John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— So did I.

— Did you? Kurt frowned slightly, wrinkling his nose. — I can’t say I remember you.

— I’m not surprised. You’d have been less than a glimmer.

— Ah yes! Of course, Kurt said, bringing a hand up into his hair and patting it down nervously. He shaded his eyes with the same hand and looked toward the cottage. — I like you, Oskar, he said suddenly.

— Does that mean no more beatings, Obersturmführer?

Kurt looked at Voxlauer, blinking at him slowly, squinting now and again, as if to make him out more clearly. — I’d pictured you darker, somehow. More heavyset. He puffed out his chest. — More of a woodsman.

— You’re exactly as I pictured you, said Voxlauer.

— Pardon me for not believing you. I hardly look the type. Kurt cocked his head, still squinting. — You do, though, actually, in your weather-beaten way.

— Yes? What type is that?

— The lover, Kurt said softly.

Voxlauer said nothing. Kurt watched him awhile longer, head cocked strangely to one side, then leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. — I’m not threatening you, Oskar.

— No?

Kurt shook his head. — Not in the slightest. Though I don’t expect you to believe me yet.

— I’d like to believe you, Obersturmführer. Very much. But first I’d have to understand you.

— It’s really very simple, Kurt said, his face very close now, wide-eyed and sincere. — I wanted to thank you, Oskar. That’s why we’re here.

Voxlauer laughed, fighting the urge to take a step backward. — Thank me? What in hell for?

— For allowing this to happen. My time with Else. This. . reunion.

— I had nothing to do with that, Obersturmführer. Believe me.

— Never mind. Accept my thanks anyway, cousin-in-law, if you can bear to.

Voxlauer looked at him for a long moment, studying his round, freckled, boyish face, smooth-featured and impossible to decipher, before raising his shoulders once and letting them fall. — All right, he said.

Kurt took a deep breath. — When I called on your mother with that summons note, Oskar, he said, turning again to face the water — I’d determined to make clear to you the fact of my return. I had every intention of threatening you then. You are suspected of being a Bolshevist and a spy. Your choice of occupation is highly suspect and your motive for hiding yourself away in this muddy little corner of nowhere equally so. Of course, on that last count I was privy to a certain knowledge. He grimaced. — The thought of my cousin consorting with such a person sickened me to my innermost self. I resolved to meet with you face-to-face and to make this understood.

— What stopped you?

— I had my reasons at that time, Herr Voxlauer, for avoiding this valley.

— I see.

— Do you? Good. Don’t trouble yourself any further about them. It might not be too much to say that they saved you a great deal of suffering.

— I’m grateful, said Voxlauer. He paused, wheezing slightly, feeling a weakness building in his chest. Please let it not come just yet. Please not just yet, he thought. He stepped back and to one side, feeling light and unsteady on his feet.

— Now, Oskar, we’ve made our peace. Else has made things clear to me as best she can and you and I have had this very important talk. I’ve thanked you for welcoming me hospitably, I might even say charitably, back to this valley. And you’ve accepted my thanks.

— I see, Voxlauer said, feeling the ground underneath him settle.

— Yes. In the shade of his hand Kurt’s expression changed slightly. — My role in town is to serve as the mouthpiece of the party that made me, Oskar, and little else besides. I had hoped, firmly intended, in fact, that up here I might begin to have a different purpose. He let out a sigh. — What do you think? Would that be possible?

Voxlauer said nothing for a long moment. — What purpose?

Kurt’s eyes were clear and patient. — You have your ideas about illegals and the unification and your ideas are very well known to me. Does that surprise you?

Voxlauer shook his head.

— I have my own problems with the unification. Kurt took a step back, as if to see him better. — Yes; I thought that might give you pause. Shall I tell you what they are?

— Please.

— It may appear to you, Voxlauer, that the unification movement has made me a powerful man. I don’t fault anyone for that assumption, you least of all, but the fact is that I have been made a fool of. He waved his fingers in the air. — Things were said and written and alluded to, promises, I suppose you’d say, meant to keep me happy and committed to my work, which was often very dangerous. Of these many promises not a single one was kept. I never wanted to return this way, as some kind of. .

His voice drifted off. — Are you listening to me at all, Voxlauer?

— I’m listening.

Kurt sighed. — It wasn’t going to happen this way, that’s all. The old guard, all the old illegals pensioned off, farmed out into the hills, Reichs-German fops in every post. This wasn’t what any of us wanted for this country. Ever. We were coming as equals to the Reich, not as some bastard colony. The Austrians were to have positions. I, he said, tapping himself on the breastbone— I was to have a position, Voxlauer. A real one. I would have rearranged things in this stinking country of ours, I can tell you. You wouldn’t have recognized it.

— I don’t recognize it now, said Voxlauer.

— What is it you think about me? That I hate the Jews? I’ve known many in my life that I’ve liked well. I’m an intelligent man, Oskar. I reserve the right to judge every man’s Jewishness, such as it is, for myself.

— I congratulate you.

— Just the same I admire strength in a man, Oskar, and I despise all forms of cunning. I think I may safely say that I hate cunning more than any other human failing. I hate it with a blind and unrelenting hate. You make a mistake, for example, if you think your Herr Ryslavy is suffering for any other reason. I am not a brute, Oskar, or a fanatic. But neither am I a fool.

— I never thought you were, Obersturmführer.

— Call me Kurt, for heaven’s sake, Oskar. Kurt coughed. — We’re practically family.

— You’re not a fool, Kurt.

Kurt was still watching him. — Understand, Oskar, that when I come on these visits I come in my civilian dress. My uniform stays behind in my rooms, thank Christ, airing out on a little wooden peg. He breathed in deeply. — We’re outside of history here, the four of us.

— If I was a Red you’d have had me killed anyway.

— Maybe so, said Kurt. — Eventually. But only for the sin of bringing history into this valley.

— What is there, exactly, between you and Else now, aside from history? said Voxlauer carefully.

— Blood, of course, Kurt said, stepping away from the bank. — The girl, Oskar. Some small sense of the future. Doesn’t the future matter to you at all?

— It matters, said Voxlauer. — It’s beginning to.

— And you ask what binds me to my only cousin? You’re wonderfully dense at times, Voxlauer, for a man of the great outdoors.

— I didn’t ask you that, said Voxlauer, squinting at him against the glare. — I asked what there was between you.

— There’s you, Herr Voxlauer, first of all, Kurt said brightly, starting toward the cottage. Voxlauer hung back very briefly, playing with the idea of striking off into the pines. Watching Kurt’s small-boned frame moving jerkily over the marshy ground, his thick reddish hair pressed imperfectly down onto his head, Voxlauer saw him for one fleeting instant as a young boy, walking with that same gait in pond-sodden clothes toward that same cottage, empty-headed and self-assured. Whatever menace he’d held vanished utterly in that instant. He was wonderful to watch, moving awkwardly across the meadow, as lovely in his way as Else was: her complement. Resi, too, corresponded to them absolutely. As he began to walk forward the thought came to Voxlauer that it might be best, after all, to keep out of such a perfect picture.