Sleeping in Flame

by Jonathan Carroll

  That morning someone shot back. We were standing in the middle of a country road, waiting for our lieutenant to finish pissing, when we heard that high skak of a faraway rifle shot. A fat chip flew off a stone wall nearby, along with the ping of the ricochet. The entire troop went down and started firing everywhere at random.

  An annoying loudmouth named Korbei, who looked like a goldfish with glasses on, shot a woman and her husband. They were sitting in their garden a few meters away, eating lunch. Korbei thought they had American hand grenades on the table. It later turned out to be a bowl of large strawberries. Korbei was unfazed. He went into their house and stole their movie magazines.

  "Benedikt, take two men and go down to the school. Get that Jew teacher and whatever kids there who are Jewish. Take all of them to the mairie. Make sure to get all the Jews, so if anyone checks, we'll be okay. We'll meet you there in an hour. The trucks should be here by then to take them. And be careful! Whoever shot at us is still around, and I'm sure he's got friends. These people are going to shit when they see their neighbors get trucked out of here."

  "Lieutenant, the kids, too? Can't we just say –"

  He looked at me coldly. "No. Do you want to ask headquarters that question? I don't. Do you think those assholes give a shit if it's a little Jew or a big one? Especially after this morning?

  "Benedikt, I want to go home when this war is over. I also want to have all my arms and legs when I get there. I don't give a shit who wins. As long as they leave me alone, I'll get their Jews and shove them on trucks and even wave good-bye when they drive off. You know that couple Korbei killed this morning? It made me sad, but not as sad as if that sniper had shot me and I couldn't fuck, or walk, or see, or live anymore. That would make me sad! So we'll all follow orders while I'm in command.

  "Today's new orders are to get the Jews in that school and bring them to the mairie. You want to talk some more about it? Too bad, because I don't. Finished. Go to the school and be nice to those kids when you get them. Get going."

  I had no idea where they would take the Jews after we brought them in. We'd seen kilometer-long freight trains in the railroad yards at both Avignon and Carpentras, but were they for these people? I knew they were sending Jews to work camps in some parts of Europe, but did that mean all of the Jews in Europe? We'd also heard terrible, unbelievable rumors about what went on in those camps, but who knew if they were true? There was too much propaganda about everything these days. You never knew what to believe, or whose word to trust. Everyone had a story, even the stupidest person had "just heard something incredible." At first, we believed everything because everything was possible then, but now it went the other way – believe nothing until it happened or you saw it for yourself. Besides, there was too much to think about right where we were, especially now that these French farmers had begun shooting back at us.

  I took Peter and Haider with me because they were smart old-timers who didn't need to be told to think before acting. If something bad happened while we were at the school, they would at least react coolly.

  As we walked down the hill out of town, I thought of my father in Vienna. How proud he'd been when I came home in my uniform the first time. His son, a soldier! In his last letter he'd gone on about how great things would be when I got back. We would expand the store because, as everyone knew, a soldier just home from war wants to celebrate his return to normal life with a new suit. He was in the middle of pulling off a deal that would make my "head turn around." There was a warehouse in town full of material confiscated from a Jew's wholesale store. If he talked to the right people, Papa could buy the whole lot of hopsack and serge and loden for next to nothing. And then we'd be in business! I could imagine his face as he wrote these words down on the page. The little man with the sad, saint's eyes. He would hold his green Pelikan fountain pen down at the very bottom, and when he was finished, his first three fingers would be all black.

  He also said it was so hard getting good shaving material now that he'd decided to grow a beard and see how it looked. He knew people would laugh at a midget with a beard, but my father had been laughed and pointed at all of his life, so it made no difference to him what the world thought.

  What would he say when I told him about what had happened with Elisabeth? How he disliked her! He disliked any girlfriend I had, but Elisabeth was truly his enemy. He had tried every trick he had to undermine our relationship, but she saw through them all and ended up laughing in his small face. He was nothing to her except the father of the man she wanted to marry. She didn't even bother to laugh or be shocked by his size. Maybe that was the greatest affront to him: her indifference to his freakishness. She wasn't kind or pitying about it, nor did she overlook it. It simply was, but since she didn't care about him, she didn't care about it either.

  "There's the school."

  Haider unslung his rifle and began loading it as we walked. Peter adjusted his rucksack.

  "How do you want to do this?"

  "I don't know yet. Let's talk to the schoolteacher first."

  "You think he's going to help us? You're crazy."

  "Let's just see."

  The school was low and. made of stone. As we approached, we heard children singing inside. Their voices were all sweet and high and happy. The three of us exchanged looks.

  "That fucking lieutenant! Why'd he send us to do this? The teacher is one thing, but little kids? I don't care if they're Jews. Listen to that! They're little kids."

  The veins stood out in Peter's neck and his face was tomato red when he said it.

  "How do you know it wasn't a kid who shot at us this morning?"

  "Don't be an asshole, Haider. You know what they're going to do with these kids. You saw all those empty trains in Avignon. My brother lives in Linz. He told me they've got one of those camps out in Mauthausen. There's a stone quarry there a couple of hundred feet high. They set them to work cutting rock. If they mess up, the guards throw them off the top of the quarry. You don't think they do that to kids, too? The lieutenant was right about one thing – those assholes in Berlin don't care what kind of Jew it is – little or big. They kill them all the same."

  I looked at him. "You don't know that for sure. I never heard about a camp in Mauthausen."

  "Benedikt, if you shut your eyes any tighter, you're going to start seeing stars."

  As we got closer to the building, I saw someone looking out the window at us. A man with his hands in the air, as if he was directing the music, was looking our way. At the end of the day, when we could breathe again and stop shaking, we heard he was the brother of the woman Korbei shot.

  "Is that the teacher?"

  "It must be." I took a step forward while the other two stayed back. One of them jacked a shell into the chamber of his rifle.

  "Monsieur Venasque?"

  The man in the window lowered his hands and looked at me.

  "Do you speak German?" The only phrase I knew in French.

  "Yes. What do you want? I'm in the middle of a lesson."

  "I'm sorry, but would you please come out here and bring all of your students with you?"

  He didn't move for a moment, then nodded at me and disappeared from view.

  "Should we go in there to make sure? Maybe he's got a gun."

  That made sense, so I went forward and entered the building alone after telling the others to be ready.

  The place smelled of delicious flowers. There were bouquets of them everywhere, along with children's drawings on the walls, and a blackboard in front of the room with musical notes written on it. The children turned and all of them seemed either pleased or happy to see me. They looked to be about four or five years old.

  The teacher was at his desk, holding an open briefcase. What made me smile was that his plain face reminded me very much of Herr Schleimer, the man who ran the Wьrstel stand at the end of my street in Vienna.

  Seeing my smile, the teacher hesitated a moment, and then smiled back gratefully. I didn't want to enco
urage him, but didn't want to scare him, either. He knew what was going on. If he made things easier for us, that would help.

  Closing his briefcase, he told the children to stand by their desks and be quiet as birds sleeping in the nest. He translated the sentence for me.

  "Some of them are afraid of you. Their parents told them Nazis are monsters."

  "Would you please tell me which of them are Jewish?"

  "Why?" He held the briefcase flat against his chest, as if for protection.

  "That's not your business. Which of them are Jews?"

  Slowly, slowly, he put his free hand out, palm out, and pointed to the first child in the first row. "Celine!"

  The little girl, serious and adorable, rose off the ground until she was floating horizontally a foot above her desk. Spreading her arms like a bird, or a child airplane, she veered softly left and glided across the room out the open window.

  "Marcel, Claire, Suzy –"

  These children, like impossible peasant angels, rose, and flying too, followed their friend out the window. I ran to watch them, not as a soldier but only a man dashing after wonder.

  "Look! Look at them!"

  Peter and Haider didn't need to be told: they had their heads back and looked as shocked as I'm sure I did. Without doing anything, we watched them fly away over a purple field of lavender.

  Remembering where I was, I turned and fixed my rifle on the teacher. Who wasn't there. I looked around the room, but the only ones there were the children. I looked at a little boy and asked him in sign language where his teacher was. The boy giggled and threw up his hands as if they were full of confetti.

  "I never knew what I actually did to make it happen. Even today I'm not exactly sure."

  We were stopped at a traffic light next to the ocean. A bunch of surfers and their striking girlfriends walked close in front of us, toting their surfboards. Every one of them had long blond hair and third-degree tans.

  "Venasque, where did you go? Did you actually disappear? I couldn't find you anywhere. How did you make those kids fly?"

  The light changed and he accelerated without answering. It made me mad.

  "Was I there or not? Was that one of my lives?"

  "You know yourself about Moritz Benedikt, Walker. Remember the man on the gravestone in Vienna who looks like you? And the midget who pushed you out the window? That was your life too. You're beginning to find some of the pieces now and put them together. They're your pieces.

  "Yes, you were there. Both of us were. That's where we met last. You never stop meeting the same people in your lives. It's necessary. You just connect up with them differently each time."

  "What happened that day? Where did you go?"

  "I don't know. I disappeared for a while. I only closed my eyes and said 'Help them' to whoever was listening. There was nothing else left to do! It was the first time I ever discovered we've got things inside to save everyone, only you've got to go deep down for it. God gives us a model kit with all the right parts, but no instructions. It's up to us to find that this and that go together. Most people don't do it, though. They glue things together fast and without thinking because they're lazy with their lives. They don't think of working harder and trying to make something beautiful, or maybe even important. Just a nice 'model' they can live in. But sometimes when you're pushed or scared, like I was, you use your model kit better because you have to."

  I wasn't in the mood for Kahlil Gibran philosophy. "What about all the people who try to put the kit together right, but still end up in the shit, Venasque? What about all the nice Jews who were gassed, or the little kids who die of starvation in –" His look stopped me.

  "Nobody said life was fair, son. None of us ever figure out all the right combinations. There's a way to learn some of them, but no – Hey! You see that girl there? The one eating the sandwich by the black station wagon? Do you recognize her? That was your red woman in Russia, the one you killed. Today she's having a good time at the beach with her boyfriend. She doesn't even begin to sense that the man who killed her a couple of lifetimes ago is driving by. Incredible! Do you know how important it is that she realize that? My God, it'd help her so much to get through this life if she went up to you and asked some of the right questions. But she won't. She's so lazy she wouldn't even know you if you walked up and said hello. Maybe she'd feel uncomfortable or drawn to you, but she wouldn't know why. But that funny feeling wouldn't interest her. The poor girl has another bunch of trouble coming up and she could easily avoid it if she put only a little time into trying to understand how to do things right. Not easily, but right. She won't. She's happy walking on the beach in California with her boyfriend's hand on her tushy."

  "Do you really know what will happen to her?" I turned completely around to watch the girl. She was kissing the boy a foot away from the thundering traffic.

  Venasque sighed. "Yes, I think I know."

  "Do you know what's going to happen to you?"

  "You mean do I know what's going to happen to you, Walker? No. That's what interests me like crazy. I haven't met anyone in years I can't read quickly. I'm not going to teach you just because I'm a nice guy. There's got to be something important for me in my students too. I know some things, sure, but I've got a long way to go, too.

  "Wow! Look at the figure on that redhead! I love making this drive. You see enough beautiful girls to make you goofy for three weeks."

  Outside Oxnard, we sat on the beach eating and watching the animals dabble with the water. The wind was blowing and kept the heat of the day off us.

  Venasque loved sandwiches. In one of his mysterious boxes in the back of the car was our lunch, which consisted of two hero sandwiches as big and round as matching 1930s hotel armchairs. They were packed with so many crayon-colored peppers, pickles, hard-boiled eggs, cheeses, and cold cuts that, try as it might, the tongue couldn't single out one special taste or flavor from the others.

  I was only halfway through my chair when Venasque got up, brushed his hands on his pants, and said, "Okay, let's begin."

  Looking up at him, even knowing what he had done to me already, I couldn't imagine him capable of great magic. I put the sandwich down on a piece of waxed paper and stood up.

  "Go find yourself a good thick stick, about so big." He spread his hands about ten inches.

  "Anything else?"

  "No, only a stick. That's all you'll use." He turned away brusquely and whistled for the animals. They came running.

  I found a stick of driftwood a few feet away and brought it over.

  "That's a good one. Now, Walker, what I want you to do is make a sand castle right here. You know, the kind kids build near the water where it's wet?"

  I looked down at the bone-dry khaki sand where we stood and thought he was joking. Pushing it with a foot, I watched it slide apart, parched and twinkling from the heat and sun.

  "Come on, Venasque. It's too dry. It won't stick together."

  "I don't want to hear that! Do what I tell you. There's a way. If I tell you to do it then there's a way. Watch me."

  Taken aback by his tone and growing rudeness, I watched silently while he went down on his knees facing me. The animals were at his side and remained there without moving or making noise. His silent guards.

  The old man closed his eyes and suddenly stuck his arms straight out in front of him, like a sleepwalker.

  His hands started to drip water. It came down in fat fast plops, as if his fingers were open water faucets. It didn't stop. He looked at me without saying anything.

  Reaching down, he slid the shining wet hands under the sand and left them there some time. The spot began to darken into brown and spread in all directions. Something below was making everything wet. Dripping fingers.

  In a while he pulled them out again and began to mold and shape the wet muck into walls and squared sections, then turrets and what looked like a moat.

  When his sand castle began to take definite shape, he stood up with a groan and told
the animals to finish it. And like hairy architects or giant worker ants, they dug and pushed and pawed things further into shape. I watched while they did these wondrous things. Looking up once, I saw Venasque standing nearby looking out to sea and finishing my sandwich. He wasn't interested in what they were doing.

  When it was done, their castle looked very much like the one at the entrance to Fantasyland at Disneyland. They stepped back and looked it over, then walked down to the water to clean themselves.

  "You can make a castle here, Walker."

  "I'm not you, Venasque. I can't make water flow out of my fingers. Or get a dog and a pig to put up walls for me."

  "No, but you gotta brain to think of something else. My way is different from yours, sure. But you gotta learn there is a way for you too. Even when it's doing something as small and dumb as this. Give me a castle out of dry sand, okay?

  "I'm going to take a walk down the beach. We'll be back in an hour or two, so work on it till then. Remember, I only want you to use that stick you found. Don't bring up any water from the ocean because that's the easy way. And I'll know if you've done it."

  "How?"

  "How will I know? Do it and you'll see. Think up something else, Walker. You can do it. If you caused all that magic to happen around you back in Vienna, you can start taking it from inside and using it for yourself."

  He whistled again shrilly, and the animals rushed up from the surf to join him. They took off together down the beach, Connie leaning against his right leg. He looked back once and gave a big wave. "Don't use water!"

  I waved back, frowning. When he was far enough away, I jammed the stick into the sand and left it standing there while trying to decide how to go about this chore.

  Brilliant ideas, like using spit or even piss (they weren't sea water!), had me momentarily excited. Yet how many times would you have to spit (or pee) before you had enough sand . . . How much wood would a woodchuck chuck . . .

  It was a beautiful day, and I kept wishing Maris had been there to share it. If she had, she'd have come up with a solution. Maris was the architect in our relationship, she was the builder. I thought of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. He'd have known what to do, too. Unfortunately, neither Maris nor Howard was around, so it was only me and my stick and a beach full of dry sand that didn't feel like sticking together unless it was wet.