by Paul Park
Then suddenly they came onto an outcropping of rocks above a clearing of felled trees. There were thatch-roofed wooden huts below them. Miranda Popescu lay in a circle of trampled earth on a tarpaulin or stretcher—he could just make it out. Dressed in the silver uniforms of the German military police, two men stood upright on either side of her. Two others were kneeling.
Pieter took his jacket off and dropped it on the rocks. The woman who had led him sat and hugged her legs. There was blood on her side, but she took no notice.
For a moment, dully, Pieter wondered what Sasha Prochenko might do now. Perhaps he would call out, wave, climb down slowly through the rocks, approach the policemen smiling with his hands open—whatever he did, it would involve a lot of talking. Pieter crouched behind a rock as one of the kneeling men looked up, stood up, pointed at the woman sitting cross-legged. One of the soldiers raised his rifle, but he didn’t fire, and the woman didn’t move.
Pieter recognized the man who had pointed, though he was older and white-haired now, a one-eyed man named Ernest Dysart who had fought with Schenck von Schenck. Prochenko would have definitely called out to him. They were old comrades, after all. But de Graz slipped back out of sight over the lip of the hill, then climbed down through the rocks. After circling through the trees, he came to the back of one of the small houses. In the village he could slip from house to house.
Some of these places were ruined or abandoned, and some were simple dirt-floored huts. There were about fifteen houses in all, arranged in two rough circles around the trampled clearing. One was larger than the rest, and its back door was open. Through it he stepped into a room with woven matting on the floor. There was a fireplace, a wood stove, a spinning wheel and treadle loom, some metal pots and even a few books. The house was neat as any peasant’s cottage with its high shelf of painted crockery—Pieter de Graz saw none of these things. He was looking for the mark of a struggle, but he didn’t find it, though the front door was ajar. And he was looking for a weapon, which he discovered near the household altar of Diana the huntress. It was a thin-bladed knife stuck into the timbers of the wall.
The shutters were closed on the glassless front windows. Pieter looked out through the slits into the trampled yard. The soldiers were close by, and he heard them talking. But it was hard to listen, hard to concentrate—they had put their hands upon the general’s daughter. He couldn’t see her face, but he could recognize her hair and legs. He found a noise of protest coming out of him, a low coughing noise. At the same time he started to pound his fist against the window frame. He wanted Miranda Popescu to wake up, and he thought surely the soldiers would be frightened of the creatures who lived in these houses. They were fierce, crazy creatures, as the world knew. Then he went and stood next to the doorjamb, next to the wooden lock plate so that he could meet them as they came to look. This was so easy, a child could have done it. He saw the muzzle of the rifle poking open the door, and he studied it as it came through, a fine light weapon from Abyssinia, perhaps.
He kicked the door and the man in the silver uniform staggered forward. He had a big fleshy nose, and Pieter grabbed hold of it. With his knife he sawed off a piece of it, then kicked the gun loose as he jumped across the open doorway and the second soldier fired his gun, fired it again—a high, odd, muffled sound. Pieter imagined he was safe for several seconds at least; the door was flat against the wall, and he had the double thickness of the door and wall. It didn’t matter, though. He didn’t need the time. The first soldier blocked the threshold. He was rolling on the ground and screaming, his hands over his face. The second soldier must have realized how exposed he was. He scuttled backward when Pieter looked out through the slits of the second window, and Dysart had disappeared.
It was time for talking now or else pretending to talk. Pieter dropped the knife and ripped away the bloody cuff of his sleeve, then pulled out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his hands as he ran through the cottage, slipped out the rear door.
The wounded soldier was still screaming. It was the end of the afternoon, and the sun hung low over the ragged cliffs. Rubbing his hands, Pieter moved away from the sun around the circle of huts. Between two of them he found the body of a little hairy woman dressed in a blue dress and white apron. She was curled up like a dog.
Pieter’s right hand wouldn’t come clean, and he now saw that he was wounded. A bullet had passed through the middle of his palm. Now when he saw the hole it started to throb, and he tied the handkerchief around it as he left the woman and went on. He flexed his fingers, and his hand hurt, and he wondered if he would meet Dysart circling around, or the German soldier, or the other man he’d scarcely seen except for an impression of drab black clothes and a slouch hat—he was the one, as it turned out. De Graz saw him lurking by the inner house, and so he changed directions and came up behind him, making no effort to be quiet.
The man turned back when he saw him, came toward him with his hands out. “Domnul Gross, where did you come from?” he whispered. “From the reception—heaven be praised. I am happy to see another citizen of Roumania. You are Roumanian?” he asked, speaking in that language but with a harsh, Hungarian accent.
“Oui.”
“I am so glad to hear it! Did you see one of those savage men? Are you here for the reward? I am asking you to help me—the hero of the Hephaestion—I am so glad. The Germans have her now.”
“Oui.”
He was a gaunt little man with a luxurious black moustache. He studied Pieter keenly without seeing him. “We saw him through the door. He bit Lieutenant Schneider’s nose completely. Come with me!”
Grabbing Pieter’s arm, he led him back the way he’d come. When they passed the curled-up body in its apron and bonnet, he groaned—“But this is terrible! These Germans have no affection for life except their own. Heaven forgive me for coming out with them. And that coward Dysart, where is he?”
He seemed anxious to talk. He kept up a long, whispered commentary as he led Pieter back to the big cottage and the sound of muffled screams. “I must tell you this is an enormous creature. I think two meters tall. Did you see him run away? You must be careful.”
But Pieter was a brave man, the hero of the Hephaestion disaster. Without hesitation he stepped through the back door of the cottage where the soldier was laid out. The knife, he saw, had fallen behind a chair. In the shadows of the room it was invisible. But it was too close to the severed nose, a gobbet of raw flesh. If the Germans looked for it, then they would find it.
Pieter wondered if he should seize it up and attack the second soldier who now crouched over his comrade, bandaging his head. He spoke to him in German, a language Pieter didn’t know. And he had managed to cover his entire face above his mouth with blood-soaked bandages. Even his eyes were covered over.
Pieter’s hand throbbed, and the bandage was soaked through. The little man was behind him again and led him through the front door into the yard. There lay the general’s daughter on her stretcher. It was put together, Pieter saw, out of a broken canvas cot. “Dysart!” called the man behind him, “Dysart!” Then in a lower tone, “Where is that illegitimate fool?”
Pieter had gone down on his knees beside the cot. He couldn’t see the girl’s face, but only her black hair and the ridge of her ear poking through. He put his left hand out to touch her and then hesitated, and then moved his open hand above her body, stroking the air a few inches above her flank, cupping her shoulder, her elbow, and her hip. He listened to her breathing and imagined the warmth of her; the sun was down behind the cliff. He smelled the fragrance of dirt and dust, and his mind was full of English words. “Ah love,” he thought, “let us be true to one another…,” which was stupid nonsense. This was the daughter of General Schenck von Schenck. He had known her since she was in diapers.
“A thousands marks’ reward is a beautiful sight,” said the drab man with the absurd black moustache. “How did you hurt your hand? You must have hurt it in the wreck!”
Then the so
ldier came to the doorway and called out in German. The man listened, and then whispered to Pieter, “These men are potato-eaters. He wants us to carry back his friend. It is always the same with them. Heaven forbid that one of them should be getting hurt! In Russia I have heard it is always the Roumanians, always the Hungarians while they hang back. It is because they think we are like nothing or like dirt, perhaps. I tell you, my friend, I am glad to see you. Listen to him—he says Lieutenant Schneider cannot walk. He cares more for his comfort than for our success.”
All this time the soldier had been calling out in German, and now he walked over toward them. He had both Abyssinian rifles slung over his back. Without ceremony, with bloody hands, he lifted up one side of the canvas stretcher and dumped out Miranda Popescu. She groaned and rolled over onto her back. Pieter reached his hands out, but he couldn’t touch her.
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle a?” he asked.
The little man squatted down and fanned himself with his soft hat. His long gray hair was combed back from his forehead. “No, she’s not sick. We found her in the house like this. Wake her up, make her walk, I beg you—try! Otherwise we cannot leave one man to guard her—where is Dysart? I tell you we must not stay here after dark.”
Miranda Popescu was wearing a loose cotton shirt and undershirt, a leather belt and riding pants, although her boots were gone. Now he could see her face, her pale cheeks chafed and roughened by the sun. He could see her small chin and dark, heavy eyebrows, her beautiful hair. Around her neck was a silver locket and around her left wrist was the bracelet of the Brancoveanus. “I could carry her,” he said in ordinary peasant’s language for the first time.
“Yes, you are a powerful man. On your back, perhaps? I think she is drugged or in a trance.”
All this time the soldier had been speaking. He had dragged the stretcher closer to the house, and now came back to stand above their heads, cursing and gesturing. He was a big man with a big, fleshy face. The man with the black moustache got up to talk to him, and whatever he had said about potato-eaters, now he seemed anxious to please. Together they went to the house and led out poor Lieutenant Schneider. All his bandages were soaked with blood, as well as the front of his fine uniform. He staggered and fell down. They laid him on the cot.
And he was lucky he was not particularly heavy. Otherwise they’d not have managed it. Even so they had to rest often as they carried the man away, following Pieter under the cliffs and down the track. And at first he would wait for them, perhaps leaning with his back against a tree. But he never put the girl down because of the promise he had made to her father. Nor did he carry her on his back but in his arms, her cheek against his shoulder. She was hot and he was sweating in the cooling dusk, and as the shadows lengthened he walked faster, out of sight of the other two, nor did he pay attention to the drab little man when he cried out, begging, then commanding him to wait. Already they were behind him, and he was thinking about Captain Dysart, Ernest Dysart, who had fought with the general and was a different and more dangerous kind of man. When he got to the deer path that the woman had shown him earlier that day, he ducked down under the brambles and followed it with Miranda Popescu in his arms. As silently as he knew how, he circled back toward the village and the cliff. About dark, he reached where he had left his jacket, and the woman was still sitting, waiting. She was wounded in the side and his hand bothered him.
* * *
NOW ALL PIETER’S life, all his experiences seemed like a dream to him, a strange, chaotic rush. But because he was a man who’d never fed his own imagination, it was hard for him to understand how powerful a dream could be, how it could form a tunnel to a hidden world, a hole to crawl out through. Once you were out, your life inside seemed fragmentary and confused, remembered only vaguely or in the middle of the night.
This was Miranda’s experience when she had drunk the water from the pool and then pushed through the cave’s new rocky egress into the bright sun. Now, days later, slumbering in Pieter de Graz’s arms, her cheek against his shoulder or else her long neck hanging back, she was alive and wakeful elsewhere. Vaguely and intermittently she was aware of being carried and supported, as Pieter stumbled up the deer path to the ragged clifftop above the town. There the woman was still waiting, and she led him onward into the dark woods until they found a place of shelter in a cottage in the woods. There was Ludu Rat-tooth, who helped him put her down onto a bed of pine needles and old quilts, and took her temperature with a mercury thermometer—she had a fever.
The Gypsy girl and de Graz sat down over her head. And when she struggled sometimes and cried out, the girl said, “Rest now, hush,” and other small things. Intermittently she was aware of them as figures in a dream. But in the secret world she saw she’d fallen into a trap.
And the floor of the pit had wooden tyger stakes protruding from the mud, their points reinforced with metal. She had fallen between them and was not hurt, but the pit was a deep one and she couldn’t climb up the steep sides. She clawed down dirt upon herself whenever she tried.
Above the circle of the hole it was bright day, a cloudless sky like a disk of painted tin. In her little prison she paced back and forth, back and forth, angry and coughing deep in her chest. How much time did she have? The men would come soon and they would shoot her.
Above her in the side of the pit there protruded the bend of a tree root, and she wondered if she could climb that far. Or if she could scrape down enough dirt to fill the pit entirely. If she undercut the sides, there might be some kind of mudslide and something might change, and so she set to work digging at the soft earth and digging at the rocks.
Then she heard a noise, and when she looked up there were other animals, the ones that sometimes followed her. Grass hung down over the lip of the pit, and she could see the little rat nosing around and hear its screaming. And she could hear the chattering of monkeys in the trees outside the hole. They were excited about something, a new creature who now climbed down onto the exposed root. At first the tyger thought it was a man, but the smell was wrong and she could recognize it now, a larger kind of ape, and tailless. It had brown hair, and it perched above her looking down, not chattering like the others, but staring at her until she stopped her pacing and stretched her body up the pit’s steep side, reaching out with her big claws.
The ape had brown eyes, curly fur. And he wasn’t telling her to rest quiet and do nothing. Instead, wordlessly, he begged her to exert herself, and he had help for her, too, some tangled strands of vines and creepers that he was bundling over the edge, a net with one edge still caught in tree branches, because she tore at it and found it firm. But she was too heavy to drag herself up, though she was a good climber, lighter and more agile than her Asian cousins, and she would often sleep in trees or drag a meal up there. But in the pit she struggled and fell until another mass of knotted vines came over the edge, a mass that now filled much of the hole, and she pulled herself up a few feet at a time. And when finally she had dragged herself onto the grass, she saw the trees were empty and the ape was gone, and everything was still. Around a tyger in the forest there is always a circle of quiet, and even the birds stop squawking and calling.
When she was safe in the long marshy grass, she pondered what she would do. Because her thoughts were slow and deliberate, she lay until evening in her nest of grass, licking herself and smelling the warm wind. She wasn’t hungry, nor did she have an instinct for revenge. But this was her forest, or it had been until men and women had come and settled here in the richest valleys, people with no animal nature, or so they tried to persuade themselves. They had villages now everywhere, even in the forest itself, and more were coming every day.
Toward dusk she got up, stretched, and shook herself. And when the moon came over the hill she started away down the valley over the wet ground. Always she was surrounded by a circle of silence, as if she were the only living creature in this teeming swamp. Once only she heard the high, nervous bark of a dog, one of several that followed he
r at a respectful distance when she was hunting, as now.
The men had a city. For a long time they had not budged from it because they were afraid. But now they were sustained by a new kind of arrogance that allowed them to move freely.
For many years they had built up the walls of their city so they couldn’t be attacked. But the white tyger wondered if they still protected the old wall, or if the thinking that allowed them to venture out had also allowed them to neglect it. She wondered if there was some hole or broken slide of rubble or unguarded watchtower.
Past midnight she came onto the plain and in the distance she saw the place lit up. Now this was dangerous, and she slunk from rock to rock beside the road. But in the silver moonlight she was hard to see, and so she continued mile after mile until she saw the gate of the city in front of her. Four roads came together there, and she had seen no traffic along any of them. But now suddenly she heard a clamor of movement and the blaring of horns, and the gates ground open, and a crowd of men and cars came out, an army of soldiers, tanks, and weapons of all sorts, regiment after regiment, all carrying the eagle flag of Germany, and they marched off to the east.
Curled up behind a boulder on a low ridge half a mile from the road, the tyger watched them for several hours. When the last men were gone, she climbed around the ridge to the west side, and there she saw a different army coming home: ambulance cars, mule-drawn carts, wounded men, an intermittent, oozing stream that trickled through a smaller barbican.
The tyger was able to cross the road quietly, unperceived. Near the junction with the south road, she saw a teenage boy and a gray-haired woman cowering at the bottom of a small ravine. Had she seen the woman before? They were not worth her notice as she circled the walls, and they were gone when she passed the place again. She was looking for weakness and she found it in a tiny portal near the ravine. Perhaps the woman and the boy had escaped that way.