John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

Why not? I asked.

Well, said the ex-lieutenant, glancing up and down the car with well-intentioned watery eyes. Well. . he began.

They’ve nothing to live for, really, interrupted a tiny, well-coiffed lady from across the table, running her plump hands along the teakwood inlay of the window-banks as if by way of exposition.

I’m going to them just the same. I’m a Bolshevik now as well, I said, drawing myself up proudly. Bolshevism, I continued, drawing on notions I’d mastered just two or three days previous, is an international movement. I raised a mud-stained finger. Along lines of class.

But not along yours, child! said the first woman kindly. I had made the mistake of telling them about my family.

There’d be no place for Karl Peter Voxlauers in their movement, I promise you, the ex-lieutenant put in.

Best thing that he’s dead, then, I suppose, I said. That quieted them awhile.

They gave me a number of further reasons between them over the course of the afternoon and I listened to them all attentively and cheerfully, as though taking part in an elaborate burlesque. My desertion was taken as nothing more than a romantic breach of decorum; the war had long since grown distasteful to these people. The idea of an Austrian boy of fine Biedermeier stock feeling sympathy for the Revolution, on the other hand, was preposterous to them — inconceivable, in fact. They were forced, eventually, to ignore me.

Voxlauer spent the morning in a clearing on the north ridge, looking to scare up deer bedded down in the loose brush among the pines. Just past noon a buck sprang in a high trembling arc from its cushion of scrub and veered toward him and away again, galloping hard between the stumps. Voxlauer’s stiff fingers worked the safety clumsily and the buck was almost out of range when he fired, both barrels discharging in the same instant and ramming the stock into his collarbone so his eyes teared and blurred. The deer stood at the edge of the clearing, quivering and heaving. He unbreeched the shotgun and levered out the smoking cartridges, moving nearer all the while over the uneven ground. The deer remained standing at the edge of the clearing. Its head lolled strangely and from where he now stood he saw the eyes rolling and bulging, witnessing nothing. Fishing two more shells from the pocket of his coat he reloaded the shotgun and raised it to his shoulder again and pulled both the triggers. The buck’s head whipped hard to one side as the spray hit it and it staggered a few paces before falling over. By the time he reached it the breath was coming in rasps through its shot-mangled throat and its mouth was a pillow of pink foam. He cast about in the bracken for a rock to crush its skull with and found one of a fair size, but when he returned with it the buck was already dead.

He skinned it in strips and hung the strips from the branches of a leafless white bush close by and opened the belly and uncoiled the intestines and threw them into a heap. Next he cut out the stomach, which burst as he pulled it, the liver, the kidneys and the thick, bruise-colored heart. The stomach he tossed onto the pile with the intestines but the other innards he wrapped in a swath of deerskin tied tightly together with bailing wire. He spent the rest of the day butchering the venison and packing it into cubes bound in broader, heavier squares of the hide. When he’d finished he left the carcass for the foxes to find and fashioned a sack from a bedsheet he’d brought from the cottage and filled the sack with the bundles of meat, then took hold of the sack by its knotted, sodden corner and started awkwardly down the slope.

The sack was too heavy to lift and Voxlauer was forced to drag it behind him through the brush where it caught every few meters on a root or in branches and resisted his pull like a still-living thing. He cursed it steadily as he went, turning on it finally and threatening it, kicking at it with his boots until self-awareness returned to him suddenly and he began to laugh. It was dark already in the pines and he felt light-headed and discovered when he was halfway down the slope that he had no clear idea where he was going. He sat down in the needles with the smell of resin all around him, staring up through the trees at the pink underpinnings of the clouds. The sky drew itself steadily westward.

That night another memory of Père came to him, softly and persistently, like a moth circling a light. He and Père were together on one of their favorite walks, a gently sloping path that began behind the ruin and ran along an avenue of young birches to a little glade. The light filtered grayly through the trees and he was holding Père’s hand and stepping over the roots and stones, frowning from the effort. Père was walking too quickly for him to follow; he was staring absently, fixedly ahead of him as he often did, mumbling in a low monotone without moving his lips, like a priest or a nun at their private prayers. — Père, he’d said, stopping in the path. — Père? Can we go slower?

Père had stopped as if struck on the back. — What’s that, Oskar?

— You’re going too fast.

— I. .? No, no, Oskar. No, no, my little Herr. He had smiled then, squinting slightly as he smiled, the look of an adult trying to explain something delicate and complex to a child. — I’m in a hurry, Oskar. That’s why I walk so fast. I wish I could walk much faster. I would feel better. It’s terrible, Oskar, you know. It’s terrible always to be in such a hurry.

He had smiled then, too, looking up at Père, searching for the joke. Père made jokes very often when they were together, instead of giving the answers he wanted. He knew very well that they couldn’t be in any kind of hurry. They had finished dinner early and Maman had said that tonight, for once, they could take their sweet time. He liked that expression very much, especially when Maman said it, which was not often. That was why he had remembered.

Père had begun walking again now, quicker even than before, and he had stamped his feet in protest, letting out a squeal of frustrated laughter. — Père! he had shouted. — Père! Stop! Don’t walk so fast!

Père had spun about suddenly on his heels and run back to him, gripping him hard by both of his shoulders and shaking him so that his head lolled back and forth like a pocketwatch on a chain. The trees blurred and rocked above him. — I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! Père had screamed, shaking him at every word. — I just told you, Oskar! Good God! Let it—

Père had let go of him then and turned round on the path, forgetting him completely, staring at a point far off through the trees. — Let it, Père had said again in a faraway voice, not talking to him any longer.

— Let what? he had said frightenedly, still stuttering in the wake of his first surprise. He’d looked up then and seen that Père was weeping, the tears running freely in bright swift streaks across his face and down the front of his fine white shirt. He had begun to cry then as well. Père was still turning in strong dizzying circles above his head, smiling and laughing and weeping, saying the same four words over and over:

— Let it happen now.

After a few nights of freezing rain in the valley there followed a steady period of warmer days. The snow melted into the dark spongelike turf and the ice on the ponds buckled slowly and sank under a thin layer of oily water. On one of these warm mornings Voxlauer was crossing the bridge when a man appeared at the road’s farthest turning. The man was tall and thin and dressed in cowled, flowing robes, like a monk’s, and the white bloom of his hair dipped and wobbled as he labored up the incline. Catching sight of Voxlauer he slowed and approached in loping steps marked and measured by a whittled bamboo cane. Reaching the bridge he planted the cane in the gravel and leaned forward slightly and looked out at the water. — Spring is bounteous, he said, smiling.