Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  I hesitated for one last moment, and then kissed Lilla’s head and kept walking.

  THE PRICE

  I DON’T REALLY know what to say about this story. I don’t remember where I got the idea; I don’t really remember writing it; I don’t remember what my critique group had to say about it. I do, however, remember researching it.

  So, since the story needs some kind of introduction lest you kind readers feel ripped off, let me ramble about research for a while. Can you believe that we used to have to go to the library to look things up? I used to own a World Almanac and Book of Facts (which of course was chronically out of date) so that I could look things up like the population of France, because I couldn’t type “population of France” and hit “I’m feeling lucky” and have it in two seconds.

  At this point, I can’t even imagine functioning without Wikipedia.

  The downside, of course, is the Wikipedia Whirlpool Timesuck Phenomenon where you start following links and two hours later you know far more about the life of Tchaikovsky, the history of ballet in Russia, and the development of the trumpet than you knew that morning, but you’ve spent two hours reading and all you meant to look up was when St. Petersberg became Leningrad. (Then again, that did happen with bound encyclopedias, too.)

  (This story has nothing to do with Russia, but the topics I remember researching would constitute spoilers.)

  ***

  MY NAME IS Antje, and I am a murderer, though I don’t remember who I murdered, or why. I think I must have had a reason, though; I don’t feel like the sort of person who would kill without a good reason.

  The prison is very clean and too warm, with a caged ceiling fan that barely stirs the air of my cell. I have a window, but it’s painted shut and paned with thick glass I can’t break. It’s also barred, just to be certain, so I know I must be very dangerous. Outside the prison, I can see where the guards and the visitors to the prison park their cars, then the dry flat fields beyond. It’s very hot outside, I can see from the way people shade their eyes and walk quickly into the building. I don’t remember how long I’ve been here, or how long my sentence is. The prison is in a city named Amarillo; I don’t remember where that is, but no one here speaks Dutch, so I know this isn’t home.

  I am up before they come to wake me this morning, looking out the window to watch the guards change shifts. I remember a fragment of a dream—an old man had died, and I was so sad I could not even eat, but everyone else in the world seemed to be mourning a man named Bobby. I try to remember more of the dream, but it’s like trying to grasp a cobweb. It’s difficult to remember anything this morning, other than my name and the fact of my crime.

  When the day guards have come and the night guards have gone, the door to my cell swings open. The guard wears red lipstick and a white dress. “Well, Mrs. Steenstra,” she says. Her voice is tight and irritated. “Up at the crack of dawn again.”

  The guard is angry with me, and I want to ask why. I lick my lips and form the words carefully in this tongue I can’t identify. “Do I make trouble for you?” I say.

  “Trouble?” the guard says. “Why would you be any trouble?” She comes into my cell with a tray of food. “Eat your breakfast like a good girl, then.” She leaves.

  The food on the tray is mushy and lukewarm, but I sit down to eat it because I know it’s important to keep up my strength. It’s not until I’ve finished that I realize a cat has slipped into the cell. He must have come in as the guard left, and now he’s sprawled out on my unmade bed. His head snaps up as I look at him and he stares at me with round green eyes, then jumps off the bed to come over and greet me in person. I hold out my left hand and the cat arches under it, rubbing his head against my palm. I offer to let the cat lick out the bowl from my breakfast but he turns up his nose. Just as well. Dishes on the floor would certainly make trouble with the guards.

  I make my bed and sit down on it, and the cat leaps up to snuggle against my side like a warm pillow. I run my hand through his thick fur; he has short gray fur like velvet, and a purr that sets my hand shaking as it rests on him.

  The guard swings the door back open. She puts three blue tablets in my right hand and a paper cup of water in my left. “Take those now, like a good girl,” she says, and I swallow the pills with the water. “Good,” she says. “You can come watch television now.”

  She hasn’t noticed the cat. I follow the guard out of the cell and down the corridor into a dayroom, sitting where she indicates. The other prisoners are old women, with sad, vacant eyes. Looking down at my hands, I know from their wrinkles that I am also old, but I can’t believe I look so sad. No one is dressed in normal clothes. I’m wearing a nightgown and a dressing gown with buttons but no belt, and powder-blue flannel slippers.

  The cat strolls in, looking around the dayroom with something like bewilderment. He spots me quickly but makes a careful tour, sniffing at the old women and peering at the wheelchairs that some of them sit in. It’s clear he’s not impressed. When he’s completed his tour, he leaps into my lap noiselessly, and I cup my arms around him to feel his warmth. None of the other prisoners look at him, and the guards don’t try to remove him. I rest my hand on his soft head again, and he rubs his cheek against my knuckles, closing his eyes.

  The hardest part of prison is the boredom. Not remembering is hard, but I assume it’s just as well. I feel a terrible sense of guilt, and I know I must have done something horribly wrong to have come here, but it could only be worse if I remembered the crime. So, I tell myself, the boredom is the hardest.

  I’m not certain, but I think perhaps I am not a woman who sits still easily. I’m not sure what it is I wish I were doing—gardening, perhaps? The dry, unforgiving landscape outside my window is not one where you would try to garden. Cooking? Even reading, I conclude. Visiting friends. I wonder if I realized I was throwing all that away when I committed my murder?

  Hours pass in front of the flickering gray light of the television. The guards pick the shows for us. We eat lunch in the dayroom, with more pills and paper cups. In the early afternoon, the show we’re watching is interrupted by breaking news. On the television they show a picture of a woman kneeling beside a man lying on the ground, his arms slack by his sides. She’s screaming, holding her arms out as if begging for help, and I realize that the man is dead. The words KENT STATE flash across the bottom of the screen.

  The guard with the red lipstick changes the station. “Hey,” another guard says. “Wait. I want to see this.” Red-lips shrugs and switches it back.

  The station has cut to an image of a jowly man saying, “Bums, they’re all bums,” and then back to pictures of dead people on the ground. “We all thought they were using blanks,” a young woman says, and her voice shakes. “I heard someone yelling, ‘They’re not shooting blanks! They’re not shooting blanks!’ I still can’t believe it. This is America!”

  “Should’ve shot them all,” one of the guards mumbles, flicking a strand of blond hair back into place.

  Anger flashes through me like a light and my hands go cold. Forgetting the cat on my lap, I stand up to stare at the guard who said that. The cat leaps aside to safety.

  “Well,” the guard says. “Look who I got a rise out of.”

  “How can you say that?” I demand, and hear my own voice shaking. “People are dead. Young people!” I don’t know the reason for these murders, but I’m certain the reason was bad. “How can you say that?”

  “Miss Morality,” she says. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying you’re a murderer? Now sit down and be good, or there’ll be more treatments for you.”

  This terrifies me, and my legs grow weak. I sit, and the cat jumps into my lap as if to hold me down, to keep me from getting myself into more trouble. I open my mouth again, but only Dutch comes out. I shout my anger at the guard in my own tongue, call her names. She comes over close, to take me by the shoulders and shake me into silence, and I spit into her face.

  “Right,” she says.
“That’s it. You’re through for the day.” She takes my arm and jerks me to my feet, sending the cat flying again. The cat follows with an anxious meow as she drags me to my cell. “Lie down,” she orders. I obey her, stretching out on top of the covers on my bed as she straps my wrists and ankles down. “Treatment day tomorrow,” she says, and closes the cell door.

  ***

  I STAND IN the doorway of the house in Amsterdam. At my feet, I hear what sounds like the cry of a child, but when I look down, I see a cat. I bend over to stroke it, and it rubs its head against my hand, its huge eyes seeking mine. The cat is only skin and bones—its fur is patchy and thin. “Come in,” I say to the cat, and pour it a saucer of milk.

  I hear another cry, and on my doorstep is another cat. And another, and another. The kitchen is full of cats, my bottle of milk is long since dry, but I can’t bring myself to turn them away.

  ***

  I WAKE BEFORE dawn, but can’t get out of bed because of the straps. I open my eyes and raise my head to look around the cell. The cat is nowhere to be seen, but there is a blond-haired boy in the corner. He is not one of the prison guards; he’s wearing a different uniform. His cold blue eyes meet mine and he smiles. I realize that I’m tied down—helpless.

  The boy moves silently toward me, his eyes fixed on mine. I try to form the words leave me alone but nothing comes out. He reaches for me. At first he doesn’t do anything to hurt me, just brushes a strand of hair out of my face. His hand is cold on my cheek. He lays his hand over my forehead as if feeling for a fever—and I’m filled suddenly with shame and self-hatred. He has the right to do as he likes to me, I think. It would be only fair.

  Carefully, he seals his hand over my mouth, pinching my nose shut. For a moment, I lie unresisting. This is his right. But without meaning to, I begin to fight for air. I try to pull my head away, but he tightens his grip. I try desperately to twist away, struggling even as I know, this is his right.

  Then the door to my cell swings open and the boy disappears like a shadow in sunlight.

  There is no breakfast for me this morning, or even the opportunity to brush my teeth to take the sour night taste out of my mouth. The guards unbuckle the straps and let me get up to relieve myself, then say, “Are you going to be a good girl today?”

  I nod, struck by a formless dread that deepens when they hand me over to two more guards who lead me past the dayroom and toward another part of the prison. I slow my steps and the guards don’t try to hurry me, but even walking slowly we’ll be there eventually. I try to form a question, to ask them why they are doing this, what it is that they want from me, but the words keep coming out in Dutch. The guards glance at each other with a shrug and rolled eyes. I wonder if they realize I am speaking a language foreign to them, or if they assume I’m gabbling in gibberish.

  They sit me down in a metal folding chair in a hallway beside a closed door; one of them stands beside me to be sure I don’t run. “How long?” I whisper. They don’t answer me. From the other side of the door, I hear a buzz, snap, silence. Again. Again. My hands are sweating even though I’m suddenly shaking with cold. I stare down at the floor, powder-blue flannel slippers against the brownish tile pattern that looks like squashed bugs.

  They want to know about the cats. I don’t know where the thought comes from, but I’m suddenly certain that this is what this is all about—I’m here to be tortured for information about the cats. “Nee,” I say. No. I stand up.

  “Antje!” the guard says sharply. “Sit down. Be a good girl, now.”

  There is no way here to kill myself; if I can provoke her into killing me, then I’ll be certain not to talk. I start to run, although it flashes through my mind that the guard has no weapon and isn’t that rather strange? Then I hit the floor hard enough to knock my breath out. Both guards are on top of me, pinning my arms behind my back, then dragging me to my feet and through the door, strapping me down to a table again.

  I have to be brave, I tell myself. I am Antje Steenstra; I trust in God. I can be strong, I can, I can. There is a hot sharp pain in my arm as they put in a needle, and a cold stickiness at my temples, and then another coldness as they strap something metal across and over my head. A new guard pulls my mouth open and slips a leather strap between my teeth. Another needle and suddenly I can’t breathe; I fight in a panicked struggle to breathe, scream, fight, but I can’t move. I try to look around for the boy—why don’t they stop him—but there are only the guards. There’s a silence around me and then a blinding pain seems to split my mind in half. Something is shaking me like a rag doll and I want to scream out but I still can’t breathe, and I can’t breathe, and finally darkness closes over me like a curtain and I fall into it with relief that this is over.

  ***

  I AM A murderer, though I don’t remember who I murdered, or why. I think I must have had a reason, though; I don’t feel like the sort of person who would kill without a good reason. I wish I could remember my name.

  I have a terrible headache, and there’s a guard here saying, “Good morning, Antje,” so I know my name again. She gives me a cup of coffee, and it’s bland and bitter but I drink it because she tells me to.

  “Is it morning?” I try to ask, but the words scramble themselves on my tongue. I wonder what language I’m speaking. It’s not the one the guard spoke to me.

  ***

  I STAND IN the kitchen of the house in Amsterdam. Cats fill my kitchen, winding around my feet, rubbing against my legs. I am pouring milk for them, touching each cat gently.

  With a crack like the shot of a gun, the door bangs open and a boy with blond hair stomps in, sending cats scattering everywhere. The boy is dressed all in black.

  “Cats,” he says in a voice of disbelief. “Antje. I had no idea. Cats.”

  I pick up the largest and sharpest of my kitchen knives. It’s necessary. The cats aren’t supposed to be here—if the blond boy leaves alive, then all the cats will die.

  It’s necessary but even so, I am struck to the bone by the stunned pain on his face, the warm blood on my hands, the tears in his eyes. “Them instead of me?” he whispers as he dies.

  ***

  I WAKE BEFORE dawn and sit up carefully with a feeling that moving too quickly will shatter my bones like china. There is a cat here; I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have expected cats to be allowed in prison. It leaps up onto the bed and stares into my face with anxious green eyes, rubbing its cheek against mine and finally licking my nose gently like a dog.

  The cat steps delicately off the bed and onto the bedside table, poking with its paws at the drawer as if to open it. I slide the drawer open. Inside there is a paper; it says, “Electroshock Therapy, Patient Information.” There is a numbered list of things the patient is supposed to know, like that it’s supposed to be painless, and that the most common symptom is memory loss. “Temporary memory loss,” the paper assures me. I feel a wave of sickness and toss the paper down. The cat meows, and I look again into the drawer. Another piece of paper—this one, a newspaper clipping. An obituary. Otto Steenstra, it says at the top. June 6, 1968. Steenstra. I look at the picture of the old man. My husband, I’m certain—but I don’t remember him. As I hesitate, the paper in my hand, I remember a fragment of grief—pain like hollow emptiness in my heart, a feeling like darkness that would never end. I set the clipping down, my hand shaking, and look again into the drawer.

  There is a velvet case there, like a jewelry box—it had been hidden by the paper. I take out the box, the fabric like cat’s fur under my fingertips, and open it up. Inside, a bronze medal. There are letters on it in a language I can’t read, then my name, ANTJE STEENSTRA. Then the words, “Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he had saved the whole world.”

  The cat stares into my face with liquid green eyes. I close the box and put it away. “But I am a murderer,” I say, and the cat stares at me, its eyes saying, No.

  ***

  IT IS THE fourth birthday of Hans, my sister’s oldest son, and
I’m throwing the party. After everyone’s stuffed themselves with cake, Hans curls up on my lap, as warm and soft as a puppy. His dimpled arms go around my neck as he impulsively plants a kiss on my ear—he’d aimed for my cheek, I think, and missed. “You’re my best aunt, Aunt Antje,” he says. “My favorite.” I scold him gently, telling him that he should love us all equally, but secretly, I’m as delighted as a child with a new best friend.

  ***

  TASTELESS FOOD AND blue pills with a paper cup of water. I sit in the dayroom and all I can think of is how tired I am. I stare at the television but don’t understand any of the programs. Perhaps I would if they were in Dutch.

  Outside the dayroom, something is happening. I hear a cry, “No!” and can see someone struggling. I stand, anxious, and go to the door. A young woman struggles with three guards, screaming words I don’t understand. She clasps the edge of my robe and cries, “Help me, please help me, I haven’t done anything wrong,” and I clasp her wrist to try to pull her away from the guards.

  “Leave her alone,” I say.

  “Get out of the way,” the guard says to me.

  “Leave her alone!” I say again, and with the distraction the girl frees herself just enough to hide behind me.

  The guards begin to circle us, moving in, and there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide the girl. I can’t protect her, I can’t do anything useful, but I know I have to try. I have to stand with her as they close in on us, because I have to try to help, even if I know it will be futile, I have to. At least this way she will know that she is not alone. She clasps my hand for an instant. “Thank you,” she whispers, and then the guards seize us both and take me to my cell to strap me down and leave me alone in the hot, heavy afternoon.