by Jeff Kamen
She kissed his lips, then hesitated, looking deep into his eyes. ‘Worm make other worm,’ she said. ‘Would you like this, Motte? A little baby?’
It took a few moments for her words to sink in, and by then he could feel the clouds screeching to a halt across the sky, screeching in flames. He lost control of his features, his face hardening uncomfortably as he looked away. There was fear in his eyes; dread. ‘Look, Cora, ah-ah ...’ he began, then his voice thickened in his throat and he started to cough.
She cupped his cheek in alarm. ‘What?’ she cried. ‘What is it, Motte?’
‘I don’t … I mean I … I need to talk to you,’ he gasped. The ground was spinning, swaying beneath his feet like branches. ‘It’s not you ... it’s ...’ He felt an old forgotten bitterness arise and stared frozenly across the rocky slopes towards their home. ‘It’s about where I’m from. What they do to you.’ He coughed again, trembling as he took her hand. ‘Look … let’s go back, shall we?’
Seated in the kitchen he described as well as he was able to the details of the birthing programmes, about what had happened to him, the cruelty, the operation. All the while he spoke he kept his eyes on her, expecting her to jump up and order him out, enraged at his deception. At every pause he expected to find he’d lost the only happiness he’d ever known; but all she did was listen, her hand upon his knee.
When eventually she spoke, he was sitting with his head bowed, one arm on the table.
‘You worry I don’t like this?’ she said. ‘You worry I think you are not a man? Don’t think this, Motte. We together, no?’
He looked up at her wretchedly, sniffing.
‘Motte, listen me. Enjoy this life. It can be good, no? We have so much here. So much to love ...’
They were used to staying up late to talk in the evening, but now they pulled their chairs up before the fire and talked all night. It was as though the last walls of mistrust erected during his imprisonment were finally collapsing: she told him more about her late husband, Kornél; about Clareka, about her parents, grandparents, about the intimate details of her life. Thinking of the headstones in the side garden, he told her he sometimes felt awkward in their presence, as if he were somehow usurping their position, taking what was theirs — at which she smiled, wiping a tear away, telling him he should have no qualms about such a thing, although she deeply appreciated his consideration. ‘Walk past them,’ she said. ‘They friends to you now, I feel it. Even Kornél. They know how this life is.’
In return, he told her of his years spent in secrecy. The hours he had wasted in daydreaming, living in false expectation. He spoke in general terms, finding it harder now to recall specific details of his earlier life, neither wanting to dredge up too much of it, nor baffle her with information she would struggle to comprehend. Even so, she seemed able to grasp without difficulty the nature of the world he’d lived in, and at one point she sat back reflectively and said, ‘So, this machine. You look in this box, you see these thing moving, yes?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t put it any better.’
‘Hmm. You say even people in there?’
‘Well … yes. In a way. It’s like a drawing, a moving picture. They’re not inside it, not really, it’s too small. But they look like they are.’
‘Like a window, no?’
‘Well, yes. I suppose so. But you can record things. I mean, you can see the same things in it again and again. You can see the same picture in there whenever you want to.’
‘And you? You like to see this mountain?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
‘It is your dream, no?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was.’
She smiled, gazing thoughtfully at the embers. ‘My mother the same, I think. Always, she look out her window. She always scared, then she leave. Leave her country.’ Her face took on a faint expression of sorrow. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Like you, if they hurt me, I will need this same dream.’
They continued talking in bed, and as he took her into his arms he realised it was more than just a conversation they’d embarked upon, for it seemed to him that if they held each another tightly enough, their exchanges need never end. ‘I want you,’ he whispered as they embraced, ‘you’re all I want,’ and in his mind the future began to overlay the past. He saw them journeying the years together, and if the thought of returning home had begun to lose its appeal before, now it grew ever more remote; became unwanted, unnecessary, a destructive backward step.
He felt the City moving further away than ever, like a satellite spinning out of orbit, beyond the reach of the sun. And even the sun was changing shape, changing face. For years it had been the hope of finding his father, but now those years were in the past. His father had vanished in the void, and the face of the new sun was the woman in his arms, and her name was love.
~O~
The first they knew of the turning weather was a loud clunk against the shutters. It sounded as if someone had hurled a stone.
As they climbed out of bed to investigate, they heard the front door blow open, heard it banging and clattering against the wall. ‘Quick!’ Cora cried, and they dressed hastily and went downstairs. He saw her struggling with the door in a blizzard of leaves. He ran to help and together they bolted it shut, then went around the house securing the rest of the fixtures. In his old room he found a shutter hanging almost off its hinges. Using wedges, they blocked the windows in every room, stifling the worst of the draughts and the light along with it. By the time they’d finished, the house stood very dark and oddly muffled. On venturing outside to check the gardens, they saw sheared-off branches spiralling from the woods and a stained shirt billowing overhead like the detritus of oncoming war. Tatters of plastic waste were blowing everywhere and the pigs were baying in fright.
They did what they could to defend the property, staking down fresh tarps to protect the soil and strengthening the windbreaks at the front, fastening them in a storm of grit and dust that was blotting out the sky. They managed to secure the fence with guylines and went round lashing the gates shut with ropes, gathering in small squashes from the garden. But it was a battle to be endured rather than won. The enemy was too forceful, its strength too great. Its wrath monstrous.
As they retreated indoors, Moth said he thought the extra sediment might be useful in a way, more or less earthing up the crops for them, but she said otherwise. She told him it was sometimes known to be toxic, and would eat at plants and affect their systems adversely. She said they’d find wizened or misshapen crops growing afterwards, and often the new seeds would not fertilise. Disease of many kinds would follow, and the milk of animals would be tainted. She told him that rogue spores sometimes landed and took a hold. Once, she said, as a girl, she’d seen where a cluster of huge spike-headed weeds had taken root, draining the water sources all the way up the valley. Over soup, she told him how axes had blunted against the plants as they’d grown; how nothing had been able to kill them, and yet how scared they’d all been when a year later, the weeds had begun to wither and die of their own accord, some blackly twisted and buckling and the fronds falling as sharp as daggers to the ground. She told him how the fires of their destruction had lit up the skies for weeks, making a noise like thatched roofs whooshing up in flames.
Listening to her, he sat at the table thinking of the wilderness he’d known, with its ruins and dunes, the giant grey rootstumps. An image of a family came to his mind, staring out at him from a chalky painting by torchlight. Huge rearing plants in the background, the ailing world ablaze ...
Turning with the torch then at the sound of approaching steps. And yet no human steps at all ...
‘You agree?’ she was saying.
He sat round, blinking.
‘Agree we try again? Or no?’
‘Ah ... yes,’ he said, wiping his face. ‘Why not? Ah, let’s try it.’
They made another round of repairs, pinned a few sheets down, but gave up within the hour. It was the last
time that they went out for a while. Like many generations before them, they were forced to sit out the storms with combined resignation and unease, getting on with small household tasks during the worst of it and only on milder days attempting to push their way outside, so as to dig out the heaped and powdery banks that had settled.
Shovelling hard, he realised that just a month or two before, the air would have suffocated him, struck him down with bloody pleuritic convulsions; but now it seemed he was able to withstand even the worst conditions with impunity. It seemed that never again would he need the fungus. Those days at least, he reflected thankfully, were behind them.
Cora agreed, and it was around this time of physical challenge that they noticed changes taking place other than to his voice. For one thing, his speech had become more fluent, and perhaps from all the bending and stretching he’d been doing, his posture had greatly improved: when measuring himself up against Cora, he was surprised to find himself standing slightly taller than her. His limbs were much stronger than before, and down them and across his chest he found dark hairs growing that he did not recall being present even weeks earlier. The hair on his head had changed, too. Once thin and mousy, it had grown thick and dark and long. Cora refused to cut it, saying it suited him. ‘You grow well,’ she said, stroking the thickening beard on his cheeks, and later, as a gift for him, she brought out her old husband’s shaving kit.
He thanked her as he took it, but a moment later, hesitating awkwardly, he asked if she’d mind if he bought a kit of his own. Taking her hand, he confessed he was also a little fed up with wearing the dead man’s clothes. He told her he felt that he’d outgrown them — and in more than one way. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s … it’s just how I feel.’
She kissed him, apologising. ‘I should think of this,’ she said, taking the box from him. ‘Sorry, Motte, we get new one from the market. When this weather change, okay? Then we go.’
~O~
The chance to head out came before long, and as soon as the winds settled, they packed a borrowed handcart and set off up the valley at an early hour, heading westwards into the hills.
It was their third visit to the upland market together: on previous trips, Cora had slipped away to visit Clareka while he went on alone; now however, he was to accompany her, a prospect which made him feel a little nervous until assured by Cora that her daughter fully accepted him. It was what families had to do, she said, just as she accepted her daughter’s surly husband. To his relief, a heavily pregnant Clareka greeted him in apparent friendship, and encouraged by this, he soon relaxed, and later stood talking easily with her husband out in the yard whilst mother and daughter spent time together indoors.
When it was time to leave, Cora promised to visit again very soon, and gave advice to the husband should Clareka go into labour sooner than expected. The husband thanked her and shook Moth’s hand firmly, saying he was welcome to visit any time he wished. When they’d hauled the cart out of sight, Cora said warmly, ‘You know, this is the first time I see Miklós smile. You have good effect on him.’
He coloured with pleasure. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased. I liked him, actually. I thought he was quite funny.’ He shifted his grip on the rough wooden tongue, looking up the rocky track, then added, ‘Did Clareka say anything?’
‘You love to worry,’ she said, laughing. ‘Why? She is happy that I am happy. Me the same with her.’ She shrugged. ‘This is family, Motte. We need each other, no? Anyway, you will be the uncle.’
They went on, hauling their cart along with its sacks of soil and a crate of other goods for sale. They passed small homesteads of local stone that stood smoking upon the hillside, passed ragged children at play and people gathered at a table where bulbous yellow and brown squashes were laid out like skulls. The hills were steepening and the air coming down off the mountains tasted of winter, of high frosted precipices.
Finally, panting, steaming in their clothes, they entered the market village, turning into the main square where a small crowd was gathered. They set themselves up in a sheltered row and got straight to trading. The soil went within the hour and Cora told him that the rest of their goods ought to go by early afternoon. She said that as long as they were home by dark she did not mind waiting a few hours, and sat minding the cart while he went off to buy the things he needed.
He toured the stalls with their waxed drapes and battered wares, picking among the woollens until he’d found some clothes for himself, and for her a thick nightgown. He bought a comb and shaving kit and socks, then spent some time with a man who was cutting panes of window glass, asking the cost, how he might fit them at home without breaking them. He returned to find Cora joking with a friend, saying on his arrival, ‘Ah! Tara, look! This is my lovely man.’
The woman nodded to him beneath her fur cap.
‘My favourite ... how is it?’ Cora giggled. ‘Dish? Yes, my lovely dish. You see, I could eat this man.’
‘Don’t listen to her,’ he laughed, and when they were alone they ate and talked about the foodstuffs they needed. They had their teeth checked and took some tools to be sharpened at a grindwheel; he was introduced to some other people she knew, and then they packed up. By mid afternoon they were on their way downhill.
Thereafter, Cora returned to check on Clareka every few days while he progressed with the seasonal work. She took her medical bag on each journey, and after a fortnight packed a few changes of clothes. On the day she left, he made her promise she’d take great care travelling the hills, and she made him promise in return to look after himself — and never to climb to the roof without her around, whatever the state of the chimney. They kissed lingeringly, then she was gone.
~O~
She returned in light snowfall proudly announcing the birth of a girl, young Borissaka. ‘I am grandmama,’ she said, embracing him, and asked for some wine.
They had much news to catch up on, and it was only when they’d fallen to silence that he told her he’d never missed anyone so much. He said the thought of not having her was frightening.
At this she smiled, fondly, tenderly. ‘Motte,’ she said, taking his hand, ‘one year you lose something, then one year you find something. Bad thing one year, beautiful thing next year. This year we find beautiful thing. We lucky.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said.
‘I’m here for you, no? You should know that.’
‘I know I should, but ...’
‘Listen me. I always here for you.’
She kissed him. He touched her face, his dark locks hanging down. ‘Nothing’s the same for me any more,’ he whispered. ‘It’s us now. That’s all I want. I want us to be together.’
‘We are, no? We together.’
‘Tell me we’re together. Tell me.’
‘Motte, we together. We are. We always together.’
He hugged her tight.
She was downstairs when he wrote a message of betrothal on a square of coarse paper, then bound it and hid it in his drawer, to await the right occasion. After their first year together, perhaps. When Clareka and family could make a trip down to see them. When they could all celebrate together, in every way united. He closed the drawer with a sense of utter completeness.
Shortly afterwards, a gale struck. The sky was rent with shrieks, and in the dark of their bedroom the lantern stood quivering. They held onto one another beneath the heavy blankets, and as they did, it felt to him that they were anchoring each other to the earth, the house held in their grip like a wilful kite. Holding down everything, he thought, even their happiness together, should it be torn from them; torn by fate from their grasp and flung away.
Chapter 59 — Deep In The Flickerings
Mutterings and mutterings …
She thought she heard movement behind the partition, but the container she dwelt in was silent when she stirred. She lay listening a while, then sank back again. She had to reach it ... reach what she felt certain was there.
Answers .
.. they felt like answers ... but to what?
Mutterings and mutterings, and in her struggles Grethà was there, and she focussed in on her and gradually a face appeared deep in the flickerings. Pulsing in and out. Everything lost, uncertain. Then the voices altered tone and the dry smoke running up the doors was sucked away and it was him.
Klaus.
She felt herself travelling closer, chasing the fragments as though with her fingertips. Scratching at the layers with her nails, nails into the bloodmeat, hot claws of agony …
Seeing more.
Even knowing the risks, she reached in further, sweating, staring through the inner folds as they parted.
This …
This is the greatest of gifts …
A pair of kind wet eyes emerged. Klaus looking up at her, knowing a trust beyond all trust, his bloodied lips dragging weakly at the air. The mask lying in the corner, a dead white visage coiled in its tubing.
There. Him coughing and coughing, while old crooked fingers crumbled a soft black substance into a pan.
Right there. She held the image bright before her like a knife.
Chapter 60 — Overland Winter, Spring
On milder days they’d spread mulch over the tender roots and earth up the bedding rows. There was pruning to do in the orchard and the fence to mend.
They cut lettuces and late cauliflowers and covered the more delicate plants with bracken and straw, with handfuls of leaf litter. Round the back on the frosted grass they slaughtered the yearling pigs. Something he could not get used to. The cold sound of the hatchet being sharpened on stone. Cora with little to say, her face blank at times during the preparations. The rough little throats cut with a knife and the blood spraying into a bucket while the hacking began. Steam and more steam and the wind chill on their hands as they strung up the bodies. Blood everywhere and the shrieks from hell; shrieks carrying from a glowing tunnel and shrieks of something he had to shut his ears against, that he could not tolerate.