His secret would be out if she touched the telltale scare. —Odyssey 19
"Here we are," I said to Helena. "We have come all this way and now I am not certain what to do next."
"At least I am quite certain. I cannot live in this filth, even for a day or two. There is an old broom in the corner and some rags and a pail. I can make this horrid place a bit more livable."
Yes, I thought, but said, "What shall I do?"
"Get me a pail of snow that I can melt on the stove once the fire is raised, then go amuse yourself for a time. Here you will just be in the way."
I got her pail of snow and went out as she had instructed. I decided that, if nothing else, I could get the "lay of the land" so to speak. I had already been west, at Command, and I knew that the line of battle must be to the northeast; hence I wandered in that direction. The forest soon became denser and the air colder. There were no more ghostly tents strewn among the trees. Yet there must be troops somewhere. The snow was no longer trampled down, so I sank in it to my ankles. My toes were becoming of stone, as were my fingertips in spite of my gloves, especially the fingertips of my left hand because of rigidly carrying my valise, which I had left in Helena's care.
The forest was quiet, except for the wind in the tree tops and an occasional glob of snow that would fall to the forest floor with a surprisingly heavy thud. In fact, one such accidental projectile struck me on the shoulder and startled me severely. I continued walking slowly northeast trying very hard not to lose my bearings. I had no desire to be lost in the woods, only a few miles from the enemy encampment. I wondered if at night I would be able to see their fires – probably not, due to the trees.
The woods were oddly illuminated, as if from the ground up; or as if there were no light source whatsoever. The light was simply there, like the air and its frigidness, like the scent of spruce. These things were all around me, reminding me of the gathered elements of a terrarium. Perhaps that is why the pieces of sky appeared so queer through the forest canopy: the sky was made of glass; and we all acted our parts inside the terrarium for some child-giant's amusement. I stole a glance upward to catch an enormous eye peering at me from above the glass lid, from the heavens. But only the monochrome sky was there; perhaps I looked at the wrong instant, just missing the eye before it focused elsewhere in my contained environment.
Then I felt the loneliness of the forest pressing in on me. The emptiness an almost tangible element added to the light and air and smell of spruce. Where were these great armies that had been clashing for these many years? I thought a moment: nine years! The forest's desolation was so complete I believed the sound of artillery would be welcome – a sign of life somewhere in the world. I felt like running from the forest, back the way I had come, to the army's camp and beyond, all the way to Iiloskova maybe, or at least as far as Mink Farm. It was a foolish thought. Exhaustion was getting to me.
I would not succumb to my childishness. I leaned against a tree trunk and began preparing a cigarette. I would smoke a cigarette here in the lonely wood before returning – that would prove something about me. Another ridiculous notion, I realized, as I finished rolling my cigarette. I lighted it and flicked the spent match into the snow. The earthy taste of the smoke and the feel of it in my lungs were a comfort, and I could sense my mind becoming more lucid with every breath.
Standing perfectly still, my hands in my pockets, the cigarette in my lips, I could detect things that had escaped me before. High above, the canopy made a swishing noise as the wind caused the needled limbs to brush together. I could hear the snow scraped from its resting place before falling to the ground with strange impact. (I thought of the River Vulpa back home and of the serene walks I had taken there.) Behind me, a clicking sound must be a small animal – squirrel or chipmunk – on a tree limb. I turned slowly. The clicking ceased ... but there only a few yards from me was an enormous buck, a bona fide lord of the forest, wearing a majestic crown of twelve or fourteen points. He stood as stock still as I had been and was again. Brown and white, he was nearly invisible in the wintry wood. I began to wonder if he was there at all – if he was some creature of my imagination, like the giant eye I had tried to spot just minutes before. The only thing at work on him was his black nose, which moved ever so slightly from side to side, like a rabbit's. His lordship was trying to pick up the scent of something. I hoped my cigarette would not give me away. In my dark coat and beaver hat, I imagined myself his equal phantom in the woods. If I did not move he would not see me. I thought that if I could somehow glide noiselessly through the air, I could touch his great muscled back before he realized I was there. Perhaps even then he would not move, believing me a thing of the forest too – not his peer but not his enemy either.
I thought –
Suddenly the buck bolted and at the same instant tree bark exploded into the air just at my shoulder. An arrow protruded from the trunk. My first crazy thought was that the tree had pushed the arrow out at me but I knew the arrow had come from out there, from among the trees. Also, my sense of hearing told me there had been multiple arrows – a half-second before the explosion of bark and a half-second after I heard them cutting the air ... and the light and the scent and the emptiness ... the arrows especially cut the emptiness.
My initial shock left me and I fell to the ground for cover. At some distance I saw a trio of phantoms moving through the trees. I crawled on my hands and knees to where the buck had stood, the reflex of some weird brotherly bond (not brothers of the forest, but brothers of the attack, brothers of the moment). There was blood bright on the snow. The lordly buck was hit, and the hunters were chasing him down. A shame, I thought. Then I had another thought, more or less synchronous with the whistling sound of arrows cutting the air again: I thought, here I am on all fours wearing my dark coat and beaver-fur hat, and the woods are lousy with bow hunters....
An arrow sliced through my hat and shoulder of my coat before lodging in the ground by my foot. A second arrow passed so close to my head I felt its wind on my cheek. A third stuck in the ground near my hand. I describe them in succession but they each hit their mark in the same second stroke of time.
I rolled to my left and emitted a little shriek – probably more animal sound than human. I just kept rolling and heard more arrows strike the ground behind me. My graceless escape was halted when I rolled into a fallen tree. I scrambled to the other side of the trunk for cover and lay panting on my back. An arrow lodged in the fallen tree; I heard the wood crack. I realized my right eye was crimsonly cloudy. I blinked and my lid and lash were sticky: I was bleeding. Instead of escalating my panic, the knowledge seemed to calm me, or focus me. I reminded myself that head wounds, even superficial ones, bleed profusely.
Another arrow zinged above me. I tried to suck in my belly, which protruded just beyond the trunk. I felt blood trickle warmly into my ear. What can I do to call off the attack? Then I remembered the red necktie in my pocket. I carefully unbuttoned the top of my coat and groped inside. The tie was folded with my notepad and letters of introduction. I pulled it out just as another arrow crashed into the fallen tree and bits of wood and bark hit my face. I spat a bit or two out of my gaping mouth.
I wrapped the red tie once around my hand then flopped the wide end over the tree trunk, where I made it dance jerkily. The tie was immediately pinned to the trunk by an arrow. "Fuck!" I began whipping wildly the narrow end of the tie in the air, and shouting, "Stop! ... Stop! ..."
A voice called from the wood: "Who's there?"
"A friend! A friend from the camp! From your camp!"
"Stand, and let's see you!"
I was somewhat dizzy but got to my feet. I held onto the tie, seemingly for support. I squinted into the woods and tried to clear my vision. "I am hurt," I said calmly. "One of your arrows." I felt myself swaying from side to side, as if blown by the wind, or intoxicated.
Figures materialized from the trees. They were soldiers, with P57s on their backs but home-made bows in their hands. One had a captain's insignia on his sleeve. He said, "You shouldn't be out here. Who are you?" He had smudged his face and his yellow-blond mustaches with mud.
"Hektr Pastrovich. I have reported to Commander Zlavik. I have papers." Blood was running down my cheek like tears, soaking my beard.
Instead of asking to see my papers, the captain removed my hat and examined me. "Just a scratch. You're lucky. Another inch or two." He did not have to finish his thought.
"Yes. I was just having a look around. I am a journalist. I did not realize it was hunting season."
"When fresh meat is available, it's always hunting season," said the blond captain. He handed me my hat and I put it on. The "scratch" stung more exposed to the air. "Let's get you back to camp. The wound isn't bad but it should be tended to." Then he worked the arrow out of the fallen tree, unpinning my necktie. The cut in the fabric was more or less where my heart would be if I were wearing it.
I folded the tie and returned it to my coat pocket. From my pants pocket I took a white handkerchief and held it near my eye to soak up the blood that was running freely in and out of the socket.
The captain noticed the tear in the shoulder of my coat. "Are you cut here too?"
I moved my shoulder and felt it with my hand. "No, I do not believe so."
"Very lucky," repeated the captain. His two men were hanging back, like schoolboys who had perhaps misbehaved. The captain began leading us all to the army camp.
Shortly we came across a group of soldiers who were tying the great buck's fore and hind legs to a long pole; the deer did not have my luck. Soon he would be properly dressed and in a few hours someone's supper. The buck's black eye, still moist with life, stared at me as our group passed. The men working with the buck watched me strangely but did not say a word.
I tried not to think of the buck as we continued our walk through the woods, but I could not forget his staring eye. It seemed accusatory. Perhaps it had been my scent that caused his reckoning, that caused him to stop at that exact place, where the hunters spied him and took their deadly aim.
As we walked along I dabbed at my eye and tried to clear my vision but it seemed I would need water for that. I knew I would receive a talking to from Helena for not being careful. But unlike the shrewish talking-tos of my wife's, I looked forward to Helena's good-natured chastisement. I would sit on a bench, secretly happy, while she clucked around me and dressed my wound. Perhaps I would embellish the story just a bit, to make the woods seem more menacing and my actions more heroic, or at least more athletic. Tramping through the woods behind the blond-headed captain, I had the urge to take out my notepad and begin practicing my embellishment ... instead I stared straight ahead with my good eye, trying to discern a trail but seeing none.
The spectral tents of the camp appeared again. I informed the captain I had been placed in the cook's pantry and assumed he would take me there directly but we veered west. I thought perhaps I was disoriented and had lost my sense of direction. The camp appeared busier now; more soldiers were milling about on the icy paths. One could not see the sun but the sky was less luminous. A northern night was coming on. I recalled once thinking of the northcountry night as a great baneful beast – I felt that way again.
I tried once more regarding our route: "My things are in the pantry. I am with a friend who can dress my wound."
"We are almost there," the captain said nebulously without turning his face toward me.
Almost where? I wondered. The path dipped down and my shoes slid a bit before I regained traction. We had come to a tent with a long narrow frame. Unlike other tents I had seen, this one had a hand-painted sign nailed above its double doors: no words but the serpent and staff of the camp surgeon. I thought of protesting – I simply wanted to go back to Helena. But, on the other hand, this could prove an informative visit, journalistically speaking. The captain's men pulled open the surgery's doors and he and I entered. As one would expect, the surgery was lined on both sides with beds, with only a long narrow aisle between the foot of each. I sensed a rotting smell not unlike the one in the pantry. Many of the beds were occupied – I assumed by wounded soldiers, but my eye had not adjusted from the white outdoors. It seemed too quiet for a place with so many people but I guessed the wounded were not inclined to be chatty.
The captain led me to the far end of the surgical tent (his men had remained outside). I detected a dripping noise somewhere in the tent; however, I decided I preferred not to know what was dripping from where. We came to an army-blanket partition on one side of the aisle, and the captain looked behind it. "Colonel Slivania? Colonel?"
I looked too. There was a bald man seated in a wooden chair that appeared too small for him; he was sound asleep at his desk, his head in his folded arms. Instead of a medical man's white smock, he had on regular army clothes, with the addition of a black scarf around his neck.
"Colonel Slivania?" repeated the captain as he shook the doctor's arm.
This roused him and he slowly sat up. He appeared to be a man who was wholly used to sleeping at his desk and being unceremoniously awakened. There was no sense of surprise whatsoever in his demeanor. Slivania did not bother to ask what was the matter, confident I suppose that he would be enlightened soon enough. He let out a deep sigh and I smelled the vodka on his breath.
"Colonel, I am sorry to disturb you but there is a minor medical emergency."
"If it is minor," said the doctor, his voice rough with phlegm, "then why do you not disturb my assistant?"
My eye had adjusted and I noticed a painting above the doctor's desk: a beach scene with colorful wildflowers growing on a knoll before the roiling surf. It seemed familiar but I could not place it at first.
"There is no assistant, Colonel."
Colonel Slivania blinked and looked up at us for the first time. He had enormously bushy gray eyebrows which were all a-tangle from sleeping at his desk. "Tell me," he said, "is there a man asleep in the first bed, on the opposite side of this blanket?"
Both the captain and I looked. "Yes," he said, "like a baby."
"Bastard," remarked the Colonel. "Duly noted," he added, tapping his bald pate. "What is it then?" He was fully awake now.
"We have a civilian, with a cut on his head."
The doctor paid attention to me for the first time. "Hm," he said. "Sit down here." He traded positions with me then lighted an oil lamp on the desk.
I removed my hat and held it in my lap. The doctor took the bloody handkerchief from me and used it to dab at the arrow wound itself. It seemed to be just at my hairline, almost a finger length from my left ear. "Not too bad," he said after a moment, of course this coming from a man who had probably spent his career removing shattered limbs and stuffing the guts back inside of people. "A stitch or two would be useful I think."
He went to the tall cabinet next to his desk and removed a metal bowl and a clean white cloth. There was already needle and thread stuck in the cloth. I suppose it was time-saving to prethread needles. That level of preparedness bolstered my confidence somewhat but when he took the needle between his fingers I got a sense of its size. It looked like a needle one would use to reconnect the large bowel – of livestock!
I spoke my first words to Doctor Slivania: "Is such a large needle necessary?"
"Absolutely not ... but it is all I have. Do you prefer to bleed all night? Your decision."
"Absolutely not," I grumbled. I suspected Helena had brought needle and thread – though I was not certain – but, regardless, it had become a matter of honor that I sit for the doctor's mammoth needle. On the bright side, there would be no need to embellish my story now.
From his desk the doctor took out an unmarked bottle and poured some of its contents into the metal bowl. I knew then the source of Slivania's breath. He wetted a corner of the cloth and proceeded to clean the wound. He did not bother with my eye, no doubt thinking I could attend to it myself in due course. He placed the blood-stained cloth on the desk, then dipped the needle into the vodka. "Take the bowl," he ordered, "now drink it down. It will help."
I swallowed the recently stilled liquid in two gulps – and I had no doubts as to its usefulness as a disinfectant. The doctor took a drink directly from the bottle and went to work on me. As the needle passed through my skin it felt more like a pencil or a music conductor's baton. But surprisingly it did not hurt, much. The doctor adroitly put two stitches in my scalp. As he was tying off the thread, I recalled where I had seen the painting before, or one very much like it: in the interrogation room at the police station back home. I recalled seeing it the day I met the Prince of Ithaca, who, in a sense, had convinced me to come north, to finally accede to Mezenskov's wish that I report on the war firsthand. The Prince's sketch was in my valise. I wished that I had it with me to show Colonel Slivania and the captain. No matter – I would have ample time. It appeared the armies were at a standstill. What word do the French have for it? Détente.
The doctor snipped the loose ends of the thread with scissors he kept on his desk. He was not especially careful and several strands of hair fell onto the hat in my lap. The hairs seemed more silvery than before I left for Iiloskova. Coming north had aged me. Perhaps returning home will shed the time, I mused.
I thanked the doctor, and the captain led me out of the surgery and toward the pantry. The adrenaline that had coursed through my arteries during the attack had totally subsided, which seemed to magnify the effects of the unripe vodka. My head did not hurt per se, but I could feel my pulse against the new stitches. I wanted to sleep, yes; but mostly I wanted to dream, to dream of someplace else, someplace warm and sunny – perhaps of the beach in the painting.
The captain did not take me all the way to the pantry. He pointed me in the direction once we were close and left me to complete the journey alone, already beginning to sleep – and to dream – on my feet, like soldiers on a long march ... or so I have heard. The cold, and maybe too the bad vodka, made my eyes tear up, which helped to wash the blood away. In spite of my dreamy state of mind, I took note that smoke rose from the pantry's tin chimney and at a distance it could indeed pass for some couple's cozy nest.