The 14th Day (28 page)

The smoke passes into the sunlight, shines for an instant before it's gone. He looks at the confident repose of a gray stone building and feels himself calming. He's started to construct his own life here, he tells himself, and Jory is another reminder of his past. Well, he can keep an eye on him, whatever that means, without having to involve himself too deeply in Jory's affairs. But no sooner does he come to this reasonable conclusion than he remembers once more his talk with Carl and he feels now as he did just after it happened, that this is something his countryman should know about. From the moment he left the Barn that encounter has bothered Vaniok, like a stone in his shoe. Whether or not he could have been more energetic defending Jory to Carl is no longer the point—what's happened has happened. But Vaniok has never settled the question of whether or not he owes it to his countryman to tell him what Carl said about the supposed woman friend who could look into Jory's past and find out whatever it was he was hiding. Was Carl bluffing or does he really have the power to look into Jory's past? If Vaniok told Jory about it, how would the man react? Would it make things worse? Jory, Jory, he thinks, will you never stop bothering me?

But just now Jory can wait. Vaniok has his own future and part of it is starting later today when he'll visit the Music Library. He looks for the professors but they're gone. Where they were a moment ago the sun outlines the thick black trunk of a poplar and he lets his gaze drift toward the Music Library.

“Hello,” he says when he encounters Ellen Bird at the counter of the reading room later in the day.

She looks up from a magazine and it takes her a moment to recognize him. “Oh, hi,” she answers neutrally. The pale green blouse she's wearing shimmers as she folds her arms quickly across her chest. Standing very erect a foot from the counter, she looks shyer, more reserved than the last time Vaniok saw her, and his confidence falters. He misses the dirt-smudged T-shirt.

For a second or two he just stands there across the counter from her, smiling stupidly. At last he says, “I was going to ask about the house-building, the houses for poor people. Not now but later,” he adds in explanation. His words are rushed, his feelings jumbled but at the same time the smells and sounds of the Music Library remind him of his earlier visit, a time of quiet peace, and even the nervousness he feels is tinged with pleasant memories.

The woman nods at him as he speaks and continues to smile politely when he's finished, evidently at a loss for words herself. From a corner of the room comes the sound of a chair scraping the floor, a dry cough, the rustle of paper. Vaniok keeps smiling energetically at Ellen Bird but language fails him. For a moment it seems as if the two of them will continue, like the professors he was watching earlier, in pantomime; but the librarian suddenly brightens. “We could have used you earlier this morning,” she says. “A squirrel got into the building and it was running all over the stacks.” She's animated now, pointing in the direction of the stacks as if she's about to lead him there. “We were very nervous until we managed to get it out. In the end we chased it out a window.” Vaniok nods emphatically though he has no idea what this squirrel has to do with him.

As if she's guessed the drift of his thoughts, she ends her story abruptly. “I mean,” she says, reddening, “I don't mean I think you're …” Her voice trails off.

“No,” he recognizes her discomfort. “I would have been glad to help. I think I could have done it.”

“Oh, I'm sure you would,” she answers enthusiastically. She folds her arms again but she's more relaxed.

“You have to be careful, though,” he says, remembering something. “In my country there are people who believe that an animal like that might be carrying the soul of someone who died, come back to earth to send a message to the living. But the soul only has a little time to give the message or it will have to stay in the body of the animal until … I can't think of the words in your language,” he frowns. “When God … at the end of everything …”

“Judgment Day?” she offers, and he nods, repeats her words. “Then I'm glad,” she says, “that the squirrel got out in time.” She laughs. “It was probably someone who had an overdue book when they died.”

“No, no,” Vaniok declares, pleased by how easily he's talking with this woman. “I think it was someone who wanted to be building houses for the poor and didn't get a chance.”

“Why didn't I see that?” She unfolds her arms and puts her hands against the counter.

“I don't want that to happen to me,” he says. “Maybe we can have coffee later this week and you could tell me about how I could get into that program.”

She nods encouragingly as he speaks. “Yes,” she says, “we do need people all the time.”

“That's good,” he says, and they quickly arrange to see each other after work tomorrow. That wasn't so hard, he thinks.

As he's about to leave there's a moment of silence when he doesn't know what to say. At last he tells her, “It looks as if it's going to storm this evening.”

“Yes,” she says. “Isn't that exciting?” She glances toward the window that looks out onto a tranquil campus scene. The grass shimmers under sunlight that might last forever.

“You like storms?” he asks, looking in the same direction.

“Yes,” she turns toward him, “don't you? You can feel something in the air long before you hear the first sounds of thunder. And I love to listen to the wind and rain lashing against the windows.”

“I like storms too,” he says. “Maybe when we have coffee we'll be lucky enough to watch one together.”

“I'll make a wish,” she says. “You do too.” But even before she's said it Vaniok has made his wish.

When Vaniok meets Ellen Bird after work the next day she suggests they go to the Grotto, a coffee shop at the edge of the campus. Remarkable, he thinks: it's exactly the place he would have picked. His impulse is to tell her this but he's reminded himself all day not to try to make too much of this encounter, and he contents himself with saying that he's been there and he likes it. Set below street level, the coffee shop conveys a sense of shelter. The recessed space with tiled floors and thick beams on the ceiling reminds Vaniok of the room in the Music Library where he worked that day and those memories fortify him. He and Ellen find a table near the window where they can look up at the street. “I like to watch the people go by, don't you?” she says, and Vaniok nods, his hands around the thick blue mug. Already his early nervousness has left him, just as it had when he talked to her yesterday. He takes a sip of coffee, then settles back, his hands resting on the blonde wood table. He feels comfortable with this woman; he doesn't have to think of this meeting as a romantic encounter. The realization loosens his tongue. Better still, it allows him to listen to her without feeling the need to comment. “Don't you look forward to the time when the students are gone,” she says, “and there's a special quiet around here?” He nods, remembering. “And isn't it true,” she goes on, “that after a while you'll be looking forward to their coming back and all the excitement that brings?” Yes, yes, he nods. Exactly.

It doesn't take long for her to tell him about the house-building program and the talk wanders into other areas. He listens carefully for clues to Ellen's life. Early in the conversation she happens to mention that she came to this town from another city after her husband drowned in a boating accident almost three years ago. She says it in passing, without emphasis, in response to a question of Vaniok's about her work. “I'm sorry,” he says and Ellen accepts his sympathy but she makes it clear she isn't interested in pursuing the subject. Three years, he thinks: it's about as long ago as he's been away from the homeland—it almost connects them. He sees her differently now: the thin arms, the shadowed eyes and soft voice—these qualities are now tied to a history, a story that has its own closed rooms.

Even after she's moved to another topic Vaniok is listening to the echo of what she said. There are recesses to this woman he'll never know; at the same time he realizes that it's true for her knowledge of him as well, however close they may get. There's a sudden lapse in the conversation: for a few moments they look at each other, their hands resting on the table beside their mugs of coffee. They draw their separate breaths. In the background is the recorded sound of a flute, laughter from somewhere else in the room. Then Ellen's voice takes on another color as she tells about something funny that happened at the library earlier in the day. Vaniok adjusts his expression. More important, there's already been an adjustment in their relationship: wherever the conversation may go from here, Ellen has established certain facts and boundaries.

In her quiet, even voice she relates with humor the daily events and personalities on her job: a colleague's sliding hairpiece, a pompous professor's demands, a copying machine possessed by evil spirits. Vaniok smiles as he listens but he can't keep from thinking about what she told him, can't suppress an appreciation for the bravery that must have been required of her just to go on living after the catastrophe of her husband's drowning. What a terrible death, to be all alone under the water. He wonders about Ellen's life with the man who died—there were no children, a situation that arouses Vaniok's interest. Was the marriage happy? To his surprise, he envies this faceless figure to whom she must have told other humorous stories about other people. A shadowy population of people she's known has sprung up around them. Contemplating the loss she lives with, Vaniok suddenly feels shy in her presence. She tells him how important Father Tom has been, though the priest isn't immune from her humor; she talks about the satisfaction she gets out of helping build houses for the poor; and once again Vaniok feels blessed to have run into the two of them in the supermarket. “But I'm talking too much,” she interrupts herself. No, Vaniok assures her, he's the stranger here, he's content to listen and learn. She's a stranger too, she reminds him: she was born in a place much farther north. “But I like it here,” she declares. “I don't really feel like that much of a stranger.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” he says. “I like it too.” The unsolicited pronouncement embarrasses him but when she looks at him over her coffee mug he's certain she understands what he's tried to convey. Vaniok sips his own coffee, quietly excited. He nods, listening for more. He realizes he wants this woman's friendship very much and he's willing to go slowly to get it. At the end of their conversation he's pleased that he not only listened but spoke as well, talking about this town, about his work, his travels. It's only the homeland he hasn't talked about, he realizes. But how could he tell anyone about that?

When he and Ellen part at the street corner he feels a quiet solemnity, as if the two of them have been to church. I'll tell her that some day, he says to himself, that after our first time together I felt as if I'd been to church. He knows she'll find that funny. They say goodbye in the street but before she turns for home she glances toward the cloudless evening sky. “I'm disappointed,” she says, turning down the corners of her mouth, “we didn't get our storm. Maybe next time we'll be luckier.” There on the street before the large window of a restaurant where patrons seated at tables look out at them, Vaniok answers quietly, “Yes, I hope so.” To the old man with the menu in his hands he may look calm but he feels as if he could leap across the homebound traffic and float to a landing across the street.

Stealthily, the days get longer, school ends suddenly and the summer begins. The town is empty and Vaniok has already seen Ellen Bird for coffee a few times. He'd like to be able to talk to Ila about his new friendship but he hasn't had much contact with her since she's started going to her course and from what he can observe of Jory, neither has his countryman. Silent, drawn in on himself, he's very much the man he was when he first came here. He hasn't encouraged sociability, either with Vaniok or with the other workers, though Vaniok realizes that he hasn't tried very hard either recently; he's been preoccupied with other things. Now, as he stands in the warehouse looking out at the scene framed by the loading dock, he reminds himself that he promised his cousin to keep an eye on Jory: she'd meant more than Vaniok's glimpsing their countryman every now and then, exchanging curt greetings. He's been delinquent; he knows he should have been more attentive but in truth he's felt some resistance. He's still bothered that he hasn't passed on to Jory what Carl told him in the Barn. At times it seems to him like a deliberate deception. For all that, though, nothing further seems to have happened between those two since their little flare-up, so why bring it up? Nevertheless Vaniok has to see Jory, to look in on him, as Ila asked him to do, maybe just to cheer him up—he doesn't like to think of himself as a man who doesn't keep his promises. It's absurd to imagine himself Jory's protector and champion but he has a role to play and he resolves that before the day is over he'll hunt Jory down and invite him out for a drink. He feels better immediately and he's even more convinced he's done the right thing when, not long afterward, as if summoned by this thought, Jory shows up just outside the building. Vaniok calls to him cheerfully in the language of the homeland. When Jory turns to him Vaniok can see on his face the toll of his separation from Ila. “Jory,” he says. “How about a drink after work?”

It seems to take him a moment to hear the words. “I was going straight home …” he begins.

“Please,” Vaniok is suddenly moved by the man's situation and by his own recent inattention to his countryman's problems. “I need the company. It would be a favor to me.” The words come fluently in the old language.