by Paul Park
“See, I’ll put it down.”
But Pieter couldn’t see. He stood beside the knothole with his back against the wall. “Ah,” Dysart continued. “Of course. The Gypsy must have taken the money. How stupid of me. She’s probably halfway to the coast.”
“Probably,” Pieter said, and took another step. There were two windows in the wall, two meters or so apart. Pieter stood between them, his shoulders pressed against the dark, rough surface.
“So we’re back to the reward,” Dysart said. “Luckacz will be here soon. You don’t have much luck, I think. Not without a gun. I’ll make a bargain. Help me take her out. I’ll give you half. And I promise she won’t get hurt.”
Pieter wondered about this, and turned to press his cheek against the wall.
“For old times’ sake,” said Captain Dysart. “You remember that time in Thessalonika. Two men with guns and just a handkerchief between them. You know how hard it is to shoot a man.”
Pieter had no memory of this, thank God. He listened for Dysart’s step on the floorboards. He listened for the movement of his voice. So far as he could tell, the man hadn’t budged.
“She’ll be all right. They always are. What did you get out of the Havsa campaign? I got seventy-five piastres a month, with one eye and a ruptured ear. It took years for me to learn to shoot again.
“I think a change is coming,” Dysart went on. “What do you think? Something has got to break. I think it’s time we went beyond these princes and princesses. That’s all in the past.”
“Yes,” Pieter said, in spite of himself. He took a step toward the far window.
“So, what do you think? Do we have a bargain?”
Pieter wondered what Prochenko would have done. His own mind was empty save for physical sensations—his cheek against the bark. The pain in his right hand. A birdcall in the dark, summer woods.
“You can’t save her,” continued Dysart. “So we might as well…”
The important thing, Pieter thought, was to get into the room. “All right,” he said and pounded his fist against the wall. Then he stepped back to the knothole. Peering through, he saw Captain Dysart near the opposite wall. He had indeed put up the gun. The plain bone handle stuck out from his belt.
Crouching down, Pieter could see better. The man had his hands held out. In the firelight Pieter could see his fawn-colored trousers and white shirt, smeared now with mud. A twig was tangled in his long white hair. And behind his head there was a hint of motion. Squinting, Pieter could see Ludu Rat-tooth with a piece of firewood above her head. Maybe she had crept over the windowsill. There was a window in the far wall.
“All right,” he said again, and pounded on the bark next to the knothole. Making as much noise as he could, he ran to the door, in time to see Dysart pluck the gun out of his belt and turn. But the girl managed to club him with the stick over his head, and then grab hold of him as he shot once, twice, three, four times. The explosions were deafening in that little space. Pieter leaped in over the threshold just as it seemed Miranda came awake. Her body shook and spasmed, and he jumped past her to where the man was struggling with the girl.
Pieter jumped over the uneven boards, some of which had broken to show the black dirt beneath. Dysart was clumsy, slow. The Gypsy had broken the skin on his pale forehead.
Pieter grabbed him by the arm and twisted his arm up. But there were no more shots. The gun fell to the floor. The girl was free and had collapsed onto Miranda’s quilts while Pieter staggered and almost fell. The man had kicked him on the inside of the knee, stomped on his foot.
But he pulled Dysart down and fell on top of him. The white shirt had some perfume in the cloth. Dysart’s body was slippery with sweat and slipped away from him. Pieter had him by the shirt, though, and with his left hand he was reaching for the gun, fallen in a gap between the floorboards. He could feel the metal underneath his fingers, and he thought he was going to let go of the shirt as it was ripping now, as Dysart pulled away. Pieter felt a pain in his right hand as he reached out with his left, intent on the gun, and unaware of Dysart’s knife until that moment; he’d flailed backward at Pieter but couldn’t reach him. But he could reach the hand clutching his shirt, and he slid the blade between Pieter’s middle and fourth fingers. He was cutting down between the bones toward the hole in Pieter’s palm, and the bandage was giving way.
But Pieter had the gun by the barrel. His arm moved slowly, gathering the strength of his body as he rolled back, as he pulled Dysart down. He hadn’t let go with his right hand. And with his left he swung the gun as if through layers of interference, and caught Dysart on his forehead once again, next to the row of tiny blood drops where the girl had marked him. Then he let go with his maimed hand and rolled onto his stomach, holding the gun out in his weak, left hand, where it felt oddly comfortable. It was a six-shooter. He had two shots left, with any luck.
But as Dysart said, it’s hard to kill a man. Maybe with his right hand Pieter could have managed it, but not his left.
He lay on his stomach, watching the blood pulse from between his fingers, and the long, smooth cut. Behind him, curled up with Miranda, the girl wept. Leaving his red knife on the floor, Dysart rose from his hands and knees until he stood upright, and Pieter rose with him. Bleeding from his forehead, the man staggered backward toward the door, while Pieter put his right hand into his left armpit. The pain was very bad when he pressed down. He closed his eyes for a moment, hardly more than a blink, and when he opened them Dysart was gone.
* * *
THAT NIGHT ALSO, at 11:29, the Bavarian Hydra Express left Ratisbon Station, en route to Vienna, Belgrade, Bucharest. On it, in an ordinary third-class compartment in the middle of the train, Clara Brancoveanu and the boy sat side by side. On their laps they held some paper boxes of sandwiches and fruit. They planned to sit up all night, playing cards and reading. They had not been able to afford a private compartment, certainly not the luxurious first-class sleeper behind the engine where the elector sat at his table. Keeping inside his hired cab till the last instant, he had not seen them board the train.
In front of him on the small table lay some papers and notebooks, some letters and his letter opener. He had washed his hands before he handled them. But he was soon distracted. Now he lay back in his fauteuil and closed his eyes. His thoughts were far away.
It was only with his eyes closed that he could catch a glimpse of the dark town in the hidden world. And even when he stood as if above it on the slopes of Christmas Hill, he did not recognize the place. Nor could he see Miranda sitting on the porch of her parents’ house, after she’d put down the silver canister.
She sat in the front doorway, watching the moon above the mountain peaks. On the surface of the threshold lay the book, The Essential History.
Closed inside of it was the small silver letter opener that Stanley had given her one Christmas. When she opened the book to the page that was indicated by the blade, she was discouraged to find there was some damage to it, a place where the onionskin paper had been dug away. No, that wasn’t it. There was a bug living in it that had dug a long, meandering wormhole. When she opened the last part of the book she could see the bug itself, a worm or a centipede that now surged out onto the page. It was fully two inches long. “Ugh,” said Miranda, and she pressed the point of the letter opener into its thin body, crushing it rather than stabbing it, so that its small guts left a smear.
Disgusted, she threw down the book, threw down the flat silver blade. And then she got up and walked down the porch steps, deciding to take a walk downtown while she waited for the pesticide to work. She knew the houses were all empty. She didn’t have to look. Nor were the streetlights on. The whole town was deserted, and she walked down the concrete sidewalks across Main Street to Water Street, and down to the fieldstone gate. Without asking herself why, she wanted to visit once more the places she had visited with Peter Gross. More than that, she wanted to get away from the abandoned buildings. She wanted to walk instead
among the maples, birches, and conifers that led down to the little cottage by the brook, the ice house with its broken roof and floor.
But in the darkness she couldn’t find the path. Or else she found a path, but it wasn’t the right one. It led her west and uphill toward the museum until she stood in a small grove of birches, their trunks gleaming in the moonlight. This was the place where she had found the woodchuck, or whatever it was, nailed to the tree. There was no sign of it now. But then a little way farther was the skull, a skull of a big animal, and there were some bones, too.
This was the lair of the white tyger. Miranda turned around. She felt calm, sleek, satisfied. There was a glint of metal under her feet, and she bent down to draw out of the moss, as if out of a scabbard, a small sword. The knob of the pommel was a curled-up snake. Inlaid snakes chased each other down the blade, which was short and heavy with a single edge.
Turning into the forest again, she saw a cat on a broken log, the same cat that had followed her from her house, mangy and unkempt, but with gleaming eyes—a big, baggy orange marmalade with a broken incisor. As Miranda watched, it jumped down from the log and disappeared.
Miranda was sweating and the wind moved through the trees. She could feel it in her hair. She was in danger, she knew, not from the marmalade cat but from something else, some colder and more subtle thing. As she searched for the trail again back toward the ice house, she was aware of other animals fleeing and scampering away, not from her, she thought. She pushed her way uphill through a tangle of brambles; no one had kept up the trail, she thought. Peter hadn’t kept up the trail. All the undergrowth was higher, and she had to hack at it with the sharp sword. Then for a while it was easier going. The ground was bare. Ahead of her there was an animal that turned now and dragged itself toward her on its bottom, a little, naked ape, she saw, wounded in the belly. It sat hugging itself with long, hairless arms.
“Go on, get,” she said, but it didn’t move. With lidless eyes it stared past her, and she turned to see the land had changed again, opened out, and above her she could see the treeless slope of Christmas Hill. There was a half-moon in the starless sky, and on the crest of the hill a half a mile away she could see something coiling and unwinding down the pasture, while the wind brought to her a small burning stink. It was some kind of a colossal beast, a worm or a snake or a centipede that wound down through the pasture side to side, a shallow zigzag, and the moon shone on its back. And its eyes were big and shone not with reflected light, like the cat’s or the little monkey’s. But they were globes like an insect’s eyes, and lit with the same fire that was burning the grass behind it as it moved.
* * *
AT THAT SAME moment in the third-class compartment of the Bavarian Hydra Express, a celebration was in progress. Unorganized, spontaneous, it had ignited out of the high spirits of the car, which was full of people: soldiers, tradesmen, and old women. Here as everywhere in Germany there were rumors of a cease-fire after the sudden, astonishing victories of the Lithuanian campaign. The war was scarcely two weeks old, but already (it was reported) the Duma had delivered an ultimatum to the tsar. With the vote of no confidence and the deaths of von Stoessel and the ministers, everything had changed. Already (it was reported) the young tsarevich had been released as a gesture of good faith. In return, Kaliningrad was to be reannexed.
Two men in the corner of the car were playing the accordion and fiddle. People stood around them and grabbed hold of each other as the train went round a curve. Men embraced, laughed, slapped each other on the back. They pulled out bottles of schnapps and hard cider. They ate sausage sandwiches. The air was full of tobacco smoke and patriotic songs.
The musicians were at the front next to the washroom, where there was an open space for luggage and freight. Down the center of the car was a wide aisle, crammed now with people. Princess Clara, keeping to herself, conversing softly with the boy, didn’t see Dr. Theodore until he was hanging by the strap above them.
This is how they’d come to occupy their seats: They had escaped from the elector’s house with their clothes and nothing else. Frightened, terrified by freedom, they’d staggered down into the town. There they’d accosted a professor of religion at the university, walking with his wife, a doctor, and their dogs. These people had taken them in, given them a place to stay, and notified the police who (as it turned out) were already pursuing an investigation.
Herr Professor Wobbe-Heck had urged them to stay, but they’d been too frightened. He had sent telegrams on their behalf to Helena Lupescu, Madame Sebastian, and others—the princess’s old friends. He’d bought them a ticket. They had no papers, but Clara Brancoveanu hardly expected to be stopped at the border. Her companion was the son of the white tyger, after all.
Now, sitting on the train two days from their escape, the princess was able to breathe freely. Still, she was terrified by the commotion and loud noises. But in the crowded car, as they climbed up the grade into the mountains, she’d experienced a new kind of sensation—timid hope. As the train had gathered speed, she’d lost some of her worst fears. Though the pressure of the crowd was painful, anonymity was a delight.
Herr Professor Wobbe-Heck had told her of the stories in the press, now several weeks old. Miranda Popescu was alive. “I wonder if it can be so?” she asked herself now.
Felix heard her as he shuffled the cards, though she’d been talking to herself. He looked up with a worried face, which made her smile. “My boy, I’ll always care for you,” she said.
“And did you tell my mother I was coming?”
“No.”
He shuddered. “I scarcely remember her.”
“Oh my boy, don’t worry. She’ll be glad to see you. And for your sake I’ll forgive her, though her husband…”
The terror on his face had touched her heart. But now she followed his staring eyes, and looked up to see Dr. Theodore hanging by the strap, looming over them as the train went around a curve.
For a moment she didn’t recognize him. It had been years, after all, since he had brought her meals with his own hands, ushered in her guests. But now here he was again, unaged, a handsome man with a yellow moustache and blue eyes, a strong, brutal face that was softened now with several days’ growth upon his cheeks. But what was wrong with him? He wasn’t wearing a necktie, and his shirt collar was open. When he started to speak, she knew he had been drinking.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said.
Petrified, she grabbed hold of the arms of her seat. She couldn’t speak, though what was there to say? Now she remembered all too well the metallic rasp of the doctor’s voice, though it was softened now by alcohol, she had to admit. Oh, but he’d been cruel to her, unfeeling!
“Ma’am, it will be all right,” he stammered now. “Today is a great day. You know there are changes. Every one of us. Don’t … tax yourself—unnecessarily. This train is headed to Roumania. You understand?”
Perhaps she had misjudged him. Certainly in the past he’d brought her medicine for her neuralgia and epsom salts—she had to be fair. But always there had been a hard, inhuman, ageless way with him, which had not disappeared. Through his fumbling reassurances, it was still there. He dropped his right hand from the strap to try to touch Felix’s hair, except he shied away.
“I’m sorry,” murmured Dr. Theodore. “Don’t be afraid.”
But every time he said that, she felt more of a threat. “Where is your master?” she asked now. “Is he on this train?”
“I have no master,” the fellow answered drunkenly. She could scarcely hear him above the music and the shouting in the car. Then he turned and staggered into the crowded aisle again, and she lost sight of him. She didn’t see him cross into the second-class compartment on his way up to the private first-class carriages, at the door of one of which he stopped to knock.
* * *
AS THE TRAIN approached the Austrian frontier, it blew its whistle and slowed down. The elector was in his fauteuil, looking over the notebooks he ha
d taken from his house. Each one was stamped on its leather cover with the token of his family, the silver snake of Ratisbon with its exaggerated eyes. Each page displayed the token of the snake, whose ribs at times resembled the legs of a centipede. In these notebooks his simulacra had compiled their observations of the princess and the boy, or so he’d thought.
But he’d been mistaken. So it was with a kind of bemused trepidation that he watched the man come in, watched him lock the door behind him, watched him stagger drunkenly into the compartment. The train whistled, and the brake came on.
The elector was suffering from one of his migraines. He had been reading:
May the seventeenth—not left his room all day. He has scarcely eaten, only lemon punch and oatmeal bread. I have experimented with different substances without result. He eats nuts, though. These are rare nuts from the spice islands that must be especially ordered. A shipment is due in the Kirchenstrasse, and I think something might be done.…
The entry was in his own minute handwriting, beautiful, but difficult to make out. Some lines were illegible. Here was an entry for the first week in June:
He makes the lemon punch himself. But he has asked me to bring from the cellar a bottle of Roumanian brandy. I have heard the cork may be penetrated with a hypodermic syringe. There is at the same time some success with the macadamia nuts. I must be careful, though. I have no wish to harm Lt.-Major Lubomyr when he arrives.…
As he read, the elector had been playing with his paper knife, a piece of iron ornamented with the snake of Ratisbon. He pricked the point against his wrist. It was still sharp. Always he had loved the look and feel of polished iron. Now he rubbed along his sleeve, momentarily wiping away fingerprints. “So,” he said. “My suspicions were … misplaced.”
“Yes.”
“Often one imagines powerful enemies from far away. One imagines the governments and sorcerers of the world. Sometimes the truth is more … pedestrian.”