John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— Christ! said Voxlauer, laughing.

— Listen, Oskar. Are you listening?

— Is it the baby?

She nodded. — He peers at me out of his frightened yellow eyes, then up at the sky. I’m filled all at once with a strange nervous happiness. “Lie down,” I tell him. “The grass will cover you.” He looks at me gratefully, then disappears.

Later I rejoin the others. I see nobody I recognize and begin to feel afraid. It’s as if the line of people I knew has been replaced, though I begin to recognize some of the faces. They’re all huddled together, discussing something in whispers. “Where have you been?” they ask. They seem very surprised to see me. “Hiding the little promise!” I laugh back at them. They turn away from me, beaten.

— Beaten? said Voxlauer, looking at her confusedly.

— Beaten, said Else, smiling.

Over the next days and weeks his feeling of blank surprise and shock consolidated itself into something understood and manageable even as each surprise led obliquely to the next like views in a baroque garden, distracting and bewildering him until he felt altogether lost in its immensity. That he could walk down at a given hour, cross the empty square at Pergau, turn up her drive and climb the villa steps to find her waiting for him in the narrow kitchen, calm and expectant, dumbfounded him each day as it had on the first. Often he would wonder secretly at his inability to get over his surprise. Am I so modest? he would ask, looking at himself in her parlor mirror late at night when she was sleeping. Do I think so little of myself? He would turn his body to the right and left, studying it in the light of the lamp: his pale, flat, bearded face, his wandering, distrustful eyes, his belly, his legs, his stooped, servile shoulders. Yes, he would think. I do think little of myself. Then it would come over him again, the slow, almost painfully acute surprise, the stubborn disbelief. And he’d laugh at his pitiful reflection in the dark.

— Look here, said Else.

They’d been walking along the valley road, shirtsleeved in the mid-April sun. She had stopped and let go of his arm and now stood bent over the stump of a fallen birch, holding the brush aside for him to see. With her free hand she pointed to a thing like a cloven oak leaf hanging from the tattered bark. — Look here, Oskar, she said.

Bending closer, he saw it was a moth of some kind, covered in silver fur, matted and slick like the pelt of an otter. Its head was hidden in a cowl of sulfur bristles. Bands of sulfur ran into pools along its abdomen, glowing dully against the silver. The bark curled away above it and it hung fixed in the shadow, motionless and gilded as an icon. — What is it? said Voxlauer, not knowing what to say to her.

Else took its wings between her fingers and pulled them open. The bands he’d imagined to be marks along the body now resolved themselves into bright yellow crescents on the underwings. The hooked black legs scrabbled wildly and the fern-shaped antennae batted and quivered against her thumbs. She held it up for his instruction, turning it slowly, as she might have for one of her schoolchildren. He nodded.

She was precious to him now, ridiculously so, more precious already after those few weeks than Anna had ever been. Any guilt he felt at this was eclipsed by his fear, not of her, precisely, but of the future: the future he’d seen the night of his accident, the future he was connected to again, against his will and intention, because of her. He could no more disconnect himself from it now than he could be rid of his surprise at the fact of her presence in his life each day. The image of Anna’s face the day she died came to him suddenly, drawn and bloodless, grayer than the wallpaper behind it. No, he thought. I won’t do it. I won’t move upstream against the future anymore. I can’t.

— Dove-of-the-moon, Else was saying brightly. — Colias mnemosyne. Very rare here so early. She held the wings spread between her thumbs now, like a cat’s cradle. — I think we’ll take it home with us, for Resi’s box. Do you have a kerchief, Oskar?

— Oskar? she said again.

— Yes, of course. I have one here, said Voxlauer quickly, reaching into his pocket.

— Take it, said Else. — Carefully. Do you see this row of spots, here? Along the abdomen?

— Yes.

— Those are its breathing holes.

One morning, a week after the beginning of their time, they awoke to find everything under glass. The garden tinkled like a chandelier and the transparent crowns of the pines along the road glinted amber and turquoise in the early light. Else wore a blue cotton wrap over a calico dress and carried a jar of olives in a linen purse, passing it to him from time to time to hold. They went across the square in Pergau and out the cemetery road without meeting a single soul. A shallow mist lay on the roads and in the ditches. Where they met the main road curving up to Ryslavy’s land a few boys out spading turf waved to them from across a field.

They continued lazily on to the junction, then bore right up the long slope to the colony. Everywhere branches sparkled and clacked together in the breeze. Coming out of the pines they saw Piedernig leading a ragged line of men across the meadow, his white crest bobbing beacon-like ahead of him as he walked. Halfway to the huts Else called out a greeting and the column stumbled to a halt.

— Hail to the patrol! Voxlauer called.

— Blessings, blessings! said Piedernig once they drew even with him. He frowned. — Where are your trouts, children?

— Best stick to roots and grubs, prophet, said Voxlauer, handing him the olive jar.

— You’ll take what you get, Walter, said Else. — And praise us for it.

— I will at that, said Piedernig, bowing. He turned and waved the men on to the settlement. There were seven of them in all, somber and dirty-faced, in crudely made leather sandals made of three flat loops threaded into one another. A few greeted Else with a slight nod as they stepped past her. None of them were wearing clothes.

— Praise be to supper, first and foremost, at the present time, said Piedernig, carving the air into generous and equal portions with his cane.

They sat in the same room as before, around the same blanket, eating Else’s olives on crumbling sourdough rolls. — How’d you come by this bread, Professor? asked Voxlauer between mouthfuls.

— Our own Herta made it, said Piedernig, nodding toward a squat, smiling woman to his left. Voxlauer recognized her vaguely as the frowning woman in the garden from his earlier visit.

— It’s delicious, Herta, said Else. The woman shook her head bashfully and waved a fat round hand. It struck Voxlauer suddenly that she was the only one in the room who looked adequately fed.

— Our Frau Lederer doesn’t know what to make of flattery, God bless her, said Piedernig, winking at Else. Herta shook her head again and stared fixedly down at the olive bowl, reddening a little.

Voxlauer looked around the room, at Piedernig and Herta and the rest, and at the blanket laid out between them. It was sparer than before, and the conversation quieter. — Where do the children eat? he asked, chewing.

Down the circle someone guffawed. — Oh, here and there, said Piedernig absently, waving a hand. — About.

— You don’t know Walter’s policy toward children yet, I see, said Herta. It was the first time she’d spoken.

— I can guess at it, said Voxlauer.

— Slander! said Piedernig, waving a hand dismissively. — Slander and defamation!

— I brought olives especially, Walter, said Else. — So you wouldn’t have to share with your little urchins.

— You understand us pretty well, Fräulein, called a man from the kitchen. — Keep the little pilgrims skin and bones.