Winter's End (26 page)

Fulgur finished his stitching. Hearing the little sound as the thread broke, Milos knew that the brute had just bitten off the remains of it with his teeth, as you might bite the thread after sewing on a button. He preferred not to look. Fulgur completed his care of his patient by painting the place with iodine.

“There, you can go back to your room. Getting into the habit of this, aren’t you? Soon there won’t be space on you for any more stitching! And don’t forget: next chance you get, ask your friend Rusticus to tell you all about his mates — if you want a good
laugh. Ask him how Faber is, for instance. Oh yes, that’s a very funny story.”

Milos didn’t have to wait long for his next chance to talk to Basil. Late in the afternoon, Milos was dozing in the infirmary sickroom when the door opened. His friend’s large head appeared around it.

“You asleep?”

“No, come in.”

Basil sat down on the edge of the bed and raised the sheet. “Dammit, I didn’t miss you.”

“That’s OK. It’s not deep,” Milos reassured him.

“Sorry, but I didn’t know where to strike. Finding the right place isn’t easy. I mean, finding somewhere to bleed a lot that’s not too dangerous. I thought of a buttock, but you didn’t turn your back, and then sitting down’s tricky later.”

“Really, don’t worry. You aimed very well.”

“Caius is furious with me. Told me if I ever found myself facing him, he’d make a hole in my hide. But he doesn’t scare me, just because he’s won twice . . . Hey, look! A jay!”

The big, colorful bird had settled on the windowsill without a sound. It just fit between the bars and looked almost as if it wanted to come in.

“We know each other already,” said Milos, smiling. “He comes visiting the sick.”

The two of them fell silent and watched the jay. They were both thinking the same thing: you’re free, bird. You can come and go; you can fly away
over the wire fence and perch on the forest trees when you like. Do you know how lucky you are?

As if guessing, the jay turned weightily on the sill, took off, and flew away.

“Who’s Faber?” asked Milos into the silence that followed.

Basil’s mouth dropped open. “You know Faber?”

“No, but Fulgur mentioned his name just now. Who is he?”

Basil bent his head. He was frowning. “Faber is the leader of the horse-men,” he muttered at last. “Our leader, see?”

“And . . . and something bad happened to him?”

“Yes.”

“Did they kill him?”

“Worse than that.”

Milos dared not say any more. Basil sniffed noisily and then wiped his nose and eyes angrily on the back of his cuff.

“They did worse than kill him, Ferenzy. They made fun of him. I’ll tell you, but some other time. I kind of don’t feel like it here.”

I
f she hadn’t been missing Milos and feeling constantly anxious, Helen’s time in the capital city might have felt like the best days of her life. She had never known such a delicious sense of freedom before. Having a place of her own, her name on a door that she could lock and unlock with her own key, going out when she liked, getting on the first tram to come along and losing herself in unknown streets: she relished these small pleasures day after day. They never faded. Mr. Jahn had given her half her first month’s pay in advance so that she could get herself what she needed. She bought an alarm clock, a brightly colored hat, a pair of woolen gloves, a scarf, and a pair of boots. The coat that Dr. Jose f ’ s wife had given her, although a little old-fashioned, was warm and comfortable and she decided to keep it. She also unearthed a dozen novels going cheap in an old bookshop near the restaurant, and lined them
up on the shelf in her room. “My library,” she told Milena proudly.

She came back quite dazed from her solitary walks in the city. She loved mingling with the anonymous crowd swarming over the sidewalks at rush hour.
If you could see all these people, Milos! Racing about, bumping into you without even noticing you’re there. You feel like an ant among millions of other ants. If you were with me, we’d have to hold hands to not get separated. I go into shops, boutiques, hardware stores, choosing what I’ll buy when I have more money. If only you were here too, my love. . . .

But what she liked even more was walking at random, going farther and farther afield, delighted to discover a new bridge, a pretty square, a little church. She walked fast, wrapped in her warm coat, until her legs began to tire. Then she would catch a tram or a bus going back toward the city center.

Dora was right: people here weren’t very good-tempered. Or rather, it was as if they didn’t trust one another. You heard little laughter and few cheerful conversations. The fact was that the people of the capital seemed depressed. Sometimes Helen met a glance from a pair of friendly eyes, but they turned away at once. She soon learned to spot the Phalangist security police and the agents on night duty: men with wary faces, often hidden behind newspapers like something in a bad thriller, but you could easily guess that their ears were working harder than their eyes.

When she got off the tram one afternoon, she
found that someone had slipped an invitation to a meeting into her coat pocket, and she thought the wording suggested that it was for people opposed to the Phalange. She thought of the young man who had been sitting beside her; it must have been him who’d given it to her. He had looked attractive and rather nice. “A trap!” cried Dora. “Whatever you do, don’t go!” And she advised Helen never to talk freely to strangers, however friendly they seemed. “New friends, whoever they are, must be introduced to you by someone safe, or it’s better not to trust them.”

A few days later, as she was going back to the restaurant on foot, she heard shouts: “Out of the way! Militia!” She had no time to move aside and was knocked down by three men armed with clubs who were chasing a tall, lanky man. They caught up with him and beat him. He fell to the ground, curling up his long, thin limbs to protect himself, but they kept hitting him on the head and the back.

“Stop!” cried Helen, paralyzed by horror as the unfortunate man huddled there while the brutes went on attacking him. “Stop it! You’ll kill him!”

She realized that everyone around her was running away except for a young man, who had turned his collar well up to hide his face.

“Bastards! You’ll pay for this!” he shouted in his own turn, and then he too ran for it. He was obviously counting on his burst of speed to escape the militiamen, and he was right. One of them chased him a hundred yards and then gave up.

“I’ve seen your face!” the young man taunted the militiaman, turning around one last time. “I’ve seen all your faces, and believe me, I’ll know you again!”

The militiaman hurled insults at him and went back to his companions. Helen hadn’t moved from the spot.

“Got a problem, miss?” he spat as he passed her. “No? Then you better get out of here.”

No doubt it was because of this incident that she didn’t feel like walking alone next day and asked Milena to go with her. “You could live without Bart just for an afternoon!”

“It’s not Bart I spend the afternoons with.”

“Oh? Who is it, then?”

Milena hesitated. “Well, if you promise you won’t breathe a word to anyone . . .”

“I promise.”

“Come on, then. After all, it would be a good thing for you to know.”

They set off along the uphill roads leading to the Old Town. Black ice made the sidewalks shine, and they held on to each other to avoid slipping. Milena was laughing to herself, impatient now to share her secret. Helen had never seen her looking so happy and radiant before. It made her a little more aware of her own loneliness and distress. A lump came into her throat. Milena noticed her friend stiffening slightly and understood at once. She stopped and put her arms around Helen. “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. You have a right to be happy! I’m not jealous.”

A sad look came into Milena’s eyes. “Don’t think I’m happy, Helen. I can never be really happy again now I know what they did to my mother. I could easily be inconsolable, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling content sometimes. So there it is; I’m content today. Content to have Bart, content to be with you, content to go where I’m going at this moment.”

When Helen only nodded, Milena stood back from her and took her hands. “Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Milos is definitely alive. I can’t keep it from you any longer.”

Helen trembled. “How do you know?”

“From Bart and Mr. Jahn. They’re sure of it.”

“How do they know?”

“They’ll explain. And what’s more, Bart says that if Milos is alive and has one chance in fifty of getting out of trouble, he will. He knows Milos very well. So don’t despair.”

“I only had to get there with Dr. Josef an hour earlier!” said Helen angrily, shaking her head. “Just an hour earlier and I’d have saved him! I suspect I’m going to be inconsolable too.”

“You did the impossible. Come on, we’ll be late.”

They set off again. A little farther up the road, when they met two women coming the other way, Milena took care to draw the hood of her coat well over her face. “Or they may go thinking I’m a ghost again!”

“So they may. Are you really so like your mother? Do you have any photos of her?”

“Yes.”

“And are you?”

“Well, yes, the photos show me with clothes and a hairstyle twenty-five years out of date! Dora even gave me one with myself as a baby in her arms. I’ll show it to you. And as you’ll see, she was very beautiful.”

The apartment building with its peeling facade stood on the corner of two streets in the most out-of-the-way part of the Old Town. It had an old-fashioned entrance hall. The girls went in and climbed a narrow staircase smelling of beeswax.

“Where are you taking me?” asked Helen as they reached the fifth and last story.

Without replying, Milena knocked on a door that had no name on it, and a smiling Dora let them in. “My goodness, have you brought us an audience?”

“Isn’t that all right?”

“Of course it is. Good idea! Come in, Helen, you’re very welcome. Put your coats over there on the bed.”

It was like being in a doll’s house without the doll. The space was tiny, the furniture plain, and the walls were bare except for a musical score pinned over the wallpaper in the living room.

“It’s a Schubert manuscript,” said Dora, following Helen’s eyes.

“A reproduction?”

“No, an original, in his own hand. You can look at it.”

Helen went closer and stared at the modest sheet of paper, slightly yellowed now, with notes written on the music as if in haste in the composer’s beautiful hand.

“The ink . . . it looks as if it’s only just dried. I can’t believe it! It must be a rare document, surely.”

“Very rare,” Dora said, laughing.

“But you . . . I mean, it’s valuable. . . .”

“If I sold that score, I could buy the whole building. And the one next door.”

“And . . . and you don’t sell it?”

“No. I’m stupid, aren’t I? What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Helen, impressed.

“It’s always been there. And the piano too. A Steinway! You wonder how it ever got up here. The stairs are too narrow, and so are the windows. It’s a mystery. I like that; I like to imagine that they took the roof off to bring it in.”

“Have you always lived here, Dora?”

“Oh, no. This is where my piano teacher used to live. She was a brilliant, crazy, impossible old woman who made herself infusions of cloves to inhale and used to throw her shoes at my back when I played wrong notes. When she died, I bought her apartment. That was when I was making money from playing the piano. I thought that was only natural. I didn’t realize it was paradise. You discover what paradise means when you lose
it, and what your nest means when you fall out of it. Come on, I’ll make tea and then we’ll get down to work.”

Helen took her shoes off, sat down in an armchair, folded her knees up against her chest, and waited, motionless. Dora sat down on the piano stool, pushed up her sleeves, and shook her dark curls. Milena remained standing, one hand on the side of the keyboard, concentrating as if about to give a recital. Her ruffled blond hair contrasted with the angelic beauty of her face and enhanced it.

“Let’s start, Milena. We’ll go back to D. 547.”

“Right, I’m ready.”

Dora delicately played the first chords, and when Milena opened her mouth, the nature of the air and everything else around her seemed to change, as always when she sang. Helen was shivering.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Dora interrupted her. “You’re too far ahead on
‘Hast du.’
Go back to the beginning, please.”

As far as Helen could tell, Milena was neither ahead of the piano nor behind it, but perfect. All the same, Milena obediently went back to the beginning. Once she was past that passage, Dora nodded her approval. “Good, that’s it.” She smiled.
She knew she wouldn’t have to repeat herself ten times with Milena. Helen felt that special pride you get when a brother or sister whose gifts you have known for a long time finally reveals them to the world. She remembered the school yard where Milena used to sing for her. It seemed so far away now. And she remembered Paula, her large consoler, asking with amusement, “How’s your friend Milena? Do you admire her as much as ever?” At that moment she admired Milena more than ever.