Lights Out in the Reptile House (19 page)

While they were working on the candies she showed him a folded piece of paper by lifting it slightly above the top of her breast pocket and tapping it down again. She took him aside. “This is what convinced Mother,” she whispered. “They sent us notification of Nicholas's death today. A day early. The date's for Monday. He was on his way home with me when it arrived.”

“You say to yourself, be patient, act responsibly, and one of these days things'll be quiet again,” Mrs. Schiele said. “And then—one piece of bad luck like this.” She eyed the half-empty suitcase, clearly wondering if she dared repack her things. David was reading a small book from the bag between his legs:
Dr. Catchfly: Fantastic Adventures in the World of Insects
. “I'm so confused,” she finally added. She seemed to be getting angrier. “You don't know what to do. After a while you only think of the children. You think, what'll become of the children?”

“We're not the first family to be brought here,” Leda said.

“We're the first family
I
know,” Mrs. Schiele said. “We didn't
know
the other families in those cases.”

Leda turned away.

Karel put his hand on her wrist. Mrs. Schiele sat by herself on the folding chair away from them all and touched her eyes and hair and clothes in small repetitious cycles. He had a momentary sense of how put-upon and abandoned she felt. She'd always been frightened of most things, and now her fear was more comprehensive.

“Nicholas, I need to talk to David a minute,” Leda said quietly. “Can I do that?” She nodded to encourage him. Nicholas stood and walked to the other side of the room. Once there he put his hand on the wall and seemed to be studying its texture.

“David, they're going to talk to us soon, one by one,” Leda said, her voice low. “And they're going to want to know about my books. The books I kept in the special place. Now, Nicholas doesn't know about them and Mom already knows what to say. What are
you
going to say if they ask?” She was holding him by both arms.

“The books?” David said. He was clinging to his toy boat.

“You know, the books, the secret books,” Leda said. She was keeping her voice calm, but Karel could hear the desperation in it. “Now everything depends on you. Remember what I whispered to you in the truck? What are you going to say?”

“In the truck?” David said.

“David!” she said, and shook him hard, once. He began to cry.

“David, don't cry, don't cry,” she said, near despair. Across the room Karel could see Nicholas looking over, unsure what was going on and sad that he had so little he could contribute.

“What will you say, honey?” Leda persisted.

“The man brought them in when you were out,” David half-wailed. She hugged him tightly.

“That's it, that's it, honey,” she said. “Did I know him?”

“No,” he wailed.

“Did any of us know him?” she said. She was looking up at Karel.

“No,” David said. He pulled away and rubbed his eyes.

She let him go. He sat down and focused on his boat with fierce concentration. She put her hands over her face and remained where she was, kneeling.

Karel crouched beside her. “They're going to interrogate you?” he asked. She didn't respond. She brought her hands down from her face. “Are you scared?” he said.

“Yes I am,” she said, without shame. “Very.”

Kehr opened the door and signaled. Karel leaned forward impulsively and kissed Leda on the cheek. “I'll get him to help,” he whispered. “It'll be okay.”

She made her mouth into a tight line and nodded. Mrs. Schiele stood up and gave him a hug. Kehr waited at the door with an easygoing patience.

Outside in the hall he raised a hand when Karel was about to speak. He shut the door and led Karel in silence to a small room a few doors down. The corporal was gone. The room was dark, and Kehr sat him in front of a pane of glass and then left, shutting the door behind him.

The pane glowed with light and Karel realized he was gazing in on another room. There was a bare black table centered in it with a hard-backed chair on either side. It was absolutely quiet.

Kehr interrogated them alone. They came into the room one by one. Karel could hear nothing.

Mrs. Schiele was first. Karel sat in the dark and watched her and heard nothing. She gestured and swung her arms around, leaned back as if to physically avoid certain questions, leaned forward to seem confidential. He imagined her chatter: defenses of Leda mixed in with scraps of old fights and resentments, protests against the injustice of all this, assurances that someone somewhere had made a comic mistake. Toward the end she gave Kehr a sly look and Karel figured she was attempting some sort of maneuver. Kehr looked bored.

Nicholas was next. He was there only a few minutes. He gripped the edge of the table and sat upright, making a visible effort to be alert. When Kehr stood up and dismissed him, Karel could see in his face his sense that he'd failed again to provide something that somebody wanted or would approve of.

Leda followed. He sat right up on top of the glass and he still couldn't hear anything. She faced Kehr with the same calmness Karel knew and loved from the afternoons in her garden, that expression that was at once open and placid and intelligent. She was questioned a longer time than the first two, but when she got up he knew she was still safe.

He shook with excitement and fear waiting for David. There was some delay. He put his fingertips to the glass and they trembled across it like something dropped into hot oil. When David finally came in, Kehr acted differently, sitting on the floor in the corner as if too shy to confront him. David had his boat and sailed it back and forth across the table.

Karel waited in something that was getting to be like agony. Kehr was still in the corner, and now David was talking to him. He stayed in the corner but finally put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists and said something, and the boy instantly looked warier. They talked some more. Kehr stood, still shy, and approached the table. He had his hands in his pockets. He took them out. He swung both down on the table so hard the concussion made David jump and the boat flew into the air. He shouted something, and the boy started crying. Karel was up on his feet, helpless. Kehr shouted again, banged the table again. He shouted. David started to wail, though Karel could still hear nothing. Kehr lifted his end of the table and crashed it down, intent on David. He shouted. David put his hands over his ears and began shouting back.

Karel lunged for the mirror. “Don't tell him! Don't
tell
him!” he called, pounding on the glass with open palms, but he knew he already had.

“Here's the situation,” Kehr said to him later, the two of them alone in the room. Karel was moving back and forth in agitation as if tied to a perpetually restless little animal. “She kidnapped her brother from a state institution. She's in possession of subversive literature concerned with the overthrow of the state. There's evidence she's part of a group helping to produce such literature.”

“What?” Karel said.

Kehr held his hands up, as if to say he wasn't enjoying this either. “We found ink, we found blank paper, we found boxes for the paper. And the younger brother told us strange men drop packages at the house.”

Karel's mouth dropped open. “None of that's true,” he said.

“She's confused,” Kehr said, as if that were the end of the subject. “The state isn't in the business of trying to fill its prisons. I'm not in that business. You help me, I'll help her.”

“What? What do you want me to do?” Karel asked.

Someone in this town was running the partisan cell for the area, Kehr said. He thought Karel knew who it was.

“Is
that
what you're doing here?” Karel said.

Kehr didn't answer. Then he said, “All I want from you is a confirmation of what I already believe.”

“I told you I don't know any partisans,” Karel said. “I don't
know
any.”

Kehr shrugged, as if he had all the time in the world.

“What'll happen to her?” Karel asked.

“There are people in our prison system who are absolutely reprehensible,” Kehr said. “I could tell you stories.”

Karel was breathing through his mouth. Sweat appeared on his back and forehead like magic.

The sort of people who believed any scruple could be overcome by a good beating, Kehr said.

“Oh, God,” Karel said. “Oh God.”

“We use the law as far as it serves us,” Kehr said. “Then we move to other methods.”

Karel stood and paced. He pulled at his hair. “I don't know anybody who's a partisan,” he said.

Kehr grabbed him by the shirt collar, so quickly it terrified him. They were face to face. Karel could smell mint. “Listen,” Kehr said. “Leave your hair alone and try to concentrate. You've been getting by without decisions. With inertia decorated with sentiment.
That's over
.” He let go, calmer. Now, he said. Mistakes became errors only when persisted in. He smoothed the front of his jacket with his spread palm. He needed Karel's decision.

Karel sat, blinking back tears of frustration and fear.

“You just want to be left alone, with this girl and your reptiles,” Kehr said. Karel nodded, after a moment. “Well, even the little man with no ambitions needs help just to be left alone. Like men joining hands in the surf against the waves.” He leaned forward when Karel didn't respond. “Am I
clear?
” he shouted. “Am I coming through to you?”

Karel nodded, swallowing. He was looking straight ahead, at the glass. There was no one in the other room.

“I need your answer now,” Kehr said. He straightened up and went to the door. He put his hand on the handle.

“Albert Delp,” Karel said. As he said it he felt the earth open and himself fall into it.

Kehr sat back down. Karel felt hyperaware, as if his fingertips had gone to sleep. His head tingled. He blinked often and tried to focus. Kehr quizzed him on details. Karel told him as if he'd gotten on a slide and it was now much too steep to stop about the tea cozy, the mysterious visitor, the secret space under the false bottom of the kitchen cabinet. Kehr, after rechecking, looked him over from head to toe and then stood and congratulated him quietly. He shook his hand. He left the room.

Karel sat where he was left, not moving.

At some point Stasik came back in and helped him up and led him down the hall and into the room where the Schieles had been. They were waiting there.

Mrs. Schiele hugged him immediately, and Leda looked grateful but wary. He still felt numb. Mrs. Schiele talked about repaying him and having known Karel would help, and Nicholas told him they had train tickets to go to the capital that night. They were all hugging him goodbye. Leda hugged him and he could feel her relief and happiness and smell her damp hair and he believed as he hugged her back that everything else in his life was some sort of vanity except his love for her.

Stasik led them all outside to a car that was to take them two towns over to the train station. Karel wasn't going. Kehr was nowhere to be seen. While they loaded the car's trunk, David was the only one who was able to stay calm, which was only right, he said, since he was a future Kestrel. He asked if he could sit near the window on the train as he got into the car.

Stasik took the portable radio out of Nicholas's hands as he climbed in and dropped it on the pavement and stamped on it. “No radios,” he explained.

Leda was the last one in. She turned to Karel.

“Why didn't you tell me you were making pamphlets?” he blurted.

She looked at him in surprise and shot a look at Stasik, who was obliviously jamming the trunk shut.

“What did you tell them? What did you do for them?” she demanded. “Why are they letting us go?”

“Get in the car,” he said. Stasik had come around and stood behind them. He was suddenly terrified that it all might collapse. “Get in the car.”

“What'd you do? What'd you tell them?” she said.

“Ask them,” he said.

“
You are not them. They are not you
,” Leda said.

“All right, lovebirds,” Stasik said. He loaded Leda into the car like a particularly awkward plant and shut the door. He banged on the hood and the driver put the car in gear and drove away.

Karel stood where he was, watching her disappear. Stasik chuckled and went into the station, energetically cleaning an ear with his little finger. When he came back out he asked if Karel wanted a ride home. Karel didn't. He went home instead by a shortcut he knew. He moved as if asleep and appreciated with an aesthetic detachment a far-off yellow streetlamp over the black twist of a path. Farther on he caught at a deserted intersection his own reflection sliding along the darkened glass of a passing staff car.

At home he dreamed about an old teacher taken from his house and dragged down steps covered with fruit and vegetable rinds, thrown into a snake pit (the snakes Karel couldn't identify, and they limited themselves to disinterested coiling and the first stages of courtship). The sequence ended with a strange hybrid of anole and skink sitting on the teacher's head and applauding with its fore-paws.

When he didn't get out of bed in the morning Kehr came up to his room and pushed open the door and sat heavily on the patched coverlet like a dad whose patience was pretty much exhausted. He tossed Karel a nectarine and said, “I suppose we're in official mourning now over our loss of innocence.”

Karel said, “I don't feel good.” He set the nectarine on the mattress beside him, and it wobbled when he shifted his weight. He kept the top of his sheet where it was, below his eyes.

“This is a tragedy,” Kehr said. “It really is. Here's a man who's doing everything he can to bury this country and poor you had to help turn him in.”