John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— They want me to throw pies at, I think, on holidays. That’s the only way I can explain it.

— I’ll never understand these monkeys, said Voxlauer, sighing.

They were quiet again for a while. — I’d guessed you’d be headed down to Italy, said Voxlauer, squinting into the water.

— Italy? That’s comic, Oskar. They’ve already had purges in Milan.

Voxlauer laughed. — You’re thinking of the Communists, Pauli. Communists have purges. Fascists have rallies.

— Fascists have purges, I’m sure, when the fancy takes them, said Ryslavy. — What’s the blessed difference?

— Communists have purges, said Voxlauer. — That’s the difference.

They began walking slowly back to the car. — Where’s your daughter now?

— At the mother-in-law’s.

— You’d best be getting on, then.

Ryslavy nodded. — I’ll drop you at the villa.

— You go on, said Voxlauer. — I said I wasn’t getting back into that sarcophagus.

— Get into the blessed car. Don’t insult me.

— Begone from my sight! said Voxlauer, waving his arms.

They stood by the hood of the sedan, looking at each other in embarrassment. — You’re fired, said Ryslavy finally, opening the driver’s-side door and putting a boot up on the fender.

— Good-bye, Pauli.

— Good-bye, Ryslavy said, getting in.

— Kurt is coming up today, Voxlauer said quickly, looking Ryslavy in the eye. — On his motorcycle.

— Up this road?

Voxlauer nodded.

Ryslavy said nothing for a moment. — When?

— Soon. About this time, Voxlauer said. — He’ll be alone, he added after a little pause.

Ryslavy was staring at him from inside the car with the door still open, understanding what he was saying fully and absolutely but looking at him in confusion just the same. Another moment went by. — Well. Good-bye, Oskar, Ryslavy said again, very quietly, reaching out to close the door of the sedan.

— Yes, said Voxlauer, stepping back.

Ryslavy pulled the door closed and waved once through the dust-caked window. He started the engine and sounded the horn and drove up to the pilings and turned back down the valley road. He let the car gradually gain momentum, waving again as he passed, and rolled down the sun-flecked road into the trees.

— Careful in the curves, Voxlauer called after him.

The sedan took me on unfamiliar roads through the suburbs of the city, past the new Alfred Rosenberg Housing Authority on the south bank of the river, past the site of the Air Rally Stadium, out through the fir-covered hills of Oberwiessen, low and crumpled together, to the ruins of the old Weimar Gasworks. I’d been given a pocket-sized.20 caliber handgun — a society lady’s pistol, really— a slim box of cartridges, a roll of gagging tape and a flashlight, all in a plain yellow box. The box was too big for its contents and they rattled and slid about more and more noisily as we turned onto ever-smaller roads. The rattling might have bothered me at another time but now it seemed insignificant and far away. I was about to do something I had never done before.

The gasworks were arranged in a loose half-circle in the middle of the woods. At a green sliding door in the side of the nearest building the car skidded to a halt and I stepped out into the twilight, looking around me calmly. The drive from the center of town had been a short one, but I’d had more than enough time to compose myself. “Is this it? This one?” I asked the driver. He nodded without turning to look.

The door was padlocked and I walked around the building to a decrepit slate-roofed cottage just behind the gasworks. It was stained a uniform brown from decades of smoke and soot, and the windows were almost completely blacked over, but I saw a dim light coming from one of the ground-floor rooms. I went to the door and turned the handle and found it unlocked. A naked light-bulb was burning in the filthy soot-covered stairwell, illuminating great continent-shaped water stains on the wallpaper. I stood at the foot of the staircase a moment, listening. Then I walked to the end of the shabby little hall and stepped into a tiny unlit room in which a man was sitting tied to a chair by the neck, hands and ankles with loops of bailing wire. It was hazy in the room, and dark, but I recognized him just the same. It was Glass.

Voxlauer walked down through the dwindling light patterns, kicking up the ever-present red clay dust under his heels. Blackflies glittered on the road and climbed to the scent of him and buzzed and worried around his ears. He could hear the steady noise of water to his right and the rustling of the heavy boughs on every side. Past the colony junction he began to hum a half-remembered air, a song his father had favored in the evenings. He heard again for a moment the bright accompaniment of the piano and saw his mother in the doorway, playful and at ease, announcing supper. The color of the scene was sepia and gold and reminded him of the photographs he’d sorted through that first day back, ages ago already, in the old house. He imagined Maman herself now as a sort of photograph, lucent and serene, composed and unchanging for all time. The questions that had harried him for the past hour, of what might happen that day and the next, receded under this image like fever chills beneath a quilt. As he walked into Pergau he felt calm and resolved.

When he arrived at the villa Else was sitting on the steps with a broom across her lap, the folds of her housedress hanging over the gravel. It was an old dress, worn through in patches and coal-colored. — You can’t come up yet, she said tiredly. — I’ve put this entire shack under quarantine.

— That explains the black dress, said Voxlauer. — Or has somebody passed on?

— Very comic. It was blue before I started sweeping, if that says anything to you. A heap of gray dust lined the entranceway behind her.

Voxlauer came to the steps and put a hand to her forehead. Her hair was damp. — Should we go for a walk, till the air clears a little? he said.

— Where’s Pauli?

— He’s gone.

Else sighed and stood up slowly and fetched a dustpan from the kitchen. She swept the dust into it and carried it around the corner of the house. Then she undid her housedress and stepped out of it and wiped her face and neck a few times and shook her head. — God knows what I’m cleaning for anyway, if we’re leaving tomorrow. Maybe I don’t quite believe it yet.

— I don’t either.

— Hard to imagine, isn’t it? She took his hand and led him back down the drive. — I sent Resi down an hour ago. On a bus.

— A bus? What bus? said Voxlauer, raising his eyebrows.

— The new Reichs-bus, Oskar. Pergau — Niessen — St. Marein. They’ve only just started it.

— May it run for a thousand years.

— May it run for the next few days before dropping into a ditch, and I’ll be satisfied. She took his arm.

They walked on through the little town, past the churchyard and square, lifeless-looking as always, to the down-valley road. — Where are we going? Voxlauer asked when they’d come to the last of the outlying fields. — Up to the ridge?

— Let’s keep on this way, said Else.

— I’d rather go to the ridge, said Voxlauer, slowing.

— We haven’t walked this way in ages. Come along, Herr Gamekeeper!

They continued down as the road narrowed to little better than a mule track, steep-ditched and slashed with gullies, snaking sharply through the trees. Voxlauer began to feel the first stirrings of fear. — So he’s gone, then, said Else, looking back at him. — Pauli, I mean.

— He is. Yes.

— And he still holds me to blame for it all, does he? She smiled. — I suppose there’s no point in asking why.