The Stars Can Wait (11 page)

“She must have worried, though. Because sometime later, I suppose after fretting and arguing it out in her head, she told Anna Malewska. And Anna was furious. None of us had ever seen such fury, though of course we didn't know then what stirred it in her. You should have seen her, marching through the village to the station! She went to Paweł that night and demanded he stop all his business with the smuggling, and stop it immediately.

“You see, Galileo, she was a bird keeper, and Paweł her falcon. She let him fly now and then, and hunt and dive and create mischief abroad, but always only in a circle around her. And when she felt it was time she would draw the falcon back in, remind him whose care he was under and upon whom he relied. And then he would become as harmless as a common cockerel. Of every man in the village, Paweł understood this best. He knew his calling to her.

“And because of that young woman, that young man Paweł Sófka, barely older than you, remember, agreed to find another way to live. Perhaps if he had been quicker about it things would have continued harmlessly, with none offended. Who can tell with such things, like guessing the outcome of a rolling die? No one, not even me. Because Anna's pleas came only a few days too late.

“Paweł was already committed to one more night run through the forest, on the midnight between Saturday and Sunday. A small contraband, fruit and fish. He had given his word to the others, and you know Paweł is a man of his word. For Paweł, his word is his act; no gap exists between the two. Furthermore, if you ask me, he must have known full well then that to bow out of a smugglers' pact is like signing the warrant for your own death.

“Without telling Anna, he made what was to be his last illegal border crossing. Now, the way that team did it sometimes, especially with the smaller contrabands, was to divide the run between two men. One would take the goods halfway, meeting another man at the border point, often marked in the forest by only a few stakes, painted Polish colours on one side and German on the other, and sometimes even left unmarked. The second man would then finish the job. This is how it was arranged on this occasion. Paweł was to do the first part, the Polish run.

“And so he arrived at the forest at midnight, resolved to make this the last time he would come to this place. He carried two loaded sacks and a pistol. The route he would take was imprinted on his mind; if he closed his eyes he was already running it. On the stroke of midnight he began his trip. I dare say, Galileo, that he thought of many things as he ran—of Anna particularly, and of the new kind of life they might soon begin together. It would have been a warm night, despite the hour.

“Eventually he reached the rotted border stakes, bent in the earth by crawling tree roots. He had no light. The darkness of the forest whispered around him. And the second man was not there. Only empty night, waiting. Well, Paweł stood and waited too, growing nervous. Still the second man did not turn up. Paweł was just about to turn back, relieved, I'm sure, that nothing had happened, so nothing could go wrong, when he heard a noise coming from beyond the borderline on the German side. The noise came and then vanished and then came again. Paweł hesitated. He took one step into German territory. Then another and another. The noise seemed always ahead of him and he took more paces to follow it, always ready to run the short distance back to safety.

“And then from the darkness emerged men, three or four of them. Men with torches and guns, German police. Your brother turned around and saw more behind him. Trapped. No going back.

“Men whose business is deception often betray each other. The second man had done just this. Perhaps he had got wind of Paweł's plans to quit the team and wished to punish him or cut him off before he became a dangerous liability. Perhaps he had simply made some deal with the German authorities. It is impossible to tell. Whatever the truth was, Paweł had no choice now but to run, ever further into German soil. He dropped the sacks and bolted, and the police gave chase. He sprinted until his lungs must have felt like bursting. Sprinted and sprinted. He knew much of the forest, which gave him the advantage. And he was fast, fast like a startled wild horse. He ran through the night and the torches grew smaller behind him. Then they started firing. Shots booming in the early morning darkness, Galileo, louder in that still forest than a dynamite charge in a coal face. Must have been quite a sound.

“But Paweł escaped them all. Nothing could touch him. Until finally he could run no more. Exhausted, he found the twisted overgrown stump of a tree and sat himself upon it. He could never have known for sure if he had lost his pursuers. Perhaps he even resigned himself to the possibility that his luck had run its course. Because the story is that Paweł didn't attempt to hide, didn't even attempt to keep moving. Just sat there, waiting for something to change. Perhaps he sat down as a way of saying to them, to everyone, ‘Do with me what you will; there's no more left that I can give.'

“Occasionally he would hear a volley of shots echoing up from the trees. Gradually the volleys grew closer, and still he sat there. And then from nowhere a stray bullet, fired at random by one of the border patrol, found its target. It had been slowed by the foliage all around, you see, so when it hit Paweł it would hardly have moved him. It would have hit him gently, like a pin piercing a tyre: deflating him. It entered the left side of his chest and sneaked through a rib and grazed his lung. You've seen the scar there, haven't you, boy?”

He had; he had seen it! A thousand times he had seen it!

“They found him half an hour later, still sitting on the stump, one hand stemming the blood. He was arrested immediately. When the German police chief reached him, dragging his feet and wheezing from all the running, he stopped and unholstered his revolver. Then he pushed the catch and flipped open the chamber and tipped out one of the bullets. Held it up for Paweł to see, held it up reflecting the moon between his thumb and forefinger. Showed him what hit him.

“The rest? Well, the rest is a sad affair. Much of it you know or have seen, without knowing its true cause. Paweł was laid up in a hospital in Oppeln for three months and then thrown into Oppeln prison for another half year. When your parents found out they were truly shocked, I'm telling you. Your mother raged for weeks, wrote Paweł long letters about his disgrace, his betrayal of his family's trust. And your father—your father just seemed to close himself up, like a book you've lost interest in. You couldn't see inside him. He was still and solid, like brick. And sad. A sadness had him; he lost his fighter's strength. Your mother despaired at it. When the disease came on your father so soon after, a part of her, I think, blamed Paweł for his yielding to it. It shook your family at its heart, boy; I know you must have felt the vibrations. Any child with brains would have, and you've never been short of those.

“It must be said, though, that Anna Malewska did her best to argue Paweł's case, for she understood his predicament, despite his neglecting to tell her about that final job. She loved him, you see, and once love has been built, the foundations can take a lot of damage before they give way. At least that's my opinion. And I've known love.

“And Paweł? A change came over him in prison. He wrote letters back to his mother and to Anna, his lover, telling of his guilt and of his shame. He spoke of wanting to make amends, to find principle and structure in his life. When a man does not have structure, Galileo, his confidence in himself fades and falters. Each one of us needs a frame to hang ourselves upon, a frame of principles and notions and actions which we believe in. Otherwise we are simply baggy skins, empty ghosts of people. I think in prison young Paweł first realized this.

“He spoke of wanting to join the army. Or, rather, of the army as his last hope of gainful work. Of course, boy, this was not true. There are always employers here who are prepared to hire a young man with strength, and in any case the Polish authorities would have no real issue with Paweł after his release, since he was captured in Germany. But he got it into his head to join the army. Perhaps he thought he could find his frame there. He was seventeen years old, one year before he would have been called up for compulsory service.

“When he got out of Oppeln prison, he came home only to apologize to his family and to Anna. He poured his heart out to them. Hoped they would forgive him. Then he travelled to the recruiting office in Katowice and lied about his age and signed the papers.

“They did forgive him, eventually, your mother and father, though the relationship between them all was never the same. A darkness slept always over them, casting its shadow. Anna was the only one to forgive him completely, forgive him as if nothing ever had happened.

“Paweł served in the Polish army for five years. By the time he left, your father had passed away. When he finally came back for good, his spirit had settled itself somewhat and he caused less trouble in the village. But there was an added intensity to him, a concentration of the old Paweł into something harder and sharper and more deep … within itself. He hardly spoke to the other villagers. He devoted himself to Anna. She became his fiancée and they lived together like monks, like hermits. In their own world. Then in 'thirty-eight he signed up again.

“But you know all this, Galileo; all this you know. And now you know it all. No one ever told you before because they believed what I have said to you already: The past is best left to the past. And let me tell you I feel cruel and like an idiot for telling you all this. But then you had to have it. You had to have it.”

Finally, Dylong had finished. He sat and looked at Gracian, the bat-wing shadows flitting over his face.

“Is this all true?” Gracian said at last.

“As true as it could be.”

“Are you sure? Did you see it with your own eyes? You couldn't have.”

“I know everything that happens in this village. I told you; I am the eye that sees all.” And Dylong's eyes were bright, but behind them shone a deep regretfulness.

“Now let's go,” he said, “before someone takes us for conspirators and we end up in the camps. I tell you, boy, I don't know who's worse, the ones that invaded or the ones that've lived here all their lives.”

Dylong stood. “This village has turned against itself, like a dog biting on its own tail.”

With that, Dylong placed the flat of his hand on Gracian's back, and the boy stood, unable to feel his legs. He swayed once and steadied himself, pushing his hands into the coats. With his words, Dylong had forged a lens in the boy's head and peered down into it. Gracian felt a sense of invasion. He did not know what Dylong's story might bring; perhaps nothing would change, or perhaps a door had swung open, never to be closed again.

His head was reeling. He thought to himself,
The time is confused.
He thought to himself,
There's no knowing it.
He thought of Paweł's face and his mother's wooden spoon and the snow coming and then fading. He thought of Kukła's childlike pipe and Dylong's wide grin and the humming of heaters and the look in the eye of a German guard who had, on a day, let him pass: a look at once violent and furtive and knowing. He thought of the changes that had come over his own body. He thought of black sheets of coal, bruised eyes, telescopes, and the stars above, and he thought of Anna Malewska reaching up to touch her hair.

Three

 

 

 

By the window in his room in his house, under an early morning sky high and wide and without cloud, stood the boy. His right hand held a simple crude telescope swinging slowly by his side, to and fro, to and fro.

The boy stood, and the telescope swung. Before him was his own reflection and beyond that was the darkened field and through the field ran the black form of the boy's brother, passing to the bottom and then vanishing. When the figure was no longer to be seen, the boy's eyes withdrew to his own face caught in the glass and withdrew still further until he saw the face of a young child.

*   *   *

The young child walked into his room, kicking his feet and swinging his arms and puffing his cheeks with air because he was bored. He walked up and down awhile and then began to run. He ran in wide circles around through the light slanting oblique across the room, his arms crooked out in front of him and making noises with his mouth. He was riding a galloping horse, because he liked the thought of riding a horse fast out along the land; he supposed he'd always liked the idea of escaping even now when he is a young child.

His brother rode horses. He did not see his brother often.

Soon the young child stopped galloping on his horse. He was bored again. He lay down on the floorboards and rested his chin on his elbow and then saw something in the corner of his eye. It was under his brother's bed. He crawled over to it, bored still but curious. It was a sack, made from material that was coarse and the colour of brick dust. He pulled on the sack and felt it was heavy. He had to get two hands on it and then pull it out, drag it out; his arms were too small, his hands were too small, but he could move it. Until it was there in front of him and he sat cross-legged on the floor looking at it. Then he reached forward and pulled it open.

Oranges. He couldn't believe his eyes. Round and fat, full of juice, and the colour of sunset. He plunged his arm inside just to feel them pack around it, then curled his hand about one he couldn't see and took it out. Then he peeled it, the pith jamming in his nails and the juice flowing down his wrist in rivulets. He ate. He ate another and then another. They were the sweetest he had tasted.

And now a figure stood in the doorway and he was caught there in his surprise, surrounded by slips of discarded peel, the flesh of an orange midway to his lips. It was his sister standing there. Her name was Francesca. Shamed, he proffered the uneaten fruit to her. She ignored it and concentrated on taking slow small steps toward him. Her eyes were wide and suspicious.