Famished Lover

by Alan Cumyn

  When I am finished I turn to fix myself up. The farmer’s wife is staring at me, her fat arms full of a tray laden with bread and cheese and a mug of milk so warm from the cow it shimmers in the cold air. She says something to me in German and I nod at her dumbly. She motions to the door of the barn, then backs up to let me pass. I enter once again and sit on a wooden rail. It takes all my will to not throw myself at the glorious food.

  “Are you friends of Henrike’s?” I ask slowly, hoping she will comprehend. She says something back in German and I struggle to find words. Two years in the country and what can I produce?

  “Danke,” I say.

  Fifteen

  I shook his hand, making sure not to cripple him, but his chin wagged a little so I let go immediately and sank into the solid oak chair on the customer side of his desk.

  “I was so sorry to hear,” he said. “What a tragedy. What an awful, awful thing.” He straightened his tie and so I straightened mine. And he started shuffling through the file dispiritedly.

  “It was the wiring,” I blabbered. He’d see it all in his file anyway. “I did everything myself on that house, but I’d no experience with wiring and must have crossed something somewhere. I’ll get someone qualified next time, of course. And no one was hurt. That’s the wonder. It’s only money.” I smiled at him and he looked up from the papers finally, his pale eyes reflecting dull disbelief at the naivety of such a statement.

  “The fire was entirely your own fault, and you had no insurance,” he said.

  “No, unfortunately I hadn’t gotten around to that.”

  He stared bleakly at me, then returned to the file.

  “I’m good for it,” I said. “The full amount. I’m gainfully employed, this is only a small setback. It means I’ll be a few more years repaying you. Which is a good thing in your business, isn’t it?”

  He tapped his pencil on the blotter pad and with his left hand massaged his eyes behind his glasses.

  “The only collateral you have, Mr. Crome, is the deed to the land.”

  “Oh yes, that, and I have a wife and child. I’ll gladly give them up to you and the bank trustees if I ever miss a payment!”

  His gaze was withering.

  “Listen,” I said, leaning in, trying to burn my eyes right back into his. “You know I’m good for it. I fought, killed and starved for my country. I built that house with my own hands, and by God I will rebuild it better than it was. And I will work to my dying day to fatten your bloody profits. There’s nothing for you to decide here. Sign the form right down there.” I pointed to the box where I knew his name was supposed to go.

  A minute of hard silence passed. I kept leaning in. He stayed looking at his papers.

  “Mr. Crome, you’re asking for an extension of your loan for an extra fourteen hundred dollars when the original deed values the land at seven hundred and eighty-five dollars. I doubt we would even get that if we tried to sell. Property prices have been so depressed in the area in recent years —”

  I slammed my fist on his solid, respectable desk. “What kind of man are you?”

  He was hardly rattled. He took off his glasses, ran a hand through his thinning hair and, with a quiet anger, studied the rest of my file. “I did take note of your war record, Mr. Crome. It seems to me you were barely in it for a few months before you were captured. So you were safe behind the lines most of the time. I was at Passchendaele, you see, while you were probably engaged in amateur theatricals with other hapless sorts.”

  I’m not sure what kept my fist from smashing his fleshy face.

  “Anyway,” he went on, the words maddeningly clipped and careful, “That has no relevance now. There is a science of financial investment, and your fundamentals are poor at the moment. This can hardly surprise you. The original mortgage, of course, remains in effect, and I trust that you do not anticipate any difficulties in continuing to meet the conditions of that agreement?”

  I waited for some sort of divinely inspired wind to hammer him out of his comfortable seat, but he remained untouched and unperturbed, his ink-stained fingers flexing slightly as I stared at his hard hands.

  “What did he say?” Lillian asked.

  She was in the spare room at Maisie Campbell’s house, where we were all staying now. The farmhouse was a lot like all the others in the area — rundown and snow-covered at the porch, with thick-furred dogs lying silently outside until the approach of a stranger sent them into barking fits. The farmhouse roof sagged in the middle, and it leaked in the summer rains, I imagined. Our room, in the back by the kitchen, looked as if it had last been papered in the previous century, but we were warm at least and eating regular meals.

  I sat myself down on the corner of the bed and tried to shake the cold out of my hands.

  “He said — no.”

  Lillian crumpled in front of me, her face set in a wince of pain as if quick-frozen and about to break.

  Michael was holding himself upright against the bed, setting an empty can on the edge and then knocking it off and tottering after it.

  Lillian looked at me with fearful eyes. She had barely slept in the days since the fire but lay awake or else got up and kept perpetual watch over the child.

  I stood to take her in my arms. “It’ll be all right.” She remained clenched and wooden and pushed me away, breathing heavily now.

  “But what are we going to do, Ramsay?” she cried — almost a moan of despair. She turned to the wall. “We have no money. The house is gone! They’re going to take the land just like they got all of Papa’s, and what if you lose your job again? Where will we go? Maisie has no money either. We’re eating what she put aside for the winter for herself. It’s too much for her even to be looking after my father.”

  Michael burst into tears at his mother’s tone and the can fell again.

  “Shut up! Shut up!” she screamed at him, and he wailed louder.

  “Lillian — calm down,” I said and reached for her. She rushed past me in a fury, then picked up Michael and shook him till his head wobbled like a blur. I struck her arm then and grabbed the child and held him still into the flat of my shoulder. Then Maisie Campbell appeared in the bedroom doorway and looked at us all with large, alarmed eyes.

  “Things might seem bad now, but —”

  “I can’t live like this!” Lillian pounded her fists against the bed frame as if determined to cripple herself. “You won’t take church charity and you won’t take any of your brother’s money and —”

  “Stop it! Stop it!” I said, and reached to try to restrain one arm at least without letting go of the boy. She whirled on us both then and pushed us back until we thudded into the wall and a small, framed picture fell onto the floor.

  “Oh dear!” Maisie Campbell said. She stepped one small stride into the room but then halted, her right hand quivering in front of her face.

  The dogs started barking outside.

  Lillian shrank to the floor, her hands over her head as if expecting to be beaten by the world. She was sobbing now, her breathing half choked, and she seemed to be trying to wedge herself under the bed as if to hide. Michael said, “Mummy! Mummy!” and reached his hands out towards her.

  I didn’t know whether to approach her or keep the child away.

  Lillian’s father appeared now at the door, useless and silent.

  “We can’t just fold at the first breath of bad luck,” I said. What followed then was not words so much as a howl of pain, a scream from within that seemed terrible enough to tremble the walls and set the air to bleeding.

  I went out later that evening with the child wrapped in thick clothing. Maisie and Mr. McGillis saw Lillian to bed. It had snowed in the last few hours, and the first job was taking an old broom and brushing off the section of the south wall and roof that had collapsed. The footing was unsafe and I didn’t want the boy to get hurt, so he tottered off to the side to play with scraps of wood. It was too cold, really, but I didn’t want to leave him with Lillian for the mo
ment, either. I was afraid of what she might do in her despair.

  When I had a good section dusted off and had tested and trod about, I took out the hammer and screwdriver I’d stuffed inside my coat. Then I brought the boy over and set him up to watch what I was doing.

  “We’re going to be doctors, all right? Brain surgeons. We insert our scalpels like this, see” — I put the blade of the screwdriver under the frozen shingle closest to hand. “Then we take a surgical mallet like so and tap gently. We don’t want to kill the patient, understand?” I knocked the screwdriver under the shingle and lifted slightly on the left side, then the right, until the whole thing started to come up.

  “How many nails did we put in each shingle?” I asked him.

  He seemed to be trying to remember.

  “That’s right, just one, centered near the top, and we want it back. We want the nail, we want the shingle unbroken, so we lift like this.” I continued easing the screwdriver under first one side and then the other. “How long is the nail, do you recall?”

  Again he seemed to be trying to remember.

  “That’s right. It’s short and stubby. There it is.” I pulled out the shingle and held it up for him. It hadn’t torn at all. I extracted the nail and dropped it in a glass jar. “We’ll pile the shingles right here on the ground. Do you remember how neat they were when they first arrived on the big truck? That’s how we want them now.”

  The boy nodded seriously.

  The moon was a dull, cold smudge of light in the purple sky, and the hills were lost in shadows. My cheeks and eyes were smarting at the cold. Michael wouldn’t last long, even happy and bundled as he was.

  I moved more quickly now, prying up the shingles one by one, saving the squat little nails, taking apart these remnants of the house as deliberately as I’d originally put them together. I worked at it for some time until Michael started to fidget and tremble in the cold, so I picked him up and rubbed him vigorously.

  “Let’s make a quick tour of inspection.”

  I carried him high on my shoulders around to the north side of the wreck. More than half the house was still upright, but most of the timbers were blackened to some extent. The furniture that was reachable and still good had been moved down the road to Maisie Campbell’s house. What remained looked ghostly in the gloom.

  We returned to the south section and I started in again. The glass jar tinkled with the sound of nails, and the pile of reclaimed shingles grew steadily behind us as the bald patch on the downed section of former roof began to spread. Cold as my fingers were, with the work and movement I began to feel the warm spread of sweat under my clothes.

  It was a relief to give my body to mechanical movement, to throw myself into labour without an ounce of extra thought.

  Michael started playing with the jar. “Don’t spill that now,” I said. He tipped it over anyway and I had to keep myself from yelling at him. He started crying for his mother, so I picked him up and held him close against my warm neck and face.

  “Don’t mind your mother,” I said. “She’s going to weep and rail and run off to church. That’s her way through this. We’ll just remove these shingles, for a start, and every one will be a little victory. Every board we save, every nail we straighten and use again, that’s another victory. That’s how you win the war. You refuse to yield no matter what loss you’ve sustained. Are you stumbling like a fool? Then stumble forward, at least. If she wants to cry all night that’s her affair. I’m going to work on the house.”

  “Boom!” Michael said and pushed the jar over again. He fell backwards at the same time and began to laugh.

  “Don’t stick yourself in the bum, little boy!” I said as he rolled around on the stubby nails. I picked him up and brushed several off his coat and padded pants while he gurgled uproariously. “That’s the last thing I want — to bring you home all bleeding and full of tetanus!”

  “Tit-mouse!” he exclaimed and kicked at me until I had to put him down. Then he tottered to the jar again and righted it and pushed it over even though it was empty. “Tit-mouse! Tit-mouse!” he said again and again.

  I wait until the darkness deepens. If I were a decent man of any description, I think, I would leave a note for Henrike — just a simple thanks. But I have no pencil or paper, not even Margaret’s letters, which I carry only in my head.

  I step out alone. I’ve managed to keep from devouring all the cheese, a hunk of which now rides in the pocket of my German clothing. My boots slip and slurp in the mud. The way westward is over a wall and across a pasture and then across a dirt road and more field. Soon enough I reach some woods. It’s a relief to be under cover, but very quickly I lose my certainty about direction. The night is not black so much as thousands of shades of grey, from sombre trunks and cavernous shadows to silvery rocks and pale, dying leaves.

  I nearly stumble into a creek, but I recover and drink from water so cold my stomach convulses in shock before finally settling down. The border is within a few days’ journey, I’m certain, even for a weakling like me, but if I stumble about in circles I’ll never make it. Yet if I remain still and exposed at night I might freeze, I’m so thin and underfed. I have to keep walking even if it’s in the wrong direction.

  I expect to hear hounds at any moment, soldiers beating the bushes to flush me out. But the woods are as still as they would have been eons ago, before any men, any war, could disturb the silence.

  By morning I reach the forest edge and am too tired and fearful to go further. I lie in a depression, cover myself with branches and dead leaves and look out at a sleepy roadside that borders more fields. I allow myself to slowly suck on a small morsel of cheese.

  And the hours pass.

  The cold is not extraordinary, just relentless — the slow, inevitable draining of heat and strength. My body feels close to subsiding into the rotted leaves and sticks and clods of earth surrounding me. I curl myself in a ball, tight as in a womb. If I stay this way till dark then I might well remain here forever.

  Painfully I crack the stiffness from my limbs and creep along the edge of the road. My brain is working so badly it takes ages to realize that the sun has risen far behind my back and that somehow, through the night, I’ve been heading in the right direction after all.

  Hardly anyone has come along that road, but I am too afraid to expose myself, so I follow the edge until I reach a small bridge and then I duck under it and along the extension of the wood. Even that small bit of walking helps my blood and limbs, and for much of the afternoon I sleep under cover by the creek — it must have been the one I stumbled upon in the night in the woods. The water is brown and sluggish, so I drink again only sparingly. By nightfall the last of the cheese has been sucked away.

  I must be close. In darkness I brazenly cross fields and scramble along roadways. Suddenly a convoy of four trucks rumbles past and I barely have time to duck under a fence. The border must be close. But my chances of being caught are rising.

  If I am hauled back to solitary, I will not survive.

  Morning takes me by surprise. I’ve made such good progress, but where is the border? I leave the wood behind and pick my way warily along the road for at least half an hour. Then I stumble onto a farm and am immediately driven off the property by a barking dog. Further along I slip into a storage shed, but all the farm dogs for twenty miles, it seems, are baying now. In the shed is a sack of not-so-badly rotting turnips and potatoes. I use a stick to scrape off what skin I can and then suck quietly in the shadows, wedged behind an old carriage and a rusted plough, with an oily tarp pulled over me. Perhaps I have a good chance of remaining hidden. But I am so tired it doesn’t seem to matter. I sleep sound as any baby wrapped warm in soft blankets.

  Late afternoon, it must be, I am startled awake and see an old man standing in the doorway. At first I think he too is an escaped fannigan. His face is speckled with grey whiskers and his eyes appear hollowed in the sunken caverns of his skull. I don’t know if he can see me in the gloom. B
ut he doesn’t look anywhere else. He starts to move away from the door, but his eyes stay on me. His right hand finds a rusted pitchfork hanging from a nail on the wall. He doesn’t brandish it at me, but simply holds it as if he is going off to do some work.

  He says something in German and spits on the ground, then leaves.

  When I burst through the door a group is watching — the old man, some women, a pair of boys standing glumly. I run to a crumbling stone fence and then over and huddle low as I scramble along the opposite side. I’m looking for anywhere to hide — a hole, a hedge. There are other fences and then fields so open. They must see me! So I run hard and surprise myself with the leather of my lungs, the strength still left in my legs.

  No dogs are chasing, no bullets sing past my head.

  At last more woods! I allow myself to stop and gasp against the trunk of a tree that is hollowed to the world but still standing. It’s an extraordinary thing to touch the iron in the depth of your own bones, to feel the last, hard fires fighting to stay lit. I ache in every pore but know without a doubt I will continue. Like a beast in a trap I will chew my own leg off and bleed a dozen miles rather than give in.

  But they do not come for me.

  In a few more hours darkness falls again, and I walk in a fit of resolution. They do not come and they will not get me. I stand straight and hard and almost wish for them to try — to bring on the dogs and guards. So this is what it feels like to be invulnerable: the blood sings through my veins, I can unearth trees and stride the rivers of the globe.

  And Margaret will have me despite Boulton, despite convention, despite the world. It is almost a certainty.

  Yet by morning very little of that giant remains. A thick fog shrouds the land, and I am delirious. I can’t stop but won’t last another day. I can hardly see twenty feet in front of me and so have no idea of direction. I might well be bumbling back to Münster. But stilling my feet would mean death.