Far To Go (27 page)

Mrs. Milling stood up from her crouch. A blond wave had fallen from her hairpin; she tucked it behind her ear. “Is this your son?” she asked. “What a darling little—” But the man had a task to accomplish. He spoke to Pepik in the funny language and tried to pick him up. Pepik squirmed away and managed to drag his suitcase a few more feet towards Mrs. Milling.

He was going with
her
; she would feed him sweets for dinner and teach him to read, once and for all.

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Milling said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

The egg-shaped man lifted Pepik’s suitcase. He put it under one arm and lifted Pepik up under the other, gripping him firmly so his little legs were sticking out sideways and his face was looking down at the ground. Pepik’s stomach lurched. He craned his neck, looking for Mrs. Milling. Where had she gone?

“Mamenka!” he shouted.

The man kept walking, carrying Pepik like a bundle of wood. He climbed some stairs up to a tram and set Pepik down in the seat beside him. The man didn’t speak to Pepik for the next forty minutes.

They arrived at a house and a woman came out to greet them and usher them in. She was older and greyer than Mrs. Milling. A face like a slice of bloody roast beef.

“So here you are.”

“
Jsem hladový
,” Pepik said. He sat down on the floor cross-legged.

The egg man shrugged at the woman. “Blimey.” It was the first word Pepik had heard from his mouth.

The woman bent down and inspected Pepik as if he were a cabbage at the grocer’s, picking through his hair, looking behind his ears for dirt. The procedure continued for several minutes; she seemed to be finding him deficient. Her voice was kind though, and for a moment the little songbird stirred inside Pepik’s chest, the one that had sung for Mrs. Milling. But the woman stood back up and crossed over to the kitchen. There was a black line of soot running up the wall from the stove to the ceiling. She took a cloth and rubbed at it vigorously. Then she looked back at the round man, as though surprised to still find him there. “Go on,” she said.

She motioned with her chin in the direction of a set of stairs. The man picked up the suitcase in one arm and Pepik in the other as though he were a pile of lumber. Pepik went limp and submitted.

The room at the top of the stairs had wallpaper that was dotted with red and blue sailboats. The floorboards were blue, like the sea. Two beds that smelled of mothballs were pushed up against opposite walls: Pepik would sleep by the window. The man plopped his suitcase down and looked at the second bed, uncertain. There was someone in it, someone so small that he barely made a bump beneath the covers. Pepik tiptoed over and peered into the other boy’s face. He had pale sandy hair and a light dusting of freckles across his nose. Clear, almost translucent skin. As though the little stove inside him that kept him alive was having trouble reaching all the way up to the surface.

“Artoor?”

The boy was still as stone.

“
Haló
?”

The boy gave a low moan. If this was Arthur, then the people downstairs were the Millings. It was Arthur’s noise of pain that welcomed Pepik, that told him he’d reached his new home.

Several hours later Mrs. Milling—the real Mrs. Milling—came upstairs. She opened the gold clasps on Pepik’s red suitcase. “
Pro boha, co je tohle?
” he said.

He had not seen its contents since leaving Prague; it was like a box of trinkets or magical charms, each one possessing a secret power.

The beautiful diamond watch could transport him back in time. And the little galoshes were for walking on water. He would cross the ocean on foot if he had to.

But he would not have to. His family would come and meet him. Nanny Marta had promised.

Mrs. Milling dug through the suitcase. She lifted the newly sewn little dress pants. “Well, aren’t you the posh one,” she said. “You come from money? Do you?”

She held up his nightshirt, which she changed him into quickly and efficiently, despite the fact that he was a big boy and able to do this by himself. Pepik realized he was not going to be made to brush his teeth. The sheets looked smooth but were rough to the touch, and he felt very high off the ground after sleeping for months in the bottom bunk in Prague. Mrs. Milling tucked him in tightly, so he could barely move his limbs. He felt like a letter sealed into an envelope.

“
Chci napsat dopis
,” he said. “
Pani. Potřebuji pero. Můžeš mi podat pero, prosím?
”

Mrs. Milling looked at Pepik. Her face was a blank sheet of paper.

There was no bedtime story. Mrs. Milling left the room briefly and came back with a thermometer. Pepik opened wide and stuck out his tongue, but it was her son Arthur’s temperature she was interested in. She gave the thermometer a vigorous shake after pulling it from Arthur’s mouth, as though she hoped to change the number she saw there. Then she flicked off the light and the room was plunged into blackness.

“
Sladký sen
,” Pepik said to nobody, and nobody answered him back.

He leaned back on his pillow. He could see out the window from his bed: the sky was slowly ticking down into a cool cobalt blue. There were a few stars out, messengers arrived too early. Down the length of the block there were long rows of brick houses, and warehouses with their gates closed and locked. The front windows were lit, small squares of yellow against the blackness, so that the street looked like a filmstrip. He thought of Snow White, of the Happy dwarf and his own Happy face, but he didn’t feel happy; he felt terribly alone. If he crushed his head up against the wall he could see all the way down the street. He needed to keep watch for his family walking up the long road towards him.

Tata would be in the middle, with Mamenka and Nanny on each of his arms.

Pepik had smuggled his lead soldier into bed with him, and as his eyes adjusted he pushed the covers back and set the soldier on the windowsill. He sat up and crossed his legs, watching. He and his soldier standing guard together. How impressed Tata would be to see him up so late, defending the house, his gun at the ready.

“At ease,” he commanded the soldier, roughly.

He didn’t want anyone getting shot by mistake.

Across the room Arthur’s breathing was raspy and irregular, like someone tuning a radio, stations coming in and out of range. There were long stretches between breaths. Only now, in the darkness, did Nanny’s words come back: it was Pepik’s job to help Arthur get better.

“Artoor?” he whispered.

There was phlegmy gasping from the other bed. Finally Arthur spoke. “I need help. Call my mother.”

It was like hearing a dead body come suddenly back to life. Pepik imagined Arthur reaching out a clammy hand to touch him.

He didn’t understand Arthur’s words, and didn’t answer.

Morning was a needle plunged into his arm. He woke to a chill draft of air. The covers had been pulled back and Mrs. Milling was standing over him. Her eyes were small and black and her lips were pressed into a perfectly straight line. Pepik tried to pull his knees up to cover himself, but it was too late. He’d wet the bed. She had seen.

“
Zarmoucený
,” Pepik said.

Mrs. Milling held her breath.

She worked quickly, matter-of-factly, pulling off Pepik’s nightshirt and underpants. She managed to strip the sheets without moving him from the bed, manoeuvring his body into different positions and cradling his head under her arm. She bundled the offending sheets into her arms and left him there, naked and uncovered.

Pepik was cold, and the skin of his bottom was red and sore. The pain in his stomach reasserted itself, and he turned his head to the side and threw up on the blue floorboards.

Two minutes later Mrs. Milling returned carrying a pile of clean sheets. She was humming under her breath, but when she saw the vomit she stopped, her song breaking off mid-note. “What . . .” She leaned down and sniffed at the little pile of regurgitation, the white jelly of last night’s boiled cauliflower flecked with yellow. Then she shouted something in the direction of the hall; the round man emerged eventually at the top of the stairs, out of breath, a bottle of tomato ketchup in his hand.

“Look, Frank! He’s ill!” Mrs. Milling motioned her husband over and showed him the vomit. “More germs for . . . Doctor Travers said . . .” She was talking quickly and gesturing at her son; she sounded like she might burst into tears.

Pepik rolled over and cradled his head in his hands. It dawned on him suddenly that morning had arrived. He’d fallen asleep at his post. Nanny hadn’t come in the night, and Arthur was still sick. He had failed them. He had failed all of them.

By mid-morning Pepik was feeling a little better and half expected Mrs. Milling would make him go outside to play, but she preferred to treat him as a second sick son, bringing glasses of flat ginger ale to both boys, sterilizing the thermometer between uses. Later in the afternoon she came in to finish unpacking Pepik’s suitcase, and found the unsealed envelope containing the photo. She took out the family portrait and looked at it closely, taking her time.

Mrs. Milling looked up at Pepik. “You poor darling,” she said softly, as though she had just now realized that Pepik, too, had a family that loved him desperately. She pulled him against her in a kind of awkward squeeze.

When she went to put the picture back in the envelope, she paused, thinking better of it, and propped it up on Pepik’s bedside table instead. There was Mamenka, looking off to the side; Nanny was behind Pepik, her hands on his shoulders, her eyes cast down at him, proud.

Mrs. Milling pointed to Nanny. “Mother,” she said, enunciating clearly.

Pepik looked at her blankly; she said it a second time.

He repeated it back to her, one syllable and then the second. “Mo-ther.”

Marta.
Mo-ther.

His first English word.

Mother.

When Mrs. Milling was gone, Pepik picked up the photo. His head felt funny when he looked at Nanny’s face. He rested his hot cheek against the cool plaster of the wall. Then he propped up the photo beside the lead soldier and placed the beautiful diamond watch beside that. It was like a row of three charms. The soldier stood for Tata with his Winchester rifle, and the watch for Mamenka, dressed up for a night on the town. The photo was Nanny:
mother
. He arranged them in one way and then shifted them around, as though he believed that if he stumbled on the correct order, he might evoke their flesh-and-blood equivalents.

Five nights had passed. They still hadn’t arrived.

Pepik lay back. He let the three charms stand guard in his place.

He woke again a little later and opened one eye. Mrs. Milling was standing at the window, her grey hair straight to her shoulders. She held Pepik’s diamond watch in one hand. She was looking at it closely, running her finger over the stones, as though wondering if it could possibly be real. He saw her hesitate for a minute. He saw her slip the watch into her pocket.

Pepik had crawled into Arthur’s bed. He was so lonely; the other child’s presence helped him sleep. It had been hours, though, since he’d felt Arthur move. Mrs. Milling crossed the floorboards towards the two boys and Pepik closed his eyes tightly, as though to make himself disappear. She touched his shoulder and began to talk crossly, starting up a stream of English scolding. It was the third time this had happened, and she did not want Pepik giving Arthur any more germs.

Mrs. Milling lifted the covers briskly, like a waiter lifting a silver dome from a plate of food. Pepik saw her fingernails, bitten to the quick. She leaned forward to feel her son’s forehead, and paused with her palm an inch from his skin.

“Arthur?”

She said it like a question and waited for a reply. When none was forthcoming she said it again, sharply this time—
Arthur
—and a third time, and a fourth. She held his chin in her hand and moved his head from side to side, grasped his little shoulders and squeezed. She was repeating his name, her voice gaining strength like a siren.

Pepik saw the first tear appear, like the first star on a late summer evening.

It trembled in the bottom corner of her eye, hanging there for what seemed like an eternity. It grew and swelled and finally slipped off her bottom lashes, missing the bedspread and landing on the blue floorboards.

Pepik imagined he heard a little splash.

More tears followed, pouring from Mrs. Milling’s eyes. Pepik was pushed from the bed and went into the corner of the room and curled in a ball and covered his ears. Mrs. Milling was screaming. She was shouting for her husband and shaking Arthur’s body, her face bright red, her eyes wide. She collapsed over the bed, pressing her face into her son’s chest, her wide shoulders heaving. She shook Arthur again and again, as though she couldn’t believe it, as though if she shook him hard enough his pale eyelids would flutter open.

Arthur was still and white, his features carved out of wax.

Mrs. Milling screamed as if she were being torn to pieces. She pawed at her face and pulled at her hair, sobbing.

Hearing Mrs. Milling opened something in Pepik, punctured a raft made of twigs and balloons. Water rushed in. It covered his legs—he wet himself almost immediately, the urine seeping out around him in a circle on the floor—and rose past his chest, and then his shoulders. It filled his mouth and he choked and gagged; he put his hand to his face and found it soaking. He was crying so hard he could not get his breath. He doubled over, vomiting. Everything from the past year that he had managed to bury inside him was being pulled up through his body, ripped out of his mouth. The sharks were below him, his legs in their jaws. He let go. He was quickly pulled under.

Pepik was sent to a home full of boys. An orphanage run by the Catholic Church. At night the big room fell silent. It was a silence that filled up with deep breathing, the creak of springs as someone turned over, a fart followed by laughter. The boys fell asleep one by one, like candles being blown out on a birthday cake.

Pepik lay still, eyes wide open, picturing his hunger. He was an empty shell alone on a beach in the moonlight. The waves came and went; he was filled and then emptied. Emptied, and then emptied again.