The 14th Day (29 page)

Jory looks at him expressionlessly and for a moment Vaniok feels accused, as he did when the two of them first met months ago. Everything has changed since then, Vaniok knows. He himself is stronger than he was when the stranger recited those lines of poetry in the language of the homeland. Still, now that he's facing Jory he can't shake off the feeling that he's somehow in the wrong about something and he's half hoping Jory will refuse his invitation. To his surprise, though, Jory nods, he smiles thinly, like someone who appreciates the company but doesn't want it to seem too important. “All right,” he says. “Yes, I like that idea” and Vaniok, hearing the simple declaration, is pleased. They're only having a drink, he tells himself.

By the time the work day is over, threatening weather has quickened the steps of people leaving campus; slanting sunlight cuts deep black shadows into the surfaces of the stone buildings but a wedge of purple is advancing in the sky. There's no doubt it will be storming before long. As Vaniok makes his way toward the bar where he and Jory have agreed to meet, he thinks, I should be going to see Ellen, this is the storm we should be watching together. At the same time, having committed himself to this meeting, he recognizes that he isn't looking forward it. There's an eerie sharpness to the late afternoon light, the undersides of leaves hiss blackly and Vaniok stops to listen, as much to his own thoughts as to the sounds of the changing weather. When Ila leaves, Jory and he will be left behind, a thought to ponder. What will it be like to be alone with his countryman from the capital? He's in the middle of the campus, where a pair of brick walks intersect near a thick dark poplar with a plaque nearby that he's passed hundreds of times without having read. He feels the breeze on his uncovered arms. The coming storm has roused feelings he can't name and once again he recognizes that he doesn't want to meet Jory. It's almost as if Jory is the one who issued this invitation and Vaniok has felt compelled to come.

As the nearby leaves rustle, his eyes pass casually across the shivering layers of green until he realizes he's seen something. He looks more carefully: there, nestled in the shade high up in a tree is an owl, motionless amid the rustling vegetation. Clouds, wind, the light—everything is moving and yet that large bird is still, watching it all. Vaniok feels a bolt of excitement: an owl in a tree. He smiles, a man unreasonably blessed. And yet a few moments later as he waits for the light to change while gusts cause flags in front of stores to snap and straighten, that dark squat shape among the leaves seems like an omen of imminent partings.

The bar is on a street that dips away from the campus and when Vaniok arrives Jory is waiting in a booth along the wall of the long cavernous room. The place is nearly empty. A few lamps cast very little illumination and a stale yellow light hangs like a haze in the long interior. There are shadowy pictures of athletes on the walls and a few unoccupied pool tables. A TV is turned to a talk show that only the bartender is watching.

“I see you got here,” Vaniok says when he gets to the booth. “I saw an owl on the campus,” he adds irrelevantly. “The sky is very dramatic. We're going to have a big storm.” Even in their own language these statements are a disconnected ramble, as if he's in a rush, or as if with empty patter he's trying to avoid talking about something else.

Leaning over a bottle of beer and a half-filled glass, Jory, as still as stone, shows no interest in either the owl or the weather. Whatever momentary impulse of comradeship led him to accept this invitation, there's no trace of it now. From the angle of the man's elbows on the table Vaniok has an intuition of how alien this place must feel to him and he can only guess at what Jory was thinking about before he came in, what it must feel like for him to believe he could end his days in this town.

“How are things at work?” Vaniok tries for neutral ground.

Jory shrugs. Up close Vaniok can see his eyes are ringed with red: he may even have been crying while he waited for his countryman. His cousin's work, no doubt. He's sorry about that situation but there isn't anything he can do to help. Still, they're going to have to talk about something. Vaniok is glad when his beer comes so that he can wet his throat before trying to say anything more. He lifts his glass and takes a swallow. “At least,” he says, “with the news about the cutbacks, Carl shouldn't be bothering you so much.” He could bite his tongue: he hadn't planned on bringing Carl up so quickly. Now that he's done it, though, he hopes Jory will choose to talk about the cutbacks.

At the sound of Carl's name, though, he straightens, he looks at Vaniok. The sadness in his eyes is gone. “What Carl feels about me doesn't have anything to do with jobs or cutbacks,” he says.

Jory's response is a bit unsettling. Vaniok hoped things between him and Carl had at least subsided a little with the general easing of tension at work—in fact, in his fondest dreams that whole conflict has disappeared altogether. But from Jory's tone it's obvious that no such fairy tale can be believed: their quarrel is still a live issue and now, more than ever, Vaniok wonders whether he ought to tell him about that damned business he heard of at the Barn. He takes another drink. No matter how many times he's tried to convince himself that Carl and Jory simply don't like each other, he can't dismiss the feeling that somehow he's contributed to the bad blood between them. More than once he's wished that he'd never accepted Royall's invitation to join the men for drinks that day. But he did accept, he did talk to Carl and now he realizes that he owes it to Jory at least to warn him about their fellow worker.

Determined to plunge on, yet still hoping to get off easy, he leans forward. “Jory,” he says, “be careful with him. That man could be dangerous.” As though he's the one in danger, Vaniok is suddenly aware of the heat in the bar. His shirt sleeves are rolled and his arms stick to the shiny black table. He's facing the street and over the top of the booth he can see the change in the light outside: the bright sunshine has become muted, something seen through the green-gold strands of a fine piece of netting.

“What do you mean, dangerous?” Jory's mouth curls. “The man is an animal. I'm not going to change my behavior toward him. If he harasses me I don't have to put up with it.”

“No, no,” Vaniok shakes his head. “This goes beyond his bothering you on the job.” Across the table from him Jory is waiting and Vaniok is aware again of the man's capacity for acting rashly. For a moment Vaniok looks at him, poised to say something, his hand raised in an accompanying gesture. He still has a chance, he reminds himself, to let the subject drop here. He doesn't have to be specific: Carl is dangerous because he's Carl. But if he doesn't tell Jory what he knows, he won't forgive himself; it will be a relief to get it over with. “Listen,” he says quietly, praying for the best, “Carl may be looking into your past.”

Jory's head snaps up abruptly. “What do you mean looking into my past?”

Both men light cigarettes. Vaniok smells the sulfur, then the tobacco, he hears the muffled. protracted cough of distant thunder. He exhales, then tells the waiting Jory, “You know he dislikes you.” Jory watches him steadily. How can he put this? “But he says he knows someone in the university.” Jory doesn't blink. “This person can track things on the computer, she can investigate your records.” Vaniok has lowered his voice. “And if Carl has a mind to, he'll ask her to do it.” As he hears himself say this, the assertion seems ridiculous, melodramatic, unbelievable. Why should anyone credit Carl's story just because he says it's so? He waits for Jory's disdainful response but the man simply looks at him without blinking and at last Vaniok says, “If you have anything you're hiding that might get you in trouble, you should be careful.”

“How do you know this?” A wild look crosses Jory's face. “Are you and he allied against me?” He takes a drink of beer and suddenly pounds the table. “God damn it,” he says, “God damn it. Is everyone turning on me?” Even though only the two of them understand the words, Jory's agitation is clear. Across the room the bartender inclines his head toward them a moment, then turns away. When Jory looks at Vaniok again there's a dangerous desperation to his eyes. “God damn it,” he says, more quietly this time.

“Wait,” Vaniok lowers his voice even more. “Of course I'm not on his side. Why do you think I wanted to tell you about this?” He takes another drink. This is precisely the kind of reaction he was afraid he'd get. This is why he didn't want to raise all this business in the first place. But now he's done it and there's no undoing it. Vaniok sags back in the booth. His reasons for telling Jory at last are as confused as his reasons for not telling him. It would be difficult to explain his motivation, even to himself. It's true that a weight has been lifted but he feels no relief. Outside the light has turned ominous, a color without a name. “Look,” he says, leaning forward again, “a few weeks ago we were all drinking at the Barn and Carl called me over.” To be sure, this is going to be an edited version of the story and Vaniok isn't telling everything but after all, these are the essentials. “He told me he was suspicious of you, he thought you were hiding something. I told him he was crazy but he was a little drunk and started boasting about this friend of his who could track you down on the university's computer.”

“Track me down?” Jory can't hide his alarm.

Vaniok nods.

Jory is silent a while. At last he asks, “And how long have you known this?”

“Oh,” Vaniok waves his hand, “this happened just before the basketball team lost that game.” In spite of his dismissive gesture it seems to him a long time to have kept this information to himself.

“My God,” Jory says. “My God.” He's still for a moment, then he settles back, lost in thought. For a time it looks as if he isn't going to move again, let alone speak. At last he mutters, “I hate this place.”

“Wait, Jory,” Vaniok says. After the first remorse, he's felt a gradual sense of unburdening, now that he's told Jory at last what he's been keeping to himself. “I want to help you,” he says. “I don't want to pry, I'm not asking you to tell me what it is, but there is something, right? Something that could get you in trouble.”

He expects his countryman to deny the assertion; he's surprised when Jory nods. “Yes,” he says. He draws on his cigarette meditatively, he exhales and watches the smoke. Thunder rumbles outside, perceptibly closer. “In the place where I was before I came here,” he says, “I knocked someone down and hurt him, probably very badly.” He's silent for a while. Vaniok can see the street sizzling with rain. The bartender has come to the door to watch and he yells something into the downpour but Vaniok can't make it out. “Possibly I killed the man,” Jory says. Vaniok swallows hard. The declaration stuns him. “I had to hide, I had to get false papers,” Jory's voice is flat, he looks at his hands on the table. The storm is fully upon them now, lightning flashes continually, the crash of thunder seems to rattle the bottles behind the bar.

Vaniok nods soberly, still trying to assimilate this news that's shaken him. The idea of Jory as a killer changes everything about the man who sits across the table from him; it raises the stakes of his quarrel with Carl. Vaniok runs his hands along the smooth surface of the table. His countryman has become a stranger once more. The booth they're in, the bar, this town, all seem thin and papery while the real world is somewhere outside, in that other country Jory has fled, elsewhere. And yet, after the first shock Vaniok is determined to accommodate himself to the new information. It seems to him that since the Thirteen Days he's heard other stories like this. Having told it, Jory too seems calmer. “So if you're found out?” Vaniok asks.

“I could be sent back there. I could be sent to prison.” He looks away, toward the bar's interior. For a long time he says nothing. Then he shakes his head. “I'm not going back. I'd rather go to the island.”

“The island?”

Though they're talking in their own language Jory speaks very quietly now. “It's complicated,” he says. Vaniok nods. If Jory wants to keep silent about this, he'll accept it. But Jory goes on. “The man who saw to the false papers is on an island to the south. I have a way of getting there.”

In the midst of the turmoil around them the idea of a sunny island to the south appeals to Vaniok. How fortunate for his countryman: there's someone who has fixed up his false papers, someone holding a place on an island for Jory. Outside the bar the rain continues to come down relentlessly, whipped by gusts of wind that slap against the plate-glass window. The bartender, still standing in the doorway, appears to be singing now. Vaniok looks at the storm. This is the place where he's chosen to live: he has no way of knowing what awaits him out there. “Look,” he says again, suddenly hopeful, “all this was weeks ago. Things have changed and Carl very likely has dropped the whole subject. But he's dangerous, that's what I'm telling you.” As he says it his hope collapses as quickly as it arose: he knows he doesn't believe in Jory's reasonableness—or Carl's; he expects this quarrel to be pushed to violence, and he wonders if his telling Jory earlier would have changed anything.

Across from him, Jory is silent. “Look,” Vaniok says. “All I'm saying is, be very careful with Carl.” Jory certainly knows the kind of man he's dealing with in Carl but that may not be enough to keep him from some reckless action. “Be careful, for God's sake. You're the one who said it: you don't want to go back to where you were before you came here.”

Jory shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder if it's all worth it. Maybe it would have been better if I'd stayed in the homeland and died there.”

Vaniok waves his hand dismissively. “We all wonder about that,” he says. “But it's too late for that kind of thinking. You're here and you have to survive. Nothing would be gained by going back to that other place.”