XVI
I waited until Estyll and I had gone, and then I too went out into the day. I crossed to the other side of the Channel on the Yesterday Bridge, and returned on the Today Bridge.
It was the day I had arrived in the Park; the day before I was due in Geneva, the day before Estyll and I were finally to meet. Outside in the yard, my driver would be waiting with the carriage.
Before I left I went for one more walk along the path on this side of the Channel, and headed for the bench where I knew Estyll would be waiting. I saw her through the crowd: she was sitting quietly and watching the people, dressed neatly in her white skirt and dark blue blouse.
I looked across the Channel. The sunshine was bright and hazy, and there was a light breeze. I saw the promenading holidaymakers on the other side: the bright clothes, the festive hats, the balloons and the children. But not everyone blended with the crowd.
There was a rhododendron bush beside the Channel, and behind it I could just see the figure of a youth. He was staring across at Estyll. Behind him, walking along deep in thought, was another Mykle. Further along the bank, well away from the bridges, another Mykle sat in long grass overlooking the Channel. I waited, and before long another Mykle appeared. A few minutes later yet another Mykle appeared, and took up position behind one of the trees over there. I did not doubt that there were many more, each oblivious of all the others, each preoccupied with the girl who sat on the bench a few feet from me.
I wondered which one it was I had spoken to; none of them, perhaps, or all of them?
I turned towards Estyll at last, and approached her. I went to stand directly in front of her, and removed my hat.
“Good afternoon, miss,” I said. “Pardon me for speaking to you like this.”
She looked up at me in sharp surprise; I had interrupted her reverie. She shook her head, but turned on a polite smile for me.
“Do you happen to know who I am?” I said.
“Of course, sir. You’re very famous.” She bit her lower lip, as if wishing she had not answered so promptly. “What I meant was—”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you trust my word?” She frowned then, and it was a consciously pretty gesture; a child borrowing a mannerism from an adult. “It will happen tomorrow,” I said.
“Sir?”
“Tomorrow,” I said again, trying to find some subtler way of putting it. “What you’re waiting for…it will happen then.”
“How do you—?”
“Never mind that,” I said. I stood erect, running my fingers across the brim of my hat. In spite of everything, she had the uncanny facility of making me nervous and awkward. “I’ll be across there tomorrow,” I said, pointing to the other side of the Channel. “Look out for me. I’ll be wearing these clothes, this hat. You’ll see me wave to you. That’s when it will be.”
She said nothing to this, but looked steadily at me. I was standing against the light, and she could not have been able to see me properly. But I could see her with the sun on her face, and with light dancing in her hair and her eyes.
She was so young, so pretty. It was like pain to be near her.
“Wear your prettiest dress,” I said. “Do you understand?”
She still did not answer, but I saw her eyes flicker towards the far side of the Channel. There was a pinkness in her cheeks, and I knew I had said too much. I wished I had not spoken to her at all.
I made a courtly little bow, and replaced my hat.
“Good-day to you, miss,” I said.
“Good-day, sir.”
I nodded to her again, then walked past her and turned on to the lawn behind the bench. I went a short way up the slope, and moved over to the side until I was hidden from Estyll by the trunk of a huge tree.
I could see that on the far side of the Channel one of the Mykles I had spotted earlier had moved out from his hiding place. He stood on the bank in clear view; he had apparently been watching me as I spoke to Estyll, for now I could see him looking across at me, shading his eyes with his hand.
I was certain that it was him I had spoken to.
I could help him no more. If he now crossed the Channel twice, moving forward two days, he could be on the Tomorrow Bridge to meet Estyll as she answered my signal.
He stared across at me, and I stared back. Then I heard a whoop of joy. He started running.
He hurried along the bank, and went straight to the Today Bridge. I could almost hear the hollow clumping of his shoes as he ran through the narrow way, and moments later he emerged on this side. He walked, more sedately now, to the queue for the Tomorrow Bridge.
As he stood in line, he was looking at Estyll. She, staring thoughtfully at the ground, did not notice.
Mykle reached the toll-booth. As he went to the pay-desk, he looked back at me, and waved. I took off my hat, and waved it. He grinned happily.
In a few seconds he had disappeared into the covered way, and I knew I would not see him again. He had got it right; he would be there to meet her. I had seen it happen.
I replaced my hat, and walked away from the Channel, up through the stately trees of the Park, past where the gardener was still pushing his heavy mower against the grass, past where many families were sitting beneath the trees at their picnic luncheons.
I saw a place beneath a wide old cedar, where I and my parents and sisters had often eaten our meals. A cloth was spread out across the grass, with several dishes set in readiness for the meal. An elderly couple was sitting here, well under the shade of the branches. The lady was sitting stiffly in a folding canvas chair, watching patiently as her husband prepared the meat. He was carving a ham joint, taking slices from beneath the notch with meticulous strokes. Two servants stood in the background, with white linen cloths draped over their forearms.
Like me, the gentleman was in formal wear. His frock-coat was stiff and perfectly ironed, and his shoes shone as if they had been polished for weeks. On the ground beside him, his silken stove-pipe hat had been laid on a scarf.
He noticed my uninvited regard, and looked up at me. For a moment our gaze met, and we nodded to each other like the gentlemen we were. I touched the brim of my hat, wished him and the lady good-afternoon. Then I hurried towards the yard outside; I wanted to see Dorynne before I caught the train to Geneva.
The Negation
Dik would listen for the train every evening he was not on patrol. Sometimes, when the mountain winds had temporarily stilled, he could hear the rhythmic drumming of the wheels while the train was many miles from the depot, but he always heard the blast of steam as it arrived, and the shriek of its whistle when it left. To Dik it was a melancholy reminder of home, because roads were few in the mountains and he knew he would leave the frontier as he had arrived, on one of those nightly trains.
He had once written a few lines of verse about the train, in the pretence that he was the same person he had been before conscription, but the writing was bad and he destroyed it soon afterwards. The verse was the only writing he had done while serving in the Border Police, and it was unlikely he would try any more.
For the last two weeks he had been listening for the train with extra interest, because he knew that Moylita Kaine, the novelist, should be arriving soon. How the train would sound different for her being on it he had not worked out, but in the event her arrival in the isolated village was signalled in another way.
As he left the canteen one evening, half an hour before the train was due, he noticed that several of the burghers’ limousines were parked in the centre of the village. They were lined up outside the civic hall, their engines running and the hired drivers sitting inside. Dik walked by on the other side of the street, smelling the gasoline fumes and hearing the soft puttering of the muffled exhausts.
The large double doors of the civic hall opened, and a beam of orange light from within fell across the polished cars and the trodden snow. Dik hunched his shoulders, and walked on towards the constabulary hostel. He heard the burghers leaving the hall, an
d the car doors slamming; in a moment a slow convoy of vehicles passed him, turning from the village street on to the narrow, unmade track that led towards the station further down the steep valley. It was only then that Dik guessed at the possible meaning of the burghers’ expedition, and when he reached the entrance to the hostel he paused to listen for the train. It was still too early, and with the wind it would be impossible to hear the wheels in the distance.
He changed quickly out of his uniform, then went alone to the outside balcony on the first floor. No fresh snow had fallen that day, and his frozen footprints from the night before led to the corner of the balcony and lost themselves in a confusion of stamping and shuffling. He followed them and stood in the same corner, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat.
From this position he could see up the narrow street that led to the centre of the village, but most of the buildings were dark and seemed uninhabited; from somewhere came the sound of an accordion band, and men were laughing drunkenly. In the other direction, looking across the sharply angled roofs of the houses on the edge of the village was a panorama, breathtaking by day, across the wintry valley. The night was dark and Dik could only just make out the pine-forest clinging to the frozen scarps that rose on either side. On the northern ridge, three thousand feet above the village, the frontier wall overlooked the valley, but Dik knew without looking that no trace of it could be seen from here.
He waited, stamping his feet and shivering, until at last he heard a jetting of steam, echoing up through the chill, blustery air of the valley, and he felt again the familiar pang of homesickness.
Dik went inside at once and joined his friends in the hostel common-room. The talk was boisterous and rowdy: the last few days on patrol had been eventful, and there was much suppressed tension to release. Dik was soon shouting and laughing with the rest. A few minutes later one of the lads by the window let out a shrill whistle, and the others ran to cluster around him. Peering with them through the film of condensation into the street outside, Dik saw the convoy of burghers’ cars returning from the depot, the engines purring, the wheels crunching softly across the compacted snow.
* * *
Dik had been about to enter college when he was conscripted. He could imagine no one less suited to any kind of military service than himself, and he had taken all the usual steps to try for deferment. It was unlucky for him that his draft-papers arrived more or less coincidentally with the first of the enemy’s air-raids on Jethra, and when, a few weeks later, there was an unsuccessful invasion in the south, the pressures of conscience grew and he signed on with as much good grace as he could muster.
His intention had been to read Modern Literature at Jethra University, and it had been the writing of Moylita Kaine that had prompted the decision. Although he had been reading fiction and poetry for as long as he could remember, and had written many poems of his own, one book—a novel entitled The Affirmation—had so impressed him that he counted the reading of it as the single most important experience of his life. In many ways a deep and difficult work, the book was little known or discussed. For Dik, the book’s apparent obscurities were among its greatest joys; the novel spoke to him in an intensely clear, wise and passionate voice, its story an elemental conflict between deceit and romantic truth, its resolution profoundly emotional, and its understanding of human nature so perceptive and candid that he could still recall, three years later, the shock of discovery. He had read and re-read the book more times than he could count, he had urged it on his few close friends (though never once allowed his precious copy out of his possession), and tried, as far as was humanly possible, to live his own life within the philosophy of Orfé, the chief protagonist.
He had, of course, looked for other books by the same author, but had found nothing. He had instinctively assumed the author dead—because of the common assumption that books found in secondhand shops are always by dead authors—but a letter to the publisher had elicited the enthralling information that not only was Moylita Kaine still very much alive, but she (Dik had assumed the author was male!) was presently working on a second novel.
All this was before the political dispute with the neighbouring countries, and before the fighting broke out along one of the frontiers. As a growing boy, bookish and isolated, Dik had been vaguely aware of the impending war, but his conscription had placed him, literally, in the front line. Since joining the Border Police all his hopes and plans had had to be suspended, but he had kept his much-used copy of The Affirmation with him wherever he went. It was now, like the nightly arrival of the train, a link with his old life and his past, and in another sense a link with his future.
The fact that a government-sponsored writer had arrived in the village was posted on the notice-board in the common-room, and Dik applied at once for a pass to see her. Much to his surprise, it was granted with only the slightest hesitation.
“What do you want it for?” the platoon serjeant said.
“To improve my mind, sir.”
“No relief from duties, understand.”
“In my own time, sir.”
That night Dik slipped the piece of paper into the pages of the novel, choosing as its place the passage describing the momentous first meeting between Orfé and Hilde, the captivating wife of his rival Coschtie. It was one of his favourite scenes in the long book.
* * *
Dik was sent on patrol again before he could use the pass. There was an exchange of mortar-fire and grenades—six constables from another platoon were killed, and several more were injured—but then the weather closed in and Dik was sent back to the village.
The streets were blocked by drifting snow, and the blizzard continued for another two days. Dik stayed inside the hostel with the others, watching the grey-black sky and the driven snow. He had grown used to the variable weather in the mountains and no longer saw it as an expression of his own moods. Grey days did not dispirit him, clear days did not cheer him; rather to the contrary, indeed, because he had sufficient experience of the patrols to know that enemy attacks were fewer when the sky was heavy, that a day that began bright with winter sunshine often finished bright with spilled blood. It was curiously exciting to know that Moylita Kaine was somewhere in the village, but also depressing that he could not use his pass to visit her.
The next day was clearer, and by noon the snow had stopped. Dik was detailed to a shovelling team, and worked alongside the tractors to clear the streets once more. Digging with the others, his arms and back straining with the heavy work, Dik spent most of the time obsessively wondering why the burghers did not lay electric warmways through the village, as they had done along the approaches to the frontier, and on the wall itself. But beneath the snow and ice were the ancient cobbles of the village streets, grating against the metal edge of the spade as Dik laboured on at the futile task.
Repetitive work induced repetitive thoughts, but it relieved him of some of his bottled-up resentment against the burghers. He knew little of what life must have been like in this village before the frontier was closed, but he detested what he knew of it now. The only civilians were the burghers and their servants, the only distractions those provided by grace of the Police authorities.
He slept deeply that night, and in the morning, as he set off up the steep warmway to resume patrol-duties, Dik felt the agony of his over-used muscles. The pack on his back, and his rifle and grenade-thrower, and his snow-shoes and ropes, felt as if they had the entire weight of the snow he had shifted.
The chance to see Moylita Kaine had come and gone, and it would now have to wait until his next spell of leave. Dik was resigned to this with the weary stoicism of the part of him that had become a soldier. He accepted that by the time he came down again from the frontier wall, if he wasn’t killed, injured or captured, she might have finished her work in the village and left on the train.
* * *
The wall was quiet, and a few days later Dik returned unharmed to the village. He had two days t
o himself, and the time which normally would be spent in lassitude or tomfoolery in the hostel suddenly had a meaning and purpose.
The pass the serjeant had given him allowed him access, during daylight hours, to the old saw-mill on the edge of the village; this was presumably where Moylita Kaine was working or living. Dik knew the saw-mill, and during the long hours of patrol he had rehearsed the walk to it in his mind perhaps a score of times. This aside, he did not know what to expect, either of himself or of the writer. He had nothing that he had prepared to say; it would be enough simply to meet her.
As he left the hostel, Dik made sure his copy of The Affirmation was in his greatcoat pocket. An autograph was the only definite thing he wanted from her.
At the edge of the village, where the street became a path, Dik was surprised to discover that a warmway had been laid on the ground, cutting a winding black swathe up through the stiff pine-trees towards the mill. White vapour rose from it in the frosty air. He stepped on to it, his feet slipping slightly as the snow and ice he had picked up on his boots melted beneath him.
As he approached the old mill he saw someone standing by a window high up in the front wall. It was a woman, and when she saw him climbing the warmway she opened the window and leaned out. She was wearing a huge fur hat, with flaps that fell over her ears.
“What do you want?” she called, looking down at him.
“I’ve come to see Moylita Kaine. Is she here?”
“Yes. What do you want her for?”
“I’ve got a pass,” he said.
“There’s a door…round there.” The woman withdrew her head and closed the window firmly.
Dik walked obediently towards the corner she had indicated, leaving the warmway and stepping along a narrow path where the snow had been trodden. It was only as he rounded the corner, and saw a door set into the side of the building, that he realized he had just spoken to Miss Kaine herself!