by Steven Price
I don’t like it here, Mason said.
My grandfather kept a cow and you could hear her bell when she came near the house. The old man looked up suddenly. This is as safe a place as any, son. I promise you.
Mason was watching the darkness spilling in through the broken hall.
Aren’t you hungry at all? the old man asked.
No.
Because you look like you could eat a horse. Are you sure?
Mason turned back to the window. A dog was barking somewhere in the twilight.
You can be happy in your life at a certain point and not be able to imagine ever being happier, the old man went on in his low voice. And then you get old and everything is different and it’s a different kind of happiness.
Mason thought he was speaking now to someone that he could not see and he shivered. You should check again, he said stubbornly. You should go downstairs and check again.
The old man nodded but he did not move. This was my grandfather’s house, he said. I know it as well as I know anything. There’s nothing here but ghosts and memories. I don’t mean real ghosts.
No.
My grandfather was a judge, he said. He was a wealthy man. I didn’t wonder about it as a boy but after his death I did. This isn’t a big house. At the time I supposed he’d donated his money to some charity or other. But that wasn’t it. Do you want to know something very strange?
Mason rubbed at his crumpled sleeves, his fingernails outlined in dirt.
What, he said.
Fifteen years after his death I received a letter. It was from a woman in Italy, a very old woman, who wanted to meet with me. In her youth she had been an actress on the stage. It seems my grandfather had sent monthly cheques to her for almost thirty years. Nearly his entire fortune went to her. Can you imagine?
Mason said nothing.
In the letter she included a little ivory hairbrush, as if for a doll, and a faded blue ribbon. I have no idea what these objects meant to her. I don’t know what she was to him. I don’t know whether he met her after my grandmother died, or before. Love is a strange thing, son. It’s judged harshly during its lifetime and then kindly afterwards. Mason watched the old man frown as if to think over this last statement and then raise his dark eyes. I returned her letters unopened, after the first one. I never met with the woman. I suppose she must be dead now. And now do you know I wish almost more than anything that I had met with her. It is almost my only regret.
Maybe she wanted money.
Maybe. But I don’t think it was money she was after. Money doesn’t mean as much when you get old.
Mason turned and peered out at the hall.
What is it, son?
You didn’t hear that?
The old man shook his head.
But then it came again, unmistakable. A clattering from somewhere deep inside the house. The scrape of boots across a wood floor, kicking aside masonry.
That, he hissed.
The old man held up a hand and the sound fell away in a shirr of drapes from the room beyond. His dark eyes were doubtful. It sounded like the furnace, he said.
It wasn’t the furnace.
Well. This old house makes some strange noises.
The wall where Mason sat was canted to one side and there was a buckle running along the hardwood floor and he thought, It is not safe not here and I know that. I do not know what he wants but I will not forget no matter what. I will stay only as long as I need to and no longer. I will stay only until the morning and no longer.
In the morning I’ll go to look for your mother, the old man said.
Mason looked up, startled.
You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, son.
But as the old man said this he would not meet his eye and Mason all at once understood. He does not believe it, he thought. He does not believe he will find her. But it does not matter what he believes. He did not want to speak but then he looked up and then he spoke. You don’t think we’ll find her, he said. He could hear the hurt in his voice and it sounded like anger but it was not anger. She’s not dead, he said.
The old man’s eyes were leached and sad. Okay, he said.
Okay what. Don’t say okay. You don’t mean it.
No. I guess I don’t.
Do you know where she is now?
No, son. I don’t.
That’s right. You don’t.
The old man regarded him strangely.
Don’t look at me like that, Mason said.
He had been speaking loudly and it was the most he had spoken since the tremor and he felt exhausted by the effort.
The old man turned his head towards the doorway.
Jesus Christ, he said.
He got to his feet.
Mason looked across in alarm.
A figure stood there. Lean and whip thin and wrapped in a white bedsheet unwinding like smoke in the dark hall. It wore heavy boots and stood in the doorway staring down at them and its eyes were as yellow as a dog’s. In one fist it held a rifle.
Jesus Christ, the old man said again.
And then it was like some muscled thing was uncoiling inside the stranger and slowly raising itself swaying before them and then the stranger spoke.
You scared me, he said. His voice was very soft. I thought I was alone in here. You two are like ghosts. You are as quiet as ghosts.
There was something wrong with his eyes, with the way he studied Mason from the darkness.
This is my house, the old man said. You’re in my house.
Mason could see the bones in the old man’s back through his shirt and he felt very frightened. The stranger stepped through the doorway into the candlelight.
What do you want? Lear demanded.
The stranger’s face looked very drawn and very grey. It is just the two of you? he said.
The old man frowned.
Forgive me, the stranger said. May I come in? I did not know anyone was here. I did not mean to startle you.
The old man had been standing to his full height and with his lean grizzled jaw set tightly he stared down at the stranger and finally he nodded and waved a hand at the oak desk. He said, We don’t have much and it’s cold but if you don’t mind that you’re welcome to it.
I am not hungry.
The old man held out his hand. Arthur Lear. The boy here is Mason.
Novica.
The stranger came in and he sat but he did not put down the rifle.
Mason was standing behind the old man and he had not taken his eyes from the stranger. He was a small man with rolled shoulders and a long sharp face and he tugged off the white bedsheets he had been draped in and then held them balled in his lap. Dressed as he was in a tight red sweatshirt with its sleeves rolled and double rolled back from his thin wrists and in greasy blue jeans and with his dark hair frayed weirdly on his head he seemed more a battered denizen from some strange carnival than a man like any other. In the candlelight his expression was unreadable.
I know you, Lear said. How do I know you?
The stranger smiled but the smile did not touch his eyes.
The old man was looking at him closely.
I am one of the gardeners at Union House, he said. I pass you at the Japanese bridge all the time. You go alone to look at the pond. You are an easy man to recognize, Mr Lear, he said.
It’s just Arthur.
There was something about him Mason did not like. He was not sure what it was but the dislike was palpable and it rolled over him and then past in that small room like a bad air and the candle was guttering in its wax and then it stood tall and orange again. Mason frowned. No it was not dislike but something else.
What’s the rifle for? the old man asked.
Does it make you nervous? I will put it down.
What’s it for?
The gardener regarded him coolly. For shooting.
Shooting what?
Do not be afraid, he said. It is for protection only. You smoke, yes?
He took out a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook one into his palm and passed the packet across to the old man.
Mason nudged the old man’s arm.
What is it?
But he did not want to say in front of the gardener.
What is it, son? the old man asked again. Are you tired?
I’m not tired.
The old man gestured at the open door in the far wall. I thought we’d set you up on the couch just through there, he said. When you’re ready.
Mason felt all at once a slow exhaustion pour through him like heavy sand. He shook his head. I’m not tired, he said again.
The gardener was watching with his yellow stare. You were caught in the earthquake together?
Yes, the old man said.
No, Mason said.
The gardener looked from the one to the other and the old man finally shrugged. We were in the same building, he said. I helped dig him out of the rubble. But we weren’t buried together.
It is none of my business.
My mom’s still there, Mason said. We’re going back to get her tomorrow.
The gardener looked at the old man carefully. It is a nightmare, he said and he made a strange noise in his throat. I have been thinking it is not real. And then I know it is real. And then I think it cannot be real. It is a little crazy.
It’s not crazy, the old man said.
I do not care about that. Do you know where I was when it hit?
I don’t know. In the gardens?
In the gardens. Yes. I watched everything around me go up and go down and I could hear it. The whole ground was moving. I have never felt anything like it. The ground went soft like water and I was just watching it. That is what was bad. That I was not a part of it.
Yes, the old man said. We all felt that.
It was happening and I was not inside it. Even though I was inside it. Do you understand?
Yes.
The gardener rolled his tongue, picked at a bit of tobacco in his lips. All of my life my hands have worked in the earth, he said. I trust it. I trust it and listen to it. Do you know what the earth talks about? It tells us that the green things in this world do not thrive through care but through adversity. The earth is always eating, it is always hungry. You people do not understand that. In this country you think nurturing means gentleness. It does not.
The old man smoked quietly.
Children are also green things, the gardener said. They are more tough than we think.
Leave the boy out of it, the old man said. How much of it have you seen?
You mean the destruction?
The extent of it. Yes.
It is bad, the gardener said. It is very bad. But the destruction is not the worst thing.
The candlelight slid and wobbled among the dark objects in the study like a thing alive. Mason leaned back out of the light and felt his heavy eyelids closing.
The gardener said, I was born and lived all my life in the city of Visegrad. I came here just before the war broke out. It is in Bosnia, on the river Drina. I lived there with my parents and my little brother. When the war broke out he would have been about this boy’s age.
Mason opened his eyes and saw the gardener looking at him.
Many men were killed on our bridge, he said. My brother used to bicycle past the soldiers during the executions on his way to school. They shot them in the head or cut their throats and kicked them into the river. I heard all of this much later. There was an old man who was forced to drag the bodies out of the river when they rolled up into piles there in the shallows. There were stacks of the dead. I try to imagine my little brother. We knew those men, they were neighbours. We are Serbs and my family was in no danger. I am not ashamed to say I sleep at night. But I could not go back there after I heard the stories. He stubbed out his cigarette and reached into his pocket for another and then as if thinking better of it he set his hands in his lap. I think of my brother daily, he said. He will be almost a man now. I have enough money to bring him over here but when I wrote to him he refused. I think of those bodies lying in the river. He shook his head. There is nothing worse, he said. There is nothing worse than to be lost like that. There is no worse thing.
Alright, the old man said. Don’t get stuck in it.
Because of the boy? I think that he is stronger than you think.
Alright.
I expect he has seen terrible things.
The old man rose then and he seemed angry. I said alright, he said. Leave it alone.
The gardener said nothing.
You can stay the night, the old man said, but leave it alone. Do you need a place to sleep?
I have a sleeping roll in the truck.
You drove here?
The gardener nodded. He was holding his rifle again as he got to his feet. I will get my things, he said flatly.
If you’re not afraid to sleep inside, the old man said.
The gardener gave him a long look. Do you mean from another tremor?
What else would I mean?
The gardener shrugged. He looked at Mason. I am sorry, he said. Do not listen to me.
They went out and Mason sat for a time in the dimming candlefire and the house was very still and then the old man was shaking him gently by the shoulder and he opened his eyes.
I wasn’t sleeping, he said.
I know you weren’t.
Where is he?
Novica? He’s still down at his truck. He has a radio there. And look at this. The old man held up a flashlight and flicked it on and off and the beam cut across the wall.
The old man set to clearing the floor in the next room, righting the chairs, stacking and sweeping aside the broken mortar and books. A glass cabinet fastened to the corner wall had not shattered in the tremor though a long spidery crack traced the pane from handle to bevel.
We probably shouldn’t be sleeping in here, he said. I think it’s safe enough though.
What if there’s another one? Mason asked.
The old man set a bundle of blankets on the foot of the couch.
There won’t be, he said.
You don’t know that.
No. I don’t.
But you wouldn’t sleep here either if you didn’t think it was safe.
That’s right.
Where will you sleep?
Right next door. Just through that door there. I’ll leave you the candle but make sure you keep it away from the window. Okay?
I don’t need it.
Are you sure?
Leave me the flashlight.
Alright.
Will he sleep out there with you?
Yes.
Arthur?
Yes?
What kind of a name is Novica?
I don’t know. It’s Serbian I guess.
I think it’s weird.
Well. Go to sleep.
The old man went out of the room then and after a few minutes Mason could hear the gardener come back up and down the hall and go into the room where the old man was. The door had not shut completely and Mason lay very still in the darkness watching them through the opening and he could hear the gardener’s soft voice rising and falling.
They did not want to go into the city, the gardener was murmuring. We went for food. I knew we would be hungry.
You keep going back to it, the old man said. Leave it. Put it away someplace until you’re ready for it. Tell me about the gardens.
But the gardener did not seem to hear him.
In the supermarket we found a girl, he went on. A woman. No a girl. I thought she must be dead but she was not dead. The gardener lowered his voice. They did things to her.
All at once Mason felt very young. He thought about calling out to them and then he did not and then he just lay listening with a taste of iron in his mouth and he did not interrupt.
Why didn’t you stop them? the old man asked. Why didn’t you help her?
What could I have done?
The gardener lowered
his hands and looked across at the old man and Mason saw with a shock that he was crying. His grizzled cheeks shining in the candlelight.
They burned her body after. In the parking lot. So nobody would be able to tell.
Why are you telling me this?
There was a silence then and then after a time the old man said in a low voice, Novica?
Yes.
I’m sorry. It’s the tiredness. In the morning I have to go back to find his mother’s body. Then I’ll have to see where to take the boy. All of it’s hard.
Mason opened his sleep-heavy eyes.
You think I am a coward, the gardener said.
I don’t know. I don’t know what you could have done.
They would have killed me.
Maybe.
A low orange glow was burning over the city through the broken wall or perhaps it was just the candlelight itself.
The boy said he has a sister, the old man said after a time. Maybe she will take him.
The gardener started to cry again.
Mason lay very still. He thought something fierce or angry or wild would come up in him then but it did not and he lay there in the darkness beginning to drift off and thinking quietly. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow I will find her and we will go back home and it will be okay. Whatever comes it will be okay.
Then the gardener was leaning forward and in the eerie light his bright eyes shone.
You do not want to go back out there, he said.
Mason through his sleepiness felt suddenly afraid and he shifted in his sheets and the couch springs wheezed in reply.
For god’s sake, the old man said. His door’s open.
It is going to get worse, the gardener said.
Then Mason heard only the old man’s shoes scraping on the floor and him shutting the door firmly and then he was asleep.
Tobey Blekkenmeyer said where is your poppa did he go back to Africa. I told him to shut up, he was not from Africa he was from Trinidad. Luke Mackey said did they eat bananas in Trinidad? I told him to suck on this banana. Jeremy Bindle laughed. I told them my poppa was kidnapped in the night by the Russians and tortured. My mom woke up and found Grandma sitting at the table in the dark. That was before I was born. Luke Mackey asked if he was a spy. I said I did not know if he was a spy but what did he think. How many people get kidnapped by Russians and tortured if they’re not? I gave him a dark look. Tobey Blekkenmeyer said I was brown like shit because I was full of shit. That was when I hit him.
