The Land Across Read online

  The moon had risen, but its pale light was helpless among the crowding trees. Even so, I was able to collect a good deal of fallen wood, some of it dry and some pretty wet. Back inside I laid a fire. I had hoped that broken twigs and splintered wood would do for kindling. I wasted a bunch of matches before I gave up on that, took off my shoes, and lay down again. All that I can remember about that second sleep is that I had scary, horror-movie dreams that seemed terribly real. Now they are gone, which is fine with me. Sometimes I wish I could forget things that happened in that house later.

  When I woke up the second time, a fire filled the big room with flickering shadows.

  I sat up. Had I gotten the wood to burn after all? Scooting to get away from the heat, I stood up and stared. Leaping flames hissed, crackled, and exploded in sparks. Only a few sticks of wood were left. A long look at my watch said it was half past two in the morning.

  Sleepy and scared, I turned away from the fire. The ghostly shapes all around the room were nothing worse than crummy old furniture under dirty white dustcovers. Then I remembered the mummy. She waited under one of those filthy sheets. Our ladders and tools lay all around like they were waiting to trip me. I picked up the flashlight I had used when I collected the wood, searching that big, ruined room for the eyes that seemed to reach out and touch me.

  It was not until I turned back to the fire that I saw the man in black. He was sitting motionless in a nook not far from it and looked like he was thinking hard.

  “You must have lit the fire,” I said in German. “Thank you! I thank you very much!”

  He looked up at the sound of my voice. When I finally remembered he did not understand German, I tried to show him how I felt by gestures.

  He smiled, and the flames shone in his dark eyes.

  “I wonder how you knew I was in here,” I said. “If Martya were with us, she could ask for me. Then she could tell me what you said.”

  A blazing stick popped so loud I jumped. “Kleon beat me,” I told the man in black. “He kicked me and threw me out of his house. If the police hear about it, they’ll kill him.” The popping of the fire had sounded about like a pistol shot.

  The man in black watched me, his smooth, handsome face holding no expression at all. I was no longer sure that he did not know German.

  “It isn’t right for me to spend the night here. Not if it means Kleon gets killed.” I paused, and when the man in black stayed quiet I added, “Kleon works very hard.” I knew how dopey it sounded, but I could not come up with anything better.

  I found my shoes. “Believe me, I really appreciate your getting the fire going, but I’m going back now. I’ve got to. Martya will let me in if I pound on the door long enough. Or maybe Kleon will. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was glad to see me.”

  Tying my shoes took about half a minute. Folding Volitain’s blankets and topping them with his pillow took maybe five. Even so, the fire had died down a lot by the time we left. I locked the door behind me and led the way down the path through the willows, guided by my flashlight. I remember wishing the man in black were ahead instead of behind me, even though he had seemed friendly at the castle and had done me a favor by lighting the fire. He scared the hell out of me, and I am not too proud to admit it.

  When we reached the street, I hesitated. “I don’t suppose you know the way to Kleon’s? Or Martya’s? She’s the girl who was with me on the boat.”

  I was surprised and happy when he nodded and motioned for me to follow him. We made tracks for ten or fifteen minutes, then turned into what seemed like a forest.

  A forest—only gravel crunched underneath my feet. The trees looked smaller than the willows, and they were more separated, letting in patches of moonlight here and there. Probably I should have switched on my flashlight, but it was really not necessary and I felt somehow that it would piss off the man in black.

  When he got into a spot of moonlight, I saw something black that looked like a big dog trotting at his heels. It was joined by another dog just like it before I had taken eight or ten steps.

  “Those are wolves,” I said to myself. Then I realized that I had said it in English, so I said the same thing in German, but although the wolves looked back at me the man in black did not. As soon as we left the moonlight, another wolf came in behind the first two.

  Pretty soon I heard twigs rattling and snapping to our right. Something there was running away from us, and the ears of the wolves went up. Then the man in black held out his arm like a general on a battlefield and all three were off like arrows from a bow. I expected yells and barks and lots of commotion, but there was just one scream, and it was not loud.

  Half a minute after that, I heard a few soft snarls. And pretty soon the man in black and I stepped out of the trees and into a street.

  We had not gone far when a black car with a silver shield on the door rolled to a stop ahead us. Looking out the front window, the driver motioned for me to come over.

  I did. He spoke in his own language, and I explained in German that I did not understand it.

  “You are foreign.”

  It was not a question, but I nodded.

  “Show your passport.”

  “It was taken away from me by the police.”

  “I am the police. Why are you out so late?”

  “By the border guards. I thought they were police—a kind of police. I’m the prisoner of a man named Kleon. He has to feed me in his house and let me sleep there.”

  I waited until the cop nodded.

  “He beat me tonight.” I handed the cop my flashlight. “Look at my face.”

  He did. “You have seen a doctor.”

  I nodded. “I left Kleon’s house to find a doctor, and it took a long time. Most doctors will not see patients so late.”

  “That is so.”

  “I got lost. At last I found a doctor who bandaged my face. I got lost again, and by that time there was nobody in the street to direct me. Do you know the way to Kleon’s house?”

  The cop shook his head. It was about then, I believe, that I recognized the silent man who sat beside him as the third of the border guards who had arrested me, the one who looked like my father. I wanted to tell the cop he had my passport, but I knew that was going to make trouble, so I said, “Well, I have to get back to Kleon’s house and sleep there. Otherwise you’ll kill him—that’s what I’ve been told.”

  “That is correct. You must sleep there. Who was the doctor who treated you?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I ask, you answer. What is his name?”

  For half a second I went nuts trying to remember Volitain’s last name. “Dr. Aeneaos.”

  The police car glided away.

  “They didn’t question you at all,” I said to the man in black.

  He gave me a smile, white teeth flashing under his black mustache.

  We had not gone far when the police car came back. The cop waved me over the same as before, handed me my flashlight, and drove away again without saying a word.

  The man in black had already set off. I hurried after him and asked whether we were near Kleon’s. He pointed in reply.

  I recognized nothing and felt sure we were a long way from it, but the man in black left the street when we had passed two or three more of the little blocks that held private houses and started up a narrow path.

  After we detoured around a ruined chicken coop, we reached a door in a wall that looked white. The man in black stood aside and signed that I was to knock. I did, knocking softly at first, then harder. Pretty soon it was opened by Martya.

  She stared. “Where have you been?”

  “Let me in.” I pushed past her and stepped into her kitchen.

  “You…”

  I grabbed the door to keep her from shutting it, and opened it wide. The man in black had gone.

  “What it is?”

  I switched on my flashlight and looked about for him. “There was a guy with me. I was going to ask
him in.”

  “It is not your house!”

  “Then I’ll go away,” I told her. “I can sleep in the park.”

  Her mouth opened and closed. With no lipstick it was not as pretty as I remembered.

  “In the morning—and it’s got to be almost morning—I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them the truth, that your husband beat me and threw me out. Is that what you want?”

  She hesitated before she shook her head.

  “Then you’d better be really, really careful about what you say.”

  “You are hungry. You men are always angry when you are hungry. I will make you something. We have sausage, eggs, many good things.”

  “That I bought.” I did not dare to sit down for fear I would never stand up. “I’m not hungry or angry. I’m too tired to think or talk. I’m going to bed.”

  There was no bar for my bedroom door, but I shut it, tried to move the dresser to block it, and hid my wallet, hanging my clothes on the chair in a special way I felt sure I would remember in the morning.

  If I dreamed I cannot remember the dreams, only waking up and seeing sunlight at the window, getting up and using the chamber pot, and lying down again feeling absolutely sure that I would never get away from this crazy country, that I would die right here and be buried right here, too. In my imagination, or maybe in a dream, I remember seeing the little gray stone that would mark my grave, a stone cut with my name and after that a “d” and the date of my death.

  Was it a real prophesy? I think maybe it was.

  7

  THE LEGION OF THE LIGHT

  Martya shook me awake. “It is nearly noon! Get up!”

  I blinked, called her a bitch under my breath, and sat up.

  “Do not take my arm.”

  I had not tried to.

  “You will wish to tire me.”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “You must not. The beach yesterday? I am burn by the sun. It hurt me very much.”

  “I got kicked, mostly in the face. I guess that’s painless compared to sunburn.”

  My irony went right over her head. “That is most good. This morning Kleon tire me very much. My back is most pain. I scream, I twist. He thinks he is big, big man because of this.” She giggled.

  “You won’t have to let me screw you to laugh at me.” I found my watch and put it on. It was eleven fifteen. Either my clothes had not been searched, or the searcher had been smart enough to replace all my things just as I had left them.

  “There are”—she groped for a word—“boxes outside the front door. Three boxes such as are for travel with clothes. They were not there when Kleon go to his work, I think. He will move them, I think, if they are there. They are not mine or Kleon’s.”

  I had never dressed faster. Both of my suitcases and my wonderful old camera bag were on the stoop. “This is great!” I told Martya. “I can take pictures of that ruined castle. Pictures of the Willows, too, and I’ll have clean jeans, shirts, everything.”

  “You must not take my picture. I am too much red.”

  “I don’t want to take your picture.”

  “You are mean.” She pouted. “For this I do not make the breakfast for you.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll find a café when I’m hungry.” The truth was that I was hungry already, but I was not about to admit it.

  “You will take me with you?”

  “Sure,” I said, “if you want to come.”

  “But you do not like me.”

  “I like breakfast a lot,” I told her. “Lunch for you, I guess.” I had slung my camera bag on my shoulder and was picking up my suitcases. “If I put these in my room, will Kleon take them?”

  “I do not think but I do not know.”

  After I had changed clothes, I put them under the bed, pushed far back. “If he does, there’ll be more trouble.”

  She giggled. “He have win the first trouble, I think.”

  “So do I,” I told her. “We’ll have to see who wins the last one. That’s the one that matters.”

  * * *

  It was a new café, closer and maybe a little cheaper than the ones we had been to before. The coffee was not up to Vienna standards but not at all bad.

  “You will take pictures of the Willows?”

  I nodded. “Film and electronic. The first to use if I can, the second for backup.”

  “It will not be good, you show everything.”

  “I won’t show everything in the book. What I decide to show will depend on the text, the stuff I’m going to write.” Honesty made me add, “And my editor. Editors are pure hell.”

  “Many things are from hell,” said a small man in black at the next table. A cartoonist I know would have made him a mouse. He had the bright eyes and the scared daredevil look, so a mouse with black clothes and a backward collar. “I’ve come to help you deal with them.”

  I just stared.

  He stood up, picking up his plate and coffee cup. “I am Papa Zenon.” He put his stuff on our table and pulled up a chair. “You were not at the Willows.”

  “You’re right. I overslept.”

  “Many times. I was told I would find you there. It is a bad place? You have need of me, it seem.”

  “We have find someone,” Martya told him. “We do not wish to be troubled.”

  His smile was almost a grin. “By those who dwell in hell or the authorities?”

  “We do not wish to be troubled at all. She have show herself to me in a mirror and is dead. You know? Who wish trouble by those others you name? No one, I think.”

  The priest talked to me. “How long since…?” He drew a finger across his throat.

  “Years,” I told him. “I don’t know what killed her.”

  “Bones only?”

  I shook my head. “Pretty much the whole body. The arms and legs and so on.”

  “If I lay her to rest,” the priest said, “it must be in consecrated ground.”

  Martya said, “This is what we wish, so she be at peace.”

  “We must have a coffin, also.” The priest looked troubled. “She is large?”

  “Small,” I said. “A small woman, very thin.”

  “Yes. Speak more.”

  “I was just thinking that it may not be possible to straighten the body out without tearing it up. We haven’t tried.”

  Martya said, “She is like so,” and demonstrated, pulling her feet onto the seat of her chair and clasping her knees. “Only more than this. I cannot because I am…”

  “More womanly,” the priest suggested.

  “Yes, yes! Like that, Papa.”

  “It will be a strange coffin. I do not know that I could obtain such a thing.”

  “I know!” Martya looked at me triumphantly. “We must use one of your clothes boxes.” She turned back to the priest. “They are large, most strong. They do not let the water in, I think.”

  “They’d leak in wet dirt,” I told her, “and I wouldn’t give you one even if it didn’t. Couldn’t we buy a suitcase here?”

  The priest nodded. “Of course. As for the rest, you must find a roll of waterproof plastic, and tape. We will wrap your luggage many times in this and seal him with the tape. I will bury her aboveground so she may remain more dry.”

  I must have looked dumb, because he smiled and said, “You shall see. Tonight?”

  “Yes. Martya and I will buy a suitcase as soon as we leave here.”

  “Let us meet at the Willows tonight.”

  I nodded. “What time?”

  “An hour after sunset. Do you fear the wolves?”

  I shook my head.

  “You are a brave man.” He grinned. “I, also!” He rose and blessed us, and was out the door before I could thank him.

  “He didn’t pay,” I told Martya. “I can pick up his bill, I suppose.”

  “You are a fool. He is a spy of the JAKA.”

  For a moment or two I tried to collect myself, sipping coffee and looking around at the shabby, ch
eerful room in which we sat—the mismatched chairs and the worn carpet, the yellowed hunting prints on the walls and the flowery cracked saucer that had held my cup. They told me (quietly and sadly, like old ladies who know they may never get up from mama’s old chaise longue, never get out of the warm, friendly bed) that there had been aristocrats here once, with Strauss waltzes at the castle and commoners who pulled off their caps to the countess—commoners who had been happier and richer and one hell of a lot freer than their great-grandkids were here in the Democratic Republic. When I thought all that I never imagined that people would make a religion out of it, but I was about to find out.

  “You did not know this?” Martya asked. “That he spy for the JAKA?”

  I shook my head.

  “The little man who come from the ministry send him. So he is a spy. He thinks you will know. I think the same. You gave him money.”

  I nodded. “A hundred dollars.”

  “So he must tell those who sit at desks that you are watched and all will be well. But you will know you are watched.”

  “And be umsichtig.”

  “I do not know that word, but yes.”

  “It was nice of him.”

  “For us, yes. For him better. And now?”

  “Finish eating.”

  “We are almost finish. And then?”

  “Buy a suitcase, the biggest we can find, and take pictures of the Willows.”

  * * *

  That went well enough at first. Martya went with me and helped put the body in the suitcase we bought. I could have locked it—there was a little flat key that any kid could have replaced with a paperclip—but I left it unlocked, figuring that Papa Zenon might want to sprinkle the body with holy water or something.

  After that I took pictures of Martya, mostly to show the scale of things. She was pretty small and made the rooms look humongous. There were five or six of her coming down the big staircase, and we even built a new fire in the fireplace where my fire had been the night before. Martya got it going with one of the candles we had bought for our lantern, something I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of. After I got the fireplace shots she said she was tired and went home. I stuck around, taking a few pictures here and a few more there. Most of them were in rooms I haven’t talked about in this, and some were up on the second floor. There was a third floor, too, but I did not go up there.