by Craig Nova
In the kitchen he cleaned the table and made tea, and while he sat there with a starkly fragrant cup of it in front of him, he stared at the letter, which he’d propped up against a pepper shaker. It was a blue envelope, addressed with real ink, and had Par Avion printed on it with wings on each side of the words. He opened it with a sharpened paring knife, thinking for a moment of the man he had confronted in the Combat Zone. As he reached inside the slit envelope with two fingers, he thought, You fool, you fool.
Her letter was on paper she had ripped out of a spiral notebook, which somehow made him feel a little closer to her, as though poverty or at least thriftiness constituted a universal language. She had the neatest handwriting he had ever seen, made up of perfect letters that looked as though they had been printed by a machine. He put his nose to the paper and smelled it. She hadn’t put any perfume on the letter, but it nevertheless had the fragrance of a distant place.
She said that she was writing to introduce herself. Now that the moment had come, she was at a loss. What could she say, in a letter, that would give him an idea of who she really was? And what, after all, would she like to be admired for? Don’t we want to be admired for those qualities that can’t be seen, but that exist like a fragrance? And there is a mystery here, too, she wrote, in that she was easily affected by other people, and in their presence she became someone who was a little different from when she was alone. And so, to describe herself as she would be with Kohler, actually meeting him, she was at a disadvantage, because without being with him, she was a little less certain of who she would become. Well, this was scarcely a good introduction, she wrote.
He tasted the bitter tea. He felt, too, a small, intimate pleasure in the fact that he had come enough into her life to make her think about how she would change in his presence. And, of course, he wondered if this would happen to him, too. He looked around the kitchen and tried to see if there was any small difference in himself that came from holding her letter and reading it.
After a minute, he. thought, Yes, there is. A small thrill of excitement ran through him that was like having a little trouble breathing. He was alert to the small effect that two people had on one another, in the words they spoke, which made for a private language, in the jokes and small understanding that came from a mutual pool of experience. The details were small, but the import of them was large. It was what people had. It was how they understood and loved one another. This awareness, he realized, was a gift that he had from just reading a letter from her.
She said that she lived in Moscow. She liked to go out at night along the Arbat, which was a long mall where there were restaurants and stores, although there wasn’t much to buy. There weren’t any pet stores in the Soviet era, and now, when people wanted to buy a dog, they had to find one at a street vendor. Did he like dogs? she asked. She had always wanted a dog. A black one with a shiny coat.
She wondered, too, where he lived and what it was like in Vermont. Could he tell her something about himself? What films did he like? She had learned some of her English, the “idiomatic” English, from the movies.
There was something else she wanted to mention. Russia couldn’t even take care of the women whose husbands had died in the Second World War. You saw them sitting in the subway, begging. That incapacity and the desperation that went with it were precisely what she wanted to get away from. She wanted to live beyond the gray concrete flats of Moscow.
And, she wanted Kohler to know, she wasn’t interested in just being a housewife. That was what happened to so many Russian women, no matter what the theory had been under the Soviets, may they rot wherever they are. No. She wanted a job, and she had a very good idea about what she wanted. She had always liked trains and she wanted to be a conductor. Everything about it appealed to her, the color of the uniform, navy blue with brass buttons, the hat with a shiny black visor, the black belt and the pouch that hung from it with blank tickets, and, strangely enough, she said, the thing that she thought of all the time, like a dream, was the paper punch. She liked the idea of standing there, her legs braced against the swaying of the train, with her punch in one hand and the ticket in the other, and the sound, too, the click, click, click of her work when she put holes in the ticket. She even had a small fantasy, she said, about standing on the platform between two cars, where she would empty the punch and take all those small bits of paper, like confetti, and toss them into the passing dark. They would explode there like snow. Well, she said, now I have trusted you.
She included a picture, a snapshot that showed her standing on an avenue in Moscow, and in the background Kohler saw a large building. She described the building as being an example of “Vampire Architecture,” which was the stuff that was built in the 1950s. She was thin, her thick hair blowing in the breeze, her eyes blue, her skin pale. He put the picture up against the cup of tea.
At night, in bed, he heard the coyotes yapping, their cries at once alarming and compelling, as though they were scared and yet filled with longing. From his bedroom upstairs he felt that picture, which was still down in the kitchen, pulling on him like the moon. So he went down there and sat at the table and put his head in his hands and thought, What is my favorite movie? He imagined the explosion of that star-shaped confetti as she threw it into the night. He could almost smell the diesel oil.
In town, he went into the stationery store and found a paper punch in a leather pouch, and his need for privacy about it was so great that he slipped it into his pocket and walked out without paying. At home, when he got a letter from her, or when he had a cup of tea (as though it had come from a samovar), he took the punch out and made that click, click, click. The sound was all mixed up with other small noises, like the undoing of a snap on her clothes, the click of her heels on the floor, the clasp of her handbag as she closed it, the crackle in her hair when she brushed it, the pop of static electricity from her finger in the winter when she reached for a doorknob.
He tried, too, to see clearly. He thought of the house where he had grown up, and those years after his mother had been found by the river. He had been able to survive by being careful about what he let himself feel and what he let himself remember. For instance, he had been careful not to think about the money that had been given to him by one of his mother’s boyfriends to hide in the closet and watch as she went about doing what the man wanted. Kohler remembered the claustrophobia of that closet, the tickle of the stockings that hung against his face, the sense of being unable to do anything but sit there with his eyes closed. It was as though everything about the world that he couldn’t get control of had been in that closet with him. Since then he had tried to be careful and precise. He had done what he could. Now, when he looked at the picture of the Russian woman, he thought she would help him.
He got up and went to the gun cabinet in the kitchen and took out a 6.5mm Mannlicher, an Austrian deer rifle. It was perfectly machined and engineered, the bolt having a flat tab and the magazine set up as a grooved cylinder that took each one of the brass-and-copper hulls. Open sights. He never liked the notion of a scope. Not with sights like these. He stood there, smelling the oil and feeling the weight of the thing, which he put away before going upstairs.
RUSSELL BOYD
THEY ALREADY HAD ONE BOY IN THE BACKSEAT OF the car, and the second one ran out of his house, letting the door slam shut behind him. He was about ten, a little slack-jawed and wet-lipped, and he wore glasses that made his eyes seem large and runny, like a broken egg yolk. He ran with his head down, as though trying to slam his way through an invisible wall. Zofia had already gotten out of the car and opened the back door so that the boy, Jack, could get in. Russell drove. Zofia had packed a lunch of egg salad sandwiches, which was in a basket in the trunk.
Jack climbed in next to the other boy in the backseat, and both of them seemed to exude an expectation so keen as to be physical. The other boy, Marshall, had red hair and freckles, and a habit of moving his head in time to his walking. Both of them were kids from
Zofia’s special education class.
Zofia got into the front seat, next to Russell, and said, “Okay, where are we going?”
“I know a place,” he said.
“You hear that, boys?” Zofia said, turning to the boys in the backseat, “My friend here says he knows a place to catch fish.”
In the rearview mirror, Russell looked at the two ten-year-olds. A foam cup of worms was on the backseat, next to them, and they kept looking down at it as though it were a keg of gunpowder.
“Sometimes there are fish,” he said. “I can’t promise.”
“Some fisherman,” said Zofia.
“What’s his name?” Marshall asked, gesturing toward the front seat.
“Russell,” said Zofia.
“Is Russell a teacher?” said Marshall.
“No,” she said. “Not a teacher.”
“Well, if he isn’t a teacher, what is he?” said Marshall.
“He’s just a friend,” said Zofia. “He helps people.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I’m a cop,” said Russell.
“Have you got a gun?” said Jack.
“Sure,” he said.
“Wow,” said Jack. “Wait until I tell everyone ...”
Jack looked out the window. Marshall put his mouth up against the glass and mouthed one word, “Pow!”
“Are we going to kill them?” Marshall said.
“Kill what?” said Zofia.
“The fish,” he said.
“If you want to take them home,” Russell said. “We have to kill them.”
“I want to take them home,” said Jack. “Are you going to shoot them?”
“No,” Russell said. “Maybe I’ll hit them on a rock.”
“Oh,” said Jack. He went back to staring out the window. “I’d like it better if you shot them.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Russell said.
“Pow,” Marshall said. “Pow. Pow. Pow. Blood and guts.”
“That’s enough,” said Zofia.
They drove along the river, in which, here and there, a tree trunk floated. The sky was reflected there, with big clouds showing in the water. Russell parked and they piled out of the car. Zofia carried the basket with sandwiches in clear wrap, and Russell took the fishing rods and the foam cup with the peat inside.
“Have you caught a fish?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Russell said. “I have.”
“Was it nice?”
Zofia stopped and turned back now.
“Was it nice?” she repeated.
“Yes. It was very nice,” he said.
“How do you know you’ve got one?” Jack said.
“It tugs,” Russell said.
They went farther up, to a sandy section where another brook ran in. The fish in the main stream would like it here because they could hang back in the slow water and wait for food to come to them out of the feeder. The boys and Russell sat down with Zofia while Russell got the monofilament out of the reel and through the eyes of the rod and tied on a hook. He used a clinch knot, and the boys watched as he wrapped the monofilament around itself and pulled it tight so it looked like a little noose.
It hadn’t seemed like a long way to walk when they started, but now Russell realized they were pretty far from the main road. He looked around at the isolation of the place, and for a moment he was glad that they had gotten away from the traffic, the noise, the greasy exhaust of passing cars. He finished the first hook as he felt a shadow sweep over him and the boys. He looked up at the bank above the stream, where the sun came through the trees.
A man stood on the bank, his arms crossed, his shape like a target cut out of black metal. His lack of motion seemed like an accusation that ran down the bank like a shadow. Russell went back to looping the monofilament around itself five times, as he always did, but as he felt the slick leader under his fingers, he found himself glancing up the bank.
“Who’s that?” said Zofia.
“I don’t know,” said Russell. He pulled the knot tight.
The man started walking down the bank, his feet making a shushing sound in the leaves, and in each gesture, in each movement, he was able to convey disapproval and something else, too, which Russell tried to name, but couldn’t. He was surprised by this since he had had a lot of experience with people who were at once vague and still dangerous. The man came out of the sun, ominous in his blunt locomotion, in his directness that verged on a state of mind carefully subdued, but not fully controlled.
“My name is Kohler,” said the man.
“My name is Boyd,” said Russell.
“What are you doing here?” said Kohler.
“I thought we’d catch a couple of fish,” said Russell.
Kohler put his head back, as though he had smelled something he didn’t like.
“This land is mine,” said Kohler. “I pay the taxes on it.”
“It’s not posted,” said Russell.
“Come on, boys,” said Zofia. “Let’s go over by the water.”
Jack stood absolutely still, as though this were a way of being invisible. Kohler stared at the boy for a moment, seemingly recognizing something in the way the boy refused to move: the memory, if there was anything specific, didn’t seem to do him any good.
“They tear down my signs,” said Kohler.
He went along the bank until he came to a ring of stones that someone had used to make a fire, and in the middle, in the ashes, Kohler reached down and picked up a piece of paper, the edges of it burned. He held it up like an accusation.
“See,” he said. “Here. They use my signs to start fires to cook the fish they catch.”
He held out the piece of paper, which could have been anything, a piece of a donut box or the packaging of an ice cream bar. Russell looked at it and then at Kohler.
“I’m sorry we bothered you,” said Russell. “We had no intention of doing that.”
“Show him your gun,” said Marshall.
“What?” said Kohler.
“I haven’t got a gun,” said Russell.
“You said you had a gun,” said Marshall.
“Come on, boys,” said Zofia.
“I’d like to ask for your permission to fish for an hour,” said Russell. “Is that all right?”
Kohler made that same backward jerk of his head, as though the wind had brought him something else he didn’t like. Then he looked around, at the two boys and Zofia. He didn’t say anything. Instead he turned and went along the river, looking here and there for the signs that had been ripped down. Then he started to climb the bank.
“It’ll be all right,” said Russell.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Zofia.
Kohler stopped at the top of the bank and turned. He crossed his arms again, his shape perfectly centered in the sun so that he stood in an umbra of platinum light. He looked at the four of them, and in particular he lingered over the boys. It was as though he hadn’t seen a child for a long time. Then he started moving along the bank, back and forth, his entire gait feral and loping. He went about forty yards and was about to turn into the woods, but stopped, drawn back to the four people who stood by the side of the stream. His sudden halt, his intense considering of the circumstances here, his brooding in the sunlight changed the sound down by the stream. Not louder, exactly, but more silvery, more as though it were being played through a tinny loudspeaker. The worms writhed like snakes, and Russell hooked them under the yellowish band in the middle of each one.
“Look,” said Russell to Zofia, “I asked for his permission. We’ll just fish for a little and then go.”
The boys and Russell moved along the stream until they came to a pool, where they threw the worms in and just like that, bang, Jack caught an ugly fish, a bass or something Russell had never seen before, not a trout, but a fish with odd-looking scales that were colored like an oil slick. The boy pulled it onto the bank and they all stood there staring at it. Russell glanced up the bank. He couldn�
�t see anyone there.
“Do you want to keep it?” Russell asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Okay,” Russell said, and killed the fish. “Well, let’s go catch another one.”
“See,” Zofia said. “I told you Russell knew where there were fish.”
It took a little while but they caught a fish for Marshall, a rainbow trout this time, heavy in the shoulders, fat with green coloring on the back in which there were black spots. A streak of pink on the side. Marshall looked at it and trembled, hands outstretched, wanting to touch it but afraid to do so, too. A long, spreading stain ran down from the crotch of his blue jeans into each leg. All of them stood in the warm smell of urine. Then he looked up at Russell with his face compressed, as though it were drawn on a sponge and someone had crumpled it up.
Russell took his hand, while with the other he held the fish.
“Sorry,” said Marshall. “I’m sorry.”
He said this through his crying. But he still wanted the fish, which he tried to grasp even though his crying made him jab at it with both hands.
“Please don’t be mad,” said Marshall.
Kohler was back at the top of the bank, arms crossed, still considering the people who were on his land. His stance, with the sun behind him, seemed as motionless as a statue, and as utterly impervious. He seemed to stand there like a post that had been driven into the ground, and it was this unyielding quality, the frank, unnecessary insistence that left Russell looking from the child who had wet his pants, back up the bank at the man whose land this was. Marshall went on crying for a moment, and this repeated and gasping sound had an effect on Kohler. He was almost vibrant, like a bird dog that was pointing a bird. Then he raised one arm in half a gesture, as though compelled to make a sign, but seemed to realize halfway through it that no one would understand anyway. His passionate attraction to the sound of the crying boy appeared to color the shadow that fell from the bank in a long, broken pattern, like a carpet going down a flight of stairs.
