The 14th Day (13 page)

The other two move on, still oblivious to his withdrawal from their march. Ila continues forging ahead. She's a remarkable person; she creates her world as she moves through it. She not only singlehandedly brought this holiday into being, regardless of the actual date, but now that they've come to the beach she'll lead the two of them until she finds the perfect spot, no matter that this is her first time here as it is his and Vaniok's. And no doubt when she finds it, it will perfectly match a picture in her head. He smiles, remembering her performance on the highway when they were stopped and once more the brush of that memory calls up the apprehension he felt then. Ila is someone who can make her way through any strange place. How lucky, at this stage in his exile, to have run into her.

But Vaniok, following her—he's very different from his cousin, he's a man given to sudden plummets. God knows, Jory can understand that. Even though he was concerned with his own situation when the policeman stopped them it actually calmed him to have to intervene when Vaniok reached for the wheel. Something happened to Vaniok there, something was taken from him on that stretch of highway and from that moment on, try as he might, he hasn't been the same man who started out on this trip.

Jory's musing pace has allowed his companions to pass completely out of view, over the next dune, and now he puts down the picnic basket. Facing the ocean, smelling the salt in the air, he could be the only living person on this continent so far from his home. The thought brings a quick spasm of terror; yet at the same time he feels an energy so strong that he squeezes his fists to contain it, as though flames will burst through his skin if he lets them. His hands tremble from the force of holding them shut. That was the way he felt last winter as he watched the alien snow falling and drank glass after glass of vodka. How long can I go on, he kept thinking, holding everything in, holding my breath, waiting? It was the succession of ordinary days, he saw then, nothing spectacular, just the daily piled atop the daily that lay ahead, that would use him up—it was an idea that terrified him.

“Jory?” He looks up to see Vaniok before him. “We wondered where you were.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I was admiring the view.” Vaniok gives a half-hearted smile. Jory can see that he's still trying to shake off whatever ghosts from the past have visited him. He's sure, too, that Vaniok will find it hard to forgive his countryman for having witnessed his moment of weakness. Still, maybe talking about something else will help. “Did you go to the ocean much in the homeland?” Jory asks.

“No,” the other answers, “not much. I'm a freshwater man, I suppose.” There's something defensive, almost defeated, about the statement; at the same time, Jory can imagine Vaniok blaming him for provoking that reaction. He feels a sense of injustice: all he wanted to do, after all, was to make conversation.

“Vaniok,” he says, suddenly moved by his friend's plight, “since this isn't exactly the traditional way of celebrating Constitution Day, maybe we could have a little drink now, just you and I, before the picnic. I know I'd like one.” Vaniok looks at him for a moment as though Jory has addressed him in some language that neither of them understands. After a moment or two he nods. “Yes,” he says. “A drink, yes.” Jory takes the cover off the picnic basket and pulls out the bottle. He offers it to Vaniok, who reaches for it greedily.

“The constitution.” Vaniok lifts the bottle, then drinks several hearty swallows. Tears come to his eyes and he blinks them away before handing the bottle back to Jory, who makes the same toast and drinks.

They stand there facing each other with the wind whistling through the beach grass. Jory feels the fire of the liquor moving through him. For the time being it's burned away the sense of hollowness, of living a life that isn't a life, the need to do something, no matter how extreme, to affirm that he actually is alive. “Vaniok,” he says, gesturing with his hands. “You know …” He wants to tell him that he sympathizes, that he understands about what happened on the highway, for a moment he's even tempted to tell him about his own fears and why he felt that way; but before he can say anything more he sees in the other man's eyes that Vaniok doesn't welcome his sympathy at all. Glimpsing Vaniok's muffled fury, Jory contents himself with saying, “May we be back there next year.” He turns toward the ocean and watches the advancing waves. There may be no point in trying to repair the irreparable. Better to wash your hands of the whole thing and let nature take its course.

“Hello,” Ila waves from the top of a nearby dune. “Now I lost two companions. I didn't plan on picnicking alone.”

“We're in rebellion against your leadership,” Jory says, happy to see her. “You're leading us across this beach like Moses with the Israelites. Who knows how long we'll spend wandering over the sand?”

“I promise,” Ila says. “Just a few minutes more.”

They follow her, Jory springing ahead of Vaniok, who trails behind. Even here on the beach he hasn't been able to recover his earlier cheer: some demon stifles any light words before they can reach his tongue. He could at least have been gracious when Jory offered him a drink. But he can't quite put behind him the idea that while he was the one who acted badly, Jory didn't feel all that differently when the police stopped them. You were scared, he thinks.
But of what?

Ila, true to her promise, quickly finds a hollow in the dunes where they're protected from the wind, which has picked up considerably since they started their trip. They unpack their bags and the basket, spreading the containers of food on a blanket. Their shelter is comfortable but for some time now Vaniok has kept his eyes on the western horizon where dark clouds have been gathering. It's very likely this picnic is going to be shorter than they've planned it.

Still, he can't just keep looking at the sky. “Here,” he offers to help Jory anchor the blanket in the sand. He feels like a man buried in the sand trying to climb out. It's true that he panicked back there on the highway but that whole episode is in the past. There's no reason for him to continue going around carrying the burden of shame, and still he does. He thinks now with some dispassion, as if it's someone else he's thinking about, of himself waiting at the bridge in Bostra. It was long since clear that everything had been lost and the men in gray uniforms were securely in power so that only small groups like the Thorn could practice minor acts of harassment. Even though he knew it would make little difference, Vaniok felt the need to join them. A bunch of thugs, really, given license by the troubles to inflict violence for a patriotic cause. What difference for them if they attacked a synagogue or a police station? But Vaniok needed to do something. He was simply glad for the chance to fight.

The plan had been to stage an automobile accident on a road outside of town to which the local police would respond. Vaniok was stationed near one of the bridges they'd have to cross, waiting with his rifle. The accident was set for seven o'clock, and when that time passed, it was apparent something had gone wrong but he continued to wait on the bridge, listening to the crickets. He had plenty of time to think about the morality of shooting policemen as a substitute for the victorious soldiers when many police were in no more sympathy with those who'd come into power than he'd been—at the moment he was ready: had the police car come he'd have done it without blinking. But the only klaxon he heard that night was probably the police picking up the other conspirators. Still, Vaniok stayed near that bridge, rifle in his hand, long after it was necessary, keeping a promise to himself. Even his nervousness gave way at last to a despairing calm. A fishy smell rose from the river, his fingers absently traced the shape of the rifle he carried. He listened to the insects and the occasional splash of a fish, recognizing that, one way or another, Bostra would be his last memory of the homeland.

“Let me get that,” Jory says to Ila, and he begins unpacking the picnic basket.

Vaniok can see that the other man isn't even trying to draw him out anymore. Fine, he thinks. Why bother? What's done is done. Once again he takes solace in the glowering sky. It might be a mercy if this holiday were to be cut short by a storm. “The weather looks ominous,” he says to Ila.

She looks at the distant clouds and shrugs. “We're hardy, aren't we? Besides, this idea was born in a storm.” And she begins laying out the ham, the sausages, the pickles. “Of course we should have the hard-crusted bread,” she says, “but here we have to improvise.” She sets out some biscuits on a paper plate on the blanket. When everything is arranged Jory pours liquor into the small cups Ila has brought and they toast the constitution.

And if the accident the Thorn had planned had actually happened, Vaniok thinks; if the police car came speeding to the bridge where he waited, its light pulsing, klaxon blaring; if he pulled the trigger and saw the car veer out of control, striking the guard rail, sparks flying as metal scraped violently against metal; if through the frost of the smashed windshield he'd have been able to glimpse a bloody head against the steering wheel; then would all of it have been over, all debts paid?

Ila is excited: this is what Miss Lorraine foresaw, this trip to the ocean. Once again she feels the bristling on her skin, the sense of expectation she experienced in that little house. Life is opening up for her and she's exactly where she's chosen to be. Even the prospect of a storm adds to the drama of the occasion she's made. The whole affair is her creation; she can even believe that she willed the encounter with the policeman, conjured him out of the empty highway, to add to the sense of drama about this excursion.

The only blemish on the picnic so far is the way Vaniok is acting. She's seen her cousin's moods before, though, and she knows they're not necessarily long-lasting. Jory, on the other hand, is in tune with her, he's caught up in the spirit of the celebration, he knows something special is going on. Ila has guessed right about him: all it took was that encounter with the policeman to bring out some of the qualities hidden underneath his clenched reserve. She followed her instincts when she teased him about driving fast even though she could see it made him nervous—who knows what memories he was responding to?—but he joined in the game and didn't abandon his role when they were stopped.

From that point on it was clear he and Ila were communicating without words. How else can she explain his suggestion that they pull off the road and explore the hinterland that lay beyond the highway, which was exactly what she'd been thinking? There was some kind of magic in the few minutes they spent wandering through that little town; they were on the moon, Jory said, and that was exactly what it seemed like, as if they'd stepped through the pages of a storybook.

“Wasn't that a strange little town?” she says now, the taste of the liquor still on her tongue. “I felt we were walking in someone else's dream.”

“Yes,” Jory says. He's slumped against the edge of the hollow yet his shoulders have that vulnerable air she's seen from the beginning. “I like that way of putting it. That's exactly how it felt: like walking in somebody else's dream.” He nods in appreciation of the phrase but he falls silent and his eyes narrow as if he's searching out a memory.

“What is it?” Ila asks. “You're thinking about something.” Back there on the highway with the blue light turning behind them, the radio blaring, she sensed Jory's anxiety, quieter than Vaniok's but somehow deeper.

He looks at her. “Yes, when you said that about walking in somebody else's dream it reminded me of something, a strange connection. I remembered an experience I had in a small town in the Borderlands …”

“Where?” Vaniok interrupts like a man roused from sleep.

Jory wrinkles his brow. “I honestly can't remember the name of the town. It was just a farming village. Anyway, I'd got it into my head to visit an old teacher who'd retired to the Borderlands and I got lost in that flat countryside. I drove into one of those little towns hoping to get directions but I got distracted by an old church. Did I tell you I enjoy exploring churches? This one was nothing special from the outside—squat, dark, a pile of stones, ugly as can be—but inside I saw the most remarkable statues, no doubt done by a local sculptor in the last century. They were crude but you couldn't stop looking at them.”

Jory stops a moment as if trying to summon up those figures half a world away. In the silence, the wind whistles through the grass, the waves boom distantly and gulls shriek. Ila knows that if she closed her eyes she'd be back there. She keeps them open, though, preferring to inhabit both worlds at once.

“What was most remarkable about them,” Jory goes on, “is that the faces on those statues of the saints, angels, even Christ and the Virgin, were peasant faces, rough, even ugly. The sculptor must have put the features of the people of the village into his characters: there were short, sturdy bodies, big-knuckled hands of ploughmen, wide faces with high cheekbones and thick lips. There was no prettiness or idealism anywhere.”

Ila's fingers itch with longing to trace out those crude shapes, feel the texture of the knuckles and cheekbones. Jory has stopped for a moment as if to catch his breath but she wills him to continue. “The most remarkable statue of all,” he says, “was above the door to the sacristy: Michael, the archangel, was driving a spear into Satan, who was writhing at his feet—we've all seen versions of that scene. The devil, of course, was a black, horned, bat-winged creature but the look on Michael's face was incredible: you knew just how much effort it had taken to push that long, pointed pole through Satan's thick skin and powerful muscles, how hard that peasant angel with high cheekbones had to thrust to crack through the devil's rib cage and drive the sharp point into the leathery meat of the heart. And from the angle of Satan's arms, the way his neck was stretched and twisted, you knew how much pain he was feeling. I tried to get a glimpse of the devil's face, but it was turned away from the viewer and besides, it was too far above me. Who could have seen it, I wondered. I couldn't help thinking the sculptor had probably put onto that face the features of the mayor, the pastor, or maybe the man who won the hand of the woman he was courting. Whose face could it have been that only the maker could see?” He's silent for a time. “I suppose I felt I was walking through some dead man's dream. Who was that man, I wondered. Did anybody remember his name?”