Ursula Le Guin: Orsinian tales

No answer.

"For the love of God, Martin!"

"All right," the man whispered. "Listen. He came on them in the woods. There, back in the oaks." He pointed to the great trees standing somber under moonlight. "He'd been out hunting. It was the day after he'd sent off the man from Brailava, told him get out and never come back. And she was in a rage with him for it, they'd quarrelled half the night, and he went off to the marshes before dawn. He came back early and he found them there, he took a shortcut through the woods, he found them there in broad daylight in the forest And he shot her point-blank and clubbed the man with his rifle, beat his brains out. I heard the shot, so close to the house, I came out and found them. I took him home. There were a couple of other men staying here, I sent them away, I told them she'd run off. That night he tried to kill himself, I had to watch him, I had to tie him up." Martin's voice shook and broke again and again. "For weeks he never said a word, he was like a dumb animal, I had to lock him in. And it wore off but it would come back on him, I had to watch him night and day. It wasn't her, it wasn't that he'd come on them that way like dogs in heat, it was that he'd killed them, that's what broke him. He came out of it, he began to act like himself again, but only when he'd forgotten that He forgot it. He doesn't remember it. He doesn't know it. I told him the same story, they'd run off, gone abroad, and he believed it. He believes it now. Now, now will you bring your sister here?"

All I could say at first was, "Martin, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Then, pulling myself together, "They – what did you do?"

"They're where they died. Do you want to dig them up and make sure?" he said in a cracked, savage voice. "There in the forest. Go ahead, here, here's the manure shovel, it's what I dug a hole for them with. You're a doctor, you won't believe Galven could do that to a man, there wasn't anything left of the head but – but – " Martin put his face into his hands suddenly and rocked back and forth, crouching down on his heels, crouching and rocking and sobbing.

I said what I could to him, but all he could say to me was, "If I could just forget it, the way he has!"

When he began to get himself under control again, I left, not waiting for Galven. Not waiting, I say – I was running from him. I wanted to be out from under the shadow of those trees. I kept the pony at a trot all the way home, glad of the empty road and the wash of moonlight over the wide valley. And I came into our house out of breath and shaking; and found Galven Il-eskar standing there, by the fire, alone.

"Where's my sister?" I yelled, and he stared in bewilderment. "Upstairs," he stammered, and I went up the stairs four at a time. There she was in her room, sitting on her bed, among all the pretty odds and ends and bits and tatters that she never put away. She had been crying. "Gil!" she said, with the same bewildered look. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing – I don't know," and I backed out, leaving her scared to death, poor girl. But she waited up there while I came back down to Galven; that's what they'd arranged, the custom of the times, you know, the men were to talk the matter over.

He said the same thing: "What's wrong, Gil?" And what was I to say? There he stood, tense and gallant, with his clear eyes, my friend, ready to tell me he loved my sister and had found some kind of job and would stand by her all his life, and was I supposed to say, "Yes, there's something wrong, Galven Ileskar," and tell him what it was? Oh, there was something wrong, all right, but it was a deeper wrong, and an older one, than any he had done. Was I to give in to it?

"Galven," I said, "Poma's spoken to me. I don't know what to say. I can't forbid you to marry, but I can't – I can't – " And I stuck; I couldn't speak; Martin's tears blinded me.

"Nothing could make me hurt her," he said very quietly, as if making a promise. I don't know whether he understood me; I don't know whether, as Martin believed, he did not know what he had done. In a way it did not matter. The pain and the guilt of it were in him, then and always. That he knew, knew from end to end, and endured without complaint.

Well, that wasn't quite the end of it. It should have been, but what he could endure, I couldn't, and finally, against every impulse of mercy, I told Poma what Martin had told me. I couldn't let her walk into the forest undefended. She listened to me, and as I spoke I knew I'd lost her. She believed me, all right. God help her, I think she knew before I told her! – not the facts, but the truth. But my telling her forced her to take sides. And she did. She said she'd stay with Ileskar. They were married in October.

The doctor cleared his throat, and gazed a long time at the fire, not noticing his junior partner's impatience. "Well?" the young man burst out at last like a firecracker – "What happened?"

"What happened? Why, nothing much happened. They lived on at He. Galven had got himself a job as an overseer for Kravay; after a couple of years he did pretty well at it. They had a son and a daughter. Galven died when he was fifty; pneumonia again, his heart couldn't take it. My sister's still at He. I haven't seen her for a couple of years, I hope to spend Christmas there. . . . Oh, but the reason I told you all this. You said there are unpardonable crimes. And I agree that murder ought to be one. And yet, among all men, it was the murderer whom I loved, who turned out in fact to be my brother. … Do you see what I mean?"

1920

"THE best thing to do is get him married."

"Married?"

"Shh."

"Who'd marry him?"

"Plenty of girls! He's still a big strong fellow, good-looking. Plenty of girls."

When their sweating arms or thighs touched under the sheet they moved apart with a jerk, then lay again staring at the dark.

"What about his pension?" Albrekt asked at last. "She'd get it."

"They'd stay here. Where else? Plenty of girls would jump at the chance. Rent-free. She'd help at the shop, and look after him. Fat chance I'd give up his pension after all I've done. Not even my blood kin. They'd have your brother's room, and he'd sleep in the hall."

This detail gave so much reality to the plan that only after a long time, during which he had scratched his sweaty arms to satisfaction, did Albrekt ask, "You think of anybody special?"

In the hall outside their door a bed creaked as the sleeper turned. Sara was silent a minute, then whispered, "Alitsia Benat."

"Huh!" Albrekt said in vague surprise. The silence lengthened, drew into uneasy, hot-weather sleep. Sara not knowing she had slept found herself sitting up, the sheet tangled about her legs. She got up and peered into the hall. Her nephew lay asleep; the skin of his bare arms and chest looked hard and pale, like stone, in the first light.

"Why'd you yell like that?"

He sat up suddenly, his eyes wide. "What is it?"

"You were talking, yelling. I need my sleep."

He lay still. After Sara had settled back into bed it was silent. He lay listening to the silence. At last something seemed to sigh deeply, outside, in the dawn. A breath of cooler air brushed over him. He also sighed; he turned over on his face and sank into sleep, which was a whiteness to him, like the whitening day.

Outside the dreams, outside the walls, the city Rakava stood still in daybreak. The streets, the old wall with its high gates and towers, the factories that bulked outside the wall, the gardens at the high south edge of town, the whole of the long, tilted plain on which the city was built, lay pale, drained, unmoving. A few fountains clattered in deserted squares. The west was still cold where the great plain sloped off into the dark. A long cloud slowly dissolved into a pinkish mist in the eastern sky, and then the sun's rim, like the lip of a cauldron of liquid steel, tipped over the edge of the world, pouring out daylight. The sky turned blue, the air was streaked with the shadows of towers. Women began to gather at the fountains. The streets darkened with people going to work; and then the rising and falling howl of the siren at the Ferman cloth-factory went over the city, drowning out the slow striking of the cathedral bell.