The Right Hand of Sleep (14 page)

In some of the larger towns the Bolsheviks, the White Russians
and the German army maintained fully parallel governments; each
person I spoke to on the street had a different opinion as to which
of the three regimes was in fact in power. The war between the
Whites and Reds was already beginning, though the territory
fought over was still technically German. I continued east with a
vague idea of reaching Kiev, which I’d heard had been liberated a
few weeks before. I learned a few more Ukrainian expressions, the
commonest questions and insults and turns of phrase, and gradually began to have better luck getting myself fed.

A few weeks after this I found Anna. She was newly a widow,
or believed herself one, at least, and had a small estate, or what
she blithely referred to as an estate, to live off as best she could.
I met her at the market in Cherkassy the morning I arrived, feverish and weak again from hunger. She was standing, tall and out
of place in a flowered muslin housedress, in a corner of the market, selling dried radishes at the head of a cart filled with half-empty bags of seed. By some miracle she spoke a few words of
German.

I’m starving, I said to her.

I need a worker, she answered, in French. Can you work?
Arbeiten?

Yes. Arbeiten, I said. She nodded gravely. Later I found out she
was ecstatic to have found me. Most able-bodied Ukrainian men
were drunk or far away and those who weren’t couldn’t have cared
less about her seven leached-out hectares. I laughed myself when I
first saw her drafty plank house leaning over into the mud. But she
brought me inside and put water on the stove for me to wash and
cooked a meal over the next few hours the like of which I hadn’t
seen since leaving Niessen: braised carrots in honey and sliced
buttered potatoes and mushrooms preserved in vinegar and four
or five precious slices of dried goose breast from the smokehouse
covered in pickled cranberry preserves. She watched me closely as
I ate, wondering, she told me later, who in heaven’s name I was
and how I came to be in the town of Cherkassy speaking no more
than twenty words of Ukrainian and awkward, gymnasium student’s French. She sat picking at her plate of carrots and potatoes absently, her small gray eyes never straying from me. At
any moment I expected her to come to her senses; I ate as quickly
as I could, barely tasting the food in my hurry. Eventually she
spoke.

You’ve come from the war? she asked, in Ukrainian.

I stared at her dumbly. After a moment or two I set down my
fork and shrugged.

She frowned. The war, she repeated. For some reason she was
set on speaking Ukrainian to me, though she must have known I
hadn’t a chance of understanding her. She’d learned her French
and her smattering of German at gymnasium in Kiev, had in fact
won a prize, she told me proudly, but her schooling had ended
on her sixteenth birthday and now she was well past her twenty-ninth. She looked older to me than that, with her hair pulled
straight back and a few streaks of white already showing at the
temples; no longer young at all. But I thought she was beautiful,
like an angel on a veteran’s monument—smooth-polished and sexless, proud and severe, indifferent to one’s gaze and at the same
time utterly naked under it. I was seventeen then, not much better
than a child, and I suppose all women had that quality to me. But I
see her even now in that cool glow of permanence that statues
have, sitting across from me at the long dining table, waiting
patiently for me to answer. Nothing I learned afterward could dispel that first idea of her.

Seeing that I still didn’t understand, she stood up from the
table and crouched down behind it, peering solemnly at me over
the white linen tablecloth, making rattling noises deep in her
throat and gesturing at me violently with both her arms. I stared at
her a moment or two longer in flat stupidity. Oh! The war, I said
finally. Krieg. I smiled uncertainly.

Yes. The Krieg. You come from it? Yes?

Yes, I said.

I ran, I added after a silence.

She nodded, looking at me carefully.

My husband, yes? Andrei. At Krieg, she said.

Yes?

Mmm, she murmured. I sat forward uneasily in my chair,
expecting the inevitable, but Anna only smiled. He is dead. They’ve
all decided.

I nodded cautiously. I understand, I said. I’m sorry. I’d begun
to feel very ill at ease.

I thought at first she’d misunderstood because she stayed on
her feet, shaking a finger at me excitedly, then made a face and disappeared again behind the table. Confused, I stood and leaned forward until I could see her stretched out like a cadaver on the floor,
smiling mischievously up at me. No, no, she was saying. No, no. I
am happy, she said slowly, in her effortful, deliberate French. Do
you understand? I am happy. Ich bin froh.

A few days later Voxlauer took up his pack and the jar now empty of milk and set out in his shirtsleeves in the mist of early morning up the road to Holzer’s Cross. By the time he had come out of the spruce grove under the reliquary the mist had largely burned away and the town spires sparkled wetly on the plain. He went with the jar to the door of the farmhouse and knocked. After a short time Frau Holzer came to the door.

—May I come in? said Voxlauer.

—Why not? My sons are on holiday today. They’ve gone down to Niessen.

He stepped inside. —I’m headed there myself.

Frau Holzer didn’t answer. She’d taken the jar from him and was filling it from a large copper pitcher by the stall-side door. —We have fresh-butchered kid today if you want it.

—Is it chamois?

—Of course. She smiled. —But not from Ryslavy’s woods. I’d swear an oath.

—I brought down some game myself, a few days back.

—How fine.

—I’d very much like some butter, if you can spare any.

—Of course we can. She stepped into the next room and returned with two small grayish bricks wrapped in waxed paper.

—Could I look by on my way back from town, and get these from you? I won’t be long. Three or four hours.

—That will be fine, said the woman. She looked at him kindly. —Why are you going to town?

Voxlauer glanced at her. —To visit my mother.

—I see. She was quiet a moment. —Well. She may not recall me, but please say best wishes to her from Elke. Elke Mayer. It was Mayer when she knew me.

—I will, said Voxlauer. —Thank you kindly. He stepped out the kitchen door into the entryway. —I’ll be back by two. Three at the very latest.

—No hurry, said the woman. She looked at him a moment longer, then went in to the pantry and began rattling in a tall chipboard cupboard there. He waited a few seconds to see if she was coming back into the kitchen, but she did not. He pulled the house door shut behind him.

As he came out of the woods above the square a light rain began to fall and the ruin as he passed it paled gradually into the mist. The square was empty save for three olive-colored sedans and behind the square the hillside rose steeply and then vanished in a hard, straight line, as though planed flat by the passage of heavy ships. Rarely had he seen mist so bright and so opaque and he stood for a while at the edge of the square looking back up the slope. As he passed the sedans two men in gray oilskin capes came out of the Amtshaus and walked briskly toward him. They passed him and climbed into a sedan and drove around the shuttered fountain and out the toll road, heading south. As he passed Ryslavy’s he caught sight of Emelia through the open doors, drawing a draft behind the long teakwood bar, and called in to her. She held up a hand.

At the grocer’s he recognized Frau Mayer’s two sons standing with their backs to him, talking to an elderly man he remembered from before the war, the three of them dressed up in loden capes, as if for a state holiday.

—What day is it? Voxlauer asked the grocer’s boy. The boy looked at him a moment, then smiled as if acknowledging a private joke. —A March Saturday like any other if you ask me, Herr, he said.

It was too cold and wet on the verandah, it seemed, even for Maman; creeping stealthily upstairs he found her in the kitchen, pounding dough for candied dumplings. She gave a little start as he rapped on the doorframe, then came over and embraced him, holding her flour-covered hands away from him like a boxer. He let go of her and she went back to the table and dipped her hands again into the flour tin. He watched as she ran her hands once up and down the rolling pin and began passing it vigorously over each of the narrow strips, which contracted and curled angrily after each stroke so that the effort of rolling seemed wasted. But as always at some unknowable point she was satisfied and reached for the jar of black plums and laid one pitted halved section in the middle of each strip.

—You’re growing your beard again, she said, balling up the strips into dumplings and pinching off the corners between her thumbs.

Voxlauer didn’t answer. A kettle began whistling on the stovetop. —Shall I pour you some tea?

—Let’s have coffee today, she said, wiping her hands on her apron. He watched as she ranged the dumplings into neat rows on a square of wet linen and folded the cloth over.

—Were you expecting me? he said.

She smiled a little. —Tomorrow is Sunday, Oskar, after all.

They sat with their coffee in the parlor at a low table and he spoke to her about the valley and how it had changed. —The creek is deeper but narrower across the middle, he said. —And though Pauli stocks it in the grand Ryslavy style, there seem to be less fish than I remember. The ice has broken under the bridge and the upper pond is open. The cottage pond will be, too, in a few days. The old green piers are gone. There’s a boat for me to use, and two beautiful rods. Next week I’ll bring some venison, Maman, if you’d like.

—That would be pretty, she said. She had been listening attentively in the beginning but now she sat back in her chair and looked out at the street as though waiting for the commencement of some grave state procession. Voxlauer thought again of the sons’ loden capes. —The woman up at Holzer’s Cross sends her best wishes, he said. —Elke Mayer.

—Who?

—Elke Mayer, said Voxlauer, frowning.

—Yes, yes. Elke Mayer. We went to gymnasium together. She was sitting with her face to the glass. He sat quietly, watching her. After a time she nodded to herself.

—Maman, he said, leaning toward her. —What’s the matter?

She looked at him a moment without speaking. Her face was drawn stiffly together.

—They marched into Vienna on Thursday, Oskar, she said, blinking at him. —They’ve taken our republic.

He sat with a dozen others along the bar. Some shops were open, some were closed. They sat in a row with their drinks while the girl, Emelia, fidgeted with the quartz-band radio. Its green eye wavered fluidly.

We’ve only just bought this radio, Emelia said. The voice came through faintly, brightening and fading. It sounded sedate and self-assured, not at all as Voxlauer had imagined it. The crowd noise behind the voice rose in high cresting trills cut by momentary bursts of static. A man next to Voxlauer told Emelia to turn it louder.

—That won’t make any difference, Herr, she said. She came over to Voxlauer.—Another draft, Uncle?

—Please.

—You. Turn it louder, said the man. He smiled out of the side of his mouth at Voxlauer. —I don’t think she wants to turn it louder, he said.

Voxlauer looked at him. He was heavyset and dressed in a blue work coat and knickers. —Turn it louder, he said again to Emelia. He slurred as he spoke, sloughing over his
s
’s in the manner of the Tyrolese. Voxlauer shifted a little on his stool and looked at the man steadily until their eyes met. The man’s eyes were green and bloodshot and fixed driftingly on Voxlauer. He raised one eyebrow with a concerted effort. —You in need of something, citizen?

Voxlauer shrugged his shoulders. —A little quiet. He gestured at the radio. —I’m hearkening to our Führer.

The man grinned. —That’s fine. He spun on his stool back to the bar.

The voice came in clearly now, rising steadily in pitch. That’s static now, behind him, thought Voxlauer. But he knew at the same time that the voice itself was clear and the sound behind the voice was that of a huge number of people screaming. He closed his eyes.

—What’s he saying now? said the man.

—Vienna is a pearl, said someone behind them.

—He said that?

—In the crown of the Reich.

The man let out a drawn-out, braying laugh. Emelia had returned with Voxlauer’s beer and set it down before him. —You, girl, said the man.

Voxlauer looked over at him again. Emelia had stopped in mid-step and stood waiting for him to speak.

—This is a great day for your people, he said after a pause.

Emelia didn’t answer. She stood midway between Voxlauer and the wall, looking past the man at the others behind him. Voxlauer felt the muscles of his neck knitting together. The man leaned toward her slightly, winking at Voxlauer as he did so. He looked at Emelia and grinned. When he spoke he spoke carefully and slowly.

—Back in Innsbruck we’d have stacked you straight by now, you dusky bitch.