The Right Hand of Sleep (18 page)

—I’ll be going then, Fräulein, he managed after an extended silence.

—You’re sure you can manage? Else said, looking at him doubtfully.

—I think so. Yes.

—Well. I’ll stay where I am, then. She fell back and drew the blanket ends closer around her, turning over into the sheets.

—I’ll bring those sketches down sometime soon, if you like, said Voxlauer, rising cautiously from the stool.

She made a small flapping gesture with her fingers. —Yes. The sketches, she said, drawing herself farther into the blankets.

—Good morning then, Fräulein, said Voxlauer quietly. He took the smoke-blackened kettle off the stove as he went out.

By the time he arrived at the cottage new pains had begun and his frayed pants were stiff and sodden to the ankles. Wine-dark tracings of blood rose upward along the seams and his socks had sloughed off inside his boots. He undressed in the cool of the little alcove and rebandaged his legs carefully, brushing flakes of dried blood and Mercurochrome onto the floor, then lay back on the pallet and watched the light gather into a porthole-shaped mass and travel down the wall toward a hand-shaped smudge above the bed. Through the window came the high, twiglike clatter of a rail.

click click click

A shape spun down from somewhere overhead, throwing sparks onto his eyes. —Père? whispered Voxlauer. His eyelids fluttered and the balls of his eyes moved sluggishly back and forth under their weight. As he turned his head the shape spun off to the left, humming quietly, like a mortar shell arcing into a drift. A soft, dull
ping!
followed, like a spoon dropped from a low height onto the floor. Then the click. Voxlauer sat up, suddenly wide awake again. —She asked me how I managed it, he said.
Ping!
came the answer from above the bed. He ignored the noise and focused his attention on remembering. Else turning onto her side, face into the sheets, right arm twisted back behind her. Sitting up in bed to see him better, frowning slightly as she spoke. The fluttering of her fingers as he’d turned to go.

It grew warmer in the room and the column of light trembled and began to bend. Voxlauer turned his head and looked through the porthole at the sheet of wind-harried water and the brightening pines, tapping his thumb softly against the glass. He stretched an arm to the handprint on the wall and covered it with his palm. The handprint of a child or of a very young girl, plump-fingered and careless. He got up and went to the table.

Bringing the lexicon down from the shelf he took out the sketches and laid them in a row with the portraits on either end and the little still life between them. It was crudely and effortfully made, six thick-traced curves drawn together into thorned stems ending in bunched-together, exaggerated blossoms. Voxlauer bent over the paper, bringing his face slowly toward it until his vision blurred. Tiny flakelets of charcoal spun and danced under his breath. He moved away. A pain stirred in his legs and he brought them stiffly together under the table, sliding the two portraits nearer to him. After a short time it subsided and he bent his head again over the sketches.

The portraits, for their part, were virtually invisible, as though the hand which had figured them had scarcely come in contact with the paper but had hovered instead in close ribboning circles just above it, bobbing and circling like a horsefly. Both seemed drawn from a single quivering thread curving forward and back again, gently spinning a likeness. The face in the first he recognized now as Else’s and in the second the same face perhaps fifteen years younger smiled out at him from an open window, the long straight hair twisted into braids and the brow pulled back sharply as if in pride or doubt. The lines of the portrait thinned and gathered at the paper’s edge into smoky, cobweb-figured nets, lightening and drifting leftward off the page. All three sketches were dated the preceding summer. He put them back into the lexicon and lay down on the pallet with his face against the cool plaster, picturing her. —How did I manage it? he said aloud.

One week later as Voxlauer was gathering wood in a stand of dead firs he saw Else walking on a logging track not fifty meters below him. A girl ran ahead of her on the wet spring turf, stopping now and again to look back and call something out with a laugh and a toss of her loose, coal-black hair. A few meters further on Else called the girl to her and they bent down together over a budding elderberry bush. He watched them a few moments longer, keeping back among the firs, then called out a hello and slid awkwardly down the slope. The girl’s face as he drew near had the same frowning, half-friendly look he’d seen in the second portrait. —Ach! It’s you, Herr Voxlauer, Else said, curtsying. —Back to average, I hope?

—They tell me I’ll live to the play pump organ again, Fräulein, in the idiots’ choir. The girl laughed at this. She stood a few steps past them up the road, toying with a knotted kerchief, watching him closely.

—You should meet Theresa, Oskar, Else said. —Resi, come here. This is Oskar. He lives in Opa’s cottage now, and minds the ponds.

The girl smiled up at him. —You shot yourself in the knees, she said.

Voxlauer looked at Else.

—A funny business, Oskar, she said. —I had to tell somebody.

—I have brand-new knees now, said Voxlauer to the girl. —Fresh off the presses. He flexed his knees and cut a caper. —No need to worry. See?

—I wasn’t worrying, said the girl. She extended a hand and he shook it solemnly.

The girl ran ahead of Else and Voxlauer as they walked, gathering pine needles from the track into her kerchief, mumbling to herself. They walked together measuredly and slowly, almost shyly now in the presence of the girl, and it seemed to Voxlauer for the second time that something had changed between them. He held his bag of kindling by its strap, whistling tonelessly and glancing at her every few moments. —You should have come by for those sketches, he said. —It’s remarkable, the likeness. He looked again at the girl.

—I don’t go into that cottage anymore, Herr Voxlauer. I’ve told you that already.

—Yes. You have.

—If you want me to have those drawings, you’ll have to courier them down to me, I’m afraid. She smiled. —Something like the postman.

—I’ve been crippled till today, Fräulein. A tragic case study. Dragging myself around the cottage by my gums.

—With a bottle in each hand you don’t leave yourself much option, Herr Voxlauer. She sighed. —I’ve seen enough to know.

He put out a hand and stopped her. —Is that all you’ve seen, Fräulein?

She smiled a little, raising her eyebrows at him. —I beg your pardon? What else should I have seen?

—All sorts of things, he said, still holding her by the arm. —I don’t understand how you could have missed them. What’s happening in town, for instance. What’s happening to everybody. Don’t you ever go to town?

The smile disappeared from her face and she looked at him as if he’d insulted her. After a moment she laughed. —You can’t imagine what all I’ve seen. I don’t like to go to town, it’s true. In spite of this, I am not a hermit, Herr Voxlauer. Not by any stretch.

—Then maybe you’d explain things to me. I am one, as I’m sure Herr Piedernig has told you. He hesitated, glancing up the road to where the girl was standing, watching them. —I’ve been away so long, because of this. What’s happening. He paused again. —This and other things like it. I’m afraid to go anywhere. I can’t go anywhere. He laughed. —I don’t expect you to understand, Fräulein. Don’t look so worried.

Else waited a long time to answer him, looking off into the trees. —What’s happening now has never happened before, she said finally.

—There was a feeling I got from the war, he said—that I get now in town. It came to the Ukraine, too, a few years after I went there. But it began in the war. He stopped and took a breath.

—That was one reason I stayed away. I was afraid to come back and find it here. I couldn’t bear to come back and find that everything had changed. He waited until she turned again, frowning, to look at him, before he continued. —And it has. It has changed. You must see that.

—I don’t know that anything has changed, in the way that you mean.

—Of course it has, Fräulein Bauer. Everything’s changed. You know that very well. Why else would you be up here, for the love of Christ? Do you enjoy it so much up here in the woods? Are you perhaps taking the alpine cure?

As if in answer to his question, Else said:—What were your other reasons? She was looking not at him now, but at the girl. —For leaving, she added, when he didn’t seem to understand her. —You must have had others.

A wind was coming up through the tops of the trees. The girl was standing with her head far back, looking at the sky.

—I did certain things that can’t be undone, Voxlauer said, letting his eyes rest on Else. She was still watching the girl. —Have you ever done a thing like that?

Slowly she loosened her arm from his grip. —Yes, I have. I’ve done some things, and I know some others. I know what you did at the Holzer farm last Friday. She waited a moment for him to respond, then said:—Do you think so little of yourself, Herr Voxlauer?

Voxlauer opened his mouth to speak, made a little sound, then let it fall closed again. The girl had come closer and stood throwing pebbles at his ankles. —Those aren’t my knees, he said, bending stiffly down to her. She turned to Else and silently handed her the handkerchief. —We’ll be going soon, Resi, Else said. The girl cursed and ran off up the track. They began walking again with an arm’s length between them.

—Does she live with you? said Voxlauer.

—She lives with her father’s family in St. Marein.

—I thought I might have noticed her.

—Yes.

—I’d mistaken her for you in those sketches.

—Yes. Well, you didn’t know about her until today, did you, Herr Voxlauer.

—No, I didn’t. He smiled at her. —I’m a bit of a fool.

—And a drunk, she said, looking off into the trees. —And that’s a shame, Herr Voxlauer, because otherwise we get along very nicely.

Voxlauer stopped short and took hold of her arm again. —Be careful, Fräulein. All gamekeepers are not alike.

—I deserved that, I suppose, she said, staring past him up the road.

—Don’t confuse me with your father, that’s all. Or with mine.

—What a habit you have of grabbing hold of a person, Else said expressionlessly, waiting for him to let go of her. They walked without speaking for a while. Where the track met the road she slowed slightly and took hold of his hand. The girl was waiting restlessly for them at the next turning. Else turned Voxlauer wordlessly to face her and looked straight up into his eyes, pushing her fingertips lightly into his ribs. Her face was unsmiling now and close to his.

—I won’t confuse you, Herr Voxlauer, she whispered.

That first night it seemed to Voxlauer they were in the low cold attic of a house full of people with no idea what was happening above them. He would reach over and lay hold of her still form, put together of all the quiet dark suffering things of this world, and she would turn and stretch herself lazily in her sleep. She was unaware of his hand, unaware of the room, unaware even that she was suffering. Maybe she isn’t, thought Voxlauer, taking in a breath. The thought seemed hollow and false at first but bloomed in him slowly, like a drink of wine. He sat up in the bed to look at her.

She slept with her knuckles to her mouth like a teething child, indifferent to everything but sleep. In the dull glow of the lamp she looked like something seen through silt-dark water. Gradually as Voxlauer watched her she became frightening to him, otherworldly, alien in her completeness. It seemed to him that if she awoke she would look at him calmly and he would die.

Her eyes as he watched them moved back and forth serenely under their heavy lids. The air whistled in her mouth. A scar ran the length of her side, relic of a childhood burn, and the rippled skin felt smooth and fossil-like under his hand. He ran his fingertips along it from her shoulder blade to her hip. Like the rest of her body it reminded him of water, of two stones clicking together at the bottom of a river. Her arm closed over it protectively. Her eyes opened.

—Give me a kiss, she said.

Slowly, haltingly, he bent to kiss her. She was looking up at him as he’d been afraid she would, calmly and deliberately, eyes still faraway with sleep. Sleepily she raised an arm and brought it to his neck and pulled him closer. Her lips were cool and dry and as he moved his mouth across them they drew together and slowly parted. Her breath came soft and noiseless against his skin and he felt a sudden tightness in his throat and brought his lips along her neck. She sighed. She was seemingly all things, smooth and whorled, soft and edged, light and dark. But she was not all things. She had a want. He sucked his breath in sharply and bent over her.

Again it seemed to him that they were in a tiny attic room. People were asleep beneath them and he could hear them groaning and creaking in their beds. She was holding his hips loosely in her hands like the reins of a cart and he was moving above her. The room continued dwindling, focusing itself into a grain of clear, white light. She was straining up to meet him, propping herself on her elbows. He was alive, alive! He was not afraid. All the past had been exploded. They were moving together in an absence of future and past. Light was there, sped up into a film reel of stuttering movement. A spare dry snow was falling all around them in the room. He looked out at it and cried.

In the early morning he was sitting at the edge of the bed, wide awake. She was awake also and talking to him and he felt calm and effortless.

—I’m walking shoulder to shoulder in a wide line of people, a search party, across a field of very tall grass. You’re there, Oskar, and Walter and Herta are there, and so is my father, who is looking well. Our arms are linked together and we’re moving step by step across the field. The line comes to a point with me and falls away on either side as far as I can see.

—We’re walking?

She frowned. —Not so much walking, I think, as hovering. Gliding. The grass is well above our heads, more like bamboo, really, or very high reeds. The farther we go the harder it is to keep together. The woman next to me turns toward me and smiles. “Let go of my arm, Else,” she says. “Go and find it.” “Who?” I ask. “The baby,” she whispers, her mouth close to my ear. I’m aware then suddenly of moving my legs and of a smell in the air like beeswax, or summer pollen.