The Right Hand of Sleep (28 page)

—I don’t recognize it now, said Voxlauer.

—What is it you think about me? That I hate the Jews? I’ve known many in my life that I’ve liked well. I’m an intelligent man, Oskar. I reserve the right to judge every man’s Jewishness, such as it is, for myself.

—I congratulate you.

—Just the same I admire strength in a man, Oskar, and I despise all forms of cunning. I think I may safely say that I hate cunning more than any other human failing. I hate it with a blind and unrelenting hate. You make a mistake, for example, if you think your Herr Ryslavy is suffering for any other reason. I am not a brute, Oskar, or a fanatic. But neither am I a fool.

—I never thought you were, Obersturmführer.

—Call me Kurt, for heaven’s sake, Oskar. Kurt coughed. —We’re practically family.

—You’re not a fool, Kurt.

Kurt was still watching him. —Understand, Oskar, that when I come on these visits I come in my civilian dress. My uniform stays behind in my rooms, thank Christ, airing out on a little wooden peg. He breathed in deeply. —We’re outside of history here, the four of us.

—If I was a Red you’d have had me killed anyway.

—Maybe so, said Kurt. —Eventually. But only for the sin of bringing history into this valley.

—What is there, exactly, between you and Else now, aside from history? said Voxlauer carefully.

—Blood, of course, Kurt said, stepping away from the bank. —The
girl,
Oskar. Some small sense of the future. Doesn’t the future matter to you at all?

—It matters, said Voxlauer. —It’s beginning to.

—And you ask what binds me to my only cousin? You’re wonderfully dense at times, Voxlauer, for a man of the great outdoors.

—I didn’t ask you that, said Voxlauer, squinting at him against the glare. —I asked what there was between you.

—There’s you, Herr Voxlauer, first of all, Kurt said brightly, starting toward the cottage. Voxlauer hung back very briefly, playing with the idea of striking off into the pines. Watching Kurt’s small-boned frame moving jerkily over the marshy ground, his thick reddish hair pressed imperfectly down onto his head, Voxlauer saw him for one fleeting instant as a young boy, walking with that same gait in pond-sodden clothes toward that same cottage, empty-headed and self-assured. Whatever menace he’d held vanished utterly in that instant. He was wonderful to watch, moving awkwardly across the meadow, as lovely in his way as Else was: her complement. Resi, too, corresponded to them absolutely. As he began to walk forward the thought came to Voxlauer that it might be best, after all, to keep out of such a perfect picture.

Reaching the door first, Kurt glanced over his shoulder before trying the handle. Voxlauer held the keys up and jangled them. Kurt shook his head good-naturedly.

—It’s a strange sort of floating peace you’ve made for yourself up here, Voxlauer. You must feel very satisfied, holed up in your little patch of woods.

Voxlauer came slowly up the steps. —It’s not my patch of woods. You know that very well.

—Come now, cousin-in-law! Confess! All alone up here, uncomplicated by politics, no one to watch over you; you must feel wonderfully free!

—I have someone to watch over me, Obersturmführer. Have you forgotten?

Kurt only shrugged his shoulders. —
Are
you a Red, Oskar? he said almost wistfully.

—Does that word have a meaning up here, outside of history? Voxlauer brought his shoulder against the door and pushed it open.

—Ah! You’re a wily bastard, aren’t you! Kurt said appreciatively. He leaned forward to peer past Voxlauer into the gloom. —What did you leave behind with the Bolsheviks, you wily bastard? A girl? A wife? Family?

—A wife, said Voxlauer, stepping away from the door to let Kurt pass. —No family.

—And I have a family without a wife! We make quite a pair, don’t we.

—You have the future, said Voxlauer, smiling. —You have the Reich.

Kurt paused in mid-stride, looking back at him thoughtfully. —When I was in Berlin, Voxlauer, during the term of my exile, I watched our cause gaining momentum hour by hour. A beautiful thing, beautiful, to have a cause, especially when you are lonely. We nursed it together like midwives, the best of us, and the people who scorned it or hindered it gradually fell away. Some tried, when it was far too late, to recast themselves as our comrades. He pursed his lips. —That’s not your idea, is it?

—Would it work? said Voxlauer.

—We’ll see, Kurt said, ducking under the lintel. —May I enter?

When he’d searched the cottage to his satisfaction Kurt sat down at the table and flipped idly through the sketches. —These are by the old man, these two, he said, holding up the portraits. —I remember when he did them.

—The one on the left’s of Resi, said Voxlauer, leaning against the doorframe.

—Yes. I recognize her mother in it.

—Not her father?

Kurt frowned. —No, not her father so much.

—Where is he now?

—He left.

—A friend of yours?

—He was. Yes. We went away together.

—I see.

—She still thinks of me as a deserter, doesn’t she, Kurt said quietly.

Voxlauer didn’t answer.

—What do you think, Oskar? You’re no stranger to it, after all.

—To what?

Kurt grinned. —Desertion, of course.

—I don’t actually cherish an opinion on the subject, Voxlauer said tightly.

—No? Tell me something, Herr Voxlauer, said Kurt, looking around the room. —What was it drove you to hide away up here in this filthy hole? He let the sketches flutter one by one onto the table. —What was it, Voxlauer? He paused a moment. —Shame?

Voxlauer went to the door and held it open. —I suppose it was, he said. —But not the sort you’d understand, Obersturmführer.

THE ILLEGALS

AUGUST 1938

The morning of the day we shot Chancellor Dollfuss a rally was announced over the radio. The usual selection of bureaucrats would speak, followed by assorted Home Front mannequins,
and finally Dollfuss himself, on the thirteen-inch brass platform he
brought with him to all his speeches, sometime in the early evening. The Brown Shirts were planning to attend with their smoke
bombs and their broom handles and we said nothing to discourage
them. “Let’s just keep them in the dark for the time being,” said
our operations chief, Glass, grinning at no one in particular from
his couch by the teletype. “It’s their natural condition.” One of the
younger boys guffawed. Glass leaned back and continued to wait
for word from Berlin with absolute serenity, hands folded neatly in
his lap. As I watched him I reminded myself again how much I
admired his carefree air. The rest of us stood awkwardly about the
office, glancing skittishly at one another, waiting for Glass to nod
off as he always did after breakfast so we could stop holding in our
excitement. I walked with measured slowness to the window. In
the courtyard the boys were filing in lazily in twos and threes.

We spent the rest of the morning strangely bored, playing
tarok, watching Glass twitch and mumble in his sleep and dreaming up titles for ourselves in the postputsch government. I was
elected minister of cultural sanitation or some such silliness. The
putsch was still nothing more than fantasy to us. Street brawls and
so on were for the Brown Shirts; we fancied ourselves an elite. A
few of us had been hunting with our fathers and knew how to handle, load and fire a rifle. One or two of us had even shot a deer.

Glass was the fat sly old uncle we were all desperate to impress.
I had impressed him most thus far, largely through flattery, and
thus was allowed to eavesdrop from time to time on his affairs, to
spy on the other boys and to order them about when Glass himself
was occupied or napping. At present there was nothing to be done
but wait. Rain came down from the north shortly after ten, darkening the pavements. I played cards for a while, grew distracted,
lost a little money. At noon the wire came from Berlin giving us
our mandate.

Glass cabled the Brown Shirts straightaway with select details:
a full and total putsch, signed into being by the Chancellor himself,
whose abduction that afternoon he, Glass, was personally overseeing; seizure of rail and tramway lines, and radio; immediate opening of the border to Bavaria with the assistance of the Republic’s
own Home Guard, already secretly sworn in allegiance to the Führer. In short, the complete incorporation, within thirty-six hours,
of the Austrian Republic into the Greater German Reich. The
Brown Shirts were furious, of course—it all came as a complete
surprise to them. The telephone rang in seconds. I could hear the
local SA brass screaming like Gypsies one after the other in Glass’s
ear, refusing to back us. There was talk of double-dealings, provocateurship, even treason. They wanted a line straight to Himmler.
Glass, needless to say, was tickled.

“There’s no such thing as a direct line to the SS Führer,”
Glass cooed, rolling his eyes at me. “If you’d like to protest to the
Home Council, comrades . . .” He was still on the line when the
first trucks arrived. Hearing them rolling in, he excused himself
blithely and hung up the receiver. At that point we still had confidence the army would back us, and the Brown Shirts must have,
too, or else figured us done for. Not that they would have warned
us in any event. The Brown Shirts had their own plans for Dollfuss;
execution by broom handle, most likely. We should have expected
them to auction us off to the highest bidder. As it was, they sold us
to the first one they could find.

One of Glass’s more recent protégés knocked shyly on the
office door, holding our disguises. We got into them quickly, no
longer trying to choke back our excitement, giggling at our reflections in the hallway mirror like toddlers in a Nativity play. I was
dressed as a lieutenant in the State Police, in creased, pleated grays
and blacks; Glass had selected a Civil Guard’s uniform for himself,
although he was not actually coming with us. “The spirit of the
thing and so on, Bauer,” he said, struggling to wedge his calves into
the knickerbockers. “They wouldn’t take me in the Guards, you
know, back in ’23.”

“With all due respect, Hauptsturmführer, I’d not have taken
you either,” I heard myself answer. I should have recognized it
right away as an omen. Glass wrinkled his brow for the briefest of
moments, then broke without warning into his infamous titter,
poking me merrily in the ribs. Eventually he got himself into his
uniform and we went down to look the rest of the boys over. We
found them lounging along the cars, suited up and waiting—thirty
in police blacks, sixty-five more dressed as foot soldiers in the Civil
Guard. Glass glanced quickly down the line and turned back to
me, his face flushed with pleasure. “There you are, Bauer,” he said,
taking me by the shoulder. “Bastard sons of the Republic, to a
man.” I spat demonstratively on the ground.

Once the boys had been reviewed we walked slowly back across
the courtyard. “By the way, Obersturmführer,” Glass said when we
were almost to the stairwell, bringing out a roll of mimeographs:
“Your partner in crime Spengler’s artistry. What’s your verdict?”

I looked over the sheets, onto which a crude sketch of the
Chancellery floor plan had been copied. Glass kept quiet, watching me. I felt a vague twinge of something like roadsickness while
flipping through them, trying to make sense of the thickly traced
diagrams and the dense chicken-scratches of script. “They’re a
disaster, Hauptsturmführer,” I said.

Glass let out another titter. “Nonsense! Just take them round,
Bauer, there’s a boy. You’ll manage. You’re all fine soldiers.”

“Listen to me, Hauptsturmführer. Spengler is not a fine soldier.
Not at all. Spengler is a—”

“We all know very well what Spengler is, Bauer. Spengler is the
very type we need to bring our plan to fruition. Spengler is what
we call a man of action.”

“Spengler is a . . . a child, Hauptsturmführer. Surely you
must—”

“All the more reason for you to ride with him this afternoon,
Bauer,” Glass said curtly. “We have absolute confidence in your
judgment.”

“What?”

“Rolling in one quarter hour,” said Glass, no longer looking at
me. He spun on his heels, clownish, dandylike. “Just keep Spengler
on his hind legs, Bauer; the rest will follow.”

He went into the stairwell then and waved me on about my
business. I have a clear memory of him there, just inside the doors,
the midday light glistening on his immaculate pomade. The next
time I saw him he was tied to a chair with wire cord, pleading for
his life as best he could through a blood-and-spit–soaked piece of
rag.

“Heil Hitler, Bauer,” Glass called out as he was halfway up the
stairs.

“Heil Hitler,” I answered, saluting his retreating backside.

I found Spengler slumped against the hood of one of the
trucks, nattering with Little Ernst, the driver. He was dressed, like
me, as a lieutenant of the police, but the uniform was far too small
for him and he’d left the shirt flapping open. He stood and saluted
as I came up, shifting his weight uncomfortably like a field hand in
his Sunday best, dense brown hairs pushing out through his open
shirtfront. Recognizing me, he let out a grunt. “Well, I’ll be buggered,” he said, flashing his gap-toothed boxer’s grin. “I almost
took you for the genuine article, Biddlebauer.”

I smiled thinly, holding up the roll of mimeographs. “This your
doing, Heinrich?”

“Hup,” said Spengler, snapping to attention. “Straight copied
from memory, officer.”

“Is that so?” I turned to Ernst and smiled. “Is it your feeling,
comrade, that a chimp with a runny ass could have done any better? If we’d handed him Dollfuss’s own prick for a fountain pen?”

“I can’t say he would have, Obersturmführer.”

“Ah! Very grand,” muttered Spengler. He looked me over slowly
and appraisingly. “I believe you’re riding with us on today’s outing,
paper jockey. Under our motherly protection.” His thick hand
lolled against his pistol butt.

I looked at Ernst again. “Is this man my mother, Ernst?”

“Not to my knowledge, Obersturmführer.”

Spengler let out a carefully timed belch. Whatever point Glass
was making in choosing him to head the attack was lost on me
entirely. In spite of his stupidity, or perhaps because of it, I was
afraid of him, and I realized this clearly as I returned his stare. “Go
ahead; have your cracks, Biddlebauer,” Spengler muttered. “You’re
riding in my car today, just the same.”

We stood a moment, looking at each other. “They’ll get us in,
all right,” Spengler said after a time, jerking his chin toward the
mimeographs.

“They just might, Heinrich. Seeing as how we’re going in
through the big brass doors, just like every other enemy of the people.” Ernst did his best to suppress a chuckle. “See you in a quarter
hour, brothers,” I said, stepping down to the next group of boys.

When the cars were all lined up and idling, Glass leaned out of the
office window to bestow his blessing. Our sedan was the first of
seven, with five trucks following after. I glanced at my watch;
it was fifteen minutes after three. Glass beamed down at us a
moment, then made a shooing-away motion with his hands, as one
might to a flock of pigeons, and we were off. We rolled around the
block very quietly, then swung out onto the Ring and navigated
through moderate traffic to the Ballhausplatz. On the way we
checked our pistols and loaded them and Spengler fussed with the
chest flap of his uniform. We took care to avoid the Hofburg-side
façade of the chancellery and pulled up instead at the northwest
corner, along the Church of the Minorites, parking well against the
curb like model citizens. Our car and the six others carrying mock
policemen emptied out onto the pavement. The boys dressed as
Civil Guards were to wait another ten minutes before following us,
locking the courtyard gates as they came in. Spengler reviewed
the boys coolly. “You could use a shine, officer,” he said, glancing down at my boots.

Staring into Spengler’s face, I saw a tiny insect, a gnat, perhaps, or a flea, crawl out of his hair. As I looked on, it made its
way painstakingly across his forehead, found a deep, sun-battered
furrow and vanished into it. The nausea I’d felt earlier looking
at the mimeographs returned at once full force and I reached
toward Spengler to keep from falling over. “I feel sick, Heinrich,” I
whispered.

Spengler laughed and stepped away from me. “Of course you
feel sick, Biddlebauer,” he said, loudly and for the benefit of all
present. “Best to wait here with the cars, I think. Try not to make
any messes.”

“Shut up, Spengler, for Christ’s sake.”

“On my word, boys!” Spengler crowed, holding his rifle up.
But instead of the promised word he simply raised the rifle above
his head and let it fall.

The sound of an engine laboring up the steep grade woke them early one morning at the beginning of August. —It’s your land-lord, said Else, drawing aside the window shade. She made a face.

—I’ve gone to Italy, said Voxlauer, hiding his head under the sheets.

—Not without me, you haven’t. Up and into your britches. She was rummaging through the clothes trunk, letting skirts and slips and stockings fall lightly through her fingers. He listened to the rustle of her nightshirt over the floor and the slap of her bare feet on the kitchen steps. He pulled the coverlet back and watched as she peered out the kitchen window. A moment later she undid the latch and a light breeze swept down to him.

—Herr Ryslavy! Such a rare privilege.

—Fräulein Bauer. Good morning. I’m sorry to disturb you.

—Not at all. Else stood still for an instant, squinting. —What time is it?