Us?
Don’t you have some protector?
They’re not Catholic out there. It’s a long time ago, Alois.
Yes. Now they call me Enzo again.
And me?
Not you.
They drank.
He thought of Mátyás’s unmade bed. Again, the cord of his Walkman. Alois had gotten up, and came back with a cardigan. He put it on, and they sat awhile without talking. They drank.
And who was left, then? Waclaw asked.
The fat butcher lady from the Sauerland. Alois laughed. What do you think. Everyone was still there, really. Only your father left, and then me, later. Have you ever asked yourself how many lives anyone would ever voluntarily spend in that place? Not one. But the heart can’t admit that.
For a while the hissing of the gas lamp was all there was between them.
Then Alois set something on the table.
It would have made him happy for you to have it.
He put something in Waclaw’s hand, medalik, it shot through his head, that and the beginning of the prayer to Mary, pod twoją obronę. He took the coin and closed his hand, then looked out into the night.
They didn’t talk about the birds. All evening they didn’t talk about the birds. As if it would have been too easy. They talked about the sea. About Waclaw’s father. About his lungs and the open window by which he’d slept, sitting, in the end. How he’d waved to his mates as they kept going down there. Prosper. The shaft, the third, the fourth level. The Baltic Sea, which he’d seen again only when his body was far too worn out. The waves sloshing against the shore. The narrow room.
Alois listened. He left pauses after Waclaw said something, as if to make sure he’d really finished.
Were you with him at the end? Alois asked.
Waclaw shook his head.
You go on land to Ciudad del Carmen, and then you’re still nowhere.
He didn’t know how to describe it. He didn’t know what to say about a night when he’d sat on the shore until the mosquitos had gotten him all over. It had been all the same to him, and he’d heard the rattling sound that came from the waves, as from a badly damaged lung.
To your father, Alois said, Tomasz, good old Tomek. He drank. I thought a lot about him when I heard. But a trip like that, you know, all alone.
Alois was silent. As if he were listening to something else. As if the sentences didn’t simply end. As if they branched out, far beneath what was actually said.
Look at you, he said then. It’s summer. And you’re wearing a suit.
It’s not for me.
You know what I mean. You spent your best years out there.
Waclaw brought the duffel into a small room that was built into the slope and smelled a bit damp. The deep sleep of that night. Alois took bedding out of a heavy wooden cupboard and shook it out with his light arms, sit yourself down, boy, and for a moment they were in a cloud of lavender. Alois wanted to close the curtains, but Waclaw said there was no need. He would wake early anyway. But he was still lying in the blazing sunlight past midday. For the first time in weeks he slept deeply and soundly until the afternoon.
Alois sent him up the mountain to the narrow place where the stream crossed the path.
You can wedge the metal sheet between the two rocks, he said.
Waclaw stood under the thin trickle for a long time looking down at the valley; he felt the cold water on his neck.
On the way back, the sun shone on his ribs. And his steps weren’t those of a holidaymaker, but rather strangely truncated. From far away it looked as if he were afraid of heights.
Alois was waiting for him outside amid the beans. He said that this year everything was going to dry out. Even the blossoms fall off, he said. And did you see the trees?
Waclaw said he’d seen many trees, and had heard the dry leaves in the night, when he’d rolled over, or when the lizards ran through them, and sometimes the wind drove the leaves in front of him over the dry asphalt roads, and the leaves looked like dried chicken feet, he’d seen them once in—
Alois interrupted him.
Have you eaten today?
A bit.
Alois sliced through the ham with a large knife. He cut many thin pieces, and took cheese out of brine, and fried eggplant in a lot of oil. Waclaw lifted a hand as if he wanted to protest, but then he let the hand sink, and Alois stood across from him in the dark, shady kitchen. He watched Waclaw eat but didn’t sit.
He just stood there, as if there was nothing more important in all the world than watching the thin man eat.
Waclaw wiped his mouth.
They heard the deep cooing outside.
What happened to her? Alois asked. Your girl—Milena, right?
Waclaw didn’t answer. He brushed the table with his fingers.
It was a miracle, Alois began again, that you came through again at all back then, to the neighborhood. And then you pick her up and you leave, as soon as the borders open, to this Polish village and no one hears anything more from you, just that you’re driving for a shipping company, and—
Waclaw shrugged.
I couldn’t keep it away from us.
Alois looked past him out the window, as if thinking.
Ah, forget about it, boy, he said then, softly.
You never know beforehand what the price is. And above all, you don’t know what you’re ready to pay. We can’t take these things back.
Come on.
They stood in front of the loft for a long time, now and then Alois pointed with his head to one bird or another, and Waclaw nodded. He wanted to tell Alois about Cairo, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know if he should tell about Farangis, or about the accident. He thought about it while he scratched at the wooden floor with a trowel; he tied a cloth over his mouth, he scraped the droppings out of the corners. Then he saw something. For a while he just stood in front of it. Then he propped his broom against the wall and carefully picked it up.
He found Alois in his folding chair between the vegetable beds. Waclaw held the plastic high.
You still have it, he cried.
Alois turned toward him. For a moment he looked at the thin man, who suddenly stood before him, as if trying to reconcile something, as if he saw again the shed roof and the house, and beyond it himself, still with all his hair, and smoking, in an evening light that made everything stand out clearly: the grout between the stones, the black crevices in his skin, the last fir trees in the distance, beyond which there was no Italy, not for a long time yet, only the dirty Emscher River that had sucked away his wife’s dreams and made her sick, and the gray ice that came every winter. The smokestacks of the distant coking plant, this land that they were hollowing out, seven levels, the drudgery, leaving early when it was still dark, returning when it was no longer light, the soot on the tissues when they blew their noses in the winter, and just the pigeons, as if they were proof of something that no one could take away from him.
The dish, Waclaw said, you still have it.
Alois lowered the roll of twine with which he’d been tying up the vines.
I need some compost here badly, boy.
Let me see, he said then, and Waclaw turned the water dish in his hands. It was a circular vessel with a top the shape of a circus tent, with five openings for the birds’ heads. The plastic was faded from the years.
What else would I do with it?
Alois wound the string around his hand. For a moment it looked like the whole thing made him uncomfortable, and Waclaw let the hand with the plastic drop.
I just mean, he said.
As he brought the dish back to the compartment for the old pigeons, he thought of the woman from the pet store who’d helped him count out his pennies on the counter. Her fingernails, he still remembered, had been painted blue. The whole way home he’d imagined Alois opening the present. It was the end of March, and his birthday.
That afternoon Alois avoided him. From afar, Waclaw saw him in the kitchen, picki
ng the leaves off herbs, whole mountains of leaves off their stems, far more than he could use.
He was tired that evening, he lay down in the room next to the slope. He awoke in the night. He could feel his heartbeat, and the old disquiet was back. Clouds passed in the narrow strip of sky that he could see from the bed, quickening in the slight moonlight. Fall was coming. Fall was a big thing, and it brought the villagers together. They stood in front of leaf fires with their hands in their pockets, a swig of homemade schnapps, swished around a bad tooth. They spoke little. The fall was what surrounded the people who lived in such places. Places like Wiórek. Places that no longer existed.
He must have dozed off when Alois woke him.
They went out onto the terrace and the stone was still cold from the night when Waclaw sat down on the bench. A large jar of honey and pistachios stood on the table. The first light shimmered yellow in the jar. Alois laid an arm over the back of the bench. Have some. Waclaw dipped a biscuit in the honey. He could hear himself when he bit through the nuts.
The honey was sweet. It tasted unusually strong.
Now come, Alois said.
He waited until Waclaw had stood up. Then he gestured for Waclaw to follow him. He opened the carabiner that ran through the latch pin, and then the rickety wooden door that was steel-plated to keep out the martens. He went inside and looked at the pigeons, one after another. He didn’t reach out to touch them. A few picked some popcorn from the flat of his hand, a few sat on his shoulders. Then he opened a hatch, and they came out one after another; they rose hastily, their wingbeats when they lifted off sounded like someone quickly shuffling a deck of cards. Then they flew big circles over the valley.
You’re still training them, Waclaw said.
You know me.
Below, low tiled roofs shimmered through the mist while the flock drifted above like a body that was lively and big and very light. The early sun fiery red and distant. Alois lifted the flag on the wooden stick. His whole body seemed to grow larger under the expansive swirls of the birds, and he beckoned Waclaw closer to him.
Do you see the big blue one flying ahead? You try it, he said. Waclaw stood there. The flag in his hand. He noticed how Alois watched him. And for him, for him perhaps, he made the same big motions he’d made as a boy. He stretched out, he waved the flag through the air a bit. Once again, he heard the barely audible whooshing of the wings cutting through the air. And then everything came back. The weight of the wooden stick in his hand, the desire to leave the miners’ estate with them, the smell of coal, unusually strong on one of the first days of fall. And the chill of the meadow, Alois’s admonishing laughter when he came to him even before school. And he saw the coal dust mixing with the powdery snow, and over it the voracious flames of the Esse—the smokestack.
They changed the water and refilled the feed, and Waclaw saw checkered and barred feathers, and later that evening the shadows of the mountains growing slowly darker. They sat on a stone bench; the dog had begun gnawing at its bone again. Waclaw had only seen it once in the daytime, its fur was spotted, and it lowered its head in fear whenever anyone approached. Alois said it had strayed his way, and sometimes it still stayed away for days on end.
What’s with your mother? Alois asked.
Waclaw shrugged. I don’t know, he said.
Last time he’d visited her in that home—she’d sung, it was a group, maybe six women. They’d sat around a table and she wore a paper crown; the carer had played a plastic instrument with tiny keys.
She was still up there in that home, Waclaw said.
He didn’t know what to tell Alois.
It was so warm in the room, he said finally.
He heard Alois breathe. It was dark, and somewhere in the meadow the dog was gnawing its bone. All day, the house had smelled of leeks and stewing meat. Now the chewing sound was conspicuous, as if the darkness that seemed to come from the hills gave it a sharper contour.
They looked out at the land.
But you have it good here, Waclaw said finally.
Alois burst out laughing.
What am I supposed to do. I’m an old man, he said. Someone everyone likes because all I want is peace and quiet. I can be here. But I can’t get my life back. It’s still up there.
Alois waved his open hand toward the north.
The Esse, Waclaw said.
I haven’t heard that word in a long time. But yes.
I couldn’t’ve gotten old there, and like everyone else, my stomach bothered me. You just don’t want to eat where you don’t feel at home. Only your father left, with his lung.
Alois stretched the u in lung out unnaturally. It sounded almost comical.
But you have it good here, Waclaw said again. Alois waved the thought away.
I was old when I came back. Look at me.
He spread his fingers.
That’s what you bring with you.
He held his hand closer to the little gas lamp, and Waclaw saw his fingers trembling.
I don’t want it to be like this for you, Alois said. You’re still younger than I was back then. She could get used to you more quickly. Isn’t there anyone waiting for you?
Waclaw reached for the carafe. It was empty, and Alois told him where to find the box of wine, and then Waclaw stood behind the heavy wooden door and heard his own breath. He heard the wine squirting forcefully into the carafe, and he stood there for a long time and drank in the darkness and couldn’t make up his mind to go back up. He drank so quickly that he had to gasp for breath.
20
Snakes
He had to go up the little hill behind the house to make a phone call. It was a dry slope with big stones where the snakes sunned themselves at noon; he banged a walking stick against the rocks and made noises to scare them away. After a few days they seemed to find other places to be.
He now knew the paths that led over the hills, and he sat up there in the mornings and evenings, always at the same times, and watched Alois training his birds. Alois had shown him a whole stack of creased certificates: competitions he’d flown in the last few years, and for a moment they’d both looked at the papers that Alois held in his light arms, and Waclaw had seen how the paper trembled. Waclaw talked little; he listened when Alois talked about the pigeons, about breeding lines.
Patrícia had called, and Sharam had left him messages—he had better take care, Sharam said, You know what they’re capable of. Think of the Gulf, Sharam said, and no longer seemed to know himself just what he meant by it. Wenzel, he almost whispered, and Waclaw held the phone close to his ear. He tried to imagine Sharam, on land, alone with his bottles. He wanted to say: it was never about us, we just wanted to believe that, but he never called back. He looked down at the village. Only the sun, burning down on the tiles.
After a few days he noticed that more cars than usual were driving up the narrow road. Alois said something about a festival, and at the end of the week Elena stood outside the door with the girl. You’re still here, she said. He nodded. The girl had the valve of a large plastic tube between her teeth, she let go of her mother’s hand and ran to the house, and Elena hastily slammed the trunk.
Are you two getting on all right? she asked, and stood next to Alois. He looked small next to her and just nodded. For a while they watched Waclaw help the girl get some air into the valve. The inflatable animal had a jagged head and wings and the tail of a fish. It was purple. When they’d gotten it blown up the girl lifted it over her head and chased Waclaw through the grass. He ran, somewhat clumsily, and then stopped in the shade with his hands propped on his knees. Later they leaned against the well—Alois had gone into the house—and the girl peered down.
That’s deep, she said.
Ask the man what deep is, Elena said.
They looked at him.
He said a number. He had to repeat the number.
Elena had to say it again.
Then he pointed to the mountains.
Twice that high.
<
br /> What’s the mountain called? he asked the girl.
Monte Piccio.
Elena shook her head vigorously. It’s called Monte Penice, she said, but the girl remained serious.
Two times Monte Piccio, Waclaw said, but instead of up in the air, down into the ground.
He thought of Sharam. The North Sea is a walk in the park compared to what they’re planning. Two miles, Sharam had said. The water off Brazil is a mile deep, and then that deep again into the ground. Do you want that?
Enni grinned as if she didn’t believe him.
Then she looked at the well and ran back to the shallow pond in the garden. She set the animal in the basin and let it float.
They ate on the meadow. Alois had made meat broth again, he took out the bones and threw them to the dog. Waclaw said that in the warmer places there were sharks and big fish that swam around the platform.
Enni lifted her feet off the ground and squealed.
They laughed.
In the afternoon two young men came to talk to Alois and looked curiously in the direction of the chairs where they were sitting. Their hair was combed back and gleamed like the chitin shell of a beetle. The younger one’s eyebrows ran together, and a light down grew on his upper lip. Alois nodded to them, and when he came back he said they’d be needing him more often—one of the tractors was broken, the engine sounded like a fireworks display. They wanted to borrow something for the festival. Alois laughed softly. Come with me, he said. Waclaw followed him to a shed. They stood in the open door for a long time. Alois pulled him inside. It smelled of gasoline.
You know, I always wanted one like this, Alois said.
I remember how your father and I took a trip, really we just wanted to get things for Easter in Bochum, but then we stopped after all—good Lord, a huge golf course, I’d never seen anything like it in all my life. Grass cut to a millimeter, all the little flags and hills and a few scattered trees like in an old landscape painting, the couple of twerps in their plaid pants were nothing to me, but I was really taken with those lawn mowers. We still used to scythe the meadows by hand and I told Federica about it later, she thought I was nuts but I told her: one day I’ll have one of those. And maybe it was just that afternoon we had together out there, your father and I, on the way back from Bochum, we had a few pilsners and it was spring all around us and we sat in the grass, the tires behind me warm from the first sun. I couldn’t tell you what we talked about, but at some point we started laughing like crazy, the whole left half of your father’s face pulled upward and I could see into his nostrils, where there was still some soot, and in front of us these bizarre gentlemen with their flat shoes and angular movements. At some point it just got to us, all that fuss for a few little white balls, I dunno, something about it took our breath away, and I still remember the pines around us and the moss and grass and for a few moments everything was so damn real—
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