John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

The huts stood bright and unchanged on the far side of the grass, half in shadow and half in weak, cloud-muted sunshine. A few fluttering rags still hung from lines strung between them. He moved toward them over the dew-heavy grass, the water seeping into his boots. All around the huts was a deep vibrating quiet. That’s a strange sound that quiet makes, thought Voxlauer. Like the sound of a train going into a tunnel, if you took away the noise of the rails. His footfalls as he began to move again seemed amplified by the clapboard walls around him and echoed grotesquely along the hard-packed ground. At the small circle of tamped earth at the center of the colony he hesitated, looking to his right and left.

The little pen to one side stood empty now and derelict and the wall of the terraced garden buckled in along its length where the soil had run out in the late spring rains. A few cracked plates jutted like sun-bleached bones out from the mud. By the garden wall he found a few turnips not yet turned up by deer and he ate them gratefully. His stomach hurt with a constant quiet pain. He leaned sideways with his cheek against the warm slate of the wall and closed his eyes.

The noise of a door clattering shut roused him a short while later. The sun had moved more completely now into the low bank of clouds and a steady wind was coming down off the cliffs. He slid from the wall and found the door of the meetinghouse swinging on its hinges, burls of dust floating and settling and swirling up again on the floor of the narrow entryway. Pushing on the door, he went into the little hall, which was pleasantly cool and desolate. A ring of water stains darkened the smooth plank floor where once a supper had been held. Many suppers, thought Voxlauer. Yes. But one especially. He remembered Else’s voice as it had sounded to him that first day, before she had ever whispered to him in desire or shouted at him or spoken his name, before he had known even the smallest thing about her. He stood remembering the room as it had looked then. A moth-gnawed blanket huddled now in one corner like a sleeping child. He thought of the blanket that had lain on the floor that day, the food in wooden bowls, the circle of nervous, jaundiced faces. Crossing to the blanket he pulled it up and uncovered the husked-out carcass of a mouse.

Passing through the other rooms he found nothing beyond some straw pallets thrown together in an alcove and the faint lingering smell of unwashed bodies. In the pantry a few sunflower seeds lay scattered along a high shelf and he put them one by one into his mouth, feeling worryless and numb. He looked out a long time at the bright blue beehouses as they changed hue almost imperceptibly in the fading light. After a time he went out through the hall and down the steps and around the house to them. A dark stream of bees came and went from a vent at the bottom of each door, silently and flickeringly, like light from a cinema projector. A few meters from the cabinets Voxlauer stopped and watched them funnel out and upward as though blown from a tiny puckered mouth. Everything was bright and still and silent. He moved his arm slowly toward the cabinet and felt nothing but coolness and a shivering in the air. All at once, as though shut off by a switch, the line of bees disappeared. The flickering had stopped. The cabinet doors hung slackly open, revealing the lifeless hives. Voxlauer looked about him, blinking. The sound of wind came down to him as always through the pines.

“Where are his shoes?” I asked after a moment.

“I have them here,” said Spengler.

I flirted momentarily with the idea of asking why Spengler had the shoes but said instead: “There are still Home Guard troops and bulls everywhere, Heinrich. They have sharpshooters now. I was almost just given a full state pardon, if you take my meaning.”

Spengler furrowed his brow at this. He glanced at Ley. “Well?”

Ley got to his feet and began buttoning up his jacket. “I suppose I’d best go out to them,” he said, as casually as he could.

I stared at Spengler. “You’re not really going to let him waltz out of here, are you, Heinrich? With only the secretary of security left for us to haggle over?”

Spengler smiled at Ley, ignoring me completely. “Go on, Herr Minister. Go on out. Inform your men.”

I stared at them both, my mind a perfect blank. After a moment or two I realized I was holding the door for Ley and pushed it closed. “Could you possibly be such an idiot, Heinrich?” I managed to stutter. He continued to pay me no mind whatsoever. Ley put on his yellow minister’s cap and stepped to the door, turning to Spengler at the last moment and bowing. “Long live your revolution, Herr Spengler,” he said, touching his cap.

Spengler said nothing. Ley bowed once more and walked serenely out of the room.

“Just a minute!” Spengler shouted. Ley reappeared after a few seconds, frowning very slightly. “Yes?”

“Take old granddad here along with you,” Spengler said, pointing at the secretary of security, who looked up at us with an expression of amazement and rose uncertainly to his feet.

“Heinrich,” I pleaded.

“I’m tired of looking at you, granddad,” Spengler said kindly. The secretary hesitated the briefest instant, perhaps debating whether or not to take a bow, then shuffled quickly after his colleague, already vanished around the doorframe. I watched Spengler as he watched them go. “Why, Heinrich, for the love of God?”

Spengler shrugged. “One old man more or less. If you must know, I really was tired of looking at him, the ugly bugger.”

“I meant why shoot Dollfuss? Why? Do you honestly believe that Ley won’t cross us?”

Spengler shrugged again.

“Are you trying to kill yourself, Heinrich?” My voice had a far-off, hollow sound, like the rattling of two peas in a rubbish can.

Spengler only grimaced. He seemed hypnotized, or drunk, or half asleep. “Control yourself, Bauer. Eh? We have the Home Guard, don’t we?”

“The Home Guard just left, Heinrich. With the secretary of security.”

“The secretary of security,” Spengler repeated. He laughed. “Is that what he was, the old gasbag?”

Just then I was able to see an angel of death hovering quite clearly above Spengler’s left shoulder, opening like an umbrella. I saw it quite clearly. I closed my eyes, rubbed them and looked again. It was still there, much larger already, spreading now to take in the entire room. The nausea I’d felt earlier in the day hit me all at once and buckled me over against the wall. Spengler, for his part, took no notice of anything. He was busy reloading his pistol, sliding each greased green cartridge into its barrel with nurturing care. I took my eyes away from him and stared again at the blood-caked sheet covering Dollfuss’s tiny body.

“I’m going to check on Little Ernst and the boys,” I said, feeling behind me for the door handle.

Spengler glanced up. “Is that necessary?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“All right,” he said. I backed slowly out of the room and shut the door.

The conference room was abandoned. I went out through the reeking reception room to the corridor. Little Ernst had disappeared. Three boys I recognized only vaguely were there, leaning sleepily on their rifle stocks. The chancellery guards lay face down, just as they’d been before, but all of the tension seemed to have gone out of their bodies. Seeing me, the boys drew themselves to attention.

I raised my arm automatically in return, glancing again at the guards on the floor as I went by. When I was almost past them I stopped short. “Did you kill these men?” I said to the nearest boy.