Lights Out in the Reptile House (27 page)

He woke with the colder air at night and the patter of sand against his cheek. He could feel the heat coming off him, still trapped in his clothes. When he stirred a large insect stalked a few feet away and then paused to see if it was being pursued. He stood up, sore and chilly, wrapping his arms around himself, spooked, and then continued walking, the slightly more trampled area of the trail whiter in the moonlight. He was not sleepy.

He walked all night. He passed skeletal silhouettes of dead bitter condalia trees and catclaws, and a dead lagoon that apparently had once fed the dead lake. It was filled with reeds that were gray in the moonlight and brittle to the touch. He passed more brush mice and a ground squirrel, and heard bats. In an uneven and rocky gully he found the trail alive with tarantulas moving like dull, sinister flowers.

In the morning he thought he might have seen a bicyclist off on the horizon, a small dark figure against the stillness, but he recognized that he could've been mistaken. He was dizzy. He walked as far as possible while it was still relatively cool and then finally lay down to rest again on the side of a steep wash overhung with peppergrass. The stream on the map was nearby, and he refilled his canteen and washed his face and eyes. He had more water and bread and ate the other plum and fell asleep with his head on his beltpack, his muscles twitchy from the endless walking, and his hands between his thighs.

He woke up terrified of the vague darkness and chill, his mind washed blank of its sense of where he was and what he was doing there. He drank some water in a wary crouch, surprised at how long he had slept, and ate the last of the bread.

The dead lake had been only a few hundred yards away. It was a huge wasteland flat, cratered and broken by traverse cracks so that it looked like an endless horrible cobblestone plain in the moonlight, with things moving distantly across it in various directions.

He changed his shoes and shirt and walked as fast as he could around it while keeping his mind on Leda, until the trail began to climb, and when he crested the ridge and looked back once more at the lake it stretched black and even and still in all directions below him.

He saw a house and a few outbuildings a short way off the trail to the south, silhouetted on another ridgeline, and after some hesitation decided to head for them. There were no lights showing.

He approached from a low draw to stay out of sight, every so often craning his head up to look for movement or danger. When he was very close he crouched low and waited. The front door had been kicked in and a piece of it swung on the lower hinge in a forlorn diagonal. There was no sound from inside, though a shutter clapped gently against its sill every so often. He threw a rock through the open door and ducked down. He got closer and threw a bigger one, and it made a disconcerting crash inside and he lay flat in mortification, but still nothing happened. Finally he got up, brushing off his shorts, and crossed to the door and looked inside.

He could see only as far as the moonlight penetrated, but the house had clearly been ransacked. The smell was horrible. He lost all interest in food, or in spending the night.

He circled around to the back. When he turned the second corner a goat standing against the wall startled him. It moved a short way away and continued grazing, relieved it was not going to be bothered.

He found himself on a rough terrace, flooded with moonlight. Beneath his foot there was a rusty old key, and on the brick wall a hanging twist of wire. He could see off to the east a slope and lights undulating slowly along its base: the national road again. He'd be there by tomorrow, he thought, and let out a small whoop in gratitude and relief.

The smell was still bad, worse than anything he'd smelled. He'd entertained ideas of hunting for food but couldn't bring himself to and thought now he couldn't even sleep here, either. He left the terrace to continue his circuit and kicked the body of a woman covered with flies. They rose up in a small agitated cloud. She was lying on her back and her arm was resting on the stone of the terrace as if she'd made herself comfortable. Her hair was over her face in a black sticky wing. There was another body behind her in the darkness with its legs folded and neck back at a severe angle. He ran blindly away from the house back toward the trail, sending the goat clattering in panic out of his way. The smell and the image stayed with him all the way back to where he'd turned off and longer, and he cried and swung his arms and cursed and felt revolted and horrified, and sorry for himself for ever having seen such a thing.

The bus driver waved him on without even looking at his pass card. He didn't see any soldiers or Civil Guardsmen among the passengers. They looked at him strangely as he came down the aisle. When he settled into his seat a cricket sprang from his pocket.

His head throbbed and he was thirsty and wanted to empty the sand from his shoes. As they crested the hill in long winding turns he kept his face to the window, looking back at the dark green patterns like underwater vegetation on the desert floor below.

At Naklo the bus let him off across the street from the train station. He stood in line to buy his ticket behind a woman who held her baby up against her chest and continually apologized to it. When it was his turn he pushed his money under the slot and held his card up to the glass and again there was no trouble. He bought a pineapple drink from a sidewalk vendor while he waited for the train and drank it slowly, the cup cool in his hand.

Nothing was on schedule, but the noon train ran in the afternoon and the afternoon train at night, so that every so often a train came in right on time because it was the previous train six hours late.

The train came as the sun was setting. They passed a small factory in a narrow valley just outside of town and some small farms before he stopped looking out the window and tried to sleep. A fat man opposite him caused an epic amount of trouble endlessly getting in and out of his seat and finally disappeared before the ticket taker arrived. The ticket taker checked Karel's ticket and pass card and left with them and returned a few minutes later with another official while Karel pretended to doze, his heart thumping. The ticket taker prodded him and returned the card and ticket and passed on.

He slept. There were creakings, snores, conversations, jolts. He woke every now and then at the water stops, hearing the trainmen murmuring. When he woke again they were stopped at a quiet station and nothing seemed to be happening. He saw moths around the light illuminating the station sign. A discarded timetable stirred and fluttered on the platform. Somebody coughed. He could make out part of a loopy painted slogan on the side wall:——
STAYS.
Another train passed with a noisy rush and reflected his window and he saw himself spying out of a fluctuating plane of lights and then he was gone. Their train started again, giving all the passengers' heads a lazy shake, and he watched the station and its water tower diminish around a curve with the rails crossing ties and spinning into the darkness and then he was dozing again, more exhausted than he'd realized, thinking about Leda and relaxing himself as much as he could with the steady clicking and rocking that were taking him away.

He felt the humidity and salt air in the closed compartment before he saw the sea. They came in along the high ridge of the cove, and he gazed down on the warehouses and storage tanks around the docks and the harbor glittering beyond them. There were boats, more than he remembered. The train let him out at the top of the city, and he swung his beltpack around so it rested on his hips and began his way down a road so steep the houses along it could only be entered from the top floors. He kept his eyes on the harbor.

He had Leda's address, but it was too early, and he was hungry besides. As he got lower, shops appeared on both sides of the street. He passed garages, a butcher's shop, a fabric store, a dealer in military antiques. At a welder's three men were beating on a metal object with hammers and cursing. The noise stayed with him for blocks. He could smell the salt in the air and the humidity after the desert was wonderful. He passed a bakery and then a café and stepped inside.

He ate back near the kitchen and it was narrow and cluttered. A black iron stovepipe went up to the slanted ceiling and while they made his breakfast he gazed blankly out of a triangular skylight. Above the stove on racks were spices he could smell in small wooden boxes, and a dirty dishtowel hung on a peg over his table. Flies wove past him and disappeared.

For breakfast he had coffee and shredded nut pastries and then asked if it was too early to make some cuttlefish with spinach and lemon. He'd been away a long time, he explained. While he ate he watched a beautiful blond woman in a Women's Auxiliary uniform who waved her spread hands like a fan over her tea, letting the cherry polish on her fingernails dry.

Back on the street he passed blocks he'd never seen before, and odd sights—a dwarf stopping to give some coins to a blind couple jointly playing the accordion, a pigeon perched just above a sleeping cat—but it seemed that every street, every simple corner of a house, retained a shiver of something from his past, some old tremor of feeling. He was here, he thought as he walked. He was here.

He showed a passerby Leda's address and asked directions. He passed small trees growing out of square open areas in the sidewalks and tightly fenced gardens. Dogs occasionally raced or clawed along the fences, eager to get at him.

The Schieles turned out to live in yet another part of the city that was unfamiliar to him, and he was beginning to feel discomfited at the continued undermining of his nostalgia.

He found himself in front of a shabby and narrow house facing a courtyard where buses were apparently stored. There was a fish store on the ground floor. Their apartment, a helpful neighbor said, was the small dark place on the third floor. The house was very old and had in its keystone arch a fierce mythical lizard of some sort with a fish in its mouth. The second-floor landing was dark and filled with junk: a bicycle wheel, some sodden cardboard boxes, stacked metal pails, a tangle of rusted and broken knives.

He smoothed his hair and knocked and thought belatedly about cleaning himself up.

Leda opened the door and surprised him completely by not being surprised.

“You're here,” she said, and her expression was so beautiful he knew he loved her completely. Her hair was lighter and finer and pinned up on the sides. She hugged him, and stood back from him, smiling. She tilted her head and smoothed her hair on one side by bringing her opposite hand all the way over the top of her head. “Come in,” she said.

Their apartment was just as she had described it. Everyone was gone.

Mother had taken Nicholas and David to the beach, she explained. Aunt was working. She'd waited here for him.

“You knew I was coming?” Karel said.

Leda looked puzzled. “Didn't you send me this?” she asked. She showed him a printed note:
Coming soon should arrive Thurs or Fri. Love, Karel
.

Karel stared at it, dumbfounded. Something told him he should lie, that if he told the truth Leda would be less happy to see him.

“I forgot,” he said. She looked at him strangely.

“So how did you get here? What happened?” she said. “Are you hungry? Are you okay?”

She got him iced tea with mint while he told her about his father's return and the destruction of the zoo. He told her about the desert and the bodies in the abandoned farmhouse. He did not tell her about the prisoner assessment room. She put her hand over her mouth. He regretted having upset her, though he appreciated her concern for what he'd been through, and he sipped his tea, aware all at once of how filthy he was.

She shouldn't grill him like this, she said. She put a hand on his cheek. She'd been going to suggest they go to the beach and find everybody, but she didn't think that was such a good idea anymore.

He shook his head.

He was probably tired, she said. And he probably wanted to wash up. She took the glass from his hands and set it down and tenderly helped him up, leading him to the bathroom door. She took off his beltpack and he raised his arms dumbly but she didn't take off anything else. She disappeared and came back with a towel and a scrub brush that looked as if it was used for pots and pans. She told him to let her know when he was finished. She gave him some of Nicholas's shorts to sleep in.

He washed himself in a small claw-footed tub. Was she in danger? Why had Kehr send the note? It had to have been Kehr. What was happening? What was Karel doing to her and her family by lying to them?

The water when he got out was gray. It left a ring, and he knelt and tried to wash it away with his hands. When he came out she looked pleased and the air in the living room was cool.

Now a nap, she said, and he was thrilled at the idea of her lying next to him, her family gone, his having braved great dangers to be at her side.

But she kissed him once on the mouth and pulled herself away from his hands, and told him it was wonderful to see him, and hugged him again. She shut the door behind her as she left.

He was disappointed but the plainness of the bedsheets in the sheer white morning light seemed paradisical. He sat on the mattress with his hands on his knees, gazing unsurprised at the extent of his own exhaustion. He lay back and thought it was possible to have kinds of homecomings without home, and fell asleep.

He woke to voices through the walls, the next apartment, and listened for a while before deciphering that the people were refugees and they were arguing over whose situation was worse. He heard other voices, too, and realized the rest of the Schieles were home.

They were all happy to see him. Nicholas pointed out that Karel was wearing his shorts and that Leda was much happier now, and the insight made him radiant. He sat across the room still wearing his bathing suit and smiled as if he knew each of Karel's secrets.

David stood with both hands on the arm of Karel's chair and asked about the desert and did Karel see any nomads or scorpions and said he had plenty of things to show Karel in the city. His mother hushed him and made Karel relate everything he'd already told Leda, stopping him to shake her head and then nod every so often. He knew she'd retell some of what he told her as part of her store of catastrophe tales, all of which featured her in a prophetic role, unheeded by the foolish (“I had a
feeling
something was going on at that zoo …”).