Lights Out in the Reptile House

by Jim Shepard

  Karel sat at the table in his shorts, and Kehr said something without looking up about the laziness of cooks and teenagers. He finally stopped what he was doing. “Can I help you?” he said.

  Karel nodded, and Kehr waited.

  “I had a question about traveling,” Karel said.

  Kehr looked at him with stone eyes. “Are you going somewhere?” he said.

  “No, not me,” Karel said. “Well, I was thinking about it. I have a friend who wants to go somewhere. To the capital. I know travel passes are hard to get right now.” This, he thought, was a real big mistake.

  “I thought you were going to continue to work at the zoo,” Kehr said quietly. “I thought you liked to work at the zoo.”

  “I did,” Karel said. His stomach felt as it did when he finished pots of coffee himself. “But Albert over there told me he didn’t need me for a while. Albert Delp. We had sort of a fight. Or something.”

  Kehr’s expression didn’t change. Karel thought of the rabbits in his shed before dinner, watching him all the way from the door to whatever cage he stopped at. Kehr said, “Nobody’s going anywhere right now that’s not official business. Nobody’s getting travel passes. Unless somebody like me arranges it, as a special favor.” He took out a small pass card, with an antipartisan symbol printed on it, and held it up for Karel to see. Then he pocketed it, and looked back down at his work.

  Stasik touched Karel on the shoulder to signal it was time to go. Karel stood up.

  “A friend?” Kehr asked, his attention on his work.

  “Yes,” Karel said. He waited, but Kehr didn’t ask. Stasik led him out.

  He told Leda at the restaurant, and she nodded quickly and told him she’d talk to him and left. They hadn’t even sat down. She hadn’t asked if he wanted to go. He was convinced he’d lost her and broke broom-handle-size sticks on tree trunks all the way home.

  He stopped by the Reptile House in desperation, but Albert was out, or wouldn’t see him.

  He paced his room and haunted Leda’s street the next day, unable to approach Kehr to try again or Leda to tell her he was going. He sat in his room that night and thought, I should be packing. Saturday morning he helped Stasik and Schay unload boxes and odd folding frameworks of wood and metal that neither of them would comment on, and then made their lunch. In the afternoon they sent him to the market. At one point while dragging his baskets from vendor to vendor he held up a melon and thought, She’s doing it right now. He imagined her leading Nicholas through the gates, Nicholas looking over his shoulder at that place for the last time. He hand-washed Stasik’s uniform cap, which had a thin looping arc of a bloodstain across the brim. He made dinner. He cleaned up with water and ammonia some hard-to-reach messes the ringtail had left. Finally he got away in the early evening, and ran all the way to her hedge. Lounging soldiers watched him go by and tried to lead him with pebbles, arguing over whose came closest.

  The neighbors were standing around her house under the streetlight, discussing something. There was an over-turned red wagon on the sidewalk. He recognized it as David’s. Most of the lights were on in the house, including in Leda’s room. Their front door was open. He began running again.

  The collected neighbors watched him go by and into the house as if this were one of the expected developments.

  The hall light was still on. Moths looped and staggered beneath it. One drawer of a small chest in the hallway was pulled out. One of the family photos atop the chest was tipped over and lying on its face. A corner of the rug was turned up.

  He shouted for her and felt cold and terrified and ran from room to room. There was a half-filled suitcase on the kitchen floor. There were folded and unfolded blankets heaped on the table. He recognized empty spaces in the living and dining rooms, marked by faint outlines on the floor, and realized furniture was missing. On the dining-room table a black-and-gray spider the size of a child’s hand had centered itself on one of the dinner plates.

  In her room he couldn’t tell how much was gone. Some drawers were empty and the dresser top looked bare. Her bed was unmade and the folds in the bedclothes formed a face. On the floor by the dressing table he found an abandoned blouse that kept the shape of her shoulders.

  Outside one of the neighbors folded her arms and told him they were gone.

  “Did they say where they were going?” Karel asked. He scanned the yard: a dishtowel hung from the prickly pear along the walk.

  “No,” the woman said. “And neither did the police.”

  “The police took them?” Karel asked. His throat felt closed.

  They certainly did, the woman said. The whole bunch. Her companions murmured. He could see in her expression the beginnings of the notion that maybe this kid who was so interested was wanted, too.

  He ran to the police station. He had to stop four different times, swaying and bent low, hands on his thighs, gasping for breath. Sweat stung his eyes.

  There was an open-backed truck filled with darkness in front of the station. When he stopped to wipe the sweat from his eyes with both hands an upright piano skidded from the back of it and fell the four feet to the street. It landed with a tremendous noise and sprang open like a trick box. Two soldiers appeared where it had been in the back and threw out a full-length mirror. It pitched aerodynamically onto the piano and shattered with a spray of flashing glass. These were Leda’s family’s, he recognized them, and he rushed to the back of the truck and caught the leg of a soldier emerging from the darkness with an end table. The soldier kicked his hand away like a vine or rope and Karel grabbed for it again, idiotically, and the soldier holding the table looked down at him and he recognized then that the soldier could kill him and that that would be the end of it. He stood there, dumb with the knowledge, and while he did he could see the soldier formulate the decision not to. He understood from his expression that the decision represented what Albert used to call, when deciding which individual to choose when gathering specimens, a whim.

  Someone put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around, and Kehr was standing there in full uniform. “Let’s leave our friend here alone,” he said. The soldier set the table down on the truck bed and saluted. Kehr nodded and turned Karel away, leading him with a hand on the back of the neck.

  Very dangerous, very foolish, he said. He shook his head as if Karel had been caught climbing the roof of his house. Karel was still both astonished and relieved and was trying to formulate a question.

  “Regular troops, recruited to help out,” Kehr said, leading him into the station. “Working under the assumption that the taking of souvenirs was allowed whenever they assisted in a mousetrap.”

  “A mousetrap?” Karel said.

  Kehr looked as if he’d been insufficiently discreet. A technical term, he said. Anyway, as Karel could see, they’d taken the news that the furniture was still the property of the state badly.

  “Aren’t they going to return it?” Karel said.

  “In some areas it’s wise not to push these types too far,” Kehr said. He signaled the sergeant on duty at the desk, and the sergeant opened the swinging gate to the rooms in the back. They were blocked by a woman with thin arms and sunken eyes who was trying to regain the sergeant’s attention. She asked him to check again on her little boy. Kehr excused himself, and when she stepped aside he brushed by her. Karel followed. The sergeant told her that there were no children here and that this was not a kindergarten.

  At a blank door Kehr paused and looked down the hall at a corporal seated on a child’s chair and reading a magazine. Kehr waited for his attention and then pointed interrogatively at the door, raising his eyebrows. The corporal saluted, and nodded yes, that was the one. Karel could hear voices behind it.

  Kehr mimed an “oh” and nodded thanks and then delicately turned the handle. He held the door open and gestured Karel through. He said he’d give him a few minutes. When Karel hesitated, Kehr reassured him with a puzzled look, as if to suggest he had no idea why Karel might hesitate.
Once Karel was through he shut the door behind him with exaggerated politeness.

  The Schieles were all in the room, with three suitcases and a bundle made from a bedsheet tied with rope. Two of the suitcases were open, and Stasik and another member of the Civil Guard Karel didn’t know were going through them, holding shirts and pants up, giving each a gentle shake at eye level and dropping it on the floor. Leda was standing against the wall. David and Nicholas were sitting beside her on a bench. Their mother was in a folding chair nearby. Leda caught his eye but didn’t change her expression, and he didn’t cross the room to her. Mrs. Schiele was looking at her suitcases as if someone were spitting in them or filling them with animal parts.

  Stasik nudged the other Civil Guardsman and pointed out Karel, and they left everything where it was, and waited for him to get out of the way so they could leave the room.

  Mrs. Schiele thanked God once the door closed. She’d been crying. She seemed to believe things had been turned around by his presence. “I told Leda your friend would help straighten this out,” she said gratefully. “I told her.”

  “Be quiet, Mother,” Leda said. David waved a hello. He had a paper cup on the floor next to him, and a toy boat, and he was shaking iridescent water from the boat.

  “What happened?” Karel said. He was talking to Leda. She was looking at him closely, and he was chilled by her expression.

  “You tell me,” she said. “I took Nicholas for the walk and when I got him home your friend Kehr was already there. They had David and my mother and were loading the piano into the back of the truck.”

  “More and more people kept getting into the truck after we did,” David said. “We kept having to move over.”

  “That piano is an antique,” Mrs. Schiele said. “Do you think they’d just take it like that?”

  “How’d they know so soon?” Karel said.

  “What a good question,” Leda said.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Karel protested. “I didn’t tell anybody!” He took a step toward her. Nicholas looked at him intently and then returned his attention to David.

  Leda turned her head a little and kept her eyes on him. He couldn’t tell whether she believed him or not.

  “Now I’m accused of kidnapping,” Leda said. She seemed fiercely calm. “And they say they found other things, publications, in my room.”

  “You mean those newspapers? Those pamphlets?” Karel said, and realized from her face that she thought someone was listening.

  “I told them people come and go from my house all the time,” Mrs. Schiele said. “With all the work I do for the Women’s League it’s a shock if I’m home at all. With membership drives and contribution collections they absolutely run us ragged. Who knows what’s where? Who knows how things get in your house?” She shifted in her folding chair, and Karel understood that even she realized they were being listened to.

  He crossed to where Leda was standing. She was giving David and Nicholas hard candy from her pockets and they were filling their cheeks like squirrels. Nicholas had figs in one hand as well, and David had between his legs a hat-sized bag with most of his smaller toys in it. It was as if in a modest way she was spoiling them in anticipation of disaster.

  While they were working on the candies she showed him a folded piece of paper by lifting it slightly above the top of her breast pocket and tapping it down again. She took him aside. “This is what convinced Mother,” she whispered. “They sent us notification of Nicholas’s death today. A day early. The date’s for Monday. He was on his way home with me when it arrived.”

  “You say to yourself, be patient, act responsibly, and one of these days things’ll be quiet again,” Mrs. Schiele said. “And then—one piece of bad luck like this.” She eyed the half-empty suitcase, clearly wondering if she dared repack her things. David was reading a small book from the bag between his legs: Dr. Catchfly: Fantastic Adventures in the World of Insects. “I’m so confused,” she finally added. She seemed to be getting angrier. “You don’t know what to do. After a while you only think of the children. You think, what’ll become of the children?”

  “We’re not the first family to be brought here,” Leda said.

  “We’re the first family I know,” Mrs. Schiele said. “We didn’t know the other families in those cases.”

  Leda turned away.

  Karel put his hand on her wrist. Mrs. Schiele sat by herself on the folding chair away from them all and touched her eyes and hair and clothes in small repetitious cycles. He had a momentary sense of how put-upon and abandoned she felt. She’d always been frightened of most things, and now her fear was more comprehensive.

  “Nicholas, I need to talk to David a minute,” Leda said quietly. “Can I do that?” She nodded to encourage him. Nicholas stood and walked to the other side of the room. Once there he put his hand on the wall and seemed to be studying its texture.

  “David, they’re going to talk to us soon, one by one,” Leda said, her voice low. “And they’re going to want to know about my books. The books I kept in the special place. Now, Nicholas doesn’t know about them and Mom already knows what to say. What are you going to say if they ask?” She was holding him by both arms.

  “The books?” David said. He was clinging to his toy boat.

  “You know, the books, the secret books,” Leda said. She was keeping her voice calm, but Karel could hear the desperation in it. “Now everything depends on you. Remember what I whispered to you in the truck? What are you going to say?”

  “In the truck?” David said.

  “David!” she said, and shook him hard, once. He began to cry.

  “David, don’t cry, don’t cry,” she said, near despair. Across the room Karel could see Nicholas looking over, unsure what was going on and sad that he had so little he could contribute.

  “What will you say, honey?” Leda persisted.

  “The man brought them in when you were out,” David half-wailed. She hugged him tightly.

  “That’s it, that’s it, honey,” she said. “Did I know him?”

  “No,” he wailed.

  “Did any of us know him?” she said. She was looking up at Karel.

  “No,” David said. He pulled away and rubbed his eyes.

  She let him go. He sat down and focused on his boat with fierce concentration. She put her hands over her face and remained where she was, kneeling.

  Karel crouched beside her. “They’re going to interrogate you?” he asked. She didn’t respond. She brought her hands down from her face. “Are you scared?” he said.

  “Yes I am,” she said, without shame. “Very.”

  Kehr opened the door and signaled. Karel leaned forward impulsively and kissed Leda on the cheek. “I’ll get him to help,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay.”

  She made her mouth into a tight line and nodded. Mrs. Schiele stood up and gave him a hug. Kehr waited at the door with an easygoing patience.

  Outside in the hall he raised a hand when Karel was about to speak. He shut the door and led Karel in silence to a small room a few doors down. The corporal was gone. The room was dark, and Kehr sat him in front of a pane of glass and then left, shutting the door behind him.

  The pane glowed with light and Karel realized he was gazing in on another room. There was a bare black table centered in it with a hard-backed chair on either side. It was absolutely quiet.

  Kehr interrogated them alone. They came into the room one by one. Karel could hear nothing.

  Mrs. Schiele was first. Karel sat in the dark and watched her and heard nothing. She gestured and swung her arms around, leaned back as if to physically avoid certain questions, leaned forward to seem confidential. He imagined her chatter: defenses of Leda mixed in with scraps of old fights and resentments, protests against the injustice of all this, assurances that someone somewhere had made a comic mistake. Toward the end she gave Kehr a sly look and Karel figured she was attempting some sort of maneuver. Kehr looked bored.

  Nicholas was next
. He was there only a few minutes. He gripped the edge of the table and sat upright, making a visible effort to be alert. When Kehr stood up and dismissed him, Karel could see in his face his sense that he’d failed again to provide something that somebody wanted or would approve of.

  Leda followed. He sat right up on top of the glass and he still couldn’t hear anything. She faced Kehr with the same calmness Karel knew and loved from the afternoons in her garden, that expression that was at once open and placid and intelligent. She was questioned a longer time than the first two, but when she got up he knew she was still safe.

  He shook with excitement and fear waiting for David. There was some delay. He put his fingertips to the glass and they trembled across it like something dropped into hot oil. When David finally came in, Kehr acted differently, sitting on the floor in the corner as if too shy to confront him. David had his boat and sailed it back and forth across the table.

  Karel waited in something that was getting to be like agony. Kehr was still in the corner, and now David was talking to him. He stayed in the corner but finally put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists and said something, and the boy instantly looked warier. They talked some more. Kehr stood, still shy, and approached the table. He had his hands in his pockets. He took them out. He swung both down on the table so hard the concussion made David jump and the boat flew into the air. He shouted something, and the boy started crying. Karel was up on his feet, helpless. Kehr shouted again, banged the table again. He shouted. David started to wail, though Karel could still hear nothing. Kehr lifted his end of the table and crashed it down, intent on David. He shouted. David put his hands over his ears and began shouting back.

  Karel lunged for the mirror. “Don’t tell him! Don’t tell him!” he called, pounding on the glass with open palms, but he knew he already had.

  “Here’s the situation,” Kehr said to him later, the two of them alone in the room. Karel was moving back and forth in agitation as if tied to a perpetually restless little animal. “She kidnapped her brother from a state institution. She’s in possession of subversive literature concerned with the overthrow of the state. There’s evidence she’s part of a group helping to produce such literature.”