Читать книгу The Wooden King - Thomas Maxwell McConnell - Страница 14

They left Horst-Wessel-Allee for Hermann-Göring-Strasse and took the slope rising slowly toward the square, the street so busy they could not walk abreast, Aleks in the middle with a hand for Alena, a hand for Trn, leading them through the jostle, the songs. The way widened into Wehrmacht-Platz, the second Christmas of the war, their second German Christmas. In their staved pools round the old public well the black carp drifted through cold water. The buyers peered over, considered, pointed, the men in long rubber gloves reached to haul out the Christmas feast. “O Tannenbaum” from a chorus in one corner of the square, “Stille Nacht” from the competing steps of St. Jakub. All the towered clocks said afternoon but the light failed in the sky, the square so crowded, as if each cobblestone must be occupied.

From wooden stalls like old barns, gaps between the rough and warped boards, the merchants hawked their grog and sweaters and wooden tops, fur caps and mufflers. A trio of policemen in black rounded helmets extended their fingers over a fire in a barrel. Smoke or steam or the fogs of breath everywhere rising. Aleks reached into a basket of stuffed animals guarded by a stout woman in an apron that fell to her muddy boots. She gummed a smile. Two of his fingers strayed over the rough fur, the leather patch of a nose.

“Look. Here they come already,” Trn said bending to be heard. “Are you prepared?”

A girl and a boy in their teens, the first in pure white, came to look down at Aleks and the angel said, “Have you been a good boy or a naughty one?”

“Yes,” Aleks said, “very good.”

The devil brandished a black cloth sack. “If he’s been naughty,” he growled, “he’ll be on his way to Hell in my bag.” His voice took a sudden hurdle at “Hell” and overturned like a cart cracking at the joints. The angel laughed and covered her smile after. He had black powder on his face, a hat with horns of black paper. Aleks wouldn’t look at him.

The devil lowered his chin and coughed in his throat and tried once more. “Can you sing us a song, little boy?”

“Yes, I can sing a song.”

Aleks began, his voice thin and falling like his face till at the end only with his eyes did he glance at the angel, who smiled and kept smiling because now Aleks’s face was hidden behind his brim and no one could be sure if he’d finished or not.

Trn looked under the cap. “Are you done?”

The cap nodded.

“Very good,” said the angel. She handed her staff to the devil and put a hand into her basket.

Alena nudged the boy’s shoulder. “It’s over. You can look up now.”

The angel held out her fist and Aleks put his palm beneath it. She placed a candy there in a bright red wrapping and before Aleks could say thank you they were gone on to another family.

“God I wish he weren’t so timid,” Alena muttered.

“That was better than last year wasn’t it, Daddy?”

“That was so good, Aleks, there’s no comparison. Your practice worked very well.” He whispered, “He’s still a little boy. He’s gentle. That’s his nature.”

“May I have it now?”

“Ask your mother if it will undo your dinner.”

“I suppose not.” She fixed a smile on the boy, looked up at Trn. “No, he’s timid. He’s entirely too timid.”

“He’ll grow.”

“When?”

“He’s growing all the time.”

Aleks drifted toward other stalls, trains and blue birds and a tin auto on cut tin wheels flanked by wooden tanks painted with the balken cross.

Trn said, “At least he’s not looking at the dolls,” but Alena could not smile.

“Has Baby Jesus already decided what I’m getting?” Aleks asked.

A man fisting a stein reeled into the corner of the stall and shook the toys on the shelves and caromed toward Trn. The beer sloshed on the stones and the man grumbled on.

“That was a near miss,” Aleks said.

Trn raised his eyebrows.

“So has he? Has Baby Jesus decided?”

“Yes,” Alena said, “he decided long ago.”

“That’s a pretty auto, don’t you think? The blue one.” He reached with two fingers and rolled it a short way along the plank. “But I can’t have it, can I?”

The stall man eyed them through the steam of his cup, drank, lipped his mustache.

“It’s very nice,” Trn said. “Best not touch it though.”

“How many crowns is it?” Aleks said looking at Trn. “I don’t want Baby Jesus to have to spend all the money from Saint Mikulas’s church box. Or is it only for German boys?”

“We need to find something for Grandfather,” Alena said. “Let’s look over there.”

“Watch it,” Trn said. “Some dog has left an early Christmas gift.”

“So you’re going to get it for him.”

“Soon enough there won’t be any more toys made of tin. You can count on that.”

She sighed. “You’re going to spoil him.”

“Is that possible? In these times?”

“He’ll have two shoes full of candy tonight and on Christmas Eve two books and a sweater and a drawing book with pencils. No other boy on the street will have as much.”

“Some will. Some will have more. The Steinhardt twins will have much more.”

“You know I mean Czech boys. The Steinhardts have family in Germany to send them things. The Steinhardts own the building.”

Trn surveyed the crowd. “How many more Christmases will there be?”

“Don’t talk that way.”

She looked down at the cobbles, away to the farthest corner of the square where the chorus in white collars addressed themselves to “Adeste Fideles.”

“You know as well as I do,” he said. “How many more even like this will we have?”

Aleks was watching their whispers. A woman too was looking from the stall of carved pipes they stood before.

“Do you think Grandfather wants a new pipe?” Aleks asked.

“I don’t know,” Alena said. “No. He doesn’t.”

“What about that one? That’s a pretty one.” Aleks fisted his pocket, revealed in his palm a red candy wrapper and a small coin. “I have ten hellers. Will ten hellers help buy Grandfather a pipe? I don’t know either if he wants one. I know ten hellers, it’s not much. It’s not enough.”

“Perhaps we should try to find some tobacco to go in the pipes he has,” Trn said.

“We need the coupons for that,” Aleks said. “Did you bring the ration book?”

The boy pinched up the coin from his palm and held it toward them but Alena was looking at Trn. Her eyes darted over his shoulder.

“I’ll take him by the plague column then. While you go get the toy.”

Trn smiled. “He’s scared of the plague column, some of the figures in it, you know.”

“It’s stone. It’s just stone.” She sighed heavily. “Then to a stall near the plague column. Come to find us there. Maybe they won’t be selling monsters.” She shook her head. “God.”