High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  His people. The people here. They probably won’t believe it was an accident. They won’t accept it. Jány pierced the cloth, and as he talked it looked as if he were walking through his own personal landscape, as it was because he made it so.

  What they believe won’t change anything. Waclaw’s voice was rough.

  You just ought to know.

  To prepare myself?

  Jány shrugged his shoulders.

  I don’t know. People here react differently. Too much has happened. Why do you think it was an accident?

  Jány was supposed to sew: the lining with two-toned thread, a ticket pocket deep enough to keep his key in. An ivory nut button. Nothing more.

  And Waclaw was uneasy, restless before the sparkling riverside promenade. Everything he saw was like a question: swift water, the couples, the boats, what had Mátyás told him, what else were these streets but his words, what did it mean that those words remained, at six thirty in the morning when his alarm went off, the night’s shadows still on his face, sometimes Mátyás would lie beside him for a few minutes before they had to go out. He walked, the puffy-faced homeless people in the Astoria subway tunnel, he rode to the other side, walked up the hill, a big church, hordes of tourists in cheap ponchos, it had started to rain, he walked, farther, the City Park, the Danube to his left, the parliament, the rain hung like lead, heavy over the plain, he felt his shoes getting soggy, the leaves had begun to drip, then statues that seemed to be wrestling with each other, marble-white, gleaming, a black swastika scrawled on a forehead, already half washed out by the rain, he walked, his shirt stuck to his skin, and by the time he reached the Gellért he was cool.

  He took a hot shower, then it was night and he was drunk, the alcohol was wasted, it helped nothing. Waclaw called a taxi, rode along the river and along the other side. He slipped through the darkness once more, not knowing whether it was an accident. He got out of the car, the flashing letters on the door spelled Tropicana.

  The ceiling of the casino was unexpectedly low. He wanted gambling to be like vomiting, vomiting grief, vomiting love, he didn’t want to win, he wanted it to get quieter, wanted to lose himself. A woman smiled at him, withered palm branches hung on the walls, everything breathed the air of a desperate trip to the tropics. Bodies, too tired for the sudden heat, drifted in the light, got stranded in the net of slot machine lights and the tinkling of one-armed bandits and reels, in the light of a world that quickly kept turning. His bed was empty, what makes you think it was an accident. Waclaw stood at the bar and swallowed it down, Jány hadn’t sat with that overgrown child who explained the storm to him and the depths, the ocean floor, where the epochs and particles drifted down like snow. The room had nine tables. The croupier at the first table wore a shirt that made his arms look strangely short. Next to him, a Japanese businessman followed the game with concentration; perhaps for one brief moment he understood the secret law of the numbers.

  Waclaw placed three black chips on the square. The wheel spun, a shimmer like mother-of-pearl, no souvenir, nothing that could be brought back, a life left behind. The ball sought its number, stopped, no one bet on numbers, numbers were a waste.

  He saw Mátyás’s tense face, come on, six, come on. The tension was physical when a lot was at stake. What they lost justified every further week out there, a rhythm of land and sea, carpeting that swallowed their steps. He looked at the chips, the ball came to rest, he didn’t care.

  Thirty-five to one for the gentleman.

  The croupier pushed the chips toward him with an elegant motion.

  For you, he repeated. Are you placing a bet?

  Waclaw looked at his hands.

  Everything they went out for.

  Sir? Then I must ask you to step back from the table.

  The rake again, this time the croupier pushed the chips toward him with emphasis. He took them. Right, Waclaw, you take them and leave. Take them, take them away.

  He didn’t want them. They lay before him on the bar. He drank. With a chip he bought another drink, clear and strong. His eyes watered. At the next table, someone was losing. Mustache, threadbare suit. The unhappiest eyes of the whole night. A thin student, looking lovelorn, stood beside him and pushed small amounts back and forth between the squares. It was too early for the real players.

  The hallway to the toilets was decorated with dry palm branches as well. For a moment he saw the churchyard, St. Cyriakus, the heavy old women, singing children, Palm Sunday. He had to smile. He was drunk. The chips in his pocket pressed against his leg. He would place them, he would keep them, it didn’t matter. He laid them on the sill of the small grated window at head height. The room was tiled, it stank of urine. He heard a voice at his back. Someone stood behind him, grabbed his belt, he felt a hand. The breath of the stranger smelled of large, empty apartments, he couldn’t move.

  I’ll take ’em. And pull those pants up good, Dákó.

  It was a stabbing pain, he heard a few chips bounce along the floor. A hand grabbed at them, while at the same time someone hurled him against the wall: the small figure from the table, the yellowish beard. Waclaw’s hands found his lower jaw and he ran forward, ran the short man against the wall where his back crashed against the tiles and he sank to the floor. He wanted to kick the man, Waclaw did, he kicked his kidneys, connected with the short ribs, the man doubled over, shielded his head with both arms, fell on his side.

  And Waclaw left. Without picking them up, without looking to see if the man was still trying to collect them, shards, chips. He went out, walked on the long, gleaming yellow promenade. The Danube with its quiet promises, all the lights that touched it, almost tenderly, a bit of light on a great cold body.

  And he knew this twitching in his eyelid. He saw Jacek, who brawled and started fights out of a sense of honor—they worked a summer together, Alto Adige, the fruit harvest in the Tyrol. It was in the time before he’d started to work on the water; they’d set out from the little village in Poland, and why did he feel so bad, Waclaw, was he more taciturn than usual when he brought Jacek the water? Because he’d lain on top of and sweated on Jacek’s honor, on Helena’s flowered dress in the muggy summer air of the pergola, where she’d hit her head on the wooden back of the bench because she wanted him, because she wanted him for an afternoon and for the time it took the cherries to ripen and because he, her Jacek, was on the road trying to scrape together at least a bare minimum of money, and so Waclaw can’t cool his friend Jacek’s cheekbone, not with schnapps and shared jokes. Because he can’t bear Jacek’s look, he leaves him woozy in the barracks and slaves away all day in the valley. Dark red apples, it’s the loss of one workday, it must be hot in the hut, he knows. They lay close in the night, their bodies exhaling sweat through the hatch windows, mosquitos in the valley, those tiny days in the valley, the card game on the heavy wooden table, and the indifference of the waiter, who had seen too many like him already.

  In the morning his cheekbone was swollen at the fitting, painful to the touch. Jány eyed the scrape on his lower jaw as he moved around Waclaw. The spot was slightly swollen.

  What happened?

  They’ve stopped the search.

  Waclaw put on the half-finished jacket. A woman’s voice had called him, he said. Eight days had gone by, now all they could do was wait.

  He tugged nervously on the edges of the lapel; it was hard for him to keep still.

  Careful, said Jány, fingering the seam.

  That’s just how it is, they never looked for him. Waclaw’s voice was husky. And now they claim they did, but still, there’s a difference.

  Jány had stopped sticking pins in the fabric.

  I am sorry, he said, and shook his head slowly.

  Get some rest. And ice that.

  Finally there was one day left to work on the eases of the sleeves, on the vest, the buttonholes. Then Waclaw could feel how the suit made him stand taller.

  He let Jány give him two yards of lightly woven wool to wrap Máty�
�s’s things in. Leftovers of a life, the cocoon of a moth that had long since left it. Where to? In the evening he lay on the hotel bed, looking on a map for the tiny village near Bócsa where Mátyás had grown up. Perhaps in passing, you sense it, you look over your own shoulder.

  He took the seven o’clock train, which carried him southwest: grass, fields, a bit of brown, and little gray stucco farmsteads. The corn hadn’t yet been harvested, and the sun was already high.

  7

  Bócsa

  The horizon here was so even that one could get the feeling that the sand, all of it, stretched toward nothing but itself. Occasionally a power line cut through the sky, and even the clouds seemed to say that the wind came from far away. The turnoff for Bócsa was one of those crossroads where the endlessly straight tarred road, the 54, was crossed by two dirt paths. A light stucco bus shelter with a sheet-metal roof, three green mailboxes close to the road, and, with no further signs, two dirt roads leading into the bare grassland. Only far in the distance could he see a bit of green.

  It was that direction the bus driver pointed in, not before warily eyeing Waclaw’s suit and the dirty duffel. The bus smelled as if it had been smoked in a great deal in the past; the light fell almost vertically on the aisle through the two oval skylights. Hand straps dangled on long rails, rows of faux leather seats, a door that opened on both sides. The bus driver pointed again toward the dark rise in the distance, poplars perhaps, perhaps some water.

  Then only the grimy metal that he watched recede. The road was dusty. Everything seemed to shrink under this light. He headed for the distant point. It ought to be a road one walked every day, not his flat hand running over his thighs again and again, a country lane, the extended line of a burning sun. Finally he saw a few poplars, a small farm, fenced pastures. And what was he supposed to say, since he could explain nothing.

  The house was gray stucco, with a large wooden veranda at the front. As he got closer, he felt the shade of a few trees on his skin. It was still. The whole country was still. At some point he heard a radio, and a dog barked and began to run around him in wild circles, as if it wanted to nip his heels as at a sheep that had strayed too far on the long line of a dyke.

  The dog received the full attention of the woman who came out of the house. When she grabbed the black-and-white fur at its neck to pull it away, Waclaw heard Mátyás’s voice in his ear telling him over and over again who she was.

  He had only the bundle of cloth that he placed in her arms, and her mouth narrowed as she realized what it was. He felt keenly that he should say something, but he didn’t know what. He looked again at the dog, then turned around and left.

  She was the woman with the broken pen, or at least that’s what it had looked like, the words were notched deep into the paper, and Mátyás often left the letters unopened for weeks in front of the wardrobe.

  She called after him.

  Did they send you?

  No.

  Then she came after him. She was shorter than he, and he knew the long braid. Back then he’d seen her from afar, and it was against their agreement that he’d stayed there in the little airport shop in Rome, near the arrival gate. She’d linked arms with Mátyás, and he’d watched them both go by.

  Where are you going now?

  Back.

  On foot?

  She looked at him awhile. Then suddenly her voice was so soft and gentle it surprised him.

  Come on.

  She pointed to the house with her head.

  She spoke broken English. Just the dry wood, a house that seemed long forgotten. Patrícia took a ratty cushion from the bench under the window and put it on a chair. The slight smell of varnish hung in the air.

  She brought water. Crickets chirped.

  Could she see the sweat streaking his forehead, the mark of the helmet? The rusty footlocker they’d sat on during breaks? Only the wind, and the way their heels hit the rust?

  She’d painted the railings, she’d wanted to do something. In the days before, Waclaw had tried not to think of her. His image of her had been erect, almost royal. But now a thin, exhausted woman with a firm handshake and smoker’s voice sat before him, her shoulders falling forward. Her curly hair fell out of the braid: a black horse with silver creeping into its coat. She was Mátyás’s half sister, ten years older than he; she had watched over him in these meadows. Later that evening when she cries, she’ll press her fists to her eyes, a childish gesture. No one will see it. She smoked. Then she laughed in agony, it was the laugh of a mother.

  What did you do? What were you doing all that time?

  Then she spoke quietly, as if to herself.

  Is this what you have to bring from your new world? Just this, and no explanations?

  Her gaze rested quietly on him. For a moment she seemed to have sympathy with this tall, tired man, sitting there in his suit. But then the harshness came back to her face. I won’t do anyone the favor of keeping quiet.

  That night he slept in a narrow chamber that lay across from Mátyás’s old room. It was a converted stable with exposed beams and single-glazed windows. Between the light beams, the dark seemed to be composed of many parts, but where Mátyás had been there was only a throbbing darkness. It was quiet. The bed was so short he had to lie diagonally.

  It smelled of wood, and he stared at the ceiling. He thought of insignificant things, little games they’d played to pass the time. Imagine, Mátyás said, it’s winter on land, nothing in bloom. And then there was this peculiar warmth in their cabin, which was created simply by replacing the world out there, the lack of even one single branch, with a world they told themselves of. By listening. By his listening to Mátyás’s voice as he spoke.

  They’d met seven years ago at the company’s training site. Outside, a warm wind blew over the fields, and hundreds of people were hurrying across the grounds, the sirens droned like they did on deck. Those were days characterized by euphoria for most, the kind of expectation that was usually attached only to things that would turn life in an important direction. They were young guys, they wanted to believe what the short-legged Texan was telling them, they drew a connection between the unfurled world map and his sentences, between the exploration wells, the great oil fields—Libra Field, Jupiter, Kingfish—and their own boundless desires. They were all protagonists in a story that hadn’t been told yet, heroes, movers and shakers, a story that began here, somewhere just around here. They’d earn good money for a while, and none of them could imagine how the skin over their elbows would grow leathery, and the time at home, and any possible return, would fade.

  It hadn’t been long then since Waclaw’s accident, his arm was still slightly numb, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He had to take this damned safety course, together with the beginners, that was the only condition. He’d been fucking lucky, they all said to him over and over.

  Now they stood there, the instructor twanging away. Perhaps he was vain enough to think it was him the men were listening to with such determination, it was him in the center of this circle, him with his speeches on creeping gases, explosions, and hydrogen sulfide, while really they were all only waiting for themselves, themselves in this new world.

  He’s a cork, Mátyás said of the instructor, and it was one of the first sentences Waclaw heard him speak. They walked from the workshop back to the containers; everything here was arranged just like at sea, only here you could smoke. Mátyás walked along the high fence with him. Waclaw had already noticed him that afternoon—he’d done for Mátyás the few maneuvers that he hadn’t yet mastered, perhaps because he knew that someone like him would have it hard enough out there. Mátyás’s curls, which sprang right back when he took off his helmet, two eyes that might have been the two brightest points in the whole workshop. But now he’d begun to speak.

  He’s a cork, Mátyás said again, he doesn’t swim, he floats. He smoked, stomped out his cigarette. That’s what everyone here wants, right? Out into the world, or at least out away fr
om the old one. Look who we’ll be out there with. But then think what could be possible.

  There was that tone in his voice, and Waclaw stood still next to him. The we had surprised him, like a touch he wasn’t expecting. He didn’t know how long they stood there, but it was as if someone were poking holes in a wall that he hadn’t even guessed was there. The wheat fields swished behind the fence.

  In the half-light of the pitched roof he wasn’t sure where he was at first. He saw the roof beams, in the first light of dawn he saw a slow sun rising through the window. He hadn’t understood everything she’d told him yesterday. But she wanted him to stay, she needed to talk to him after work. He should feel free to have a look around. Hungary, southern landscape. He heard a car engine starting.

  When he stood in the front doorway, everything was once again unfamiliar, it was late again, and he followed his shadow, erect and with level shoulder pads, through the dust, as if he would know what to do with that last bit of water, the twinkling coastline that he hadn’t taken his eyes off until it had completely disappeared from view out the window of the Puma.

  On the farm, a large sandy area and then, at a slight remove from the house, an old barn. The roof was sealed with tarpaper, bars of light fell through the rough-hewn slats. Waclaw stood in the open doorway for a long time. It smelled of hay and straw, and there was the shimmer of dust; it was so quiet that he cleared his throat. For a while he leaned against a bale of hay and stared out. Stretches of grass. A white poplar that he stared at until he realized that it reminded him of another tree. A shore, the smell of rotting fish, graffiti on the electricity boxes, beer in cans, the time just before Mátyás.

  Patrícia returned in the afternoon, she was nervous, and he saw that there was something she wanted to say to him; she’d surely thought long and hard about it and was now putting it off even more by showing him around. Finally Waclaw followed her into the house and into a large room whose windows were almost totally overgrown. The window frames were bleached by many years of sun, but inside, the furniture had heavy round feet, and a large woven carpet lay diagonal to the walls, where countless family photographs hung. As if this weren’t the country with its dust, as if this room could be reconciled with a life of silver cutlery and the huge women’s hats in the photographs. Patrícia lived between these things, she rationed the light that came from outside with heavy curtains. A silver-plated bowl stood on a long table; behind it, a piano with yellowed keys.