Baccano! - Volume 4 - Chapter 3

THE WEALTHY

1930 October Somewhere in New Jersey

It began with an odd pair of burglars.

That day, Eve Genoard’s heart was filled with unease.

She was fifteen. She’d been born as the sheltered youngest daughter of a very rich local family, and there was still something childlike about her. That was all there was to say about her: The girl had no other defining characteristics to speak of.

A few days previous, her grandfather, the head of the family, had passed away, and the Genoard household was in a state of confusion.

Her grandfather had been kind, and Eve was terribly sad that he was dead, but her unease had another source.

Her older brother: Dallas Genoard. He’d heard the news and returned from New York.

He was nice to Eve, but she just couldn’t bring herself to like him. After all, when he interacted with anyone besides her, the only word for Dallas was lowlife.

When he’d returned to the house, his eyes hadn’t held any sadness over his grandfather’s death at all.

Instead, they were filled with something ominous. Some dark, secret hope.

Almost as if he were planning to kill someone…

This state had been one of the earliest in the union to develop industry, and her grandfather had built a vast fortune in a single generation. What sort of business had he started here, in this country town far from the state capital of Newark, that had allowed him to earn a fortune? All Eve had heard was that he ran a factory, and she hadn’t been especially interested in knowing more. A big factory in the forest. Neither her father nor her grandfather had taken Eve anywhere near it, and she hadn’t tried to go. As a result, she had absolutely no idea what her family manufactured.

However, she was aware that they belonged to the class that was commonly referred to as moneyed.

She also knew that this thing called wealth sometimes led human hearts far astray.

When she was taken to society functions, she saw all sorts of people: those who clung to wealth, those who coveted it, those who manipulated it, and those who loathed it. She witnessed its elegance and its ugliness.

Having had these experiences, she was able to pick up on two things.

One was that her grandfather’s legacy would probably amount to an enormous sum, far more than enough to lead people awry.

The other…was that her brother Dallas had been completely taken in by its glamour.

Even so, there was nothing she could do. At the same time, she was aware that if things went on this way, something she cherished would collapse.

Terror regarding the approaching tragedy, anger at her cowardice: She was at a sensitive age, and being caught between these two feelings was eating away at her nerves.

When she’d been filled with unease about these things, involuntarily, she prayed to God.

She asked for a miracle.

I just want to be free of this anxiety. That’s all.

Under the covers, as if she were making the wish of a lifetime, she prayed and prayed.

…And, abruptly, a miracle presented itself.

Late at night, when darkness and silence had enveloped the mansion, two intruders appeared in her room.

Before Eve even had time to scream…she froze, her eyes round.

The man and woman who’d slowly opened the door were dressed like American Indians.

The man wore a short coat of animal pelts over bare skin, and his lower body was encased in rough hemp trousers. The woman wore a matching outfit, and their clothes were ornamented with beads in geometric patterns.

They wore native war paint, too, and large feather headdresses.

The strangest thing of all was that both were white people. If it hadn’t been for that, she might have just screamed.

For a moment, Eve had no idea what was happening, and then the couple turned to her and said, firmly but quite casually:

“Shh. Don’t make a sound! We’re nobody suspicious.”

“Hide us for a little while, okay? Just a little while!”

The two had large sacks on their backs, like the one Santa Claus carried, and several bills peeked out of the openings. The bottoms of the sacks were lumpy with what were probably jewels and ornaments, and she knew right away what the pair really were.

Burglars. Even when she’d arrived at that answer, she didn’t panic or make a fuss. She still wasn’t quite sure why, but it might have been because they were wearing very innocent, artless smiles.

“Say, are you maybe, you know, one of the Genoards?!”

“Yes, a sheltered young lady!”

When she heard the two of them whisper-shout, the feeling of unease finally returned.

Were they going to take her hostage?

However, in mere moments, that unease dissolved. The words the two white American Indians said next were beyond anything she’d imagined—or rather, they came from an angle she hadn’t even considered.

“I see! You don’t have to worry anymore!”

“Isn’t that great?!”

Nothing they were saying made sense to her. Ignoring the bewildered Eve, the two kept right on talking:

“We’re taking all your unhappiness for you!”

“Now your family won’t have to fight!”

“It’s best when families get along!”

“Yes, you’ll be happy!”

They were so delighted that this girl, whom they’d only just met, was going to be happy that they might as well have been talking about themselves. At that point, Eve finally stumbled upon what they meant.

If the inheritance disappeared, no one would fight over it. If there was no fortune, no one’s heart would be warped.

These two were making her wish come true.

It was a horrendously selfish theory, and if anyone other than Eve had heard their story, it wouldn’t have been at all odd for them to deck the couple immediately. However, Eve was grateful to them.

After all, they’d appeared right after she’d prayed to God and used her single “wish of a lifetime.”

They must be God’s messengers. I’m sure of it.

The Genoard family had never been very religious, so Eve’s idea of what God and angels looked like was extremely vague.

Forgetting even the fact that they were dressed like Indians, Eve knelt to them.

“H-hey, Miria. Why is she worshipping us?”

“I don’t know, but since she is, we need to do something for her!”

“Hmm… I’d really like to perform a Snake Dance ritual, but that takes dozens of days, and we’d need fifty snakes. Besides, we’re not shamans, and if we did it, the great nature spirits or whoever they are might get mad at us.”

“Let’s do a Butterfly Dance, then! The one those Hopi children taught us!”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

The two nodded briefly, then began to dance a recreational dance from the Hopi Tribe. The dance—performed by just the two of them, with no song or music—bordered on comedy, but Eve watched it earnestly.

“Miss! Miss Eve!”

The dance was interrupted by a knock at the door to her room.

“They say there are thieves prowling around inside the mansion! Is everything all right in there, miss?!”

Oh no! Hurry and hide—

When she turned around to warn the pair, they were nowhere to be seen.

The wide-open window swung in the breeze, and that was all.

Of course. They must have returned to the heavens.

The girl was prone to fantasies, and she completely failed to see the Indians clinging to the tree outside the window.

The next day, Dallas came to Eve’s room, looking terribly tired. He seemed very irritated, but at the sight of his sister’s face, he started to smile again, just a little. It was a genuine, big-brother smile, the sort she hadn’t seen in several years.

“Want me to teach you billiards, Eve? It’s been a long time.”

On the verge of tears, Eve beamed and nodded.

After that, as the burglars had said, she lived happily.

However, one year later…quite abruptly, her happiness was shattered.

1931 December Same location

What had crushed Eve’s ordinary days was a sudden onset of a great loneliness.

Her father, Raymond, and his oldest son, Jeffrey, had succeeded her grandfather as the center of the family. One day, they left for work in Manhattan, and they never came home again. Or rather, to be accurate, they did return. However, they were so horribly changed that Eve was unable to believe they were her family.

Two corpses had been discovered in a car that had fallen into Newark Bay. The police didn’t tell her whether it had been an accident or murder. They said only that they were investigating, and then they left.

On top of that, she was informed that Dallas, her other older brother, was missing.

Her mother had passed away before her grandfather, and so, for all intents and purposes, Eve was the only remaining member of the Genoard family. Gradually, the servants quit and left, and the mansion grew as quiet as a ruin.

She heard that her family’s “business” would be taken over by the factory directors. Eve was paid a token guarantee, and practically speaking, her only remaining assets were the mansion and the land.

Not many people would have continued to serve in a house like that, and the only ones who stayed were the butler and the black housekeeper.

“Oh, my stars and garters! Then yer fixin’ to go f’real, Missy Eve?”

The plump black woman sounded impressed by Eve’s resolution.

The woman, Samantha, had worked as a housekeeper all over the country; she spoke in a mishmash of accents from different regions, and absolutely everyone had trouble understanding her.

“Yes, I am.”

Eve, who’d been in Samantha’s care since childhood, didn’t feel a shred of prejudice toward her.

“Miss, as unworthy as I may be, I, Benjamin, am confident that I can at least aid you by serving as your guide to the town.”

“Benjamin, are you sure you don’t mind?”

“You needn’t trouble yourself over it. Serving you is my duty, miss, and it is also the one purpose in life this dotard has.”

The man who said this, bowing deferentially, was a German butler who’d served the Genoard family since Eve’s grandfather’s time.

Although he wasn’t a very stiff person, as far as appearance went, there would have been no difficulty in calling him a stereotypical butler.

Cackling at the sight of the profoundly respectful manservant, Samantha thumped her chest.

“Whaddaya actin’ all starched fer? Missy Eve, I’m a-goin’ witchoo, so youse jes’ rest easy.”

Accompanied by these two members of her family, Eve left for Manhattan, a great, unfamiliar city.

…In search of her vanished brother, Dallas Genoard.