It’s one of life’s ironies that I first decided to publish this story, and that I wrote it, but never finished it a number of years ago….And then this week I released my story THE BASHFUL COURTESAN as both an ebook and a paperback, while it is, in its own strange way, as sequel to this very story.
Go figger, eh?
THE BOY WHO COULD KEEP A SECRET
1918
1
George sits in the automobile watching the trees as they file past, darker shadows against a darker sky, he thinks, like soldiers standing at attention—only not as attentive as they should’ve been, he tells himself. It’s stranger still how he can so easily accept that he’s fleeing into the woods like this—it’s an odd sort of twisted irony, he thinks—he’s still not accepting that he’s running away from it all, and that’s because he used to hide in the woods as a child when he was playing with his brothers. Now he wonders who he’s hiding from.
He feels uncomfortable and shifts slightly, moving what’s left of his arm and feeling a quick stab of pain that leaves a dull throb in his lower back. It’s bearable for the moment, and he tells himself he'll learn to live with it if he has to. It isn't hard considering the choices he has: Stay in the hospital until he’s shipped back to Vienna as Martin Jakob, or go home with Annette. Not such a bad choice he thinks, looking at her as she manages the single dirt track that passes for a road.
As he looks at Annette, she turns to him, smiling, looking happy to be away from the hospital and out in the open air at last. It seems as if the close confines of the hospital was closing in around everyone, George thinks; not just himself.
The setting sun breaks through the trees around them, dappling the automobile with patches of light and shadow, alternately splashing along the length of the hood and windscreen like a strobe-light, like the dull throb of some oscillating, sequential science project. He can hear the echoing roar of the automobile out of the side window, and asks himself how no one else can hear the dull roar.
He wonders how Annette and the family have remained out of the war for so long, and then she turns off the main road and little branches whip against the outside of the automobile as though it were a penitent sinner. It’s only a moment until they’re under a canopy of trees, the branches interlaced like the fingers of a man in thought. The road’s little more than a game trail, and he can see grass growing in the ruts. He holds what’s left of his arm as the automobile slows down, crawling across the trail and pitching up and down like a boat on the open sea.
“It’s hard enough maintaining this road when there isn’t a war going on,” Annette says, almost as if she knows what he’s thinking. “This used to be the service road. We blockaded the front driveway.”
“How big is the house? I mean, how many of you are there? Ten? Twelve?”
She smiles. “Ten of us. Five adults,” she says. She’s silent for a moment, and George looks at her, waiting for her to go on. “Four I suppose, when you consider Papa. But the children more than make up for his loss of appetite,” she laughs.
“How many rooms?"
“Ten. And a water-closet, too,” she says brightly. “It’s at least three kilometres off the road. No one even knows it’s there,” she adds. “We’ve got gardens, where we grow vegetables, and two chickens that give us eggs whenever they’re in the mood,” she smiles. “The larder’s stuffed with dry goods—all sorts of preserves we make ourselves. We’re always preparing for winter, it seems—like now. We have trees for fuel as long as we take them from nearby; it’s not as difficult as it sounds for three women and five boys to drag a tree down and cut it up.”
“What about deserters?” he asks.
“Not for the last year,” she says calmly.
“But your sister?” He lets the question hang between them.
“She was on the hospital road when they caught her. I guess they thought it'd be easier to find a woman near the hospital—I mean, that’s where you find the nurses. If it wasn't her, it would've been someone else,” she adds with a shrug. He wonders if the shrug is meant to convince him that she feels indifferent to the whole thing, and he tells himself that if she’s come to terms with her sister's attack, she's done it in her own way.
“What about the army?” he asks. “This place must be on a map somewhere? Why haven't they taken it?”
“Because the war hasn't come out this far,” she smiles again. “We’ve had officers come out and take everything we have—leaving us with nothing. But we still managed to make it through the winter. I doubt if they did,” she laughs. “Sometimes, Papa would shoot at them after they left. The Countess doesn’t like it very much, but there’s no stopping Poppa once he gets an idea like that in his head. He'd stand on the front landing shaking his fist at them—but they’re more often than not just a trail of dust on the road by then. The Countess is afraid they'll shoot him if they see him. He says he doesn’t care.”
George sits in silence for a moment, expecting the house to show up like a sudden vision—like the gingerbread house popping up out of nowhere for Hansel and Gretel—but there’s nothing to see in the distance ahead.
“How far did you say the house was from the road?”
“Three kilometres,” she says. “We’re almost there,” she adds.
“Have you told them I'm coming?” he asks.
“Told who?”
“The Countess? Your father? Your sisters, maybe? I don’t know. How about the children?” he laughs. “Am I going to show up with you and be greeted with impatient sighs and rolling eyes—like my mother used to whenever we found frogs as children?”
She laughs lightly. “I told them,” she reassures him. “The children are curious, of course, and the Countess is excited.”
“And your sisters?”
“Lettie’s indifferent. As long as you pull your weight she says; which I find hard to accept, considering what she does around there,” she adds. “Stassi...I don’t know what she thinks half the time, or if she even does, anymore.”
“She doesn’t do anything?”
“She does what she has to—we all do that,” she smiles. “But she doesn’t do any more than that—not since the attack. Lettie’s got it in her head that she can raise the boys herself, but has no idea about what she's doing. She was never was the matronly type. Even so, she's managed. She obviously favours them over my boys, but not so the boys would notice—just me.”
"What about Anastasia and the Countess? Haven't they noticed?"
“The Countess spoils my youngest—but that’s because he’s the youngest,” she says with another smile, shrugging the explanation off. George realizes that he loves her smile and everything about her. It brings back memories of Vienna before the War, when he first met her at Julia’s.
“Are you sure that’s the reason?” he asks, hoping to distract himself from his own thoughts.
“It’s what I tell myself,” she says after a moment.
The house appears in a clearing that opens up like a river in a dense fog—and George thinks it really does look like an enchanted house out of some forgotten fairy tale. The yard’s overgrown with shrubbery though, and the grass is untended, almost knee high in places; the moss on the trees hangs from the branches like old grey and green beards, and the white paint is blistering and peeling off the side of the house. It’s a magnificent mansion for all the peeling paint and wild shrubbery, George thinks, looking up at the gables and gargoyles carved in stone and staring down at him. The front landing extends for the width of the house, closed in with eight tall columns carved out of twisted white oak; above, a walkway stretches around both corners of the house. The windows are covered with blankets on the inside—thick, heavy, quilts that are nailed around the window frames to prevent any light from seeping out and drawing attention to them during the night. George struggles to get out of the automobile with his single crutch and shattered knee, and a sense of wonder comes over him as he stops to look around the yard.
“I see why you didn’t try describing it to me,” he says, turning to Annette who’s still sitting in the automobile.
All five boys come running out to greet her, stopping short and looking at George with a sense of curiosity. George nods, and then looks up at the landing where the Countess is standing. She looks at George with a smile, coming down off the landing to greet him. He hobbles towards the first step, thinking to meet her half-way. She throws her arms around him, hugging him closely, before she realizes she may be hurting his missing arm. She hesitates, kissing his cheeks quickly and steps back. He can see fresh tears on her face, and she looks away, wiping her eyes. The boys stand by, watching their grandmother in silence, suddenly appearing shy.
“Thank God one of you has made it through this mess,” she says with a long look at George, pushing him away and then hugging him again, “I thought Anna had to be mistaken when she said you were in the hospital.”
George grins at her. “That’s probably because you thought I was in England!”
The Countess laughs and tries to help him up the steps with his crutch and escort him through the front doors. At the landing, George looks up and sees dark lead-crystal panels in the doors, both etched with flowers and grapes. He looks over his shoulder to see if Annette’s following, but the children are helping her camouflage the automobile. They cover it with branches and an old piece of netting she took from the hospital.
George looks at the Countess and smiles. She’s aged, considerably, he thinks, and she’s aged roughly, he realizes. There are deep lines on her face, and her hair is streaked with grey; long and unkept, she ties it with a string to keep it out of her face. He tells himself it’s easy to understand her aging as she has. Her husband’s probably abed in one of the rooms, dying from the inside out, he reminds himself, with nothing anyone can do for him.
The Countess is thinner though, if that’s possible, her ample bosom withered with loss. He notices there’s a wide shock of yellow that runs through her hair from her forehead, and ending somewhere off to the side in that mass of tangled hair she keeps tied in the back. Closer now, he can see that her face is lined with wrinkles—and not the fine-lines one sometimes sees on old ladies standing in concert halls, George tells himself, but thick, deep lines one sees on people who wear their tragedies like a scar. She no longer wears satins, silks or lace, but is dressed in a simple blue cotton dress. She has thick, heavy-soled soldiers’ boots that clunk across the landing with every step she takes. But there’s more than that about her appearance, George thinks; there’s something that tells him she’s carried whatever loss or tragedy she’s endured with a sense of dignity—that here stands a woman who’s suffered and borne it with the strength that is silent, dignified and solemn.
“Are you a spy like Anna says?” she asks with a playful laugh in her eyes, looking up at George with a smile.
“She says I'm a spy?”
“Not really, but it’s the only way I can explain you being here,” she says.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
“George.” She says it like it’s an admonishment—a gentle reprimand not unlike a rebuke, or something meant to castigate and reproach him—but her voice is light, it’s chastising and laughing, as if him spying is the farthest thing from her mind. “Even if you were one—a spy, I mean—what difference would it make out here? We’re so far removed from the war, there’s no one fighting it anymore.”
“Maybe I should tell you I deserted?” he says with a grin.
“I doubt that. I could never think of you a deserter,” she smiles up at him.
“I like the sounds of that,” he laughs.
“Then you’ll stay with us?”
“I thought it was already settled? Besides, where else would I go?” he asks, shrugging awkwardly on his crutch.
“Spying?”
Annette comes in from outside—stepping across the floor with the single minded self assurance of a woman determined to find the solution to one of life's little mysteries—stopping in front of the Countess as she takes off her coat.
“Where’s Lettie? And Stassi? Why aren’t they here?”
“Lettie? I forgot all about her,” the Countess explains with a burst of nervous laughter. “Stassi’s taking a nap, I believe; it is two o'clock, isn't it?"
“Where did you see her last?”
“Lettie? She was in the garden,” the Countess says. “Perhaps she needs help? I'll see that George gets settled in. Where should I put him? I don’t think it would do either of you any good to have him next to you?”
“Next to me?” Annette says awkwardly, a blush creeping over her face like a memory out of the past. She laughs, and George thinks it sounds like water hitting a silver pitcher, ending like a rainbow dissolving in itself and lost in its own mist—or maybe he’s just Romanticized the idea of her, thinking she’s still the young girl he met ten years ago?
“Then I’ll put him on the other side of the house, so he’s as far away from temptation as we can get him?"
“What sort of temptation is that, mother?” Annette asks softly.
The Countess laughs. “My darling child,” she says. “Judging by the look on your face, I’d have to say the usual. I know what it means to be a woman. Still. I was alone for a number of years, remember? You haven’t been with a man for years—none of you have—so I think I can speak from authority when I say having a man about the house might be something of a temptation for the two of you.”
“But there’s three of us,” Annette says.
“Do you really think Stassi is thinking about being with any man?”
“And won’t you be tempted?” George says playfully.
“Me?” the Countess laughs. “I tend to resort to other means!” she says, and George feels a slow blush creeping up his face as both women laugh at his discomfort.
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