The Eyes of a King (32 page)

And then I saw Grandmother crying as I turned my back on her and walked away into the rain. And suddenly I changed my mind.

Someone pushed the door open. It was the sergeant, looking the worse for his night at the inn, clutching his head and carrying a bag of food. He caught my eye, and I caught his. Then, slowly, I took the gun from my head and pointed it at him.

He stared at me silently. He dropped the bag and made the slightest move for the pistol at his side, identical to the one in my hand. I made a move, even slighter, with my head, to tell him not to. He stayed still. I gripped the gun more tightly, with both hands, so that it would hold steady. He didn’t believe I would do it. If he had, he would have gone for the pistol. He thought I was joking. I thought I might be too—I was not sure.

There was irritation in his face, but also a hint of what was almost amusement. As if I was a child dragging a game out far too long. It reminded me of how my father had looked one time when I was about five years old, when I stole his expensive watch and ran round with it, sick with laughter, while he got
later and later and didn’t know whether to laugh or shout or chase me. I was angry because he had to go out to an interview almost every day that month, when
The Sins of Judas
was published. I kept running, because once I’d gone so far with the game, I couldn’t go back. And then my mother gave him her watch and he jogged off down the street, and when he turned to wave, I saw that he looked tired and he wasn’t smiling. The laughter died in my throat and I wished I’d given it to him to begin with.

I came back abruptly from my thoughts and tightened my hold on the pistol. Then I think the sergeant realized I was serious.

We stared at each other. Then, “Put that down,” he breathed, quiet as ice. I pulled the trigger.

T
he gunshot surprised me with its loudness, and the recoil made me stumble. The other boys woke at once, shouting out. I opened my eyes and saw the sergeant again and expected him to sway and go down like a felled tree. He looked as if he expected it too. But he didn’t move. A lump of plaster dropped from the wall, and I saw where the bullet had really struck—three or four feet wide. I was not used to firing this type of gun; I would not have missed with a Maracon rifle.

There was silence in the room while everyone stared at me and I went on grinning stupidly. “I could get you imprisoned for attempted murder,” said the sergeant, his voice high. “Do you know that?”

“The hell you could,” said the loud voice in my head, “while
I still have the gun.” But I didn’t say it out loud. I walked toward him without lowering the pistol. They were trained to get to their weapons quickly. I watched for a sudden movement. But everyone was still. It was like walking through a gallery of statues.

I was within a few steps of the sergeant, and I nodded to him to move away from the door. He did it. I went out, and then I lowered the gun, turned, and walked off. He could shoot, and I knew it. I braced myself for a bullet in the back of the head at every step, but none came. “He took my pistol,” I heard the boy with the silver tooth complaining in the house behind me.

“Shut your mouth,” the sergeant growled. “I swear to God, the blood of whoever he takes it into his head to shoot now is as much on your hands as his.”

“He’s sick,” the boy said. “There is something mentally wrong with him. He’s possessed by a demon.”

Then I realized what I had done. I started laughing, feeling the fear rise like a prickling current in the air from the house that I had left. I laughed and laughed, falling down on my knees in the street. Men passed me, staring, but I could not see them properly.

When I opened my watering eyes, the sergeant’s voice came quickly behind me. “Don’t move.” I tried to turn anyway, but he fired a shot. “The next will be in your head, so stay still if you value your life.” I didn’t value my life, or I never would have tried to shoot him. But there is something frightening about a gunshot, something that makes you freeze automatically. He stepped forward and kicked the pistol from my hand. I did not even try to catch it as it fell.

“Pick up the gun,” the voice in my head was shouting. But I couldn’t. It looked like a dead insect lying there on the ground, with its shining black barrel and the crisscrosses on the butt, like a fly’s wing case.

“Stay where you are,” said the sergeant. He was tying up my hands. I tried to turn. “Don’t move,” he told me warningly, and pressed the gun to my back as he pulled the knot tight about my wrists. “Stand up,” he told me then. I did it.

Footsteps were approaching behind us. “What’s going on here?” It was the private.

“He tried to shoot me,” muttered the sergeant. The private laughed incredulously. “It is not a joke.” The sergeant bent and looked into my face. “You will be in prison for this. You do understand that? You will be imprisoned for this crime.”

I did not answer. I had heard about the military prison in Ositha.

“Perhaps you are being too hard on him, sir,” said the private. “Perhaps he did not mean to shoot. He is probably still in shock. I was surprised you brought him at all.”

“In shock?” said the sergeant.

“You know,” the private said, lowering his voice. “After what happened with his brother.”

“What did happen with his brother? Because this boy has not told me.”

There was a silence between them. I looked at the floor. Then the private was explaining.

“Hey, don’t cry,” he said, turning to me. My nose was running, but I couldn’t do anything about it because my hands were tied. “He should be with his family,” said the private. “This is a misunderstanding, and I am partly to blame.”

The sergeant forced me to meet his eyes. “You should have told me,” he said. “I wouldn’t have made you come if you’d told me.”

I looked away. They went on arguing, but I did not listen. Then the sergeant was speaking again with his face close to mine. “Listen. Whatever the circumstances, you are guilty of attempted murder. That is final. I’m sorry.”

I did not know what that meant. I sat down on the floor and closed my eyes. “Watch him,” he told the private quietly, and went to get the other boys ready to leave for the border. The boy with the silver tooth was still complaining that I had taken his gun, but the sergeant ignored him.

It was then I realized that the pistol was still lying at my feet. I opened my eyes.

The sergeant was inside the small house, with his back to me. I glanced at the private. He was sitting on the doorstep of one of the deserted houses, studying his clasped hands. I wondered if he was paralyzed with guilt because he had forgotten to tell the sergeant about what had happened, or if he was thinking of something else entirely. I moved slightly. He did not look up. And then I decided to escape and get back to Kalitzstad. And the weight lifted from my heart.

I was remembering a trick I used to practice when I was a little boy. I clenched my fists and imagined the ropes dissolving from around my wrists. I concentrated so hard that for a moment I could not see. The knots loosened. I went on forcing them outward. I stopped thinking of anything but getting my hands free. I could move my wrists now. I stopped and breathed again.

But once I had stopped, I felt suddenly as if I would fall. I
remembered that Stirling was dead. I was so frightened of falling into Nothing. I told myself that if I got back to Kalitzstad, everything would be all right, and was only faintly surprised when I began to believe it. I shut my eyes and tried to stop my heart from beating so quickly. Then I held my breath and snapped every knot. The rope loosened, but I held it so that it did not fall.

The private glanced up. “Look,” he said, in a low voice, “I really am sorry. I don’t know what to do about this.” I did not answer. He got up and paced away from me, down the street, and raised his hands to his face. In that moment, I moved. I picked up the gun.

The sergeant, suddenly at the door, shouted, “Saltworth, I told you to watch him!” He swore and took a step toward me.

This time I aimed properly. I shot the glass out of the windows of the house. The sergeant threw up his arms to cover his face, and the other boys were shouting and jostling to the door. I turned and ran.

I
could hear them shouting behind me, but I did not listen. I raced down a side alley, then cut across the yard of an inn and came out on a different street. I went on running. Soldiers turned briefly as I passed them, but they were all preoccupied and no one stopped me. I fought my way through an old barbed-wire fence and across a stretch of waste ground, and then I was running through the narrow streets again. Somewhere ahead a church bell was chiming. I could see the cross on the tower suddenly, and hills beyond that, and I ran in that direction. For some reason I could
not get my arms and legs to work properly. I stumbled and fell more than once. But every time I stopped, I thought I heard shouting voices behind me, and that drove me on.

I came up to a fence, and beyond it was the churchyard. Soldiers were filing in at the gate, but I ran past them and dropped down on a stone seat beside the door. I could no longer hear shouting. I breathed out. My hands were bleeding from climbing through that barbed wire. I rubbed the palms against my trousers and shut my eyes.

When I opened them again, a young private was watching me with what looked like faint amusement. The other soldiers had gone into the church; he was the only one left. He lingered in the doorway. “Mass is about to start,” he said. “You are not coming in?” I shook my head.

A hymn began inside, and it made me think of Stirling humming on the way back from church. And I realized that even if I got back to Kalitzstad, nothing would be all right again. I wished I had let them put me in prison. Sometimes physical hardship makes you forget to think. “Are you all right?” said the soldier, still watching me. “You seem troubled by something. You must be one of these cadets that they have called up suddenly.”

The hymn finished and he glanced into the church but did not move from where he stood. “You are not religious?” he said, turning back to me. I shook my head again. “I’m not,” he said. “But I’m going to the border. I want to go to Mass before I leave. Maybe that is bad religion.” He shrugged. “I have a brother at home about your age,” he went on. “He would be fifteen. He works down in the harbor. He promised to take care of my wife and my little girl.”

I did not answer. My heart was beating so loudly that some of the time I could not hear him. He did not seem to notice. He hesitated, then sat down on the bench beside me, searching in his pocket. He took out a sheet of paper and smoothed it carefully. “My little girl drew this. She’s only three but she can draw. Look.” He began pointing out what the picture was supposed to be. I went on watching him in silence. I could barely follow what he was saying to me, but I did not want him to leave me here alone either. He traced each line of that child’s drawing, then folded it and put it back into his pocket.

The psalm had started by the time he got up to go into the church. He looked at me for a moment then, frowning as though he had only just seen me properly. “Is that your gun?” he said. “They are giving the cadets pistols?” He frowned again, then shrugged. “To be honest with you, nothing would surprise me anymore, with this war. Let me see that.”

He took the gun from me silently and examined it, then adjusted the safety catch. “Did they not teach you?” he said. “Leave that on. You don’t want to have an accident.” He handed it back. “Goodbye, then. I am glad I spoke with you.” Then he turned and went into the church.

I waited for my heart to slow, but time passed and it didn’t. Then I got to my feet and crossed the churchyard. I could see, beyond the fence, the lines of war graves, row on row of them, all identical. They stretched across the hills for a mile or more. I stopped at the fence, where the summer flowers and the long grass ended abruptly, and looked out over those endless graves. And then I looked beyond, across the cornfields and the marshes and the edge of the eastern hills. Kalitzstad, a hazy red
island, was visible in the distance. I thought about climbing over the fence and walking back there.