John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

He frowned again. — Well. They seem the same.

— They’re not the same, Oskar.

He stood close beside her, leaning slightly over. — What is it with Pauli? he said. — Trouble with Rindt?

— Mmm.

— Rindt’s thick with the Black Shirts, is he?

She didn’t answer.

— That greasy bastard.

— Yes, Oskar. She sighed.

He laid his hand on her shoulder. There was precious little under the wrap to indicate it held part of a living human being. He felt her breathe in, a slight shifting of the bones. — Having you away did nothing to lighten the years, she said almost in a whisper.

— I was ill, Maman. And then I was married.

— If you choose to call it that.

He took his hand away and laid it against the pane of the door. — Come in off the verandah now, for God’s sake.

— In a minute.

— In a minute, then. He stepped into the parlor and shut the door behind him, leaving her there, swaddled tightly in her blankets, motionless and austere.

Gasthaus Rindt on closer inspection appeared much the worse for wear. Voxlauer recognized in passing some of the drunks of his youth splayed in wicker chairs on the patio and men who might possibly have been their sons equally drunk beside them, basking sleepily in the noonday light. A dry snow wisped around the tables. Many of the window frames were boarded over and paper sacks of cement lay like sandbags in the foyer. A woman in Trachten watched him from the entryway. He wished one man he remembered a good morning and crossed the avenue to Ryslavy’s.

The Niessener Hof by comparison still seemed more or less hale, though a few windows on the upper floors had been nailed shut and some tiles looked to have loosened along the gutters. The façade had recently been given a fresh coat of lime and the vestibule as he entered it appeared in good repair. Most of the tables were empty but a fair-sized crowd stood parceled along the bar. He leaned over as unobtrusively as he could and asked the girl drawing drafts where he might find Herr Ryslavy. — In his office, said the girl with a lazy wave behind her.

Ryslavy was in a small windowless room just off the kitchen, slumped deep in an old cowhide chair with his back to the door, shouting into a telephone. The room itself seemed barely an office at all but rather a storeroom for wine crates and bottles of pilsner. Voxlauer watched from the kitchen for a while, then tapped lightly on the doorframe. Ryslavy turned at the sound and looked up at him a moment, then mumbled his excuses and hung up the receiver. He regarded Voxlauer a few seconds further, scratching his round stubbled chin, then rose slowly from the chair. — I’d expected a Cossack, he said, stepping forward.

— You should have seen me yesterday. I looked like Genghis Khan.

— Much better, said Ryslavy. His teeth as he smiled were the color of weathered pinesplints. He shifted restlessly from foot to foot. — The least you might do is look your age, for the love of God.

— You should have seen me yesterday, said Voxlauer.

The floor was carpeted in varicolored receipts, some of them still bearing the blue K&K of the imperial notary. A fly rod of red lacquered bamboo hung in a corner above an oliveskin tackle bag. The air stank of pipe fumes and carbon ink. Ryslavy stood a moment longer, then slipped around the desk. — A cautionary note: I’ve done nothing since you left but get fat. And go fishing.

— Two not unrelated pastimes.

— And breed. I have a daughter now. The fair Emelia.

— Maman told me. I believe I passed her at the bar.

— Yes.

— Or was that the missus?

Ryslavy made a face. — Ecch! The missus. Run off with an American, two years ago this April.

— An American?

— A stinking unwashed bugger.

— I’m sorry to hear that.

Ryslavy kept quiet.

— Sorry to have missed it, actually.

— A Baptist, believe it ot not, said Ryslavy, smiling. — The genuine article. A preacher of some stripe or other. If I wasn’t an atheist beforehand I definitely am one now.

They sat at a table in a hall off the kitchen, sipping pilsner from wide ceramic mugs, looking out across the square. Ryslavy packed his pipe fussily. He looked over at Voxlauer. — You look tired.

— I am. I’m perpetually tired.

— What was her maiden name?

— Rhyukina. Voxlauer turned his mug back and forth. — We were never married.

Ryslavy chewed his pipestem. — Of course I heard all of this from your mother, he said carefully. — I’ve felt like your older brother through this whole affair. I feel that way now.

— I know it.

— It’s a complicated time you’ve chosen. For Emelia and me especially.

— I know. I didn’t choose it.

They sat quietly awhile. Ryslavy lit his pipe. — Do you need money?

— Thank you. No.

— We’d love to take you on here if you did, now that you’ve been shaved and powdered.

— I don’t need any money. I’ve been here half a week and already I’m sick to death of this place.

— I don’t believe you.

— Well, I can’t stay in town.

They sipped at their beer. Ryslavy drew his lips together.

— I don’t understand, Oskar. Your mother—

— I was hoping to hire on somewhere near to here. As a cowsenner, maybe.

— Never come to town?

— Just to see her.

Ryslavy smiled. — And the rest of us can go to hell? Is that it?

Voxlauer looked out the window toward the patio at Rindt’s.

— Your silence has been duly noted, said Ryslavy. He took a swallow of beer. — You’ve not changed as much as one might have hoped. That is very obvious.

Voxlauer shrugged. — I never had much love for this town, Pauli.

— But the people in it, Oskar! said Ryslavy, setting down his mug and frowning. — The people in it.

— Yes. The people in it. My father and my mother. Well, my father is dead and you know that very well and everyone here knows it. And they know one or two other things about me, too, or so I gather. But they couldn’t know less about why I left or why I came back. He paused to breathe, leaning forward in his chair.

— Of course they couldn’t, Oskar. I didn’t mean you owed them anything.

— Or you, either. Or her.

— No.

Voxlauer closed his eyes. The breath was coming hard to him again, as it always did when things began to reel. He was right that he had to leave but he knew at that moment that they might not let him, Maman and Pauli and the rest. Uncle Gustl, Irma Gratzer, Kati Milnistch, all the others he’d not yet seen. He felt unsteady on the chair and lowered one arm carefully along the chairback. He expected to see Ryslavy staring at him when he opened his eyes but Ryslavy was looking quietly out the window, puffing on his pipe. Voxlauer closed his eyes again. After a time Ryslavy cleared his throat.

— I’m sorry about your father, Oskar.

— That’s all right.

— I’d heard you’ve been sick.

— Yes.

— I never found out exactly what it was. Something from the war?

Voxlauer smiled. — Yes. Something from the war.

— What was it, exactly?

— It was attacks. He scratched the back of his neck. — Is attacks, I suppose.

— Attacks?

— Breathing trouble. That sort of business. Sometimes I see things.

Ryslavy raised his eyebrows. — What sort of things? Things from the war?

Voxlauer smiled. — Catholic things. You wouldn’t understand, Pauli.

— The hell I wouldn’t. I’m an honorary Catholic, on account of my firm belief in alcohol. Ask any of your papist brethren.

— I don’t like talking about it much.

— Oh, said Ryslavy. They sat quietly again.

— Has it gotten any better? said Ryslavy after a time.