He broke off.
'And until then, she is forced to stay here,' he said. 'Every day, they do this to her and she—'
The widow silenced him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
'I have become used to others telling my story for me,' she said to Dominik. 'Some mean well, others do not. None speak for me.'
She passed Dominik the folders and he took them without thinking. There were two of them. His name was on one, Lukas' was on the other.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'I wonder if I said everything I needed to say twelve years ago in that room over there. I said it so loud and so clear, and yet people still misunderstand.'
She stepped toward him.
'Where are you from?' she said.
He told her without thinking and when he said the name of the village its memory flared brightly and then died. She nodded.
'I know it.'
She took his free hand and held it as though she were a palm reader. She traced the shape of his wedding ring with the tip of her finger.
'A wife?'
'Yes.'
'Children?'
He nodded. It was almost true.
She glanced at Zeitler and shook her head, a sad gesture which looked as though it had become over-familiar to her. Then she turned away from them and picked up a tin bucket, sloshing with suds and water. The door flapped shut behind her as she disappeared into the lounge.
Zeitler snatched the files out of Dominik's hands. He scowled as he opened his waistcoat and jammed them underneath it. His fat fingers clumsy as he refastened the buttons.
Dominik watched, silent and appalled.
'I want the promotion,' he said.
'What promotion?'
'The Assistant Administrator role. I won't tell anyone what I've seen here. I want the promotion. I have bills. A child. I need this more than Lukas does.'
Zeitler scoffed. He straightened his jacket.
'You're not qualified. You're a filing clerk for pity's sake.'
'Then I'm sorry.'
He marched back to the door. As he pulled it open, he felt Zeitler's hand on his collar. The big man's face was red, his cheeks glistened.
'Alright,' Zeitler said. 'It's yours. Congratulations.'
Music started up in the lounge: a scratched vinyl recording of the national anthem. Dominik could hear the diners singing along. He could hear the two elderly women warbling and the deep bass of the Colonel. He could pick out Lukas' voice from the rest, high, competitive, and defiant.
Zeitler looked to the door and when he spoke, his voice was quiet.
'They're humiliating her,' he said. 'They force her to her knees and they stand above her. Sometimes they spit on her. Sometimes they kick her.'
When he turned back, Dominik saw that when he wasn't smiling, Zeitler's face lost its structure. His moustaches drooped unhappily, and his jowls hung resigned.
'I only wanted to give her hope. A little hope to keep her strong.'
'You think I might be her son?' Dominik said. The words sounded blunt, unruly. But as he spoke them, he found himself desperately wishing it to be true.
Zeitler shook his head, eyes downcast.
'You?' he said. 'No. Lukas? Maybe, but I couldn't bring him on his own. Safety in numbers, that sort of thing.'
He glanced up at Dominik and met his eyes.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'We'll be missed if we stay much longer. Bribing the house staff will only pay so far, but this is important: how does your wife like the City?'
'My wife?'
'She's from the same village as you. You've said so before. You were childhood sweethearts? Something like that.'
Dominik didn't remember such a conversation. Certainly not with Zeitler; the man had barely acknowledged him before. He glanced around the room as though someone might be listening.
'She misses home,' he said and the Administrator smiled.
'So take her home,' Zeitler said. 'Leave now. Take the cab, pick her up and leave the City. Whatever you think you're going to achieve by doing this, you will fall harder if you stay.'
He laughed but there was no humour in it.
'This is a city where you can be convicted of treason by not raising your glass to toast The Autocrat; how long do you think you'll last as a blackmailer? How long will you last as an accessory to treason?'
'You've done alright.'
Zeitler shook his head.
'Go home. Go back to your village and take your wife. Raise your children amongst the wheat fields and meadows; teach them to play in the mountains. I'm giving you a way out, Dominik. You'd be a fool not to take it.'
Dominik shook his head.
'The promotion,' he said. 'I need the promotion.'
Zeitler looked down, his eyes screwed tight. He let out a long breath, as though the fight in him was escaping. When he looked up again, his expression was overcast with a weary resignation.
He nodded.
'You'll have to announce it,' Dominik said.
'I will.'
'Outside. To everyone here.'
Zeitler looked at him sadly.
'You have my word,' he said.
*
Dominik was the first back to the lounge. One of the house staff was serving coffee to the diners. The widow was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the dessert from the carpet. No one paid attention to her, and she did not acknowledge him as he passed.
When Zeitler returned to the table shortly afterwards, he sat, beaming as though the conversation in the kitchen had not taken place. He turned to smile at one of the elderly women, who fluttered her hands over her face because his attention made her blush.
Dominik tried to make eye contact, but Zeitler's gaze ducked and weaved out of his way until, fearing their deal would be ignored, Dominik stood and raised his glass of schnapps.
'I would like to propose a toast.' His voice was clearer and steadier than he had ever known it. 'To Administrator Zeitler, who has just this moment promoted me to the role of his assistant.'
The silence which landed across the room was uneven.
Lukas blinked in surprise then stumbled to his feet. He snatched his glass from the table and raised it smartly. He looked at Dominik not with resentment, certainly not with surprise, but with respect, as though he believed the promotion was well earned.
One by one, the other diners stood and raised their glasses, and all the while, Zeitler remained in his seat, looking up at Dominik with a wry expression.
'The Administrator Zeitler,' Dominik said and his words were echoed throughout the room. Dominik swallowed the contents of his glass. The clear liquid burned down his throat as though it was coursing its way through the core of him, scorching everything in its path. He felt himself turn pink as he slammed the glass on the table.
Zeitler's smile broadened. He inclined his head.
'My dear boy,' he said. 'You flatter me.'
He took his time to stand, picking up his own glass as he did so.
'While everyone is on their feet, I have a toast of my own.' His tone was calm, friendly. He turned to look at the widow standing in the corner.
'Mrs Cusco,' he said. 'If you would be so kind, would you refill the glass of my new assistant? He appears to have finished what was given to him.'
His dead-eyed smile sent a cold white spike of tension down the back of Dominik's neck.
'Mr Administrator,' he said. 'Please, don't trouble yourself—'
'Nonsense,' Zeitler said. 'It's bad luck to toast with an empty glass.'
Dominik felt the widow at his side. He saw with unexpected clarity she was holding the round decanter and not the square one.
It doesn't mean anything, he told himself. But when he turned away, the look on Zeitler's face caught him like a trap.
As the widow filled his glass, Dominik's hand began to shake. The widow reached out to steady it and in the oppressive warmth of the room, her skin was cold and dry. The coolness of her filled his hand and climbed his arm to his heart.<
br />
He could feel her eyes on him, but he could not bring himself to meet them.
'Administrator Zeitler,' he said. 'I can't. Really. I have to work this evening, my head should be clear—'
I have a wife, he thought. I have a child.
He knew he was babbling and Zeitler roared with laughter.
'Drink more,' he said, 'and you will be capable of drinking more. Think more and you will be capable of thinking clearer. You're young, you have much to learn. But the choice is yours. You are your own man.'
Zeitler raised his glass.
'To The Autocrat,' he said.
In Dominik's stomach, the General's last meal curdled and froze.
The other diners raised their glasses.
'The Autocrat,' they said and the guards clicked their heels to underline the sentiment.
Dominik stood motionless, his glass heavy in his hand.
He felt the faces in the room turn towards him with an intent that was almost mechanical. He felt the eyes of the guards, heavy upon him as though they had seen him for the first time.
He exhaled a breath and it sounded like a sigh.
At the far end of the room, he could see Emilia Cusco turn away and face the portraits on the wall. He thought of Maria alone in their apartment. He thought of the way she ran through the meadows outside the village when they had been young, the dandelion heads filling the air about her with sparkling seeds. He thought of the child they would have together: a son, a daughter, a clear and focused confluence of everything he dreamed and everything he feared. For some reason, the thought gave him hope.
'The Autocrat,' he said.
He raised his glass and drank to success.
The Bridge
When we first visited the house, there was a model in the attic. The whole town in miniature, clustered under the eaves of the roof and lit by forty-watt bulbs. The river snaked through it as it did the real thing, only this river was plate glass and papier-mâché; it was dotted with tiny wooden boats with cocktail-stick masts and onion-skin sails.
It was the work of Mr Bryce, the house's previous owner. The agent was unable to hide the pity in her voice as she told us. She looked at the model as though it were the symptom of something unspeakable.
'Mr Bryce was a widower,' she said. 'He was childless, all alone.'
She shook her head.
'The poor man,' she said.
I was not yet familiar enough with the town to see how accurate the model was, but I could appreciate details of it: the filigree weathervane on the town hall, the cluttered window displays in the high-street shops.
The agent said: 'We can get rid of it. The house-clearing boys were sentimental; they didn't have the heart to throw it out.'
She cast me a suspicious look as though I might suffer from a comparable affliction.
Louise was not looking at the model, she was looking at the room and I could see her gauging its possibilities.
'We can deal with it,' I said before she could answer. 'When the time comes.'
*
'His wife died,' Louise said.
The model was built in a broad square ring. To get to the middle, you had to crouch low, avoiding hanging cables and endless boxes of tools and off-cuts of timber.
We stood in the middle, our new town surrounding us.
'It was either an accident or a suicide,' Louise said. 'No one really knew.'
It was the first time Louise had seen it since we had moved. We were still living out of crates and boxes and there was too much else to do. But the model fascinated me. I found myself spending my spare time drinking in the details of every tiny room in every tiny building.
'He must have missed her so very much.'
Louise had come upstairs to find me; she said I was spending more time with it than with her. She told me it would make her jealous. She told her friends I was seeing a model behind her back.
I'd guided her to the middle and thrown the switch so the town lit up and constellations of lights reflected in the glass water. I showed her the details I had only recently found: a woman ironed a shirt in her kitchen; a man in a vest watched a blank-screened television; a woman stood on the bridge, gazing downwards at her reflection.
'Listen,' Louise said. She took my hand and pressed it to her abdomen. 'It's kicking.'
*
The house had more character than space. A compact knot of misshapen rooms propped on a rise overlooking the town, it had a potential we could not yet afford and so we arranged our belongings to mask the spaces Mr Bryce had left behind. The ghosts of his furniture furrowed the carpets, the shadows of his pictures discoloured the walls.
For one room, we decided, we would make an exception.
'The attic?' Louise said.
I shook my head.
'The model's in the attic,' I said.
There was a smaller room which overlooked the back garden. It wasn't perfect but it was practical. When we peeled off the wallpaper, there was another layer underneath: teddy bears and balloons; dark mould scattered like buckshot.
'I thought they didn't have children,' I said.
Louise ran her hands over the design, the paper whispering under her fingertips.
'They didn't,' she said.
We stripped it down and repainted the walls left exposed. In a stubborn silence, we claimed the room as our own.
Later in the evening, I watched as Louise collected the wallpaper that had fallen. She gathered the fragments. She folded them and bagged them. She looked only at her hands until she was done.
*
That night, Louise went to bed early without a word. I waited until she was asleep before I made my way upstairs barefoot and quiet, like someone with something to hide.
A woman looked at herself in a mirror, her hands flat against her thighs. A man stood at an attic window, his palms pressed against the glass, his tiny features a mask of shock. The streets were thinly populated: men and women walked alone, missing one another at every turn.
A raft spider picked its way down the high street like a B-movie monster. I shooed it away, and it took off, scuttling over the rooftops and down to the waterfront. Its jagged movement was so alien in the silent town that eviction did not seem enough. I cornered it and flattened it against the glass river, smearing it across the surface with a violence that struck me as childish; snapping one of the boats from its mooring as I tried to restore the perfect tranquillity of the scene.
*
'You fixing it or selling it?' the man said. He turned the piece over in his hands, his fingernails gnawed to fat ellipses.
'We've only just moved in,' I said.
The man looked up at me through his eyeglass.
'The town,' he said. 'The model.'
I told him I was mending it. Just a part of it. Something I had noticed was broken.
'Broken,' he said.
He sold me a box with a picture of a smiling boy with 1950s hair on the front and parental advice on the back. Inside were plastic tools and six thumbnail-sized paint pots from signal red to moonlight blue.
He gave me his card.
'In case you change your mind,' he said.
*
I was more familiar with the model than the real town. On my way home, I took a wrong turn and lost my way in a tangle of new red-brick terraces that had no counterpart in the town I knew. The model was a moment, polished and refined, while the town that inspired it had moved on.
When I regained my bearings, I found the streets crowded with Saturday shoppers. A group of kids rushed past with an enormous kite, their faces bright with excitement.
On impulse, I bought myself an ice-cream and stopped on the bridge, leaning on the balustrade to look up the river to the rise of the hill. I found our street, its neat regiment of copper beech trees made toy-like themselves by the distance. The road turned upon itself, winding downhill to where the Church of St Catherine stood in the crook of the river.
It was a stocky, boldly puritan
building that drew attention to itself, but it took me by surprise as though I had never seen it before.
*
That night as I lay awake, I listened to the town beneath us and imagined the one above. I closed my eyes and tried to fit the one to the other, but the model was silent by its nature, trapped and preserved in a frozen frame. I pictured myself drifting through its streets towards the river; the painted hardboard walls reared up around me. The inhabitants I passed were statues, arrested mid-motion. Their faces waxen and indistinct, their backs were to the water, walking away. The silence grew dense and oppressive like the shadow of a storm cloud. I opened my eyes like I was coming up for air.
The bedroom curtains were carelessly closed and a seam of moonlight divided the room. By the bedside clock it was nearly two and I could tell by the sound of Louise's breathing that she was also still awake.
I thought about Mr Bryce. I thought of him working in the attic, hunched over his intricate work. I thought of him alone in a silent house, how as his miniature town grew around him, the real one diverged and took its own course.
Beside me, Louise stirred.
'What are you thinking about?' I said.
I heard her turn her head towards me. I stared up at the still unfamiliar ceiling. Cobwebs clung to the naked light-fitting. They cast grey shadows like cracks.
'You know what I'm thinking about,' she said.
*
The man from the model shop came to take the town away. It had been built in sections and came apart with only minor damage which the man promised he could repair. Jumbled in the back of his van, it looked like an earthquake had struck. Great tectonic plates overlapped each other but the townsfolk carried on as though nothing had happened.
The man slapped the dust off his hands, a job well done.
'You know he never let me see it?' he said. 'I sold him everything he used to build the bloody thing, but I never so much as stepped through that door until today.'
He shook his head, as the estate agent had shaken hers.
I asked him about the church.
'That's the least of it,' the man said. 'If you knew anything about the town, you wouldn't recognise it from what he did. He told me about it once. Church, hospital, police, he said. None of them were there for him when things got bad, so he didn't build any of them.'
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