He met a man walking in the opposite direction, a shabby satchel in one hand, makeshift walking staff in the other. The man had a field worker’s complexion but wore his Sunday suit; when he saw Lucy he ceased walking, staring at Lucy’s valise as though it posed some problem for him.
“Did you take the room at the Minor house?” he asked.
Lucy didn’t understand at first. “Take it? No, I’m just leaving there.”
The man relaxed. “So the room’s still available, then?”
Lucy’s head banked to the side, the way a dog’s does when it hears a faraway whistle. “Who told you there was a room there?”
“The woman herself. She was putting up a notice at the tavern last night, and I happened to be stepping past.”
Lucy looked in the direction of the cottage, though he could no longer see it through the trees. When he had asked his mother where she was going the night before, she’d said she wanted to take the air.
“She seemed an honorable woman,” said the man.
“She is not dishonorable,” Lucy answered, still looking uphill.
“And you’re only leaving there today, you say?”
“Just now, yes.”
In a covert voice, the man said, “I hope you didn’t find the accommodation lacking in some way.”
Lucy faced the field worker. “No.”
“Sometimes you don’t uncover the lack until it’s too late. That’s how it was with the last house. It was slave’s rations by the end of my stay there.”
“You’ll be happy at the Minors’.”
“She seemed an honorable woman,” the man repeated. “I pray she doesn’t mind my being early, but I’ve found it best to get a jump on these things.” He gestured at the incline. “It’s just this way, is it?”
“The path will take you there,” said Lucy.
“Well, thank you, boy. And good luck to you.” He bowed and walked on. He was disappearing around a bend when Lucy called to him:
“Will you tell her you met me, sir? The woman of the house?”
“If that’s what you want.” The man paused. “But who shall I say I met?”
“Tell her you met Lucy. And tell her about our conversation.”
The field worker seemed to think it an odd request, but he tipped his hat. “Consider it done.”
As the man disappeared into the trees, Lucy was visited by an evil thought; and at the same moment the thought became whole, a rush of wind swarmed him, a column of air focused on his chest and face. It was true that at times a gust of wind was like a soundless voice commenting on some private notion or realization. Whether the wind agreed or disagreed with him, who could say. Certainly not Lucy; and neither was he much concerned about it. He continued down the hill. His mind was like a drum, a fist, a sail overflowing, pregnant with push and momentum.
At any rate, he was no longer bored.
4
Lucy thought he might pay a farewell visit to Marina, and headed to her house to see if she was in. There was no sign of Tor’s gargantuan boots on her porch and he knocked, propping himself in the doorway as one merely happening past. But when she answered, she looked so naturally beautiful that his eyes must have betrayed his true feelings, a cleaved combination of adoration and acrimony. For her part, Marina evidently had no care for his being there. Pointing to his valise, she asked,
“Are you going somewhere?”
So, she wasn’t even aware of his leaving. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve been summoned to the Castle Von Aux. Likely you’ve heard of it?”
“I haven’t.”
“Are you certain? It’s in the east, the high mountains—a very picturesque location, they say.”
“I’ve never heard of it, Lucy.” She gazed disinterestedly over his shoulder, hopeful for some diversion or another. “What will you be doing in this very famous and picturesque castle?”
“I’m to be undermajordomo.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s akin to the majordomo, more or less.”
“It sounds to be less.”
“I will be working in concert with him.”
“Beneath him, that’s what it sounds like.” She untied and retied her apron, fitting it snugly around her dainty waist. “What’s the wage?”
“It’s a healthy wage.”
“But what is the figure?”
“Assuredly healthy. And they sent me a first-class ticket, as well. A nice touch, I thought. They mean to keep me happy, that much is clear.” In actuality, they had sent a paltry advance which had not quite covered a third-class ticket; he had had to take a loan from his mother for the remainder.
Marina asked him, “How did you get this position?”
“I was assisted by the good Father Raymond.”
Smirking, she said, “That old rag doll. He’s all powdery, like a biscuit.” She laughed at this—laughed loudly, and for a long time. Lucy didn’t understand how her laughter could be so blithe and enchanting when she herself was so covetous and ungenerous. Furthermore he couldn’t comprehend why he felt such an overwhelming desire for someone who, it was plain enough to see, was patently rotten from the inside out.
He said, “You can laugh at the man if you want, but he alone took it upon himself to help me. This is more than I can say for anyone else in these parts.”
Marina couldn’t be bothered to take offense. She peered back into the house and seemed to be thinking of taking her leave, but Lucy wasn’t ready for farewells just yet. Feinting, he removed his pipe and pointed its stem at the storm clouds, now tabled across the valley. “Rain’s coming,” he said. She did not look skyward but stared at the pipe.
“Since when do you smoke a pipe?” she asked.
“Somewhat recently.”
“How recently?”
“Very recently.”
A drugged mien came over her, and in a silky voice she said, “Tor smokes cigarettes. He rolls them in one hand, like this.” She see-sawed her fingers against her thumb, her face affecting Tor’s self-satisfaction and confidence. “Did you hear he’s working out the terms to Schultz’s farm?”
Lucy had not, and his mind flooded with insults and epithets, for Shultz’s property was the finest in Bury. And yet he held his tongue, wanting his farewell with Marina to be peaceable, not out of any magnanimity, but so that after Tor ruined her—he felt confident Tor would ruin her—and she was once more alone, she would think of Lucy’s graciousness and feel the long-lingering sting of bitter regret. In a sober tone, he told her, “Good for Tor, then. That is, good for the both of you. I hope you’ll be very happy together.”
Marina was moved by the words, and she crossed over to hold Lucy. “Thank you, Lucy,” she said. “Thank you.” Her hair brushed his face and he could feel her breath against his neck. This unanticipated contact was like a bell struck in the pit of his stomach, and he was reminded of the time of their love affair, which took place during the previous spring.
At the start it had consisted of much forest-walking, hand-holding, and eye-gazing. After a period of a month Marina realized Lucy was not going to make love to her without encouragement, and she encouraged him, and Lucy was scandalized, but not for very long at all. They fell into a routine of daily fornication in the lush, sloping fields below the village. Lucy was greatly relieved to be courting, at long last, and he knew he had the makings of a faithful wife in Marina. As they lay naked in the grass, the clouds moving bovinely over the mountaintops, he pondered their future. How many children would they have? They would have two children, one boy and one girl. They would live modestly, and Lucy would become a schoolteacher or cobbler or poet—some post which did not involve strenuous activity. Each evening he would return to their humble home and his family would swarm him, easing him into his chair by the fireplace. Would he like a cup of tea? Why yes he would, and thank you so very much. What of a scone? Well, why not? These daydreams caused in Lucy a physical reaction, a pleasing tension which ran from his shoulders to the un
dersides of his feet, toes curling in the sunshine.
His visions of this contented life were bolstered by the field relations themselves, which he had thought were going markedly well. But when, one afternoon, he said as much to Marina, her face darkened. He asked her what was the matter and she told him, “It’s just that . . . you don’t have to handle me so gently, Lucy.” Soon afterward she sent him away, and Lucy spent heartsick months studying the curious words with such fervor that they all but lost their meaning—and he never did deduce just what it was she wanted. What he was keenly aware of now was that Tor’s hands were matted in curly brown hair gone blond from sun exposure, and that when he gripped a glass of ale it looked as though he were holding a thimble. Lucy hated Tor, and presently decided to tell a sizable lie about him. Marina was saying her goodbyes when he said, “But before I go I have something I need to tell you about this Tor.”
“Oh? Is that so?”
“Unfortunately it is. Most unfortunately, actually.”
She crossed her arms. “What is it?”
He thought for a moment. When the lie came to him he clasped his hands solemnly, “I happen to know for a fact that he is engaged to another woman in Horning.”
She laughed. “Who told you this? It isn’t true!”
“Oh, but I’m afraid that it is. Here is my reason for visiting. I’m quitting Bury forever but couldn’t bear the thought of you being made a fool of.”
“Who is a fool?”
“You may do with this information what you will.”
She said, “I think you’re jealous of Tor, Lucy.”
“That is a fact, Marina. I am jealous of Tor. But more than that I am in contempt of him. For if you were mine I would never be seen gallivanting around Horning with another woman on my arm, and introducing her to all I passed as my bride-to-be. She is, I understand, several years younger than you.”
When Lucy set his mind to it, he was a most accomplished liar, that rare stripe who could convincingly relay information running contrary to reality with the utmost sincerity. He could see that Marina was beginning to take him seriously, and he pushed on, telling her, “The dowry is said to be no trifling sum, either. In a way, you can’t really blame Tor.”
“Enough, Lucy,” she said. “Tell me it’s a lie, now. Will you say that it is?”
“I wish that I could. But that’s not possible, because what I’m saying is factual, and I once made a pact with you. Do you recall it?”
Her eyes fluttered and cast about; she was only half listening to Lucy. “A pact,” she said softly.
“You asked me to always be true to you, and I swore that I would be. Oh, but you must remember, Marina. For you made the same pact yourself.”
Her eyes were hollow and doleful and she believed him completely, now. “Lucy.”
“Goodbye!” he said, and he turned to take his leave of her.
Walking away on the springy legs of a foal, he thought, How remarkable a thing a lie is. He wondered if it wasn’t man’s finest achievement, and after some consideration, decided that it was. He experienced a sterling enthusiasm for his future, and his would have been a triumphant getaway were it not for the fact that the assistant train engineer, two hundred kilometers away in Ravensburg, had insisted upon eating a second helping of cheese for his dessert on the night prior.
Eirik & Alexander
5
The assistant train engineer, named Eirik, was entertaining disappointment in the tavern after hearing news that his junior colleague Alexander would be made full engineer, an insult considering Eirik’s seniority and years of loyal service to the company. He had had nine plum brandies when Alexander entered the tavern, nodding his small greetings all around but making no announcement of his advancement, which somehow was worse than if he had, for it was plain just to look at him that he was distending with pride. He took a seat beside Eirik and laid a palm on his back. Eirik felt a measure of pity in that hand, and he rolled his shoulder to remove its weight. Alexander volunteered to buy Eirik a drink but he declined. “Thank you all the same, but I’m not quite destitute yet.”
“I wish you wouldn’t take it that way,” said Alexander.
“Wishing is a pastime for disappointment, nothing more,” Eirik replied. “Take it from one who knows.”
Now Alexander became serious, and he spoke with an edge to his voice Eirik had never heard before: “Look, now. We’ve got to work together. Tomorrow morning and each morning after. You and I have always got along well enough; I do hope there won’t be any problems between us now.”
Eirik found himself regarding the ringed baby flesh of the man’s neck, imagining what it would feel like to grip it in his hands. And in that same unsettling way one realizes he’s left the door to his home ajar, Eirik knew that he could kill Alexander. Not that he would, but that it was possible.
“There won’t be any problems coming from me,” Eirik said, and he excused himself, bowing exaggeratedly before weaving from the tavern and into the road. He went home for his supper but found no solace there, his foul mood compounded by his wife’s miserly cheese portion. His wife was always miserly with her cheese portions but the amount he received that night was even more scant than usual. He sat at the table alone, staring at his empty plate and considering his private theory, which was that his wife secretly ate the cheese herself while he was at work.
“More cheese,” he called.
Her voice, from the larder, was unemotional: “There is none left.”
“How in the world did we eat through an entire wheel in less than half a month?”
“What can I tell you? You eat it, and then it’s gone.”
“But I don’t eat it, that’s just the problem.” He moved to the kitchen and found her stacking plates, her back to him. “You eat it!” he said.
She stiffened, then turned to look at her husband, loathing everything about him: his weak chin, his sour odor, his lopsided mustache, his stoop. The thing was, she really did secretly eat the cheese. No sooner would Eirik leave for work than she would go for the hidden wheel and tug away a goodly sized piece, savoring this in a corner nook otherwise unused save for this lone and lonely activity. But she was unsatisfied in most every aspect of her life, and the cheese was one of the very few pleasures she had. And now it appeared that this, too, would be stolen from her. All right, then, she thought. Take it all, even my smallest happiness. Reaching her arm deep into the cupboard, she removed the hoarded cheese and laid it on the counter before making for the privacy of the attic, where she wept in the full-throated style, feeling just as sorry for herself as a person could ever hope to feel.
Eirik stood awhile, swaying and listening to his wife’s jerky, breathy sobbings. He knew he should move to comfort her but found the desire to do so entirely absent, being far too excited about this unexpected surplus of Gouda. I’ll pay her a visit after a snack, perhaps, he thought, and brought the cheese to the dining room table, consuming the entire half wheel in addition to a bottle of elderberry wine, afterward passing out in his chair and suffering through a cycle of horrific dreams and visions: Alexander furiously copulating with his wife while eating his, Eirik’s, cheese; his wife lying on the table nude while Alexander carved elegant swaths into her broad white calf with a paring knife, for she herself was fashioned from cheese; that his penis was cheese which broke off while he urinated; that his penis was cheese his wife nibbled on while he slept—all through the night like this, and so in the morning, in addition to the state of his head from the wine and plum brandy, his sense of peace was compromised as he set out for work.
He arrived at the station ten minutes late with bloodshot eyes and a halo of fumes swarming his head. Alexander recognized the man’s impairment and felt a professional impulse to chastise him.
“So you kept it up last night?” he asked.
“I did what I had to do.”
“And now?”
“Now I’ll do the same.”
An uneasy beginning, the
n. They spoke little as the hours went by. Eirik’s pain and insult were stubbornly insistent but he knew he would get through the day, and that the next day would not be quite so bad. In passing time, he thought of the loveliness of a glass of brandy, the first glass after a shift, the way it drew down his throat and coated his insides with flammable heat, afterward leaving an aroma of smoked plum smoldering in his nostrils and mouth when he exhaled. It was very invigorating, that first plum brandy, and he began to look forward to the tavern with earnest, uncomplicated appreciation. His anger diminishing, he decided he would buy his wife a wheel of cheese on the way home from the tavern, and that he would encourage her to eat as much as she wanted, in plain sight—just so long as he could have his fair share as well. And when this ran out, so what if they had to buy another? Perhaps he wasn’t a full engineer, but he earned a good wage and there was room for occasional extravagances so long as they weren’t too dear. Eirik hit his stride with his coal spade and the flames shimmied and spit in the firebox. Sweat ran off his nose and chin and into his eyes, and this was agreeable to him. Life was not such a trial after all, he mused. It wasn’t easy, but then, how dull an experience it would be if it were so. He began to whistle, and this meant that he was happy.
Alexander sensed the change in his partner’s mood, and felt calmer for it. Allowing his mind to drift, he fell to thinking of the difficulties of his youth: his mother dead mere months after his birth; his father, waylaid from sorrow, vanished one autumn morning, never to return, never sending word. From the start Alexander was instilled with the knowledge that whatever shape his life took, it was up to him alone to sculpt it, and so to have risen to the level of engineer, he couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. Surely this is understandable, but half an hour shy of Bury, he made the mistake of verbalizing his satisfaction: “My maiden voyage as engineer,” he said. “I can’t deny it, but it feels good.” He turned to Eirik, who said nothing, but looked stonily ahead. Alexander said, “Won’t you allow me a moment of boasting, old friend?”