John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— To hell with the land. Sell it.

— You buying?

— Plenty would. It’s good timber.

Ryslavy sat for a while running the leader of the line back and forth across the floor, following it with his eyes. Finally he laughed. — Damn it, Oskar. I’ll not sell to those sons of bitches.

— Others, then.

He laughed again. — Yes! Other sons of bitches.

— Others, that’s all. Voxlauer watched the line as it ran in. — You might sell.

— Not me, said Ryslavy flatly.

Voxlauer said nothing for a long while, gazing fixedly at something over Ryslavy’s shoulder.

Finally Ryslavy glanced at him. — What is it, Oskar? he said, raising his eyebrows. — Is there something outside?

— That rocket ship of yours, said Voxlauer, still looking out the window to where the Daimler stood in a parabola of shade, dark and proud and otherworldly. — Does it take very long to start?

They drove in a streak out past the canal and through the town gate and down the toll road at the fullest possible throttle between the bending, blurring willow rows. Voxlauer leaned out over the road with his face to the wind and his eyes tearing over and his hair whipping back and forth across his neck, gulping lungfuls of hot, steaming summer air. It tasted of cut green grass and dried cow dung and tar. Ryslavy let out long, stuttering whoops and beat against the hood with the flat of his hand. The shadows of the trees made perfect widening bands on the hood of the Daimler and flashed by in a cinematic flicker of white and black and green, bowing to let them pass. Flocks of starlings exploded upward from the fields and ruts and ditches. The Daimler rifled forward, banking smoothly as a biplane in the sudden dips and bends. At an abandoned mill they skidded sharply off the tar onto the split yellow clay of the Pergau road.

Leaving the plain the road narrowed and after a few curves the sun fell behind the walls of the valley. The road was wet in places from the past night’s rains and at one curve they were forced to stop and haul a fallen sapling out of the roadway.

— Barricade us out, will they? Ryslavy bellowed. A few minutes later they passed through Pergau and rolled once, idling, around its empty square.

— This place is always deserted, said Voxlauer, shaking his head.

Ryslavy laughed. — Maybe they’ve all gone down to Italy.

— Or the Ukraine.

— Bolshevists, the lot of them, said Ryslavy, nodding fatuously. — Greasy Yid-loving homosexual Gypsies. He sniffed. — Where should I drop you?

— The fishes will be missing me by now, I expect.

— I very much doubt it, said Ryslavy.

— Spend much time here, do you? Ryslavy said, kicking a half-empty tin of peas across the floor.

— Not so very much, said Voxlauer. He looked up from the hunting locker and made an all-encompassing wave. — Sit down wherever you like. My house is your house.

Ryslavy looked around him aggrievedly. — Smells like piss.

— Old man’s piss, Pauli. The piss of the ancients. One develops a respect for it after a time.

— I’d rather not, said Ryslavy. He lowered himself cautiously onto the stove bench. — Do you have any quarterweights? Any decent sinkers?

— I thought you were using flies.

— I might do. Conversely, however—

— I’m looking, said Voxlauer. — A little patience. He brought out a battered lure case. — Have a look in this. Voxlauer brought the case over to the bench and turned to the stove and began to fill it.

— These’ll do, said Ryslavy a minute or so later, snapping the case shut.

As he set the kettle to boil, Voxlauer watched him through the porthole struggling up the bank on bowed legs with the tackle box in his left hand and the two reels in his right, gasping for air like a great hairy carp. It seemed to Voxlauer he could make out Ryslavy’s lips quite clearly forming passionate chains of curse words in the dwindling light, fine and lovingly crafted insults sent out in all directions to every living creature. He watched until he disappeared into the first cluster of pines above the bridge, then went back to the little table and sat quietly waiting for the water to boil, exploring the sockets of his missing teeth with the tip of his tongue. After drinking the coffee he went up and found Ryslavy sitting sullenly on his heels with his rod held stiff as a broom handle out over the water. — Too late a start, Ryslavy called out preemptively.

Voxlauer stretched himself out unconcernedly in the grass. — I thought the later the better, in the afternoons.

— Yes, but not in June, Oskar. Ryslavy spat into the creek. — Never in June, he said, more tentatively. A moment or two later he prodded a stone into the water with his boot.

— That ought to rouse ’em.

Ryslavy dipped the tip of his rod into the current. — Never question my methods, Oskar. Never doubt them.

Voxlauer propped himself up on his elbows in the grass. — Pauli.

— Present.

— Tell me about the old man.

Ryslavy reeled in and cast again. — He’s dead.

— And yet his memory somehow lingers.

Ryslavy snorted. — Try turning out your sheets.

— You remind me of Maman, Pauli. Have a little mercy.

Ryslavy played the line out, fixing his eyes on the toes of his boots. He coughed once, cleared his throat and spat again into the water. Voxlauer lay back down and looked up at the sky, waiting for him to begin.

— He was run out of town, said Ryslavy finally.

— Why?

— I couldn’t say.

— I doubt that very much.

Ryslavy shrugged. — He was strange. Nobody trusted him. His wife drowned in the middle of winter and they told him to leave town. He’d drunk with us for thirty years, so Papa in his unholy goodness offered him the cottage. He was a drunk, Oskar. A drunk. That’s all. They wanted him out of town, old man Herbst and Papa and the rest of them. So he brought himself up here, and his children with him. On the back of a Burmese elephant for all I know or care.

— Did you say children?

— Your lady friend and her cousin.

— Kurt was with them?

Ryslavy nodded. — For a while.

— When was this?

— Five years after you left. Six. The war had been over about five years.

Voxlauer was quiet a moment. — Did you know them?

— No.

— You must have known them.

Ryslavy threw the rod angrily against the bank. — Why are you asking me these questions, Oskar? I wish I hadn’t. I wish to hell I didn’t know them now. They hated Papa for throwing table scraps to her ass-scratcher of a father and they hate me too, now, the both of them. Don’t think I don’t know it. Kurt Bauer would murder me if he could. The two of them would, together, and the little girl with them. Christ, Oskar! Why in hell should I tell you anything?

— I’m sorry, Pauli. I’ve been wondering about them a little, that’s all.

Ryslavy laughed and said something to himself that Voxlauer didn’t catch.

— What was that?

— Look to Kurt Bauer for the answers, I said.

Voxlauer took a breath. — Kurt and Else are not the same person, Pauli. I don’t need to tell you, of all people, that they knew each other long before any of this had come into anybody’s—

— He was an illegal already, they’d killed the Chancellor already by the time she got that child, Ryslavy said, spitting the words out. — You ask him about her politics, Oskar. Ask him about her views. Ryslavy let out a sour, tight-voiced laugh. — I should be thanking you, really, Oskar. You’re in such a privileged position to find out what they’re going to do to me.

— What was that you said about the child? said Voxlauer, his voice wavering slightly.