The Land Across

6 NIGHT, AND NIGHT’S DENIZENS

The expression of the first woman I passed in the street told me I ought to get my bruised and bleeding face out of sight. At first I could think of no place where I could hide but the Willows. When it finally occurred to me that I could go to a hospital, I began asking where I could find one. Most of the people I stopped could speak no German—or anyhow pretended they could speak none. One lady gave me directions that left me completely lost.

At last a kind old man directed me sensibly, warning me at least three times that the distance was long and the hospital might not take me. I set off anyway, thinking a lot about how any distance these people thought was a long walk was likely to be way too long for me.

I walked until I felt terribly tired, and I believe I would have been tired even if I had not been all set to fall over before I started out. Then I saw the cherry trees, fragrant ghosts towering through the twilight and still in full bloom though the bees had gone home to their hives. Beyond those trees, I knew, stood Volitain’s house. Was Volitain a doctor? I could not remember, but he had sure acted like one when he had treated my stings.

It was all I could do to walk to his door and bang his knocker twice. After that I just listened, and it seemed to me I heard, barely (only barely) heard, somebody crying inside. Soon the crying stopped.

The door was thrown wide. Until that moment I suppose I thought Volitain’s death’s-head face could never look surprised. If I did, I had been wrong. His eyes flew wide and his jaw dropped. Then he took me by the arm and pulled me into his parlor. “Were you set upon by thieves?”

“By Kleon,” I said.

“Ah! I see.” Volitain chuckled. “And now you’ll stay away, and Kleon will be shot. He will be shot, at least, if you confess your escape to the police. Will you do it?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want that.”

“Ah! You are afraid of him.”

“Sure I am, but that’s not the reason. His wife was cheating with me. We were pretty open about it. He had a right to get mad.”

“You let him beat you.”

“I didn’t. I fought him, and I would’ve beaten him every bit as bad as he beat me if I could.” I thought back to our fight and remembered things Martya and I had done before the fight and told Volitain, “I’m not going to claim it would have been right, but it’s the truth.”

“I see.”

“Can I sit down? I’m tired.”

“Certainly! Certainly! Here. This chair.”

I sat and leaned back. The upholstery felt as soft as a pillow.

Volitain tapped my chest here and there. “Have you been spitting blood?”

“Sure. From my tongue. I guess I bit it during the fight.”

“That’s not uncommon. Does it hurt you to talk?”

“Not much. No.”

“Good.” Volitain straightened up. “I’ll stop asking you questions for the moment. Your face is bruised and cut. He kick you, eh? He does not seem to break the facial bones.”

“I tried to protect it.”

“Naturally. We always do. I will provide the local anesthetic and clean the worst. I see nothing here that needs stitches.”

When he had finished patching me up, he said, “I take it you do not go back tonight?”

I shook my head.

“Where will you sleep?”

“Here, if you’ll let me.”

“I will not. I help if I can, but you cannot sleep here. My decision I will not defend with argument. This house is mine, and I decide. You must sleep elsewhere. Where will you go?”

“To a hotel in that case.”

“By this you sign a death warrant for Martya’s husband. His name…? I hear you say it.”

“Kleon.”

“Kleon will be shot. A moment ago you do not want that.”

I was silent, trying to think.

“A foreigner without luggage, with a bandaged face? They will ask for payment in advance, most polite. You will provide it. As soon as they show the room, they telephone the police.”

“I was told there were no telephones here—no telephones in Puraustays.”

“There are but few, yet the better hotels have them and the police. If the hotel does not have the telephone, a boy will run with a note. The police will pound on your door and soon after Kleon dies. Somewhere else?”

“The Willows then.”

“More reasonable—if you have the courage to sleep.”

“I do,” I said. The honest truth was that I felt I could sleep anywhere.

“That is very well. You are hungry?”

I shook my head. “I’m too tired to be hungry.”

“You ate last when?”

“Lunch, I think it was.”

“Thus you tire, my friend. Wait here.”

I fell asleep as soon as he left the room.

When Volitain woke me, he had lit every lamp. The windows were dark, though no darker than the coffee he had made for us—strong coffee with sugar but no cream, and a plate of rolls still hot from the oven.

“Eat and drink,” he said. “For you are two blankets and a pillow. We must carry them. It is not far.”

“Nothing is far,” I said, and got ignored. “Nothing but the hospital.”

The rolls were dark and heavy. I smeared them with Volitain’s dark yellow butter and found them delicious. He had baked a dozen perhaps, or a baker’s dozen. He ate one. When we left, three were left on the plate.

He had brought a tin lantern like the one Martya and I had bought earlier, and he carried the blankets—they were rolled up tight—slung on his right shoulder and tied beside his left hip. I carried the pillow, which was big and awkward but weighed less than a shoe. A blister on my foot had broken. I was vaguely aware of it, and the pain in my ankles and the throbbing of both legs. “Vaguely” is what I wrote because I do not know a better word. All three seemed like something happening to somebody else a long, long way away.

My key turned easily in the lock I had oiled. “If you are wise,” Volitain said, “it is here you sleep. If you go farther into the house you may be lost.”

I agreed because agreement was simpler.

“I am going to take my lamp. This you see. I wish to leave it with you, but I myself have need of it.”

He took off the blankets. I pulled them free of the string with which he had tied them, and together we spread them on the floor. I lay down on them and he pulled the free side over me. I think I was asleep before he had gone out the door.

I woke shivering, I suppose three or four hours later. There was a fireplace near the place where I lay, and I remembered that there had been fireplaces in the big room beyond it—also that Martya and I had bought matches and flashlights after our early lunch. Feeling certain there would be deadwood between the willows, I got a flashlight and went out.

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.