Little Nothing (21 page)

The only time she has a hope of locating her past is during Sunday visiting hour. The women stand on one side of a chicken-wire fence across from their families, who wave and shout messages. Guards patrol the fence on both sides, making sure that no one tries to poke a finger through the diamond-shaped openings in order to touch a prisoner's hand or stroke a baby's cheek. Each Sunday she waits, expecting nothing but still hoping, but there is never anyone who calls out to her, and she recognizes no one. She is compelled most by the children. Whether they stand near their adults or are small enough to be carried in arms, they are attentive to the cacophony surrounding them, the names urgently shouted, the prisoners elbowing one another to get closer to the fence, guards shouting warnings, frantic conversations as people exchange as much information as they can in the little time available. Despite this emotional tumult the children seem unperturbed. If their lives have been upended by the circumstance of having a mother or a sister in prison, they offer no clue. Occasionally, one of them notices that she is staring and he might smile or stick out his tongue or, if he is a little older, offer up a crude gesture. They frighten her, these children, as if they might do her harm, or she them.

After visiting hour is over, the women return to the barracks. No one speaks. It might seem an obvious time for stories about
a time when
, the excitement having stirred memories, but the proximity of what is lost makes this kind of talk too dangerous. Even Iveta seems dull and uninspired after a visiting day that serves only to remind her that all her schemes are meaningless because not one of them will land her on the other side of that fence.

But unlike Iveta and the others, and even though no one has come to claim her, she feels a weird, restless energy and she paces up and down the narrow aisle between bunks until someone yells at her to stop. The children possess her thoughts. She is agitated by their ruthless ability to adapt to their circumstances. She feels—yes, this is what memory must be made of—a
yearning.

A
nd where would you like to go tonight?”
Danilo says to Markus one evening after they have dropped off the watermen and returned to the stable. The dark hours are their daytime and they have many to fill before they have to hitch the horse back to the wagon and collect the workers. The question doesn't need answering; he knows exactly where the boy wants to go.

At night, the chaos of the city subsides. Variously electrified, the streets become landscapes of light and shadow. Markus and Danilo's nightly strolls feel private and somehow secret, and Danilo senses he is on the brink of discovering something. He can't say what, only that to be walking so fearlessly on these streets is to feel every breath, to glory in the swing of his legs and arms, to hear his footfalls echo, and to know in a way that is less certain during the day that he is alive and that to be alive is something besides working and eating and sleeping. It is to move
through a city and not hide the sound you make. He'd like to shout. He touches Markus's back as they turn a corner. The boy is part of this feeling. He is not alone. The two of them together are a foundation.

They walk easily through the cramped neighborhoods they have come to know well from their wagon rides. But when they turn onto a broad street lined with elegant homes decorated with flowering window boxes, where the cobbles, cleaned daily of garbage and manure, glitter in the abundant lamplight, they feel like apostates inhaling sanctified air. Still, they must pass through this fine neighborhood each night to get to the clock tower.

The street lamps that stand in the town hall square cast a glow over the face of the clock so that its discs shimmer. At the hour, two doors slide open and the twelve apostles appear and disappear in slow procession. Below them, tucked into niches, other figures are set into stuttering motion—a man holding a mirror, one clutching a moneybag, another wearing a turban. A skeleton figure holds an hourglass and rings a bell every time the clock strikes, death reminding everyone that the final hour draws ever closer. Although he's seen this performance unfold many times now, Markus's face always registers wonder. The fact that the figures move hour after hour, night after night, is a kind of miracle of continuity. That the boy doesn't trust the clock to delight him from one week to the next seems to Danilo a sad testament to Markus's past, but there is another part, this continual willingness to be freshly delighted, that he envies. When the hour is struck, and the little cock at the very top of the
tower crows, Markus always laughs, waking the three-legged piebald dog that sleeps at the foot of the building. The dog lifts its head, regards Markus and Danilo for a few moments, remembers that they offer nothing in the way of food and, sighing heavily, settles back to sleep. Some nights, Markus will beg to wait a full hour for the chimes to play again, sometimes twice more. Danilo always agrees although he puts up a little resistance so that the boy can feel his victory is hard and well won. But the truth is that Danilo is as captivated by the clockworks as the boy. The rotation of the figurines, the way they imitate life but are not life. With their stiff poses and mechanical movements, the figures suggest something about destiny. He wonders about his own fate and whether he has no more control over it than these wooden characters. Perhaps Pavla was right and his future is already written for him. But what if that future does not include her? The thought frightens him. He's comforted by the fact that each time he and the boy watch the clock, the performance is exactly the same. The figures live in an ever-repeating present where time past is not really past and the future—the next hour, or the one after that—is only a return to a familiar place in a never-ending loop. Will she and he circle back to each other again? Or could he somehow return to a place he's been—the forest, maybe? The carnival? Even back to Smetanka's doctor's office? Would she be there? A wolf, a wolf girl, a dwarf, all of the ways she has ever appeared to him existing at once?

“What does it mean?” the boy asks. “What's the story?”

And each time, they tell a different one. The man with the mirror is staring at himself because he thinks he's handsome.
But he's so busy admiring himself that he doesn't notice the other man steal all his money. Death wants to take the turbaned fellow to heaven or hell, but the man runs away. He's not ready to die.

“And what about him?” Markus asks, pointing to a figure that doesn't move.

“The one with the book,” Danilo says. “He's telling the story.”

“What story?”

“It's been two hours, Markus. I'm exhausted!”

But Markus begs to stay for one more hour, and Danilo gives in.

Danilo wonders what the story was for the person who built the clock hundreds of years earlier. Only that man knows the true tale. Perhaps, Danilo thinks, he and Markus are characters in the clockmaker's story. They are the young man and the boy who come each night to stand in the amber-lit square, faces upturned, waiting for the inevitable and yet surprised by it all the same. They are the ones who take such pleasure when the doors open, who grow quiet and somehow a little bereft when the little scene comes to an end, the apostles disappear, the doors shutter, and the story ends all over again. The lame dog might be a character, too. Danilo puts his hand on Markus's shoulder but takes it off quickly, suddenly self-conscious, as if he were only acting out the will of this long-ago narrator.

“What time is it now?” Markus asks.

“You tell me.” The boy can neither read nor write. Danilo is trying to teach him to tell time.

“What will you give me if I do?”

“Admiration.”

“Not worth it,” Markus says. But then he gives in to the challenge. “Ten minutes past . . . te—eleven.”

“You have my admiration.”

“Ha, ha,” Markus says.

Night after night Danilo tries to decipher the symbols on the clock. The golden numerals in the center ring represent the twenty-four hours of the day; that much he knows. The hands of the clock are a sun and moon. He thinks another of the disks shows the astrological signs. He recognizes the one for the twins. His mother showed it to him and his brother when they were little but warned them not to tell anyone, especially the priest. But what do the stars have to do with time? And what about the strange markings on the third disk? Are there three kinds of time occurring simultaneously? The idea that the moment he occupies right now might be another moment entirely—well, if that is possible, than what isn't? Is there anything that cannot be believed?

Markus finally turns from the clock and, as has become his habit, heads toward the bridge that spans the river. They pass the ghostly statues of the saints and heroes that line either side. Some of them hold books or crosses; others have their hands firmly around the hilts of their swords. A statue of a lion captures the beast just as it rears up on its hind legs to battle a many-headed dragon. Danilo smiles to himself as Markus charts a wide arc around that one as he always does, careful not to catch Danilo's eye and admit his fear. Once they reach the opposite shore, they begin the steep climb toward the castle whose turrets and crenellated walls are etched against the night sky.

Here the city becomes one of steep pitches and switchbacks,
rooftops climbing one on top of another. The cobblestone streets are so narrow that it is easy to imagine a busy cook could stretch a flour-dusted arm out her kitchen window to take a bowl of sugar from her neighbor. Danilo thinks of lovers whispering to one another and although he tries not to, he thinks of her. The higher they climb, the more the city below becomes a frozen painting, a darkly tranquil landscape of copper-green cupolas and needle-thin spires. The bells of the city's many churches strike the hour unevenly so that the contrapuntal notes wash the air. Once Danilo and Markus reach the top of the hill, the street empties out onto a flat esplanade that precedes the ornate castle gates. Two armed sentries stand at their posts, as frozen as the statues on the bridge. Danilo becomes nervous around officials of any kind, even these ceremonial ones who seem no more dangerous than tin soldiers. But Markus insists on waiting in the shadows, hoping to see if one of the men will scratch or sneeze and give himself away as human. That they never do is both a frustration and a satisfaction to the boy who would be disappointed were the scene ruined by something so ordinary as an itch.

Well past midnight, Danilo and Markus sit on a grassy verge overlooking the river. The lights from the bridge throw oscillating reflections onto the tide. Boats roped to pilings nudge one another apathetically.

“Did you really kill someone?” Markus asks.

“Yes,” Danilo says.

“Who?”

“A hunter.”

“Was he trying to kill you and you killed him first?”

“No, that wasn't it.” Danilo imagines what would have happened if that scenario were true. Perhaps he would not have been put in the asylum. He might have had the chance to find her. “He was going to kill a wolf.”

“That's what hunters are for.”

“I know that. But I didn't want him to kill this particular wolf.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“That's not a reason.”

“Sometimes I think it's the only explanation for anything that happens,” Danilo says.

For once, Markus does not question his logic. The boy lies back and stares up at the sky, and Danilo does, too. The stars are out. He recognizes the constellations Klima pointed out to him.

“What was he like?” Markus says.

“Who? The hunter?”

“The wolf. Was he fierce?”

“He was a she,” he says. “And yes. She was fierce. And also kind.”

“A kind wolf?” the boy says incredulously.

“Maybe that isn't the word. Maybe she just . . . accepted her fate.”

“What was her fate?”

“To be a wolf.”

“Did you save her?”

“I don't know.”

“Where is she?”

“I'm not sure if she was ever there to begin with. She might have been, I don't know, just a dream I had.”

“So you killed someone because you had a bad dream?”

Danilo laughs lightly. “I never thought about it that way.”

“That's because I'm smarter than you.”

Danilo sits up and looks at boy. “I had a brother once,” he says. “His name was Markus.”

“The same name as me,” the boy says, understanding coming slowly. Something shifts in him as he recognizes that his name has meaning and that it connects him to Danilo in a particular way. He sits up. “What happened to him?”

“He got sick and died.”

“I'm not sick.”

“No.”

“I'm fierce.” He makes claws out of his hands, bares his small teeth. “I'm as fierce as a wolf!”

T
he two have fallen asleep by the side of the river.
Danilo wakes first. Dawn has broken. The ground is wet and cold and his bones ache. The previous night, he and Markus were somehow contained in a warm, safe membrane, but now that protection has disappeared. The boy sleeps curled in on himself, his hands tucked between his thighs.

A truck rattles across the bridge. A garbage scow carries its load down the river.

“We'll be late,” Danilo says, nudging the boy. Markus whines and resists until Danilo offers to carry him on his back, and like that, they cross over the bridge, past the statues, which seem smaller and less forbidding in the daylight. Still, Danilo puts distance between himself and the lion, if only to honor his burden.

Back at the livery, Markus harnesses Anuska. These days, the horse walks the route without any provocation. Danilo holds
the reins idly, and the boy dozes against his arm, waking when they arrive at the work site. Sooty and tired, the watermen fill the wagon with the collected rubble of the night's work, then climb on top and settle in for their uncomfortable ride home. Boris takes Danilo's place on the bench, and Danilo joins the men in the back of the wagon. He listens as they grumble about the time lost carrying the heavy pails out of the tunnel. They are paid by every meter they excavate and their progress of late has been slow.

“What we need is a mule down there,” a man says.

“We have Borek,” someone says to general chuckling and the half-hearted objections from the broad-backed man.

“Be serious,” someone says. “I barely make enough to feed my family.”

“Pulleys,” Danilo says under his breath.

“A man should open his mouth only if he has something worthwhile to say,” Boris calls back over his shoulder.

Danilo is about to demur; he doesn't want to appear naive in front of these men. But his mind has already latched onto an idea, and in no time at all he conceives a plan in its entirety. A system of ropes and pulleys and levers. Perhaps a flywheel. He explains his idea in a rough way. “You'll be able to take out twice the amount. Maybe more,” he says, trying to moderate his excitement.

He spends the following week making drawings and calculations. He shows the final layout to Boris, who, having just awoken, surveys it stark-naked and sporting a proud erection. Finally,
he looks up, inhales and exhales deeply. “I have no more use for you as my valet,” he says.

Discouraged, Danilo looks at his sketches, trying to figure out what has displeased the man. “At least keep the boy on,” he says quietly. “He's good with the horse. Turn me out, but not him.”

“Tonight,” Boris says, “you become a waterman.”

—

O
NCE
IMPLEMENTED
,
the new system is a complete success. Full buckets of rubble move from the deepest part of the tunnel to the mouth just as empty ones return to be filled. The true engineering triumph, however, is the system that Danilo devises to lift the heavy buckets out of the manhole. Instead of the diggers wasting time and energy hoisting the awkward loads up a ladder, one man stationed aboveground need only push down on a lever. The flywheel spins, a weight drops, and the bucket flies out of the hole as if borne aloft on a rush of air. When this is demonstrated for the first time, the watermen applaud.

Danilo stays underground to work the new contraption. Markus, after complaining richly, is allowed to help, although he is sent out of the tunnel whenever it is time to set off dynamite. Even without those explosions, the noise in the tunnel is thick with shovels and picks and buckets clanging and men shouting warnings about falling schist. Half the men dig and carry, the others follow behind, shoring up the sides of the trench with square frames of timber and support joists. Dust particles are illuminated
by ventilation shafts and by torches that hang intermittently from the provisional stanchions that shoulder the roof of unstable rock. When the men take their meal break, sitting against the sides of a recently blasted section, chewing on rinds of sausage and bread and smoking, Danilo and Markus take a torch and explore the network of finished tunnels. Ovoid in shape, the brick-lined passageways are tall enough for a man to stand and wide enough for workers to walk alongside the massive pipe that runs down the center. Markus likes to put his ear to it and listen to the sound of the water rushing through. The pipe is made of bolted sections of heavy iron, and Danilo doubts the boy hears anything but he humors him. Is Mrs. Pigface having her bath? he says. No, Markus says. It's Mr. Snotnose flushing his toilet. They marvel at these roadways, a secret map of the underside of the city known only to this special group of men of which they are now a part.

During one such meal break, Danilo takes an apple out of his pocket, splits it in two, and hands half to the boy. The olfactory announcement goes out swiftly, and in no time, they hear the scrabble of claws. A rat appears out of the darkness, its eyes shining. It stops, stares at them, its long tail drawing an S shape on the tunnel floor. Markus chews his apple slowly. He puts the last bite into his mouth then spits it out and holds it between his fingertips. The rat's nose twitches. It stands, frozen. And then, in less time than a blink, it darts forward, snatches the apple from Markus's fingers, and disappears down the tunnel.

“I had a dream,” Markus says, as they walk back to the work area. He balances on the pipe, his arms akimbo.

“Tell me,” Danilo says.

“I was on a journey. I walked for a long time. Sometimes I was running very fast. But I never got tired.”

“Where were you going?”

“I don't know where I'm going,” the boy says, back inside the present tense of his dream. “But I'm not scared.”

“That's good.”

“Finally, I get on a boat. When the boat docks, I look for her but she is not there to meet me.”

“Who?”

“But then I pass a café and she is inside, sitting at a table by herself.”

“She must be lonely.”

“She's not. The waiter is there. He's smoking a cigarette.”

Danilo smiles to himself, content that the boy does not yet know about that most hopeless kind of loneliness that you can experience in a crowd. “And does she see you?” he says.

The boy doesn't answer.

Danilo thinks about Dr. MaÅ¡ek and his talking cure. Maybe it would be good for the boy to speak of his dead mother, to admit to his sadness. “Markus, what happens next?”

“I don't know,” the boy says. “The dream ended. I woke up.”

His tone is not convincing, but Danilo doesn't press him. “I once knew a woman who claimed to be able to tell the past of complete strangers,” he says.

“Is this a story?” Markus says.

“Yes, but it's also true. She called herself ‘Fortunate FrantiÅ¡ka.'”

“Was she pretty?”

“Ha! Listen to you!” Danilo says. “Already you have your eye on the girls.”

“I don't!” Markus says, grinning.

“In fact, she was terrible looking. A face like a rotten grape.” He remembers the woman's suspicious gaze, how cold her hand was when she took his and, flipping it over, traced his palm with her yellowed fingernail. Pavla said the woman reminded her of a gypsy she once knew. That gypsy was the reason she was born, she told him, although he didn't understand what she meant. “People lined up to have FrantiÅ¡ka read their fortune because she was always right. She could tell you the names of your parents and how many brothers and sisters you had. She could tell you things you thought but never dared to say.”

“Why would you pay someone to tell you what you already know?”

Why, indeed. “Because,” Danilo says, trying to figure out the answer as he goes. “I knew things had happened to me. But when she told me, I
believed
that they had happened.” He recalls the strange sense of peace he felt when he left the soothsayer's tent the time she told him he had a dead brother. The miracle of a stranger knowing their past was what people paid for, but what they left with was the sensation that their lives had somehow been made true and maybe even eternal. He often watched customers as they walked away from a session with the fortune-teller into the bright sunlight, dazed as newborns. The world had just been revealed to them, and they were alive to its abundant mysteries.

“She could tell the future, too,” he says. “Things that were going to happen to you.”

“How did you know she was right?”

“You didn't. You just had to hope you'd live long enough to find out.”

“Was she right about your future?”

Danilo remembers:
One of you will be brave. One of you will be a coward. One of you will believe. One of you will doubt.
“I don't know,” he says. “I haven't lived long enough, I guess.”

He doesn't think Markus is any kind of seer only that, like the water pipe he now jumps down from, he's a conduit. Something rushes through him. Something as pure as water from a faraway mountainside that has made its way over dams and through aqueducts into these underground pipes, heading exactly where it needs to go. But where is that place? Where will the two of them end
up?