When he got off the train and found in the wet hubbub of the platform and the glare and echoes of North Station nobody to meet him, he felt let down, betrayed. The emotion was quite inappropriate. Nikolas would hardly have stayed to meet a train five hours late. Eduard considered calling the house to say he had arrived, and then wondered why the thought had entered his head. It had risen from his stupid disappointment at not being met. He went out to get a taxi. At the bus stop near the taxi stand, a 41 was waiting; without hesitation he walked to it and got onto it. It had been how long, ten years, fifteen, no, longer than, that, since he had ridden a bus crosstown through the loud streets of Krasnoy, dark and flashing in the March night, street lamps stretching reflections down into the rivers of black asphalt, as when he was a student riding home after late class at the University. The 41 stopped at the old stop at the foot of the Hill and a couple of students got on, pale, grave girls. The Molsen under Old Bridge ran very high in its stone embankments; everyone craned to see, and somebody behind him said, “It’s up over the warehouses down below Rail Bridge.” The bus groaned, swayed, stopped, lurched its way through the long straight streets of the Trasfiuve. Orte was the last but one to get off. The bus with its solitary passenger gasped its door shut and went on, leaving a quietness in its wake, the suburban quietness. Rain fell steadily. At the corner near a street lamp a young tree stood startled by light, its new leaves piercing green. There were no further delays or changes of route. Orte walked the last half block home.
He knocked softly, pushed the unlocked door open, and entered. For some reason the hall was brightly lighted. A loud voice was talking in the sitting room, a stranger’s voice. Was there a party gong on? As he took off his topcoat to hang it on the hall coatrack, a boy came careening past, stopped at a distance, and stared with bright, bold eyes.
“Who are you?” Orte asked, as the boy asked the same question, and as he answered, “Eduard Orte,” the boy gave the same answer.
For a moment his head spun with the dizziness that he dreaded, the abyss opening, the falling.
“I’m your uncle,” he said, tapping the rain off his hat and hanging it up. “Is your mother here?”
“In the piano room. With the funerals man.” The boy kept gazing, studying him, self-possessed, as if in his own house. Why did he not stand out of the way? I cannot go past him, Orte thought.
Retsia came into the hallway, saw him, cried, “Oh, Eduard!” and burst instantly into tears. “Oh, poor Eduard!”
She drew him with her, relinquishing him only to Nikolas, who shook his hand softly and seriously, saying in his even voice, “You’d left. We couldn’t reach you. Very easy, much suddener than expected, but very easy at the end…”
“I see. yes,” Orte said. The abyss hung under him, he held his brother’s hand. “The train,” he said.
“At two o’clock almost exactly,” Nikolas said.
Retsia said, “We’ve been calling the station all afternoon. The whole railway above Aris is under water. You must be worn out, poor Eduard! And not knowing, all day long, the whole afternoon!” Tears ran down her face as plentiful and simple as rain running down the windows of the train.
Orte had intended to ask several questions of Nikolas before he went up to see his mother: Had it in fact been a severe attack? Is she on the same medication? Has there been much angina? Now he still wanted to ask these questions, which after all had not been answered. Nikolas continued to tell him about the death, but he had not asked about that. It was not fair. He still felt a little light-headed, but that was from travelling all day. The abyss had closed and he had let go Nikolas’s hand. Retsia hovered close, smiling, tearful. Nikolas, he noticed, looked strained and tired, his eyes rather swollen behind his thick spectacles. What did he look like himself? Did he show any such signs of grief? Did he feel grief? He looked into himself with apprehension, finding nothing except the continuing slight unpleasant dizziness. One could not call that grief. Should he not wish to cry?
“Is she upstairs?”
Nikolas explained the new government regulations. “They have been most efficient and considerate,” he said. The body had been taken to the East District Crematory; a man had come by with the papers, to arrange for the display and service; they had just been completing the arrangements when Eduard arrived. They all moved about, went to the music room, the man was introduced. It was his voice Orte had first heard coming into the house, the loud voice and bright lights, like a party. Nikolas showed the man out. “I met,” Eduard Orte said to his sister, then hesitated—“young Eduard.” Then wished he had not spoken, because the nephew named for him could not be that boy, who was much too old, and who had said his name was Orte, had he not? when it must be Paren; Retsia’s married name was Paren. But who was the boy, then?
“Yes, I did want the children here,” Retsia was saying. “Tomas will drive up tomorrow morning. I do hope it stops raining, the roads must be terrible.” He noticed her strong ivory teeth. She must be, it was impossible, thirty-eight. He would not have known her had they passed on the street. Her eyes were greyish blue. She was looking at him. “You’re tired,” she said in the way that had used to irritate him, telling people what they felt; but the words were welcome to him. He was not aware of being particularly tired, but if he looked tired, or was tired without knowing it, perhaps also he had feelings he was unaware of, appropriate feelings. “Come and have some supper, now that man’s gone. You must be starving! The children are eating in the kitchen. Oh, Eduard, everything is so strange!” she said, leading him briskly on.
The kitchen was warm and full of people. The cook-housekeeper Vera, who had come after his time but had been there for years now, greeted him mumbling. She was upset, and he understood that; how was an old woman with bad legs to get a new job? But no doubt Nikolas and Nina would take her in. Retsia’s children were all at the kitchen table: the boy he had met in the hall, and the older sister, and the little boy, whom they had called Riri last time Orte had seen them, but were calling Raul now; and there was another one, that sister or cousin of Retsia’s husband who lived with them, a short, sullen girl of twenty or more. Nikolas’s wife Nina came from behind the table to greet him with an embrace. As she spoke, he remembered what he had not thought of since Nikolas’s letter about it a couple of weeks ago, that Nikolas and Nina had adopted a baby—had Nikolas written that it was a boy? It had all seemed so artificial to him that he had read the letter carelessly, finding the matter distasteful and embarrassing, and now he could not recall what Nikolas had written. It would not do to ask Nina about it. Old Vera insisted on making tea for him to show that she was necessary, and he had to sit down with them all in the bright noisy kitchen and eat a little, wait for the tea and drink it. The noise abated. Nobody spoke to him much; Nina glanced at him with her sad, dark eyes. He began to realise with relief that his habitual gravity of manner might be taken for emotion controlled, might serve him as a façade behind which he could keep to himself his lack of sorrow, like a locked and empty room.