The Testament of Yves Gundron (40 page)

I did not sleep that night. I could not wait one day longer to embark on my project of building; I cared nothing for splitting wood or fixing fences, but desired only the task nearest my heart. All night did I keep the animals awake, as with my chalk I traced the outlines of the pieces
for my writing desk—a plain top, four slats for bracing, four legs—and began to saw them out. By morning I had fitted them together with nails, and I began work on a stool for sitting. I was not yet certain why I needed this furniture, but I needed it badly. When I looked at the box of pens, sullied now by Mandrik's admission of his human need, his human failure, I knew) had work to accomplish.

¹
Now, of course, I can't help thinking that I should simply have told them—yes, of course there is a village—but at the time I could not dream of betraying Mandrik's confidence. It seemed that circumstances would uncover the truth soon enough. Adelaïda's distrust pained me, but I felt somehow less culpable if I didn't interfere.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE JOURNEY WESTWARD

efore the dawn had trailed the last wisps of pink across the eastern sky, my neighbors departed on their journey. From my work in the barn I heard numerous carts approaching on their iron-clad wheels, and though it was not yet morning, I heard the beat of the timbrels and the tinkling of bells. When I opened the barn door to peer out, the Archduke's litter had just lumbered past, leading my brethren forth, but it did not look so splendid without the full light of the sun thereupon. As the last of my neighbors clattered by and receded into the distance, I went into the house, and morning came cold and still. Many of the birds had flown away for the winter, and those that remained were too busy pecking the ground to sing. Winter loomed still as death before us. Against her custom, Ruth was out of bed before my wife, her face wan, her clumsy hands working a passable fire. She looked up from burning her bread over the fire. “Would you like some?”

I shook my head no. My anger toward my brother had grown so hot that she, at least, looked an ordinary person again.

“I didn't wake you, Yves?”

“No, no. I was up all night. I was working.”

She nodded, and lifted her wire contraption, in which she burned her bread, from the fire.

“I am sorry I yelled at you,” I said beneath my breath, “and that I cursed your work.”

Her eyes showed the depth of her gratitude, and her lips compressed into the ghost of a smile. “It's fine. I don't blame you.”

“But I apologize.”

“Is the sun up?” my wife asked, then turned back over toward the wall. I did not recall her lazing thus when Elizaveta grew inside her.

“But a moment ago,” I answered, smoothing her yellow braid from out her sleep-sticky mouth.

“I want tose,” Elizaveta called from her hammock.

Ruth took her down, changed her wet rag for a dry one, and placed another slice of bread in the wire contraption she'd set over the fire. When Ruth was gone, we would still need to make this strange delicacy for our child. I could smell Elizaveta's sweet breath, unclouded yet by the stench and misery of adulthood, as she padded about the house in bare feet. “Papa, why is Roof sad?”

Ruth said, “I'm not sad. Here. Blow.”

Elizaveta blew dutifully on her toast.

“I suppose there's no point in leaving until they all come back. I'll want to say goodbye,” Ruth said, struggling under the weight of the kettle.

“You'll leave forever, then?”

“Maybe not forever, but for now. What I wanted to study will be gone.”

I didn't care for her defeated tone. “I'll be here. Or am I not interesting enough?”

“You always start with that when you're upset. I'm sure there'll be plenty to study, something new, if I come back a year from now. You'll change, too. Watch.”

“Nay, Ruth. You might know me better than that.” I turned the bellows on the fire, for what she had built would never come to a boil. I took the slop pot out from under the bed, that I might empty it as I relieved myself of the night's accumulations. My feet near frozen with chill, I hurried into the near pasture, the last brown spikes of grass prickling my soles. The milky-gray sky boded ill for winter. From the east I heard Friedl Vox, perhaps the last person left in Mandragora but me and my kin, calling up over Ydlbert's rise. “Damn your eyes!” she
shrieked. “Iulia Gansevöort! Come out from under your cairn. Your brethren from the sea have come forth to claim you at last.” I closed the fly of my undergarment, for the wind blew cold. As she topped the rise, I saw that she was not raving utterly, but had two slender strangers behind her, carrying the weight of great backpacks upon their backs, and bunched together as if they feared Friedl's nearness.

“Iulia!” she once again shrieked.

Ruth raised her eyes to me as I stepped inside. “She really does frighten me.”

“Come outside, Ruth. Adelaïda, get up.”

Ruth said, “What's the matter?” Adelaïda pulled the blanket over her ears.

“She's got people with her. You'd best come see.”

Ruth solemnly chewed the rest of her bread and wiped her hands on her apron. Elizaveta caught her air of wonder and stood up slowly, her two hands gripping Pudge.

I leaned over my wife in bed and licked the gap in her teeth. “Get up, Adelaïda. We may need you.” She nodded, and my head moved also, in sympathy. “Please, I may need your help.” She nodded again, and looked at me with the same eyes with which I'd regarded my dying family, the eyes that could not store enough against approaching absence.

Ruth took Elizaveta's hand, and we walked to the road. Yoshu bounded out from the barn and crouched at the edge of our property, growling at whatever was drawing nigh. When Yoshu began barking fiercely, her cry broke the silence of the morning.

Ruth peered at the figures walking up the road. “This can't be,” she said.

“What?”

The paving stones looked unusually pale, as if they anticipated the first wash of snow.

Ruth opened her mouth wide, and in a loud, clear tone, called out, “Nurit?”

All three figures stopped in their descent. The strangers turned their heads toward the sound, which, carried on a visible puff of breath, continued to echo across my fields.

Again Ruth called out, “Nurit? Eli?”

The figures regarded one another, looped their thumbs into their shoulder straps, and began running down the hill, one whooping, and both shouting, “Ruth!” From the tones of their voices, one was a woman and one a man. Both were dressed in blue trousers and heavy short coats.

The moment in which Ruth ran out to greet them lasted an eternity, long enough for me to puzzle through every permutation of what this might be about. Then at once I realized the figures were her siblings, come from her homeland as surely as mine came to me from the land of the dead. They dropped the backpacks by the roadside and ran into one another's arms. “What are you doing here?” she asked them, burrowing her nose into their necks. They were both taller than she. The landscape once again fell quiet.

“Oh, Ruth,” said her sister, “I'm so glad to see you.”

“How on earth did you get here? My sweet Eli.” She kissed the pale side of his throat.

“That woman,” her sister said, “is completely terrifying.”

“Ruth, we missed you so much.”

“Iulia!” Friedl cried, her one blue eye staring at Ruth in fear.

I went out to her in the road and, despite her stench, smoothed down her grizzled locks to calm her. “Shh,” I whispered to her. “All's well. Thank you for bringing them hither.”

“How did you get here?” Ruth asked again.

“We hiked in over those mountains.” He pointed back toward Nnms. He was certainly a man, but a gypsy's jewels dangled from his pink ears.

“The Navy showed us a videotape,” her sister said. Her narrow face radiated with winter's first chill, though her smile, however earnest, had a wan and tragic cast. “But this I wasn't prepared for.” She ducked her head slightly and pushed the vision apparatus, the eyeglasses, up her nose.

“Friedl?”

“Yeah, her, and like the whole ghost-town thing. It's creepy.”

“Is everything okay? Back home?”

“Everything's fine. Dad's worried about you.”

“But he's fine,” Eli corrected. “You didn't look completely well in that video.”

“I broke my leg, but it's good now. As long as it doesn't rain.”

“Iulia Gansevöort, they've come at last to bring you back to the Beyond,” Friedl said in a quieter tone.

All three of them looked up at her, startled, and I felt as if my mind would explode, watching them—all so slender and so much like one another, with their broad, flat voices, all gesturing forcefully with their hands.

“Friedl, thank you so much for bringing me my brother and sister. Thank you so much.”

Friedl was used to no words kinder than invective, and hung her head in confusion.

“And Yves.” She reached forth to take my hand. I colored, despite myself. “Yves, meet my brother and sister, Eli and Nurit.”

They held out their cold, delicate hands in that peculiar intimate gesture and smiled bashfully, Nurit ducking her head as she bade me hello.

“This is Yves Gundron, who's—I can't tell you how kind he's been to me.”

I felt guilty for all the dark thoughts I had so recently harbored against her.

“Yes,” said Nurit. “I remember you from the tape. Thank you for taking care of our sister.”

“It was but my duty,” I mumbled.

“Ruth,” Nurit said, “we missed you so much. We were so worried about you.”

Ruth, looking back and forth between them, began to weep from the pit of her stomach, racking sobs that bent her double and propelled her into her sister's arms. The brother looked at me with shy dark eyes and bowed his bejeweled head. Abashed, I also bowed mine. Elizaveta said, “Papa, why is Roof crying?”

But I didn't know how to put it into words that some things make people cry from joy and confusion. I could not tell my daughter that remembrance as often as not makes us weep. I had heard Ruth cry the very night of her arrival, sure, but until that moment I had not known she was capable of a deeper emotion. I had thought that because she did not work the land, because she did not know an honest day's labor, she could not know an honest day's pain; and though I recognized from the
start the signs of her grief, I thought, how deep could it be, really, if she never spoke of it, and if she had not lost everything at once? How hard could it be for her, in a land of plenty greater than even they across the hills could imagine, when her father and siblings yet lived? Yet there before me stood most of what she had in the world—and there was the proof of how she loved it. All three were ruining their fair, clean complexions with emotion, screwing up their faces like masks of death. I should not, I realized, be watching this, and yet I could not tear my eyes away. Even Yoshu, with her fierce desire to protect our home, stood still, and neither scratched nor bit.