Little Nothing (16 page)

T
he old man gasps
when he opens the door
and sees the armed stranger. “Please don't hurt us,” he cries. He is frail and bent. He grips the side of the jamb to hold himself upright. Ivan tries explain himself but the effort is too much and he keels over, falling halfway into the cottage. The man tries to push him out of the doorway with his boot.

“Old man, what are you doing?” A woman appears. Like the man, she is withered and brittle. Her cheeks are sunken. A maroon scarf covering her head makes her mouth and eyes appear outsized on her pinched and wrinkled face. “My God, Václav. Is he dead?”

“I don't think so,” Václav says. “He's only fainted.”

“Then bring him inside!”

“Are you crazy? We don't know him, Agáta. He could be anybody.”

“He's a soldier!”

“A soldier come to rob us, I'm sure.”

“He's welcome to all our nothing.”

Václav crouches down, begins to look through Ivan's pockets.

“What are you doing?”

“It goes both ways,” he says.

“Have you lost your mind? Bring him inside.”

The two drag Ivan into the house and hoist him onto the bed. Agáta slaps his cheeks. “He's as cold as a corpse. Better put a blanket over him.”

Václav covers him with the comforter.

“Water,” she says.

While Agáta holds Ivan's head, Václav puts a glass to his lips. Water spills over the soldier's chin and chest.

“Come on, boy,” Agáta says, jostling him gently. “Wake up now.”

“Let him sleep.”

“If he sleeps now, he'll sleep forever,” she says.

“Maybe that's for the best. The war takes men one way or another. Did you see that Petr Matejcek has come home? The boy's stark raving now. He'll be useless to Gita and that baby.”

“I never liked him to begin with,” she says. “He got our darling into trouble with that shameful picture, remember?”

Václav laughs softly. “I think our girl was smart enough to get herself into mischief without anyone's help. Anyway, that was a long time ago.”

They are quiet for a few moments. Václav lifts the glass to the soldier's lips again. Ivan suddenly jerks and sputters, and the glass flies out of Václav's hand and shatters on the floor.

“Well, he's not dead,” Agáta says.

“Good. Because he owes us a glass.”

Ivan sits up. He's delirious and flails his arms so that the old people have to duck.

“Don't worry, son,” Václav says. “We won't hold you to it.”

“Where is she?” Ivan whispers hoarsely.

“Is there someone else with you?” Agáta says. She turns to her husband accusingly. “Did you leave someone out there? A woman, no less?”

“He's the only one I saw,” Václav says.

“What have you done with her?” Ivan says as he tries to get off the bed.

“You need to rest,” Agáta says.

“You've killed her!” Ivan says.

“We've killed no one,” Václav says. “Who sent you here? We've paid the price for our sin. We've been shamed enough. We did not kill her. We loved her!”

“Shhh, shhh,”
Agáta says, laying a hand on her husband's arm. “He's not from here. He doesn't know.” She goes to the stove and fills a bowl with stew. “Eat,” she says, bringing the food back to the bed. “Eat first. Tell us about who we killed later.”

Ivan lets her feed him the first few bites, but then takes the bowl and slurps down the contents. She hands him a piece of bread and he swallows it whole. “Water,” he says. After guzzling two glasses, he closes his eyes. Soon, he breathes evenly. Agáta inadvertently fingers hair from his eyes. Catching herself, she stands up, pats down her skirt, wrings her hands.

“It's alright, my dear,” Václav says.

“I just—”

“I know.”

“I can't—”

“I know.”

She walks to the open window, breathes in the morning air, and screams. “Václav! Get the gun!”

“No!” Ivan says, waking up.

“There's a wolf out there!” she says.

Václav goes for the shotgun that hangs on the wall.

Ivan scrambles out of the bed. “Don't shoot her. Please!”

But Václav has already flung open the door.

She sees the man and gun. She runs.

“It's going for the chickens!” Agáta cries. “Shoot it, you fool!”

“She won't hurt you!” Ivan says.

“Without those chickens, we will starve to death,” she says.

Ivan pushes past the couple and hurries into the yard just as the wolf disappears behind the coop. “Come here, girl,” he says softly. “It's alright.”

Behind him, the old man cocks the gun.

“No! Don't!” Ivan says, spinning around and putting himself between the gun and the wolf. “I promise you. She won't attack.”

“Better move out of the way, son,” Václav says as he starts toward the coop. “I'm not the shot I once was.”

“Please,” Ivan begs. “Let me show you.” He turns around and makes his clicking sounds with his tongue. He holds out his hand. Slowly she edges out from behind the coop and comes
toward him. She sniffs his palm. He strokes her head and massages her ears.

“You see?” he says. “She's not dangerous.”

“She's hungry, though,” Agáta says, standing behind her husband. “A hungry wolf is not a wolf I want at my door.”

“If she hasn't eaten me,” Ivan says. “I don't think she'll want you.”

“Now you insult my wife?” Václav says.

“He's only telling the truth,” Agáta says. “Between the two of us, there's not enough meat on our bones to satisfy a crow.”

The wolf pants heavily. She settles down on her haunches.

“Skinny,” Agáta says appraisingly.

“She hasn't had anything to eat in days,” Ivan says.

After a moment of consideration, Agáta disappears into the house and returns with a bowl. No sooner is it on the ground than the wolf is at it.

“The two of you need a lesson in table manners,” Agáta says.

“Tell me,” Václav says, finally lowering his gun. “Do you regularly go around with wild animals?”

—

I
VAN
TELLS
THEM
the story. The old man interrupts at the more improbable parts. The wolf kept the soldier's dying friend warm? Even though Ivan had given up hope and was prepared to die, she pushed him on? It was she who first noticed the couple's house?
“Acch,”
Václav says dismissively at each turn of the tale,
“Pfft.”
But Agáta tells him to keep quiet, to let the soldier speak.

“Well,” Ivan says when he finishes, embarrassed to have commandeered so much attention. “It'll be a good story to tell your grandchildren, I suppose.”

“What grandchildren?” Agáta says.

“The crib. I thought—”

All three look at the child's crib that stands against the wall. It is missing a set of bars at one end.

“You see?” Agáta mutters to her husband. “I told you to get rid of that thing.”

Václav drops his head. “Agáta needs to forget. I need to remember.”

The silence that follows is broken by the sound of scratching at the front door.

Agáta resists letting the wolf into the house. “I won't be able to sleep. And that wretched stink. And by the way, you don't smell much better,” she says to Ivan.

“Could you let us rest here for a day?” he says. He kneels at the open door, petting her. “We'll sleep outside. We'll leave first thing in the morning. We'll be gone before you wake.”

“Where will you go?” Václav says.

Ivan has no answer.

“They kill deserters, you know,” Václav says.

“And the people who harbor them,” Agáta adds.

“I can't go back there,” Ivan says, suddenly overwhelmed. “Everyone I know has died. It's just—I can't fight anymore. I can't. I'm sorry.”

The couple is quiet for a long time.

“Come back inside,” Agáta says finally. “And you might as
well bring your smelly savior with you. If the neighbors see a wolf in our yard, things will be worse for us than they already are.”

That evening, she lays a blanket on the floor for Ivan, then insists he tie up the wolf. “I'd prefer not to wake up with my head inside her mouth,” she says, handing him a rope. He fixes one end securely to the leg of the kitchen table and the other around the thick ruff of fur on her neck.

Agáta watches the wolf submit willingly. “Strange,” she says.

—

T
HE
WOLF
AND
THE
SOLDIER
stay with the old couple for many days. She is not allowed to roam the yard, both because Václav doesn't trust her around the chickens and because he and Agáta do not want the neighbors to find out that they are housing both a deserter and a wild beast. Twice a day, after the wolf has been fed a mouse or, if she is lucky, a shrew, Agáta or Václav check to make sure no one is about. If the way is clear, then Ivan, using the rope as a lead, takes her behind a tool shed. She doesn't understand what she is meant to do or why the man keeps telling her to go. “Go!” he says, frustrated when she simply sits and stares up at him. But after the woman catches her crouching in the house and throws a pot lid at her, she begins to have some idea.

Ivan makes himself useful, helping Václav with the repairs he needs to make to the roof, which has weakened in places because of the heavy spring rains. After that, the soldier hoes the decrepit garden while Agáta reminisces about when it was an Eden of
lettuces and carrots and tomatoes and cucumbers. She pulls a paltry turnip out of the ground.

“You know the story of the enormous turnip,” she says.

“My mother used to tell it to us.”

“It's a very good story,” she says and sighs.

The couple's house is small and immaculate, but that doesn't stop Agáta from giving it a thorough cleaning every day.

“Let me do that,” Ivan says, one morning, as she struggles to carry a full pail of water and a mop. “Let me do it all,” he says. “You sleep a little.”

“I'll have all my death to sleep,” she says.

“My grandmother used to tell me that she had to rest up for her death. That it was going to be a lot of work in heaven having to talk to all the relatives she hated.”

Outside, Václav is singing to the chickens.

“He thinks they lay better if he serenades them,” Agáta says.

“He must be right. Those eggs are good.”

“I'm not going to heaven,” she says, frowning.

“How do you know?”

“I know what I've done.”

“Let me help you anyway.”

He sets up a chair next to the open door and, after much resistance, she sits and allows herself to enjoy the sun and the slight breeze. In a matter of moments, she is snoring deeply and peacefully. The wolf wanders over and sniffs her, then settles by her side. Agáta's hand slides lazily off her lap so that her fingers graze the animal's fur. The wolf's eyes shutter, and soon she sleeps, too.

Once he has finished mopping the floor that needed no mopping in the first place, Ivan finds Agáta's feather duster and rags and cleans the already spotless table and shelves. He straightens the bedclothes just as his mother did, giving them a yank and a smack, as if the sheets were just more of her unruly children. His mother. How will he face her? How will she be able to hold her head up with a deserter for a son? He can't think about her or about what he's done, so he concentrates on cleaning, running his brush over the small portrait on the mantel, hanging up a sweater. A long mirror is mounted inside the wardrobe door. He hasn't seen his face in a while. He looks too old to be himself. His eyes are more hooded than he remembers, as if the experience of war has made them less eager to open up and see things as they are. He looks older than his father will probably look in ten years' time, when the man will finally close his disappointed eyes for good. The war that killed Jiři in his prime has made Ivan already older than his father will ever be. It's a confusing world he's been spared for. He remembers now: he held a dismembered arm. The fingers looked like they were just about to close down on something. What? A gun? A comrade's hand? He closes the wardrobe door, dusts a shelf that holds a worn bible and a school notebook that is filled with immaculately laid out mathematical equations. Many of them are marked with a red X, sometimes an exclamation point, suggesting the teacher's frustration with a dim student. Once—it seems so long ago now—Ivan was top of his class in arithmetic. He tests himself to see if he can still work the numbers and arrive at the correct answer, but his and the student's conclusions are the
same. The teacher must have been stupider than the pupil. Well, Ivan thinks, the people in charge are not always right. Look at this war. He puts the ledger back where he found it, goes into the small water closet, and relieves himself. When he reaches up to pull the chain, he notices a blue glass bottle sitting on top of the water tank. He takes it down, uncorks it. The smell of ammonia shoots up his nostrils and knocks his head back.

“Oh ho, wife. What have we here?”

The old man is back from the coop. Agáta, likely embarrassed to have been caught sleeping, barks orders at her husband. Ivan puts the bottle where he found it.

“Take off your boots, old man! I just finished cleaning,” he says as he comes out of the water closet.

“A recent addition,” Václav says, indicating the toilet. “It works nicely, doesn't it?”

“As well as any other, I suppose.”

“Spoken like a man who knows nothing about plumbing! You should see the toilets that scoundrel Palček is putting in these days. And charging double what they're worth. Which is nothing. They are complete shit.”