The Land Across (9 page)

Half a minute after that, I heard a few soft snarls. And pretty soon the man in black and I stepped out of the trees and into a street.

We had not gone far when a black car with a silver shield on the door rolled to a stop ahead us. Looking out the front window, the driver motioned for me to come over.

I did. He spoke in his own language, and I explained in German that I did not understand it.

“You are foreign.”

It was not a question, but I nodded.

“Show your passport.”

“It was taken away from me by the police.”

“I am the police. Why are you out so late?”

“By the border guards. I thought they were police—a kind of police. I’m the prisoner of a man named Kleon. He has to feed me in his house and let me sleep there.”

I waited until the cop nodded.

“He beat me tonight.” I handed the cop my flashlight. “Look at my face.”

He did. “You have seen a doctor.”

I nodded. “I left Kleon’s house to find a doctor, and it took a long time. Most doctors will not see patients so late.”

“That is so.”

“I got lost. At last I found a doctor who bandaged my face. I got lost again, and by that time there was nobody in the street to direct me. Do you know the way to Kleon’s house?”

The cop shook his head. It was about then, I believe, that I recognized the silent man who sat beside him as the third of the border guards who had arrested me, the one who looked like my father. I wanted to tell the cop he had my passport, but I knew that was going to make trouble, so I said, “Well, I have to get back to Kleon’s house and sleep there. Otherwise you’ll kill him—that’s what I’ve been told.”

“That is correct. You must sleep there. Who was the doctor who treated you?”

“What difference does that make?”

“I ask, you answer. What is his name?”

For half a second I went nuts trying to remember Volitain’s last name. “Dr. Aeneaos.”

The police car glided away.

“They didn’t question you at all,” I said to the man in black.

He gave me a smile, white teeth flashing under his black mustache.

We had not gone far when the police car came back. The cop waved me over the same as before, handed me my flashlight, and drove away again without saying a word.

The man in black had already set off. I hurried after him and asked whether we were near Kleon’s. He pointed in reply.

I recognized nothing and felt sure we were a long way from it, but the man in black left the street when we had passed two or three more of the little blocks that held private houses and started up a narrow path.

After we detoured around a ruined chicken coop, we reached a door in a wall that looked white. The man in black stood aside and signed that I was to knock. I did, knocking softly at first, then harder. Pretty soon it was opened by Martya.

She stared. “Where have you been?”

“Let me in.” I pushed past her and stepped into her kitchen.

“You…”

I grabbed the door to keep her from shutting it, and opened it wide. The man in black had gone.

“What it is?”

I switched on my flashlight and looked about for him. “There was a guy with me. I was going to ask him in.”

“It is not your house!”

“Then I’ll go away,” I told her. “I can sleep in the park.”

Her mouth opened and closed. With no lipstick it was not as pretty as I remembered.

“In the morning—and it’s got to be almost morning—I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them the truth, that your husband beat me and threw me out. Is that what you want?”

She hesitated before she shook her head.

“Then you’d better be really, really careful about what you say.”

“You are hungry. You men are always angry when you are hungry. I will make you something. We have sausage, eggs, many good things.”

“That I bought.” I did not dare to sit down for fear I would never stand up. “I’m not hungry or angry. I’m too tired to think or talk. I’m going to bed.”

There was no bar for my bedroom door, but I shut it, tried to move the dresser to block it, and hid my wallet, hanging my clothes on the chair in a special way I felt sure I would remember in the morning.

If I dreamed I cannot remember the dreams, only waking up and seeing sunlight at the window, getting up and using the chamber pot, and lying down again feeling absolutely sure that I would never get away from this crazy country, that I would die right here and be buried right here, too. In my imagination, or maybe in a dream, I remember seeing the little gray stone that would mark my grave, a stone cut with my name and after that a “d” and the date of my death.

Was it a real prophesy? I think maybe it was.

7

THE LEGION OF THE LIGHT

Martya shook me awake. “It is nearly noon! Get up!”

I blinked, called her a bitch under my breath, and sat up.

“Do not take my arm.”

I had not tried to.

“You will wish to tire me.”

“No.” I shook my head.

“You must not. The beach yesterday? I am burn by the sun. It hurt me very much.”

“I got kicked, mostly in the face. I guess that’s painless compared to sunburn.”

My irony went right over her head. “That is most good. This morning Kleon tire me very much. My back is most pain. I scream, I twist. He thinks he is big, big man because of this.” She giggled.

“You won’t have to let me screw you to laugh at me.” I found my watch and put it on. It was eleven fifteen. Either my clothes had not been searched, or the searcher had been smart enough to replace all my things just as I had left them.

“There are”—she groped for a word—“boxes outside the front door. Three boxes such as are for travel with clothes. They were not there when Kleon go to his work, I think. He will move them, I think, if they are there. They are not mine or Kleon’s.”

I had never dressed faster. Both of my suitcases and my wonderful old camera bag were on the stoop. “This is great!” I told Martya. “I can take pictures of that ruined castle. Pictures of the Willows, too, and I’ll have clean jeans, shirts, everything.”

“You must not take my picture. I am too much red.”

“I don’t
want
to take your picture.”

“You are mean.” She pouted. “For this I do not make the breakfast for you.”

“That’s okay, I’ll find a café when I’m hungry.” The truth was that I was hungry already, but I was not about to admit it.

“You will take me with you?”

“Sure,” I said, “if you want to come.”

“But you do not like me.”

“I like breakfast a lot,” I told her. “Lunch for you, I guess.” I had slung my camera bag on my shoulder and was picking up my suitcases. “If I put these in my room, will Kleon take them?”

“I do not think but I do not know.”

After I had changed clothes, I put them under the bed, pushed far back. “If he does, there’ll be more trouble.”

She giggled. “He have win the first trouble, I think.”

“So do I,” I told her. “We’ll have to see who wins the last one. That’s the one that matters.”

*   *   *

It was a new café, closer and maybe a little cheaper than the ones we had been to before. The coffee was not up to Vienna standards but not at all bad.

“You will take pictures of the Willows?”

I nodded. “Film and electronic. The first to use if I can, the second for backup.”

“It will not be good, you show everything.”

“I won’t show everything in the book. What I decide to show will depend on the text, the stuff I’m going to write.” Honesty made me add, “And my editor. Editors are pure hell.”

“Many things are from hell,” said a small man in black at the next table. A cartoonist I know would have made him a mouse. He had the bright eyes and the scared daredevil look, so a mouse with black clothes and a backward collar. “I’ve come to help you deal with them.”

I just stared.

He stood up, picking up his plate and coffee cup. “I am Papa Zenon.” He put his stuff on our table and pulled up a chair. “You were not at the Willows.”

“You’re right. I overslept.”

“Many times. I was told I would find you there. It is a bad place? You have need of me, it seem.”

“We have find someone,” Martya told him. “We do not wish to be troubled.”

His smile was almost a grin. “By those who dwell in hell or the authorities?”

“We do not wish to be troubled at all. She have show herself to me in a mirror and is dead. You know? Who wish trouble by those others you name? No one, I think.”

The priest talked to me. “How long since…?” He drew a finger across his throat.

“Years,” I told him. “I don’t know what killed her.”

“Bones only?”

I shook my head. “Pretty much the whole body. The arms and legs and so on.”

“If I lay her to rest,” the priest said, “it must be in consecrated ground.”

Martya said, “This is what we wish, so she be at peace.”

“We must have a coffin, also.” The priest looked troubled. “She is large?”

“Small,” I said. “A small woman, very thin.”

“Yes. Speak more.”

“I was just thinking that it may not be possible to straighten the body out without tearing it up. We haven’t tried.”

Martya said, “She is like so,” and demonstrated, pulling her feet onto the seat of her chair and clasping her knees. “Only more than this. I cannot because I am…”

“More womanly,” the priest suggested.

“Yes, yes! Like that, Papa.”

“It will be a strange coffin. I do not know that I could obtain such a thing.”

“I know!” Martya looked at me triumphantly. “We must use one of your clothes boxes.” She turned back to the priest. “They are large, most strong. They do not let the water in, I think.”

“They’d leak in wet dirt,” I told her, “and I wouldn’t give you one even if it didn’t. Couldn’t we buy a suitcase here?”

The priest nodded. “Of course. As for the rest, you must find a roll of waterproof plastic, and tape. We will wrap your luggage many times in this and seal him with the tape. I will bury her aboveground so she may remain more dry.”

I must have looked dumb, because he smiled and said, “You shall see. Tonight?”

“Yes. Martya and I will buy a suitcase as soon as we leave here.”

“Let us meet at the Willows tonight.”

I nodded. “What time?”

“An hour after sunset. Do you fear the wolves?”

I shook my head.

“You are a brave man.” He grinned. “I, also!” He rose and blessed us, and was out the door before I could thank him.

“He didn’t pay,” I told Martya. “I can pick up his bill, I suppose.”

“You are a fool. He is a spy of the JAKA.”

For a moment or two I tried to collect myself, sipping coffee and looking around at the shabby, cheerful room in which we sat—the mismatched chairs and the worn carpet, the yellowed hunting prints on the walls and the flowery cracked saucer that had held my cup. They told me (quietly and sadly, like old ladies who know they may never get up from mama’s old chaise longue, never get out of the warm, friendly bed) that there had been aristocrats here once, with Strauss waltzes at the castle and commoners who pulled off their caps to the countess—commoners who had been happier and richer and one hell of a lot freer than their great-grandkids were here in the Democratic Republic. When I thought all that I never imagined that people would make a religion out of it, but I was about to find out.

“You did not know this?” Martya asked. “That he spy for the JAKA?”

I shook my head.

“The little man who come from the ministry send him. So he is a spy. He thinks you will know. I think the same. You gave him money.”

I nodded. “A hundred dollars.”

“So he must tell those who sit at desks that you are watched and all will be well. But you will know you are watched.”

“And be
umsichtig
.”

“I do not know that word, but yes.”

“It was nice of him.”

“For us, yes. For him better. And now?”

“Finish eating.”

“We are almost finish. And then?”

“Buy a suitcase, the biggest we can find, and take pictures of the Willows.”

*   *   *

That went well enough at first. Martya went with me and helped put the body in the suitcase we bought. I could have locked it—there was a little flat key that any kid could have replaced with a paperclip—but I left it unlocked, figuring that Papa Zenon might want to sprinkle the body with holy water or something.

After that I took pictures of Martya, mostly to show the scale of things. She was pretty small and made the rooms look humongous. There were five or six of her coming down the big staircase, and we even built a new fire in the fireplace where my fire had been the night before. Martya got it going with one of the candles we had bought for our lantern, something I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of. After I got the fireplace shots she said she was tired and went home. I stuck around, taking a few pictures here and a few more there. Most of them were in rooms I haven’t talked about in this, and some were up on the second floor. There was a third floor, too, but I did not go up there.

The most interesting room I found was on the ground floor, anyway. It was the master bedroom. You could tell right off that it was the master bedroom even if it was not very big. For one thing, there was a great big bed right in the middle of it, a really high bed with a tester and a little two-step ladder so you could climb into it. For another thing, the ceiling was all one big picture painted right on the plaster, naked girls having a picnic in the woods. There were trees and wildflowers and all that, and a guy with horns like a goat’s peeking out of the bushes to look at them. Some of the paint was gone and some of the plaster had fallen but I liked it anyway and when it was new it must really have been something, even if the girls were kind of fat.

There was a chest of drawers and a fireplace and some other stuff, but the big thing for me was that picture. I must have taken twenty shots of it, trying to get it right. It was hard to get all of it in, or even most of it, and it was hard to light even with the strobes. I had just gotten the best shot of all when I heard somebody tapping on the front door.