Читать книгу The Wooden King - Thomas Maxwell McConnell - Страница 10

They were the same flight of seventeen he’d trudged up all winter but he counted them nevertheless, a hollow series in the dark of the well, as if each scuff of his soles were over empty stone. He pulled his fingers one by one out of the gloves, on the landing unlaced his boots, came in quietly shutting the door.

From the kitchen Alena leaned into the hall, her eyes bearing on his.

“He went in good order,” Trn said.

She pursed her lips and was gone. He hooked his coat, scarf over the collar, hat last, coupled gloves in the coat pocket. At the counter she was rolling dough.

“Is your father up? “

“I don’t know,” she said.

“We talked on the way again about Adam,” Trn said. “I believe he’ll be fine.”

“And what makes you believe that?”

“I told him Adam was upset about his father.”

Her shoulders worked her elbows like pistons, the red embroidered hem of the apron leaping.

“And when we are upset, I told him, angry at the world because we can’t be angry with the person who’s upset us, we often launch our anger anywhere because we hurt everywhere, so we think it doesn’t matter.”

“And what did Aleks say to this?”

“He listened,” Trn said. “He didn’t say much but I think he understood.”

She glanced over her shoulder to roll her eyes.

“And the next time Adam pushes him to the ground and kicks him,” she said, “all will be well.”

“I told him to keep away from Adam.”

“But who’s going to tell Adam to keep away from Aleks? Tell Adam that he’s only angry with the world?”

“If it happens again I will speak to the teacher.”

She slapped the dough against the counter, arched her weight to flatten it with the heels of both hands.

“‘I will speak with the teacher,’” she said. “Just like you did about those German hoodlums last year. And if that doesn’t work you will speak to the director again, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes came round to bore on his again.

“And this will make Adam Svoboda conduct himself in a more civilized fashion. This will make Aleks grow ten centimeters over one night so he’ll be bigger than Adam and Adam will suddenly leave him alone. Swing his kicks at another boy who will turn the other cheek.”

“Aleks must learn to exhaust all the possibilities before pummeling back. I know that’s what you want, for him to return every blow, but he must learn.”

“And why? Because it’s the honorable thing? Because it’s what you wish him to do, to learn? Adam Svoboda’s father went to Poland so he could go on fighting Germans. That’s the lesson Adam Svoboda learned.”

“And now he’s probably dead and his son draws the blood from smaller boys because his father is not here to teach Adam the difference.”

“The difference between what?”

“The simple difference between what we do and what we ought to do. Perhaps the difference isn’t so simple but it must be learned.”

She turned to the counter again, fingers clenching so the dough escaped them. She gripped at it again and never looked back.

“If you won’t teach him to fight,” she said, “I will. I’ll find someone.”

The muscle stood from her jaw, the tendons taut inside her neck.

“Thank you for making dumplings. We all like them so much.”

She pounded the dough, set pale clumps aside on waxed paper.

“We have dumplings twice a week,” she said. “It’s nothing.”

He closed the lavatory door, rolled his cuffs. The water purled in the stoppered sink and a vapor fumed over it. He undid two shirt buttons, folded in his collar. Be glad for hot water. The brush grew the lather in the cup and he spread it along his jaw, under his chin, toward the cheekbones. He put a new blade into the razor, glanced up at the face with its white beard in the mirror. An ersatz Saint Mikulas. The rasp of the blade took the soap and left behind the familiar stare puzzled in the cloudy glass, the eyes always set too close together. The razor dripped, her wedding gift all those years before. No one uses a straight razor anymore, she said. The scrape up the neck, the jawline. Not so many years before. Through the fog of the mirror a small rain coursed, blurred the lather, blurred the face. I could grow a beard for winter, a winter beard for warmth. Save time mornings. He lengthened his lip and razed the lather there. Save water. Save the gas to heat it. He stirred the suds in the basin, lifted the blade and blinked the fog away before cutting at the little that remained.

Winding west and south instead of east to the nearest tram stop he took in the houses on this long avenue of the quarter, ornamented with towers and oriel windows, pinnacles with weathervanes shaped like pennants that bore the year of their construction. 1906. MCMII 1918. The last throes of a realm that couldn’t hear its own death rattle, when the best fancied they were a suburb of old Vienna. Chandeliers hung behind the leaded panes, the street lined with weeping cherries naked to the weather. Hands in pockets he walked on, his breath scouting before him, the old leather case slung from his shoulder beating at his hip the time of his strides. Between the houses painted yellow or gray, pale green and white plaster, he glimpsed the bare trees on the hills that shaped the valley, snow powdered on the forest floors. To the west, just piercing the haze, the twin spires of the cathedral rose over the city.

At the bottom of the hill he waited to cross, an old man stooped in his heavy clothes beside him, looking right for the traffic.

“Sir? Sir? Now you should look the other way first.”

“Why did they have to change everything?” the man said under his visible breath, under the drooping eyelids. “What was wrong driving on the left I would like to know?”

Trn smiled, nodded. The wattles of the man’s neck shook in his sagging collar as he looked the wrong way again, his foot searching from the curb. He shuffled across the street as if his ankles were shackled.

Not many waited for the tram. A mother cooing into a blanket, a sturdy woman with her shopping netted in each hand, two men with silent eyes in the shadows of their hat brims. Through the trees on its long ridge the ancient hulk of the castle spied out beneath the scarlet flag, the crooked cross unfurled over its keep. A number fourteen drew up and paused and departed. An eleven rattled down the line, squealing to a stop on the rails, and Trn took the steps after the woman and her shopping. The two men behind their brims stood together in the aisle not talking and the mother whispered into the crying blanket until a man rose and she heaved down beside a woman with a round hat angled over chestnut hair fanning across the shoulder of her coat. He could see nothing of her face, but the hair, the brightest object in the tram, was lustrous, washed today, this morning. Dried before the fire, swung limp and wet to be treated to the rough toweling while she wore her slip. The tram lurched to a stop and Trn sighed at the interference of passengers. When they all swayed at the bend he stepped to the other side of the aisle but still she was out of his sight. A man with a toothbrush mustache read a newspaper, another little Hitler with his homage neatly trimmed. The headline declared the French had been repulsed again. Through one stop and another Trn gazed past the news for a glimpse of the chestnut hair. He consulted his watch. When the door folded open he took the steps to the street, a vain glance back for the luster, and then the tram jolted and left him behind. He would have a long extra block to the library, down another street fretted with bloodred banners, but today he had the time.

Under the cold sunshine he waited, cold but still sun revolving them into a new season. He unbuttoned his coat. The first boys came out putting on caps, swinging satchels. One slung his into the back of another boy and ran on, a gaggle joining him down the sidewalk, all of them laughing except the target, his knees jogging further and further behind. Finally he stood and watched, shrugged one shoulder and plodded on. Aleks was among the last. He took Trn’s reaching hand, gave up his satchel to the other.

“How was your day today?”

“It was good.”

“That’s good. Do you have much homework?”

“It’s Friday.”

“That’s right.”

“What will we do tomorrow?”

“I thought we’d go hiking. Would you like that?”

The boy nodded.

“Look at that sun.” Trn settled back his hat. “Won’t it be fine shining through the needles tomorrow?”

“If it doesn’t rain.”

“What’s wrong?” Trn asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it Adam?”

They were stopped at a corner for a staff car with the WH license plate of the Wehrmacht to thrush over the pavement. The boy watched the gutter.

“Yes.”

“Did he hit you? I thought that ended some time ago.”

“No. It’s not about hitting.”

“What then?”

Aleks shrugged. They crossed and climbed on. The shadow of one great cloud rolled over a far wooded hill and Trn squinted to see the sun blinded behind it.

“Tell me what happened. I thought this was all resolved.”

“Adam is a kind of hero.”

“How is he a hero? Because he bullies the other boys?”

“No. Because of his father.”

Trn said, “I see.”

“His father was in the army. Then he went to Poland to be in another army. Then he died.”

“So now Adam is a hero for having such a father?”

Aleks said, “Were you in the army?”

“We all had to be for a time.”

“But you weren’t in a war.”

“My father was. The last war. I know you know that already.”

“And he was hurt.”

“That’s so.”

“He had to have a plate of metal in his head for the rest of his life but you couldn’t see it. But you could see the surgeon’s scar when he lost his hair.”

“You have a good memory.”

They made the top of the hill, kept the gymnazium to their left on the crescent road round it.

“That’s where you went to school.”

“Secondary school. That’s right.”

An iron-gray van drew up to the iron gate, gray smoke choking from the tailpipe until two guards swung the gate.

“It’s kind of you to walk me to school every day. And home.”

“Do you like it?”

He shrugged.

“I like it,” Trn said. “It’s the best part of my day.”

“But you don’t have to anymore. I know the way now.”

“I know you do.”

“And the German boys, they don’t push us into the street now. Not really. They don’t shove us down. We can walk on the sidewalk.”

“If you would like to take yourself to school we could arrange that. Or I could go only part of the way. What would you like best?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or we could go on as we do now.”

Trn squeezed and a warm hand squeezed back.

“Alena, you know I don’t have the English for that.”

“But you do,” she said. “You had that time in London. And Oxford. You used to talk about the library there, the round one. I’m sure universities in England and America would be—” Her eyes searched at two corners of the ceiling for a term. “Very excited to have a Czech scholar of history on their faculty.” Her teeth smiled at the idea.

Trn glanced to the clock on the sideboard.

“First of all how can a professor who doesn’t have a position in his own country get one in another? And who would want to study the history of a lost tribe?”

“It’s not your fault the Germans closed the universities. You can explain it all in a letter. Benes taught in America.”

“Benes was president, Alena. Of course he found a job.”

“He believes he’s president still to listen to him on the wireless, even though he ran away.”

He could say, “You want us to run away,ˮ but he only watched her standing there in her white dress. Woven into the hair at her temples a few white threads. The war or life with him?

“So. Let’s say then that I could get a position, though I couldn’t. How are we to travel, even as far as England?”

She waved a hand. “I’ve thought of that. We cross into Slovakia. They haven’t been independent long, their borders won’t be fast. And besides, Slovaks are still our brothers. We can talk to the guard. Maybe bribe him. Then on to Yugoslavia. From there we take a train.”

“A train to where, Alena? Yugoslavia and Slovakia don’t have a common frontier. They don’t meet. And what about papers? The Gestapo won’t knock on our door with exit permits.”

She concentrated on a fingernail, bit. She inspected the floor.

“Well first to another country, then Yugoslavia. Hungary, Bulgaria?”

“Hungary.”

“I don’t carry a map in my head like some bus driver. Hungary then, then Yugoslavia and a train through Italy to France. Won’t that work? From there a boat to England. Or America. It’s as simple as that.”

He said, “You know the Slovaks are evicting Czechs,” but her hands were already dusting him from their palms. She twirled toward the window so her skirts flared.

“Look, Viktor, a beautiful spring. It’s only beginning and already the sun’s brilliant.”

The same flare, the smile beaming as she whirled to face him, leaned back into the sill. Her teeth were graying.

Yesterday was cold rain. He didn’t say that either, didn’t say that cold rain would settle over them again before they had spring in earnest.

“What will we do for money, Alena?”

“We have what we saved for a cottage and can borrow the rest. I’ll earn some.” Her fingertips played against one another. “Sewing, and cakes.” She bit at the nail again. “Everyone on the street loves my pastries.”

“The sugar you’ll buy on the black market,” he said. “And the flour.”

“I’ll set some aside from our ration every week.”

Trn spanned his brow with a hand.

“How much sugar will you need to bake a bridge for us all to England?”

“Maybe the Overseas Service,” she said.

“I’m sure the BBC have all the Czechs they need.”

“You won’t even write to England, will you? Not even to save your own son.”

“I no longer know anyone there. And letters don’t go to England from here anymore.” Just behind the clenched eyes he felt the skull. The temple bones grown close under the skin. He dropped his hand to look at her across the room. “And what about your father? Even if we had the money, if I had the slightest promise of a job, is he well enough to travel?”

“I’ve thought of that too,” she said. Her gaze examined the floor. “Father will have to stay here. We’ll get someone to look after him, Mrs. Asterova will look after him, and then after we’re settled we’ll send for him. Send someone to bring him.”

“Who, Alena? Mrs. Asterova is older than your father.”

“Dita will help her.”

“Dita has all that she can bear with Mrs. Asterova.”

She glared so long and blue that he faced the radio, huddled his hands in his lap. He heard a long sigh.

“Why do you always have to paint the devil on the wall?” she said. “I see leaving this country as our only hope.”

“I don’t see that as a hope, Alena. It’s a dream.”

The squares of parquetry cracked under her heels. The dress flounced toward him.

“Another man would do something.”

The dress passed on. Across the hall the door to the bedroom shut. The key rattled and shot the bolt. Since he was not another man.

Her prettiest dress. His favorite. Bleached for the occasion.