by Mike Carey
Klaes was familiar with this piece of gossip. He did not use tobacco himself, but Pabst and Tusimov did, and Dietmar’s failure to bring any Turkish leaf back from Opole had caused some tension between the older officers. He could not understand, though, why Drozde had mixed him up in this story. He watched with more bafflement than irritation as his puppet repeatedly bungled the assignment, his searches turning up cinders, a string of sausages and a cowpat. During this last episode he was propositioned by a milkmaid, and walked off with the cowpat only after misunderstanding everything the girl said to him. Klaes repressed a snort: the whole episode, cowpat and all, would not have cost him a tenth of the embarrassment he had suffered from his real-life encounter with Bosilka Stefanu.
Finally the puppet received word that the precious tobacco was stored behind the altar in Narutsin’s church. He tried to attend Sunday service there, but found the church so packed that he had to stand outside in the rain. A local man then sold him a packet of Turkish leaf for an inordinate price, and the puppet-Klaes brought it back to Pokoj through a series of misadventures involving storms and falling into ditches. He arrived (Klaes had foreseen this detail) with a fever, but triumphantly holding up the packet, which August inspected and pronounced to be filled with oak leaves. The piece ended with the colonel disconsolately stuffing the leaves into his pipe anyway. The audience laughed delightedly, though without the applause that had greeted the dancing gun. The colonel stalked off and was replaced by a private and two camp followers, who sang a song lamenting the tattered state of their tents and the various difficulties this caused the girls when getting undressed at night.
Klaes barely noticed the next couple of items. He felt light with relief, and at the same time oddly foolish. The woman had said nothing about him that he hadn’t been twitted with many times before. And he’d been afraid of her!
He had come out from behind the thicket now: the concealment suddenly struck him as ridiculous. He turned away from the group of officers at the back of the audience and headed towards the edge of the crowd where half a dozen of his men were laughing uproariously. Privates Rasmus and Leintz leaned against each other as if they could hardly stand for mirth. Klaes stood unobtrusively beside them to watch the end of the show.
She was a skilful performer, he had to admit, watching a complicated dance in which a group of villagers pursued a boar through the forest, armed with ladles, spades and giant needles. Klaes’s men, still unaware of his presence, guffawed and made raucous comments. The boar was finally caught by Private Standmeier in a big net, and carried off by three soldiers while the villagers ran in the wrong direction. The real Standmeier – who had actually killed no more than a brace of rabbits the week before – whooped and punched the air. Klaes found himself fascinated: how was it possible to move so many puppets at once?
The final act featured a raid on the camp by a dragon, a preposterous beast which always seemed to make an appearance in the shows in some form. It had been lured by the scent of Molebacher’s stew, wailed the private who raised the alarm, while the creature loomed above him, slurping alarmingly. The company deployed all their guns against the monster, led by Mathilde, her long lashes fluttering fiercely. At the first sight of the giant cannon the dragon was smitten, and ceased hostilities to sing a song in her praise. The piece ended as the dragon bore Mathilde back to his ice palace, waved off by a heartbroken Jursitizky.
Klaes laughed along with his men and joined in the applause at the end. He nodded pleasantly to the startled Leintz, who hadn’t noticed him till that moment, and went with the others to give his grosch to the performer.
‘If it isn’t Klaes!’ cried Tusimov, catching sight of him. ‘We don’t often see you here! What happened? Church service not enough excitement for you any more?’
‘No indeed,’ Klaes said gravely. It was probably unwise to say anything more to Tusimov, who would only use it as a fresh excuse to mock him. He walked on, waiting until his back was turned on the older man before he allowed his face to relax into a smile.
‘That went well,’ Alis said to Drozde as she and the others seated themselves in Libush’s tent after the show. ‘I liked what you did with that stupid gun. And it’s true about the tents – the wind comes right in. Whenever it blows from the east you might as well be outside.’
‘They’re like sieves,’ agreed Sarai. ‘But you don’t think Drozde’s show will help matters, do you? We’ll just have more men coming over to look through the holes.’
Libush gave her cock-crow laugh. ‘Well, that’d help keep the wind off.’
Drozde was only half-listening. The takings from the show were a little less than last time’s, though that was to be expected with only a couple of weeks between them. But the introduction of Mathilde had been a general success, and once she’d got her supplies from the carpenter, she had some ideas to build on for future performances.
‘Girls, I might ask for some needlework from you,’ she said. ‘I want to put some of the Narutsiners in the act – the mayor and his wife, and maybe the priest, so I’m making a few outfits. I can pay a cruitzer a time, if anyone’s interested.’
They were: there were few enough ways to earn money when the company was stationed somewhere like Narutsin. Drozde discussed clothing styles with them for a while, arranged to lend them a puppet apiece and promised to go to the market again soon for the materials. She said goodnight then. Molebacher was not cooking this evening, and she’d seen him dicing with some of the other sergeants straight after the show. If she hurried she could return the puppets to their storeroom without meeting him.
Magda was waiting for her in the kitchen, perched on the table where Drozde had sat the day the company arrived. She leaned back and swung her legs, grinning widely at Drozde.
‘Did you see me this time?’ she demanded.
She had sat on the ground in the very centre, against the legs of the audience in the front row. When Drozde first caught sight of her the General Schrecklich puppet had almost lost his voice. ‘Yes, I saw you,’ she said, sounding as severe as she could. ‘It isn’t polite to make faces at someone while they’re performing.’
Magda pouted and hung her head for a moment, but she couldn’t stop her face creasing with laughter. ‘It was so funny!’ she exclaimed. ‘When the general dropped his brandy bottle … and when the lieutenant pulled out the string of sausages … and the dragon …’ At the thought of the dragon she burst into loud giggles.
‘I’m glad you liked it,’ Drozde told her. She headed down the stairs and hastily stowed the puppets away while the child watched, still giving little snorts of laughter. Drozde considered. She’d have to see Molebacher soon: he’d had time to calm down by now, and if she avoided his bed much longer then his mood would only worsen. Besides, he’d expect her to hand over tonight’s takings. But he could wait for another day. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go visit your friends.’
She was starting to recognise the faces of some of those who gathered to meet her in the ballroom, both the ones who had told their stories and a few who had featured in them. There was the old Jew, Gelbfisc, along with two others in monks’ clothing who congratulated her on her performance: Tomas Lauzen, the sometime abbot of Pokoj, and Grigorjus Hurr, the infirmarian. There was the wild-haired woman, Arinak, who fixed her with a glittering gaze and pronounced, ‘You tell me about these wooden men, and how you make them play. Soon, yes? I’ll like that.’
Drozde was conscious that she had left in anger the last time she had visited the ghosts. She received their warm welcome all the more gratefully because she had been afraid – and it was only now that the fear was past that she recognised it at all – that she might have saddened or offended them to the point where they would not want to see her again. Smiling a greeting to them all, she selected one of the room’s spindly-legged chairs and sat down – she normally used the floor, but the show had tired her. She found that the ghosts adjusted themselves to her level, sitting comfortably on thin air a
s if they had imagined themselves chairs of their own. She supposed that this mental act was no odder than the fact that the ghosts wore clothes, or that Arinak had a twist of gold wire hanging from a leather thong around her neck.
There was a sense of ease and relaxation about the gathering, but also some difference that she could not at first identify. Then she realised that no-one had yet come forward to tell a tale. ‘No story tonight?’ she asked.
It was Thea who answered, as if the explanation were obvious. ‘Oh, tonight it would be discourteous. You’ll need to sleep soon.’
She’d be the judge of that, Drozde thought. Her arms and back were tired to aching, but she wasn’t in the least sleepy. Still, it might be pleasant to sit and talk for a change. ‘Magda told me …’ she began, and then noticed another oddity. The child was no longer with them. ‘Where is she?’
‘She’s there!’ said the dark-eyed woman, Thea’s friend Cilie. ‘Playing with her little cat.’ She gestured towards the balcony, where chairs had been set for musicians long gone. Flicking in and out of vision through the balcony rails, the little girl jumped and twirled in flashes of pink and black. Drozde heard a soft giggle. It was hard for her to see the child clearly, but Cilie and Thea laughed as if appreciating some wonderful game. ‘Shall I call her?’ Cilie said.
‘No, no – not if she’s enjoying herself.’ Drozde looked back at the two women. They were smiling indulgently as they watched Magda playing, for all the world like the mothers of Narutsin giving their children a few minutes more to run about the square before their Sunday lunch. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What do you do all the time – when I’m not here, I mean?’
For a moment they looked at Drozde in confusion.
‘When you’re not …’ Cilie repeated, as if the very concept puzzled her.
Then Thea’s face cleared. ‘Oh,’ she said at last. ‘Well we talk, of course, and walk in the grounds. And Cilie sings to us sometimes.’
‘And you read your books,’ Cilie put in eagerly. ‘She loves reading,’ she told Drozde.
How could a ghost read a book?
Her incomprehension must have shown in her face. Thea tried to explain. ‘I had so many books when I was a child, and loved them so much … so it was easy to find my way back to them. Perhaps it’s more remembering than reading. But the words are all there.’
‘Reading belongs to the world of the spirit,’ said a deep-voiced man who had come up behind Thea. ‘And with God’s will the spirit can transcend all boundaries. The holy books are as clear to me now as they were in life.’
It was the old abbot from Gelbfisc’s story, Father Ignacio, who had been silenced by the rest of the ghosts when last Drozde heard him speak. And here was another mystery. How did such a man, with a rock-firm belief in God’s providence, react to finding himself a lost soul?
It would not be tactful, Drozde thought, to ask him that question. But tact had never been her virtue. ‘So, Father,’ she said, ‘how is it you’re here at all? I’d have thought you’d look to be in Paradise by now.’
‘That, mene dame, is because of your ignorance,’ the old man said in a tone of patient reproof. ‘Scripture tells us that the Day of Judgement is not now but at the end of time. And till that day the dead sleep … all but a few, blessed as we have been blessed to wait out that time in wakefulness, to bear witness every day to God’s glory.’
‘Even Meister Gelbfisc?’ Drozde asked him. She heard something like a cough from beside her, and realised that Cilie had smothered a laugh.
The abbot’s expression was as clear as any living man’s: irritation, self-belief and a touch of weariness. Drozde had the feeling that he had been teased like this before, and had given the same answer many times.
‘The Jew is blessed above all of us,’ he said tightly. ‘With an eternity in this place, and the good example of the brothers, he may yet overcome his intellectual pride and come one day to stand before the Throne. Who else among us has been given such mercy?’
‘Every soul here, Father!’ protested Tomas Lauzen. Gelbfisc, beside him, put a hand on the younger man’s arm and shook his head, smiling.
They talked to each other like members of a family, Drozde thought: squabbling and teasing and knowing each other’s weaknesses, with shared jokes and references that no outsider could understand. And she was no longer an outsider, she realised. Perhaps she never had been. She didn’t know yet what she thought about that; she wasn’t even sure she knew what it meant. The ghosts of Pokoj were too far removed from the other people she knew, the terms of their offered friendship too alien to any relationship she had formed before. The living always wanted something. Life was hard, and staying afloat yourself meant that you had to push others under as often as not. It was a harsh truth, but one that she had seen in action, and acted upon herself, more times than she cared to recall. You lived however you could, and when you died a shadow lingered on in your place.
But the dead of Pokoj were different. They asked nothing of her but that she bear witness, listening as she asked the company to listen every time she blew a fanfare on her battered trumpet. Whatever her feelings on the matter, she was of their party now, and she found, with a certain surprise, that this knowledge did not frighten her as it would once have done.
She came to herself with a start. She had slipped sideways on the narrow chair, her chin sunk to her chest and one hand dangling. The ghosts had left her, and the room was dark. As she stirred, Magda came out of the shadows and put her small hand on Drozde’s.
‘I knew you were tired tonight,’ the child said. ‘Do you want to go back to your tent now? I’ll come with you. I won’t talk or anything. I know you had a long day. Did you have fun with everyone? Father Ignacio is funny, isn’t he?’
Drozde let the child lead her through the dark. The ghosts were good company, she thought, if you could overlook their strangeness. But she had no map for their world, no rulebook, and sometimes it seemed as if they were equally baffled by hers. There was so much about them that she didn’t understand: they spoke in riddles and expected her to know what they meant; they told her everything about their lives, except why they were telling her. Every time she went to the ballroom her mind worked its way back to the questions which had occupied it since she first met them, confusion nagging at her like a knot she couldn’t untie.
17
Molebacher’s kitchen bore some resemblance to a battlefield. Every orderly under his command was hacking or hauling, or scurrying between the racks and the central table where the quartermaster was hard at work with Gertrude on a flayed carcass. His men had found a richer farmer to plunder, with fields close by the river: the cow they had taken was a big, well-fed beast, and Molebacher was seizing the opportunity to lay in supplies for the winter. Beside him Hulyek sliced strips and gobbets of fat and carried them to the fire, where Muntz tended a seething cauldron that sent out heavy bluish fumes. Fast laid out rack after rack of meat to be salted, while Rattenwend, almost as big as Molebacher himself, hauled a great leg to the drying cupboard. The air was thick with the clang of metal and the fumes of blood, offal and burning grease.
Drozde might have taken the opportunity to enter unobtrusively, but that was not her way. She strode into the midst of the reek and clatter and faced Molebacher across the great table, hands on hips. The pouch with last night’s takings dangled from one hand, where he could see it. She did not speak; when Molebacher was in his chopping humour he had no tolerance for conversation. But she twitched her hand so that the coins jingled in the pouch, and quirked her lips in a careful blend of teasing and invitation: Well? Are you pleased to see me?
Molebacher glared at her, barely pausing in his bloody work.
‘Crawling back, are you?’ he growled. ‘Three days in the wind, and then you barge in here when I’m busy.’
Drozde dropped the smile; gave him a level stare.
‘I had a show to prepare,’ she said. ‘But I can see now’s a bad time.’
Sh
e’d almost reached the door when she heard the throat-clearing that meant Molebacher had more to say. She turned back, slowly.
‘I didn’t say you could go.’ His head was still bent over the carcass, the chopper coming down with rhythmic savagery. Drozde stood still. ‘Now you’re here, I dare say there’ll be some use for you,’ Molebacher conceded. He looked up. For an instant his eyes met hers and she thought he might be managed after all. But next moment he seemed to forget her.
‘What – the fuck – do you think you’re doing?’
He was shouting at Muntz, who had stopped stirring the great cauldron of rendered fat, and was now pulling the whole thing, on its rickety stand, away from the fire. Muntz paled a little.
‘It’s … it’s done, Sarge!’ he said. ‘All melted down. We got enough tallow here to fill the barrel and more, once we let it cool a bit.’
‘And did I say you could stop, you little gobshite?’
‘Ah, no, Sarge, but we’ve got enough right here; barrel’s full. We couldn’t burn more than this all winter …’ He tailed off under Molebacher’s scowl. The quartermaster turned to roar at another orderly.
‘Swivek! Where’s that other barrel?’
Swivek vanished into the scullery. Almost at once he re-emerged to summon Standmeier, and the two of them trundled a giant tub into the kitchen, rolling on its side and spattering the floor with brownish drips as it came. The thing stank: even through the kitchen’s fumes, Drozde could smell the sickly odour of rot that came from it. The inside seemed to be coated with thick yellow slime, darkening at the bottom to green and black.
Molebacher nodded with apparent satisfaction. ‘You don’t waste good fat in my kitchen,’ he told Muntz. ‘Got that? So you melt down the rest of it like a good boy, and we’ll get an extra barrel cleaned out for you.’
‘Ah, Sarge …’ protested Standmeier, eyeing the tub with horror. Swivek, who had more experience of the sergeant’s moods, gave the young private a kick and a surreptitious headshake. But Molebacher did not erupt. He treated Standmeier to a friendly smile.