The Land Across (6 page)

I gave her the ham, the flour, and the potatoes. She did not like that either, saying she would be carrying more than I did. Both of us wanted to carry the eggs, since it seemed obvious that the person who carried those could not carry much else for fear some would be broken. In the end, she carried the eggs and the salt, and I carried everything else. As we were leaving the market she saw some fresh, bright red cherries, which she said had come a long way on the train. I bought some, but only after she agreed to carry them.

After that we trudged back to Kleon’s, Martya eating fresh cherries as she walked and spitting out the pits.

It was not yet noon when we reached the house, but I laid down the law, saying we had to get lunch before we went out to buy tools—I said it because I wanted to sit down and take off my shoes. Martya wanted me to buy our lunches at a café she would show me. “Is really most good food there and most true to old city. This you must write in your book.” (I had explained that I was a travel writer and had come to collect materials.) After another argument like the one about carrying the groceries, we settled on a compromise. She would make tea for us both. I would get what was left of the cherries, with bread, butter, and cheese. When I had finished, we would walk to the café and I would buy our lunches. After that, we would shop for tools. Martya’s arguments confirmed what I had already begun to suspect: everyone here eats everything he or she can hold at every meal but walks so much that most people do not get fat.

While I chewed dark bread and cheese and Martya drank tea, we talked about the Willows. I described the sort of ladder I wanted—an aluminum extension ladder light enough that Martya and I could carry it. She insisted that there were no such ladders here. I wanted a steel pry bar. She wanted two of them, so she could make a cross of them. And so on.

The café fronted on the river. The fertilizer plants (if that is what they really were) were only too visible across the water, but they could have been any kind of building—castles, incinerators, prisons, public housing. You name it. Martya and I sat outside like a dozen other people, under a faded old umbrella that might have been red when it was new. European waiters despise tourists, but I was not one and felt pretty sure I did not look like one. I knew I was right when the waiter asked whether I had come to buy pork for Germany.

I told him I had not, without explaining that I was an American and a prisoner. He thanked me and said exports were raising food prices beyond the reach of the poor.

The food in his café was pretty cheap by American standards. Martya had an apple dumpling doused with syrup. I had roast duckling stuffed with mushrooms, white raisins, and apricots. There was good, hot coffee laced with malt liqueur afterward, and the two meals cost only a little more than two Americans would pay for hamburgers and soft drinks at a fast-food franchise. As I said, this café is by the river. It is called the Skiadeion.

The big screwdriver, oilcan, and pry bars I wanted (one large and one small) gave us no problems. We must have tried half a dozen stores, though, before we found flashlights. We bought two (with spare batteries, string, and more tools) even though they were smaller than I would have liked. Martya suggested candles, so we bought some, with matches and a tin lantern to hold them.

The ladder just about stumped us. We could have a little stepladder or a four-meter wooden ladder that must have weighed a hundred pounds. Another man and I might have carried one as far as the Willows, if we did not have to carry anything else. For Martya and me—already loaded with candles, lantern, flashlights, batteries, and tools … well, forget it.

No, the long and dusty shop in which we had found the big ladder did not deliver. Very reluctantly, as though he was afraid I would scoff at his suggestion, the shopkeeper confided that porters could be hired at the Mounted Guard. He was willing to hold our purchases for us upon my promise to buy his four-meter ladder if I could find men to carry it. So off we marched to the Mounted Guard.

I had imagined a sort of hiring hall in which the porters could sit while they waited for somebody to hire them. There was nothing like that, only a small ground-floor office with a window looking out onto the street. Placement was by seniority, so we got a couple of grandpas with gray mustaches. To tell the truth I was happy to get them. Some of the guys my age looked like they would cut your throat.

They followed us back to the ladder shop, inspected and approved the ladder we had decided on, and suggested we buy a stepladder, too. I said it would be all Martya and I could do to carry the tools, which were numerous and very heavy.

They insisted that we would not have to carry it. They would carry it themselves. After laying our ladder flat, they chose a stepladder for us and laid it on the rungs of the big ladder. After that, they tied our other stuff to the rails and picked the whole thing up, each resting a side rail on each shoulder. With Martya leading the way, we went back to the Willows, she and I carrying nothing at all and our porters a credit to the profession.

“Funny old place,” said one.

I explained that I was renting it and meant to get it fixed up, adding that Martya and I might live there.

The other porter spit. “A good house must got a good roof.”

I nodded.

“You trim these trees, sir. Look up there. Every little wind will drag those branches across your shingles.”

I saw he was right and told him I was planning to have the willows cut for firewood.

We got the ladders and tools inside, and I paid the porters, adding a pretty good tip. Tipping here is about the same as in America. You give a tip for good service, and keep your money for bad. Waitresses in greasy spoons think anything over ten percent is pretty nice. Waiters expect more but do not always get it from me. In the pricier places like Skiadeion, the usual tip is twenty percent for small parties and fifteen for big ones.

I was trying to take down the big brass-framed mirror I mentioned in Chapter 3 when there was a knock on the front door. Martya ran to get it and came back to tell me that somebody from the Ministry of Internal Order wanted to talk with us. I left the mirror hanging by two screws and went into the reception room with her.

I had expected him to be fat and pompous, but he was a little man with a little mustache, a bowler hat, and smart eyes. I invited him to sit down.

At that, Martya jumped in with both feet. “We cannot discuss important matters in such a place. There is a much nicer one not far from here, outside, in a garden. It will be lovely today. Let us go there.”

Naturally I said okay.

The small man asked my name, nodded, and said, “You and I have much to speak of.”

The café Martya led us to is the Haysuxia, a patio in what looks like a private house. The three of us were put at a tiny table and told that the first strawberries of the year had just arrived “from the south.” Martya consulted with the small man in their own language, asked whether I, too, would like coffee, berries, and cream (nodding as she said it), and ordered for the three of us.

“You are Amerikan,” the little man said.

I said yes and asked how he knew, hoping he would say he had seen my passport.

He shrugged. “I have heard your name, and you speak German with the accent of an Amerikan. Those suffice. It is difficult to change your Amerikan dollars here. Give some to me and I will change them for you.”

I have traveled enough to know when I am being asked for a bribe, but I was, not sure how big a bribe he wanted. I saw his eyes widen a trifle when I got out a hundred dollars. “Could you change this for me? These big bills are hard to change even in America.”

“I will try,” he said. He took it from me, held it up to the light, and put it into a tall, old-fashioned wallet with a catch.

Bowls of strawberries and cream arrived, together with cups and a carafe of good coffee.

After a cautious sip of his coffee, the small man made a steeple of his fingers. “To begin, let us dispose of the matters that brought you to my attention, sir. You have engaged the ruinous house in which I discovered you. You, or possibly another who used your name. Since I found you there, I am inclined to think it was you yourself.”

I nodded. “It was me. The official at the Mounted Guard who rented it to me knew I was foreign but made no objection.”

“That,” said the small man, “is scarcely a matter of wonder, sir. There is no law against foreigners renting, leasing, or purchasing houses here. It is entirely within the law.”

I thanked him for clarifying the point.

“There is, however, a person under citizen detention whose name is your own. Were you aware of that, sir?”

“Sure I am. I’m him.” I stirred my coffee and sipped a little to straighten up my thoughts. “As a foreigner I’m pretty unfamiliar with your law. I guess you know that.”

“I do, sir.”

“My understanding is that I have to live in the house of the citizen who’s looking after me, but that I can leave it to shop, go to clubs, see a movie or a play, or eat in cafés like we are now, as long as I go back to my host’s house at night.”

“You must sleep there, sir. That is correct.”

Martya said, “He sleep there last night. To this I swear.”

“I am inclined to believe you,” the small man told her, “but you force me to inquire concerning your own status. Do you yourself sleep there?”

Martya nodded. “With my husband. Yes, always. My husband own the house, which he buy with money my father leave us when he die.”

“I see. You were not sweeping its floors when first I saw you, but answering the door of the ruin this gentleman has engaged.”

“He desire to rent this house. I come with him to help. He is my cousin from America.”

The small man nodded. “I understand. How unfortunate that he should be arrested! Can you tell me why he engaged the house?”

“He say he wish a house near ours, but he does not pay much. It is such a house, and large. I do not decide. He decides.”

“I see.” The small man turned to me. “Can you tell me, sir, why you engaged this house?”

I put down my spoon. “Are you asking me why I wanted a house, or why I chose the one I did?”

“Both, I think.”

“Okay. I came here—I mean, here to your country—to collect materials for a travel book. I’m good at them. If you want to check up on me, I’ll give you the name and address of my publisher back in New York.”

The small man waved my offer aside. “I doubt that it will be necessary. Why did you come without a passport?”

“I didn’t, I had one. It was taken away from me by your border guards.”

The small man nodded. “They thought it fraudulent, sir. That it was or might be. Such passports are sent to the capital for laboratory examination.”

“I guess they’re given back to their owners when they check out.”

The small man nodded again, more slowly. “If their owners are still alive, yes. If they can be found. In many cases…” He shrugged. “They are not returned. Possibly I can help. You wished a house not far from the house in which this woman resides. I understand that. But you are living in that very house at present, provided I have understood you both correctly.”

“I am. But I figure the charges against me will be dropped pretty soon. When they are, I’m going to move out of their house and into the house I’ve rented. I ought to have it fixed up by then.”

“Your nation does not maintain a consulate here in Puraustays.”

It was my turn to nod. “That’s what everybody tells me.”

“There is, however, an embassy in the capital.”

I nodded. “I’ll go there when I can travel again. You seem to know a lot about this stuff. When I’ve talked to somebody at the embassy, will I be sent back to America straight off?”

The small man shook his head. “It will be months, certainly. Years, possibly. Do you have influential friends in your own country?”

“A few,” I told him.

“In that case, months, perhaps. Or a year or two.”

I nodded again. “Okay, if that’s the way it is, I’ll tour your lovely country with my cousin as my interpreter, and collect materials for a new book. Take a bunch of pictures, if I can get my camera bag back.”

“Ah! The police seized your luggage as well?”

“I don’t think so. It got left behind on the train when I was taken off.”

“I see. It may be that I can have it returned to you. I will try. You find the Willows attractive?”

“Yes,” I said, “certainly. I’ll have the trees cut and replaced with fruit trees and a nice lawn. When that’s been done and the roof fixed, with a few other things, the house should be really nice.”

“The state will not increase your rent?”

“Well, I hope not. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it.”

The small man sniffed. “You need fear no increase. I will see to it, sir.”

“Thanks! I’ll owe you for that.”

“If you are alive, sir. The house is most attractive? You are drawn to it while you sleep? It may be that I have employed the wrong word. This German we speak is not my native tongue.”

“It isn’t mine either,” I said.

“Does the house you have rented from us draw you in the way that a magnet draws iron filings?”

“Not so far.”

“Your cousin is attractive. You agree, I hope? See her as she eats the strawberry. Does she not attract you?”

“Sure she does.”

“But the house that you have rented from us, is it hideous?”

I thought quite a bit about that one. Finally I said, “It’s like a woman a hundred years old. Just seeing her, you know she used to be beautiful. You’d fix her up if you could.”

The small man chuckled. “Houses can be repaired.”

“That’s my point. Probably the house will attract me when it’s been fixed up, but by that time I might be as free as anybody. My passport wasn’t forged, and I’ve never committed a crime.”

“You are in my country,” the small man said slowly, “while I have never been in yours. Do you confuse ghosts with demons there? Or conflate either with fairies?”

That question made me a little dizzy. I ate a couple of strawberries while I thought about it. “No,” I told him, “I don’t believe we do. Ghosts are the souls of the dead, still hanging around. Demons are fallen angels, but fairies are nature spirits—or that’s what they said in a class I took one time.”