by Jeff Kamen
Seeing back then, in that woman’s past, the people penned in like animals, the children running to the fence crying, their faces tear-stained and filthy. Running with her the people from a town ... running to the tall slablike towers down a darkening road, away from the flickering. The sky behind them lit red. The dry air sucking backwards as though into a vacuum.
Running to an entrance, a huge vault-like door swinging open and herself leading the charge, the crowds herding inside just moments later as the heat grew unbearable ...
... the great door swinging shut and the onset of darkness with a boom ...
... and from outside only the screams remaining ...
‘Stop,’ she whispered, ‘stop,’ and then she rolled over, panicking, disorientated — to be startled again on hearing a voice as Radjík came climbing up the slope.
‘Got some eggs, too,’ Radjík called, raising a woven bag, and as she climbed out of the cart, Jaala called back to her, ‘Well done. We’ll not starve yet.’
She smiled as she said it, but it was with something of a distant expression that she went off to build the fire.
Chapter 67 — At Karoly’s
He was standing in the sun. A tiny black cross, arms stretched wide above the world. Gazing out and down, the broken landscape tinted by his goggles.
He’d not meant to land so close to the village but the wind had almost spilled him down the ridge on the southern side and so to avoid it he tilted the bar a few degrees and swooped towards a dry wasteground away from the dwellings. As he landed, he became aware of a shrill chorus of noise. He turned to see a group of dusty and unkempt children running excitedly towards him. There were yapping dogs in their midst and adults hurrying from nearby hovels. Others were following from the village and as they ran through the clouding dust he saw them waving caps and handkerchiefs. They were cheering, calling out to him like some long lost and much cherished friend.
He’d just stepped free of the harness when the crowd descended on him, the children pulling at the wings with filthy fingers and tugging at his clothes, asking for sweets and gifts while their parents and elders scolded them and called them away. People begged to take his bag and jacket while he folded the glider frame, some attempting to shake his hand, offer him water. He tried to thank them all and somehow keep them at bay but they would not relent. He was struggling to keep his cool when a man with tight black curls pushed through to the front, and with an incredulous smile said, ‘Klaus? Klaus, is that really you?’
He let the glider go. Then slowly drew down his goggles. His mind flaring, shutting out the clamour and the people crowding all around. The day growing long and quiet and remote; somehow brighter, almost blinding. Like most of the men the villager was unshaven and swarthy, his thin shirt ringed with sweat. He thought from what the man had said that he should know him, but he didn’t know him, didn’t know any of them …
‘What did you say?’ he croaked. ‘What did you call me?’
The crowd stood back a little, a few children pulled away by their parents. The man peered at him uncertainly, wiping the sweat away with the back of his arm. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said. ‘Like seeing him young again.’
‘You said Klaus. You said … but where … he’s … he’s my father.’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes, my father. Where is he? I’m Marty, I’m Marty, I’m his son!’
Clasping him around the shoulder, the man gestured to the crowd triumphantly. ‘It’s his son!’ he cried, ‘it’s his son!’
There more cheers at this and caps soared aloft and there were children squealing. People ran off to call to onlookers. The mob lifted him up and the glider was lifted alongside him and amidst that jubilant throng of humanity he was carried off and paraded all around the village.
~O~
‘Some called him the Doctor,’ the man explained when they were indoors at last, sat at an old scored table in a dingy kitchen. ‘We just knew him as Klaus. Actually, to be truthful, we’d given up hope of ever seeing him again.’ He smiled, shaking his head. ‘And now this. Like a miracle.’
He pointed to a cup and Moth nodded. ‘Thanks, Karoly,’ he said, watching him pour.
‘Karo.’
‘Karo. Thanks.’
As he drank, he looked through to the yard, where the man’s wife was squatting with their children as they fed some hens. One boy, one girl, both dark-eyed like their parents. A wooden coop was the yard’s main feature, with dry sparse trees lining the fence, a few heads of cabbage under some netting. The glaring sunlight bleaching it all pale. ‘Six years ago,’ he said. ‘Hard to believe.’
Karoly looked concerned. ‘You’ve been looking for him all that time?’
‘Well, it ... well, yes. It’s been a long time since I last saw him. But I ... I’ve only been on his trail like this the last couple of months. Since I repaired the glider.’
‘Are you worried for him?’
‘A little, I suppose.’ He attempted a laugh. ‘Enough to come after him, anyway. It’s been quite a while ... not to have heard anything.’
‘Of course, Marty. We were worried ourselves after a few months. But as I said to Sylvie, there was a man who knew what he was doing. If he wanted to be somewhere, he’d be there, no question of it. So capable. Always thinking, making plans.’
‘Really? What kind of plans?’
‘Well, it’s hard to say exactly. Improvements, he liked improvements. Making things better. Like if there was a problem with the house, he’d want to make it better. Get it repaired, but so it didn’t get broken again. At the same time he was simple, very down to earth.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Yes, that was Klaus, all right. You could be walking with him, and he’d see a flower and that would be it — down on his knees, just staring at it. Any flower, any plant, you name it. Always cutting them up, putting little bits here, little bits there, looking under a glass. He’d draw them in his books. Write things, always writing, you know.’
Moth looked out at the yard again, picturing a grey-clad figure kneeling patiently at the planted rows. A figure turning as he called to him, sun-browned and bearded. A figure raising a hand, a smile.
Clearing his throat of dust, he said, ‘He left in the spring. So he’d have been away a couple of months before he reached you. Did he say where he’d been?’
‘You mean ...?’
‘I mean his route. Did he say where he’d been staying? Did he say why he’d stopped, what he was doing here?’
Karoly took a fine wooden pick from a threadbare pocket and inserted it in the corner of his mouth. ‘Well, he said he was travelling, that was pretty much it really. He spoke about home and things, but you can imagine at the time he arrived, we were more interested in his glider. Quite a shock he gave us, flying in like that. Covered in ash, filthy with it. And I wasn’t the first to see him either, just heard the screams and ran out.’ He stopped to scrape at a tooth. ‘Never forget the sight of him, packing those big wings up. It was baking hot and he needed to drink something, it was obvious. We took him home, so he could recover himself. And here we were, just like that, drinking water like we are now.’
Moth nodded, smiling at the thought. ‘Incredible,’ he said.
‘That’s the word, Marty. Incredible. I’ve said it myself so often. An incredible day, when he arrived like that.’
‘So, what happened then?’
‘Well, after all that flying, he was tired. Very. Not that he complained about it.’
‘No, I can’t imagine he would.’
‘Ill too, not that you’d know it at first. He tried to keep it hidden.’
‘… Ill? How do you mean?’
‘You know, sick. Stomach trouble. Headache, temperature, that kind of thing.’ He turned to the back door and called out, ‘Sylvie noticed it, didn’t you, love?’
‘What’s that?’ she called back.
‘You noticed Klaus was sick, didn’t you, love? You said something to him.’
‘Well, I
said he didn’t look right. Anyone could see it. He was so thin, wasn’t he?’
Moth turned to face her. ‘Thin? Really? So what … I mean what was wrong with him?’
‘What’s that?’
‘He said what was wrong with him. What did Klaus say?’
‘Well, he knew it was something. He was a doctor, wasn’t he. Knew everything about medicine, your father.’
‘Come and talk in here, love. Marty can hardly hear you.’
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
Karoly shrugged. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’
‘Yes, I … so did he take any treatment while he was here?’
‘Treatment?’
‘Well. Medicine. I mean, how sick was he?’
‘Well, that’d be hard to say. Never got a peep out of him about that. Not his own health. I’d say he was only interested in other people.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, that was Klaus. He went round the homes and he must’ve seen everyone while he was here. Kids with the mumps, the women, everyone. Saw my old dad about his guts, may he rest easy. Saw Erik about his gout leg. Saw newborn babies, saw everyone. He had the gift, your father, had the gift in his hands. That’s why they called him the Doctor.’
Moth nodded, gazing around the little stone kitchen. Poor and humble, clean and safe. Home. The house where he had stayed. The table where he’d eaten. ‘Have you got time to talk now?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to interrupt you ...’
‘Of course, Marty. A friend of Klaus is a friend of ours. And having his son here …’
‘It’ll be like old times,’ said Sylvie as she entered. ‘Just like he was here again.’
Moth looked from her to Karoly. ‘Then tell me everything,’ he said. ‘Everything you remember. Every last detail.’
The couple did what they could. They told him his father had not intended to stay more than a day or so, although it had been close to a month in the end, by which time he’d regained much of his strength, and had appeared more purposeful. He’d slept in their barn the entire time. They spoke of a man keen to repay his hosts in any way he could, who seemed to have quickly grown fond of the villagers and taken to heart their concerns about the state of hardship they’d found themselves in as the land grew ever more barren, plagued by disease in recent years. When he asked if his father had been missing his family, they confirmed this without hesitation. When he asked if he’d mentioned returning home, they confirm this as well, leaving him with much to ponder. After that, when he asked if he’d appeared to be afraid of something, of being followed, harassed, they said merely that he’d had a lot on his mind, that he was a thoughtful man in every way, although they’d not been minded to probe him on the cause of his preoccupations.
They ate supper that evening at the headman’s house, where he was welcomed as a guest of honour. There were toasts to him and his father, and at the end of the meal he was presented with a small glazed platter made in the village. In the warm darkness Karoly walked him home and showed him into the barn where he was to sleep. ‘You’re up the top,’ Karoly whispered, raising his lamp and pointing out a ladder leading up to a hayloft. Moth thanked him, taking in the scatterings of dusty straw, the pungent reek of animals, then he heard Karoly shushing him as a hollow scuffing arose in the dark. A bell clanged dully and clanged again. There was a strange clicking from somewhere, and between the boards of a paddock there glinted back at him an array of glassy yellow eyes.
‘What … what’s that?’
Karoly went to the paddock and motioned him across. As the lamp roved, the bell clanged again and there was a click and stomp of hooves and the sound of animals moving restlessly. On approaching, he saw the dark spears of horns cast in shadow, violent shapes thrusting and scissoring along the plankboard walls. He stood frozen, watching as Karoly clucked and whispered to them, shaggy and wilful beasts that came forth eyeing him with a gaze that scrimmed back the day and revealed beneath it a hideous cove of darkness in which something tiny lay shrieking and struggling.
‘Goats?’ he whispered. ‘I … I didn’t ... you didn’t say you kept goats in here.’
‘Beauties, aren’t they? Best leave them till tomorrow. They’re a little nervy now.’
‘So I’ll have to … I mean, will they sleep all right?’
Karoly turned.
‘I mean if I’m here. If they hear me or something. I can sleep outside, I … I don’t want to disturb them.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. They’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.’ Karoly patted a few rough flanks and then led him across to the ladder. Insects whirred around the lamp as Karoly showed him the way up, and from the beams there flittered down a fine trail of particles. Dust motes, filaments of wood and straw.
‘Sylvie’s sorted you some bedding. And water. You should be fine, but if you want anything else, well, you know where to go.’
Moth took a grip on the ladder and it seemed to hold firm. He turned with his jaw set and murmured his gratitude.
Karoly motioned him upwards. ‘Sleep well, Marty,’ he whispered.
‘Goodnight,’ he answered as he climbed, remembering dimly the rungs from another climb before. A climb from terror, from a raw scuffing in the darkness. A cruel cold bleating like laughter.
On reaching the loft he looked down to see the forked heads of goats in the shadows and Karoly grinning behind the lamp. A face like an orange mask, lined with thick black wrinkles. Eyes hollow, sockets deeply pitted. Sightless. The glowing figure lifted a hand and went out the door and closed it, drawing away the light.
Turning, he trod feverishly through the tousled straw and sat in the bedding, running his hands through his hair. Tired: surely he was just tired, as his father had been. He undressed, feeling on his skin the warm night air, and lay back listening to the sounds of the barn and the night.
Chdt-chdt-dt-dt-dt came the noise from below. He clapped his ears to shut it out, his bare ribs rising and falling.
‘I’m here, father,’ he whispered to the darkness. ‘I’m here.’
~O~
In the morning the goats were gone and the barn door stood wide open. He looked down to where the wrapped glider stood upright against a wall.
Yawning, rubbing the back of his head, he let his eyes roam over the things his father had looked down at years ago. Shovels and hoes and pickaxes. A rusty ploughshare and harness, bails of rope and lengths of chain. A couple of horse collars hanging up on nails, long unused. He surveyed the covered meal bins. The empty paddock with its feed bowls and dirty straw. Here. Here in this place. Hallowed, hollow, which. He descended shakily, his dreams still strong in him.
‘Sleep well?’ said Sylvie as he entered the kitchen. She smiled, indicating the table, then continued scraping at a potato.
He sat in the way old men sit themselves and put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. Sat rubbing his face. ‘Fine, thank you,’ he croaked. ‘I … I thought it’d be cold up there, but it wasn’t at all.’
‘Karo said you were worried the goats would wake you. They didn’t bother you, did they?’
‘No, I … I said I thought I’d disturb them with my noise. Going up the ladder.’
She nodded, scraping briskly. ‘Klaus used to love them. Couldn’t take him away from them most days. He did all the feeding.’
‘… Did he?’
‘Mad about them. Said they made him laugh.’
He smiled tightly. ‘Yes, they’re nice creatures. Very intelligent, they say.’
‘Oh, yes. Especially the little ones. Always up to something. I always remember him trying to get them down off the roof.’
He watched her work. ‘I keep pigs, myself,’ he said, and coughed. ‘They’re the same. So I know what he meant. About … what he said.’
‘Pigs? Goodness, you’re so alike it’s peculiar. He told us all about his pigs. Even had names for them.’
‘His pigs? He said … is … is that right?’
She brushed something from her ragged housecoat. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh. Oh, nothing, I was …’
‘We’ve not kept pigs round here for years. We’ve got a few sheep, though. Not as many as we used to have, but we still breed them.’
‘I see. Pigs aren’t so popular here?’
‘We just keep goats and sheep.’
‘I know, I was …’
‘Karo’ll show you the sheep when you go out with him. If you’re interested?’
‘I don’t mind, I … yes, why not? Thank you. That would be nice.’
She stood watching him.
He tried to smile the way she was smiling, but his face would not allow it.
‘You’re just like him,’ she said wistfully. ‘Same eyes. Same voice, even. Soft and husky. Yours is a bit lower, though.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I am,’ he said. ‘The same.’
Then he looked away.
Later that morning she lent him some of Karoly’s clothes while she took his away for washing. Whilst she plunged away at the tub, hair up and sleeves rolled back, he kicked a ball of rags around the yard with the children. Afterwards, at their insistence, he took them to the barn so they could watch while he checked the glider over. They studied his every move, occasionally fetching him tools from the workshop their father kept behind a rusting pile of junk. He was almost finished when Karoly came to the door, calling them to eat.
‘Hear you want to see the sheep?’ he said, as Moth ran a hand along the edge of a wing.
‘Oh, I don’t mind. I’ve got a bit more to do here, so I don’t …’
‘No trouble. We’ll all go out for a walk later. Kids?’
Sylvie’s elderly parents joined them as they trekked out beyond the village’s confines and passed through a series of wilting orchards to where hectares of once-fertile fields lay smoking in the wind. They stood looking out for a long time, the grandparents muttering about the storms of recent memory and the deteriorating state of the topsoil. More ash had blown in over the previous few days and the land all around was powdered grey, the thin stands of crops that remained rustling dryly, unpromisingly in the sun.
