“He will snatch it up from my hand, do you mean?” Lucy asked.
“Just so, yes. It is an unorthodox method, I know, but we are on our own, here, and we must make do.” Mr. Olderglough scratched his chin. “You’re looking at me as though you have a question.”
“Yes,” said Lucy. “I’m wondering how it came to be that the mail was collected in this way.”
“Ah, I bribed the engineer,” said Mr. Olderglough. “Actually, I continue to bribe the engineer. Possibly that sounds untoward, but it’s only a pittance, and if the truth should be known, I get a thrill from it. Touch of criminality, thickens the blood—you didn’t hear it from me, boy. Now you’re looking at me with another question.”
Lucy nodded. “The engineer, sir. Will he have letters for me as well?”
“No, he won’t. The Baron’s is a one-sided correspondence.”
Lucy pondered the definition of the word. “I was unaware there was such a thing,” he admitted.
Mr. Olderglough’s face puckered, as one stung by a discourtesy. “Is this a comical observation?” he asked.
“It was not meant to be, sir, no.”
“I certainly hope not. Because I don’t subscribe to amusements, Lucy. Laughter is the basest sound a body can make, in my opinion. Do you often laugh, can I ask?”
“Rarely.”
“How rarely?”
“Very rarely, sir. Extremely rarely, in fact.”
“Good,” Mr. Olderglough said. “Good. Now. These letters are of the most pre-eminent importance to the Baron, and must be handled with the greatest respect and discretion. No peeking, is what I’m saying here.”
“I would never, sir.”
“You will want to.”
“Be that as it may.”
“And, if there ever comes a day where the engineer does have a letter for you, this should be treated with utmost seriousness. I suspect this will never happen. Actually I can say with confidence that it won’t. Still and all, you have been instructed, have you not?”
“I have been instructed, sir.”
Mr. Olderglough stole a glance at the contents of Lucy’s valise. “Where is your day suit, boy?”
“I haven’t one, sir.”
“What—do you mean?”
“I mean that I am not in possession of a day suit, sir.”
“Well, what do you have in the way of evening attire, then?”
“This is my attire in its entirety,” said Lucy, pointing to his worn out suit of clothes.
Mr. Olderglough regarded the ensemble with unambiguous indignity. “Did it not occur to you,” he said, staring glumly at Lucy’s sheepskin cap, “that you would be expected to dress in a manner befitting your appointment?”
Lucy considered the question. “I will admit to being aware of a style of dress common among those working in places such as this,” he conceded. “But I suppose I assumed that my employer might furnish me with said attire, were it required of me to wear it.”
“I see. And who was it that gave you this idea, I’d like to know?”
“No one, sir. It came to me independently.”
“It’s a bold notion.”
“I was not after boldness.”
“You achieved it.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”
“You have annoyed me mildly. It is abating as we speak.” Mr. Olderglough looked out the window, and back. “Has anyone ever told you you possess a likability?”
“Not that I can recall, sir, no.”
“You possess a likability.”
“I’m happy to hear as much.”
“Yes. Well. Perhaps something can be done about the situation at a later date, but until that point in time, we will get by with what’s available to us.”
“Just as you say, sir.”
Mr. Olderglough moved again to exit the room, but in turning the doorknob he found himself transfixed by its apparatus, so that Lucy asked him, “Is there something the matter with the door, sir?”
Mr. Olderglough didn’t reply for a moment; when he spoke, his voice was dimmed nearly to a whisper. “Would you describe yourself as a fitful sleeper?”
“I suppose I would, sir, yes.”
“Good. May I also ask, do you typically retire early in the evening, or later on?”
“I would say that it varies. Is it safe to assume that you have a preference?”
“It is indeed. In fact, I will request, with a friendly firmness, that you come to your room no later than ten o’clock, and that you should lock yourself in each night.”
Lucy wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Did you say you want me to lock myself in, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Yes.”
“And why is it necessary, sir?”
“Hmm,” Mr. Olderglough said. “You should lock yourself in because I’ve asked it, and because I’m your superior, and so it will avail you to heed me, just as it will please me to be heeded.” After speaking he stood by, happy with his skillful avoidance of the question put to him. He tocked his heels together and left, and Lucy began unpacking his valise. In the drawer of his dresser he found a heavy brass telescope; carved on the side was the name BROOM. He assumed his predecessor used this to chronicle the goings-on of the shanty village, which sat far beneath the tower window, and now he himself did just the same.
When he peered into the device, the village leapt into view, colorful and fast-moving. He caught a glimpse of young Mewe exiting his shanty, stepping with speed and purpose but suddenly stopping, an expression of doubt on his face. Now he doubled back and returned to his home, and he did not exit again. Memel was standing outside his shanty just next door, arguing with a slight girl whose features Lucy couldn’t make out, as she was facing away from him. When she stalked off, Memel called after her, to no avail. He was smiling as he watched her leave; their argument, at least for him, was not a vicious or serious one. Alone now, he removed a pipe from his pocket and began filling this with tobacco. Lucy had forgotten Memel had stolen it. He decided to retrieve it, and after tucking his valise beneath the bed he descended the corkscrewed stone stairwell.
III
KLARA THE BEGUILER
1
It had just gone six o’clock as Lucy ambled down the hill before the castle. The winter sun had dipped below the mountain, and the village wore the properties of night prematurely. The cold stung at his ears and he pulled his hat down to cover them. As he walked past the shuttered stalls in the marketplace, a half-dozen children assembled behind him, stepping in a clutching cluster to observe him and wonder at his arrival. They were giddy to be stalking the newcomer, and while there was an element of danger to this adventure, they themselves knew, in the way children know such things, that Lucy was not a bad man. Still, when he spun about to greet them, they scattered in individual directions, each one shrieking ecstatically. Lucy blushed at the attention but also felt happy, even proud in a way, as though he had been formally announced.
Passing Mewe’s shanty, he noticed the window was ajar, and he paused to peer inside. Mewe sat at an uneven table, playing cards fanned out in his hands. His face bore the penitent look of one who has just been caught cheating, because he had just been. Across from Mewe was a young woman, and she was very pretty indeed, if the truth would be known. In point of fact she was more than pretty: she was exquisite.
She was his age, Lucy supposed, or slightly younger. She wore her abundant brown hair stacked atop her head, exposing a delicate jawline angling into a long, tapered neck. The silhouette of her face was backlit by candles, and he could see no flaws about her, not an angle out of place, as though she were a marble figurine crafted by the sure hand of a master wishing only to share an ideal of the purest beauty. Her comeliness was counteracted by the state of her coat, a shapeless, sack-like thing with cuffs gone thin to the point of fraying. But she herself was so very lovely to behold that Lucy wouldn’t have looked away for
the world; he couldn’t have. Her black eyes flashed in the stuttering flamelight as she chided her playmate.
“Why do you do it, Mewe?”
“I don’t know why. It’s like an itch that must be scratched.”
“But it isn’t any fun for me when you cheat.”
“No?”
“How could it be?”
“I should think it might be exciting for you.”
“And why would you think that?”
“It follows some manner of logic.”
“Would you like me to do the same to you?”
“I suppose I wouldn’t, actually.”
She snatched up the cards from his hand, shuffling these into the deck. “Even if you win, you lose, don’t you understand?”
“I don’t know about that,” Mewe said.
She ceased shuffling. “Will you or won’t you stop it?”
Mewe put on a brave face. “I will try.”
A days-old puppy, black in color, clambered onto the table and arched against an earthen jar sitting between Mewe and his enchanting guest. When the jar toppled, Mewe righted it automatically and dragged the puppy from the table to his lap. The girl dealt the cards and they resumed play, and Lucy had the feeling he was watching a painting come to life; there was something enduring about the scenario, something timeless and vividly evocative, and this appealed to him in a sweetly sad way. The spell was broken when Mewe spied him at the window and said, “Oh, hello, there.” The girl turned to look, and when her and Lucy’s eyes met he was filled with a shameful panic, and he spun away, huddling at Memel’s door, his heart knocking against his throat.
“Who was that?” he heard the girl ask.
“Lucy’s his name. We met him on the train. He’s at the castle, now. Gone after Mr. Broom.”
She paused. “Is he nice?”
“He seems it. But who can say? Perhaps he’s a scoundrel in hiding.”
The girl softly laughed, then was silent. Lucy heard the scrape of her chair, and now she appeared at the window. She stood mere feet from Lucy but owing to the darkness had no idea of his proximity. She was pondering some distant thought, a lonely one, according to her expression; when she shut the window and drew the curtain, Lucy stood awhile in the snow, feeling foolish and trembly.
He turned and knocked on Memel’s door. Memel answered with a puppy in his hand, this likewise black, but with white boots.
“Did you take my pipe?” Lucy asked.
“Yes,” said Memel.
“Can I have it back, please?”
Memel left and returned with the pipe.
“Thank you,” said Lucy.
“You’re welcome.” Memel nodded to the castle. “How are you settling in?”
“Fine.”
“What have you had for your supper?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know if I am.”
“Shall we find out?”
Memel ushered him into the shanty.
2
The front room of Memel’s home brought to mind an animal’s burrow. The floor was dirt, and the air smelled of roots and spices. The walls were made from tin scrap of varying degrees of corrosion, and they shuddered in the wind. But it was not an unpleasant space: a copper cauldron hung in the fireplace, its fat, rounded bottom licked by flames, and oil lamps throwing off a honey-colored light lined the rafters in neatly pegged rows. Lucy sat beneath these at a low-standing table. There was a litter of puppies roaming about, yipping and knocking things over and pouncing on one another; the exhausted mother lay on the floor beside the table, stomach bagged, dead to the world. “Poor Mama,” said Memel. “She’s had just about enough.” He nudged her with his foot and she retired to one of two small back rooms, with the puppies following after. Memel removed the cauldron from the fire and set it in the center of the table to cool. Tilting back his head, he shouted, “Mewe!”
Mewe’s muffled voice came through the wall, from his own shanty. “What?”
“Is Klara with you?”
“Yes.”
“Is she still angry at me?”
Lucy could hear the girl named Klara murmuring, but couldn’t decipher her words.
“She says she’s not,” Mewe called.
“And do you believe her?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“And you? Are you still angry?”
“Not at all.”
“Will you please come and eat with us, then?”
A pause; more murmuring. “Who is ‘us’?” Mewe asked.
“Lucy has come to visit. The lad from the train?”
“Yes, he was spying on us a moment ago.”
Memel looked at Lucy with a questioning glance. Lucy shook his head. “I was only passing by,” he whispered.
“He claims not to have been spying, Mewe.”
“Oh? And what would he call it, then?”
“Passing by, is how he describes it.”
Yet more murmuring. Mewe said, “Ask him for us, please, if he believes one must be in motion to be passing?”
Lucy admitted that yes, he supposed one did have to be, and Memel restated this.
“Well, then,” Mewe continued, “how does he explain the fact of his being stationary at my window?”
Memel raised his eyebrows. “Were you stationary, Lucy?”
“Perhaps I lingered for a moment.”
“Now he is calling it a momentary lingering,” Memel said.
“I see,” said Mewe. Murmuring. “We would like to know, then, just what is the difference between the two?”
Lucy thought he could hear some restrained laughter coming from Klara. To Memel he said, “Spying suggests a hope to come by private information. My intentions were much simpler.”
Memel digested, then repeated the words, which precipitated further hushed discussion between Mewe and Klara. At last the former said, “Would Lucy describe himself, then, as idly curious?”
Lucy was now certain he could hear both Klara and Mewe stifling their amusement.
“Well?” Memel asked, who was smiling.
“I think that would be fair,” said Lucy.
“It would be fair, he says,” Memel said.
For a time, Lucy could not hear any further chatter from next door. Finally it was Klara who spoke. “Give us a moment to finish our game, Father,” she said.
3
Stew’s too hot yet, anyway,” Memel said, peering into the cauldron. He stepped away from the table and invited Lucy into his room, a drab cube with no window or furnishings save for a straw mattress on the ground and a wood crate doubling as a bedside table. The puppies lay in a heap in the corner, feeding off their mother, who regarded Memel and Lucy with a look beyond concern. Memel leaned down and stroked her with a gentle hand, his face drawn with worry. “They’re going to kill her.” Cocking his head, he asked, “Would you like a puppy, Lucy?”
“Oh, no, thank you.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” he said, “this simply won’t do.” He picked up the puppy with white boots and left the room. An uneasy feeling visited Lucy; he followed Memel and found him standing at a water barrel beside the front door, his arm submerged to the elbow. “If the mother dies, then they all will,” he said, regarding the black water with a look of grave determination. Long moments passed, and when he slipped his arm from the water, there was nothing in his hand. He returned to his room and re-emerged with another puppy, making once more for the barrel. Why this was being carried out in Lucy’s presence, and just prior to eating, Lucy could not fathom. Whatever the reason, he felt impelled to intervene. When he spoke, he was not motivated by any one thought or combination of words, but in response to a kind of pain, much in the way one involuntarily cries out after being injured:
“Stop it,” he said. “If it’s come to this, then I’ll take him.”
Memel came nearer and deposited the puppy in Lucy’s palm
. “Her,” he said, and moved to the table to ladle out the stew.
The puppy was the runtess of the pack. Sleekly black, her head tottered creakily, as though she were feebly aged. She peered up at Lucy and opened her mouth but no sound came out; lowering her head, she closed her eyes and Lucy tucked her into the breast pocket of his coat. Her snout pushed proud of this, her tiny jaws ajar. Lucy rubbed the fuzz above her nose and she licked his fingertip, which prompted a flutter in his stomach. There is an instance of import when one experiences the conception of love, he realized. It was as though you had been waiting for it all along; as if you’d known it was approaching, and so when it arrives you reach out to greet it with an innate familiarity. Behind him, Memel said, “All right, Lucy, the stew is cooled.”
When Lucy turned to face the table he gave a start, for Klara and Mewe had snuck in and were sitting upright, hands laid flat before them, a portrait of obedience but for the hint of mirth clinging to their lips. Lucy suspected their sneaking in was a prank played on him, some bit of mischief for his benefit or at his expense. It was harmless enough, as pranks went; but why did his face burn so as he sat down? Klara, spoon in fist, covered her face and silently shuddered; Mewe produced a series of discreet snorts. Memel, sitting, took note of their good humor but had no inkling of its origin. He leaned forward on his elbows and asked hopefully,
“Is there a joke?”
“No,” said Mewe and Klara together.
“There’s not a joke?”
“No.”
Memel tried to let it go, but could not: “Oh, tell us the joke, already.” He was genuinely curious; he himself wanted to laugh with the others—he wore a smile on his face, in anticipation of the introduction of something amusing. But when they offered no explanation, he grimaced, and told Lucy, “This is rude behavior.”