Peter Beagle - The Line Between

I may or may not be a forbidding personality; he could certainly, when he chose, be a far more commanding one than I had ever imagined. I would have opened any kit of mine to his inspection at that point. Dr. Nastase hesitated only a moment before he silently requested the key from Lyudmilla Plaschka and turned it in the dainty silver lock of the traveling case. I remember that he stepped back then, to allow her to open the lid herself. Love grants some men manners, and I still choose to believe that Dr. Nastase loved Volodya Andrichev's wife, rightly or wrongly.

There was no money in the traveling case. I looked, I was there. Nothing except a vast array of creams, lotions, salves, ointments, unguents, decoctions … the sort of things, my doddering brain finally deduced, that an anxious Juliet, some years the senior of her Romeo, might bring along on an elopement to retain the illicit magic of the relationship. I had only to glance at Lyudmilla Plaschka's shamed face for the truth of that.

To do Sigerson justice, his resolve never abated for an instant. He simply said, «By your leave," and began going through Dr. Nastase and Lyudmilla Plaschka's belongings just as though he had a legal right to do so. They stood silently watching him, somehow become bedraggled and forlorn, clinging together without touching or looking at each other. And I watched them all, as detached as the coachman: half–hoping that Sigerson would find the evidence that Volodya Andrichev had been

viciously swindled by the person he loved most; with the rest of myself hoping … I don't know. I don't know what I finally hoped.

He found the money. A slab of notes the size of a brick; a small but tightly packed bag of coins; both tucked snugly into the false lid of a shabby steamer trunk, as were the tickets he had discovered earlier. The faithless wife and the devious doctor gaped in such theatrically incredulous shock that it seemed to make their culpability more transparent. They offered no resistance when Sigerson took them by the arm, gently enough, and ordered the coachman to take us back to town.

At the police station they made formal protest of their innocence; but they seemed so dazed with disbelief that I could see it registering as guilt and shame with the constables on duty. They were placed in a cell — together, yes, how many cells do you think we have in St. Radomir? — and remanded for trial pending the arrival of the traveling magistrate, who was due any day now. The doctor, ankles manacled, hobbled off with his warder without a backward glance; but Lyudmilla Plaschka — herself unchained — turned to cast Sigerson and me a look at once proud and pitiful. She said aloud, " You know what we have done, and what we did not do. You cannot evade your knowledge.» And she walked away from us, following Dr. Nastase.

Sigerson and I went home. When we parted in front of my house, I said, «A wretched, sorry business. I grieve for everyone involved. Including ourselves.» Sigerson nodded without replying. I stood looking after him as he started on toward the Widow Ridnak's. His hands were clasped behind him, his high, lean shoulders stooped, and he was staring intently at the ground.

Our tour began the next day — we did well in Gradja, very well in Print, decently in Srikeldt, Djindji, Gavric and Bachacni, and dreadfully in Boskvila, as always. I cannot tell you why I still insist on scheduling us to perform in Boskvila every year, knowing so much better, but it should tell you at least something about me.

But even in foul Boskvila, Volodya Andrichev played better than I had ever heard him. I detest people who are forever prattling about art in terms of human emotions, but there was certainly a new — not power, not exactly warmth, but a kind of deep, majestic heartbeat, if you will — to his music, and so to all of ours as well. He said nothing to anyone about his wife's arrest with her lover, nor did anyone — including Sigerson and his friend Progorny — ask him any questions, nor speak to him at all, except in praise. We did not see St. Radomir again for a week and a half, and the moment we arrived Andrichev tried to commit suicide.

No, no, not the precise moment, of course not, nor did it occur just as the wagons rolled past the town limits. Nor did anyone recognize his action for what it was, except Sigerson. As though he had been waiting for exactly this to happen, he leaned swiftly forward almost before Andrichev toppled over the side in a fall that would have landed him directly under our team's hooves and our wagon's iron–bound wheels. A one–armed scoop, a single grunt, and Andrichev was

sprawling at our feet before the rest of the company had drawn breath to cry out. Sigerson looked down at him and remarked placidly, «Come now, Herr Andrichev, we did not play that poorly in Boskvila.» The incipient screams were overtaken by laughter, quickly dissolving any suggestion of anything more sinister than an accident. At the livery stable, before shambling away, Andrichev thanked Sigerson gruffly, apologizing several times for his clumsiness. It was early in the evening, and I remember that a few snowflakes were beginning to fall, a very few, twinkling for an instant in his mustache.

This night, for some unspoken reason, I passed up my own house and walked on silently with Sigerson, all the way to the Ridnak farm. The Widow and her sons were already asleep. Sigerson invited me into the back kitchen, poured us each a glass of the Widow's homebrewed kvass, and we toasted each other at the kitchen table, all without speaking. Sigerson finally said, «A sorry business indeed, Herr Takesti. I could wish us well out of it.»

«But surely we are," I answered him, «out and finished, and at least some kind of justice done. The magistrate has already passed sentence — three years in prison for the woman, five for the man, as the natural instigator of the plot — and the money will be restored to Volodya Andrichev within a few days. A miserable matter, beyond doubt — but not without a righteous conclusion, surely.»

Sigerson shook his head, oddly reluctantly, it seemed to me. «Nothing would please me better than to agree with you, concertmaster. Yet something about this affair still disturbs me, and I cannot bring it forward from the back of my mind, into the light. The evidence is almost absurdly incontrovertible — the culprits are patently guilty — everything is properly tied–up … and still, and still, something…» He fell silent again, and we drank our kvass and I watched him as he sat with his eyes closed and his fingertips pressed tightly against each other. For the first time in some while — for there is nothing to which one cannot become accustomed — I remembered to be irritated by that habit of his, and all the solitary self–importance that it implied. And even so, I understood also that this strange man had not been placed on earth solely to puzzle and provoke me; that he had a soul and a struggle like the rest of us. That may not seem to you like a revelation, but it was one to me, and it continues so.

How long we might have remained in that farm kitchen, motionless, unspeaking, sharing nothing but that vile bathtub brandy, it is impossible to say. The spell was broken when Sigerson, with no warning, was suddenly on his feet and to one side, in the same motion, flattening his back against the near wall. I opened my mouth, but Sigerson hushed me with a single fierce gesture. Moving as slowly as a lizard stalking a moth, he eased himself soundlessly along the wall, until he was close enough to the back door to whip it open with one hand, and with the other seize the bulky figure on the threshold by the collar and drag it inside, protesting, but not really resisting. Sigerson snatched off the man's battered cap and stepped back, for all the world like an artist unveiling his latest portrait. It was Volodya Andrichev.