Pavel & I

by Dan Vyleta

  She heard him leave, finally, and soon got up herself to heat a pan of water over the coal oven, using some for tea and the rest to scrub her face, feet and armpits. Invigorated, she fed the monkey, then crouched upon her chamber pot. We live in a time, she thought, when we bring out our waste by hand. Pellets of shit wrapped in tissue paper, up and down the sidewalk, the monkey’s, mine, even the Colonel’s. How could a man like Pavel live in a time like this? Smiling, unaccountably merry, she fixed herself breakfast, then played and hummed Schubert lieder until the phone rang and brought an end to her joy. It was Fosko. His voice was full of honeyed good humour.

  ‘Are you alone, my dear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have a nice night?’

  ‘He stayed over. Like you said.’

  ‘Splendid. How much does he know?’

  ‘The Russians got him. Last night.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I bailed him out. But does he know about you, my dear?’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Don’t be dim now. About you and Boyd. That you were – what’s the term – involved?’

  ‘No. At least he didn’t let on. I doubt he’s any good at lying.’

  ‘Is he any good at anything else?’

  She hesitated. ‘He – couldn’t. Said his kidneys hurt. He wanted to be held.’

  ‘Ah, well. Some other time perhaps. I have the foolish feeling that he might fall for you yet. Damsel in distress. He’s the type, don’t you think? Any sign of the boy, by the way?’

  ‘No, no sign.’

  ‘Very well, then. I will call back later, or better yet, drop by. Sonia, my dear?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I just wouldn’t know what I’d do without you.’

  She set the phone down without hurry and marvelled that she would dare lie to the Colonel. She knew it was an idiocy. There was nothing she could do that would protect Pavel from his wrath, and nothing that Pavel could offer her that would have made it worth the risk. Inadvertently her gaze travelled down to the floor, and once again she found herself straining to divine what was going on in Pavel’s rooms. There was no way to satisfy her curiosity. She knew him to be watched. Any move she made would find the Colonel’s ear. Ill at ease, she sat down upon a kitchen stool and started to peel potatoes. They were cold and hard as stones.

  Sitting there, her hands working mechanically on a tea towel spread over her lap, she asked herself – scrupulously, dutifully even – whether it could be that she was in love. She recalled the pallor of his skin and the angular cast of his bones when he had lain sick; how she had spied, below the nape of his neck, the spiky ridge of spine and thought it ugly. Nothing about him spoke to her body. She pictured them as lovers, entwined in some way she favoured, but no interest stirred in her; she could not recall the shade of his eye nor the build of his hands. Only his wedding band stuck in her mind, plain and loose upon his emaciated finger. She hadn’t asked about it, had thought the question redundant. There was always a wife back home somewhere, waiting. In this he was no different. And yet she was impatient for Pavel’s company, and longed to touch him, upon chin and arm. There was no happiness in her in this suspicion of love. She saw no way that it would not harm her.

  When she was done with the potatoes, she put on the radio and listened to an educational programme about democracy. Democracy, the announcer explained, was the allies’ gift to his listeners’ ravaged land. ‘Delivered from the yoke of tyranny, into an age of freedom: here lies the truth of May 1945.’ Sonia turned the dial over to a radio play. She could not be sure, but she thought she recognized the voice. It had read the late-night news in the glorious days of the Thousand Year Reich.

  ‘Fagin? That’s a funny name, that. What is he, a Gypsy?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were Gypsies in England.’

  ‘Look here, Schlo’, either you want me to tell you the story or you don’t.’

  ‘Go on then, Anders. I like that other name. Olliwer Tweest. He’ll probably turn out to be some kind of king or something.’

  They were sitting huddled close to the oven and speaking in whispers so as not to wake the other boys. It cannot have been much past four or five in the morning. Anders had the devil of a time trying to retell Oliver Twist’s adventures. His memory was sharp enough, but without the author’s convoluted sentences the story fell flat somehow, disintegrated into episodes and feelings that could be related but not felt. Perhaps it was because he did not know the ending: it would be easier to tell if he had a goal in sight, some clear landmark by which to steer. Schlo’ seemed to enjoy it anyway, mouthing names and events no sooner than he’d heard them, urging Anders to tell him again and again of Oliver’s humble origins, the bad food and callous wardens, and his first encounter with hook-nosed Fagin.

  ‘Hook-nosed,’ he would whisper, ‘just like Uncle Jakub,’ and run dirty fingers over his own button nose until it was greasy like a side of bacon.

  They had neither of them slept more than an hour or so. Schlo’ had been troubled by dreams again, and Anders had much to think about. He lay wrapped in his new coat, a wolf-fur jacket with an outsized collar and buttons made from wooden pegs. The coat was cut for a burly man to fall mid-thigh, and Anders almost disappeared in it. He had the sleeves turned back on themselves, and there had been a rip at the back that’d taken two dozen stitches to mend. In one pocket he had found some foreign coins, in another a Viennese furrier’s card decorated with the handsome drawing of a fox. Naturally, he thought it the best coat he had ever owned. When he’d come back to Paulchen’s, taciturn and already troubled by his thoughts, he had much enjoyed the cat-calls and teases that greeted his new outfit. Some packs of cigarettes that he had acquired along with the coat in exchange for Sonia’s earrings appeased Paulchen and cut short all questions as to where he had spent the day. Anders had eaten the lentil and ham stew in silence, and impatiently awaited the nodding off of his comrades. Then he’d sat up, his back against the oven, and begun to reason through what had to be done.

  What drew his attention above all was the coat the Colonel had taken off him. Obviously, he had recognized it as the midget’s, if by nothing other than its quality and gentlemanly cut. The only point in taking the coat, reasoned Anders, was that the Colonel thought some small item might be hidden in it: hidden, because otherwise he would have expected its new owner to have found it, and small, because one could hardly hide something large in a midget’s coat. He would have carried it back with him, slit the lining, the collar and the lapels, in short, ruined the coat, all to no avail. Anders was pretty sure Fosko had found nothing – he had searched it himself diligently enough. It troubled him to think what the Colonel might do next. He needed to speak to Pavel, give him warning, only Sonia had said that Pavel was being watched. Schlo’ was the answer.

  He didn’t start right in. When he noticed that the younger boy was awake, he slid over to him, stroked his hair, and told him to forget about the dreams. Anders drew him over to the oven’s heat, and began to tell him stories, first a fairy tale he remembered hearing on the radio, then the book Pavel had read to him through long nights and idle mornings, until the day Boyd White had shown with his trunk and his tale of woes, and Pavel had almost died. Only when Anders was quite sure of the boy did he give him his instructions. He broke them down into easy chunks and bade Schlo’ repeat them, once, and then again an hour later. By this time Schlo’ had begun to fade a little, and Anders cooed over him soothingly as he settled down to get some sleep.

  ‘Remember,’ he whispered. ‘If the Colonel shows, scream murder and run like the wind.’

  The boy nodded, and slipped an embarrassed thumb into his mouth.

  ‘Go on,’ Anders assured him. ‘I won’t tell the others.’

  At length he nodded off. Anders, too, felt tiredness pull at him now, but there was no time for rest. There was something he had to do, and he had to do it fast, before dawn broke and the boys’ empty st
omachs shook them awake. He got up noiselessly, and crept over to the room where Paulchen slept upon his own feather-mattressed bed. He slept on his stomach, the head twisted sideways and covered by a thick woollen cap. There was a patch of frozen drool right next to his face; his lip seemed glued to it, distended, the mouth gaping like a fish’s. By the weak light of the oven’s glow, Anders made out a watch, a sap and a pair of knuckledusters that lay side by side on his dresser. The gun, he knew, would be underneath the pillow. He imagined slipping a searching hand under Paulchen’s head, but knew it was futile. There was no way of getting to it without waking its owner, and no words that would convince him to part with his prize possession.

  All this Anders understood at a single glance; it was as clear and inevitable to him as a law of nature. When his fingers closed around the sap, he neither flinched nor hesitated. He hit Paulchen smartly, along the bony plane between ear and eye. There was hardly any noise, only the lip cut loose from its moorings and tore in the process. Droplets of blood soaked into the pillowcase. At the temple, a second rivulet of blood flowed downwards from under Paulchen’s hat and onto his sleep-hooded lid. Here it pooled, before following the outline of his nose.

  With the same quiet certainty with which he had grabbed it, Anders replaced the sap on the dresser, and pulled the Luger from its hiding place. He had held it before and was unsurprised by its weight. It fitted in his coat pocket, along with a roll and some cheese he found in the kitchen. Then he left the apartment, hoping with all his might that Schlo’ would keep to his instructions after the hubbub about the theft had subsided. Out on the street he double-checked that the weapon was loaded. He tested the safety, like he had seen Paulchen do, and smelled at the old gunpowder that lined its muzzle. There was some regret in him that he would never be able to replace it and thus make things up to the lad he had sapped. He was quite sure that once they had found its bullet in Fosko, Paulchen would no longer want the gun.

  Pavel stood, then paced. Sat at the typewriter, toying with the idea of writing out his questions; stiff-fingered typing drills, until the ribbon’s ink ran thin. Every few minutes he made for the door, stood handle in hand and prepared himself to storm out and up. Piano notes trickled down through the ceiling, then the ring of the telephone, then silence. He wished she would resume playing, but perhaps she was busy with lunch.

  His bed welcomed him. He imagined his kidneys had grown heavy again, and lay idly on his face, keen to sink back into his illness’s stupor. Behind him the oven smoked and crackled, ineffectual. He rose to fix himself food, only to discover there was nothing much left; drank tea, Russian style, pouring it out from a bent old samovar, and leafed through books that offered up phrases in which to clad his confusion. The boy did not come back, and as his longing for him mounted, so did his anger, until he resolved to punish him somehow, perhaps through his silence. There was no way he could tell Anders about Belle in any case; he would denounce her a liar, and run up to spit in her face. In his loneliness, Pavel even considered creeping up into the attic, to subject the midget’s body to another search, and probe his frozen eyes for answers. But he remembered Sonia’s warning that he was being watched, and the shadow upon the staircase, and stayed mum, waiting for some crisis that would shake free the truth of Boyd’s death without the need for confrontation. He did not want to hear her shape the words, without feeling or shame, the Colonel’s razor cosy upon her sink.

  At long last a knock on the door, breathless, announcing a child of eleven or so who eyed him up and down appraisingly. Pavel had met the boy before – he had cost him some china cups, and a run-in with a gun. He bid him enter and watched him place his backside against the oven until steam rose from his collar and shoulders and curled the hair that protruded from a battered sheepskin cap. The boy was staring at the books now, counting them off under his breath and releasing a finger out of his crumpled fist every time he got to ten.

  ‘I forgot your name,’ said Pavel when the boy’d run out of fingers.

  ‘It’s Schlo’.’

  ‘That’s short for Salomon, isn’t it?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘How come you speak German like this?’

  ‘My father was German. Jewish-German. He moved to America before I was born.’

  Schlo’ nodded like this made sense to him. When he took off his gloves and rolled back his sleeves to press his hands against the oven, Pavel caught a glimpse of the tattoo upon his forearm.

  ‘Are your parents dead?’ he asked softly.

  The boy stood and wrinkled his nose. It wasn’t clear to Pavel whether he did not know or would not say. He offered him tea.

  They sat and drank. The boy gulped his down, obviously burning his tongue, and refilled his glass immediately. Pavel passed him the sugar and watched him stick a lump between his teeth. Impatiently, he waited for the boy to explain himself, but he seemed content to drink and chew his sugar, smacking his lips after every sip. After the fourth cup, Pavel put the samovar away.

  ‘Tell me then,’ he said. ‘Why are you here?’

  The boy made a final grab for the sugar bowl, smacked his lips one last time, and then, without the slightest hesitation, he began to talk, working his jaws into a right frenzy and piling up the words into a single breathless phrase.

  ‘It’s about the coat, see. The Colonel thought there was a secret pocket, which there was, but Anders says it was already empty which means that Boyd found it first and hid it somewhere, because if he didn’t, the Colonel wouldn’t be looking for nothing having already found it, you see, and if he, I mean Boyd, did hide it, he must have done so at your place, only the Colonel searched that, too, and didn’t find a thing, so it must be in the other coat, Boyd’s, that is yours, which the Colonel, who is a ped-i-rast, will figure out before long, and that’s what I’m to tell you.

  ‘Get it?’ the boy asked, himself a little confused about his outburst. ‘Cause that’s what Anders told me to say, and the only reason I’m late is because he stole the gun, so Paulchen wouldn’t let me go until I told him what’s what and now he wants to meet you and have things out, American papers or no American papers, and you better bring him a new piece – loaded – or else, and he’s got a bruise on his face size of an egg, only it’s blue.

  ‘You see,’ said the boy, ‘I’ll be in trouble if I don’t come back with a message, and also, I really need to pee.’

  Pavel pointed him to the chamber pot and picked through the maze of his words to his water’s tinkle.

  ‘Anders stole the gun?’ he asked as the boy shook off the last few drops. Schlo’ looked back at Pavel like he was an idiot.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been saying, right?’

  ‘I’ll meet your Paulchen. Tell me when and where.’

  The boy named the spot, then turned to leave, eager now to be out of there.

  ‘Nobody calls me Salomon,’ he told Pavel in parting. ‘It sounds Jewish, you know.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Pavel. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

  Once the boy was gone, Pavel stripped off the coat Boyd had given him the night the midget had died, spread it out over the kitchen table, and calmly searched its lining for secrets. A little later he’d rummage around for his camera, a flashlight and some scissors. His was a busy afternoon full of revelations.

  All day she sat and waited for a knock on the door. She found she dreaded it, no matter whom it would announce: Fosko, studying her from behind fat cheeks, his chubby hand gently combing through the monkey’s pelt; or Pavel, her inept suitor, begging her for a truth he did not want, and taunting her with the possibility of love. For a while Sonia returned to the piano, trying to tease solace from its wooden guts; heard notes within notes, dark scrapings in the under-carriage that shouldn’t have been there but were, and remained inexplicable to her until, opening the piano’s great lid and shining a light into its workings, she found some of the monkey’s waste grown hard around its strings and hammers. It seemed to her that the monkey ne
ver stopped shitting, shat more than she gave it to eat; it was as though it had been instructed to expel at all cost and thus play symbol to the absurdity of her existence. In her frustration she left the piano and sat smoking cigarettes before her mirror, one after the other, until her tongue tasted of ashes and nausea had settled in her throat. A mountain of butts, and still: no knock. She rinsed her mouth with brandy, swallowed aspirin, filed her nails.

  It was late afternoon by the time Pavel showed. She was unprepared for the wave of joy that welled up in her, and immediately set to avenge herself for it. It started in her stomach, the seat of all her affects; it must be, she told herself spitefully, because your heart’s so meagre an organ. She pictured it beating, empty and wrinkled like a child’s scrotal sack, pumping blood so diluted it showed translucent in its vents and chambers: all this in the single moment it took him to step into the middle of the room and stand there with the stiff-waisted serenity of the drawing-room butler. In his hand he held a pair of rolled-up socks.

  ‘You come bearing gifts?’ she asked.

  ‘After a first shared night,’ she said, ‘flowers are more traditional. Or champagne, if one has a touch of the cad.’

  She scratched over one breast, as though to remove a stain. It brought colour to his cheek. He lowered his gaze, stepped forward, still with the same solemnity of purpose, and made to pass her the socks.

  ‘The Colonel is looking for this. It’s why Boyd died.’

  She arched an eyebrow.

  ‘Not for the socks, Sonia. For what’s inside. It’s what he’s been after all along. Fosko.’