John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

Voxlauer dug his hands into his pockets and hunched forward, the toes of his boots pressed together under the table. Outside in the square a sparse dry snow was falling. — I thought it had, he said.

In the evening they drank on and played tarok and ate from huge heaping platters of cutlets and tatterbread dumplings. The girl came to clear the table and sat in on a few rounds. — Emelia, this is your old Uncle Oskar, said Ryslavy. — Oskar, Emelia.

— Pleased to meet you, Uncle, said the girl, smiling down at her cards.

After the round was played she stood up from the table and returned a short while later with a tray of prosciutto and melon and smoked sections of trout. They laid the fish on small wedges of oven-crusted bread, spattered the wedges and the fish with butter, then laid them whole onto their tongues.

— Ah. That’s lovely, said Voxlauer, leaning back.

— Fish want swimming, as they say, said Ryslavy, producing a thin yellow wine bottle from under the table. He poured the wine into two tall-stemmed glasses and proceeded to tell Voxlauer about stickle trout and river trout and the subtleties between them, in the water and in the pan, and his lease of spawning rights to the ponds in the valley above Holzer’s Cross. How word of his fish had spread to such a degree that it had grown necessary to install a pensioner in the valley as a warden, and, later, how the old man had become erratic with drink and for the last winter of his life could most often be found across the square at Rindt’s, splayed out cold across the benches. Voxlauer listened to it all patiently and closely.

— In October we caught three boys buckshotting from the poor bugger’s own boat, said Ryslavy with a gesture of absolution. — With his own damned shotgun.

— What happened to him?

— We found him in a snowdrift last January. In his overcoat and drawers. Daughter still collects his pension. She’s a something, said Ryslavy, smiling.

— What does that mean? said Voxlauer.

— A queer one. Used to teach school down at Brunner’s Cross. Looks a bit Yiddish, which is a fine thing, I’ll tell you, because the old drunk was a bastard of a Yid-hater all his days. Hated Papa something fierce. Not enough to refuse a little schnapps money now and then, of course.

— Of course.

Ryslavy grinned. — She’s a something, anyhow.

— I’m sure she is. What about this cottage, then?

— A room with a roof over it. Ryslavy shrugged. — A chimney.

— How far up valley?

— By the farther pond. You remember, Oskar. On that soggy piece of marsh by the runoff.

— I might remember.

— Well, there you have it.

— Well: if I have it already, then I’ll take it, I suppose, said Voxlauer. — You’ve talked me into it.

Ryslavy looked at him uncertainly. — Beg pardon?

— Thank you, Pauli, said Voxlauer. — I’ll take it. He said it again over Ryslavy’s slurred objections and repeated his decision with a violence that startled even the girl who’d returned and stood watching them from the swinging doors, holding aloft a tray of candied pears.

— He refused me the same thing, she said sullenly.

Maman’s face as he told her betrayed little or no surprise. She looked past him as he spoke, over his shoulder toward the gathering dusk over the ruin. — I suppose I couldn’t have hoped for more than one week, she said.

— It’s only up at the ponds, Maman. It’s work.

She smiled. — We’ll never see you anymore down here. Once a week for butter, maybe.

— It’s work, he repeated.

She was already busy with the table for supper. — Gustl’s coming tonight, she said brightly.

Gustl arrived on his bicycle punctually at seven. Voxlauer heard him cursing through the open parlor window and came out onto the verandah. — Hello, Uncle, he called down. Gustl waved up distractedly. He was pulling a grease-blackened length of chain from a tartan satchel, cursing to himself and spitting onto the gravel.

— Hark! the Bolshevik speaks. Wait till I get my hands on you, my boy.

— There’s no need for the chain, Uncle, surely, hereabouts?

— Chancy days, Oskar. Chancy days. Gustl snapped closed the little padlock and tucked the key into his hatband and nodded. He squinted up at the verandah. — Where’s that infamous beard?

— Growing in.

— Aha!

— Maman! Gustl’s here.

— I hear him, she said, coming out onto the stairwell. — Tell him to bring some pilsner up from Gottschak’s.

— I have it already, Dora, laughed Gustl.

They sat on three sides of the parlor table over which a white cloth had been spread eating noodles and cabbage and boiled halved potatoes and bitter canned peas in watered butter. Every now and again Maman kicked him hard under the table.

— Ah! I see what you mean, Uncle.

— Do you, Oskar? A damn lot’s come clear these last few years. Not that it helps the poor serf any.

— It hasn’t helped you, then.

— Not a scratch. The flour-jew takes my grain same as always.

— If you’re lucky, Gustl, said Maman.

Gustl rotated his head wearily. — Luck, my dear sister, doesn’t enter into the equation. In thirty-five years of groveling for a fair-set price and getting pulled by the prick every time it never once has.

Voxlauer smiled. — Ouch! How does that feel, Uncle?

— Don’t set him going again, Oskar.

— I’m only saying. Sounds like out-and-out bad luck to me.

Gustl set his fork down carefully. — Was it bad luck the Jew invaded this country, not as an army but by stealth, and connived through ceaseless intrigue to leach the bounty from our German soil? It was not. Gustl stopped to clear his throat, paused briefly for effect, then recommenced. — Was it bad luck he brought Bolshevism — if you’ll pardon me, Oskar — into Europe? Not at all. Rather it was the result of a thousand years’ inveterate scheming. You, I suppose, can be excused your confusion. He raised his fork augustly to his lips.

Maman’s chair back creaked loudly as she straightened in it. — Good Lord, Gustl. You sound just like a hut-country Schönerer. What do we care about German soil, of all things?

Gustl looked back and forth between them, eyes wide open and compassionate. — I don’t know which of you is more in need of a contemporary newsmagazine, he said finally.

The next morning she found him in the linden grove working the hard smooth ground with a loose-handled rake. What scrub there was among the trees had been piled in a clearing and weighted down with stones from the creek bed. — What’s that scrub pile for? she asked.

— I don’t know, said Voxlauer.

— When will you be going?

— I don’t know.

She stood for a few moments beside him without moving or speaking, not looking at him, not looking away. — Don’t you? she said quietly.

— Tomorrow, said Voxlauer.

The sun was just inclining over the verandah wall as he made ready to go. He asked if he might borrow some books from the parlor to read in the evenings and she nodded her head yes. He took an old animal lexicon, a guide to butterflies and moths, and a clothbound Selections from Goethe, fraying along the spine and edges. He wrapped the books in waxed paper and took the provisions she’d bought for him and folded his linen and packed everything down with a green oilcloth tarpaulin in the bottom of his pack. He asked if he could take some of the photographs and she stood still a moment, frowning. — I can’t imagine what you’d be needing those for, she said. Instead she brought him two cabled wool sweaters that had once been his father’s and a green pressed wool cap. — Is he letting you fish, at least?

— As much as I like.