Lights Out in the Reptile House (13 page)

The local policeman handling the six-block grid where Karel lived was an elderly sergeant named Grebing. Karel knew him from hanging around the café. He was a harmless old man. He did his best to avoid trouble and cultivated a hearing problem partially for that reason. He liked to cadge fruit from the market stands.

Grebing was doing his best with what
The People's Voice
called spontaneous outbursts of patriotism. The outbursts took the form of late-night vandalism. The victims were those who had been or might have been supporters of the Republic, those in the town records who had voted against the party in the very first referendums. Grebing usually arrived in time to assist in the clean-up. The newspaper openly lamented such lawlessness, however well-intentioned, and listed in its sympathetic account of the damage done to each home the home's address, usually with the comment that it had not been entirely destroyed. Following such announcements it usually was.

The radio announced the local police were being directed by the Security Service to assist in the firmer measures soon to be instituted. Grebing, apparently, was handling Karel's grid.

He pedaled past while Karel watched from his window. His cap sat high on his head; it looked as if he'd forgotten his and borrowed someone else's. He coasted to a stop at the Fetschers' front hedge. The chain rattled. He got off the bike and it fell over with a crash. He stopped and then decided against lifting it, and tore his sleeve on the handbrake straightening up. Karel could hear the sound where he was.

A light went on in Mrs. Fetscher's house. Grebing struggled with the latch of the low gate and closed it behind him.

Karel left the window and went outside. A bat swooped and fluttered above his head in the dark. A truck engine coughed.

At her front door Mrs. Fetscher was looking at Grebing. Her eyes were flat and her expression suggested there was nothing more to say.

“Karel, come here,” she called.

Karel came around into her yard, stepping over the gate. There was a rustling in the cactus bed near his feet.

“Sergeant Grebing is arresting me,” she said. Her voice was neutral.

Grebing protested. He was trying to tuck the torn part up his jacket sleeve. It was protective custody, to keep her safe from the hoodlums.

“I thought he had news of the investigation about my husband,” Mrs. Fetscher said. She ran the palm of her hand across her forehead. “He informs me otherwise.”

Grebing, embarrassed, held out the sheet of paper for Karel to see. “I think it's a small thing,” he said. “These people are supposed to gather at the Town Hall. It's a small thing.”

“I'm going to call my sister,” Mrs. Fetscher said. She seemed to be looking at Karel. “I assume you'll wait.”

“Might I wait inside?” Grebing asked.

“No,” Mrs. Fetscher said. She left the doorway.

Grebing lowered his head and stepped back and forth in place while he waited. He glanced at his bike and then at Karel. He looked as if he thought there was a chance he had something to worry about in that regard. It was colder now, and he shivered, maybe to demonstrate his unsuitability for this kind of work. He had no weapon.

Mrs. Fetscher returned. She was holding Eski up by her chest and carrying the other piece of the matched suitcases her husband had taken. Eski's ears bobbed.

“I don't know if Eski can come, Mrs. Fetscher,” Grebing said.

“Eski can come,” she said.

Grebing knitted his eyebrows with sadness, thinking probably of the upcoming reprimand. “Is that all you'll need?” he asked. “You may be—”

“That's all,” she said. To Karel she added, “My sister will be coming in a week or so. You'll help her if there's anything she needs?”

Karel told her he would.

“By then you'll be back, I think,” Grebing said.

She led them to the gate. She stooped and set Eski down. While the dog urinated she cleared away with her free hand some peppergrass from the walkway. She said, “Karel, you'll give these flowers some water?” She said goodbye. Grebing offered her his bike and she said, “You ride it.” He did, weaving slowly and erratically along in an effort to maintain a slow enough pace for her, circling her like an suitor while Karel watched. She kept walking, back straight, with Eski's ears bobbing over her shoulder, all the way down and into the square, and out of sight.

The next morning Karel was in his kitchen early, making coffee even though there was no sugar. He washed the brown ring out of his cup and thought about things he could have done for Mrs. Fetscher. He imagined a protest that stopped everybody or his hand on Grebing's arm, and thought these were things Leda might do, not him.

With the coffee ready he didn't want any. There was nothing he felt like having for breakfast anymore.

Someone banged at the back door. When he opened it, Leda looked at him critically. “You just get up?” she asked.

“Yes. I just got up,” he said. He wiped his eye. “It's early.”

“We have to go back and see Nicholas,” she told him.

“You want some coffee?” he asked. He didn't remember if there was another cleanable cup or not.

“We have to go now,” she said.

He looked at her, conscious of horrible early-morning breath. It dawned on him that he was still in tattered shorts and a T-shirt that had egg on it. His hair, too, probably looked like a rat's nest. What she was saying at that point formed in his mind, like letters becoming visible through disturbed water.

“You want to go where?” he said. “We were just there yesterday.”

“We have to go back,” Leda said. “My aunt called. She wasn't going to, she told me, but she was worried. Something's going on.”

He looked at her blankly. They stood facing each other in the doorway.

“My aunt?” she prodded. “With the son in the Civil Guard? My cousin?

“Yeah,” he said. “What's going on?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don't
know
. She said her son told her that one of their units had gone to Nicholas's hospital, the whole thing was supposed to be very secret, last night.”

“What would they go there for?” he asked. He tried to tuck in his shirt.

“
Kar
el,” she said.

She waited for him to dress right where she was, in the doorway, and called out, “Can't you find your clothes?” when he didn't reappear immediately. He barely had time to lock the door, and he followed her in silence for a while, feeling taken for granted and peevish. He told her finally about Grebing and Mrs. Fetscher.

She nodded, ahead of him. Had she already known? She walked faster.

At the iron gate they were told by a new nurse with no nametag that Mrs. Beghé had had an accident and was recuperating. The news increased Leda's agitation geometrically.

“Where's my brother?” she said shrilly. “Where's Nicholas Schiele?”

“Hsh,” the nurse said. “You can't visit anyone today.”

“
Where's my brother
?” Leda demanded.

The woman winced and made conciliatory petting gestures at the noise. She suggested they come back Saturday.

“Where is he?” Leda shouted. The woman looked over her shoulder and back at them, biting her lip, and then produced the spatula key and opened the gate. She stopped Leda when she tried to push by. “
I'll
fetch him,” she said. “You wait here.”

“What happened here last night?” Leda asked.

The woman looked at her carefully. “You're concerned, I know,” she said. “I'll fetch him. I'm sure whatever happened, happened.” She was one of those adults Karel was always meeting who believed if they said something it had to mean something.

They waited in the courtyard. Leda said to herself, “I should go in there,” but stayed where she was.

A few of the patients were out, standing around, and looked at them curiously. Windows of the reception area were broken, and there was a tricycle wheel near the door. Otherwise things looked the same.

Karel looked at the patients, full of doubts. Suppose something had happened? What could they do about it? Make things worse?

An impossibly short girl walked up to them and stared, holding her doll by the foot. The doll's head thumped through the dirt. Why was she in here? he found himself wondering. He could see nothing wrong with her.

“Did some men come last night?” Leda asked her, bending over. “Did something happen last night?”

The little girl smiled, and righted the doll and twisted its head decisively, as if she knew all about it.

“Here we are,” the nurse said, leading Nicholas out of the reception area. He looks as tired as I am, Karel thought. Probably got him out of bed, too.

Leda flew to him and hugged him. He hugged her back with one arm, rubbing an eye with the other hand.

“Hi, Leda,” he said. “You must've made a big stink.” He smiled.

Leda looked over his shoulder at the nurse. “Can we talk for just one second?” she asked.

The nurse, with an expression meant to convey that there was no end to the extent to which she could be taken advantage of, withdrew to a safe distance and remained there, wounded.

“What happened?” Leda said. “You're all right?”

“I'm okay,” Nicholas said. “I don't know what happened. I was asleep.”

“You don't know anything?” Leda said.

“A lot of people are gone,” Nicholas said. “Mrs. Beghé, both Willems.”

“Who took them? Where'd they go?” Leda said. “Are they coming back?”

“Willem's brother said the Civil Guard,” Nicholas said. “I don't know, because I was asleep. Willem's brother said he was pretending. They took the girl they just operated on. Andrea.” He pointed to his head.

Karel said, “The one with the head that was shaved? Like this?”

Nicholas said that was the one, and Karel felt his stomach shift.

“Are they coming back?” Leda said. To the nurse, who had come closer, she said, “What happened here? Is he safe?”

“Everything's fine,” the nurse said. She seemed to feel that was her signal to come back. “And you're to get out of here now, before I get into more trouble.”

But Leda was not to be budged until two orderlies appeared and carried her out of the courtyard. A third escorted Karel by locking his arm behind his back. Nicholas waved to them before being led back inside.

She watched her brother disappear from outside the gate and told Karel they were going to the police. He asked why.

“You don't understand
any
thing, do you?” she demanded. “Don't you get it? The Civil Guard took them, I don't know why. But suppose nobody says anything? Suppose it's a test? Suppose they want to see if anyone
cares
what happens to these people?”

“I
thought
of that,” Karel said, but he hadn't. “I just meant what's the point of going to the police.”

Leda didn't answer. Then, halfway there, she said, “I don't know what else to do. At least they're not the Civil Guard. Maybe they can do something. Maybe they know something.”

But his hopes in that regard sank immediately when they entered the station. The crush he'd seen following the declaration of war was gone. The local police's supersession by the Civil Guard and Security Service had clearly turned the station house into a backwater. The waiting room had one other customer, a shy fat man sitting as if hoping he was camouflaged by a nearby potted plant.

The sergeant on duty was eating either an early lunch or a late breakfast. It was spread before him on a sheet of waxed paper, and he eyed them when they came in as if part of his daily routine involved having his meals ruined.

Leda walked up to his desk and said, “I'd like to find out what's going on at the Retention Hospital.”

The sergeant gazed over at Karel as if trying to connect him to an unpleasant memory. He had an unappetizing way of rinsing his mouth with milk before he swallowed it. He said, “Is it about the stolen plants?” He motioned for Karel to sit down.

“No, it's not about stolen plants,” Leda said. “It's about missing people.”

“A girl was in here before about stolen plants,” the sergeant said. He folded a small wedge of sandwich into his mouth. “With everything else that's going on,” he said, mouth full.

“It's not about plants,” Leda said, exasperated. “People are missing, kidnapped, from the hospital.”

“Kidnapped,” the sergeant said. “Hold on, here.” He moved his lunch aside by lifting the corners of the waxed paper and shifting the square over. He scanned papers that had been beneath it. Leda waited.

The fat man, as if a host, indicated for Karel a bowl of nuts on the table. Karel shook his head.

The sergeant looked up sharply and shot Karel a look. Karel attempted to return it or straighten out any misunderstanding until he realized the stupidity of what he was doing and stopped.

“Kidnapped,” the sergeant said with a little more feeling, as if it were one of those familiar and tragic stories one was always hearing: placid dog attacks baby in crib.

Karel paged through a glossy photo magazine called
Community Life
. It was full of beautiful black-and-white pictures of well-oiled and gleaming machine parts and thighs and backs, dramatically lit. There was a two-page spread of a woman high diver in a black bathing suit, her body an arcing T over a tiny pool below. He shut the magazine, and the fat man gestured that he'd like to see.

Leda was explaining the situation to the sergeant, who said finally, “You'll want to speak to the lieutenant,” and left to fetch him.

The lieutenant was thin and deferential and conscious of his posture. It looked as if he resented being called out here for this. He gave the sergeant looks while he listened to Leda. The sergeant, settling back down to his lunch, refused to notice.