Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Peter S. Beagle

  It was open.

  Jansen stood for a long time at the foot of the narrow stair, looking up into the shadows and becoming more aware with every passing moment that the last thing he wanted to do was go even one step further, because that would commit himself irrevocably to whatever reality lay in wait at the top. When he did finally begin to climb, his body felt like the body of someone heavier than he, someone older, and even more weary.

  The second floor stairs creaked on the sixth and eleventh steps, exactly as he remembered. All the interior doors were closed, blocking out the light from the street, so by the time he reached the fourth landing he was feeling his way, palms and fingers rasping over the rough burned wood and ragged wallpaper. The Berlin Brigade may have sworn by spotless uniforms and occupied fancy officers’ quarters, but they took their OPs—their observation posts—largely as they found them. Jansen counted right-hand doorframes, stopping when he got to the third. His hand found the familiar shape of the brass doorknob, turned it, and eased the door open, grateful to see light again, even if it wasn’t very strong this high above the streetlamps.

  The first thing his eyes registered was the neatly folded khaki sweater on the one old armchair in the room. Just where I left it… transferred to Stuttgart on half an hour’s notice, never did get back here. Then he saw the folding chair placed carefully on its handmade wooden riser, in front of the open window, and the crude signatures and battalion numbers and obscenities scratched into the walls, including six-inch high letters that said T HE “40” HIRED gUNS. Next to that was a blocky ’50s-vintage German wall telephone, its cord dangling above a beaten-up oil heater. On the cheap metal table in the corner were a couple of paperbacks—Mickey Spillane, Erle Stanley Gardner—and some torn candy bar wrappers. Harding, he thought. Three crap mysteries from the PX every week, like clockwork, along with half their Baby Ruths and Mounds. Good as gold or cigarettes when it came to bartering with the street kids.

  Jansen picked up the Spillane book, opened it, and realized that it was completely blank inside its lurid cover. He frowned, then dropped the empty book and lifted the wall telephone’s absurdly light-blue handset. He held it to his ear, and the result was exactly what he expected: no dial tone, no static sputter—nothing but the dark silence of a long-dead line. He jiggled the hook, which was pointless but irresistible, and then hung up, a little harder than he perhaps needed to do.

  After that he moved to the window, easing gently down into the folding chair positioned before it, because the dream-prop wooden riser under its legs was obviously just as flimsy as the one he’d teetered on so many times back in the real West Berlin. All he needed were his old binoculars and some wet-eared short-time 1st Lieutenant bitching at him and it would be like he’d never left. Except, of course, that there had been a couple of Germanys then, and as he looked out across the street he could see that the world was just as gone on the GDR side of the Wall as on this one. Ahead of him lay the Death Strip he had looked down upon every day for almost two years, the pale gravel raked over the flat ground between the crude outer Wall, topped with Y-shaped iron trees supporting a cloud of barbed wire, and the even cruder inner wall on the other side of the ramshackle watchtower. But the VoPo barracks he knew from before, the decaying and abandoned pre-War buildings that should have been there, were not; and as he looked from right to left, as far as he could see, sharp-edged blackness traced a line that paralleled the Wall itself. Spotting one or two of the old Russian T-55 tanks would have been a strange but distinct comfort right now, but of course there weren’t any.

  The telephone rang.

  Jansen spun in his chair and the riser gave way beneath his shifting weight with a sharp crack, spilling him heavily to the ground. His back twisted, muscles on the lower left side spasming, and his right knee flared red with pain. Fuck. Real enough to hurt like a son of a bitch!

  The phone rang a second time, then a third ring, a fourth. It took him that long to struggle back to his feet and hitch straight-legged over to it, his right knee still not trustworthy.

  He put his hand on the receiver. It seemed to buzz like a rattlesnake in his fingers, and he held onto it for a second before he could make himself pick it up and put it to his ear.

  He said, “Who is this?”

  An instant of silence; then a sudden burst of surprised laughter. “So who should it be, bulvan?” The accent was Russian, as was the gruff timbre of the voice. Even the laughter was Russian. “Come to the window, so I can see you again. I am wondering if you are the Rawhide or the Two-Gun Kid.”

  Jansen said, “For God’s sake, who are you? Where are you?”

  “Come look. I will turn on light.”

  Jansen moved stiffly back to the window, the receiver cord just long enough to stretch. Stepping over the fallen chair, he put his free hand on the windowsill and leaned down to look out. A hundred yards away, toward the far side of the Death Strip, the lights inside the East German guard tower were blinking on and off. As he watched, the pattern stopped and the lights stayed on, allowing him to see a bundled-up figure pointing one forefinger at him, sighting along it like a pistol.

  Into the handset, Jansen said, “You?”

  “Garazhi, Rawhide. Me. So good to see you again.” The distant figure executed a clumsy bow.

  “Why are you calling me that?” Jansen’s mouth was so dry it pained him.

  The chuckle came through the receiver again. “The glorious Soviet Army was not nearly as efficient as your leaders liked to believe. Knew only the names of your officers, no one else. But from first day we looked across at each other, I had to call you something. I was learning English from comic books—very big on black market, you see, the Westerns with horses and guns and silly hats, so I called you Rawhide Kid and that short man—”

  “Roscoe Harding.”

  “Really? For us he was Two-Gun Kid, and your mostly night fellows, Kid Colt and Tex Hopalong. Very satisfying, very shoot-’em-up. We had many such jokes.”

  “You don’t want to know what we called you.”

  Another laugh. “Possibly not. But what name should I give you now, Rawhide? We are both older, I see, and it does not suit.”

  “My name’s Jansen. Henry Jansen. Listen, you, whatever your name is—”

  “Leonid,” said the voice in his ear. “Leonid Leonidovich Nikolai Gavrilenko.”

  “That’s a mouthful.”

  “True. But we are such old acquaintances, you must call me Lyonya. Or not, as you prefer. I do not presume.” He paused, then said, “Welcome back to the Wall, my friend Jansen. Henry.”

  “Look behind you.” Jansen kept his voice deliberately flat, but he could feel himself struggling not to panic. “This place isn’t real.”

  “Da, temnyi. The darkness. I have seen.”

  Jansen said, “What the hell is going on? I can’t be here. I was in a clinic waiting room with my daughter. She’s seven months pregnant, and her husband’s run off somewhere. She’ll need me.” Even as he spoke the words, he tasted their untruth in the back of his mouth. Arl had never had a chance to need him, and wouldn’t know how to begin now, even if he wasn’t who he was. But the Russian was impressed, or sounded so.

  “Lucky man, Henry. I congratulate you, to have someone needing you. A good life, then? Since we saw each other last?”

  “No,” Jansen said. “Not so good. But I have to get back to it right now. Arl—my daughter—she won’t know where I am. Hell, I don’t know where I am.”

  “That is, I think, what we should be finding out. We put our thinking caps on, you and I.” A certain growling bemusement had entered the Russian’s voice. “Do Americans still say that? It cannot be accident, this place. Something is happening to us, something has brought us here. Have looked, but seen no one but you. So I think now, yes, after all, we must meet in person, do you not agree? At last, meet. With thinking caps.”

  As absolutely as Jansen wanted to leave the room, the deep suspicion that had been born in him here—n
ever to abate fully—had its own hold. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, tovarich.”

  “No one is using that word anymore.” Gavrilenko’s voice was flat, without rancor or any sort of nostalgia. “Except the comedians. A comedy word now. Listen, Jansen, we don’t give it up so fast! It is not good to be in this place alone, surely, whatever it is. That is why I called you. Old place, old face from old place, old time—this cannot be coincidence.”

  Jansen frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. But that’s another thing. How did you know this number? Nobody was supposed to have it but the commander and the NCOIC. They didn’t even give it to us! Some kraut spy sneak it out to you? Was that another one of the jokes?”

  “You are not thinking, Henry.”

  “Fuck you, Gavrilenko. Why should I trust a single goddamn thing you say? I want to go home!”

  There was a long silence.

  He threw the receiver down, grabbed the empty window frame with both hands and stuck his head out into the night. “Do you hear me, you fucking Russian asshole? I want to go home! I have to go home!”

  He saw the woman then, entering the Death Strip from somewhere just beyond and to the right of the watchtower. She walked quickly, looking from side to side, shoulders tense, head forward. She wore a faded light-brown coat, a transparent kerchief over her hair, and flat, rundown shoes. In one hand she carried what looked like a small duffel bag.

  Oh God, oh no, Jansen thought. Not this, not this, not again.

  The Russian had seen her too. Even at this distance Jansen clearly heard him shouting in Russian, and then in German. But she kept coming on, and suddenly Jansen understood that she was a ghost. He had never seen one before, but there was no doubt in his mind.

  As the woman came even with Gavrilenko’s tower she began to run, racing toward the Wall. Halfway there a battery of searchlights came on, so bright they were blinding to Jansen’s dark-adjusted eyes. Automatic, self-activated, never did figure where the trip must be. Maybe they moved it around, be just like them….

  And then the firing started.

  He couldn’t tell where it was coming from: there were no snipers shooting from jeeps or gun-trucks, and in the guard tower there was only the Russian—yelling and screaming, yes, but without any weapon in his hands. Yet real bullets were somehow crackling and spitting all around the woman’s churning legs, kicking up little spouts in the neatly-raked gravel like pettish children scuffling their feet. It wasn’t happening exactly as it had happened, though. Back then there had been alarms, VoPos and West Berliners shouting—Harding too, right in Jansen’s ear—dogs barking, engines revving, the mixed sounds of panic and hope and adrenaline-spiked fear. Here, after Gavrilenko stopped shouting, there was only the spattering echo of gunfire as the woman dodged left and right between the concrete obstacles. I couldn’t have done anything.

  I couldn’t!

  The two paired hooks of a ship’s ladder sailed over the Wall between two of the iron Ys, under the barbed wire, catching among the irregular concrete blocks and mortar. On the other side, out of his sight, the ghost pulled the ladder taut—Jansen could see the hooks shift, almost coming loose before catching. The woman climbed rapidly: in another moment her head topped the Wall, and she pulled a pair of clippers from her waistband and swiftly opened a gap in the barbed wire barrier. Then she braced herself with her hands and looked directly into Jansen’s eyes.

  She was twenty-three, or so he’d been told, though at the time he had thought she looked older. Now she seemed incredibly young to him, younger than Arl, even, but her plain little face was as gray as the Wall, and her eyes were an inexpressive pale-blue. They were not in the least accusatory or reproachful, but once they had hold of Jansen, he could not look away. He wanted to speak, to explain, to apologize, but that was impossible. The nameless dead woman held him with eyes that neither glittered nor burned, nor even judged him, but would not let go. Jansen stood as motionless as she, squeezing the window frame so hard that he lost feeling in his fingers.

  Then a single shot cracked his heart and the woman was suddenly slammed forward, her body twisting so that she fell across the top of the Wall, her left foot kicking one of the ladder hooks loose. She rolled partway onto her side, lifting her head for a moment, and again he saw her eyes. When they finally closed and freed him, he began to cry silently.

  How long he stood weeping, he couldn’t say. Gavrilenko did not call out to him across the gap, and there were no other sounds anywhere in the world. Jansen was still staring at the body on the Wall when—exactly as though a movie were being run in reverse—the dead woman sat up, crawled backwards to the ladder, reattached the dangling hook, and began descending as she had come. This time she did not look at him at all, and as her head dropped almost out of view the barbed wire knitted itself together.

  He watched for a time, but she did not reappear.

  The receiver felt as heavy as a barbell when he finally lifted the telephone. He could hear Gavrilenko breathing hoarsely on the line, waiting for him. “The Friedrichstrasse,” Jansen said. “Checkpoint Charlie. I’ll meet you there.”

  It had never taken Specialist 4 Henry Jansen—twenty years old, of the 385th Military Police Battalion, specially attached to the 287th Military Police Company—more than eight minutes to cover the four and a half blocks from the Axel-Springer-Strasse observation post to Checkpoint Charlie. The sixty-six-year-old Jansen, kidnapped by the past and all but completely disoriented, took longer, partly because of his knee, but mostly due to mounting fear and bewilderment. The guillotine dark was constantly visible over the Wall that flanked him on his right, and to his left it waited at the end of every side street. Passing the T-intersections he couldn’t help but stop and stare.

  He consciously attempted to hold his shoulders as straight and swaggering as those of that young MP from Wurtsboro, but despite the effort his head kept lowering between his shoulders, like a bull trying to catch up with the dancing banderilleros, jabbing their maddening darts into him from all sides. The further he went into this unreal slice of an empty Berlin, the deeper the banderillas seemed to drive into his weary spirit.

  I couldn’t have helped her. I couldn’t have helped, I couldn’t… She lay there two hours, she bled to death right in front of me, and there wasn’t anything I could do. Harding wouldn’t let me go to her, anyway, and he outranked me.

  But that thought didn’t ease him, no more than it ever had. Why should he expect it to help now, in this false place and timeless time, this cage of memories?

  By the time he reached Checkpoint Charlie he was sweating coldly, though not from exertion.

  The checkpoint was a long, low shack set in the middle of the Friedrichstrasse, with a barrier of stacked sandbags arrayed facing the “Worker and Farmer Paradise” gate on the East German side. Just past the shack he could see the imbiss stand where he and his buddies had grabbed coffee, sodas, and sandwiches while on duty, and also the familiar hulk of a massive apartment building, abandoned and empty both then and now.

  Someone was standing at the checkpoint, thoughtfully studying the guard shack, but it was not Gavrilenko. Jansen could tell that even from a distance. This stranger was a tall man with thinning blonde hair—probably American, to judge by his neat but casual dress—who looked to be in his middle to late forties. When the man turned and caught sight of Jansen he looked first utterly astonished, and then profoundly grateful to see another human being. He hurried forward, actually laughing with relief. “Well, thank God. I’d just about come to believe I was the only living creature in Berlin! Glad to see there’s two of us.”

  He had the faintest of German accents, hiding shyly under the broad, flat vowels of the Midwest. When he got to Jansen he put out a hand, which Jansen took somewhat cautiously.

  “Hi,” the tall man said. “My name’s Ben. Ben Richter.”

  “I’m Henry Jansen.” He let go of Richter’s hand. “This isn’t Berlin, though. It’s not anywhere.”

  “No,”
the stranger agreed. “But it’s not a dream, either. I know it’s not a dream.” He peered closely and anxiously into Jansen’s face. “Do you have any idea what’s happened to us?”

  “Don’t fall asleep in a Planned Parenthood clinic, I’ll tell you that much,” Jansen said. “That’s where I was.”

  “I was trying not to fall asleep,” Richter answered. “I was driving home from a business meeting, and my eyelids kept dropping shut. Just a few seconds at a time, but it’s terrifying, the way your head suddenly snaps awake, and you know you’re just about to crash into someone. Couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t tired when I started out, got plenty of rest the night before. Weird.” He seemed suddenly alarmed. “Do you think my car just went on, with no driver?”

  Jansen felt his face grow cold, almost numb. “Couldn’t tell you.” After a pause, he added, “Ben, was it?”

  “Actually, it’s Bernd, but everyone’s always called me Ben, since I started school. Kids just decide, don’t they?”

  Jansen said, “I knew somebody named Richter when I was in junior high. You got any relatives in Wurtsboro, New York?”

  The tall man laughed slightly. “I don’t know if I’ve got any relatives anywhere. Not in the States, for sure.”

  “Forget it. Guess I’m just looking for connections.”

  Richter grinned. “Not exactly surprising, given the circumstances.”

  “We’re not alone,” Jansen told him. “There’s at least one more of us, anyway, a Russian. Name’s Gavrilenko. We spotted each other across the Wall. He was supposed to meet me here—I don’t know what’s keeping him.” After a moment, he added, “Don’t know how he got here; I mean, if he was asleep or not.”

  Richter asked hesitantly, “Did you and your friend—uh, the Russian—did you have any luck figuring this out?”