by Daniel Mason
He touched his cheek briefly against her hip and secretly inhaled the scent of the wet blankets and her skin. Again, and deeply, as if it was something he was about to lose.
She shifted to let his head rest on her thigh. He felt the sunlight on his eyelids and let his gaze run down her legs. Bits of grass stuck to the thin down on her calves. Her toes pale, brushed with sand. Above him, her belly rumbled, a little. He closed his eyes.
It was she who broke the silence, with the words that he’d been dreading. “They’ll be waiting.”
He didn’t answer. Looking up he saw there was a slight rose to her shoulders, as if she had already begun to burn.
“Lucius.”
“Of course.”
They bathed separately before dressing and gathering up their belongings, and started back down the trail. A silence fell. Twice, they stopped; both times he kissed her, but now it seemed a little more that she was letting him, that she was impatient to return.
Scattered clouds drifted down the valley, gained and overtook them. His wristwatch showed close to two; they had scarcely been gone four hours, yet it felt as if they were returning from a different world. He recalled the summers in Vienna, the boulevards, the lovers walking hand in hand. But she was always slightly out of reach, and as they walked, he felt a distance open again between them. He fought this feeling, forced his thoughts back to her floating in the water, calling him. But he knew that she was thinking of something she wouldn’t share.
At last the trail left the river, and they passed again through the deeper woods. Crushed leaves marked the paths where she had traipsed off for mushrooms. He now regretted that he had let the moment in the sun pass in so much silence. Only minutes remained before they reached the road, the possibility of other people. Before he’d lose his chance to speak…
In the operas, the novels, he had always been somewhat amused, incredulous even, by the manner in which seemingly sane men and women put so much weight into the words he wished to utter. Three in German, two in Polish, one in Hungarian (though everything in Hungarian seemed to be one word). It had always seemed a bit excessive, he had thought, a bit maudlin and sentimental, a failure of imagination by the poets to put that same phrase upon the lips of dying knights, returning soldiers, weeping maidens, as if worshippers of a faith with but one prayer…
Except that now he understood. Three words, or two, or one if he was too self-conscious (for at times self-conscious lovers resort to other tongues). A spell. And like a spell, they’d be transformed…
He had wanted to say it the night her fever broke.
And when Horst had come again.
And when he’d watched her care for József Horváth after the Anbinden.
And the afternoon when they had gone up to the ruins of the castle, and he had dared to ask her where she’d go after the war.
They gained the road. The first houses of the village appeared just beyond the trees. Steam rising from the thatched roofs and the dark wood of the church. A clattering of squirrels above them. She, too, seemed to slow.
“Margarete.” I love you. It would be so easy, just like that.
She stopped. She hadn’t even fully turned, when he found himself speaking, so haltingly, so formally, so unsure…
“Margarete…I…I would like to ask you if you would consider marrying me. Not now, of course. Nothing has to change now, I promise. But if you wish, after the war…” He twisted his hands. “Margarete…I…I…you understand that I…”
But there he stopped because he saw that she was crying. Impulsively he touched her cheek, and she took his hand and kissed it, first his fingers, then his palm. “Oh, Lucius,” she said. And then she was running, down the path and around the bend in the road that led to the village and the church.
11.
Returning to the hospital, trousers wet with dew, his cuffs mud-spattered, he went directly to his quarters to change his clothing, holding on to a faint hope that she might be waiting there, that he could see her again before they joined the others. But no, of course she wasn’t waiting. She had mushrooms to deliver, a habit to change. And he knew that with the soldiers in the courtyard, she was unlikely to risk a visit to his room.
Alone, he took a moment to collect his thoughts. He was uncertain about what had just transpired. By the way that she had taken his hand and kissed it and said his name, by her tears, which seemed, at least in that moment, to be tears of joy—he had assumed at first that her answer had been in the affirmative. But no sooner had she turned, than doubts descended. There had been a sadness in her gaze, and of all the ways she might have responded, he could not expect that she, who rushed headlong into everything, would flee. He didn’t know whether it had been a mistake that he hadn’t told her he was in love with her. Whether he had already gone too far or not far enough.
In his room, alone, he touched the bruise on his shoulder, on which he could see the faintest marks of her teeth. Now this, too, seemed ambivalent; there are bites of longing and bites of warning. But he couldn’t doubt the sun-speckled moment when she had clung to him in the water, or the way she’d said his name.
In new clothes, he headed into the courtyard. The men had begun to gather for supper, and from the kitchen, the smell of cooked potatoes met him as he headed toward the church.
Inside he found Zmudowski.
“You’re back.” The orderly was carrying a bundle of linens on his way across the courtyard to the laundry. “We were beginning to get worried.”
“And Margarete?” asked Lucius, as offhandedly as possible.
Zmudowski stroked his beard. “I thought she was with you?”
“Yes.” But there he halted, his stomach tightening. Could something have happened in the short stretch between the forest and the village? It seemed unlikely; for all the dangers of the woods, the road at least was safe. “She was with me. Though she walks so briskly, she reached the village first…”
This seemed to satisfy the orderly. “Well, she’s probably in the sacristy, or bathing. For a moment I was worried she was on her own.”
By evening rounds, though, Margarete still hadn’t appeared. Now Lucius went and knocked on the door of the sacristy, and when there was no answer, let himself inside. She wasn’t there, nor was there any sign she had returned—no sack of food, no habit specked with mud.
Again, he found Zmudowski.
“Still nothing?”
Lucius shook his head. They were standing in the courtyard, the evening sun slanting across the grass. He wished to tell the orderly about what had happened. That perhaps she wished to be alone, to consider his proposal. That perhaps she simply couldn’t face him yet.
“I think that we should try to find her,” Zmudowski said.
Nodding, Lucius let his gaze drift across the hillsides, the high pass, the road that led to the place where he’d last seen her. Then up again, to the hints of trails that led back into the mountains, to other villages, perhaps even to her home. This last thought came suddenly. No, he told himself. She wouldn’t have left. She wouldn’t have done that, not to him, not to her patients. She wouldn’t leave them all alone.
The sun was just beginning to touch the mountains as they set out, the great underbelly of clouds alight in rose and plum. The kind of sky that presaged something, he thought. Calm or storm. Margarete would know; he wished he had paid more attention to such signs.
Above this, in a clear patch of sky, hung Mars. A flock of crows circled, cawing, as if angry at the presence of something he couldn’t see.
There were four of them. Zmudowski would follow the road down the valley to Bystrytsya, while Schwarz, a geologist in home life who’d arrived two months prior with his hip fractured and his pockets full of Mesozoic ammonites, offered to head upriver. Krajniak, leaving that night’s baking to an underling, would search around in the village.
“And Pan Doctor?” asked Zmudowski.
Lucius thought of the ruins up near the watchtower.
Some
times I used to come here to seek guidance.
“I’ll take the trail to the pass,” he said. “There was a place she liked to go.”
If the others noticed the suggestion of intimacy, they said nothing. They would sound the church bells if she returned, to alert those who were still out looking. In the hospital, Lucius quickly threw together a rucksack, water, bread, a blanket in case she was cold. Papers, as always, in his pockets. A lantern and matches. A pistol from the collection of belongings of the dead.
With Schwarz, he walked in silence to where the valley steepened and forked. There, they parted. But once alone, the road rising, he hesitated. His instinct had been that she had gone to the ruins. Now, with night falling, in the silence and solitude, he began to have his doubts.
Just then, a figure appeared on the road ahead of him. For a moment his pulse quickened in anticipation. But there wasn’t one figure, there were two, and soon he found himself before a pair of village women in cotton kerchiefs, and then, on a long rope, a cow. He stopped them. D…dobruy vechur. Ruthenian, mangled, but it worked: Good evening. Then, in Polish: had they seen a woman on the road, alone?
They didn’t understand. Over the shoulder of one hung an old hunting rifle. The other, her chin propped up by a massive goiter, carried a stick with a sharpened animal jaw fastened to the end. Armed, as always. And now Margarete alone.
He asked again, this time pantomiming a nun’s habit, pressing his hands in prayer.
They laughed and shared a glance. Yes, yes—this in Polish. Tak. Tak.
“Where?”
Again they exchanged glances, turned back to him, and shrugged. Now he pointed up the road. They nodded, smiling, following his gaze.
Yes—again in Polish. One of the women pressed her hands together, laughing toothlessly.
Yes. So perhaps he was right after all.
Dobruy vechur!
He quickened his pace. The trail rose, flattened and rose again. The sun was gone, but thankfully the clouds were high and distant, the peaks alight in alpenglow. A warm wind rustled the trees. He took swift, long strides, trying to think of what to say if he found Margarete. Would she be angry with him? Or just grateful he had come for her? Certainly, she would understand why he was worried: the night, the risks of traveling alone. He hadn’t wanted to disrupt her solitude, he’d tell her; he only wished to know that she was safe. On the trail, he hadn’t meant to speak so rashly, to ask her questions she couldn’t answer. He could be anything for her. A husband, or someone to seek shelter with in the high grass by the water, away from disease and war. Or, if she wished, they could start anew, doctor and nurse.
It took him close to an hour to reach the top. By then it was dark, the moon a sliver. In the distance, he heard the faint, familiar drumming of artillery. But it was far, so far that when the wind picked up, he heard nothing but the trees.
As he reached the ruins, he saw that they were empty. He called her name. An animal scurried on the low wall and vanished into the shadows of the watchtower. Again he called, picking his way through the stones and stunted pines, now with the lantern. But nothing.
At the fallen staircase, he stopped, uncertain where to go. His face felt warm, his hands shook a little; he told himself he must keep calm. He thought back on the villagers, the old woman pressing her hands together in a pantomime of prayer. But had she truly understood what he was asking her? Or was she just mimicking the motions of this stranger with whom she couldn’t speak?
Again he felt his worry massing. Had Margarete returned already? But then he would have heard the church bells. Or had she come to the ruins, as he’d expected, but taken another trail from there?
From the watchtower, the path ran either down into the neighboring valley, or up along the ridge. But neither made any sense for her. The ridge led on to even higher terrain of stone and tarns. It was forbidding country. Soldiers were lost up there, he knew; it was where Horváth was found.
Horváth. The memory surfaced, and he had to fight it off: body, wheelbarrow, the peasant in his sheepskin cloak and hat.
Above him, clouds were moving in from the plains, and light rain began to fall at intervals. He checked the ruins one last time and turned to head back down, when a flicker of grey across the neighboring valley caught his attention. He stopped and turned down the lantern. He saw nothing; it must have been a trick of his eyes. But then again it was moving, down below, a skirted figure slowly making its way up toward the opposite ridge, a blanket held above her head.
He shouted her name, but now the wind was too strong for her to hear him. So he began to pick his way across the ruins, joining first a narrow descending path, and then a broader trail, which rose up the valley before crossing to the facing slope. He hurried; she was only minutes away, but he would lose her if she passed beyond the ridge.
He called again. The figure halted and then began to climb more quickly through the grass. Again he called. She seemed to hear him, for she turned and looked, then hastened on. Now he found himself confused. He could understand why she might have wanted solitude. But to flee at this hour of night was madness. Perhaps it was delirium, he thought, perhaps the fever had returned.
He was running then. The lantern was useless, heavy, swinging, the light reflecting off the mist and making it impossible to see. He left it on the trail, to collect on his return. He stumbled onward; by the time he reached the opposite slope, she had vanished from sight. But her passage was marked by a clear track in the crushed, wet grass, and he left the trail and followed her path as it rose and twisted, and at last, at the summit, plunged into a dense stand of trees. There, a heavy mist was pushing up from over the other side of the hill, and for a moment he found himself unsure of where to go, when a flash of her habit again caught his eye. He followed, through the trees, and out into a clearing, where he stopped. Nothing. He advanced, more slowly now. Again he called. The fog hung low, impenetrable. The air redolent of pine. He could scarcely see twenty paces ahead.
A voice, Stij!
He turned. She was standing off to the side, in the waist-high grass, rifle raised to her shoulder. A girl of perhaps twelve, dew-drenched, panting, kerchief pushed back far on her head. Around her shoulder was slung a heavy bag. From the highlands, probably, coming home from scavenging for food.
Stij! she said again. Stop.
Then more words.
He slowly raised his hands. “Ne rushume,” he tried in Ruthenian. I don’t understand. His doctor’s vocabulary, now so useless. Where does this hurt? Stay still. Breathe.
She didn’t answer. She will kill me, he thought, a strange man pursuing her through the valley at night. Then, again, she began to shout. The words were angry, scolding. He had the sense that other grievances were being voiced. He lifted his hands higher. The rifle twitched; he flinched. Again: she was motioning him to move. But he hesitated, afraid of showing her his back.
Again the muzzle twitched, and she made a show of taking better aim. So he backed away, slowly, until the mist closed over.
For a long time he stood in one place, until he felt that she was gone. Rain had begun to fall, and a stronger wind shook the grass. He was soaked now, and he took the blanket from his bag and put it over his shoulders. It was time to head back. He was at the edge of the clearing, about to head into the trees, when the wind shifted, and very briefly, but very clearly, he heard the sound of bells from far away.
He entered the forest again and began to circle, looking for the path he’d followed after the girl. Again he heard the bells. His spirits lifted. Signaling to me, he thought: she’s back. Now the visions that he had fought to keep away—a new fever, a fall, an attack by wild animals or soldiers—all vanished. There was a much simpler story, he thought, hurrying onward. She went to think over his proposal; now she had returned. She would laugh when he told her about the chase, the windswept slope. He wondered about her answer, what she had decided. He allowed himself the thought of her beside him, of lying down together in the mist.
The forest, which he had remembered as a narrow stand, seemed now much deeper, and he walked for some time before it opened onto another clearing. He wished again for the lantern. He could not find a path, so he looped back through the grass to a pile of stones that he didn’t remember seeing before. He turned and headed back downhill, again looking for the path to the ridge. But the mist was thick and the way was uncertain. He cursed. They would be worried back at the church.
Maybe she deserves to worry a little, running away like that.
Around him pine trees shivered in the wind. He pushed forward, clawed at by the low branches. Now he was certain he hadn’t been this way before. He entered another clearing. But this was different from the first.
He stopped. He was lost. His watch read midnight. He wished now that on their walks, he had paid closer attention to the land around them and not depended so much on her. But he had enough of a sense of the geography of the mountains to know that all the valleys ran down to the Galician plain. Better to be safe, to head downhill to the flatlands. There it would be easy to walk or get a ride back to the main road that led up to Lemnowice.
So he set out again, this time following the valley down to where a shallow river rushed, a murmuring that seemed to echo against the belly of the mist. Fording it, he found himself on a long, slow descent. This relieved him—soon he would reach flatter country. After some time, the sky began to lighten. The summer night had passed. Despite his worry, the world around him seemed almost out of a fairy tale; the air, heavy with water, glowed like amber.
He crossed a meadow, through neck-high grass. From time to time, he heard something moving, but it went silent when he stopped. A second trail joined his, and the path widened as he left the meadow and entered a new forest. And then: an open road—at last!—beneath a high outcrop of rock.
