Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  Now.

  He bit down hard.

  He made his way to the hallway, aiming for the kitchen—and faster than expected, he was next to the fridge, his hand in the assorted recycling.

  From nowhere there was light.

  Jesus!

  It was white and heavy and belted him across the eyes like a football hooligan. He brought his hands up as it was turned off again, but still it throbbed and stung. In the new drowning dark was Tommy; he was standing in just his underpants, with Hector at his flank. The cat was a shifting shadow of himself, and eyes in shock from the light.

  “Clay?” Tommy wandered toward the back door. His words drooled, midsleep and walk. “Kil’ nee’ s’ fee’…” With a second attempt, he nearly cracked the full code of his sentence. “Achilles knees some feed.”

  Clay took his arms and turned him, watching as he ambled the hall. He even bent down and gave the cat a small pat, triggering a few short purrs. For a moment, he expected Rosy to bark, or Achilles to let loose a bray, but they didn’t, and he reached for the crate.

  Nothing.

  Even when he gambled and opened the fridge—just a crack, to borrow some light—he couldn’t find a single scrap of the murderous paper. What a shock to walk back in then, and find it patched up, with sticky tape, on his bed.

  Needless to say, Penelope never went to the eisteddfod; she never rehearsed, or walked the city of aqua rooftops. She remained at the Westbahnhof, on the platform, sitting on her suitcase, elbows on her knees. With her crisp, clean fingers, she played with the buttons on her blue woolen dress, and traded her return ticket for an earlier one home.

  Hours later, when the train was set to leave, she rose to her feet. A conductor leaned from the train’s doorway, unshaven, overweight.

  “Kommst einer?”

  Penelope only looked at him, stricken with indecision, twirling one of those buttons, center-chest. Her suitcase stood in front of her. An anchor at her feet.

  “Nah, kommst du jetzt, oder net?” There was something charming in his dishevelment. “You coming now or not?” Even his teeth were loosely stowed. He leaned like a schoolboy, and he didn’t blow a whistle but called to the front of the train. “Geht schon!”

  And he smiled.

  He smiled his jangle-toothed grin, and Penelope held the button now, in front of her, in the palm of her right hand.

  * * *

  —

  As forecast by her father, though, she made it.

  She was all suitcase and vulnerability, but exactly as Waldek predicted, she got through.

  There was a camp in a place called Traiskirchen, which was an army of bunk beds and a wine-dark toilet floor. The first problem was finding the end of the line. Lucky she’d had plenty of practice; Eastern Europe had taught her to queue. The second problem, once inside, was negotiating the ankle-deep pool of refuse at your feet. Some watery wilderness, all right, it was a test of nerve and stamina.

  People in line were blank-faced and tired, and each feared many outcomes, but one of them most of all. They could not, under any circumstances, be sent home.

  When she’d arrived, she was questioned.

  She was fingerprinted, she was interpreted.

  Austria was essentially a holding ground, and in most cases, it took twenty-four hours to be processed and sent to a hostel. There you would wait for approval from another embassy.

  Her father had thought of many things, but not that Friday was a bad day to arrive. It meant you had to last out the weekend at the camp, which was no picnic, but last it out she did. After all, in her own words, it wasn’t hell on earth, either. Not compared to what other people endured. The worst was the not-knowing.

  * * *

  —

  The next week she took another train, this time to the mountains, to another set of bunk beds, and Penelope started the wait.

  I’m sure in nine months there, we could dig around, but what do I really know about that time? What did Clay know? As it turned out, Penelope’s life in the mountains was one of the few periods she didn’t talk about as much—but when she did, she spoke simply and beautifully, and I guess what you’d also call mournfully. As she explained it once to Clay:

  There was one short phone call, and one old song.

  A few small parts to tell the whole.

  * * *

  —

  In the first couple of days, she’d noticed other people making calls from an old phone booth by the roadside. It stood like a foreign object, by the vastness of forest and sky.

  It was obvious the people were calling home; there were tears in their eyes, and often, after they’d hung up, they struggled to walk back out.

  Penelope, like many, hesitated.

  She wondered if it was safe.

  There’d been enough rumors of government phone taps to make anyone second-guess. As I mentioned earlier, it was people left behind who’d be punished.

  What most of them had on their side was that they’d left for supposedly longer time frames. Why wouldn’t they call home in their weeks away? For Penelope, it wasn’t that simple—she should have already returned. Would a call put her father at risk? Luckily, she’d loitered long enough for a man named Tadek to find her. He had a voice, and body, like the trees.

  “You want to call home, young girl?”

  At her reluctance to speak, he went and touched the phone booth, to prove it couldn’t hurt her. “Is anyone from your family in the movement?” And then, even more specific. “Solidarność?”

  “Nie.”

  “Have you ever bent the wrong nose out of shape, if you know what I mean?”

  Now she shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so.” He grinned, like he’d borrowed the teeth from the Austrian train conductor. “Okay, then, let me ask. It’s your parents?”

  “My father.”

  “And you’re sure now. You’ve caused no trouble?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And him?”

  “He’s an old tram driver,” she said, “who barely speaks.”

  “Oh, well then, I think you’re okay. The Party’s in such a pitiful state right now, I don’t think they’ve got time to worry about an old Tramwaj man. It’s hard to be sure of anything these days, but of that, I’m totally certain.”

  It was then, she’d said, that Tadek looked out through the pine trees, and corridors of light. “Was he a good father to you?”

  “Tak.”

  “And he’ll be glad to hear from you?”

  “Tak.”

  “Well, here.” He turned and threw her some change. “Say hi from me,” and walked away.

  * * *

  —

  Of the phone conversation, there were ten small words, in translation:

  “Hello?”

  Nothing. Just static.

  He repeated it.

  That voice, like cement, like stone.

  “Hello?”

  She was lost in pine and mountainside, her knuckles bony white.

  “Mistake Maker?” he asked. “Mistake Maker, is that you?”

  And she imagined him in the kitchen, and the shelf of thirty-nine books—her head now against the window, somehow saying “Yes.”

  Then hung the phone up lightly.

  The mountains all gone sideways.

  * * *

  —

  Now to the song, a few months in, in the evening, in the guesthouse.

  The moon against the glass.

  The date was her father’s birthday.

  In the East, name days were given more significance back then, but out of country, you felt things harder. She’d let it slip, to one of the women.

  They had no wódka, but there was always plenty of schnapps in that place, and a tray came out with glasse
s. When they were handed around, the owner held his own glass up, and looked at Penelope, in the parlor. A good dozen or so people were there, and when she heard the words, in her own language, “To your father,” she looked up, she smiled, and it was all to keep herself together.

  At that moment, another man stood.

  Of course it was Tadek, and he started, very sadly—and beautifully—to sing:

  “Sto lat, sto lat,

  niech żyje, żyje nam.

  Sto lat, sto lat,

  niech żyje, żyje nam…”

  It was all too much now.

  Since the early days of her phone call it had been storing up, and she couldn’t hold it any longer. Penelope stood and sang, but inside her, something collapsed. She sang her country’s song of luck and companionship and wondered how she’d left him. The words came in great surges of love and self-loathing, and when it was over, many of them wept. They wondered if they’d see their families again; should they be grateful or condemned? The only thing they knew for sure was that now it was out of their hands. It was begun and had to end.

  As a side note, the opening words from that song are these:

  A hundred years, a hundred years,

  May you live one hundred years.

  As she sang, she knew, he wouldn’t.

  She would never see him again.

  * * *

  —

  For Penelope, it was hard not to relive that feeling, and become it, in all her remaining time there, especially living in such ease.

  Everyone treated her so well.

  They liked her—her quietness, her polite uncertainty—and they referred to her now as the Birthday Girl, mostly behind her, and at the sides. Every now and then, the men, especially, would say it directly, in various tongues, when she cleaned up, or did the laundry, or tightened the shoelace of a child.

  “Dzięki, Jubilatko.”

  “Vielen Dank, Geburtstagskind.”

  “Děkuji, Oslavenkyně…”

  Thank you, Birthday Girl.

  A smile would struggle through her.

  * * *

  —

  In between, all there was was the waiting, and recollections of her father. Sometimes it felt like she was getting by in spite of him, but that was in her darker moments, when the rain slew in from the mountains.

  On those days especially, she worked longer, and worked hard.

  She cooked and cleaned.

  She washed dishes and changed the sheets.

  In the end it was nine months of regretful hope and no piano, when finally a country agreed. She sat at the side of her bunk bed, the envelope in her hand. She looked out the window at nothing; the glass was white and smoky.

  Even now, I can’t help seeing her back there, in those alps I often imagine. I see her as she was, or as Clay had once described her:

  The future Penny Dunbar, joining one more line, to fly far and south, and somewhat straight, to the sun.

  Penelope crossed worlds, and Clay crossed the fence:

  He walked the small laneway between The Surrounds and home, where the palings were ghostly grey. There was a wooden gate there these days, for Achilles—for Tommy to walk him out, and in. In the backyard, he was grateful he hadn’t had to climb over; morning-afters were obviously pretty awful, and the next few seconds would be telling:

  First, he took on the slalom course of mule apples.

  Then the labyrinth of dog shit.

  Both culprits were still asleep; one was upright on the grass, the other sprawled out, on a porch-lit couch.

  Inside, the kitchen smelt like coffee—I’d beaten him to it, and clearly in more ways than one.

  Now it was Clay’s turn to face my music.

  * * *

  —

  As I did every now and again, I was eating breakfast out the front.

  I stood at the wooden railing with cooked sky and cold cornflakes. The streetlights were still on. Rory’s letterbox lay on the lawn.

  When Clay opened the front door and stood a few steps behind me, I went on finishing my cereal. “Another letterbox, for Christ’s sake.”

  Clay smiled, a nervous one, I felt it, but that was the extent of my niceties. After all, the address was in his pocket; I’d taped it my very best.

  Initially, I didn’t move.

  “So, you got it?”

  Again, I felt him nod.

  “I thought I’d save you the trouble of fishing it out yourself.” My spoon clanked in the bowl. A few drops of milk jumped the rail. “It’s in your pocket?”

  Another nod.

  “You’re thinking of going?”

  Clay watched me.

  He watched but said nothing while I tried, as I’d often done lately, to somehow understand him. In looks, he and I were most alike, but I was still a good half foot taller. My hair was thicker, and my body too, but it was only the extra age. While I worked on hands and knees on carpet, floorboards, and concrete each day, Clay went to school and ran his miles. He survived his regime of sit-ups and push-ups; he was tense, and tight-looking—lean. I guess you could say we were different versions of the same thing, most notably in the eyes. Both of us had fire in our eyes, and it didn’t matter what color they were, because the fire in them was everything.

  In the middle of it all, I smiled, but hurtly.

  I shook my head.

  The streetlights flickered off then.

  I’d asked what had to be asked.

  Now to say what needed to be said.

  * * *

  —

  The sky widened, the house tightened.

  I didn’t move close, or aim up, or intimidate.

  All I said was “Clay.”

  Later on, he told me that that was what unnerved him:

  The peace of it.

  In the midst of that strangely dulcet tone, something in him tolled. It lowered itself, steadily, from throat to sternum to lungs, and full morning hit the street. On the other side, the houses stood ragged and quiet, like a gang of violent mates, just waiting for my word. We knew I didn’t need them.

  After a moment or two, I took my elbows off the rail and placed a look down on his shoulder. I could ask him about school. What about school? But both of us knew the answer. Who was I, of all the people, to tell him to stay in school? I’d left before the end myself.

  “You can leave,” I said. “I can’t stop you, but—”

  The rest was broken off.

  A sentence as difficult as the job itself—and that, in the end, was the truth of it. There was leaving and coming back. There was crime, then facing punishment.

  Returning and being let in:

  Two very different things.

  He could walk away from Archer Street, and trade his brothers for the man who left us—but coming home meant getting through me.

  “Big decision,” I said, more directly, then, in his face and not by his shoulder. “And, I guess, one hell of a consequence.”

  And Clay looked, first in my face, then away.

  He recognized my toil-hardened wrists, my arms, my hands, the jugular in my neck. He noticed the reluctance in my knuckles, but the will to see it through. Most importantly, though, he saw that fire in each eye, pleading as they were:

  Don’t leave us for him, Clay.

  Don’t leave us.

  But if you do.

  * * *

  —

  The thing is, these days I’m convinced.

  Clay knew he had to do it.

  He just wasn’t sure if he could.

  When I walked back inside, he stayed awhile, stranded on the porch, with the fullest weight of the choice. After all, what I’d promised was something I couldn’t even bring myself to say. What was the worst thing you could do to a Dunbar boy, anyw
ay?

  For Clay, that much was clear, and there were reasons to leave, and reasons to stay, and all of it was the same. He was caught somewhere, in the current—of destroying everything he had, to become all he needed to be—and the past, ever closer, upon him.

  He stood watching the mouth of Archer Street.

  And the tide comes in with victory, and struggle along the way—for likely the fairest thing to say about Penelope’s entrance to life in the city was that she was constantly torn and astonished.

  There was great gratitude to this place for taking her.

  Then fear of its newness, and heat.

  And then, of course, the guilt:

  A hundred years he’d never live.

  So selfish, so callous to leave.

  * * *

  —

  It was November when she got here, and although not normally the hottest time of year, occasionally it produced a week or two of brutal reminders that summer was drawing near. If ever there was a time not to arrive, it was one like this—a binary weather chart of that heat, humidity, heat. Even the locals seemed to be suffering.

  On top of that, she was obviously an intruder; her room at the camp clearly belonged to a squadron of cockroaches, and God almighty, she’d never seen such terrifying things. So big! Not to mention relentless. They fought her each day for territory.

  Not surprisingly, the first thing she bought here was a can of Baygon.

  Then a pair of flip-flops.

  If nothing else, she understood you could go a long way in this country with crap footwear and a few good cans of fly spray. It helped her get by. Days. Nights. Weeks.

  * * *

  —

  The camp itself was buried deep in the unruly rug of suburbs.

  She was taught there, from the absolute basics, to speak the language. Sometimes she walked the streets outside, and the rows of peculiar houses—each one set in the middle of giant, lawn-mowered lawns. Those houses seemed made of paper.