Another Green World (31 page)

He acknowledged this with the briefest of bows. The horses, he explained, were a matter of simple expediency. “I would have rented an automobile, but there didn't seem to be any to spare in Kassel. Maybe I should've just bought one, it would've been a lot faster.”

“What's the hurry, Sam?” Talking to this man—how old would you say he was, twenty-four? twenty-five?— she felt like an actress in some
avantgarde
play whose every line was improvised, and whose plot might therefore take any number of dizzying turns.

“Please, call me Butler.” His voice was soft and deep, like a lion's purr. “There isn't any hurry. I simply prefer to waste as little time as possible
en passant.”

“En passant
to where?”

“Oh, you know … just hunting around.”

Martina chose this moment to glance aside at the ghost-pale boy who had sauntered over to a window, through which he stared motionless as a sentry. His eyes were ice-blue, his features unexpressive. What is
this
one, now, she wondered, and why is he traveling with Samuel Butler Randolph III? What nefarious doings are afoot here? Something frightfully scandalous, she hoped. “Hunting?” she prompted.

“For a story,” Butler said amiably. He stretched back against the tower wall, flattening his spine on the aged limestone. It made him look even taller. The rain had stopped outside but continued to drip from his hair and clothing.

She ought to have pressed him a little harder. But the mystery surrounding this handsome stranger was not without its appeal. There was, too, the relief of having an American to banter with. And so before long Martina found herself answering Butler's questions, at length and unguardedly, instead of asking her own. His attention flattered her. Not until much later did she pause to reflect that he seemed especially happy to be told about her companions, Ingo and Isaac. He was curious as well about the Socialist Worker Youth, and how the whole bunch of them had gotten acquainted, and what, by the by, brings you out here in the sticks to—what do they call this place, the Leuchtenburg? All this as though he were jotting down notes for future reference. Martina made nothing of it, assuming that Butler
found her comments informative, her opinions sharp and well formed, her delivery amusing. Hardy-har-har.

“So this friend of yours,” he said, “this Ingo. Odd name, isn't it? German-American, I suppose. Is he a
rough
sort of fellow, then? Likes to throw down some beers and bash around a bit?”

“Ingo?”
She couldn't suppress a titter. She felt Butler's stare grow heavier. “No, he's not really the bash-around type.”

“How would you describe him? Physically strong but slow to anger? Formidable when roused?”

“Not exactly.”

“You smile. Is there something I'm missing?”

He was smiling, too. But there was something private about that smile, like you were seeing it through a window, a face fleetingly glimpsed in the first-class car of a passing train.

From the cannon-slot, the German boy uttered a soft syllable. “Da.” His whole frame had become taut. He stared down into the close of the castle, where people were once more venturing out. “Da ist er,” he said. “Das Jüdling.”

To Martina, this didn't sound good. She stuck her head out the next window over and craned her neck to survey the open space, hemmed by the wings of the building and partly occluded by an old tree. At the center was a giant chessboard formed by alternate patches of green and silver creeping thyme clipped mercilessly into squares, its pieces artfully carved from heavy logs. A crowd had gathered to watch a match that had started before the storm and now resumed. Black's position looked hopeless, though the onlookers were free with suggestions. Among the kibitzers, half hidden by a waist-high bishop, was Isaac.

“You're sure that's him?” said Butler. No more lion's purr, the voice was all business.

“Yes, this is the same little Jew,” said the German boy in stiff but well-spoken classroom English. “You can see, he shows bruises still.”

“Okay,” said Butler, “I'm going down there.”

Now, the notebook. Martina blanched. Who was he? What had she told him? His face had taken on a hawkish look. She felt vulnerable, almost violated, yet even this—as she would later reflect—was far from unpleasurable.

Should she call out to Isaac? Call out what, though? Butler Randolph might not be what he seemed, but he surely was no right-wing bullyboy looking for heads to smash. And the little German: no worry there. Yet even as these thoughts ran through her head, she glanced down to see Isaac staring up at the Veil Tower, his eyes locked uncannily on the window
where the blond boy stood. The pair of them stood that way for several moments, bracketed, motionless, as though caught together in a private time-stream. Butler meanwhile bounded to the stairwell and
pfft
, he was gone.

Martina turned to the German kid. His face was cleansed of expression by the cool gray light, like a stone carving worn smooth by centuries of rainfall. “Who are you?” she said. “What do you want with him?”

The boy turned to look at her. He was terribly young, younger than Isaac, yet his calm, controlled manner and his eerie self-possession made him appear grown-up.

“I am not come here,” he said, “to make any harm.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you doing here then?”

“I am come to warn your friend.”

“To warn? Don't you mean threaten?”

The boy retained his composure. “Your friend is in danger. The other one, too, who was there with him. Both are… marked out. It is a question of honor. There is a need for…I don't know your word, Vergeltung. For my comrades, this is very important. Especially while a foreigner is involved. Even more so, a Jew.”

Martina stared at this ghost-pale youth. He seemed sincere, perhaps only because it took some effort to express himself in English. She nodded toward the empty space where Butler had been. “Where does
he fi
t in?”

The boy answered readily: “He paid for the horses. He is a Bolshevik, but I believe a man of honor.”

Martina doubted it. She preferred her Black Knight fantasy.

When she glanced out the window again, she saw Butler down there in the close, striding heedlessly through the chessboard, ignoring the players' objections, his head scanning the faces. But Isaac was nowhere to be seen. The little fox had given them the slip.

Ingo turned up not long afterward, as Martina was making her way to the dining room. He came bouncing across the wide and gloomy ancestral hallway with its faded portraits and coats-of-arms. The storm had drenched him to the bone, yet he seemed cheerful about it, his face in a healthy flush from the day's outing, the ends of his hair, already drying, bleached straw-yellow by the sun and dangling over his eyes.

Martina started to tell him about the latest arrivals when he gestured with a tan arm and said, “I'd like to introduce a friend. Marty, this is Anton Krolow.”

She was surprised, but not overly so. It stood to reason that Ingo would make friends, given his fluency in German and his new habit of rambling around the countryside. This Anton was a pleasant-looking youth, an inch taller than Ingo, lanky and long-haired. Shaking hands with him, she said, “Are you an orchid-hunter, also?”

Anton gave her a perplexed smile.

“His English isn't so good,” Ingo explained, then quickly murmured a translation.

Anton responded with an easy laugh. “Ja,” he said, “ich bin auch orchid-hunter.”

“Anton is really the expert,” Ingo said.

Martina felt a curious pang as she watched the two of them. The way they managed to communicate in glances and a few soft phrases, you would have thought they were not new acquaintances but old and intimate friends. Was it jealousy she felt? Was it envy? She thought of dangerous, dark-haired Butler Randolph, imagined him speaking softly in her ear as Anton was murmuring in Ingo's. But that was a different thing, of course. More dangerous and thrilling than simple friendship—more 1929.

“What's for dinner?” said Ingo. “We're both famished.”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Frau Möhring's cabbage surprise.”

“Herrlich!”

She watched the two boys tramp off into the dining hall, arm-in-arm, like good German comrades. It wasn't fair.

That night they had a bonfire. Young Germany loved its bonfires and this was a noisy one, logs still damp from the rain hissing and popping and bursting into clouds of sparks like tiny fireworks. The whole gang from the castle came out onto the sloping field where it was lit, but as time passed many drifted off into the knee-high grasses and wildflowers. The sky had mostly cleared and the remaining clouds moved with dramatic speed across the face of a waxing moon. Martina moved in slow, widening circles looking for Isaac, someone she knew, anyone to talk to. Near the fire she had been sweating, though now the night air felt chilly and there were goose bumps on her bare arms.

“Gansfleisch,” said a voice behind her, deep and filled with latent power.

She turned with a jumble of feelings shaken together like a cocktail at a gin joint.

“German term,” said Butler. “Means the same as the English. Here, take this, it'll warm you.”

He handed her something dark and heavy, a leather jacket, rich with manly scents with which she yearned to become familiar. His eyes were as dark as the trees. He stood with his back to the fire, whose orange glow limned the fringes of his hair.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said.

“An apology, how about. You tricked me. On purpose. I thought you were being friendly. But you were
interviewing
me. All those questions— who was I with, what were we doing, how long we'd been here. I didn't suspect a thing. I
still
don't get what you're up to.” She could make out the sparkle of perfect teeth—damn him, he was smiling.

“Who are you angry with?” he asked her. “Me, for making conversation? Or yourself, for being so naïve?”

She raised a hand to slap him but he caught it easily. She was glad he did. He lowered it slowly to her side and, after a couple of moments, relaxed his grip. What did those moments mean?

“I told you,” he said in that relaxed, gentlemanly drawl, the oral equivalent of a slouch. “I'm hunting for a story. Think I've found a good one, too. Young Americans abroad, carefree summer vacation, seeing the sights, doing the Jugendtag—then all unawares, they get tangled in German politics. Chance meeting of strangers becomes a collision of worldviews. Ancient hatred erupts. There's treachery, there's violence. But wait, what's this? A new twist: young Deutscher pops up, offers his hand in friendship, only to find himself spurned like an unwanted suitor. Young America is tired of playing by Old World rules—can't tell who the players are, even
with
a scorecard. But ‘leave us alone, please’ doesn't play in Thuringia. Like a small town really, always bumping against one another, feelings easily bruised. And so we come to what you might call the moment of catharsis—only what does this consist of? A reconciliation among enemies? Does the German break bread with the Jew? Or is this a story of prejudice and betrayal, violence begetting revenge? Either way, it's ripping good, don't you think? Excellent magazine piece, if not more.”

Martina was already shaking her head. “Or maybe it's not a story at all. Maybe it's real people's lives that you have no business messing around in.”

He accepted this with a nod. “Fair enough. I'd still like to talk to your friends, though, if you can arrange it. Both of them—but the German-American especially intrigues me. A sort of bridging character. One foot in either camp. Next time you see him, I wonder if you'd just let him know—”

“Tell him yourself. He's standing right over there. See, by the fire, next to that tall skinny kid?”

Butler followed her gaze. Martina enjoyed the thought of what Ingo—
the new, self-confident Ingo—would say to this arrogant so-and-so. He'd give Butler hell, she hoped. Somebody ought to.

“That's
your friend? That's our good pal Ingo?”

Something was wrong here, Martina thought. Butler's tone was sarcastic. He peered at her closely enough that she could make out the unsavory gleam in his eyes.

“You're telling me, that fellow over there is the terror of Frau-Holle-Quell? On whom the Jungdo have sworn bloody vengeance?”

“I guess I am. Sure. Why not?”

Butler laughed. “I noticed him at dinner tonight. Him and his pretty friend. Well—there must be some confusion here. At the very least an exaggeration of facts.” In the consequent silence, she formed the impression of someone scratching his earlobe or chewing a pencil, one of those manifestations of inner thought. “But you know, it might play even better this way—not for the
Saturday Evening Post
, of course. Perhaps
The New Yorker.”

“What are you going on about?”

“My dear,” said Butler, taking one of her hands, pulling her toward him until they stood eye-to-eye, moonlight and firelight merging in their faces, “I strongly doubt your friend Ingo could have done what people claim he did. Mauled a bunch of strapping Germans, hauled the sacrificial lamb out of the fire? Great God, woman—he's a raging queer.”

A
what
? Martina's mouth was open, ready to argue. But the words never formed in her throat. She felt as though a missing piece had dropped into place—but more than that, a piece whose absence she hadn't even noticed. Suddenly, things made sense that she'd never thought
didn't
make sense. An aspect of Ingo she had assumed was merely dormant or underdeveloped turned out to be alive and kicking after all. Only secret, hidden. Inside-out. Paradoxically, she felt almost no surprise.

Butler chuckled. “Here,” tugging gently on her hand, drawing her toward him, “you look rather blanched. Why don't we find a dry place to sit? It's a beautiful summer evening, and I don't expect we'll have too many more of those.”

She could not have known that this was to be her last night in the fairy-tale castle. Even afterward she would not remember it that way, but rather as the night of the bonfire or the evening after the rain, when the grass was damp and the moon was huge and yellow and the first kiss of autumn was in the air. She wondered sometimes how Ingo remembered that night, and
Isaac. Because for each of them it was the end of something; and the morning that must come all too soon would be the beginning of something different. It was unusual, she supposed, to be able to date with such precision one of life's great turning-points. But now and again it must happen, and perhaps not infrequently to a group of people at once. Friends, fellow travelers, even strangers thrown together by chance. Rarely, an entire generation.