The Land Across (2 page)

The variations in size meant that our car (and the wagons and so forth) could not go fast, turning left or right almost at the end of each block. Left turns were followed by rights, and the other way. When we had made half a dozen turns or so, it hit me that all the turns must make it hard to follow a particular street. After that, I watched for street signs, but there were not any. Pretty soon I asked the big man the name of the street we were on. He just shrugged and the boss border guard told me, “Our streets do not have names.”

Then I stuck my neck out, saying that no street names must make it hard to find somebody’s house. The boss border guard asked me, “Why do you want to find somebody’s house in Puraustays?”

For a while we threaded our way among old buildings of three, four, or five stories, all of some dark stone. They said the biggest one, with gargoyles and lots of balconies, was the seat of the city’s government. The trees around it were so tall I could not see a thing below a story that could have been the fourth or the third. This story, like the ones above it, was impressive and pretty interesting. I remember plants that looked an awful lot like jellyfish, and people who looked a lot like flowers.

Beyond that was a long yellow brick building with three stories. It was the first building I had seen that looked busy, and it seemed a whole lot busier than just about any building in America, with people hurrying in and out all the time. I asked what it was, and the big guy who had lifted me said, “The Mounted Guard.”

I know I must have looked dumb. There were a lot of big doors, but I had seen no horses and no soldiers. The boss border guard told me, “They are on duty in the East.”

After a while we got into a suburb or something like that. The streets there were more like those in American towns. The houses were all pretty much the same size, and that meant the blocks were pretty much the same size, too. So the streets were nearly straight except when they bent around.

Finally we stopped in front of a house that was not quite as big as the others, a little square house of dirty white concrete blocks. Our driver got out and trotted around to open the door for the third border guard. The sky was overcast, there was not a lot of time, and I could not be sure. But it seemed to me that the driver looked like the porter who had made my bed on the train. They could not have been the same guy. Still, they looked a lot alike.

There was no walk to the front door, only a little path among trees. Except for the driver, we trooped along it, the boss border guard, then the biggest and the third border guard. I limped along behind them, thinking I ought to run away but knowing I would be a darned fool to get separated from my passport. The boss border guard knocked with the barrel of his pistol.

A short, stocky man maybe thirty or so answered it, opening the door a crack then closing it again to unfasten a security chain before opening it wide. He had on a clean gray undershirt and gray wool pants that looked too big.

We crowded in and he talked. I think he was trying to get the boss border guard to sit down in the biggest chair. The boss border guard would not do it and lectured him. After a lot of that, the boss border guard asked me, “In Amerika, you build prisons for your prisoners, yes?” His German was not even as good as mine, but I understood him and nodded.

“Here we save.” The boss border guard chuckled. “You are this man’s prisoner.”

I said I had not done anything.

“You come without visa, with no passport. These things are sufficient.”

“You took my passport,” I reminded him. “Give it back, please.”

“It has been sent to the capital. I cannot give back. Until it is sent back, you have none. You must stay here. You see this man?” The boss border guard indicated the short man in the undershirt. “Do you like him?”

“I don’t know him.”

“So you like him. When you know him better, you do not like him so much, I think.” The boss border guard shut one eye and pointed his pistol at the short man’s head. “When you escape, him we shoot.”

The short man gave me a sad glance.

“You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is rotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too.”

I said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner.

“You are to sleep here.” Holstering his pistol, the boss border guard took a folded paper and a pen from a pocket of his uniform jacket and shoved them into the short man’s hand.
“Grafote!”

The short man signed, and the border guards trooped out.

I apologized to the short man in English, and then in German. He could not understand that either.

The girl who had peeped in before smiled. She was a cute girl, with lots of curves and bouncy amber curls. “I must help.” She talked to the short man. It seemed to me she was translating what I said, so I thanked her.

“It is nothing. I am most happy to be of use. I am Martya. My husband is Kleon. They do not like us.”

Her husband spoke.

“He too says they do not like us. They will kill him if you escape. He says we could tie you up and keep you a prisoner in that way, which many would do. He says please do you not escape, or take us with you if you do.”

I told her I would not escape.

“Kleon does not understand, but learns from our faces. Has mine told you what I think?”

I said it had not.

“See that you do as I.”

I nodded.

“What you just did he understands. For us it might be most fortunate if you were to remember this. Try also to make long answers to my short questions, long, long answers to my long questions. In this way he will know only what I tell him. It is good for you and me, I think.”

“I have a great many questions to ask you,” I said, “questions about your country, this city, this house, your husband, and yourself, lovely lady. Where can I telephone the American embassy and a bunch of other stuff. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ll have long questions as well as long answers.”

“Here no one has the telephones you seek. In the capital, perhaps.” She talked to her husband for two or three minutes. He shook his head, said a few words, and spat into the fireplace.

“He will answer none of your questions.” She smiled. “He thinks you are a JAKA spy. He did not say this, but he thinks it.”

I said he was wrong, and explained that I had come to collect material for a book.

“I believe you because I see your clothing. It is foreign and most well, lamb’s wool and fine cottons. The silk shirt also. The shoes. You are fortunate the border guards did not take them.”

“They would not rob a spy, would they?”

“They rob everyone. Who will arrest them? No, you are foreign, from a weak nation far away.”

I told her she was right.

“If you escape you will return there. Could you bring with you another, perhaps?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s never easy but it might be possible.” It seemed to me it was the smart thing to say.

She smiled. “This is too short an answer, you see? You must answer me much more long, and who does not know
ja
? Now for you a new question. These kind border guards who did not take your clothing, did they not take also your money, and did you before they came change some into our money? Is there other wealth of you that might be drawn upon, and do you still have it? Do not look at this money, this wealth you have, before you make the answer.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “As to the currencies about which you asked me, I have dollars from my own country and euros. What I mean by this is that I have some of each. Don’t you use euros—”

Somebody pounded on the door. Kleon looked frightened and the girl spat like a cat. “It is Aldos, the swine-dog. You must answer our door. It will confuse him.”

The big man who had pounded it looked confused for less than a second. After that he shouted in my face, but I could see fear in his eyes. I talked to him in German, saying I could not understand him, but that I would try if only he would talk slower and keep his voice down.

He did not. When I backed away, he came at me. When I came at him, he backed away.

The short man, Kleon, came to stand beside me. From his tone, I believe he must have cursed the big man. His voice was low and bitter.

At last the big man stammered and stopped, jamming his clenched fists into the pockets of what looked like a pair of old golf pants. He was wearing an undershirt too, but his was dirty. Part of it was covered by an old wool vest.

Behind me the girl said, “He says our chickens get into his garden. We do not have chickens.”

Her husband nodded almost imperceptibly to that. He spoke in his cursing tone to the big man, advancing toward him, making wild gestures that almost brushed the big man’s nose. I advanced, too.

For a minute the big man rallied, shouting louder than ever. Then he turned and stamped away.

“I suppose somebody’s chickens must get into his garden,” I said to the girl.

“Ours did once or twice,” she acknowledged. “Kleon had chickens before we were married.”

Kleon spoke bitterly before retreating into his house and slamming the door behind him.

“He says he was rich once, that one may be rich or wed but not both.”

I said, “I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“For him, yes.” The girl smiled, making me feel like I was a lot younger than she was. (Really it was only two or three years.) “He has locked us out.”

I stared.

“You do not believe? Try the door.”

I did. It would not open.

“You see? I have hear the bar drop into place. We are cast out!” She grinned at me. “Are you afraid?” She had a great grin.

“A little bit,” I admitted. “Is there an American Consulate? If there is one, I’d like to go there.”

“Soon he thinks better.” It was like she had not heard me. “Martya is with him, he will think. She will tell him he need only go to the police. He will say ‘I am his prisoner! He lock me out!’ Then the police will come and shoot him. He is right about this, but we will not go to them right away. Do you like these trees? The bushes?”

“They’re really nice,” I said.

“This bush here…” She caressed it. “It will bloom for us before the moon is old. For a week it is the most pretty one in Puraustays. Our trees give nuts. I do not know the German name, but the wood burns well. A hot fire and slow. A little stick burns for a long, long time.”

“I see.”

“Some have fruit trees. This is nice because of the fruit. Apples, pears, cherries are all good. These burn well, too. I think you have these in your land.”

I said we did.

“But you, yourself? You have such trees?”

I tried to explain that I did not have a house, I lived in an apartment because I was on the road so much.

“If you had a house, you would have fruit trees. You are a fruit tree man. This I see.” She had begun to walk, and I followed her. “My father had fruit trees but he is dead.”

“My father is dead, too,” I said. “He was with the State Department, so I grew up all over the world.”

“Here?”

“No, not here. Mostly Germany, France, and Japan.”

“Here there are three kinds of men. A fruit tree man like you, he is strong.” She held up her clenched fist. “Strong, or perhaps he has the good friends.” She drew an imaginary pistol. “You are such a one, I think.”

I said I had a lot of friends in America.

“If a man who is not strong plants fruit trees, his neighbors take the fruit.” She raised her chin, a proud daughter. “No one took my father’s fruit!”

“That must have been nice.”

“Yes, yes! Once Kleon had fruit trees. They took his fruit and he could not stop them. Now we have nut trees, so we eat the nuts.” She pointed. “Do you see those?”

We had reached the edge of her husband’s block, and she was pointing at the next one. The trees there were oaks. I said they looked fine.

“No, no! He is weak. No one takes acorns.”

“I see.”

“When a man dies his neighbors cut his trees to burn. My father is dead half a year before anyone is so brave.” The girl sighed. “I take you now to a man who has fruit trees. If there is for you a consul, he will know.”

2

THE STORY

They were cherry trees mostly, Martya said. Whatever they were, they were beautiful, tall trees in wedding gowns. The smell made me think about God and heaven, and the bees that swarmed over them about hell because I got stung twice before we got to the door. “Volitain will put wet tobacco on those,” she told me. “It will take your pain.”

He was pale and starvation thin, with straight black hair, as courtly and polite as Kleon had been abrupt and hostile. “Enter!” He bowed from the hips. “Enter and welcome! Any friend of dear little Martya’s, a brother is to me.” The look that passed between them told me Martya had tried to make him.

“He is bee-bitten.” Her tone was flat, and her face held no expression. “Put tobacco on them.”

“I see…” Volitain stalked over to a table in his parlor, which looked as big as Kleon’s entire house. In the table drawer he found a magnifying glass.

“That will not help!”

Volitain bent over the sting on my cheek. “Sit here, please. Now incline the head, eh? I must have light from the window.”

I did what he said.

“The sting is here. It must be drawn. The hand we see next, eh?” He moved my hand to bring it nearer the light. “Here, also. Wait a moment. Drink good wine.”

He left us, slipping into some interior room through a door that was not quite open.

I asked, “Does he always do that? Not open the door?”

“He has no wife. The room where he go will be soiled, I think. He does not wish you to see it.”

“Or you,” I said.

Martya shrugged. “There is wine here. He desires us to drink. A woman brews tea, a man has wine.” She went to a sideboard. “Is Tokay, I think. We drink it much here. You will drink?”

I nodded and she poured. It was pungent and a little too sweet.

Volitain returned with tweezers and iodine. “The bee that stings, dies,” he murmured. “One would suppose that evolutionary processes would soon end such deaths. Is the hive stronger without him?”