The 14th Day (30 page)

Jory's brow furrows. “But how do we know what Carl knows? How do we know he's not just talking?”

Vaniok is encouraged by this response. Maybe Jory can be counted on to be sensible. “We don't know for certain that he knows anything,” he says, “but surely you don't have any doubt what he'd want to do to you. If he got hold of something that could harm you, do you think he'd think twice about using it?”

Jory inhales on his cigarette and lets out a long exhalation.

“The point is,” Vaniok says, “you have to be careful, you have to pay attention.” He looks into the silvery rain and for a moment he has the irrational wish to be standing in the street under all this water.

“Oh, it doesn't matter,” Jory says and suddenly his being sensible seems like a childish dream. “There's nothing for me here anymore.” he says. “This place is a wasteland.” Jory looks at Vaniok. “Anyway, I'm sure you'll be happy to see me go.”

“No,” Vaniok answers. He's feeling a complicated emotion and he tries to put it into words. “I'm not so sure about that. Look, we both know Ila is going away. When she leaves, this place will be much emptier for me. Really, I don't need any more people leaving.” He listens to the rain: since it started coming down its force hasn't abated. Surely there will be flooding somewhere. “As for me,” he says, “I've decided to stay here.”

“You mean you'll be friends with Carl.”

“This has nothing to do with Carl, or you or Ila. It's my choice, I want to stay here.” He wishes it didn't sound so desperate.

Jory says nothing in response. He seems to have lost interest in the subject. Vaniok takes another drink. The two of them are silent while the thunder rumbles outdoors. The bartender has returned behind the bar where he continues his singing. Vaniok listens: he can't make out the words to the song and for all he can understand, the man might be chanting a plea to the forces of nature. Meanwhile, Jory seems to have lapsed deeper into abstraction, as if he's been bewitched by the same chanting; and Vaniok can only guess where he's gone: to the cold country where he might have killed a man, to that island in the south, or to one of the countless other places he must have lived in since leaving the homeland? A full minute passes, and more. When Jory meets Vaniok's gaze again his eyes are bright. “Vaniok,” he asks, “you've been to the capital in the homeland, haven't you?”

“Yes,” he answers, caught off guard.

Jory nods as if in approval. “Did you ever go to The Willows when you were there?” he pursues.

Vaniok shakes his head, recognizing the name of the summer palace of their country's kings, situated on the outskirts of the capital. “No,” he admits. “We saw a film about it in school, though.” He remembers a hundred windows glinting in the sun, the camera moving toward the building at a solemn pace while a reverential voice intoned the names of the country's rulers who had lived there. “What about it?”

The other man frowns; it's clear he's disappointed. “Oh, nothing,” he says. Behind him Vaniok can see the rain, which is abating at last. “I was just remembering the place,” Jory goes on musingly. “It's quite wonderful.”

“Yes,” Vaniok says. “I suppose.” He can conjure up no more images of the building he remembers from the film. All he can see is the rain outside, this long narrow room and the disappointment on Jory's face. He recognizes that he has no way of entering his countryman's memories.

As if he's read Vaniok's thoughts, Jory waves his hand like a man brushing away a fly. “I'm sorry to bother you with my private nostalgia,” he says.

“No, no,” Vaniok answers. “It's very understandable.” Outside, the storm has ended abruptly and there's a dazzle of sunshine in the street.

When Vaniok remarks on it, Jory turns to look. “Well,” he says, “we may be able to leave this place at last.” Vaniok nods, still feeling vaguely guilty for not having been to The Willows. He's ready to offer what he remembers from the film if his countryman returns to the subject of the summer palace. But Jory doesn't return there. His mouth tightens with what might be a smile or a scowl—whatever it is, it's totally private, without reference to anyone else—and he straightens, clearly intent on leaving. “I wish you luck in your stay here,” he declares.

Vaniok studies his countryman. He genuinely appreciates the sentiment, though the way it's delivered is unsettling: it sounds like a farewell. “Thank you,” he answers, thinking,
He looks like someone who's already left
. Vaniok feels a sudden rush of emotion. “I wish you luck too,” he says. “Really. And remember, I'll help you in any way I can.” Jory nods. He still looks like somebody who's already left and suddenly Vaniok feels emptied. He slumps back in his seat, a man who's finished the job he set out to do but with resignation rather than satisfaction. At least, he thinks, I can tell Ila I've done my duty. He has no idea, though, of what he's accomplished by having done it.

The air is cool in the street outside the bar, the sky is clearing. Beside the curb a stream of water rushes downhill from the direction of the campus. To Jory the town itself seems to be leaning, still settling into place after the storm. “I appreciate what you've told me,” he says to Vaniok.

The other man frowns. “That business about Carl—it might be nothing at all.” He sounds as if he's trying to convince himself. “Most likely it's nothing at all.”

A cool, damp breeze carries a faint tang of beer, water continues to rush noisily down the dipping street. “Yes,” he responds, “I expect you're right.” What else is there to say? He puts out his hand. “But now I have to get home,” he says. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

After Vaniok walks off, Jory remains standing in front of the bar. As he watches his countryman disappear around the corner he becomes aware of his heart's muted pounding, residue of the abrupt turmoil that swept him up moments ago when he suddenly remembered The Willows. But the summer palace is long gone and now he's back here, among strangers, among enemies. Of course in a manner of speaking it's been that way ever since he left the homeland. And yet after what he heard this evening it would be foolish to believe that things are simply the way they have been. He looks for consolation in Vaniok's parting words:
Most likely it's nothing at all
. But he knows Vaniok doesn't believe that. It's entirely possible that even as he and Jory sat in the booth talking about it, somewhere in this town an unknown woman was tracing his history on a computer screen, tracking the false name back to its origins, retrieving street numbers, names of places, people. Could that computer deliver to Carl the whole story of what happened there, could it communicate the despair that finally overtook Jory on the icy night of the winter carnival when people in thick coats gathered on the snowy street like arctic beasts, the knife-sharp air turning their breath to vapor as they clustered around the giant bear made of ice; could that machine convey what it felt like to see the sleek frightening curve of the creature's haunches outlined against the alien sky? Hundreds of miles from the scene, Jory's stomach remembers that massive icy shape.

He's started walking back toward the campus without any destination in mind, just an urgent need. He has to keep moving; it will calm him and make thinking easier. And yet, even as he makes his way past scenes that have become familiar in the past few months, he's haunted again by images of The Willows. In those days whenever he was agitated about something he could take the trolley there, a short distance outside the capital. Like all inhabitants of the city, he'd visited the place as a child and marveled at the long, carpeted corridors lined with dim paintings and suits of armor; he'd been thrilled by the dozens of sumptuous rooms, as individual as snowflakes. His favorite had been a small but richly furnished space that had once been a study. There were gilt walls, a tiled fireplace and a writing desk with thin curved legs, an oriental screen behind which a small window looked out on the lavish grounds. As a boy he'd determinedly kept his eyes level on entering the room, taking in all he could see before raising his head toward the domed ceiling. There an ingenious artist had painted a pale blue sky in which plump angels played among the clouds. In the very center of the ceiling there reached down from one of those clouds a plaster arm, presumably God's. It was as slender as a female's, extended languidly, the hand open as if either bestowing or soliciting a gift. The room was the fancy of some baroque monarch, a nondescript king during whose brief reign nothing important happened. Yet for the boy, this whim made him one of the most fascinating of the nation's rulers.

It was his father who taught him the trick of keeping his eyes down. The first time he took his son to the palace he prepared him. “Here's a surprise,” he said. “We're coming to my favorite spot in the whole palace. When we step into that room keep your eyes down until I tell you and it will be your favorite too.” It was ironic that the place in that vast building he should remember most fondly was also his father's favorite. It always puzzled the older Jory to acknowledge his father's delight in something so gratuitously dramatic—it was so much at odds with his own picture of the careful man who'd wanted the world to remain orderly and predictable. But to the boy, the older man's excitement about this odd little nook didn't seem strange at all, and the grown Jory had to contemplate in wonder a time when father and son were closer.

When Jory went to the summer palace as an adult, though, it wasn't to revisit the room that had delighted him as a boy. Looking out the window of the trolley that carried him past boulevards and parks to what was once the countryside, he was most likely to be troubled and lonely, wondering where his life was headed. On those excursions he rarely entered the palace itself but found more satisfaction in strolling across the spacious grounds and pondering things, tramping through the shaggy grass all the way to the willow-lined bank of the slow-moving river, where he could watch the loose dance of the leaves in the clear water, occasionally lifting his head at the casual splash of an oar that signaled a pair of lovers in a boat. There was something timeless about The Willows. Even during the troubling events leading to the Thirteen Days—the strikes, the demonstrations, the power failures—Jory could find in the summer palace a place of refuge.

In one of the cities of his exile he dreamed he was back there: he was fishing on the bank of the river and he caught a small, flat-bodied red fish with the face of an old woman, which spoke to him as it lay on the grass. He listened carefully and he even nodded in response but an instant after coming awake he couldn't remember anything of what the fish said, though he was certain that it had communicated some deep wisdom. Curiously, in the dream the palace was set not in the middle of the extensive acreage but at the river's edge and as he contemplated the creature who spoke to him from the grass, he heard a snap and turned to see a pair of French windows flung open, revealing a short, fat man in a jester's outfit who laughed at him. It was a long and complicated laugh, with sudden rises and falls like an aria. In the fluid dream-space, the building was so close to the river that Jory could see the man's curled violet shoes planted on an ornate bed; he could hear the tinkling of tiny bells sewn onto his parti-colored outfit. Here in this other country that dream is so vivid that the bells' tinkling, the man's high-pitched laughter echo in Jory's ear.

Suddenly the smell of damp wood makes him sharply aware of his surroundings on one of the back streets of the university town. And I've even lost that, he thinks, I've lost that jester from my dream whose laughter I could never interpret, though it sounded like derision. But Jory can't just loiter here in the street; there's no trolley in this town to take him to a summer palace and he has nowhere else to go to. He certainly doesn't want to return to his apartment. He can imagine himself within those confining walls, trying to read but only thinking about Carl, getting up, going to the window as if on the lookout for something, watching the clock's hands move slowly toward the time when he might be able to escape into sleep. And how likely would that be? It would be all too easy to believe that Carl had set spies on him, that he was being watched, even in his dreams. Jory stops for a moment and allows things to settle. This is ridiculous, he knows. After all, this isn't the Thirteen Days.

Still, when he resumes walking, his quick steps take him in the opposite direction from his apartment. He crosses the campus instead: in the quiet after the storm the old buildings are brooding and somnolent; an occasional lighted window is outlined against the dusk; birds call to each other from thick trees heavy with the recent rain. He vaguely remembers that Vaniok said something about seeing an owl here and his eyes pass over the dark foliage but if there are any creatures there, they're keeping out of sight. There are no other walkers on this part of the campus, the brick walks are dark with damp. This is the place where he's lived and worked for the last few months and yet he could be seeing it for the first time. Standing by the bank of the river near the summer palace, wondering about his future, he could never have dreamed himself here.

Before long he's back on the town's main commercial street. The brief homebound traffic rush is over and only a few cars' tires hiss on the wet pavement. There are smears of reflected light on the slick walks in front of the stores whose roofs are outlined against a clearing sky of charcoal blue. The day's humidity has been broken, a sharpness has returned to the air, and Jory's heart races with involuntary excitement. Back home a spell of warm days would often be ended suddenly when a weather system from the north infused the atmosphere with a piney astringency, conjuring up icefields, dark firs, a gray, heaving sea. He breathes in the air with anticipation but the coolness is thin, a mere pause in the heat.