Authors: K.C. Frederick
Ranush was tall and gawky, he had a lock of hair that never could stay in place. He moved so deliberately that people joked about his match going out before he got around to lighting his cigarette. Vaniok knew, though, that for all his slowness the man was uncannily quick in sensing the slightest shift in his friend's moods. “What's wrong?” Ranush would ask even before Vaniok had finished greeting him with a falsely hearty salute and he'd have to admit that, yes, just hours ago one of his brothers had made some offhandedly condescending remark. “None of them will ever take me seriously,” he'd protest and Ranush would nod encouragement, bent forward sympathetically, his eyes full of understanding. “I know exactly how you feel,” he'd say and Vaniok would be grateful, as he was moments ago remembering his friend's forgiving smile.
The two of them were terse and ironic with each other in public, which was the style back there, but when they were by themselves they could talk passionately about everything imaginable. One night in the summer before the Thirteen Days, the two of them were drinking at a fishing lodge in the Deep Lakes. Ranush, who worked in the postal department, had just received a small promotion and they were ostensibly marking that event, though they didn't need an occasion, they might just as well have been celebrating summer and being young, their hearts beating with a hunger for life. It was after midnight and they'd taken their drinks outside. Most of the lights in the lodge were out, the sky above them was ablaze with stars. He and Ranush lay on the cool, gently sloping lawn, they looked into the brilliant dazzle above, heard the occasional sound of a fish jumping, the steady trill of crickets, the haunting cries of the loon. They traded speculations about life on other planets and spoke in hushed voices about the mysterious turns of fate. A young woman they knew named Lanya had recently been killed in a car crash and they kept mentioning her name in wonder. “She isn't here anymore,” one or the other would declare, evoking the memory of that tall, wide-hipped woman with large teeth who moved with the grace of a dancer. “We can say the name but it no longer refers to a living person. Lanya,” they'd pronounce the name while the stars blinked impassively.
The night was mild but this kind of talk brought a chill, the stars themselves seemed colder, and the silences between their words lengthened. Ranush began talking about his father. The two of them had quarreled all the while Ranush was growing up. Now, when he hoped they could come closer, the old man's mind had begun to slip. Ranush wanted to tell him he'd learned a great deal from him, that he was only becoming aware now how much he had learned; but his father had returned to his own youth and all he would talk about was an important football game he was going to be playing in. Nobody gave their team a chance, he'd laugh cunningly, everyone believed the other team was unbeatable but soon they were going to find out they were wrong. “I've lost all my opportunities to make up with him,” Ranush said to Vaniok. After a while he added, “If I only believed in God I'd have someone to blame. My father's mind is dead, Vaniok,” he said. “He's as far from me as Lanya.”
Listening, Vaniok felt the brush of the cool grass against his neck. He wanted to tell Ranush that things might get better, that his father could still recover his faculties, if only briefly, and that a reconciliation wasn't out of the question; but something in the night air demanded honesty and all he could do was to shake his head. At the same time he felt an overwhelming sympathy for his friend, he wanted to assure him he understood his sorrows and he wished he could help. As if reading his mind, Ranush said quietly, “It makes me feel better anyway to tell you.”
“I'm glad of that,” Vaniok said, his throat suddenly thick. Death and loss were all around them in the night. He knew then that Ranush meant more to him than anyone else in the world and he told him so. He was happy he'd said it, he repeated it even more ardently and Ranush answered that the same was true for him. Soon the two were holding each other as if they were lovers. There was a spacious tranquility to that night and nothing about what they were doing seemed unnatural, even Vaniok's awareness of his friend's sexual arousal, which was matched by his own.
Nothing further happened: they held each other for some time, they talked, they heard the almost inaudible breeze moving through the nearby birches. They were unembarrassed by their sexual excitement, they even joked about it. Later, they got up and went to their separate rooms in the lodge. Neither of them mentioned that night afterward but Vaniok couldn't help thinking of the experience as a gateway, though he couldn't say where it would have led; and often when he thought about that night he was troubled. Finally he came to wish it had never happened. At times, though, especially when they were drinking together, he felt that Ranush was waiting for him to say something about it just as he was waiting for Ranush. In the end they never got around to talking about it. What would have happened had one of them done so Vaniok doesn't know. But he knows this: that as he drank by himself in the Old Hunter hours after he heard about what happened to his friend, there was a moment in the midst of his inconsolable grief when he acknowledged a sense of relief, a feeling that something was settled now that would never have to disturb him, that now at last this uncomfortable business between them would be silenced forever.
Holding what's left of his coffee in the dark room, Vaniok nods as if in response to some question, assenting to everything that's implied in his thoughts about his friend. He feels as if here in the host country he and Ranush have at last had the chance to talk about that night under the stars, that each of them recognizes that it happened and that neither is sorry that it had. It's as if without speaking a word his friend said, “Of course I understand you might have felt upset about that, it may have played a part in the whole swirl of reasons that prevented you from meeting me. As we used to say when we tried to understand why other people behaved as they did, who does anything for just one reason? I understand that in your confusion afterwards you might even have thought you were glad about what happened to me. But that's not important when you think of our relationship over the years. We're only human, after all. Possibly I would have felt the same way. There can be love even with betrayal.” Yes, Vaniok thinks now, there was love between them. At this moment he's sure that, however tangled his relationship with Ranush may have been, they loved each other, and not in any way that he thinks of with shame.
He emerges from the storage room like a man who's been asleep for a century, he sees everything with new eyes. A pair of his fellow workers is talking in a corner, their heads close, conspiratorial, but this time he feels no ache of exclusion. Now he's certain that it's the threat of cutbacks that has frightened them, made them band together against the strangers. To Vaniok they seem like men who've been robbed of something precious who are trying to understand why it's happened to them. The basketball team's success gave drama to their lives and they followed its fortunes as if they were somehow connected to their own hopes and actions. Very likely the team's unexpected loss and the students' response has made these men see what their true connection to the university is: as employees; and their good spirits have turned sour. Fearing for their livelihoods, how could they feel other than angry toward the students? Vaniok can sympathize with them. Just now he feels exalted, as if he could forgive everyone all their transgressions and weaknesses. So what if the men are staying away from him because they see him as an outsider who wouldn't understand the way they feel? They're wrong but it doesn't surprise Vaniok that in their confusion they huddle together.
He's still in this mood when he runs into Jory not long into the work day. “My God,” he says, seeing the small bandage above his eye, “were you in a fight?” Insanely, his first thought is that Carl had something to do with it.
Jory looks embarrassed. “I happened to be in town last night when the disturbance broke out. I was too close.”
It's hard for Vaniok to imagine his countryman in the middle of the student riot. “What was that like?” he asks.
Jory waves away the question. His eyes search the warehouse as if he's looking for an enemy hidden among the stacked boxes. Vaniok, who approached him with good will, has the familiar sense that his countryman is drawing back, as if he's afraid Vaniok will ask him too many questions. Possibly he's uneasy about his relationship with Ila.
Vaniok keeps looking at the bandage. He can't help feeling that Carl had something to do with Jory's injury. “It must have been something,” he says, trying to be friendly.
For an instant Jory seems on the verge of responding and Vaniok remembers times when the man has surprised him with a sudden cheerfulness. But what flickers in his eyes is brief.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “I have to be getting to work.”
After he leaves Vaniok feels a vague irritation. Just minutes before, it seemed as though aches he's carried with him for so long were quieted once and for all. Now he's been reminded that nothing lasts forever, not even the mysterious solace that came to him in that dark room full of mops and pails when Ranush's spirit visited him. He thinks of the story from the gospels that used to fascinate him as a child: Christ goes to the mountain with the three apostles and there his face shines like the sun, his garments are as white as snow, and Moses and Elijah appear beside him. Dazzled, the impulsive Peter suggests that they put up tents and stay there but Christ, who has other plans for himself and the apostles, tells Peter they have to return to the lowland.
Why does it always have to be Jory who does this to him?
But this isn't the gospel story, he reminds himself, and there's no Jesus in this town. He isn't going to let himself fall into gloom. Jory is preoccupied by something, but that's not unusual for him: he's a man who lives in a hole he's dug for himself. Even the success Vaniok knows he enjoys with Ila hasn't changed that. Vaniok can see this, like a sudden glimpse of the earth's curvature: that whatever has already happened between Jory and Ila, it won't be permanent, that there's something in the man that will prevent him from holding on to whatever happiness he can manage to find. Vaniok is surprised by how certain he is about this, he even feels sympathy for his countryman. He, on the other hand, feels a lightness, the weightlessness of a curled piece of ash lifting from a fire and floating on the heat of the flames. Lord, let us set up our tents, he thinks.
He has to talk to somebody and the only one he knows who could even begin to understand how he feels is Ila. What if she's closer to Jory at the moment, she's still his cousin. He phones the inn where she works and asks for her, aware of the boldness of this move. “Is this an emergency?” the person on the other end of the line asks. “Just call her to the phone,” he demands. When she answers Vaniok asks her if she'll meet him after work.
“Why, Vaniok? Is anything wrong?”
Hearing his cousin's voice, he realizes how impossible it's going to be to explain his motives. What can he tell her, after all? About Ranush, about what he's recognized about the men at work, his intuition about Jory? Can he put any of it into words that would convey a fraction of his feelings? And yet he has to talk to her, what he's felt this morning can't just be a passing mood. “No,” he says into the phone. “Nothing is wrong at all. In fact everything is fine, yes, everything is fine.” His own voice sounds a little mad but he wishes he could talk to her this minute. Even as she agrees to meet him Vaniok feels the weight of the hours that stand between this moment and the time when he'll see her.
Walking to the coffee shop to meet her cousin, Ila wonders about Vaniok's call. He sounded so strange, so intense. That he phoned her at the inn is a surprise. He didn't sound depressed; in fact, if anything, he seemed the opposite. Of course he can be given to sudden elations and enthusiasms but he can plummet just as suddenly. What can be behind this new mood? Certainly he knows about her and Jory but maybe he saw them togetherâthat could have upset him. Possibly in some way it's thrown him off his balance.
He's already waiting for her at the coffee place on the corner and she can see at once that the almost desperate cheer she heard in his voice on the phone is edged with something more brooding. He greets her spiritedly, then falls silent, his fingers moving along the edge of his saucer.
“Was there any damage at the inn?” he asks her. “From the riot, I mean.”
“Oh, no,” she says. “The people who stay at the inn aren't the type that go around breaking windows.”
He smiles. “Yes, I suppose you're right. Of course,” he laughs but the laughter never reaches his eyes, which are those of someone who's awakened in a hospital bed wondering whether he has all his limbs. He's fallen silent and she looks at him encouragingly.
“I went drinking with the men after work on Friday,” he says. This can't be what he called her about, Ila is certain. “I don't want you to think I'm a drunkard, though,” he adds.
“Vaniok, why would I?” she tells him. Is this a reference to his behavior at the seaside picnic, she wonders.
But his expression darkens, something furtive enters his eyes before he glances into his coffee cup. “Ila,” he says, “did you ever do things you weren't proud of, things you were ashamed of? Maybe things you didn't understand when you did them?”
“Of course,” she answers immediately. “Isn't that what it means to be human?”
“True, true,” he nods, taking in the statement as if he'd just learned some fact, a thing to be memorized. “You have to go on,” he says. “What's past is past.”
It sounds like a question and so she answers: “Yes.”
He shakes his head. “You understand things so well.”