John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

She blinked a few times at this in mock surprise. — Have I been incommoded, sir?

— Well. You’ve been put out, at least, said Voxlauer, feeling the blood rushing to his face at her joke. He felt adolescent and intensely spinsterish both, sitting there a few feet from the bed looking down at her, unable to laugh or reply or even to force his mouth into a grin. An innocent enough joke, a simple joke, he told himself, not meeting her eyes now but looking down absurdly at the floor. He thought suddenly then, quite naturally, of Anna, not with any sense of shame but with a sharp pang of longing for their effortless way together.

— I’ll be going then, Fräulein, he managed after an extended silence.

— You’re sure you can manage? Else said, looking at him doubtfully.

— I think so. Yes.

— Well. I’ll stay where I am, then. She fell back and drew the blanket ends closer around her, turning over into the sheets.

— I’ll bring those sketches down sometime soon, if you like, said Voxlauer, rising cautiously from the stool.

She made a small flapping gesture with her fingers. — Yes. The sketches, she said, drawing herself farther into the blankets.

— Good morning then, Fräulein, said Voxlauer quietly. He took the smoke-blackened kettle off the stove as he went out.

By the time he arrived at the cottage new pains had begun and his frayed pants were stiff and sodden to the ankles. Wine-dark tracings of blood rose upward along the seams and his socks had sloughed off inside his boots. He undressed in the cool of the little alcove and rebandaged his legs carefully, brushing flakes of dried blood and Mercurochrome onto the floor, then lay back on the pallet and watched the light gather into a porthole-shaped mass and travel down the wall toward a hand-shaped smudge above the bed. Through the window came the high, twiglike clatter of a rail.

click click click

A shape spun down from somewhere overhead, throwing sparks onto his eyes. — Père? whispered Voxlauer. His eyelids fluttered and the balls of his eyes moved sluggishly back and forth under their weight. As he turned his head the shape spun off to the left, humming quietly, like a mortar shell arcing into a drift. A soft, dull ping! followed, like a spoon dropped from a low height onto the floor. Then the click. Voxlauer sat up, suddenly wide awake again. — She asked me how I managed it, he said. Ping! came the answer from above the bed. He ignored the noise and focused his attention on remembering. Else turning onto her side, face into the sheets, right arm twisted back behind her. Sitting up in bed to see him better, frowning slightly as she spoke. The fluttering of her fingers as he’d turned to go.

It grew warmer in the room and the column of light trembled and began to bend. Voxlauer turned his head and looked through the porthole at the sheet of wind-harried water and the brightening pines, tapping his thumb softly against the glass. He stretched an arm to the handprint on the wall and covered it with his palm. The handprint of a child or of a very young girl, plump-fingered and careless. He got up and went to the table.

Bringing the lexicon down from the shelf he took out the sketches and laid them in a row with the portraits on either end and the little still life between them. It was crudely and effortfully made, six thick-traced curves drawn together into thorned stems ending in bunched-together, exaggerated blossoms. Voxlauer bent over the paper, bringing his face slowly toward it until his vision blurred. Tiny flakelets of charcoal spun and danced under his breath. He moved away. A pain stirred in his legs and he brought them stiffly together under the table, sliding the two portraits nearer to him. After a short time it subsided and he bent his head again over the sketches.

The portraits, for their part, were virtually invisible, as though the hand which had figured them had scarcely come in contact with the paper but had hovered instead in close ribboning circles just above it, bobbing and circling like a horsefly. Both seemed drawn from a single quivering thread curving forward and back again, gently spinning a likeness. The face in the first he recognized now as Else’s and in the second the same face perhaps fifteen years younger smiled out at him from an open window, the long straight hair twisted into braids and the brow pulled back sharply as if in pride or doubt. The lines of the portrait thinned and gathered at the paper’s edge into smoky, cobweb-figured nets, lightening and drifting leftward off the page. All three sketches were dated the preceding summer. He put them back into the lexicon and lay down on the pallet with his face against the cool plaster, picturing her. — How did I manage it? he said aloud.

One week later as Voxlauer was gathering wood in a stand of dead firs he saw Else walking on a logging track not fifty meters below him. A girl ran ahead of her on the wet spring turf, stopping now and again to look back and call something out with a laugh and a toss of her loose, coal-black hair. A few meters further on Else called the girl to her and they bent down together over a budding elderberry bush. He watched them a few moments longer, keeping back among the firs, then called out a hello and slid awkwardly down the slope. The girl’s face as he drew near had the same frowning, half-friendly look he’d seen in the second portrait. — Ach! It’s you, Herr Voxlauer, Else said, curtsying. — Back to average, I hope?

— They tell me I’ll live to the play pump organ again, Fräulein, in the idiots’ choir. The girl laughed at this. She stood a few steps past them up the road, toying with a knotted kerchief, watching him closely.

— You should meet Theresa, Oskar, Else said. — Resi, come here. This is Oskar. He lives in Opa’s cottage now, and minds the ponds.

The girl smiled up at him. — You shot yourself in the knees, she said.

Voxlauer looked at Else.

— A funny business, Oskar, she said. — I had to tell somebody.

— I have brand-new knees now, said Voxlauer to the girl. — Fresh off the presses. He flexed his knees and cut a caper. — No need to worry. See?

— I wasn’t worrying, said the girl. She extended a hand and he shook it solemnly.

The girl ran ahead of Else and Voxlauer as they walked, gathering pine needles from the track into her kerchief, mumbling to herself. They walked together measuredly and slowly, almost shyly now in the presence of the girl, and it seemed to Voxlauer for the second time that something had changed between them. He held his bag of kindling by its strap, whistling tonelessly and glancing at her every few moments. — You should have come by for those sketches, he said. — It’s remarkable, the likeness. He looked again at the girl.

— I don’t go into that cottage anymore, Herr Voxlauer. I’ve told you that already.

— Yes. You have.

— If you want me to have those drawings, you’ll have to courier them down to me, I’m afraid. She smiled. — Something like the postman.

— I’ve been crippled till today, Fräulein. A tragic case study. Dragging myself around the cottage by my gums.

— With a bottle in each hand you don’t leave yourself much option, Herr Voxlauer. She sighed. — I’ve seen enough to know.

He put out a hand and stopped her. — Is that all you’ve seen, Fräulein?

She smiled a little, raising her eyebrows at him. — I beg your pardon? What else should I have seen?

— All sorts of things, he said, still holding her by the arm. — I don’t understand how you could have missed them. What’s happening in town, for instance. What’s happening to everybody. Don’t you ever go to town?

The smile disappeared from her face and she looked at him as if he’d insulted her. After a moment she laughed. — You can’t imagine what all I’ve seen. I don’t like to go to town, it’s true. In spite of this, I am not a hermit, Herr Voxlauer. Not by any stretch.