The Right Hand of Sleep (17 page)

The shadow of the pines grew steadily sharper and a high reel of birdsong inclined up the slope toward him. Light was gathering now and the thought of day brought with it a panic he’d not known for years, sweeping over him inescapably, holding his body suspended in its center like a wave of dark gray water. —Mother of Christ, he said aloud. He shut his eyes and felt a shiver run down his leg and a warm trickle of piss a moment after. Reluctantly he allowed his eyes to open. There was a movement in the trees and he leaned over gratefully into the cold wet turf.

It was a doe this time with a very young fawn. Voxlauer’s hands spasmed as he undid the safety of the shotgun and brought it level, bracing the stock against his collarbone. All along the tree line now the brush seemed alive with furtive movement. He shifted the shotgun slightly and both deer jerked up at once and struck off with loud harsh barks into the pines.

Voxlauer scrabbled to his feet and ran across the slope into the trees. As though down a long corridor he heard the snapping of twigs hush and recede behind a thickening screen of yellow wood. He struck in after the sound, holding the gun barrel crosswise in front of him like a King’s Hussar, throwing all the weight of his body forward. Branches clawed at his sleeves then lifted suddenly and spread apart as the ground fell away and he felt himself sliding and tumbling and brought the rifle close to his chest. He was rolling now and let the slope carry him down in loose ragged somersaults, faster and faster, with his legs flying up behind him and the roots gouging into his shoulders and ribs. The light spun and heaved. At a buckling in the slope the gun discharged both its barrels and he felt a pain across his thighs that beat hotly in his throat and against his closed eyes. He came to rest on his back with his head facing downhill and warm wellings of blood pooling under the tails of his shirt. The sky was still turning, buckling, righting itself and buckling again. Somewhere close to his head was the sound of running water.

Voxlauer lay for a long time with his eyes on the raked sky. His mouth felt chapped and blistered and eventually he pulled himself down to the water and drank. Afterward he rolled onto his back again, breathing in soft, musical rasps, and tried to stand. To his amazement he found that he could and that the pain was abstract and far away. His pants and shirtfront were wet and this troubled him vaguely but as he walked he tried hard to think of something else and after a time he succeeded. He felt small and lighter than air and saw himself drifting in a boat on a wide, shallow lake, letting his arms trail down in the water, dragging his fingers through the weeds.

He managed to reach a road before he collapsed again. Close by was a house and the smell of woodsmoke wafted sweetly down to him. He closed his eyes and lay back with his knees drawn into his chest and that was how she discovered him, his legs half in the ditch and his coat bunched and furled around his ankles, his arms trailing off in the dirt to either side. She pulled him upright by the shirt collar and shook him until the color came back into his face and shoulders, then forced him to stand and, one arm braced against his back to steady him, led him up to the villa.

THE VALLEY

APRIL–JULY 1938

Else set the pot and cups on a lacquered tray and brought it in to him where he sat propped up on the bed with his swaddled legs spread in a V over the quilting. There was dust in the room and she couldn’t see his face clearly for the sunbeams but she knew he was awake. He shifted heavily as she entered and the loose bed frame creaked under him. —I’ve made coffee, she said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to be there.

Voxlauer stared at her a moment. She was standing over him, gracious and matronlike, waiting for him to speak. —Thank you, Fräulein, he said finally. He took the cup offered him and levered it slowly up to his mouth. —It’s wonderfully bright in here.

She frowned at this. —Should I pull the curtains?

—No. Leave them open, please.

—I thought you might like some air, she said, going to the window. —It’s not warm outside, but the air is fine.

—Thank you. Open it if you want to.

—What?

—I said open it if you want to. The window. Please do as you would on any other day.

She turned to him and smiled. —On any other day, Herr Voxlauer?

—I’d like not to put you to any sort of trouble.

—Well, she said, turning to the window again and pulling it carefully open with both hands, as though a pane might fall— aside from the trouble of hauling a full-grown body up into my kitchen and spending a night keeping it from bleeding all over my bedsheets, and three nights after that listening to it muttering all sorts of horrors, and making my bed here on the parlor couch, which, as you can see, she said, turning to smile at him—is losing its stuffing, you’ve not put me out so very much. Besides, having put
yourself
to the trouble, Herr Voxlauer, of falling on a loaded gun, it doesn’t seem so much for me to open my own parlor window.

Voxlauer was quiet a moment. —I thought this was the bedroom, he said.

—Where you are is the bedroom, said Else, opening a second window. —Where I am, Herr Voxlauer, is the parlor. She brought a footstool over to the bed and sat down on it. —So.

—So, said Voxlauer. He smiled shamefacedly. —I suppose a knock on your front door might have been simpler.

She had brought a pair of boots from under the bed and was working her feet into them, frowning slightly. They closed with buckles across the ankles and she drew them snug and then raised her eyes to look at him. The coffee she had given him was cold but strong and he passed his tongue back and forth across his teeth, grateful for its bitterness.

—How did you get me up here, Fräulein? With pulleys?

Else shrugged. —I’m heavy-boned, thank you. Built for the country life. Unlike yourself, if I may say so.

—Yes, Fräulein. I’m sure you’re right. He passed a hand over his forehead. —Have I had a fever?

She nodded, letting out a mock-weary breath. —A right plague of it. You were very talkative, as I’ve said, but a bit weak on specifics. Her fine straight hair wisped outward with her breath and her head tilted back from him distrustfully. The light behind her was whorled and dark, like river water. —How on God’s earth did you manage it?

Voxlauer looked down at his legs. A band of black stains traversed his thighs from right to left, fanning out along his left leg, graceful and intricate as a tattoo. He shook his head. —Fool’s luck, he said at last, grinning at her.

In the evening she undid the wraps and cleaned the cuts and painted them with Mercurochrome and he saw that they were not very deep. The strangeness of what had happened was dawning on him now, coldly and steadily, but Else seemed perfectly at ease and happy to have him there to complain about and tend to. She showed him some loose bits of shot on a saucer and pointed to the holes each had come from, thin rust-colored grooves bordered by a dull, lifeless white. The skin was flayed in ribbons above his knee-caps and the muscle underneath showed a bright garish red, like the inside of a deerskin, but he found he could move both legs slowly up and down without too much pain. —Sit back now, Else said angrily. —You’ll only start them going again. And in fact as he brought his legs together he felt a warmth welling under the bandages and a prickling seeping into the bone just above the cuts. He lay back very carefully and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again the light was ebbing from the room and he saw her highlighted through the glass, working a round patch of earth in the garden with a spade. She had come and gone all day from the room, taking little notice of him as he lay on the bed, rarely staying long in his sight. Her attitude toward him was so different now from what it had been on their walk down the hill, so inexplicably mild and gracious, indulgent and disinterested at once, as though his presence there on her bed were a given, not to be fretted over—his confusion had grown steadily more complete since the morning. Now he watched her in quiet detail as she fussed somewhat coquettishly over the ground, worrying it with sharp quick gouges of the spade. After every few passes she stepped back and surveyed the plot, her round face twisting into a smile as though acknowledging her foolishness. Her hair caught the last weak light in its gloss and darkened her smooth, ageless, nearly sexless features. Voxlauer closed his eyes for a long time and when he opened them she was still in the garden, crouched down pulling roots from the spaded ground, the color almost gone from the windowpanes. As he watched her, the twilight wandered down across them, stooping like a willow bough. A few minutes later she came inside.

She brought supper to him as he lay half awake with his head against the bedboard: tinned tomatoes in an omelette with leeks and gray, rye-seed-speckled cheese. He called to her when he was done and she came down from the kitchen with a mug of sweet brown beer. While he drank she took the dishes and returned with a lamp and a pile of battered books, spines cracked and stained to illegibility. She put the lamp down by the bed on a night table and lit it and sat down with an earnest and businesslike air on the stool. —I’ve not had an audience in a while, she said, seeing him watching her. —What shall we read?

—You’re a schoolteacher, said Voxlauer, putting down his mug. —I’d forgotten.

—Answer the question, Herr Voxlauer, or we’ll send you to the corner without your beer. You’d not like that much, I fancy. She smiled.

Voxlauer sighed. —Give us the choices please, Fräulein.

—
Max and Moritz,
Else said reverently. —
Hatschi-Bratschi.
King Farú.
Robert Walser—

—Those are all children’s reads.

She frowned. —Walser isn’t.

—No?

—He’s Swiss.

—All right. Let’s have the Walser then, said Voxlauer, lying back. Years later her voice would remain clearest in his memory, low-riven and solemn, secretive and measured, the texture and the color of crushed wool. The close, half-drawn breaths, the unspooling sadness of that voice. It’s resignedness. She read evenly and slowly, stopping now and again for a sip of his beer, and kept steadily on as his eyes fell closed. The lamp sputtered and smoked behind her.

Once there was a town. The people in it were merely puppets. But
they spoke and walked, had grace and sensitivity and were very
polite. Not only did they say “Good morning!” or “Good night!”
they meant it quite sincerely. These people possessed sincerity.

In spite of this, they were very much city people. Smoothly, if
reluctantly, they’d shed all things coarse-grained and countryish.
The cut of their clothes and of their manners were the finest that
anyone, tailor or socialite, could possibly imagine. Old worn-out
unraveling outfits were worn by nobody. Good taste was universal. The so-called rabble was unheard-of; everyone was completely
alike in demeanor and erudition without resembling one another,
which would of course have grown tiresome. On the street one
met no one but attractive, elegant persons of noble mien. Freedom
was a thing one knew well to guide, to have in hand, to rein in
and to cherish. For this reason controversies over questions of public decency never occurred. Insults to the common morality were
equally undreamt-of.

The women especially were wonderful. Their fashions were as
charming as they were practical, as seductive as they were well
designed, as titillating as they were proper. Morality seduced!
Young men loped after it in the evenings, slowly, dreamily, without
falling into greedier, hastier rhythms. The women went about in a
sort of trousers, usually of white or pale blue lace, which rose and
then wound tightly around their waists. Their shoes were tall, colorful and of the finest leather. The way these shoes clambered up
the legs, and the legs felt themselves enclosed by something precious, and the men, in turn, imagined what those legs were feeling,
was glorious! This wearing of pants had the further advantage that
the women brought a spirit and eloquence into their gait, which,
hidden under skirts, had felt itself less noticed and appraised.

On the whole, quite simply everything became “Emotion.”
The most miniscule things were a part of it. The businesses ran
brilliantly, as the merchants were vigorous, industrious and honest.
They were honest out of conviction and tact. They had no desire to
make life, beautiful and airy as it was, any harder for one another.
There was more than enough money, plenty for everyone, since
everyone was so responsible, looking first to the fundamentals;
there was no such thing as Sunday, nor any religion either, over
whose dictates one might fall into disagreement. The houses of
entertainment took the place of churches and the people gathered
there devotedly. Pleasure for these people was a deep and holy matter. That one remained pure even in pleasure was obvious, since
everybody felt a need for it.

There were no poets. Poets would have found nothing new or
high-minded to write about. There were no professional artists of
any kind, as a natural aptitude for the arts was commonplace. A
fine thing, when people have no need anymore of artists to be
artistic. They had learned to view their senses as precious and
to make full use of them. There was no cause to look up fine sayings in ancient texts because one had one’s own fine-grained and
particular perception. One spoke well when one had cause to
speak, one had a mastery of the tongue without knowing whence
it came . . .

The men were beautiful. Their carriage bespoke their erudition. They delighted in many things, they were busy at many tasks,
but everything that happened did so in connection with the love of
beautiful women. All of life was drawn into this fine, dreamlike
relation. One spoke and thought of everything with deep emotion.
Business matters were conducted more simply, more discreetly and
more nobly than is now the case. There were no so-called higher
things. The very idea would have been an intolerable suffering for
these people, who found beauty in everything.

Are you asleep?

Voxlauer woke to dull pains in his legs and Else’s still form beside him wrapped in a patterned sheet. He rose and limped to the kitchen in search of a chamber pot and, finding none, stepped out into the early-morning dampness, a bright mist hemming in the pines. The bleeding seemed to have lessened. He hobbled back past the house and leaned over behind a solitary birch, pissing against the white trunk and down onto a skirt of mud-colored drift. Three days now I’ve been here, he thought, leaning against the tree. Or is it four . . . ? He felt unbearably old suddenly, watching his piss trickle into the snow. And her inside sleeping. Suddenly the past day and evening and above all the fact of her there in the bed asleep served as nothing to him but proof of his own harmlessness, his nonexistence, a photograph projected onto a paper screen. To his own surprise he laughed at this, a rasping, hollow laugh that traveled dully and gracelessly off into the woods. Watch yourself, Oskar, he said. Button up your pants. He shook his head a few times violently from side to side, still smiling at himself without the least affection, then limped back to the villa through the snow. When he came into the bedroom he saw she now lay with half of her body out of the covers, sighing and whispering in her sleep. He sat down on the stool and pressed the heels of his palms against his knees.

An hour later she stirred. —Is it morning?

—It looks to be. Voxlauer smiled. —I had best be going.

—Yes, she said sleepily. —Have you had any breakfast?

—Thank you. How did you sleep?

—Very well . . . You’ve had breakfast? she said again. She seemed to be making an effort to see him clearly, or perhaps to place him in her memory.

—Yes. There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you’d like any.

She sat up all at once, awake now, squinting at him. —You’ve been walking.

He nodded. —An undeserved miracle. I’ll go back to my hut now, if you’ll excuse me, and fall over.

She smiled. —Why not fall over here, Herr Voxlauer, and spare yourself the trouble?

—Thank you, Fräulein. You’re very kind. I’m ashamed to say that my dignity won’t allow it.

—Your dignity? said Else, squinting again. —What does your dignity have to do with anything here, Herr Voxlauer?

—Nothing, I’m sure, Fräulein. I’d rather not incommode you further.

She blinked a few times at this in mock surprise. —Have I been incommoded, sir?

—Well. You’ve been put out, at least, said Voxlauer, feeling the blood rushing to his face at her joke. He felt adolescent and intensely spinsterish both, sitting there a few feet from the bed looking down at her, unable to laugh or reply or even to force his mouth into a grin. An innocent enough joke, a simple joke, he told himself, not meeting her eyes now but looking down absurdly at the floor. He thought suddenly then, quite naturally, of Anna, not with any sense of shame but with a sharp pang of longing for their effortless way together.