screaming in despair. And it all thanks to his old amiable father.
An onrush of poignancy, mixed with panic, welled up within him at the thought of this. Erik dreaded to think what might happen if the worst came to the worst. It could have happened, and Erik knew full well how things like this might have ended. Based on the experiences in the past. His incompetence resulted in the demise of his mother. And then his past consumed his wife and daughter and now… the same fate might have befallen on his son. His blindness and arrogance could have rendered him killed. The only difference was that this time he had some luck. Nonetheless, he shivered at this possibility. It could have ended the other way, and the thought of this brought him up short and sent chills down to his spine.
‘Are you bewitched or… what? Too immersed in mentally communicating with professor that you lost track of time?’ Peter blurted, interrupting his relentless thinking. Dismissing those restless thoughts, looking over his shoulder, Erik found Peter staring intently at him, his face taking on a curious, thoughtful look. ‘You stood there for probably a hell of a century,’ he continued, ‘Exaggeration though. But for me it felt like a century–’
‘I know, I know.’ Erik hastened to say. He tried to force himself to stay calm and collected but, nerves on edge, all he could bring himself to do was ruffling his already disheveled hair to make it even more tousled and nest-like. And when his fingers combed through his hair, it was then that he realized he was sweating like mad. He didn’t notice his palm was soaked with sweat until he rubbed it all on his hair, and that his back was already dripping wet. And so was his face, coated with a film of sweat, as saturated as the misty window on a snowy winter night.
Jittery and legs shuddering under stress, Erik thumped down on the side of the bed. The mattress let out a heart-rending screech, as though echoing the relentless thoughts in his head. At that very moment he wished he had Charles’ powers. He could really use it. In this case the power of settling the nerves would come as exceedingly useful. And reading minds would make it a lot easier for them to communicate. If only God had granted him the power of telepathy! – But hell no, God made him manipulate metal. The power was hilarious in all fairness, but under certain circumstances the power of toying with nails and paper clips might be of no use at all. Twice he experienced this feeling of impotence. One was when he was held in captive a hundred floors beneath the Pentagon, where there was not a single shred of metal; and the second time? – This was the second time. He was going through it right now.
‘So… how come you… find out about this? I mean, us related?’ Erik sputtered. Even so, a fusillade of questions flowed out of his mouth quite naturally yet uncontrollably like a stream running on a slope. ‘When did you know about this? And who told you about this? Is it your mom? Who is your mom? How is she? And where have you lived before you moved here?’
‘That’s a hell lot of questions. Feels like you are interrogating me.’ Peter pursed his lips, ‘Yeah, definitely interrogation. You sound like those cops knocking on my door.’
Erik was suddenly alerted, ‘Why did those cops come to you?’
‘Well, it seems that we have some disagreement on the interpretation of ownership… They adhere to the traditions but I, unlike them, am open to the novel insights… Fine, I admit it,’ Peter caved in at last upon seeing that bemused but solemn expression stubbornly sticking on Erik’s face, ‘I lift things from the local shop. That’s why they come to my house every once in a week. Not some mutant-kidnapping-or-experimenting-whatever wicked plan on the sly. You got it?’
Erik allowed himself a second of pause to shoot a deprecating look at Peter, ‘You are not supposed to do that.’ said him in a reproachful voice. Nonetheless Peter just found it quite amusing.
‘Already acting as my old man?’
‘That’s not what I intended–’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Peter interrupted immediately before he could finish his words.
Though Erik was not telepathic, he knew perfectly well what Peter actually meant by saying that.
‘You think I’d be disappointed at this?’
‘Well, suddenly finding out you got a useless good-for-nothing adult son in your late 50s surely is not something very cheerful, isn’t it?’
‘Unexpected is what I’m gonna use here,’ Erik corrected him, ‘cause this doesn’t happen everyday… So yeah, unexpected. But that doesn’t mean I’d turn down a chance to reunite and maybe bond with my son, after twenty years of being absent from his life. I’d never say no to a family reunion.’
Peter didn’t respond. But from what Erik could see he did appear to be more relaxed. And unless his eyes were tricking him, Erik could well say that he seemed to catch a glimpse of a suspicion of a smile flickering across Peter’s face. Though only for a fleeting second. Flexing his limbs, with a neat sweep of arm Peter took out his Walkman. So quick was his move that in Erik’ eyes it looked as though it was magically produced out of nowhere. Next he started to decide on which song would be the good buddy of him for the next thirty minutes.
‘Whose music are you mostly into?’
Peter surveyed him quickly, ‘Ever heard of Pink Floyd and Rush?’
Erik shook his head, ‘Guess I’m too old for that.’
Peter cracked a lopsided grin on hearing this. The smile he usually saved for those hilarious jokes, though technically it was not even a joke, let alone being hilarious. But he couldn’t repress the urge to reciprocate it with a laugh. A laugh from the heart. A sincere one.
‘Welcome to the world of rock’n’roll.’ said Peter briskly, flicking the switch on the side off to shift it into the default mode before tossing his Walkman into Erik’s hands. Merely one fleeting glimpse at the screen, where was seethed with lines of words, was enough to tell Erik that none was to his liking. Even so, he clamped the headphones over his ears, randomly chose a song, and immediately turned down the volume when the first crash of roar bumping into his ear.
‘So, how come you find out about this?’ Erik began a moment later, with the throaty singing voice resembling the rumble of thunder continuously knocking the back of his head in the background.
‘Mom told me. Remember the day you wreaked havoc at the White House? And your live-broadcasting speech?’ A look of reminiscence spread over Peter’s face out of the blue, as he relived the shocking memories, when that steely-cold but familiar voice rang in the distance of his mind, ‘Well, mom acted weird ever since she saw you on the television. At first I thought she knew about the prison break and was wavering over whether to turn me in for helping a mutant terrorist escape. But hell no, it was way worse than that. So one day when I was in the middle of playing Pac-Man she busted in and told me everything, from the fact that the said mutant-terrorist whom I helped break out of the Pentagon was none but my own father to the story of how you met and,’ he shot a careful glance at Erik, ‘how you mysteriously disappeared one day without leaving one single message. All this time she believed you might be dead but then you appeared on the telly making that speech and it really gave her a shock…’
‘And your mom…’ murmured Erik, a vague idea already surfacing.
‘Her name is Magritte.’ answered Peter crisply, ‘You know, my stepdad used to call her Mags.’ he added when something crossed his mind, ‘Not for Magneto, obviously, just pure coincidence. Still funny though.’
A faint smile flickered across Erik’s wrinkled face. Though it soon gave way to somber contemplation, as he pondered on Peter’s words, searching the name ‘Magritte’ from the fragments of memories swept and dumped in the dusty corner of his mind. Magritte.Magritte Maximoff. The name did ring a bell. The image of a fair woman with dirty-blonde hair draping over her shoulders emerged to the surface. They lived together in an old apartment for about half a year, living a life of serenity like that of those ordinary people.
‘So why you left her at that time?’ A soft but tentative whisper penetrated into his head, interrupting his thoughts. Swiveling around, he expected to be met with questioning, reproachful eyes, but to his utter surprise, Peter was rather poised, fiddling with fingers and merely waiting. His quiet breathing and his making no attempt to push for an answer even after long time of waiting gave people an illusion that he had absolutely no interest in any of this but, an illusion was still an illusion.
Erik weighed his words but at last he decided to leave out all the deliberation and just be blunt and honest, even though the answer might not be a splendid one. ‘I was on a Nazi-hunting mission then. Though technically, mission is not the proper word for this. Actually it’s a–’ he paused to take in a long breath, to brace himself for what he was gonna say next, ‘it’s a revenge.’ said Erik in a whisper, ‘For my parents. At that time all I had in mind was things like this and there was no room for any other things–’
Erik tried to force more words out but he couldn’t come up with anything coherent save some faltering splutters of dry hums. He was never good at explaining. In the edgy silence, once again their eyes met and even if it was impossible for him to say it out loud, those words dying in his throat, as Erik hoped, could communicate themselves to Peter through eye contact at the very least.
‘That’s very you.’ said Peter vaguely, ‘Woa woa, it’s not like I’m bitter about you leaving us.’ He amended almost in a panic instant when catching a glimpse of the guilty look on Erik’s wrinkled face. ‘I can totally relate to what you’ve done cause… revenge, er, revenge is important eh? I might be an even worse drama queen if I were in your shoes – imagine someone dare to hurt my mom. I’d leave a promising record-breaking-anticipating Pacman game behind to kick his ass.’
Smiling, Erik adjusted the headphones a trifle, through which furious drumming was now roaring in his ears. He had no idea what a record-breaking-anticipating Pacman game was. But he did smell a hint of bitter anticipation in Peter’s voice. The bitter anticipation of ‘What if…’
Like ‘what if you’ve stayed.’
The throaty drawling voice in the headphones was singing ‘how I wish you were here.’ An apt echo.
‘How’s your stepdad treating you?’ asked Erik moments later when the song was slowly brought to a memorable end. At this question Peter pursed his lips and shrugged, which Erik took as a negative reply.
‘He’s an alcoholic. Mom divorced him when I was 12.’ Peter snorted, ‘Anyway, not a good dad. And – oh, he’s shorter than you.’ He added, as though it was something of great importance.
‘I can’t say I’m an excellent example in this regard even compared to him, if that’s what you meant.’ Erik croaked gloomily, ‘I’m not a good dad either.’ said him frankly, a surge of guilt taking over his head, pricking his eyes and making him feel awful.
‘A cool dad though.’ Erik heard Peter saying, ‘I used to imagine my dad being someone dressed in leather jacket, tattooed with the face of Elvis Presley and having a punk hairdo. Well, you are way cooler than that. Not everyone’s dad is crazy enough to ally with a mutant demon first and then launch a mutiny against him. You deserve a trophy for this.’
Erik broke into a hearty laugh, ‘I’m well honored.’