The Uncanny Reader (41 page)

Transferred from the lice-ridden barracks, he was given a berth above the incineration hall, in an attic room penetrated by pipes like pneumatic tubes through which the gas pellets were dropped from the roof. His rations were improved: he was allowed a quarter loaf of black bread a day along with a dollop of coal tar margarine, and on Sundays fifty grams of wurst. He was careful, however, to eat only enough to assuage his hunger, since any increase in the size of his spindly frame could result in his becoming ineligible for an occupation Toyti lived to resume.

Why? “Because I'm ensuring the Jews a clear passage to heaven,” he told himself, though he never believed it for an instant.

Due to the constant accumulation of creosote and fatty deposits, the cleaning rotation was ongoing, but there could be lapses between of several days. During that time Toyti was expected to lend his energies to facilitating the business of cremation, though his assistance in that area was negligible. He was negligible, he understood, in everything but his function as sweep. Still he helped sort the clothing that the victims left behind on numbered hooks in the undressing room, often finding scraps of food that could be bartered for various indulgences. He found jewelry secreted in their shoes and the folds of their garments, treasures that must be turned over as property of the Reich on pain of being tossed into the furnaces one's self. With a rag masking his face, he moved among the tangled bodies, pink and dappled with seagreen spots, that were brought up in the lift from the basement chamber. Often they had to be pried apart like braided cheeses, and once Toyti had seen, between a lady's legs, the just emerging head of a child. He sheared off the hair of the women, which would be woven into socks for the crews of submarines, and cracked the jaws of the deceased to extract their gold teeth; he removed rings from fingers and sometimes, when the rings were stubborn, the fingers themselves. He stood beside the pit where the corpses were burned when the furnaces became glutted, while the guards laughed at the rude noises the pyre emitted, how the men's penises came to attention in the flames. He hosed out the blood and shit from the artificial showers, their walls stained an azure blue from the Zyklon gas, like a mural of the sky that someone had begun and abandoned. But for these tasks anyone would do, and whole units of Sonderkommandos had come and gone since Toyti had been reassigned to the killing centers. He knew well enough that it was only for the sake of his skill in the chimneys that he was kept on this side of oblivion.

Far above Luther was shouting something about a spider tangled in its own web, something about the cold, to which Toyti paid no special heed. But as he scraped, brushed, and chiseled toward a depth that was the point of no return for so many before him, he encountered an obstacle in his way. This had never happened before. While the sludge that caked the insulation could often be bulbous and dense, there was never so much of it that it interfered with his descent; but this was something else, an authentic obstruction. The sulfurous square of light high over his head gave no help in identifying the blockage, but as Toyti holstered his tools and ran his hands along the dry, lath-like surfaces, he was satisfied that what lay in his path were bones. It was a skeleton, curled up but—as best he could judge—wholly intact and belonging to a creature no larger in fact than himself. Blindly he described with his calloused fingers the human-shaped configuration of limbs, stroking here a knotted knee joint, there a vertebra, a collarbone. As he proceeded in his inspection, he discovered an irregularity beyond the skeleton's natural frame, from which jutted a pair of appendages comprised of a cartilage as fragile as jackstraws. Toyti handled the twin protrusions, one of them crimped to accommodate the shaft's right angle, the other unfolded to allow a fully extended wing.

He recoiled, thinking he'd come upon the upshot of one of those monstrous experiments the doctors performed on the inmates of Block 10. But how could it have gotten lodged here in the flue? Gingerly Toyti began again to trace its contours, feeling a warmth suffuse his body that had nothing in common with the residual heat from the furnaces. This was a warmth that inspired visions: a clockwork marionette wobbling across a damson carpet in a room whose walls were lined with books. He stroked a shinbone and saw a slender lady seated at a crow-black piano; stroked a rib and felt the silken tongue of a spaniel lapping his chin in a garden where he hunted snails; he touched a knuckle and saw, as if lit by lightning, a bearded gentleman in a top hat cradling a scroll. The bones were an instrument for evoking images and sensations, the sensations causing a stir in the pit of his stomach, which curdled and convulsed until Toyti had to undo his trousers and empty his bowels on the spot. Then his head was light as a bubble and floating, his body dangling like a jellyfish in the inky air. He jammed his feet and spine against the tiles to catch himself and shuddered from a vicious impulse to kick the thing from its perch. When the impulse passed, he pulled the rope off over his head and looped it in turn around the skeleton's rib cage, pulling it tight. “What a joke this will be on Luther!” thought Toyti. But who was he kidding? Having resolved to salvage the bones at whatever cost, he feared that the joke was on him.

He yanked at the tether, which was the signal for the treble-chinned guard to begin hauling up his burden, but instead of becoming abruptly taut, the rope tumbled down the shaft on top of him.

“Corporal Luther?” cried Toyti, but there was no answer.

Ordinarily such an event would not have greatly concerned him. Agile in his narrow domain, he could inchworm his way up the vertical duct with relative ease. Of course today's ascent would be somewhat encumbered by his new acquisition. Then there was a further development: for as Toyti embraced the skeleton with the intent of lifting it out of the chimney's throat, the heat from the furnaces below, which were supposedly inoperative, had begun to intensify. Moreover, though he struggled from his nearly upended attitude to dislodge the bones, they remained obstinately wedged in place. Toyti tried again to wrench them free from their station, while the thickening smoke caused his lungs to constrict, his smarting eyes to flood with tears. He coughed and gasped for air, yowled from the scorching tiles, so hot now they'd begun to blister his flesh. Then he made his mightiest effort yet to wrestle his prize from its fixed position, and this time he did manage to jar it loose, but its weight—who would have thought that such a small parcel of bones could weigh so much?—tugged Toyti from his own precarious purchase, and losing his balance he pitched headlong after the angel into the abyss.

*   *   *

Down below Corporal Luther, a fat baker tending his oven, opened a muffle to see if all the clattering meant that his strategy had met with success.

 

THE PANIC HAND

Jonathan Carroll

I'd just finished going through a time in life when one day bled into the next. Nothing worked, nothing smelled good, nothing smiled, nothing fitted. Even my feet grew a little, for some mysterious reason, and I had to buy three pairs of new shoes. Figure that. Maybe my body was trying to burst out of its old, failed skin like a snake and form a new one.

In the middle of this black mess I met Celine Davenant. She lived in Munich, five easy hours away from Vienna on the train. With her beautifully smooth and reassuring voice, she worked reading the news on an English language radio station up there.

On Friday evenings after work I'd hurry over to the Westbahnhof and catch ‘The
Rosenkavalier
' to Munich. That really was the name of the train.

Sometimes Celine came to Vienna, but made no bones about the fact she didn't like the city one bit. I told her the train trip was a pleasure for me and I looked forward to it. So we silently agreed for the time being to leave things as they were: she'd meet the train at the Munich Hauptbahnhof at eleven-thirty and our weekend would begin there amidst startled pigeons, travellers, the jerk and hoots of trains.

My first excited trip West, I made the mistake of buying a first-class ticket. But even there, the compartment was crowded with weekend people and their many bags. What I subsequently learned was to buy a second-class seat, arrive early, and go directly to the dining car. If I sat there until the town of AttnangPuchheim, the train would have emptied and, strolling back to second class, I could have my pick of empty places.

The arrangement worked out well, particularly because the railroad served good food. It was delightful to sit eating by those large windows and watch the Austrian countryside slide by. Perchtoldsdorf, St Pölten, Linz. Stationmasters in red caps waved. Farmers in old pick-up trucks, blank-faced. Unmoving people stood frozen at small stations, rural crossings, in the middle of who cares, watching us dick by. Dogs barked silently. I often saw deer grazing. Rabbits darted zigzags across open fields.

It took me away from my life; it took me closer to Celine.

*   *   *

What is the name of that pink and white lily that smells so strongly of pepper and spice. I can't remember, but it's one of my favourites. When they entered the dining car that evening it was the first thing I noticed. Both of them were wearing that marvellous flower in their hair. Maybe it was the second thing I noticed: it was hard not to be wide-eyed about their uniquely different beauty.

The woman was tall and splendid. She looked as if she'd been an actress earlier, or at least held perfect champagne glasses and looked out of high windows at the Manhattan or Paris skyline. Now in her late thirties or early innings of forty, she'd come through the game strong and unimpeded. If there were lines on her face they made her look sexier, more knowing. The flower behind her ear said she had a sense of humour, could give the world a smile. The flower behind her daughter's ear said here was an attentive, pleased mother. A rare combination.

The girl had the same russet-coloured hair and wide round eyes as her mother. At least I assumed it was the mother. They looked too much alike—senior and junior versions of the same great face. The face the girl would grow into in twenty years if she had luck.

I spent a good portion of every day thinking about Celine and how things would work out between us. I wanted them to work out and was hoping she did too. We hadn't talked about long-range plans because that sort of discussion comes after you have surveyed the new lands of your relationship and given long thought to where you want to drive in the first permanent posts.

We liked many of the same things, couldn't get enough of each other in bed but, best of all, knew there was almost always something to talk about. Very few quiet spaces in our time together, and if they came, it was only because we were savouring the silent hum of contentment that is the real electricity of love.

When I started thinking about Celine, almost nothing could distract me. And I
was
thinking about her when the mother and daughter came into the dining car. So it shocked me to realize all thoughts of my friend had disappeared while I watched these two stunners cross … to my table.

“Do you mind if we sit here?”

The car was about a third full and there were a number of empty tables. Why did they want to sit here? I am a good-looking man and women generally like me, but they don't cross rooms for me. Particularly when they looked like this one.

“Please.” I half stood and gestured to the empty chairs. I could smell the flowers in their hair. The little girl was blushing and smiling and wouldn't look at me. Snatching the chair out so hard that it almost tipped over, she had to grab it with two hands at the last moment.

The mother laughed and put her hands to her cheeks. “Poor Heidi. She wanted to make such a good impression on you. She saw you walk down the platform at the station and actually jumped out of the train to see which car you went into. She made us wait till now so we wouldn't look too eager.”

The girl looked daggers at her mother; her secrets were being told, laughed at. I didn't think that was funny and tried to tell her with a smile and a small, friendly shrug. She was sunburn-red and wouldn't look at me after one fast, furtive glance.

Mama shook her head, still smiling, and put out her slim hand. “I'm Francesca Pold. This is my daughter, Heidi. And you are … ?”

I said my name and shook the woman's warm hand. She held on a few seconds too long. I looked into her eyes to see if she was telling me something with that, but saw only, “Wouldn't
you
like to know!” there. Her smile spread and she sat down.

Hmmmm.

“What are you reading?
Albanian Wonder Tales
? That sounds interesting.” Without asking, she picked it up, opened it, and started reading aloud. “‘Whether you believe it or doubt it no matter. May all good things come to you who listen!'”

Both mother and daughter burst out laughing. The laughter was exactly the same except that one was high and young, the other deep and more experienced. It was charming.

“What a funny way to start a story! Are they fairy tales?” She put the book down on the table and the girl picked it right up.

“Yes. I like to read them. It's a hobby.”

The woman nodded. Her expression said she fully approved. I'd scored points.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I sell computers to the East bloc.”

“You sell computers and read fairy tales? A well-rounded man.”

“That's nice to say, but it's probably only a bad case of arrested development.”

That got a chuckle and another approving smile.

She raised a hand for the waiter and one swept down on the table like a hawk. The world can be divided between people who can get a waiter's attention and those who can't.

Those who
can
have only to raise a tired or lazy finger and waiters lift their heads as if some secret radio signal has suddenly been beamed out on their private frequency. They arrive seconds later.