The 14th Day (20 page)

The encounter leaves him wary, though, and he's still on his guard when he goes to the room with the coffee machine. Edward and Parrish are there. Maybe they've already talked to Royall. Possibly they can shed some light on his mood this morning. “Hi,” he calls tentatively.

“Hi, Van,” they answer without enthusiasm.

“Looks like a good day,” he says.

They mumble something in response, then turn away, resuming their conversation in low voices. It's only after it's happened and he's on the other side of the room, a paper cup in his hand, that he realizes they turned from him an instant more quickly than they had to, their gestures making it clear that they weren't expecting him to join in. As Vaniok pours himself coffee he tries to hear what they're talking about: he can't make out the words but from their expressions the two of them seem as angry as Royall was. Vaniok is puzzled. He can't believe everybody's upset just because they'll have to clean up some of the students' destruction. How much of that would there be after all? he wants to ask them. And anyway, the day would have to be spent doing some kind of work, no easier than this. He takes an exploratory sip of his coffee, noting how the pair across the room have crammed themselves into a corner, their bodies tense, their voices pitched just beneath the threshold of his hearing. “See you,” he calls to them as he leaves and they nod without looking at him.

Their behavior irritates him; worse, it frustrates him. He feels like a foolish child in a game of blindman's buff whose playmates, after his eyes have been covered, have all slipped away, leaving him to grope in solitary darkness, looking for people who aren't there. Something is simmering, something is going on this morning that he can't figure out; these aren't the men he's used to working with. Royall, Edward, Parrish—something has made them angry and withdrawn. As if they've been betrayed, Vaniok thinks. Already he foresees a long day: nobody is going to be interested in talking to him about the basketball game. Or the riot. But there's something more: he senses that whatever it is that concerns his fellow workers, they're trying to exclude him. His suspicions are strengthened at the office where he picks up his work slip for the day and is greeted with the same kind of curt nods and grunts he got from Edward and Parrish. There are a few tight smiles, a remark or two, but nobody makes a move in his direction, they hold their ground, waiting for him to leave so that they can go back to talking to each other. More than ever, Vaniok is mystified about why the students' actions should have caused so much bad feeling. As he leaves the office a voice rises behind him, an angry reference to the university's president. Are they blaming him for the loss of the basketball game?

Moments later on his way back to his work station he sees Carl, leaning against a column, reading something on a sheet of paper. Vaniok's first impulse is to turn down the corridor and avoid this meeting: all weekend he's thought about their conversation at the Barn. He didn't really say anything against Jory, nothing substantial anyway—he didn't tell Carl about what he heard his countryman say in the car. Still, he isn't happy with the role he played listening to the man's suspicions of Jory—he could have just smiled politely and changed the subject but in his memory he was too eager to hear more, he kept encouraging Carl in his speculations, in his memory it seems like a betrayal.

Now he swallows all these doubts and calls Carl's name. The man looks up from what he's reading. “Oh, Van, hi.” There's no smile on his face. “Busy day,” he says, pointing to the paper in his hands.

“Sure thing,” Vaniok mumbles.
Exactly like the others
.

He walks away quickly, as if in a hurry to get to his own work. He knows when he isn't wanted. In truth, he isn't entirely disappointed not to have had to talk with Carl; still, the man's chilliness, on top of all the other reactions, stings.
He wants to erase me
. The recognition stifles the hot flow of anger rising within him. He remembers the blankness in Carl's eyes when they talked at the Barn and he suggested that Jory was a criminal, like an investigator prying into the darkest corners of the man's life. How much of that was beery bluster? Or has the man actually started looking into Jory's past? For an instant Vaniok wonders whether the sheet of paper he saw Carl reading from had something to do with his countryman.
I should tell him about Carl
. Jory is in danger, he thinks; and, thinking that, he can't help wondering if that danger extends to himself.

But it isn't just Carl, he reminds himself. Something is certainly up this morning. What's bothering the men has to be more than the basketball game and the riot that followed, though neither of those has helped their mood. Given their anger and secrecy, it's more likely their behavior today has something to do with the cutbacks people have been talking about. Just a couple of days ago only a few people were taking them seriously. Can it be that over the weekend the men have been thinking about that situation, calling each other to find out that all of them are worried about it? That at least would make some kind of sense, that might explain the harsh reference to the university's president. Whatever the reasons, they're shutting him out of their conversations, maybe out of their sight: he's becoming invisible to his fellow workers. Will they see him at all in an hour? He remembers thinking of Jory as the shadow-stealer. At the moment Vaniok could believe that only his shadow has any reality.

His progress toward his work station takes him by the closet-like room where the cleaning equipment is kept. He's passed it a thousand times without paying much attention to it but now he stops before the blue door as if he's heard someone calling his name. Who could it be, he wonders, and to his surprise he thinks of Ranush. For an instant he can believe his friend is nearby. Then the moment passes and he's standing there, a cup of coffee in his hand.

Vaniok looks around him: no one else is in the area. On an impulse he opens the door and steps into the tiny space. Cramped as it is, there's room for him. Among the mops and brooms, the pails and the cans of cleaning fluid outlined by the light entering through the open door, there's a wooden box he can sit on. With a single motion he closes the door behind him and settles himself on the box. He hasn't bothered to turn on the light. In the darkness all the sounds in the building change, he might be in an undersea cave. The anxiety he felt moments ago has lifted from him and he feels the excitement of a child playing hide-and-seek. No one else seems to be interested in getting to work today, after all. Now I'm really invisible, he thinks.

In the enclosed space the smell of coffee mixes with faint traces of cleaning fluid rising from the mops and sponges and Vaniok is basking in a surprising contentment until he discovers that he's crying, at first quietly, then with audible sobs and racking gasps: tears burn his eyes, they roll hotly down his cheeks, his throat stings. Yet while all this is happening, he seems to be disconnected from it: even as he's shaken by his weeping he has a clear perspective on himself, he knows that nothing that's happened to him this morning justifies this extreme reaction. As his tears continue he comes to recognize that they're not for his trials here, that he's revisiting other hard moments he's endured: during the Thirteen Days, with Ranush, at Bostra, places he's lived in since leaving the homeland. His harsh, choking sobs are amplified in the silence and darkness of the room, a few drops of coffee splash onto his hands. Yet he sits there, touching all these places from the past until he realizes that his shoulders have stopped heaving and his sobbing has gradually quieted. His throat burns but he feels emptied, cleansed, he can hear himself breathe. After an interval whose duration he has no way of gauging, he lifts his head in the dark, aware that his crying has stopped completely. He blinks, inhales sharply through his nose. He wipes away his tears, clears his parched throat and drinks some coffee, grateful for its strong, bitter taste.

The air in the room is close but the faint chemical odor is strangely bracing. In the darkness the place's dimensions have expanded and the small room has taken on the vastness of outer space. So I'm alone, he thinks, and the men at work won't talk to me. The thought doesn't disturb him. It seems to him now that he's always known this, that he knew it even when he went drinking with these same men a few days ago. If they were ready to turn against Jory then, why should it surprise him to find they'd do the same to him? He remembers that it was just when he felt elated about being included by his fellow workers that he had that vision of Jory and Ila together, when he had to admit to himself that the newcomer was now closer to his cousin than he was. In the spacious darkness he can't understand why it meant so much to him to have been drinking with the men on that sunny afternoon, giving those ridiculous imitations of basketball players. Like a kid, like a little kid looking for the grown-ups' approval.

Traces of sadness and hurt linger as the memory of that moment fades but they're distant now and Vaniok is left with a sense of clarity. So, he tells himself, I'm alone. He's been alone before, he knows he can stand it. On the bridge near Bostra nobody was there to watch over him, to tell him to stay or to go. There was, for all practical purposes, no nation left by then, there were no enduring loyalties anymore, few people you could trust. Every hour his fellow citizens were crossing the border, on foot, on bicycles, in cars, in the backs of trucks carrying melons or old tires; leaving their country behind, leaving history behind. Vaniok could easily have laid his rifle down among the weeds at the side of the road and made his way to that nearby border, joining the flow, he didn't have to wait a few pointless hours to fulfill his questionable duty. Here in the darkness that smells of cleaning fluid, his blood pulses exactly as it did then. There were moments that night when he was terrified, when he was on the verge of taking the first step away from that bridge—all that was required was the slightest act of consent, as negligible as the faint touch of breeze he occasionally felt on his neck—yet it never came and mysteriously the terror gave way. There were moments when he was brave. And of course there were long periods when he just didn't care. What was important was that he had the necessary strength for that ordeal; he made his own decision, for better or worse he stayed when plenty of others found reason to leave. And he managed to find his way here to this place.

Somewhere in the warehouse a machine growls distantly. Vaniok listens to his own breathing, as he did that night when he stayed beside the bridge over the muddy slow-moving river. Wasn't Bostra worse than this, when every inhalation of the cigarette in his mouth might have been his last one, when for all he knew he wouldn't survive much longer than the gray smoke that drifted over the dark water? The metal pails whose presence he can sense somewhere near him in the dark, the mops leaning against the wall a few feet away—all these are less real than that place near Bostra where he spent a handful of hours of his life.

In the midst of these thoughts he remembers his trip to the Music Library, the woman who offered him coffee, the shadows under her eyes. He's free to go back there, he can read that book on church music, he can talk to the woman, thank her again for the coffee. The prospect lifts his heart. All this is in his power, regardless of whether or not his co-workers think of him as a friend. It's my decision, he recognizes, my choice. He reaches into the darkness and his hand finds a shape, he runs his fingers along the rough handle of a mop, he grips it tightly, listening. Somebody passes by outside. The heavy tread is quiet at first, then louder, then it fades into silence. Not a soul knows where he is. What if he stayed in this retreat all day? How long would it take to find him in his tiny sanctuary?

All at once Ranush is with him. In the darkness without dimension his old friend is standing inches away, tall, stooped, his weight shifting imperceptibly from one foot to the other. Vaniok is alert, attentive: Ranush is here, in this room; at the same time he's somewhere in the Deep Lakes beside a thick white birch, a brilliant confetti of colored leaves in the air around him. Everything is bathed in a haze, like something seen out of the corner of the eye, there's a smell of damp earth, a brisk autumn wind that promises a chilly rain. The mysterious presence brings a shiver. Is this really Ranush? Can Vaniok be losing his mind? He drives his fingernail into the heel of his palm, he resists the temptation to open the door and let in a sliver of light. “Ranush,” he whispers, but the other man gives no indication that he hears him. Still, Vaniok can sense that his visitor is smiling. It's a lopsided, comic smile yet serene, the smile of someone who's been through the very worst that can happen and has found to his surprise that it isn't as bad as all that; and Vaniok knows that the smile is meant for him, that Ranush wants his friend to know that he doesn't hold anything against him.

“Thank you,” Vaniok says. It's only after some seconds that he realizes Ranush is no longer there, that he's looking into an empty darkness. Yet at the same time the memory of Ranush's smile lingers. Vaniok experiences a sense of great relief, he's a man blessed. Once more his eyes are wet. He knows, though, that when they're dry he'll be ready to go back and rejoin the world.

Not meeting Ranush at the street corner is something that's eaten at Vaniok's heart relentlessly and he's used to telling himself that he feels an ache every time he thinks of his friend because he showed his weakness then. But even he knows that explanation isn't enough to account for the persistent bite of memory: after all, everyone is weak at some point—he was weak only moments ago when he cried. That doesn't mean one is weak forever. What was weaker was not admitting to himself that there were other emotions entangled with that fear that lay behind his desertion of his friend.