The 14th Day (12 page)

“What's he doing?” Vaniok asks in an urgent whisper when the policeman has left. Whatever has caught hold of him hasn't let him go. He's just as disturbed by the man's departure as he was by his presence, he closes his fists on a trembling he can barely control. Behind them a voice booms unnervingly over the radio in the police car. The last few minutes have been like swimming underwater and Vaniok is desperate to reach the surface where he can breathe.

“He's checking to see whether the car is stolen,” Jory says. “I assume it isn't.” Vaniok glances at him quickly: though he's joking with Ila, Jory's mouth is tense, there's a glaze of sweat over his upper lip; and Vaniok can see what he glimpsed earlier: that, no less than he is, Jory is holding his breath, waiting for this to be over.
It isn't the speeding,
he thinks; that's not what's bothering him.
He's as nervous as I am, maybe more
. Still, Vaniok can't take any satisfaction from his intuition because of his own response.

Ila smiles at Jory. “What kind of woman do you think I am? Isn't it enough you believe I killed all those animals back in the homeland? Bison!” She shakes her head.

“He's taking a long time,” Vaniok says. Then, shamed by the banter of his companions, he reminds himself: they're not in the homeland, after all. There's no real danger in this encounter with the police: it's only going to cost money. “How much does a fine for speeding cost?” he asks. “I should help you pay, since I encouraged you to drive fast. I'll pay it all, in fact.”

Ila laughs quietly. “That's very sweet, Vaniok, but I'm a big girl. It was my decision.”

He turns up his hands. “Still …”

They fall silent as they hear the policeman approach. “Who are your passengers?” he asks, leaning into the car, his big face and dark glasses threatening once more. When he and Vaniok give their names Jory has to clear his throat. “They my cousins, officer,” Ila says in the voice she's put on for the occasion. “It's holiday in my country,” she sniffles, “and we go to ocean to make picnic.” She dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief and smiles charmingly. The policeman watches, then shakes his head like an indulgent older brother. Frowning, he pushes back his cap and says, “I'm going to let you off with a warning, miss. I'm not going to write you a ticket, you being a stranger and all.” He pauses a moment. “But from now on, you watch that speed limit.”

“Oh, thank you, officer,” Ila says. “I will.” Vaniok nods at the policeman, expecting to feel a sense of reprieve, if not a return of his earlier high spirits; but already he knows this isn't going to happen. He feels the empty gratitude of a beggar. After the policeman leaves, Ila pulls back onto the road and soon the car is traveling at the legal speed limit. It would be wiser to drive a little more slowly, Vaniok is sure, at least while they're still in sight of the police car, but he isn't going to make any suggestions.

Jory, on the other hand, seems to find the whole situation amusing. “What an actress,” he says.

“Who, me?” Ila's eyes widen. “I just poor foreign girl,” she says in the language of the host country.

Vaniok joins weakly in the laughter of the other two, but everything has changed in the last few minutes; though he's seated between his companions, he might as well be in the back of the car. The encounter with the policeman has depleted him. He feels a vague irritation with Ila and Jory for treating the whole episode so lightly, especially since he knows Jory wasn't nearly as casual as he tried to seem. What is it that the man's hiding? But at least, whatever it was, Jory kept it concealed while Vaniok let himself fall into a panic back there. It makes no sense, here in this country, where nothing more was at stake than a traffic ticket, for him to have got so upset, to have lost all courage. Were they likely to be thrown into a cell, after all, then led out to the woods to be shot?

Vaniok looks glumly at the countryside through which they're moving. He thought he'd proved what had to be proved once and for all in the homeland. Even after failing Ranush, he stayed, he fought. Even after the Thirteen Days, when it was clear to all but the suicidal that everything was lost, Vaniok, who'd never had the slightest interest in politics, remained there for a time with a group called the Thorn and played his futile part. In the border town of Bostra he waited alone beside a bridge, a rifle in his hands, long after it was safe or reasonable, listening to the nighttime insects, listening for other sounds. Whether or not that was really courage, didn't he have a right to expect that something of that experience would remain with him permanently? Yet here he is, in another country, and the man who called himself Vaniok who waited at the bridge might be a stranger he's read about in the paper. He can't even be sure how much of a self he carries with him from day to day. Vaniok's anger is a hammer pummeling him into silence.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Vaniok's baffled muteness, Jory seems to be flourishing; he and Ila are talking animatedly. No, Vaniok realizes, he can't even pretend to have been the one who encouraged Ila to drive faster. Ila was playing some kind of game with Jory and it was Jory's response that egged her on. It was Jory, after all: the shadow-stealer who's come out of the clock and taken Vaniok's shadow. And the man was as bothered by the police as he was, Vaniok is sure of it.

“What do you suppose it's like off the highway?” Jory asks Ila. “It looks as mysterious as the moon.”

“The moon? You do think I was driving fast, don't you?”

“Who knows? It could be the moon. We could explore it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Today is a holiday; it isn't a time for being serious, is it?”

“Then let's turn off and see what the moon looks like,” Ila says. “What do you say to that?” she asks Vaniok.

“Yes, of course,” he answers. Who was the Vaniok who waited near the bridge in Bostra? Who was the Vaniok who didn't join Ranush on that street corner? Where is either man now?

Off the highway they've suddenly wandered into a vast flat emptiness and a silence that seems to rise from the land. On both sides of the road are fields where something is growing, but the only structures are distant blots against the horizon; there are no humans to be seen. A sign promises a town within two miles, but it would be easy enough to imagine the straight, two-lane road leading to the edge of the earth where the green car would drop off into the infinite spaces, tumbling forever among the stars and planets.

Jory points out a lone tree in the field: a beardlike fringe hangs from its black, writhing limbs. “We are on the moon,” he proclaims. “I'm sure of it.” His whole manner has changed since the episode with the policeman; he seems lighter, as if he's thrown off a pair of water-soaked boots. “Trees like that are found only on the moon,” he says. And it's true: it looks like something from a fairy tale.

“We have to see this town,” Ila says.

“What do you suppose the moon-creatures grow in those fields?” Jory asks.

“Melons,” Ila offers. “Pumpkins, baby moons.”

Vaniok looks at the scene before him. He remembers thinking not long ago that the three of them were lost angels moving across the earth. Possibly those angels would have felt exactly what he's feeling now: a sense of terrible disconnection. Where are we, each of them would ask. How do we find our way back to where we came from, a place we can scarcely remember?

“Look,” Ila says. “How desolate.” She stops the car before a small house standing by itself in the fields, the kind of tumbledown shack a tenant farmer might have lived in with his family crowded into its tight spaces, though no one has lived under this sagging roof for years, it's clear. Unpainted, the wood has turned silver, conferring a mysterious glamour on this modest ruin. Ila looks at the house a long time. To Vaniok this place could only have been abandoned in haste by someone trying to escape a terrible fate. How long has it been empty, he wonders. It's remarkable that nobody has come here in the middle of the night with a can of kerosene and burned the place down. It would be so easy: Flames would pulse for a few moments in the dark field, but the dry wood would be consumed quickly. Then there would only be the charred remnants, black grass; after a time, nothing would be left.

“I think I see signs of a town.” Jory points toward a steeple among a growth of trees, and Ila directs the car past more fields empty of people until all at once they're within the shady patch of trees that marks off a tiny settlement, just a few buildings clustered together. Where the two main streets intersect Ila turns and they slowly drive past a handful of small businesses and modest houses with metal furniture on the porches. The only people they see are black. When Ila turns up one of the side streets they find themselves suddenly confronting a large structure, ghostly and abandoned, set on a lot of its own, and they get out of the car to take a closer look. To all appearances the leading citizens of the town must have lived here in the previous century. Old trees crowd the house, tall grass pushes against its walls and shrubbery has spilled on to the porch. The paint has long since faded, the windows are out, a few shutters hang askew and the steps that lead to the rotting porch are gone. “I wish I knew more about the history of this country,” Ila says. “There's a story here.”

Not far away is a church, though they can't tell whether or not it's still in use. The small cemetery beside it has been neglected, a number of the stone tablets having fallen, grass and weeds grow unchecked. Silently the three visitors walk through the enclosed yard, looking at the graves. There are cemeteries in the homeland much older than this, yet these abandoned graves convey a sense of great antiquity. Vaniok scans the names: oddly, some are the same as those of the people he works with at the university. He and Jory watch as Ila crosses herself and says a short prayer.

Later they stop for gas at the town's main intersection. The gas station is combined with a convenience store and a take-out restaurant. “I'm hungry,” Ila says, looking at the barbecued ribs and fried chicken in warmed trays, and Jory nods in agreement. “Let's get some of this,” she says. “It isn't traditional Constitution Day food, but it smells wonderful. We have to make our adaptations to the tradition, don't we, Vaniok?”

“Yes,” he nods. As they drive away from the town the smell of fried chicken fills the car. To his surprise, he regrets leaving that town: it was strange and mysterious, like a person who knows important secrets but is unable to speak. Yet when Vaniok imagines himself roaming its streets, walking through the unkempt grass to the large abandoned house, or entering the shack in the fields outside of town, he sees himself alone: there was nothing there that he could talk about with the others.

Nevertheless, as the car resumes its course toward the ocean, he's determined to pull out of the gloom into which he's sunk. After all, the ocean will be something to see. And they're going to be celebrating Constitution Day. He should be happy, he can't let these unwelcome visitations overwhelm him. He will be happy, he tells himself. At the same time, he can't help feeling that his shadow has been stolen.

When they get to the beach Ila directs the unloading of the car and starts out across the sand, where they fall into a single file with Jory at the rear. Since it's early in the season there are few other people at the shore today, the three of them have the place virtually to themselves. Still Ila leads them across the dunes briskly, as though they're racing to get the last available spot.

Jory doesn't care whether they get anywhere or not. Being here, free, at the edge of the land, is a miracle; he could stay on this beach forever. Even as he makes his leisurely way across the yielding sand, trailing the other two, he contemplates again his close call on the highway: he sat there beside Vaniok, joking with Ila, but he'd already accepted the fact that he was going to be found out, the false papers exposed—he was sure the holiday was ending for all of them on the side of the highway, and a lot more than a holiday was ending for him. Yet here he is on his way to a picnic. He relishes it all the more for the danger they encountered.

Barefoot, a sack slung over her shoulder, Ila moves quickly—she might be a child let out of school early, determined to make the most of her freedom. Her hair flies wildly in the strong breeze from the ocean, her skirt a rippling flag, and every few seconds she calls back some words that Jory can't hear, though he imagines them to be simple cries of delight. Vaniok is a few steps behind her, trudging the top of a dune, with a small suitcase and a paper bag, like a refugee. As they move across the uneven landscape Jory takes his time, stopping every now and then, stooping to run the beach grass against his fingers, and the gap between himself and the others grows. They can't lose me, he thinks: I've got the picnic basket. His heart swells: to smell the ocean, to see the coast curving for miles, to push himself across the yielding sand, every muscle in play. And after that narrow escape on the highway. Gratitude floods him. What would have happened if that policeman had decided to make a thorough check? Would they have sent him back to that country to the north? What would he have found out about the man he pushed away, whose empty eyes looked up into the frigid night while he stood over him, breathing heavily, bleeding, hearing the distant sounds of revelry?

He stops for a moment, he watches the other two make their way across the sand without him. To the east the dunes drop to the beach floor, where the white-capped surf comes crashing in, still advancing at this time of day. The water's blue is almost green, topped with a froth where the waves curl and break with a steady pounding while the wind whistles through the beach grass. This is different, so different in its color and music from the ocean he saw as a boy when he went to visit his aunts in the port city, that water slate-gray, the waves low and furtive. Yet it's the same ocean that covers the globe and here, on this foreign shore, the three of them have come closer to the homeland.