The Right Hand of Sleep (2 page)

THE FUTURE

MARCH 4, 1938

There were two in the compartment: the smoking man and Voxlauer. The nub of a cigarette leapt and hovered in the pane and glimmered there over the reddening pastures and towns. The man smoked carefully, tapping lightly with his shoe heels. The smoke rose in a coil from his lips to a vent in the ozone-stained glass. Outside, to each side of them, dark fields were passing and glittering in places with the last rays of daylight. Lights were coming on in the houses and men and wagons were moving toward them across the turned fields. As on any other day.

Heaving a pack down onto the floor Voxlauer took out the last of the food he’d brought with him, a scrap of bacon wrapped in cabbage and a loaf’s-end of pumpernickel. He was grateful now to have taken the canteen he’d found a few weeks earlier at the bottom of a drawer, wrapped in army drabs. —Was this Andrei’s? he’d asked Anna. He’d been standing at the foot of the bed. She had nodded, raising her head tiredly and letting it fall. A few days later she’d reminded him of it, saying he might need it if he were to travel soon. And in fact he’d needed it sooner than either had thought and it had been a great comfort, that last week of traveling, filled with light sweet brown tea or fresh water with a dried wedge of lemon.

Finding the canteen he unstopped it and poured the last dregs of tea into a cup with the word “plenty” stamped along its rim in edged Cyrillic script. The smoking man stubbed out his cigarette and proceeded to roll another in the fold of a newspaper. Every so often the train wound closer to the river, rising along its bank through stands of willows lit in passing by the compartment lights.

At the border they waited a long time in silence. Two Hungarian officers inspected the crates in the passageway, making jots in thick vellum notebooks. They handed the conductor a receipt and stamped the train’s crumbling freight log and moved on. After another, briefer wait the Pass-Kontrolle came on board. The Austrian officials were better dressed, less capable and more friendly than the Hungarians had been. The head of the station came to visit the passengers personally. He was a little drunk and before he asked to see their passports he sat down in the compartment and retied his shoes. —The good of winter boots that let in the damp is a puzzle, he said, smiling. The young guard behind him remained standing. —A puzzle for the ages, said the inspector, shaking his head sadly. When the boots were tied to his satisfaction he straightened himself and in a more formal tone of voice inquired after their papers.

Voxlauer looked out at the rails and the crossties beneath them, counting the pins and seams. The smoking man’s passport was examined and found to be in order. He was a lighting-fixtures manufacturer and salesman from Vienna. He slid the passport back into his briefcase and offered the inspector rolling paper and tobacco. —No thank you, Herr Silbermann, said the inspector, still smiling, and the tobacco in turn was offered to the guard, who accepted enthusiastically and set about rolling a cigarrette against the greasy wooden door of the compartment. Strands of tobacco spilled onto his coat and clung there among the epaulets and folds. The inspector turned to Voxlauer and eyeing his threadbare overcoat asked again after his papers.

Voxlauer dug into a pocket and handed the little book, unscuffed and green, to the inspector. Although the inspector was a younger man than Voxlauer, and younger too than the salesman, he already bore the slight stoop of a life spent on trains. As he flipped through the passport, his face clouded slightly. —There’s not one of our stamps in this booklet, he said.

—I know that, said Voxlauer. —I applied for it while living abroad.

—What became of your previous passport?

—It was taken from me.

—When?

—In the war.

A brief silence followed. —You are a veteran? asked the inspector.

—Yes.

—Place of residence?

—Niessen bei Villach.

—Where were you living, while abroad?

—In the Ukraine.

Another silence. Voxlauer looked up at the inspector. The salesman shifted uneasily in his seat. After a moment more the passport was handed to the guard, who had finished with the rolling of his cigarette, to be stamped. Then it was returned to Voxlauer and the two men made to exit the compartment. —Good-bye, Eli, said the inspector. —We’ll be seeing you again at Easter?

—With a butterlamb under each arm, said the salesman. —And Mark’esh for your dyspepsia.

—I beg of you, Herr Silbermann, laughed the inspector. —This state of affairs cannot possibly continue. The salesman laughed also. The two men standing regarded affably the two seated men before turning to go. The inspector paused a moment at the door.

—Welcome home, Herr Voxlauer. Give the south a great warm kiss from me.

—I’m so surprised you’re not Russian! said the salesman as the train began moving. —You look the part, if I may say so.

—Well. I’m sorry to disappoint you.

—Are you a nihilist?

—What?

—A nihilist. You’ve been in Russia for some time. He paused. —That’s a fair enough question, isn’t it?

Voxlauer smiled. —Call me a sympathizer.

The salesman nodded. —Are you from the Steyrmark?

—Near enough. Kärnten.

—I thought either Kärnten or the Steyrmark. Elias Silbermann, from Vienna.

—Oskar Voxlauer. He shook the hand offered him.

—Any relation to Karl?

—Who?

—Come now, Herr Voxlauer! The composer.

Voxlauer looked at him. —Karl the composer, he repeated.

—Operettas. Sentimental airs. All the rage when we were little. Surely you must remember! The salesman began to hum a waltz.

—Yes, I remember now. I’ve been away for some time. No relation, I’m afraid.

—What sort of name is that, “Voxlauer”? I’d always wondered. Is that Bavarian?

—Austrian, I think, said Voxlauer.

—Oh. I’m not sure of that, the salesman said.

—What did you say your name was, Herr . . . ? Voxlauer said tonelessly.

The salesman didn’t answer. They rode awhile in silence. —I served, myself, he said after a few minutes, almost apologetically. —In the Tyrol. He leaned forward and raised a trouser leg to disclose a mottled blue scar. —The last great time. He smiled.

Voxlauer didn’t answer. The lights in the passageway leapt and flickered as the train clattered over a rail switch. After a sudden lurch leftward the wheels became quiet again, or near to quiet.

—Those godforsaken kits are all mine, said the salesman, pointing at the crates. —Blood of my brow.

—What’s inside them? said Voxlauer.

—Tungsten ingots.

—Ah.

—Yes, said the salesman. He laughed. —Exactly. What’s your trade then, Herr Voxlauer?

Voxlauer sat looking out the window. —My trade? he said. —Nothing.

—There’s a great many folk in that profession nowadays.

—That is to say, farming, Voxlauer said after a few seconds’ pause.

—Nothing or farming? said the salesman, blinking.

—Whichever you’d prefer.

—Well: I think I’d prefer nothing to farming, if it’s all the same, laughed the salesman—and anything to life as a peddler of lighting fixtures. He paused a moment. —Fortunately that’s not my sole vocation. I’m a pianist by training.

Voxlauer rubbed his eyes. —Tough times, I suppose.

The salesman regarded him a moment through the smoke and the gloom of the compartment. —Have you not been home since the war? he said finally.

—No.

—A great deal has changed, Herr Voxlauer. A very great deal.

Voxlauer didn’t answer. The first low steeples and clusters of light heralding the approach of the suburbs of the capital appeared along the south side of the train. To the north was the river and beyond the river identical clusters ever growing in density. Lights signifying buildings and families and German and books and machinery. The numbness he could no longer remember not feeling made itself noticed again, like the whine of a gaslight. He made no effort to take in what Silbermann was saying to him.

—Many of us simply fear for our livelihoods.

—Excuse me?

—Because of events in the north.

—I know nothing at all about that, said Voxlauer.

—I thought maybe you were an illegal. Many of them are coming back now.

—An illegal?

Silbermann nodded. —An illegal. A Black Shirt. He raised his left arm stiffly in salute.

—Ah, said Voxlauer. —I wouldn’t very likely be coming from the Ukraine in that event, would I?

Silbermann shrugged. —I suppose not.

They were very close to the river now and the packed sand under the rails dropped straight into the water. —It’s taken as a bad sign, Silbermann said after a pause. He was passing the tobacco back and forth between his hands and looking the whole while out the window, or at his reflection in the glass. To stop him fidgeting Voxlauer asked for a cigarette.

—With pleasure, said Silbermann distractedly, spreading the newspaper over his lap. Voxlauer closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Silbermann’s fingers on the newsprint and the sound of his own breathing, deliberate and calm. The steady turning-over of the gears. The rattle of the door.

—Here you are, Silbermann said brightly after a minute or so had passed, twisting the paper ends nimbly with his fingertips as he cast about after the matches. They were soon recovered from the floor and the cigarette lit. Voxlauer exhaled and watched his breath snake upward along the glass as Silbermann’s had done.

The cigarette drew evenly and smoothly. Voxlauer stared up at the vent. Silbermann was rolling another, glancing every few moments out the window, measuring their distance from the station. —Twenty minutes, he said, looking up and smiling.

—Twenty for you. I’m continuing south.

—I’d forgotten. You have family waiting?

—Of a sort, said Voxlauer. —A mother.

—Mothers. One wonders how they manage.

—They manage very well.

Silbermann looked up from his paper. The tracks were rising now to the level of the lowest houses and in the middle distance the stolid fin-de-siècle apartment buildings of the inner city came into view, monochrome and bright, with St. Stephen’s spire rising bluely behind them. —How long have you been a farmer, then, Herr Voxlauer?

Voxlauer sat back from the window. —For as long as I can remember.

They marched us into the Isonzo in the early morning, twenty
miles up from the station in loose oilskin coats and jackboots
brought back from the front and hurriedly reblackened for us. It
was October and a wet, heavy snow was falling. When we reached
the back lines a few bewildered trench cutters stared at us, then
waved us up the hill. No one seemed to have been expecting us.
Everywhere men were cursing the snow and dragging crates and
canvas sacks up and down the hill on runners. The war was ending,
though we didn’t know it yet. My battalion was put together of
frightened aging men and homesick boys with hurt looks on their
faces; we were the replacement for a battalion that had been utterly
routed that September in the hills outside Caporetto. I was the
youngest, turned sixteen that past December. I had no ideas of my
own yet about anything. I felt no homesickness for my family, or
for Niessen. I was happy to be in the war.

They set us to work right away gathering spent mortar casings and firewood. An advance trench was opened a few meters
below the tree line and we were moved into it that same day, with
eight twenty-millimeter mortars and three or four dozen machine-gun posts. The gunners were all officers between twenty-five and
forty and had been on the line for near to a year already; most
were months past their leaves. They barely seemed to register our
arrival.

The first night was very quiet. A lieutenant came round to our
newly dug positions and yelled at us for letting the trench floor fill
with water. He was bleary-eyed and stooped and apologized a few
minutes later for losing his temper. Later that night I saw him
slumped over on a crate outside the officers’ mess, twitching and
mumbling in his sleep. In the morning we learned seven men had
deserted.

Things had begun unraveling by then, but quietly, without any
noticeable change. I stared saucer-eyed at everything around me,
as though at any minute I’d be found out and ordered back to
school. As the shelling began that second day a cluster of officers
crawled from one post to another down the lines, thanking us for
not leaving our positions. The Germans were coming, they told
us, in two or at most three weeks’ time. We were to hold to our
dugouts, return modest fire at intervals, and wait.

In late November six German battalions arrived. We had
barely advanced at all, ten or twenty meters at most up a steep
snowfield under near-to-constant mortar fire. The excitement I’d
felt at first had given way to a steady nervous tiredness, an impatience for something definite to happen. Since I’d been on the lines
there had been no true offensive. The trenches we’d abandoned
over the last few weeks had filled completely with mud and cast-away food tins and cartridges; to reach us the Germans had to lay
a network of planks over them and inch their way forward in their
caterpillar-treaded trucks. Things must have looked desperate to
them because they stayed in the transports until their officers had
finished their tour of the lines, coming out only when given the
direct order. Maybe it’s comfortable for them in there, I thought. I
watched raptly as the infantry and gunners let themselves down
one by one from out of the covered beds, surefooted and serene.
That was the first of many times I envied them.