John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— He doesn’t hold you to any blame, Else.

— It’s a strange way to leave if he doesn’t. He barely tipped his hat.

— He offered to take us with him.

— Should we have gone?

Voxlauer nodded. — Yes. We should have.

— But you didn’t want to, either.

Voxlauer was quiet a moment. — I suppose I didn’t.

— We’ll be all right, said Else. — Don’t you think so? I think we will.

They walked farther to a washed-out curve with a view over the trees and lingered there for a time, looking up at the cliffs. The colony meadow shone in a ray of sun and above it a round, shadowed opening hung starkly in the light, black and partially veiled by pine scrub.

— See the cave? said Else. She pointed. — There, just under the rocks?

— I’d heard an old loony used to live there.

— Years ago, yes. None of us ever saw him. Papa said he did, but Papa used to make up all sorts of horrible stories to make us behave. There was smoke sometimes, though, in the evenings. In the daytime too, in winter.

— You never wanted to pay him a visit?

Else laughed. — We were afraid to, of course. Kurt especially. We drew pictures of him to make up for it. He looked a little bit like you, actually, only three or four meters taller, with a walking stick made out of an old butter churn. And a broken stovepipe hat.

— That’s more or less how I picture myself.

— On your off days, Oskar, she said, patting him on the cheek. — Kurt tried to find him once, when we were a little older. He went up to the cave in the middle of the night with a candle, a box of matches and a spade, but all he found was a pile of tattered women’s dresses. Had nightmares for weeks after.

— About the dresses?

— About the man, I think, said Else. She laughed.

They began walking slowly around the bend. — Piedernig knew him, said Voxlauer.

— I can’t think how he would have. This was before—

Voxlauer stopped suddenly. — What’s that sound?

— What sound?

He held up a hand. — Listen.

The whine of an engine spiraled upward through the pines, high and keening as a bandsaw. The pines dampened the sound and smoothed it. It kept constant and dull and grew louder with each step as they followed it down the hill. Underneath and behind the keening was another sound, dimmer and harder to identify. It might not have been a sound at all but it quivered as a sound would along the ground and made them hurry forward. They came into a glade and the noise spread and brightened to a flat wail all around them, hanging on the air like a shield of shivering, spinning glass. Voxlauer covered his ears and began to run. Else was already running as fast as she could, screaming to him to hurry.

Where the road met the creek and fell back into the pines a wheel spun above the ditch in a cloud of blue-black smoke. Coming up behind Else Voxlauer saw the shape of the wheel and the smoke around it and knew already what had happened. As they drew nearer he saw the rest of the machine, broken and inverted, and the body underneath pressed down deep into the grass.

In the three days before his death Kurt spoke almost not at all, breath coming to him in sharp splintered gasps that seemed chipped as they came from a hard, glasslike column of air. Else brought food to him, cups of broth and bits of milk-soaked bread that he almost always refused. Occasionally Voxlauer would see the two of them whispering together. Catching sight of him from a corner of his eye, Kurt would stop and look over at him for a long moment, his face calm and blank.

The windows were kept open on the warm summer air and every so often Kurt would take a deeper breath than usual and sigh mildly, like an old man unlacing a heavy pair of boots. He would lie quietly for hours then, barely breathing, until his chest would seize and blood would well in a froth over his tongue and lips. From the kitchen Voxlauer would hear him choking and rush down to help Else turn him onto his side. As they took hold of him he would scream and curse them both until his breath was gone, then once it was done quiet again into an uneasy, effortful state of rest. Within the hour he would be asleep, breathing shallowly through his nose, and they would steal two or three hours’ fitful sleep themselves, waking always to the sound of Kurt flailing back and forth across the bed.

As soon as Kurt had been laid out Voxlauer sent word to the hospital in Niessen and the Polizeihaus. The next morning a doctor and the little SS officer from the funeral, both dressed in olive-colored field jackets and matching jodhpurs, pulled up in a beautiful jet-black Horch convertible with two uniformed SS privates in the back holding an elaborate folding stretcher across their knees. The doctor and the officer came briskly to the house and rapped on the screen door. The two privates waited by the car, staring up at the house.

— Else Bauer? the doctor said as Else came to the door.

— Yes. She looked at the officer, behind her at Voxlauer, then back to the doctor. — Come in, she said after a moment.

The officer turned to the two privates and made a little gesture. They brought the stretcher from the car and set it on the grass. As he stepped in after the doctor, he caught sight of Voxlauer and stopped in mid-stride.

— Who is this person? said the officer, frowning slightly.

— A friend of the family, said Else. — Are you coming downstairs?

The officer remained motionless.

— It is my cousin you’ve come for? said Else, already halfway down the steps.

The officer didn’t answer. Else went down with the doctor. The officer and Voxlauer stood a shoulder’s width apart just inside the door, studying each other. — Is that for me? said Voxlauer, looking at the two privates crouched in the grass over the stretcher.

— I couldn’t say, Herr Voxlauer. Are you ill?

— I’m tired, said Voxlauer, sitting down at the table. — Shouldn’t you be attending to something or other?

— I’m not needed downstairs at present, said the officer, taking a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. — Peaceful up here, he said in his faint Reichs-German accent, a cigarette dangling slantwise from his mouth.

— Not lately, said Voxlauer.

— Of course, said the officer.

Voxlauer drummed his fingers against the table.

— Regarding the accident, said the officer. — Any thoughts worth mentioning?

— None.

— Pass anyone on the roadway yesterday evening? Anyone at all?

Voxlauer sighed. — You’d have it much easier if I owned so much as a wheelbarrow, wouldn’t you.

— I’m asking for your testimony, Herr Voxlauer. Surely that must have some significance, even to you. You’re a reliable witness, aren’t you? Clear-headed? Unsentimental? Sober?

— You’d not much like the testimony I’d give.

— Oh! I’m sure we would, Herr Voxlauer. I’m sure we’d all like to hear your testimony very much, should you feel inclined to give it to us. If not, however, we can certainly follow things to a satisfactory conclusion without your help.

Voxlauer said nothing.

— Do you? said the officer.

— Do I what?

— Do you feel so inclined?

Voxlauer looked out through the screen door, breathing in the sharp dusky smell of the burning cigarette and the heavy, grass-scented sweetness everywhere behind it. — I feel inclined to live, he said.

The officer smiled and looked down at his fingernails. — Really? That surprises me, I must say. I’m almost beginning to think the Obersturmführer was wrong about you after all, God rest him.

— The Obersturmführer’s not dead yet, I believe.

— He is to us, the officer said, letting the words fall out of his narrow mouth one by one, distinct from one another and perfectly formed. — Listen closely now, Herr Voxlauer. My predecessor may, as one of his countless whims, have extended to you some small measure of protection but that protection is now at an end. It has already been decided by an authority greater than my own to regard his death as an assassination on behalf of Jewish interests, and to take the accused, once he has been recovered, to a full and public trial. Your testimony might prove of some slight interest to said authority. Alternatively, you may be tried as a collaborator and hanged. Do you follow me?