A lot of false travel papers had been turning up, Holter said to Albert apologetically. Duplicate birth certificates, fraudulent work papers. He crossed the room to the kitchen cabinets and turned, his back to them. Albert didn’t have anything like that to worry about, did he?
Albert didn’t answer.
“Rude question,” Holter said. “Of course not.”
“Yesterday one of my assistants’ house was set on fire,” Albert said. “Now he and his family are out on the street. The neighbors said the men wore Party pins.”
“That sort of arson is really planned and executed by big-city types,” Holter said. “We’re fairly helpless in cases like that. It’s pointless, but who can tell them that? Or maybe they were partisans seeking to blame us. Who knows?”
He turned to Karel. “Do you?” he asked.
“No,” Karel said, startled.
Albert shook his head, and Holter looked over at him with amusement. “I don’t understand why a citizen who respects the law would support the partisans,” he said. “I mean, everyone has his passion for reform in the early going, but most of us realize we’re just wasting time and energy better spent in other directions. And who are the partisans trying to reform? Did you hear the joke about our countrymen who wanted to seize the train stations but couldn’t because they hadn’t bought tickets?”
“Couldn’t you be helping them with whatever they’re doing?” Albert asked. “Do you have to torment me?”
“One more story, not from the radio,” Holter said. He pulled a chair out and swung it around and sat on it backward.
Karel found Albert looking at him and had to look away, at his feet, at the table. What was happening here? Why had he been sent here? He understood something sadistic was going on but didn’t know what or why.
“For months we knew a lot of people who’d gotten away from here were in hiding in the capital, in bunkers and mazes built out of subbasements, wine cellars, storm drains, everything. Informers told us that much and showed us one or two. Big question: how would we find the rest? Kuding, Lenz, Kruse — remember them? — they were all down there somewhere.”
Albert looked away, agitated. “It’s eight-thirty,” he said.
“Well,” Holter said. “Finally, we hit on it. Bang: the electric bills of the businesses above! Get it? All those sites would be siphoning off electricity. Right away we found a central cell, maybe forty people. We’ve identified most of the bodies.”
Albert paled. He ran his hand up the back of his neck and let it drop.
“Kuding’s actually alive,” Holter said. “Though he won’t be a problem. As our Justice Minister says, show me a man and I’ll show you a case.”
Albert put his hands over his eyes. He was trembling.
Karel stood up, abruptly, and had no explanation when Holter looked at him in surprise. The young men returned from the crawl space dirty and empty-handed and saved him. One had cobwebs hanging from his hair.
“I’m supposed to be back,” Karel said. He couldn’t take any more of this.
Holter lifted two boxes from the hall and brought them to Karel. “Children need two things, don’t you think?” he said, addressing Albert. Karel put his arms out and he loaded the boxes on them, tilting the weight back against Karel’s chest. “If they don’t get them, the result is unhappy children. Routine and discipline: the child who doesn’t get them will have all kinds of trouble.”
Karel said goodbye to Albert over the boxes and left. He had to wait at the door for one of the young men to open it. Holter called after him as he went down the steps that what he recommended was that children be given plenty of little tasks, and then be made to do them regularly.
Today we tried to read the future by dropping melted wax and lead into bowls of water. E asked, Will Leda marry Karel? and everybody thought that was funny. Sometimes I feel so excluded from their company! and I just want to sit outside under the sky and feel sorry for myself, like mother says.
Poor K! Always around, so sure he’s in love. I’m amazed how my feelings for him have grown. Because of what? He’s very maddening and almost always strange. That time with N an example. Mom and David like him a lot. Only Nicholas seems skittish around him. I kissed him, but would he ever kiss me? I think about him often, but what does that mean? Sometimes I think it’s like I don’t love him but the world in him.
K: 1 Political?
2 Kind, thoughtful
3 Attractive
4 Good?
5 Emotions not good or bad — just up and down
6 So self-consc. — never just does something. I think that bothers him.
The People’s Voice announced that the conversion of the Retention Hospital to museum space was now fully under way. A large number of patients had been moved to unspecified centers around the region, and others had been unfortunately lost in an outbreak of typhus the hospital had surpressed to prevent panic. Those families involved in the loss of loved ones had each received an urn, a certificate, and a bill. In rare cases there had been inevitable bureaucratic errors involving notifications, and these were deeply regretted.
Karel took long walks, wanting to get out of the house. It was hot. He passed an old man walking a dog on a lead. The dog stopped endlessly, and the old man conceded the dog that right, as if any kind of delay he experienced because of it made no difference in a world like this.
He sat in the shade and read the posters on a kiosk: nomads had formed teams of stranglers that roamed the countryside at night. Victims had been found with their ankles broken and eyes put out, according, it was thought, to a secret nomad tradition: the eyes so the dead wouldn’t recognize their murderers, and the ankles so they couldn’t follow them and indicate to everyone their guilt.
In the square a band was playing, sweating in the heat. The music was nervous and worn out and the band members played number after number with their eyes on the ground, their fingers working the stops. The heat staggered drifting mongrels and cats. In a cleared field he saw hawks and sparrows panting and standing beside each other in the shadows of fenceposts, on a truce because of the heat. Their wings slanted downward and trembled in the dirt. Beyond them through a window in the cool shade of a whitewashed room a woman with Leda’s hair and eyes served something from a shallow bowl with the smooth silence of a painting come to life.
He worried that he’d gotten no letters from her and asked about the mail situation at the post office. The clerk informed him in a harassed voice that he wouldn’t predict that anything got anywhere in any amount of time. He asked Kehr if he’d heard anything and Kehr said no and added that he was not holding his breath waiting for a note of thanks from the Schieles.
He tried to ration his time with the journals. He discovered with a shock that he had a rivaclass="underline"
Where is your smoothness? Why have you left? Now, when others pass their hands through my hair I resent it. Dark boy, I’m hypnotized by your black eyes. So much is happening all at once! You’re four years older, four years smarter, four years better, four years worse, four years more experienced. Am I aiming too high? Oh, I want you to be happy.
The next three passages said nothing more on the subject, as if he’d hallucinated it. He was flipping frantically ahead when Kehr appeared in his room and announced that they needed the journals right away for a while, he’d get them back, there was no need to get all excited, he was going to have to call Stasik if Karel continued to make a fuss, and no, it couldn’t wait.