Tales of Mystery and Truth

by Jeffrey K. Hill

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Then listen carefully…”

  * * *

  She hoisted her rucksack on her shoulder. For some reason she glanced around her apartment, feeling vaguely that she was leaving something undone.

  Old newspapers were stacked recklessly in a corner beside a useless box. Several plastic plants always seemed to thrive when she spoke to them. The pot in which she boiled water, often as if preparing a feast, sat empty. A few metal dishes were dripping dry in the rack. Her bed, awash in soft morning light, looked obscenely like a coffin.

  Everything that caught her eye detailed a woman she would never have recognized as herself. She wondered how and when she had become this way. Had her life deteriorated into this pretense of living over time, gradually, so she had never noticed the change? Or had her life been battered into submission overnight by a disappearing parent?

  Perhaps it was her life, here in this tiny cold apartment, that was undone. If that was so, when she returned she would be forced to make several changes. Since reading the book, she no longer had any desire to remain the same. When she looked at the objects around her now, it was with the eyes of one who might be seeing it for the first time, searching for clues to a stranger who had once inhabited it.

  She turned down the hall and stopped abruptly beside the blank wall opposite the door. The vast yawning emptiness drew her attention. The Vermeer reproduction, which the kommissar had confiscated, had been all that remained of her father.

  On that fateful day when her father disappeared, so had the painting. Her mother had cultivated a cold hatred in her heart, leading her to believe her father had preferred to take with him a work of art and leave behind his daughter.

  “Your father would stare at that painting like it was a piece on display in a case,” her mother once told her. “He admired its ‘mathematical clarity and sense of order.’” She scoffed. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn he is behind this ‘Bolfsumwälzung.’”

  Her mother claimed to hate it for all the reasons her father had admired it. But somehow she knew there was much more to the painting. She knew for both parents it must have been much more than an exercise of the mind.

  Over the years the image of the pretty young woman bathed in cool silvery light acquired sinister qualities: seductress, insurrectionist, infanticide, and eventually uxoricide. But after her mother’s death she discovered the painting in the attic, wrapped in a blanket covered with the dust of forgetfulness. On the brittle brown paper covering the back someone had scribbled a strange sentence: For death and life alike I am unfit, and you, my lady, are the cause of it.

  Since its recovery, she had come to cherish the painting. When she took the apartment, she immediately hung the painting opposite from her door where she would see it every day, and be reminded of her father. For her, its sudden and unexpected reappearance symbolized hope of one day seeing him again.

  All those years since its recovery she had been unable to figure out why such a simple portrait had inspired such admiration in her father. Just as confounding was the apparent threat the kommissar had discovered in the painting. Now all that remained was the sadness of the empty wall, the emptiness of her life within these four walls.

  Her stomach gurgled and she realized she could never return. There were already too many blanks in her life. She cursed the crippling Regime and ran out the door.

  Her sudden emergence in the street startled a scrawny brown bird, which flew peeping into the overcast skies. She watched its fluttering form disappear from view. With a twinge of anxiety, she wondered where the bird would alight, where it had been, how it would survive.

  Despite the clouds and lack of sunshine, she recalled images of beauty along the French Riviera she had once seen at a photographic exposition. The feel of soft sand embracing her tanned body, the soothing sound of the ocean in the dark of night, the tempting smells of living richly were all parts of her promised land. If she closed her eyes and gave in to the anticipatory mood and spirit of the day, she could imagine with perfect clarity a pristine forest overlooking a glittering sea on which the sun bobbed brilliantly, never to be seen by mortal man.

  The constant zip and electric clicks of rusting trams filled the air. Everything but the bakery and the bookstore smelled ominous gray. The Regime tried to snuff out life in the city, but somehow her spirit had sprouted from the filth. Now, she thought with a mixture of hardy persistence and pitying hopelessness, she would stand out like an insidious weed.

  She hurried along the street, paying careful attention not to notice anyone, partly of her hope to remain unnoticed, but also of her well-learned fear of catching someone at something illegal, immoral, or incomprehensible. At the station she proceeded to the end of the cracked concrete platform to wait for the tram she normally rode to her evening classes. Aboard she searched out the seat beside a legless man that everyone always left empty. She knew she would not be disturbed there.

  The tram rumbled between neglected buildings and passed high wooden fences, which kept barely hidden and confined things she glimpsed frighteningly through cracks. No one spoke, but the squeals and growls of the tram mimicked conversation of a threatening nature. The walls screamed graffiti jokes and revolutionary slogans with an air of obscenity. In the center of what could become anyone’s nightmare with but a mistaken word or gesture, she felt safe in this one seat beside the legless man, which was ignored almost out of existence.

  Often she would sleep or study her texts. Today, though, she could not concentrate on anything. Words she read on the page meant nothing, and the words she strung together on paper proved even more meaningless.

  She drew her rucksack into her lap and reached inside. With a mixture of dread and awe, she pulled out the photograph of her inexplicable youth. She stared at it and first smiled at the promise of soon recapturing that child, then frowned at the thought her father would never know. Suddenly a hated feeling of childhood returned, that she had become the center of attention, conspicuous in the seat beside the legless man chosen for its anonymity. She shoved the photograph back and let the bag drop to the floor with a bookish thud. She closed her eyes and sat motionless, conjuring the glorious sunset of her unsullied paradise.

  When she opened her eyes, she was gazing into the emptiness where a pair of legs should have been. Slowly, so as not to arouse attention, without moving her head or even breathing, her eyes glided up the seat into the legless man’s lap. His hands were folded. She could see no higher without moving, so she coughed, adjusted herself in the seat as if uncomfortable, and with a quick turn of the head raked her eyes across his torso and face.

  His sad eyes met hers. They both smiled uncomfortably. She turned away.

  She tried again to picture the comfort of her eternal sunset, but the legless man persisted in her thoughts. She wondered about the endless struggles he must face just to live, and suddenly her own life seemed grand. At least she always kept with her that hope of one day escaping. But for him there was no escape. She thought in his condition she simply would not want to live.

  How did he reach the seat? How did he even board the tram? Where did he go every day, and why?

  She wanted so to see through his eyes, to know him and perhaps learn what life really meant. She stared at him intently, until he turned once again toward her. But this time she forced herself not to glance away in shame or embarrassment. She forced herself to look directly into his eyes, as if gazing into the forever eyes of a lover.

  He was nothing like she expected. She had never taken notice of him, gray after gray day, only noticing, like so many others, what was missing.

  He could not run away and escape her scrutiny. This fact gave her a strange feeling of control over the moment, of power over events she had never enjoyed. She held his eyes with her own and made him look at her, made him not turn away, made him see her and recognize her. To her surprise, he smiled at her without a hint of self-consciousness, then returned his attention
to the state newspaper he was reading.

  She tipped her head back, suddenly exhausted. All she could do was marvel at the unexpected discovery of his dignified beauty. The thrill of power she had experienced was gone, banished, not by indifference or abandonment, but by his generous acknowledgment and casual composure.

  * * *

  The inner eye of her soul opened. She sobbed, wiped at her nose, sniffled. Her stuffed kitten was damp with her tears. She shuddered against what felt like a sudden draft of cold air, and tugged the blanket to her sides. She tried to recall the dream, remember why she had cried, and to place the face of the stranger. She could not remember details. She knew only that she had been sad and frightened, and had wanted something more than she had ever wanted anything. But even as she grew warmer and calmer and her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, the vague images and emotions slipped away. She stroked the kitten’s plush body and sighed.

  Another draft of air came through the half-open window. She tossed back the blanket and skipped across the room. Cautiously she separated the blinds and peered into the night. The leaves of the towering trees rustled in the gusting breezes to the faint rhythm of a cricket’s chirp. Across the street in another open window, a bluish gray light glowed brightly, then dimly. For several minutes she watched with gratitude the stillness that shown outside her window. Then somewhere too near she heard the boom of distant artillery signaling the start of another day’s hostilities, and she pulled down the window to shut out the obscene noise.

  She scurried back toward her bed, eager to leap under the blanket and snuggle down with her kitten. But just before her feet left the floor she restrained herself, bumping into the bed and then falling forward. With arms outstretched she held her head and body away from the bed and stared at the cause of her sudden uneasiness.

  Slowly she pulled the stuffed animal to the safety of her arms. Comforted herself by the kitten, she rose and backed away from the bed. She reached behind her with one hand for the lamp, never taking her eyes off the object of her apprehension. Her fingers met the stand and crawled toward the tiny chain. She held still for a moment, listening, watching, preparing to confront this mystery. Then all at once the terrible yearning from the dream returned, her whole body shuddered, and a blindness crept in upon her. She jerked the chain.

  The room remained in darkness. She sighed with growing apprehension, glanced quickly at the uncooperative lamp, and pulled hard on the chain. It came off in her fingers. With a grunt of frustration, she threw it on the floor and backed further toward her bureau. Still without looking away from the bed, she ran her hand along the front of the bureau until it reached the third drawer. Inside the drawer she groped among clothes and keepsakes for the candle which she used to read late at night so there would be no light under the door to betray her. To her relief, it was there, with the matches too. She placed it atop the dresser and lit it. A dim glow suffused the room. With candle held before her, she started back toward the bed. The light moved slowly with her, creeping up on the object of her apprehension. When she reached the side of the bed, she raised the candle over her head and stared down in surprise.

  On the pillow beside where her head had lain was a book. She stared at it for several minutes, trying to identify its size and shape, searching her bookless memory, wondering where it had come from. The last time she had been reading in bed had been several nights earlier. She did not recall placing this book there before falling asleep. There were no shelves or stands it could have fallen from.

  She stroked her kitten again and began cautiously circling the bed. Even as she watched and drew nearer, the book did not move of its own accord or reveal itself in any way; it simply lay there. She placed her animal on the bed at arm’s length, then reached for the book. It felt heavy as she drew it near. Across the top of the cover was written the title, along the bottom the author’s name. Between, a detail from a Vermeer, which she recognized from her art books, gave the book a gentle, contemplative, but significant, appearance. She admired for a moment the woman of the painting and suddenly felt certain the book had been a gift from her mother, who always encouraged her reading habits. Inside the cover, no inscription had been written, so with book in hand she headed toward her parents’ room to question and thank them.

  She padded down the corridor, tapped on the half-shut door, and stepped inside. She whispered, “Mamma,” but from the massive oak bed came no response. She stepped further into the shadows and whispered again, louder. This time she saw a figure move, an arm arc in the dark, trailing the ghost of a sheet behind. Her eyes had adjusted and now she could see her father lying alone.

  For a moment she pondered her mother’s whereabouts. She listened for noises from other parts of the house, but heard only the gentle rasp of her father’s steady breathing. Unable to thank her mother for the gift, she felt sad. Then a quick succession of thoughts flashed through her mind, nothing she saw clearly as an image, but more strongly felt as a premonition: her mother was on the run, wanting never to be found, and then stranded somewhere alone, wishing anyone would find her. She stared at the book, now bending in her tight grip, then stared at her father who continued to sleep oblivious to the crisis of his child. She struggled with her portentous feelings, wanting to visualize them, wanting to help her mother and be helped by her father, wanting to run away herself and never to be found.

  Her father remained asleep, sprawled out trusting and content as an innocent. She marveled how still he could be. She thought only of him moving, always going, never staying in one place. She always thought of him cold and unaffected, but now in bed, perhaps dreaming wildly, she saw him vulnerable and open. She wanted to sit down and talk to him, tell him all the things he had not had time or care to listen to. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him and how much she needed him.

  “Where’s Mamma? I didn’t expect to find you here.” She sat down on the edge of a chair and looked at the book gripped tightly in her hands. “Did you give this to me?” She smiled at her father’s figure. “It’s nice, if you did. Maybe we could read it together. Or could I read some of it to you now?” She opened the cover and turned the first few pages.

  From her father came a low groan and a sudden spasm of movement. She watched as he seemed to grapple with unseen demons, then finally fall still again. He mumbled something. She wanted to brush the hair from his forehead and hold his hand, but feared coming too close. Something deep inside her warned that if she were not careful, he might at any moment disappear.

  “Are you all right?” she said quietly. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you like I took care of Mamma.”

  He grunted something, deep within a dream, then shouted “No!”

  She sat up in the chair, alert and frightened. His head turned from side to side, and she reached out to touch him, to give him comfort, to wake him from his demons, but his arms suddenly waved twice, as if to keep her away.

  “Don’t, Pappa,” she said, tears suddenly filling her eyes with the presentiment of what was coming. “Please don’t.”

  Her plea seemed to calm his nervous movement. He continued to mumble low, as if in argument, and she watched, nervously gripping the book. For an instant she wished she had brought her kitten for comfort.

  In a clear firm voice her father said, “I can’t.”

  “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong, Pappa?”

  “I’m leaving!”

  Somewhere deep in her mind the past and present collided in a desperate act of dreams and fears. She saw herself alone again, staring through tears across that which separated her from her father: the endless wasteland she called her life. Once more that terrible yearning seized her soul. In a flash of hope and fury, she raised the book over her head to pummel her father into only a mere fraction of the pain he had caused her. She opened her mouth with a scream she did not hear and let the book come down. It sliced clean through his legs, just above the knees, causing only a trickle of blood to stain the bedclothes.<
br />
  Her father opened his eyes, suddenly painfully awake. She glanced down at the limbs lying useless at the bottom of the bed, and her father’s twitching stumps. Her hands shook and she dropped the book to the floor. She met her father’s beseeching look of horror and awe. A rush of strength and power flooded her body, then quickly receded, leaving behind a gentle, fertile care.

  She smiled and said, “I love you, Pappa.”

  * * *

  “Fräulein.”

  She opened her eyes and reared back from the grizzled man who leaned close to her face, his hand pawing at her shoulder.

  “The end of the line, Fräulein.”

  She looked around then. The tram was empty; even the legless man was gone. She opened her mouth to ask the conductor what had happened to him, but merely sighed instead.

  Across such a short distance she had come so far to bring change to her life, to bring life to her living, and for a moment just before falling asleep to the steady rocking motion of the tram, she had believed the legless man was a good omen. Now she realized nothing had really changed at all. Despite all her hopes she was once again alone.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “Grozny Station,” he replied.

  The thought occurred to rid herself of the book of false hopes, leave it behind to appear to some other anonymous rider as mysteriously as it had appeared to her. But this was where she had been instructed to come. Though she knew she could not affect the past, she clung to the belief her future might yet be decided. With any luck her dream would be made manifest just outside the station.

  She slung her rucksack over her shoulder and clutched the book to her breast. The conductor offered her his hand, which she took for a promise. She stretched her stiff muscles and, with a smile of appreciation, and mounting anticipation, she squeezed between the groaning doors of the tram.

  The station was underground and inadequately lit. To the left, a massive wall screamed graffiti at her; to the right, the track curved abruptly out of sight; above, grim air-ducts collected soot. The unexpected chill of the evening and the abandoned loneliness of the station hit her at the same time, and she shivered. She thought she saw a rat leap down into the abyss of gleaming rails. The only other movement came from a man nodding his head in the corner beside a ventilation grate. She took a step forward, thinking him the legless man, then halted when she noticed shoes poking from beneath his tattered blanket.