by Claire North
Ritte watched without blinking, then, with a half-nod of his head, he gestured for his men to leave. The door closed behind him, a half-centimetre open, as he squatted down on his haunches just outside my reach, studying me as a hunter might study a wounded deer.
“Who am I?” he asked at last.
“You are Josef Ritte, you are military intelligence. You think a Russian woman called Polina ripped apart the truth of your soul and that’s why your agents died, that’s what we do, please – please! I only know what they tell me and they don’t tell me anything, I know what the shadow knows, you don’t want to be in the room with me when the shadow comes, no one wants to know the truth, no one does, they all say that they do but they don’t, even you, I know you think you want to know now but you don’t, I swear it, I swear.”
“Incredible,” he mused. “Tell me something else. My wife’s name.”
“Elke, you haven’t seen her for seven months, it’s harder to tell you about her because she is not in your heart, you married for politics, you respect her, that’s all I know, I see what’s in your heart, not what I want to see, you never really loved her but you admire her deeply. I’m not lying, I’m not lying…”
“Can you lie?”
I twisted on the floor to shuffle a little closer to him, hands reaching out in prayer at the end of their chain. “He’s coming, he’s coming, please!”
“This is more effective than I thought. We had one such as you in our service nearly a century ago, but the records were poorly kept.”
“Please. I love her, I love… You can’t do this. You’re killing them. You’re killing them.”
“You will have to hope that I’m not,” he mused, rising again to his feet.
“You can’t do this!”
I’m never quite sure why anyone says that, and as quickly as I’d said it I knew he could do whatever he wanted, and I went back to begging again, not that it would make a difference. The truth was the truth, and it was absolute, and that was all there was to it.
Then the parade began.
The first man they brought to me had already been beaten to bacon, and had he wanted to talk I doubt he could have done through the tomato of his mouth. I blathered the truths of his heart out, of Magyar rebellion and assassins waiting in the streets of Belgrade and printers and bankers and men of quiet resistance, and when they had enough names dragged from the depths of his soul, Ritte said, “Enough!” and they took him outside, and I heard a gunshot five minutes later.
The next was a blindfolded Serbian, who kept on exclaiming that this was all a terrible mistake, and who didn’t understand English but whose heart sang with terror, and who was innocent of all that they had accused him of, which was a little inconvenient, but he still owed the state a great deal of cash so it was probably worth, in Ritte’s eyes, putting the fear of God in him.
“Pray, discourse with reason and pay your taxes!” was Ritte’s sentence upon the gibbering wretch, a politician’s answer to the physician’s fresh air and walking.
The woman had killed a man, not for politics, but in revenge, and damn right too.
The Ottoman spy smiled constantly beneath his blindfold, hands folded in his lap, and nodded thoughtfully as I tore apart his network of spies and agents, as though to say, ah, they found another one, and as they led him away pronounced, “Until next time, sir; until the next.”
They stopped after the first twenty hours, but by then I was too manic to sleep, voice run ragged from tumbling out the truths of these strangers’ hearts. Ritte sat on a little stool by the door, watching me as he had done without a word throughout this festival of secrets, and a little before dawn, when nothing could interrupt the torrent, I howled the truth of his soul at his face, and he blinked a little, and did not flinch.
“Fascinating how little we know how little we understand this is such a useful tool so useful break him soon won’t take much break the English doctor and once he’s trained once you know he’s safe, maybe then they’ll be pleased with you maybe then they’ll show you a little respect a little courtesy, not that it matters doesn’t matter doesn’t matter why want something you’ll never get what matters is being right but a little glimmer of courtesy maybe they’ll give it to you now maybe Father will look you in the eye he won’t of course he never will perhaps he’ll die soon and maybe death will make him pay you a little attention.”
I laughed and that bought me a moment to breathe; only a moment.
“So invigorating! Better than a priest, better than confession; honesty, truth! Worried so long that you were deceiving yourself, you must know yourself before you know your enemies, worried for so long that you’d built yourself a house of lies but no, turns out you’re exactly who you thought you were what a relief, what an absolute relief and not merely that, you’re precisely the kind of brave, logical fellow you always wanted to be, excellent! It wasn’t all for nothing, you didn’t destroy them all for nothing, you are in fact where you want to be and honour and love would never have served you, not you, not love, honour or respect, just the job, just truth well done you!”
“I think it will be soon, no?” he enquired, arms folded, one foot balanced on the tip of the toes, other flat as he leant into the door frame. “You will have to tell me if you see it.”
“Things would be so much easier if we couldn’t lie. White lies they say white lies but it’s all so goddam obvious and all that happens is we lose the respect of each other, don’t respect, not equal, it’s all just so stupid, so obvious. How much does the Englishman know well if you ask him he’ll have to tell he’ll have to answer the truth is on his lips I know everything I know everything I know what you want me to do and I know you’ll never let me go but you need me to have a little hope maybe even learn to respect you it will be so much easier than the alternative you’ve heard rumours of course you’ve heard rumours, knives and chemicals, perhaps you even believe it too, perhaps the British do that to their prisoners after all he’s here he’s here HE’S HERE!”
And finally, Ritte nodded, and summoned his men, and they carried me screaming until my voice cracked downstairs, and dumped me unceremoniously on the back of a high-sprung carriage, and whipped the horses into motion and whistled brightly as they trotted towards the gate, and Ritte stood behind, watching. And as he watched, a hand of shadow, burnt and melted to nothing, reached through his throat. The arm that followed it shimmered black, caught in a perpetual blaze, then a shoulder, the tip of a chin, the hollowed end of a burnt-off nose, and by now I was out of voice to scream but pointed at Langa as he shambled after me, one hand raised as if he and I were children engaged in some playground game, before the carriage turned round a long stone wall, and galloped away.
We rode south for five days, never stopping, changing horses every five hours. Then we caught a train, slouched in the baggage trunk with two boys who smoked cheap cigarettes and spoke not a word of English except “frogs’ legs”, which they would say to me in response to any sound or sigh.
We rested for a day. Then caught a train again, and then horses. I tried to work out our direction by the turning of the sun, but quickly lost track of time and place. Not that I needed to pay much attention; it was obvious that we were luring Langa after me and then doubling back. I was not surprised when, on the tenth day, we returned to exactly where we had begun, a house in the middle of a forest of spruce and pine, Ritte waiting at the door, the dreams of its inhabitants pushing against the edge of my slumbering mind.
Then it all started again.
Chapter 46
One night to dream the truth.
Three more for the knowing to grow on my tongue.
Two nights after that of what I had always considered my most optimally productive time: the days of knowing, of looking into the hearts of men and plucking them out. After that, the truth would start to well on my lips, harder to hide, until at the last it would be a torrent and Langa would come, as he always came.
That was the way of
the thing, and Ritte knew it, and sat with me for those first four nights like a nurse by the patient’s side, watching and waiting for the truth to grow. I ignored him as much as I could, until loneliness and the desire for human companionship broke my sulk. Cooperation, however grudgingly given, had earned me a proper bed, a few books, some in English, some in German, and a Bible. I tried to read, but found myself running over the same paragraph again and again, until finally I switched to the German books, hoping that at least the challenge of the language would keep me occupied.
It didn’t.
In the end, Ritte produced a pack of cards, shuffled it, played a hand of solitaire, silent, focused in a corner, won, shuffled again, dealt again, won again, said without raising his eyes, “You play?”
“Depends on the game.”
“Do you know whist?”
“Everyone knows whist.”
He dealt the cards without further questioning, pulled a red-bound notebook and a stub of pencil from his pocket, drew a score table between the confessions of men and notes of scandal. He did not force me to play; neither did he think I wouldn’t.
I picked up my cards, hunched awkwardly on the side of the bed, and wasn’t surprised at how easily he beat me.
“Are you a patriot?” he asked at last.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There are more important things to die for.”
“Such as?”
I grunted, lost a trick, glowered into my hand. He pulled his lips in, but said nothing more, won, dealt again.
“How many do you kill?” I asked at last. “For your patriotism?”
“Fewer than my enemies would kill, if I did not get to them first.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can. It is my job to know the character of these things. If I sat down a hundred people from my country, and laid out clearly and in detail why certain men must die, I think not one of them would disagree when faced with the evidence I have. They might feel sick inside; they might hate themselves. But pragmatically, they would all agree. It is hypocrisy to pretend that you would follow a higher path; you want your government to do quietly all the deeds you bluster against.”
“That’s your choice. You haven’t given me one.”
“No, that is true. An assassin’s bullet can start a war; a bomb may bring chaos. You are more discreet. Balance will be maintained, and the game will continue. This will not be for ever. We will keep you safe and comfortable. You will not be mistreated more than necessary.”
I laughed at that, burying my gaze in the cards, unable to meet his eye. “You are going to cut up my brain the moment I cease to be useful. You think the British have done this before, to the sangomas and witch doctors of their empire, but when the old stories run out of new information, why not see what science can offer? Besides, you’ve spent too much time in my company, indulging in your introspections. I have to die to protect your secrets. As we are being honest with each other.”
I felt no particular rancour towards him, even as I pronounced my own execution. In a strange way, I liked him more when Langa was near, and I could respect the integrity of his soul, find that depth of commitment that drove him, live it again in myself, rather than sit merely as a victim of his efforts.
He thought about this for a while, then simply replied: “Yes. Perhaps. Perhaps we will. When a soldier goes to war, he measures things differently. Before he was a soldier, he cared about money, what his neighbours said, whether a woman looked at him with affection, and would barter all manner of things to gain these commodities. When the first bullet is fired, this changes, and now he bargains with God: very well, you can shoot off my leg, but my left, not my right, and below the knee, please, not the hip. Or you can kill eight of the men of my company, but not my friend; or if you must kill me, please shoot me in the head rather than the belly, so that it’s quick. This becomes the new marketplace of his existence, invested in so many pints of blood or missing limbs. It becomes normal. You, Dr Abbey, must ask yourself if you are not in much the same position. What will you barter for one more day of life?”
I found I had no answer, and knew that I would probably sell the world.
Locked in a room for even a little while, you become hypersensitive to every detail. One log more or less on the fire. The way the ash moves across the floor. The bed nudged a little off the perfect straight line. The cracks in the ceiling; the creaking of the floor; the turning of light through a high window.
When the woman came to light the fire, I was immediately aware of something different about her.
As always, she did not look at me, and ran away as quickly as she could, crossing herself.
But there was a truth in her heart, and it terrified me, or perhaps it terrified her and the line between our feelings was growing thin, and for a brief moment I wondered whether even one more day of life was worth the price that might have to be paid.
The next day, Ritte ordered the chains put back around my wrists and looped through the bar by the window, restricting my world back down to a miserable staggered half-circle. Then a boy, barely thirteen years old was brought in, blindfolded, and Ritte waited, eyebrows arched, to see what I might pronounce, and the truth of his heart was that he had dreamt of being a great man right up to the moment when they arrested him, and now his trousers smelt of piss and he wanted his mother and was afraid of his father, and if he survived this, he promised himself he would run away and learn a proper trade, and never learn to read because books were full of promises that broke people.
So I murmured, “He’s just a child. He’s no threat to you.”
Ritte shook his head. “Not good enough, Dr Abbey. We’ll come back when you’re in a more talkative mood.”
And Langa comes.
In the afternoon, the woman who tended the fire returned, and this time I knew with absolute certainty the truth of her heart, and nearly gasped with relief at it as she entered the room.
As always, she crouched by the still-warm embers to breathe a little life back into them, shuffle on another fork of coal, a log. The gun she drew from the bottom of her coal scuttle was a small revolver, barely large enough to dimple a Bible, but waved in the face it still made a notable impression. She held it in her right hand, bone popping through white skin, jaw locked and jutting, eyes wide and rippled with red, and when she looked at me she knew the truth of me as surely I as knew hers. I tried to apologise, to say something to make it right, but my Magyar was non-existent and she barely spoke German, so all I could do was smile, nod, pray. A key came from her apron pocket, which she immediately dropped with shaking hands. Straining, I could just about reach it, pick it up slowly, studying her face, her heart, then turned and released the padlock on the chain. She jumped as the chain fell, gun shaking in her fist. I held out my right hand slowly, as you might to a nervous cat, and after a moment’s hesitation, she dropped the pistol into my palm without a word.
I nodded, and she nodded in reply, and her name was Ljubica, and she did this shitty job with gratitude, grateful because it was a job, and her husband had died from the bite of a horsefly that had ruptured to a purple sepsis in his blood, and of her seven children three were nearly fully grown and one was ill, and she was terrified, and wished she was anywhere else, but the people who had come to her door promised more riches and threatened more pain than she could say no to, so here we were.
This practical truth punched through the rest. She was petrified. She did what needed to be done. These truths ran side by side in a screaming cacophony, so loud that thought had almost ceased entirely, leaving simply an automaton moving through necessary motions.
I tried to smile, tried to comfort her, to communicate some semblance of calm, and couldn’t. I reached out to squeeze her hand, and she recoiled from me like the devil, so I let it go, and tried to breathe out the terror of her heart and only deal with the terror of mine. I shuffled to the door, my every step deafening, tongue twice the size i
t had been a moment ago, a gammon gag in my mouth.
The door was unlocked, the corridor lined with old grey floorboards that creaked and groaned as we slithered along them. Trying to be quiet was more laughable than simply moving, walking at a brisk pace as if my footsteps belonged, as if Ljubica and I were out for a brisk constitutional. A flight of stairs at the end twisted down, narrow, the servants’ route to a discreet door set into wood panelling at the head of a far larger, grander stair for grander people. Here the carpet, worn and ragged, was orange and scarlet, vermilion and brown, a mismatched weave of geometric patterns, and the severed animal heads lining the walls watched us reprovingly from their perches with polished glass eyes.
We made it nearly to the bottom of the staircase before encountering the first guard. He wasn’t even a real soldier; he just worked here, caring for the dogs and helping to drive game towards the shotguns of visiting guests. Having a prisoner in the house made him deeply uncomfortable, but like Ljubica he had a job to do. So when he saw us, for a mute second he tried to wrangle some logic – any logic – by which this situation was all right. And when he failed, and opened his mouth to call for help, I raised the gun and barked, “Don’t!”
The threat silenced him for a second, and the hard calculations ran through his mind as they did through mine. Would I really shoot him? What would happen if I didn’t? For a moment, the balance hung between us, and then he made a decision and yelled: “Help! Help me!”
With a curse I barrelled down the stairs towards him, knocking him to one side as I charged for the front door. He didn’t try to grapple with me or resist, just sprawled at the bottom of the stairs shouting, “Help! He’s escaping! Help!” with a thoroughly sensible attitude to the whole affair.