Читать книгу The Wooden King - Thomas Maxwell McConnell - Страница 11

When Aleks was finished with his breakfast they asked but Alena frowned and shook her head and Miroslav said he didn’t feel quite up to it today even though the sky through the window looked fair. The old man discomposed the boy’s bangs and told him to enjoy his holiday and Aleks smoothed them right again, wincing. They heard the Steinhardt boys stomp down the stairs, waited for quiet, and then went out and followed the street and the path that left the street and went in under the pines. The ground dropped steeply and they held to roots and striplings to slide down the clay and then the slope gave way to flat ground again on the valley floor, the sound of water not far off. Ravens overhead croaked through the cool of the morning.

“Look, Daddy. Just like a tomahawk.”

Aleks flung a stick wapping through the air and smiled and Trn smiled down.

They parted hands round a solitary oak and joined on the other side. A bleak sun gleamed off needles, broke among the branches to dapple the leafmeal, the soft straw. A dove cooed and they stopped to listen till its thin throat went quiet. Others moaned unseen in distant trees. A black beetle stumbled over a dead branch and they knelt to watch the legs strive with the air. As Trn reached it righted and disappeared without a sound they could hear beneath a crumbling log. They came to the freshet trundling over rocks in the steep groin between two pine hills and Aleks leaped out to a rounded stone.

“The snows are melting in the highlands,” Trn said. The boy vaulted to the far bank, dropped to his knees and fashioned a sloop from an oak leaf, a smaller leaf for sail. He set it into the current and watched it ride, spoke across the water.

“Once more?”

Aleks made a horn of his hands. “Will my boat?”

Trn crossed with two long strides, crouched beside the boy.

“Will it sail to the lake and go over the dam?”

“We’re south of the dam, downstream. So I’m afraid your little boat is destined to float past wide fields and under the bridges of beautiful cities and into the Danube and then the Black Sea.”

“Is the sea really black?”

“I think it is.”

“Will I see the sea one day?”

“I’m sure you’ll cross many seas.”

“Someday we’re going to build a boat and sail it on the lake, aren’t we? Only a little boat. Will it be as long as this?” He stretched his arms. “I want it to be blue. With red sails and white lines. Can it be blue?”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Trn said.

They spoke of squirrels that barked lies about the humans crossing their forest down below and the different shapes of leaves they trod and the four black birds that scurried into the air after Aleks charged their bush. The birds had been eating red berries and Trn plucked a few that rolled together in his palm. They marveled how birds had stomachs that could swallow them but boys must never because they were poison. They looked for hedgehogs balled in the underbrush but none showed themselves and Aleks talked of the two new boys from somewhere in Slovakia whom he was helping with the routines of school. Next week was his mark on the calendar to feed the mouse in his cage and he wouldn’t forget but Franto would sing every morning, “Aleks, mouse, Aleks, mouse.” He picked a stick and whipped it to break against a trunk.

“How do you know Franto will do this?”

“He does it every time.”

“If he does it to everyone try not to worry over it.”

Aleks flung the remnant of stick. Trn looked at the sky.

“We should start home.”

“I don’t like the climb back.”

“I know. It’s not easy but it’s good for us. To work to get back home.”

The last stretches on the street in the unshaded noon were thirsty. He held the hose in the garden for Aleks while the boy slurped and then he drank. They trooped upstairs. Seeing Alena and Miroslav in the sitting room Trn said, “What’s wrong?”

Miroslav pointed to the radio.

“Norway, and Denmark.”

The newspapers next morning told stories of the Danes’ feeble resistance. Black arrows on a gray map speared the Norse coast above the Arctic Circle.

“They couldn’t possibly mean Narvik, could they?” Trn got down the atlas and Miroslav looked over the page with him. “Surely they mean Larvik.”

“They mean both,” Miroslav said.

A mild May day a month later and the same papers said the Wehrmacht had broken the frontier of the low countries. The fanfare from the radio one afternoon heralded an announcement of victory from the front: the armies of Italy had joined with those of the Reich and crossed into France. A crackling through the ether brought them the stamp of German boots parading past the Arc de Triomphe. Miroslav held his head. “Who would have thought those bastards could demolish in four weeks what they couldn’t touch before in four years?” From the Eiffel Tower a red flag lashed the wind. Hitler was driven through the empty city to see it.

They sat on the couch listening, he and Miroslav. Alena paced with folded arms. Trn looked at the clock. The city’s church bells rang.

“They’ll burn London now,” Miroslav said. “Like they did Rotterdam. Like Warsaw.”

“Is there not one man in Paris with a rifle and a rooftop?” Alena said. “I would like to know that.” The toes of her shoes pointed at him. “And you. When they came here all you could do was tell me to fill the tub with water while you ran to the shop for bread.”

The joints of the parquet resumed their cracking.

“A historian, a student of history, that’s what you call yourself, and that’s all you could think to do.”

“What would you have him do?” Miroslav said. “Even the president said don’t resist.”

Trn looked at his watch. “I must leave to get Aleks.”

“Hacha is an ass,” she said. “And look where it’s got us, such strategy. At least that regiment in Silesia resisted.”

“And now they’re all dead,” Miroslav said. “Is that what you want, the whole country burning? Every city a smoking ruin? The hospitals and schools hulks of rubble and the people inside too?”

Alena’s face crimped. “Miroslav,” Trn said, laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder. She wiped at both eyes.

“No,” Miroslav said. “Listen. Have you not heard what this Luftwaffe does to bodies of flesh and bone? Do you need to thrust your hand into a charcoaled corpse? Had their bombers flown here you would have been the first one weeping like a Magdalene.”

“Why do you never do anything?” Her voice trembled toward Trn. “You sit there and you sit there and you never do anything.”

The chair she flung herself into screeched upon the floor and they each stared at a different pattern in the rug and there were no more trains west.

When Trn opened the door to Miroslav’s room, Aleks twisted in the chair, something in his hands on the desk.

“Are you ready for our walk?”

“But it’s raining.”

“It’s clearing now. What’s that?”

The boy frowned at the wooden box clasped in his palm.

“Only my treasures.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Grandfather gave it to me. He found it in his wardrobe.”

“What do you have inside?”

The boy raised his vast eyes and held out the box to Trn.

“Is it all right?”

Aleks shrugged, nodded. “It doesn’t hold much. It’s small.”

When Trn slid back the lid a marble swirled blue beside a round cedar cone, a pigeon feather with a broken shaft. A ten heller coin. Two crude lumpish things that Trn fingered out to shake like dice in his hand.

“Where did you find these, Aleks?”

“On the street.”

“Not our street?”

“Nearby. In the gutter.”

“When did you find them?”

“I don’t know. Sometime.”

“Why do you keep them?”

“They’re interesting. I found them and they’re interesting.”

Trn stared at the yellowed enamel, the rotted pith.

“I’ll give you a crown for each of them.”

“Two crowns?”

“Yes, two crowns.”

“Two crowns each?”

“I didn’t realize I was dealing with a banker.”

“I’m not a banker.”

“Very well. Four crowns altogether.”

Aleks raised his hand.

“Is that to shake across our bargain or to take the money?”

Aleks grinned. “Both.”

Trn took the coins from his pocket, replaced them with the molars.

“Get your shoes and coat and I’ll meet you at the gate.”

Since their weight might rest in the neck of the toilet and even in the bin they might be rediscovered he went into the back garden and pressed a crescent grave deep into the soft earth with his heel, let the teeth drop there and stamped them back out of sight.

The dial on the radio ran like a scale climbing all the frequencies their range once took in. Zürich, Preßburg, Rome. Athens and Warsaw. Trn watched the boy run his forefinger along the names.

“I smell cabbage. Are you hungry?”

Aleks wrinkled his nose away and said, “I don’t really like cabbage.”

“I know.”

“We always have the aftermath of cabbage.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s what Grandfather calls the smell.”

“The smell of cooked cabbage?”

“No. The smell after. After we eat it.”

Trn laughed and the boy did too.

“But Grandfather says he can always light his pipe to dispense with the aftermath of cabbage.”

Back and forth, still the finger of a child, pale and tapering. Bucharest, Vilnius. Alexandria. Paris, Kiev, Stockholm.

“Do you want to get the atlas? We can find them all there.”

Amsterdam, Lisbon, Algiers. It always stopped at Alexandria. The boy liked this best because it looked like his name.

“Now we listen only to Vienna.”

“That’s right. And Prague.”

“And some others. But only when you and Grandfather put in the Churchillka.”

“Viktor?” Alena called.

“Remember. We shouldn’t talk about the Churchillka.”

“We used to listen to so many. In the evenings. Even if we didn’t understand the words. Once we listened to someone in Albania.”

Trn smoothed a hand over the boy’s hair. “That’s right.”

“Viktor. I need you in the kitchen.”

“But now we listen only to Vienna. Mostly.”

“I’m coming,” Trn called.

“Because the penalty for listening to the foreign broadcasts is death.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Viktor!”

The boy lifted his eyes so they roamed over the far angles of the room. He shrugged.

“It says so there around the knob,” and he pointed at the paper notice warning in Czech and German what Trn had thought the boy’s mind too young to read.

Before he could hang his coat Alena called from the kitchen, “Did you get the sugar?”

“Yes. They had sugar.”

He took the box from his case and stood it on the table, sat.

“There is a God,” said Miroslav, “and just in time too.”

“Father.”

Frowning, she clinked a cup and saucer on the table before the old man, the little tongs already waiting in his hand for the bowl to be filled with cubes.

“Do you want coffee?”

“Yes. Please.”

“What’s wrong?” Miroslav said. “What’s happened?”

“I just saw a dead man.”

“A dead man? Where?”

“There was a crowd around him, staring.” Trn watched the steam laze from Miroslav’s cup. “On Udolni. On the way back to the tram.”

“But that’s just the other side of the hill,” Alena said.

Trn traced a stain on the table.

“He was stretched across the sidewalk. His head was almost in the gutter.”

“How do you know he was dead?” Alena said.

“He was dead. There were two policemen with their backs to him, keeping people away. Around his head the blood had pooled, like a dark glue.”

“So it only just happened,” Miroslav said.

Trn shrugged.

“Probably one of those gangs,” Alena said, “those little fascists running around.”

“They put that rabble down last year,” Miroslav said. “You didn’t know him, did you?”

“I didn’t recognize him.”

“Maybe the SS. He might have been with the resistance.”

“Or the Gestapo,” Alena said. “He might have been a Jew.”

“Or he might have been a collaborator,” Miroslav said, “and the resistance left him as a warning. Broad daylight, you know. Gutsy people, those.” He nodded to himself, sipped and set his cup down. “God this is awful coffee.”

“He looked so ordinary,” Trn said. “Dark pants, a black sweater. He lay there on his back in the sun. You might have thought him drunk.”

“Except for the price of beer,” Miroslav said.

“His feet, they splayed out flat, as if his ankles were broken. The wind blew his hair into the blood and it stuck there. He still had on his shoes.”

“That’s what the police were after. As soon as the crowd departs they cleverly grab the shoes. One each.”

“May I have that coffee, Alena?”

She brought it, sat herself.

“He looked so like anyone,” Trn said.

“Probably a collaborator,” Miroslav said. “They’re everywhere now, top to bottom. Did you hear that Göring was in Prague the other evening? Called on Hacha and invited him to dinner. When the waiter handed Hacha the menu our president opened his pen and said, ‘Now, where do I sign?’”

Miroslav laughed and clapped the table so the spoon jumped in the saucer.