The man was standing at the base of the canal when the bank started to shift. A whole section of bank cracked away suddenly from the rest, and flowed down, the scrambling workers carried on it like debris, even the guard who had stood at the top and the dogs that were with him.
Augustin was holding a horse by the head, trying to lead it on. The horse shied as the land moved and he was thrown down. For a moment all his conscious attention was for the horse, though he felt the land shuddering about him. He scrambled up, steadied the horse, and only then did he see. The man was gone. He had been at the bottom of the ditch, and he was gone altogether. Pieces of other men, heads, arms, legs, stuck out from the mud. Some of these men were alive, and were brought out black and shiny as eels.
Safta does not see the movement in the picture but only the static fact: the horizontal figure and the heap of earth. ‘Andrei died. You met him in the camp. And he died in the camp and was buried. Is that what you’re telling me?’
They sit with the drawings on the table before them. The light is going. Soon she won’t be able any more to see what he has drawn.
He has put his hands to his lap, folded one into the other. His eyes are on her, his face very close. It is a strange face because you can see the youth in it and yet it is old at the same time. You see the fine structure of the bones, no flesh on them; the heart shape pale and vulnerable beneath the dark mop of his hair. His eyes are taut even in the dusk. She senses the knowledge coiled in them.
She speaks again. ‘Is that it? Is that what you’re telling me? But you know you can’t just tell a person something like that and leave it there and say no more.’
She has a need to move. She stands up and then he stands too, awkward, knocking the table so that the drawings fall to the floor.
‘You have to tell me more. You have to make it clear.’
Her voice has begun quiet, as ever when she talks to him, even and uninflected as if she were speaking to herself. Now it begins to rise, sharp like a blade.
‘Oh Tinu, don’t you understand? Don’t you see?’
At last she cannot bear his silence any more. She takes hold of him and shakes him. She holds him with her two hands, pinning his arms to his sides. She wants to shake the words out of him, out of his body so tight and dumb, that seems to be all bone, no flesh but all dumb bone. She shakes him so hard as if it would make him snap.
And then lets go and falls against him, and his body softens and he raises a trembling hand to stroke her hair.
After a time she looks about her.
‘Look, it’s almost dark. The dark comes down so swiftly now. Those are bats flying over the lawn now, where just a few moments ago I thought there were swallows.’
She has cried and stopped crying, and still he strokes her hair.
Her words come slowly, drawing back into themselves.
‘Do you know, I thought I saw him once? If this is true, what you have drawn, if I understand it correctly, then perhaps I did. But it was just for a moment, from a distance. It might very easily have been someone else. That happens, doesn’t it? That you see someone’s back or the shape of them, or the way they walk in the street, and you think that it’s someone you used to love; but then they turn or you get up close and you see they’re not really like that person at all. It was in Ukraine. I was at a field hospital, not far behind the front. I went out to meet some ambulances coming in and I saw this man standing beyond the next tent with his arm in a sling, just his back first and then the side of him; and then the ambulance driver opened the doors and began unloading a stretcher and there was a poor boy on it in screaming pain. I saw to the boy, saw to it that they gave him a first shot of morphine, and when I looked again the man had gone. I was so busy. You cannot imagine the chaos that there was: no time to think or act for yourself, everything frantic, the smells, the cries, the movement, so intense. I let the moment go. It was just a fragment of all that was happening. I didn’t think about it at the time but later it came back to me. And then I told myself that it was only a passing resemblance, some memory that had floated up. I was so tired in those days. Sometimes one was so tired that one just went on mechanically and one’s thoughts quite separated themselves. The pieces of one’s mind separated and came together at moments in unexpected ways, and there was no point trying to make sense of them. What was so special about the way that particular man stood? At that distance? Any number of men might have stood that way.’
And what if it had been him, would she have gone and spoken to him? She doesn’t know. There was so much that had happened in between, so much that had been put away that she could not open – least of all in that place where there were already too many wounds.
‘What could we have said to one another anyway? Everything had changed. I was changed.’
32
This night, for the first night since she has been with him, he does not appear to be disturbed by his dreams. It is she who is disturbed. She remembers the past so intensely that it seems to be about her in the house. The moon lights the walls where the mirrors hung. It is almost as if she can see them. They were old mirrors, framed in gilt. They seemed to have a slight tint to the glass, that flattered everyone in them. Or that was what her grandfather used to say. He said that he had been to a famous tailor’s in London who had just such mirrors that flattered all its clients. Her mother said that it was just an effect of the soft light that filled the room in the daytime, that came in filtered from the verandah on one side and the acacias on the other. She sees her mother gliding in through the double doors, deliberate in her walking like a ballerina, going to the green sofa. Sees her father in the room as if there were two of him: the man he was and his reflection in the mirror of which he was always aware. She thinks of Andrei. Augustin thought he was still important to her. She would have said only a day before, only that morning, that Andrei wasn’t important any more. He hadn’t been important for a long time. But once Augustin had an idea he fixed on it. She had held his hand back from drawing. She had wanted to tell him that the past was past, even if his pictures made it present. It wasn’t necessary to work so hard to tell her something that she didn’t need to know.
Didn’t he understand about the past? She had thought, perhaps you needed words for that, to pack time away, to file and classify events and sort them into history. Words made it possible to say: this happened then. That is finished. Here is now.
But it isn’t so.
The windows to the garden are wide open. The moon must be full though out of view behind the house. Under its light the grass has become smooth lawn again. The catalpa has grown huge since she has been gone, a dark cumulus shape making a squat cumulus shadow. There used to be a bench beneath it, a white bench of iron cast to look like twigs. Even then the branches hung down so low that when the tree was in full leaf the bench was almost hidden from the house.
Not only then but now, here in the dark.
The smell of mushrooms on her fingers.
They rode without speaking through the village in the evening and the peasants doffed their hats.
The lake. A time before they had so much as touched one another. Beneath the trees, a long flat dive, the brown length of him. He challenges her to race but keeps himself just within reach, the water taut between them, she all the time catching up yet knowing that it is in his power to pull away.
His brownness. His blue shirt. She has the image of his hands as he drove. They said they would drive across continents. Did they mean it or was it only the words carrying them onwards? There is his face, the profile looking ahead, the elation on it that might be happiness or might be no more than the impact of the wind.
Is she to believe in him again, all of a sudden, on the basis of a drawing? She saw the drawing form, line by line. She watched the movement of the pencil, listened to its friction on the paper. She followed the lines as they came together, gaining density, forming, transforming. The lines were nothing in themselves. They were nothing until they
were interpreted, some process of intelligence and intuition turning two dimensions into three, representation into reality; and all the while there was the other reality of Augustin working away and humming through closed lips. Still they are no more than lines and yet they have become meaning, story, fact. And the story lies out there on the table where Augustin left it. Before they came in he had picked the drawings up from the floor where they had fallen and laid them back on the table and placed a stone on them to hold them there. In the morning they will be there in the light again for her to see.
They are driving in the darkness. They drive into black space with the headlights of the car lighting a white funnel before them. No sky, no horizon, but only the lit ground like liquid running on and falling away. They head on into the land as if it is a vast dark sea. They ride the swell of great waves, slipping down into the long troughs between. Gradually they go deeper and deeper until the land subsumes them. It has pulled them down into itself and they are drowned.
That was how Augustin drew him, not so much buried as drowned in earth.
33
She has slept only in snatches. Some time deep in the night she wakes. The moon has climbed higher and shifted its light across the room. She thinks she has heard a sound in the house. The night is very still. She listens for the sound to repeat.
Augustin sleeps on unaware. The shifted light falls across his face but it does not wake him.
She sleeps another stretch – or perhaps it’s only an instant. Black sleep this time, no pictures. She wakes again sharply. Someone is moving around inside the house.
She hasn’t heard the dogs barking. If the dogs have made no noise and yet someone is there then perhaps it is because they know the intruder.
Without making any noise herself, she goes to the windows on the side of the drive. She has kept the shutters on that side closed in case anyone should come by. She opens one of them a crack.
There is a cart there, a couple of horses and a foal. One of the horses whinnies and the foal goes close to it beneath the acacias. Then she hears a man’s voice. She cannot make out what he is saying. She is not even sure of the language. The dogs run down the steps and behind them comes a man. Only one man, and it seems to be to the dogs that he is speaking. He is a small man, his movements quick and precise. He has a wide-brimmed hat like a Gypsy. He takes something from the cart and goes back into the house. Probably he is only a Gypsy.
She has nothing with which to defend herself. There is not even anything in the room with which she can wedge the door shut. She moves softly as if she was in a night ward, through from the drawing room into the next room and to the half-open doors of the room beyond. The man appears to have no suspicion of their presence. He seems to be settling down for the night. He must have noticed the loss of his mattress but he has put a blanket on the floor where the mattress was. She creeps back, pulling each pair of doors to behind her. Lies down again beside Augustin. She is back in the present. Her ghosts are gone. The room is just a room. The house is only a collection of empty rooms that they share with a stranger.
The man is up early. She watches as he draws water for his horses. They are good horses, better than she would expect of an ordinary Gypsy. And he takes good care of them. She sees him feel for some injury on one of the mare’s legs. He takes a packet from the cart and begins to prepare some kind of dressing. She had hoped that he was preparing to move on but it seems that he is planning to stay longer. She thinks he will not go so long as the mare is lame.
She opens the shutter fully and shows herself.
‘It’s a big house. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t share it.’
He is older than she had thought in the night. Small, wiry, quick, but his moustache is grey. Bow-legged, weathered. He comes to face her where she stands at the window looking down at him.
‘I know who you are,’ he says.
He makes coffee. He has already made a camp fire outside. He seems to have everything he needs with him on the cart, even tin mugs for the two of them. He hands one to Augustin who is shy as he always is with strangers.
‘He’s my brother. He doesn’t speak.’
‘Drink?’ There’s a bottle of pálinka on the seat of the cart. He holds it out to her.
‘No thank you. My brother won’t have any either.’
‘You’re one of the family, aren’t you?’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Your looks. And why else would you be here?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘I shan’t tell anyone.’
She wonders if she can trust him. There is something odd and free to him, unpredictable.
‘My name’s Elisabeta, Safta. And this is Tinu.’
‘István.’
‘You’ve been here before.’
‘I come past now and again. I travel a lot.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I trade horses. I knew this place years ago, spent some time here.’
‘When was that?’
‘A long time ago. A long time before the war even. I brought a horse here from Transylvania.’
‘The Lipizzaner.’
‘A fine horse, really fine, that one. What happened to it?’
‘The Moişier shot it.’ She speaks of her grandfather as the squire, letting herself slip for a moment into a word from the past. ‘He could not bear for it to go to Russia with the cavalry.’
‘I’m glad that it didn’t go to Russia.’
Augustin has put his cup down and gone to the horses.
‘He’s not really your brother.’
‘Not family, no, but almost like a brother. He’s deaf and dumb but he knows horses. He used to work in the stables. He loved your Lipizzaner very much.’
The foal comes to Augustin’s outstretched hand as if it has always known him.
‘I think that you knew his mother.’
‘Who was his mother?’
‘Paraschiva. She was the cook, here in the house.’
‘Paraschiva. I remember Paraschiva.’
‘She never married. She brought Tinu up on her own. He was born the year after the Lipizzaner came.’
Does he understand? He considers Augustin, who has the mare nudging his back now as he strokes the foal.
‘The lad has a way with horses.’
‘He was born with it. Horses like him. He likes them. He is happier I think with horses than with people.’
‘And Paraschiva?’
‘She’s gone. We came to see if we could find her. Someone told me she was killed when the Russians were here.’
‘I shan’t be here long,’ he has said. ‘Just a day or two, then you’ll have the place to yourselves again.’
He has put the horses to graze on the lawn and gone off on foot. Now that he is out of sight Safta does not trust him. She will not be at ease until she sees him return alone. She considers whether they should leave themselves while there’s time but cannot think where they might go.
When he comes back at the end of the day he brings a chicken. It is newly killed and she guesses that he did not buy it. He makes a fire. Plucks the bird and cuts it into pieces. Puts them to cook. He also has peppers and tomatoes.
‘You two can share. There’s more than I can eat.’
Safta has gathered a basket of plums from the orchard. She brings that and the last of the bread the priest had given her.
‘Tell him that I’m sorry about his mother. Can you tell him that? Tell him that I knew her once.’
‘You can tell him yourself. He’ll understand that much.’
When István has spoken – with his hands as much as with his lips – Augustin considers him for some time. It is rare for him to look at a stranger so directly. Then he nods, and stands up, lifting his hand to tell them to stand as well. He wants them to follow him. He leads them out at the side of the house, through the yard. The cellar door lies open at the foot of its steps; there are bullet holes in it but they have no meaning
for anyone apart from himself. He walks the way the big Russian dragged her, out from the yard and across the grass. Everything is so overgrown that it is hard to find the place. It was at the edge of the wood but the wood has moved in towards the house. He looks for a tree that he recognises, a big beech that stood out from the wood. He thinks that he finds it at last, but it is changed. While the other trees about it have grown this one has lost a great branch that lies broken on the ground before it. From this point he begins a close search, parting the grass with his hands where it is long.
‘What’s he looking for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s getting dark. Soon we won’t be able to see a thing.’
The moon will not rise till later. The twilight will soon be as dense as one of his drawings. Safta starts to work through the grass herself. He must think he’s close or he would have given up by now. Her hands find a piece of metal standing out of the ground. A metal hood with a cross beneath it. She kneels to part the grass.
‘It’s her grave.’
Augustin is kneeling on the ground beside her pulling away the grass.
‘The priest told me he buried her himself. Nobody knew anything about it till she was already buried.’
István stands a little back. He has taken off his hat and holds it before him.
‘It’s too dark now,’ he says. ‘We can come back and clear it properly in the morning.’
34
István takes the scythe from his cart and goes to the grave alone soon after dawn. He stands before it and sharpens the scythe, then works with short crisp strokes, beginning around the cross but moving out to mow a neat rectangle over the area where her body must lie. In daylight he sees what the cross is made from. Strange boy. It’s all scrap from the war. The hood is beaten out of a battered and rough-cut sheet of metal that still bears a few traces of khaki paint. The cross itself is two round steel poles that could have been parts of an aeroplane; the ends of the horizontal bar finished with brass cartridge cases and the vertical bar, which is broader, with a slender brass shellcase. Just above the central joint a strip of tin has been attached and her name beaten out from it. Above the name, the pinprick outline of a bird with outstretched wings. He passes his fingers across it as if he would feel it fly.
Painter of Silence Page 21