The Land Across

9 FREE ALMOST

When I woke up next it was still really early, but the man in black had gone. Or anyhow, that was how it looked. I sat up and put on my shoes and more clothes, and went to the window to look out. The sky was gray, but the sun was not up. You probably know that time. I knew I would be able to see it out of that window when it rose, and it was not there.

Then it came to me that he was like the sun. He was still there, I just could not see him. I tried to remember whether he had said anything to me and whether I had said anything to him. We had not talked at all. I had looked at him and sort of smiled, meaning I am glad to see you. He had not smiled. (His eyes never did smile, even when his mouth did.) But he had nodded just the tiniest bit, meaning I am glad to see you, too. You know how you do.

Of course I remembered pretty soon that the next time I was questioned they would ask about Russ, but that was an easy one. I had been asleep and had not seen a thing. I had given him the cigarette and the matches, and I was pretty sure he must have smoked the cigarette by this time.

So that was a piece of cake. The big question was whether Russ had seen the man in black, too. I did not know and did not want to ask because I would not have trusted the answer either way. If he had, there was a good strong chance he would say he had not. If he had not, there was an even stronger chance that he would say he had so as to try to find out what the heck I was talking about.

Okay, that was the big question and there was no way I was going to learn anything by quizzing Russ. If I kept my eyes and ears open I might find out something. Or not.

The little question was whether what Russ had done with his fire and the cigarette, plus whatever it was he had been saying, had fetched the man in black. It seemed pretty clear that the answer was yes, and after that I got to wondering about those voodoo dolls. Had they worked? Any of them? Most people probably had not tried the spells, and most of those who had, had not done them right. But were the spells any good? There was no way of telling.

I was still thinking about all that, about the dolls especially, when the screw came up the corridor unlocking cells so the guys could go to breakfast. Russ was still in his bunk, so I said, “Hey, breakfast!” He did not move, so I let him sleep. When I got back from breakfast, his bunk was empty. I figured somebody had decided he was on a hunger strike or something and he was getting slapped around.

Later on a screw and a cop came for me. The cop made me put my hands behind me the way they do and snapped cuffs on me. Then they marched me down to Butch and Aegis in one of the interrogation rooms in the basement. It was the first time I had seen the two of them together.

(So much for my idea that they were the same guy with different clothes and so forth. I had never really been serious about that one anyhow.)

Butch looked worried, something I had never seen before, and Aegis looked mad, something I had seen a lot of. Aegis said, “Do we make him stand or let him sit?”

“We let him sit,” Butch said, “if he has something to tell us. If he doesn’t, he stands.”

“That is good. It hurts more when they fall down.”

They were talking in their own language, but by that time I had picked up enough of it to have a pretty good idea of what they were saying.

Butch switched to English. “Where is your cellmate?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “He was asleep in his bunk when I went down to breakfast. When I came back he was gone.”

Butch told Aegis what I had said, although I was not sure he had to. From now on I will not mention that much.

In German, Aegis said, “He was not asleep in his bed at breakfast.”

I sort of shrugged and said he was a lot smarter than I was.

“You don’t know where he is now?” That was Butch.

I said I did not, which was the truth.

“You saw Rathaus lying in his bunk this morning?”

I said sure.

“You didn’t. If you don’t believe that, I think I can prove it to you.”

“Of course I believe you. Not to change the subject, but I notice I’m still not sitting down.”

Aegis laughed.

Butch said, “You don’t believe us because you feel certain you saw Rathaus.”

I said, “No, I believe you. I made a mistake, that’s all.”

“Let me show you what you saw,” Butch said. He left, but he was only gone for a minute or two. When he came back he was dragging something that looked so much like Russ that for a second I thought it must be Russ’s body. He held it up, then sat it down on the floor with its back propped by a table leg.

That was when the truth jumped up and smacked me in the face like a rake handle. It was a big doll—just a big doll!

Pretty soon I was sitting down and telling them all about Russ’s business in the States. Butch bought my story, but Aegis did not. He wanted to send a letter by courier to the U.S. embassy, asking them if there were such dolls and requesting a dozen or so.

Butch said, “In a year we get them—or perhaps we don’t. Listen to me. If an artist make this there is something inside in which he has cut the face. Rubber it might be, or synthetic. If it is as he says, this is something else. Let us open it and see.”

Aegis agreed, and they slit the side of the doll’s face with a pocketknife. Granules poured out, little multicolored spheres no bigger than coarse sand. As they did, Russ’s face vanished. All that was left was a doll with a blank face.

They sent me away after that, and I suppose they must have reported what they had learned from me to somebody higher up.

Three days, or maybe four, went by without anything happening. One day I did factory work, which Russ and I had been doing off and on all year. Mostly I just sat in my cell staring at the wall. When the door was unlocked for meals, I went out and ate with the other prisoners. There was supposed to be no talking, but we whispered. Once they let us go outside for exercise, and I went out into the yard and met a couple of other Americans. Both of them had been in longer than I had, and neither of them had known I was in, too. Once I was taken down to the shower. The screw was surprised that I had soap but did not take it away from me.

Then a couple of screws came for me. One told me to take anything I wanted to keep, because he did not think I was coming back. So I got my soap and a few other things Butch had given me.

I had thought we would be going someplace in the prison, but we did not. It was outside and into a big green car that looked like it was at least ten years old but seemed to be in good shape. Probably I should explain that we were handcuffed together, me to a screw on each side. I knew which one had the keys and which pocket he had put them in. I had been careful to notice all that, but it did not do me a bit of good.

We drove into the city, which was a lot bigger than Puraustays. I have probably said that already somewhere in here, but it will stand saying again. When we had driven through as much city as Puraustays, we were not past the suburbs yet.

Every once in a while our driver said something. He was not talking to me or to the screws on each side of me. They were talking about what they were going to do tonight, because by the time I got out they would be off work and have the next two days off. One was going to get drunk and the other one was going to play some game. I think it was probably billiards, but I could not be sure. Whatever it was, he said he was going to play it tonight and tomorrow night and maybe Sunday night, too, and win a lot of money.

After I had listened awhile I got the idea that our driver was talking to somebody sitting next to him who was too short for his head to show over the back of the seat. Either that, or he was invisible. Or most likely of all, our driver was nuts and there was really nobody there.

But thinking “Nuts!” reminded me that there were those nut trees all around Martya’s house. They had nut trees because the neighbors were not scared enough of Kleon to let his fruit alone, but they did not bother with the nuts. Or at least not much. But Martya and I had made out, and that was kind of nice to think about. Four times for sure were all I could remember, which did not seem like enough. It ought to have been five or six. There ought to have been one time on the boat, or else on the island where the ruined castle was. And maybe one time in the Willows. I kept telling myself that someday I would go back and make both those come true.

Then the green car stopped and we got out and went into a building that looked like an old warehouse—old but not abandoned. An old warehouse that somebody was still using. Our driver stayed with his car, and the two screws and I got out (which was clumsy because we were cuffed together) and went up to the door. There was a phone there in a steel box. I think it was the first phone I had seen since coming to the country. One of the screws picked it up and talked, keeping his voice too low for me to hear what he was saying.

What I could hear was the door unlocking. The other screw pushed it open and we went in. It was dark inside and not like a warehouse. There was a long passage with only two or three doors along it. Those doors had mirrors in them instead of glass. At the end of it was a steel booth with a machine gun poking out of it. When we got close to that, the gunner said, “Keep going.”

We turned left and went down another hall to the biggest, fanciest elevator I have ever seen. It was maybe twelve feet square, and there were screens and keyboards in it, with nice chairs in front of them and a padded bench in the middle. None of us sat down, and I noticed that the elevator was pretty slow and clanked.

We got out on what was probably the top floor of the old building. The hall there was a lot nicer. Scarier, too, for me. That hall had thick carpets, and good tables and really nice leather-upholstered armchairs off to the sides. Everything said: The people up here have real power, the no-shit kind that pays no attention to the law or anything else. If they say you die, you die. There were no pictures on the walls that I could see, just framed seashells and bones. One was the front of a skull.

One of the doors opened and a woman came out. I got to know her really well, so I might as well describe her here for you. She was not bad looking if you did not mind a hard face, and her hair always looked dark under lights. When I saw her out in the sunlight it was really a tawny red. In there you might have thought it was black. She was quite a bit older than I was but I was never sure how much. Her eyes were hazel and her name was Naala.

She stopped the screws and told them to take the cuffs off me. They did not like that but they did it. “You do not speak this tongue?” she asked me.

“Not well,” I said. “Just a little bit.”

“That is good.” She gave me a hard smile. “They fear you will run. Will you?”

I shook my head. “They’d catch me while I was waiting for the elevator.”

It made her laugh. “You are wise, too. We shall get on well, I know. Come with me.”

I followed her into a big room with a lot of windows. It was a relief to look out of them after what I had seen of that building already, even if they did not show much except a lot of roofs and chimneys, and the night sky.

There was a table in the middle, a table not nearly as big as the room. It had six chairs, but there were only two men sitting at it, both middle-aged, well dressed, and tough looking. The bald one was at the end of the table. Naala motioned to a chair and we sat down.

Hair said, “What do you think of him?”

Naala opened her purse and got out a gold pen. There was a tablet at her place already. “We could not ask for better.”

“You rush to judgment.”

“As you asked.”

Hair grinned. “Tell me why.”

“For many reasons. One, he thinks of himself.” She was writing as she talked. “Two, he is of Amerika, like this Rathaus. Three, he know him. They are in the same cell. Four, Rathaus know this man. He may trust him more than us. Is that enough? I have more.”

Baldy said, “That is enough. Will he escape, too? You cannot know, Naala, but what do you think and why do you think it?”

“I can know, as you do not say. He will not, and that is number five. He may try. Is it that which you intend? It will depend on his treatment and his hopes.”

She turned to me. “You wish to return to Amerika?”

I said, “First I’d like to get my passport back.”

She nodded.

“Second, I’d like to collect enough information and take enough pictures for a book about your beautiful country. When I have those—they’re what I came here for—I’ll want to go back, yes.”

Baldy grunted. It did not tell me whether he had liked my answer.

Hair said, “We were given to understand that you did not speak as we do.”

“I don’t,” I said, “or not very well.”

Naala gave me the hard smile. “You learn in prison?”

“In prison and in Puraustays, and while I broadcast for the Legion of the Light. Was it the Legion who got Russ out? Is that what you think?”

Hair said, “Would not they have taken you and left him? So I think.”

I said, “You’re right.”

“Thus you will not escape,” Naala told me. “Rathaus has friends here, you see? He believe they get him back to Amerika and they may try. I do not know. You, having no friends, might slip away from us and wander the streets.” She pointed to the door. “Do you wish it? Go! Not one here will shoot you.”

“In prison clothes,” I said.

“You will get others. You will steal them. Or you will steal money and so buy them.”

I shook my head, and she turned to Baldy.

“You see? He helps us, and we let him go free. Let him write this book as he wishes. He is a sensible young man.”

Hair grumbled, “He speaks like a child.”

“Like a little child he speaks a foreign tongue he has learned by listening. Soon he speaks better.”

“I do not mean a foreign—,” Hair began.

Baldy moved his hand a quarter of an inch or so, and that was enough.

“If he runs, it looks bad for me,” Naala told him. “It must be thus. I want him even so.”

There was more after that, but I have given you the main things and tried to quote all four of us as accurately as I could. Maybe this is the place to explain. I had taken notes, and I find that even when something happens to them later having written them down fixes them in my mind. So it is good to take notes, and when they get lost I have not lost the information, usually. Maybe you will doubt me when I say that, but there was one time when my notes were lost for a while then found again. There was not one thing in them that I had not remembered.

All right, Naala and I left together and walked maybe a mile to her apartment building. The shops and offices were all closed or looked like they were, and that was not where the bars and clubs were, so it was pretty quiet. I saw a couple of posters like the ones I described when I told about getting clear of the Legion of the Light, but I do not think I asked Naala about them.

In general, we did not talk much on that walk. I remember I said that we were likely to get busted because of my prison clothes.

She said, “Do not be concerned. They will not take you while you are with me. Tomorrow we get new clothing for you. I know a shop and I have good taste.”

I said, “I do, too. Or anyway, I think I have.”

“Men never do. Women sometimes, but not much.”

There was no elevator in her building, but that did not matter because she had a first-floor apartment. “You will like it,” she promised me. “It is nice, no?”

Of course I said it was. It was just three rooms and a bath, but all the rooms were big. The biggest room was a corner room with a lot of windows, maybe four feet above the ground. The kitchen was in one corner—a stove, a sink, and a little fridge. There was a desk in an alcove, too, with a telephone on the desk. I saw the telephone and thought, wow! But I did not say anything then. It was a spinning dial phone, something I had read about somewhere but never seen.

My bedroom was not as big as Naala’s, but it was still pretty big—a lot bigger than the cell I had shared with Russ Rathaus. There was a bed big enough to sleep two, a dresser, two bureaus, and two chairs. You could tell Naala was proud of everything. She pointed out all the pieces and told me all the drawers were empty, which I found out later was not quite true.

“It is better you keep the blind down, at night most particularly. If the window is light, people in the street see through the trees.”

I had already figured that out.

“They see through, or it may be they come to spy. When the sun come up, the blind may rise also. Then you have the light. You are hungry?”

“I’m too tired to be hungry,” I told her. “I’d just like a shower. Then I’ll go to bed, if that’s all right.”

“With me, you think.” She laughed.

I said no.

“For me you will be clean and smell sweet. This I appreciate, but you must sleep here.”

I said I would.

“If you come for me in the night, you will be hurt.” She had turned serious. “You may be killed, though I hope not. Do not tell others you were never warned.”

I said I would stay in my room unless I had to use the toilet.

“Still you wish a bath?”

I said I did.

“You may have one, but this you must do for me. Leave the uniform of correction on the floor beside my bathtub. You may take your shoes. Your stockings also.”

I said that was fine.

And that was what I did, wrapping a towel around me to make a kilt when I went back to my bedroom. I could hear Naala talking on the phone in the big room, but I could not tell what she said. She listened more than she talked, or that is how it seemed to me.

My new bed was a lot bigger than my bunk in the prison had been, and a lot cleaner, too. I got in bed and covered up, and for a little while I thought about the man in black and Russ Rathaus. Like, suppose we found Russ. Would the man in black be mad at us? And did I really want to help Naala find him? Stuff like that.

She thought I was just a kid. I knew that, and maybe she was right in certain ways. But I knew she was with the secret police, the JAKA. That warehouse the screws had taken me to was probably JAKA headquarters here in the capital, and Baldy and Hair had been pretty far up in the organization, especially Baldy.

So thinking about that I could see they were not as interested in Russ Rathaus as they thought they were. What they were really interested in was the people they thought had helped Russ escape.

Well, would the man in black be mad at me? I kept coming back to that as I got sleepier and sleepier. Why had he helped Russ, and where was Russ now? Would he be seriously pissed at me…?

About then I fell asleep and had a dream that has stayed with me better than a lot of things that really happened. Maybe I should not tell it but maybe telling it, writing it down for you to read, will help me get away from it a little bit.

In my dream I was back at the ruined castle, although it was in better shape in my dream than it really was. I was tied or chained to a wall or something. I could not move. The man in black was in front of me, driving a stake into the ground by hitting it with the back of an axe. At first he tapped it to get it started. When it was started he took his axe in both hands and really slammed it, driving it deep in. Then he turned his axe around so as to hit it with the sharp edge of the blade. Just two or three strokes, and he had cut a point on it. I remember thinking I could not have done that, and I know that is right. I could not have. If I practiced a lot I could learn to do it, probably. But it would take a lot of practice.

He went away then, and I waited, watching the stake and wondering what he was going to do. The sky was very blue, I remember that clearly, the blueness of it and the black of the castle wall. There were just a few little white clouds in that sky, and some black birds that flew but hardly ever moved their wings. They were pretty big, and I wondered what they were.

Then the man in black came back. The axe was gone, and he was carrying something. I could not see the face, but I knew somehow that I would recognize it if I could see it. He was tied like I was on the boat, his hands behind him and his feet tied together with rope. The man in black carried him like he did not weigh anything, like you might carry a dummy stuffed with straw.

He took him over to the stake he had pounded in and sharpened and lifted him, and turned him over so he was looking up at the blue sky and the black birds.

For what felt like a long time he held him like that, then he slammed him down on the point of the stake. I saw the wooden point come up out of him all smeared with blood. Maybe the man in black went away then, because I do not remember him anymore. It was just me and the man with the stake through him, only it was not really a man, it was the doll with Russ’s face. It wiggled around, trying to get off it, but wiggling only made the point go in deeper. I wanted to tell it how it could get off the stake, but I did not know what to say. It seemed to me there was no way it ever could.

Then I woke up.