John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— What could we have done?

— Anything, he said after a time.

— The things you’ve seen fit to do haven’t helped at all. Are you listening to me? Not in any way. She let her breath out heavily and leaned back in her chair.

Voxlauer didn’t answer.

— Today, she went on. — Do you think you helped anybody today? Me? Pauli? Any one of us?

— I could have.

— How the hell could you have helped us?

— I could have pushed harder, said Voxlauer.

She cursed at him and sat forward. — Don’t you understand a thing? Haven’t you realized yet that Kurt’s the only reason we’ve been allowed to have a life up here at all? Who in hell would it have helped if you’d pushed harder? The Polizeihaus?

— Me, Else. It would have helped me.

— Where did you learn to help yourself that way? She waited. — In the war?

— I told you what I learned in the war.

Her expression changed slightly. They were both of them quiet. — I’m sorry, Oskar, she said a moment later, taking hold of his arm.

— You go to hell, said Voxlauer.

She flinched as if he had hit her. Somewhere outside the door the tops of two trees were sawing together in the wind. — Why would you say something like that to me, Oskar? she said.

Voxlauer let out a slow, steady breath.

— Oskar?

— You were there with me. At the Niessener Hof. Weren’t you there?

She closed her eyes. — What happened there, that was everybody, the whole town. Not just Kurt. Everybody. What could we have done to stop it? She paused a long moment, frowning to herself, then sat forward suddenly and took hold of his hand again. — What we can do is try to live. Outlast it. It can’t go on and on this way forever. I’m sure it can’t.

— Of course it can. Why couldn’t it?

She sighed. — That’s all that I can do, anyway. All I can do is wait. Or go away. I can’t do anything else.

— They’re forcing him to sell. He paused. — Else—

— I know it.

— And that doesn’t trouble you at all, in a cousin? He was forcing the words out now, almost spitting them. — Doesn’t that upset you? No? He gripped the edges of the table. — Don’t you have any right and wrong in you? What more can you possibly want?

She stood up from the table. — I want to see Resi. I want to see my little girl. I’m not sure he’ll let me anymore, after what you did. Is that all right to want, Oskar? You’ll allow me that? The both of you? She quivered there a moment between the table and the door, vacant and unreal-seeming in spite of her grief, hands opening and closing on empty air. — That’s all I’ve wanted now for seven years. She swallowed and took a breath. — For all this time I’ve barely had it. She stopped again, then said — He didn’t bring her today. You saw.

— No, said Voxlauer. — He didn’t bring her.

Else turned and pressed her face against the screen. — She was supposed to come to stay. Did you know that? The rest of the summer, until school. And now she won’t.

— Why is that?

Else shook her head. — Go to him, she said pleadingly. — Make friends with him again, Oskar. Please.

He sat perfectly still. — Not till you answer me.

She turned back to the screen and was quiet. Finally she said: —She won’t come because he can keep her from coming. She won’t come because of who he is.

— Obersturmführer, you mean?

— Her father. He’s her father, she said, bringing a hand up to her mouth.

— Why could you not tell me this? Voxlauer said softly. — I’d already guessed.

— Because I knew you. Because I knew what you would think of me. Because if I had had a child — she was talking quickly now, on the verge again of anger, looking not at him but at the floor, the chairs, the screen door, all about her — Because I knew what you would think of me, having a child by such a man. Because I knew what kind of man he was. Because—

— What kind of man? said Voxlauer.

She stopped short. — What?

— You told me before, when I asked, that you didn’t know.

That you didn’t know what kind of man he was. That you didn’t know what it was he did. He paused to take a breath. — Was that a lie?

— Oskar, she said, crouching down beside his chair and taking hold of his arm. It was very dark in the room but he could see that her eyes were wet and she was trembling. Her hand on his arm was trembling too, moving up and down slowly from his wrist to his elbow. — Please, she said, breathing stutteringly. — Say you’ll go to him—

— You go to hell, said Voxlauer, getting up from the chair. He stepped past her where she crouched with her hand still trailing toward him and took up his coat. She made a low sound as he stepped past her and reached for the back of the chair to steady herself. Voxlauer pulled open the screen of the door and a stirring of warm air came into the room, rousing him as if out of a heavy sleep.

One hour later he was kneeling by the bank of the lower pond, pressing his fingers into the warm mud and breathing in the smell of the grass and the floating pollen. The water lapped shyly against the reeds. He moved further along the bank to a low bluff of gravel and washed his hands. A trout broke the surface close by, to his left. When his hands felt clean he stood and walked over the wet ground to the cottage.

The cottage gave off a low white hum as it had when he’d first seen it, glowing white against the flat blue slope like chalk against a blackboard. Long ago, now, he thought. How much simpler things were then. I was unhappy. He smiled. The cottage door hung slightly open. He stepped inside and felt about him for the table and chair, then sat down facing the vague blue rhombus of the door and waited.

Before long the first tracings of gray crept under the shutters and the room began to fill with a tentative yellow light. Voxlauer got up from the chair and opened the shutters, then sat down as before. After another hour he stood up stiffly and went down the steps and out to the road. The sweet damp smell of the ponds rose up to him as he passed the standing water. Midges and damselflies, reticulate and green, spun before him in fiery arabesques over the grass. As he watched them razor-thin streaks of light appeared in the wake of their serpentines and the ground underneath darkened suddenly, as though in an eclipse. Voxlauer ducked quickly down into the shadow of the pines and clenched his eyes shut. The ground fell away under his feet and rose up like a swinging door and fell away and he knelt down in a depression at the edge of the woods and doubled over till his face was pressed into the dust. His breath came more and more painfully and a cord of bile surged into his mouth and clung there, frothing and clotting against his lips. He lay down and pressed his arms against his sides. Beneath the smell of the bile a fine dry smell, comforting and close, crept up from the sun-warmed needles. He curled into a ball and sank slowly into the earth.

After a measureless length of time his breath came back to him and he was able to raise himself from the ground and spit out the rest of the bile. He sat forward and propped himself on his elbows and waited for his eyes to focus. The bile glistened in a puddle at his side. Gathering up a handful of needles and dirt, he covered it over, then brushed the needles from his clothes and climbed to the road.

At the road Voxlauer stood for a time with his head tipped back, helping his sight to clear by following the clouds from west to east, then turned down valley. He walked slowly through the trees from sunspot to sunspot, lingering in each for a moment or two with his arms close against his sides, shivering. At the junction he hesitated briefly, glancing up again at the sky, then went left up the trail to the meadow and the colony.