Bridge of Clay(22)

From nowhere there was light.

Jesus!

It was white and heavy and belted him across the eyes like a football hooligan. He brought his hands up as it was turned off again, but still it throbbed and stung. In the new drowning dark was Tommy; he was standing in just his underpants, with Hector at his flank. The cat was a shifting shadow of himself, and eyes in shock from the light.

“Clay?” Tommy wandered toward the back door. His words drooled, midsleep and walk. “Kil’ nee’ s’ fee’…” With a second attempt, he nearly cracked the full code of his sentence. “Achilles knees some feed.”

Clay took his arms and turned him, watching as he ambled the hall. He even bent down and gave the cat a small pat, triggering a few short purrs. For a moment, he expected Rosy to bark, or Achilles to let loose a bray, but they didn’t, and he reached for the crate.

    Nothing.

Even when he gambled and opened the fridge—just a crack, to borrow some light—he couldn’t find a single scrap of the murderous paper. What a shock to walk back in then, and find it patched up, with sticky tape, on his bed.





Needless to say, Penelope never went to the eisteddfod; she never rehearsed, or walked the city of aqua rooftops. She remained at the Westbahnhof, on the platform, sitting on her suitcase, elbows on her knees. With her crisp, clean fingers, she played with the buttons on her blue woolen dress, and traded her return ticket for an earlier one home.

Hours later, when the train was set to leave, she rose to her feet. A conductor leaned from the train’s doorway, unshaven, overweight.

“Kommst einer?”

Penelope only looked at him, stricken with indecision, twirling one of those buttons, center-chest. Her suitcase stood in front of her. An anchor at her feet.

“Nah, kommst du jetzt, oder net?” There was something charming in his dishevelment. “You coming now or not?” Even his teeth were loosely stowed. He leaned like a schoolboy, and he didn’t blow a whistle but called to the front of the train. “Geht schon!”

And he smiled.

He smiled his jangle-toothed grin, and Penelope held the button now, in front of her, in the palm of her right hand.



* * *



—

As forecast by her father, though, she made it.

She was all suitcase and vulnerability, but exactly as Waldek predicted, she got through.

There was a camp in a place called Traiskirchen, which was an army of bunk beds and a wine-dark toilet floor. The first problem was finding the end of the line. Lucky she’d had plenty of practice; Eastern Europe had taught her to queue. The second problem, once inside, was negotiating the ankle-deep pool of refuse at your feet. Some watery wilderness, all right, it was a test of nerve and stamina.

    People in line were blank-faced and tired, and each feared many outcomes, but one of them most of all. They could not, under any circumstances, be sent home.

When she’d arrived, she was questioned.

She was fingerprinted, she was interpreted.

Austria was essentially a holding ground, and in most cases, it took twenty-four hours to be processed and sent to a hostel. There you would wait for approval from another embassy.

Her father had thought of many things, but not that Friday was a bad day to arrive. It meant you had to last out the weekend at the camp, which was no picnic, but last it out she did. After all, in her own words, it wasn’t hell on earth, either. Not compared to what other people endured. The worst was the not-knowing.



* * *



—

The next week she took another train, this time to the mountains, to another set of bunk beds, and Penelope started the wait.

I’m sure in nine months there, we could dig around, but what do I really know about that time? What did Clay know? As it turned out, Penelope’s life in the mountains was one of the few periods she didn’t talk about as much—but when she did, she spoke simply and beautifully, and I guess what you’d also call mournfully. As she explained it once to Clay: There was one short phone call, and one old song.

A few small parts to tell the whole.



* * *



—

In the first couple of days, she’d noticed other people making calls from an old phone booth by the roadside. It stood like a foreign object, by the vastness of forest and sky.

    It was obvious the people were calling home; there were tears in their eyes, and often, after they’d hung up, they struggled to walk back out.

Penelope, like many, hesitated.

She wondered if it was safe.

There’d been enough rumors of government phone taps to make anyone second-guess. As I mentioned earlier, it was people left behind who’d be punished.

What most of them had on their side was that they’d left for supposedly longer time frames. Why wouldn’t they call home in their weeks away? For Penelope, it wasn’t that simple—she should have already returned. Would a call put her father at risk? Luckily, she’d loitered long enough for a man named Tadek to find her. He had a voice, and body, like the trees.

“You want to call home, young girl?”

At her reluctance to speak, he went and touched the phone booth, to prove it couldn’t hurt her. “Is anyone from your family in the movement?” And then, even more specific. “Solidarno???”