The White Tyger
Page 35
“No. This is not a place for you. It’s not what we need. How could you pass the physical?”
When she said nothing, he continued. “Can you see yourself in a latrine with twenty men?”
That made her pause. “I had not thought you were so cruel.”
He looked around. Her voice had changed, and she was closer. “What about your own physical exam?” she asked. “Or were you always Captain Hook?”
Then again: “I am begging you.”
“No!” he cried, angry now. Morning had come. There was no time. “Wasn’t it your job to stay with Miranda and protect her? Isn’t that what we decided, what we agreed on in Cismigiu Park? I wish that was my job, not to die here in this place. This cesspit.”
Now he could see her in the morning sunlight. She stood up on the other side of the wall. She climbed over between the tumbled stones. Always the dandy. Civilian clothes—her pants perfectly creased. She carried a silver-headed cane.
She had a way that both attracted and repulsed him. But he had seen no women for many months, and his heart lifted when he saw her. She was too exotic for mere beauty—her yellow hair under the slouch hat, the soft body hair that made her exposed skin seem to glow, the proud expression and strong features in which her animal nature, now, seemed to predominate. But the sharp, musky smell had disappeared. He was used to it already.
Though she was dressed as a man, and in spite of the dog or wolf that lurked inside of her, she looked more girlish or womanly than she ever had in Berkshire County. Her hair was longer now, curling down below her ears. “It doesn’t seem so bad,” she said, looking around at the quiet orchard, the guns on the hillside raising their muzzles to the sky.
“It’s a beautiful sight,” she persisted. “You’d better go. A girl can dream.”
But now Peter wanted to stay a moment longer. “Promise me you’ll go back to her. This is not the place for you. The Condesa de Rougemont—in Bucharest we had no choice except for her to take Miranda in. But do you remember her on the Hoosick riverbank? Young woman then, old lady now—the place stank of magic.”
Andromeda gave him a blank look. She didn’t remember. How could she remember? “I don’t trust her,” he went on. “No matter what Madame de Graz says. I wish I could—no … leave a message at the hospital. Will you do that? There’s a corporal of the Fifty-third Light Infantry over in those trees. He’s got a broken leg. And tell me,” he continued. “What does this say?”
He thrust the envelope of hieroglyphs into her gloved hand. She didn’t need to squint to read it. “This is a shopping list. Small arms.”
“Sure,” said Peter. “Is that all?”
“No, it’s not all. Chiselet—do you remember Chiselet?”
She smiled, then went on. “You weren’t yourself. Neither was I. But I saw those lead canisters in the baggage car. That’s what they’re talking about here.”
Peter shrugged. Andromeda raised the paper to her nose and sniffed it. “They must have been blown up in the explosion,” she said, “except for one. An Abyssinian in a gray suit. He crawled out to die south of the tracks. I took the suit, his money, and his watch. But I left the canister two hundred meters in the marsh—a dead oak tree. You could see from the embankment. Everything else was to the north.”
Peter scratched his right forearm where the leather cuff chafed. He had his own memories of that day and the wreck of the Hephaestion. From there he’d gone to Mogosoaia, where he’d found Miranda Popescu. “Tell me,” he said, though by now it was too late to listen, “how is everyone in Stanesti-Jui? How is she?”
He spoke the name of the village like a charm. It was impossible to send a letter, though he had written many, or else the same one over and over. “Tell me, is she safe?”
Andromeda smiled, cruel in her turn, he thought. Her teeth were sharp and numerous. “You’d better go.” And then after a moment: “In any case, I’ve been in Bucharest.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen her!” Peter said. “Promise me you’ll watch over her—is that too much to ask, while I am here? Inez de Rougemont—I saw her on the Hoosick River, dressed in Gypsy clothes. Since then I’ve told myself that was not real. Madame de Graz had vouched for her, her oldest friend. She talks about her in her letters, but how can I be sure? Promise me you’ll go there now.”
For a moment there was no irony or slyness in her face. But she was as he remembered her—his old comrade in arms.
“Give her this,” he said. He unbuttoned the first buttons of his tunic, then took from an inside pocket the letter he rewrote every fourth day or so, whenever they pulled his platoon from the front line. He kept it over his heart, a piece of superstition. “‘I have a rendezvous with Death,’”he quoted fiercely. “It’s lucky I learned that one, isn’t it?”
It had been a favorite poem of his mother’s in Berkshire County, a battle poem from the First World War. Now he said it for effect, something Sasha Prochenko might be expected to understand.
Jealous, he supposed, she smiled at him. “It’s true—you are the lucky one. I often think about what happened in Chiselet.”
Standing in front of him, she took hold of his collar, brushed her fingers against his silver captain’s bars. She held his letter in her other hand, along with the hieroglyphic message, which she’d refolded carefully, replaced in its envelope. “No, give it back,” Peter said. “I changed my mind—it is not good for me to write to her. That’s not what I promised to her father. I said I would protect her, not …”
His voice dribbled away. Andromeda supplied the rest. “ … Care for her? It’s not the worst thing.”
Was she teasing him? Peter turned his head. He stood looking out over the field. “Madame de Graz told me not to write to her. She told me it was dangerous, because I was a wanted man. She told me the police were looking for me. I haven’t seen any proof.”
“I’ll take your letter,” said Andromeda.
“No—I don’t want that,” Peter said. He reached out for the two envelopes and she came to him. She tucked them into the inside pocket of his uniform. She patted him over his heart, buttoned him up.
Though he was uncomfortable to feel her so close, he did not step away or knock her hands away. He had refused her, after all, rejected her. Her animal scent came back to him, and he could smell the liquor on her breath.
He turned back toward the trench. It was only a couple of minutes later, after she was gone, that he realized she had picked his pocket, taken both envelopes—the letter to Miranda and the pages of hieroglyphs. She’d left him with nothing.
Notes
1 Denotes a Tor Book
2 Forthcoming
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE WHITE TYGER
Copyright © 2007 by Paul Park
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
“Comment,” copyright © 1926, copyright renewed 1954 by Dorothy Parker, from The Portable Dorothy Parker, edited by Brendan Gill. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429989688
First eBook Edition : February 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-5434-1
ISBN-10: 0-7653-5434-9
First Edition: January 2007
First Mass Market Edition: February 2008
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