Читать книгу The Wooden King - Thomas Maxwell McConnell - Страница 16

“What besides the contact lens?” Aleks asked.

“The sugar cube,” Trn said. “That was invented by a Czech too.”

Aleks stuffed back a yawn with his little wrist.

“Sugar came in loaves that had to be sliced with a knife and once this man’s wife cut herself badly so he devised a method for portioning the block by machine into cubes. Clever, isn’t it?”

“He wouldn’t have to worry now.”

“Why?”

“There’s no sugar and so she wouldn’t have cut herself.”

“There’s still sugar.”

“Not very much. Not enough to need cutting.”

Trn watched the face, the sleepy blink of both eyes. Eyes dark like mine.

“In the morning,” he whispered, “you will have sugar for your tea.”

“Mother says soon there won’t be any tea. Or coffee, or anything else. She says it is all too expensive and becoming more so.”

He knuckled at an eye.

“She is worried but we will have enough.”

“You don’t have a job. Grandfather doesn’t have his pension. We all live together now. There won’t be enough sugar for Saint Mikulas to leave candy in my shoes next Christmastime.”

“But I am paid as if I did have my work. And on his day I’m sure Saint Mikulas will find some sugar for candy.”

Gentle with sleep the boy’s eyes gazed at the ceiling.

“Do you understand? It is important that you understand.”

“Why is it important?”

“So that you won’t worry. Agreed?”

Aleks nodded, eyes closing.

“Good. Sleep well. I love you.”

The boy turned to the wall.

“Pardon? I didn’t hear.”

“I said I don’t believe there is a Saint Mikulas.” The blanket tugged up twice over the shoulder.

“You will when December comes again. Listen. Tomorrow night I’ll tell you of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. From their observatory near Prague they were the greatest astronomers of their day. There are craters on the moon named in their honor. Their patron was Rudolf the Second, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia.”

The blanket said nothing.

“And the cathedral spires here, above the old town, Saints Peter and Pavel, did you know they are the tallest twin spires in Europe? And when Mozart was your age he came here from Vienna and lived and wrote for a time. I can show you the building where he lodged.”

The silence didn’t move even when he laid a hand there. Let me not seem to have lived in vain. Brahe’s last words, recorded by the hand of Kepler himself. Last words uttered at the end of eleven days spent thrashing in a deathbed. The chapters of life that are not for telling. That Holy Roman Emperor was an empty title. That Rudolf ended in disgrace. Let me not seem to have lived in vain.

“You’ve had a long day,” Trn whispered. “I know you’re tired.” But before he could kiss the cheek he leaned for the covers rose and all the rest was hidden.

As they climbed the steps from the street Alena said, “I don’t see then why I should have come at all.”

“You’ll feel better for having done a good deed.”

Trn pressed the button on the panel.

“I hardly know her. What if she’s not even here?”

“Where could she go?”

He stepped back from the door to look up.

“They’re not my friends.”

“You’ve known them for years.”

“I’ve known the baker for years but he’s not my friend. You could have brought the cake. All she will do is put it away.”

A face appeared over the wall of the second balcony but said nothing.

“Anamaria? Good day, Anamaria. It’s Viktor, and Alena.”

“Oh. Good day, Viktor.”

“Do you have a few moments? We came by to see you. Alena’s brought you something.”

“Let me get the key. Yes.”

She reappeared and against the blank sky a dark object dropped from her hand and Trn let it fall into both of his.

“It’s the largest,” Anamaria said.

“We’ll be up in just a moment.”

“She didn’t even say hello.”

“She will when she sees you, I’m sure.”

At the landing she met them, arms folded so her hands disappeared at the sharp angles of her elbows. She wore black so only the pall of her face appeared in the stairwell.

“Viktor, what a surprise. And Alena, thank you.”

“It’s just a little cake,” Alena said, “for an evening, some evening.”

Anamaria set a hand on Trn’s shoulder, took the ring of keys, leaned to press her cheek to Alena’s.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come down. I don’t feel capable of all those stairs.” She led them up the flight. “We so rarely have company that I’ve become unused to them.”

“Of course,” Trn said. “We’re glad we found you in.”

Her hall was dark and she took them down its narrow passage, opened a door.

“I’ll put this away. Please go in.”

She sighed with both shoulders. “Or shall we have it now? You see. So little company I hardly know how to behave.” She looked from one to the other of them and Alena looked at Trn.

“We’ve just had lunch,” he said. “Please save it for an occasion.”

“I don’t know who will eat it then. Here we don’t have occasions anymore.” She heaved both shoulders as heavily again. “Put your coats anywhere. I’ll be back in a moment.”

“I’m keeping mine on,” Alena said. “You’re not?”

“No. I’m not.”

“You can see your breath in here.” She put her hands in her pockets. “I’m glad I put it on a chipped plate. I’m sure I’ll never see it again.”

Trn took from his pocket a folded note of a hundred crowns, slid his hand under the cushion as he sat, his coat over the arm of the chair.

Anamaria came in, said, “Sit, Viktor. Sit. Alena, here’s your plate. Thank you so much for the cake. It’s so nice of you to come.”

She took a place at the end of the couch and smoothed her black dress over her knees, pulled tighter the black sweater round her shoulders.

“It’s been such a long time. How long has it been?”

She looked from Alena to Trn and back, the skin below her eyes twin bruises.

“How is your father, Alena? How is Aleks?”

“Both as troublesome as ever. As men are.”

Trn said, “How is Jakub? He’s not in?”

Her right hand jumped in her lap as if the wrist were jerked on a string.

“He’s studying. Studying German. That’s what he does now.”

She looked at the floor.

“It’s the only way he can talk to Pavel, you see. If you want to write to anyone at Buchenwald you must write in German.”

“Has Pavel written recently?”

“He’s getting quite good at it now. He studies all the time. I worry he’s neglecting school but what can we do? You know he wants to be an engineer. Wanted to be. Maybe he does still. We don’t talk of such things now. We don’t speak much, of the future. He said to me just the other day, he said, ‘Mama, should I learn the future in German? What do you think?’ And ‘Jakub,’ I said, ‘Jakub, why are you asking me? What do I know of these things?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know if I ought to spend the time to learn the constructions to make the future. I can’t decide if it would be good for Papa to think about the future or not.’”

She closed her eyes and the bruises were all she had to see with. When she opened them toward the window they shone like little disks of glass. At her side the hand leaped, the thumb needling the flesh of her thigh through her dress before it retracted into the palm and went quiet among the other fingers.

“What do you think, Viktor?” She turned the disks on him. “Pavel always thought so highly of your opinion. ‘We must ask Viktor about that when he visits.’ That’s what he would say. So what do you think, Viktor. Should he learn the future?”

Alena took a hand from her pocket, examined her nails while the pendulum ticked in the clock on the mantel.

“Yes, Anamaria, definitely. Jakub can always tell Pavel his plans for the next day. Learning all he can learn will be good for Jakub, good for his mind. I never heard anyone regret learning.”

“I do,” Anamaria said. “I have regretted much that I had to learn.” She leaned toward him and the disks were eclipsed under the shadow of her brow. “But that’s not what I mean. I mean should Pavel learn the future?”

“I should think it would give him hope, Anamaria. That would be quite a gift.”

Her eyes blinked and went back to the window and she said, “I wonder if all gifts are only cruelty now.”

Alena examined the other set of nails and put her hands in her pockets again.

“We send him parcels when we’re allowed. You must get permission, a release. Of course we haven’t much to send. The last time we had a round of pork with a nice bit of fat to it, I thought he would need that, I’m sure he’s getting thin. The butcher passes us some cuts when he can. But please don’t tell anyone. Please. In the gymnazium when I saw him the last time before the transfer he was already going thin on that gruel.”

The thumb spiked into her thigh again more deeply. “I didn’t know it was to be the last time.” Her face fell so low that her eyes disappeared. “What date is today?”

Alena was already looking at him.

“The twenty-second,” Trn said.

“The twenty-second.”

“Yes, Anamaria.”

“He never got the pork. I received the receipt for the parcel but weeks and weeks later when we had a card from him he said thank you for everything else so he never got the pork. I guess a guard sluiced it, they did that in the gymnazium too after I wasn’t permitted to give him the box directly.” She spoke as one murmuring in her sleep. “Today is our wedding anniversary. You stood by his side, didn’t you, Viktor, all those years ago?”

Trn nodded but she still looked down and then the bruises started open on him.

“Viktor, I often wonder. I wonder why they took him. Do you know, Viktor, do you know why they should take Pavel?”

“They took him because he was brave, Anamaria. Because he would write the truth.”

“They took a lot of them,” Alena said.

“I used to get so angry at him. He’d leave in the middle of the night to talk to someone about things he couldn’t tell me. He couldn’t tell me but he could write them in the paper.”

Trn leaned at the edge of his chair and on the couch Anamaria collected herself into a corner.

“That was to protect you, Anamaria. You and Jakub.”

“Or stay late because he had some midnight deadline. How I hated that newspaper in our box every morning. After he would read it I would take it and burn it up in the stove even in summer. But now I like to think he’s started a paper in the camp. The Prisoners Daily or something similar, I don’t know. It would give him work to do with his hands, his mind, it would give him something to endure with. His hands were always alive here. But what could he write that they don’t all already know. And they would never let that happen. I tell myself that too. That it would never happen.

“Now I like to think that if they let him come home I’ll never burn his paper again.”

Her eyes were staring at the thumbnail stabbed into her thigh. She jointed her hands in her lap, looked up into the window, spoke to the dim light.

“But he was taking care. I begged him to be careful and I convinced him to be more correct in what he wrote and what he was. The censors hardly struck anything anymore, not like in the beginning, even the German censor left him alone. And then all of a sudden on that day they should come here, just as the bombs are falling on Poland, the sun barely up and Pavel still in his pajamas. He hasn’t even got the paper yet, Viktor. And they stand outside the bedroom door while he puts on his pants and while he’s buttoning his shirt and buckling his belt. And I looked at his buttons and I said to myself, ‘See, he doesn’t need any help, his fingers aren’t even trembling.’”

“I know, Anamaria. I know that morning was terrible.”

Her hands came undone and she reached to move a small china plate on the end table. The nail of her long finger scratched at the paint on the plate and then her hands came together again.

“I’m holding his coat for him and he says, ‘If you need anything go to Viktor.’ Because he’s known you all these years, in school and university and even before. And he doesn’t even have his tie on and they’re one on each side of him, their hands on his arms, fat hands, and they say, ‘You won’t need a tie,’ and Jakub comes up behind me at the door, rubbing his eyes, and he says, ‘Mama, where is Papa going?’ and I say I don’t know and I hurry to the balcony so down the street I can watch the van, just a gray van with gray doors and they open them and they hold him while he steps up and bends his head and I can see another man in there on the bench, I can see the hat on his head as he leans forward, his elbow on his knee and suddenly it comes to me. ‘What if that’s Viktor in there too?’ And I think that will be good for Pavel, but you weren’t, Viktor, they never picked you up even when they closed the universities. And so in all these months, in these years, I’ve begun to wonder. They’ve arrested a lot of professors but they’ve never rounded up Viktor. Why is that? They took Pavel with the neighbors watching, with Mrs. Krupkova and her puny dog staring at him herded down the street between two strangers and her dog squatting to shit in the gutter and then I hear he’s in the castle where the stone drips and then in the gymnazium and after the gymnazium they took him to Buchenwald, one day I get a note with the Gestapo eagle at the top telling me Pavel’s been transported to Buchenwald, it doesn’t say why, it doesn’t say when. Nothing ever says why. And so I wonder, Viktor, I wonder why they took Pavel and never took you?”

The thumb worked her flesh but she was watching him. The bruises did not blink. He looked down at the carpet.

“Did you inform on him, Viktor? Did you tell them to lock him away?”

“Anamaria, you know that I didn’t.”

“I don’t know anything, Viktor. You saw him only the week before. I remember you were here. I know you were the last friend to see him. You went to that pub. He told me.”

“I don’t know why they arrested him, Anamaria, other than the fact that they took a lot of brave people that day. All over the country.”

“I remember, Viktor, I remember that day so well. Jakub’s first day of secondary school and the pants and shirt I had ironed still hanging in the kitchen from the night before. And they hung there all day because I didn’t let Jakub go because I didn’t know what would happen to him without his father. His father taken with a lot of other men but not you, Viktor. Never you.”

“They don’t explain these things, Anamaria, as you know. They just do them.”

“Perhaps your time will come then.”

The room was so dim he could not tell the pattern in the carpet. A burgundy swirl in the dark, a dried blood. He stood and lifted his coat and his hat. Alena took up her plate. Anamaria watched them and finally rose. Alena went into the passage and he followed, turned back.

“I’m sorry you feel this way, Anamaria. I would like to help.”

“The only help I need, Viktor, is my husband out of Buchenwald. Can you do that?”

Trn opened the door and Alena walked out. From the landing he said, “Perhaps there is something I can do for Jakub. Help him with his studies perhaps.”

“He’s too busy studying German.”

“Perhaps I could move his mind back to engineering.”

“I think his mind is unmovable at this point, Viktor.”

Even now the thumb scissored out from her hand, pinning the dress against her.

“Goodbye then, Anamaria.” He looked at her a last time. “I’m sorry you feel this way.”

“I’m sorry about a great many things, Viktor. The outer door will lock behind you.”

They went down the stairs and into the cold again. He checked the knob twice. Alena passed through the gate he held for her and they took their way down the sidewalk.

“So,” Alena said. “That wasn’t so bad as last time.”