Lights Out in the Reptile House (10 page)

Farther on, cheeses carved into likenesses of the Praetor were displayed in delicatessen windows. Sausages were arranged around them. He watched the crowd for his father but still felt he was wandering around stupidly, like a puppy who'd been smacked on the ear. He passed Holter, and Holter said that that was some news about his father. They were separated in the crowd and Karel said “
What?
” and Holter nodded and smiled and said he thought so, too, before disappearing. Karel fought his way after him in a frenzy of anxiety and frustration. He'd been wearing a light bluejacket. At an intersection of two alleys a lieutenant in the Civil Guard blocked the way, stooping over to examine the arm of a little boy who seemed lost. The lieutenant asked the boy if he knew what happened to little boys who stole things, and the boy said no.

The alley emptied back into the square, where stages had been erected around the central well. A band on one struck up the old drinking song the Party had adopted as its anthem. It sounded to Karel like a horn section falling down the stairs.

The people behind him started shouting and air horns sounded on the side streets: something else was going on. He fought his way to a streetlamp, pulled a younger boy down, and shimmied up. He scanned the crowd in all directions. There were three people above him higher on the pole, and it swayed and lurched. His palms were skinned. He could not find Holter.

The parade had started. It took a few minutes to reach him. While he waited he sucked on one palm and then the other. Both were burning. A cart passed, carrying a bust of the Praetor covered with flowers. It was followed by ten of the town fathers portraying the Old Guard and one the Praetor. They marched along reenacting the Bloody Parade every thirty yards or so by walking into a hail of tossed flowers. When the flowers hit, the Old Guard staggered and lay down, while the Praetor marched on. He paused every so often to allow the group to re-form. Behind them young men with glasses and uncertain expressions carried a banner that said
JUNIOR SCHOLARS OF THE HOMELAND.
Behind the banner two men rolled a large silver-and-glass thing on wheels shaped like soup tureen and said to contain the Praetor's legacy to the future, a short autobiography in verse. It was topped by a silver baby kicking up its heels. A small band followed, identified as the Flutes of the Political Orphans, and then jugglers, and more local officials, and at the end rowdy unofficial marchers. Karel checked everybody. At the very end two members of the Young People's NUP called to each side over and over:
We are a universal people
—

We are a rersle-rersle riesle, the crowd responded, tailing off.

There will always be a springtime for our greatness—

There will always be a ringtine rerer rateness, and they were past, a lot of the crowd following, with or without Holter, he wasn't sure, and then there was only one more person, bringing up the rear: the mayor's small son in army fatigues, sitting reverently on a tiny pony.

He had a last chance, though: the races and contests. He worked his way over and squeezed into a spot high on the largest temporary grandstand, feeling it tremble from the weight of the numbers scaling it. People near him were shouting at everyone else to stay off. Fights started at the bases of the aisles. The stands collapsed regularly and Karel remembered an engineer saying in the newspaper after one of the bigger disasters that as a people they just weren't very good with wood.

Nobody could hear the opening. It was a reenactment of the Marta Siegler story. Siegler, played by a young girl, was seduced by a foreign grain salesman, killed him with a threshing machine, retired to a nunnery, spied for her country, and was stabbed to death resisting the advances of a crazed youth who was actually her half brother. She reappeared to her murderer in his jail cell with her arms full of lilies, offering forgiveness and causing him to repent. He then became a member of the Civil Guard. The three parts of the story were titled Purity, Forgiveness, and Repentance on easels beside the action.

Afterward the regional Party head gave a speech. Karel didn't follow it. His palms still hurt and he figured with his luck they were probably infected. He tried to keep scanning the crowd. The speaker said that the great issues of the day were settled not with words or speeches but with iron and blood. The crowd's applause had some sarcasm to it that the speaker didn't seem to catch.

After that there were poetry contests—one of the Praetor's most despised innovations—and races of cripples around the stages, which some in the crowd seemed uncertain about. During the pauses the Kestrels led them through the cardinal virtues. The stands swayed and creaked. On the main stage there was a boxing match between two women and then fireworks, and gifts were shaken down from nets stretched above the grandstands—fruit and papier-mâchè eagles—and hundreds of birds were released, pheasants and guinea fowl and smews and ravens, with a thunder of flapping wings from cages below the stage. In the uproar Karel slipped down from the grand stand and rushed around with lights booming over his head and birds exploding up before him like the bats from Leda's cave. He slipped on plums and cherries rolling underfoot. He checked all of the light blue and near-bluejackets he could find, and never found Holter.

On the way home he looked in on the Schieles (still no lights) and then found himself staring blankly at his dark front door. Occasional fireworks were still booming in the distance. Mrs. Fetscher called him from next door. She was silhouetted against her lighted doorway. When he got there she nodded him into the house, something she'd never done before. He thought, She has terrible news about my father. But in the foyer he saw with a shock the uniformed man from the Civil Guard he'd seen in the café. The same supporting officers were with him. They all looked at Karel as if they expected him. The uniformed man was looking at him as well. Karel took a closer look, despite himself, at the badge with the nest of snakes and skull. They stood around Mr. Fetscher in a semicircle.

“You are—?” the uniformed man said.

“This is a neighbor,” Mrs. Fetscher said. “He can swear my husband was home yesterday, working in the garden.”

Karel blinked, not sure he could.

“That's true,” Fetscher said. “I waved to him. I remember thinking, that poor boy.”

“Umm-hmm,” the uniformed man said. “My name is Kehr,” he said to Karel. “You are—?”

“Karel Roeder,” Karel said.

Kehr nodded. He said to Mrs. Fetscher, “Why is he a poor boy?”

“His father's disappeared,” Fetscher said. “Though it might be anything—”

Kehr looked back at Karel. “What's your father's name?” he asked.

“Simon,” Karel said. He thought about the old man's hand from the café and the cracking sound. “Do you know anything about him?”

“No,” Kehr said. “Mr. Fetscher, get your things.”

“But Karel can swear,” Fetscher protested.

“I'm not interested in what he can swear,” Kehr said. He was absorbed with his cuff. “You'll only be gone overnight: Collect your things.”

Fetscher continued to protest and was led away by one of the supporting officers. The family dog, a small black-and-white mongrel with rumpled ears, followed them into the bedroom. The supporting officer opened a small suitcase on the bed and began to demonstrate how to put clothes in it. Fetscher relented and began packing, still pleading his case. The dog stood on the bed and unpacked things—folded undershirts, shorts, an eyeglass case—as fast as the harassed Fetscher could pack them.

“Stop that, Eski,” Mrs. Fetscher scolded.

There was a cautious knock on the door and the neighbor from across the street, Mrs. Witz, peered in.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Fetscher said. “Can't you see enough from across the street?”

“I came to see if there was some trouble I could help with,” Mrs. Witz said, wounded. She had dressed up. Her five-year-old, Sherron, stood behind her and kept peeking around. “If you'd like me to leave—”

“Who is this?” Kehr said. “Is this your son?”

Mrs. Witz looked at Karel in horror. “Oh, no,” she said. “This is my daughter, Sherron.” She brought Sherron out in front of her, holding her by the shoulders. Sherron's feet left the ground when her mother maneuvered her. “And you are—?”

“A servant of my country,” Kehr said. He stroked an ear with some weariness.

“I didn't catch your name,” Mrs. Witz said.

“Would you please leave my house?” Mrs. Fetscher asked. Her voice was heading toward shrill.

“What's going on out there?” Fetscher called. He was told to keep packing. There was the muffled sound and yelp of the dog being cuffed.

“Is there any sort of trouble?” Mrs. Witz asked.

“None whatsoever,” Kehr said. He looked at Karel briefly and turned his attention to the bookcase and two knickknacks, ceramic crocodiles with open mouths. One held stick candy and the other matchsticks. Kehr's jawline and collar were perfect, and Karel felt shabbier in his presence.

Mrs. Fetscher asked if Mr. Kehr would like some of the sugared wafers she'd been making when he arrived, which, she remembered with a worried look toward the kitchen, were probably ruined by now.

Kehr declined. Mrs. Witz suggested Sherron might like some. Sherron looked toward the kitchen dubiously.

Sherron was fat enough as it was, Mrs. Fetscher snapped. Mrs. Witz glared at her.

“But this is some kind of mistake,” Fetscher called from the other room. There was the brisk sound of clasps being shut.

“We do not hunt for crime,” Kehr said. “I do not have the details.” His subordinate looked aimlessly around the room, arms folded.

Fetscher returned with a small plaid suitcase, trailed by the other subordinate and Eski, who wagged her tail festively.

Kehr checked a pad and repeated Fetscher's name. Fetscher nodded. His wife touched his arm. Eski stood, with her front paws on his thigh.

The escorting subordinate asked if he was a salesman and Fetscher cried out, new hope breaking over him. See? he said. There
was
a mistake! He was a butcher.

“Do you often take walks, Mr. Fetscher?” Kehr asked.

Fetscher looked around the room, dumbfounded. He looked at the others, and Karel, as if it were their responsibility to help. Everyone backed up a step.

“What kind of question is that?” Mrs. Fetscher finally said, after a silence.

“Please come with us,” Kehr said.

But he was a butcher, Fetscher said frantically, repeating himself to avoid making another mistake.

They made way as Kehr and the others led him out. Sherron stood straight with her feet together, as if at a ceremony. “Where will I reach you, Tommy?” Mrs. Fetscher wailed, and no one answered.

Eski, sitting now in the middle of the foyer, looked at Karel with an excited and irritating expectancy, as if he were the one who was supposed to do something. The last Civil Guard officer when he passed said to Sherron, “See that you're a good girl,” and in response she smiled and showed him a handful of marbles.

For a week he met with Mrs. Fetscher over their fence each morning to exchange the fact that they hadn't heard anything; then she disappeared, not answering the door for three days, and Mrs. Witz when she caught him passing the house told him that Mrs. Oertzen had made a mistake, turning in the wrong Fetscher, and that this Fetscher had on top of everything else had a fatal accident. He'd lost his head and had fallen against the wall. They hadn't been able to wake him. Mrs. Fetscher was in a bad way. They were going to bring her something later. The funeral was on Thursday, if Karel was interested in attending.

School was suspended again. He roamed the neighborhoods during the day. At night he listened to the radio, which didn't help but at least broke the silence. He entertained the hope he'd learn something of use. The war was at a standstill and the news concentrated on fifth columnists and shirkers. The head of the Civil Guard promised that when final victory occurred the. Party would return its attention to all those of that sort who had slipped by. Karel stopped listening. He ate some mealy peaches. He turned the radio back on and suffered through a long playlet involving a simpering character who made trouble for every-one and who was finally identified as a profiteer and a corrupting intellectual spirit. They shot him and after the theatrical sounds of the gunshots he made a surprised ‘Oh!' as if he'd found something in his shoe. Somebody else gave a talk about saving wood palings. The only concrete news Karel heard was the announcement broadcast on all channels that for the duration of the emergency the administration of justice was now out of the hands of civilians and entrusted to the bureaus of the Special Sections of the Civil Guard.

He slept in his father's room. He rummaged through the closet, kneeling on the floor, setting aside piles of shoes and old newspapers. He found things he could not have said belonged to his family: folded brightly colored table-cloths, a musical instrument made from a gourd, copies of
Guardian of the Nation,
a magazine “dedicated to the preservation of civilization and race,” a chessboard of copper and dark wood, a cigar box full of chess pieces, a loop of wire, a photo of a desert path, a leather shoe repair kit. There was nothing in all of it that seemed like part of his life, and he remembered his mother's letter, and imagined desolately a historian peering into his parents' history and finding no trace of him whatsoever.

The next morning he found a letter without postage from his father under the front door. He looked up and down the street as if it had just been dropped off, and then opened it. It said his father was well, and that Karel shouldn't worry. There was great news. All would be explained soon. There was more money for food under the top step below the landing. It added in a P.S. that Karel should call a plumber if he hadn't already.