The 14th Day Read online

  “I hope so,” Vaniok answers. “What do you think, Jory?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says without turning his head. He too is watching the sky, though he doesn’t look concerned, but rather intent, like a man listening to music only he can hear.

  “What do you say, Van?” Edward goes on after a while. “Think our guys are going to make it tomorrow? The game, I mean.”

  “Sure thing,” Vaniok responds. “They’ll be national champions. We’re Number One.”

  Edward smiles. “We’re Number One,” he repeats. After a while he asks, “You a basketball fan at all, Jory?”

  Jory shakes his head and returns to watching the coming storm. Edward frowns, he mutters something inaudible and they drive on without speaking. They stop at a light and listen to the trees’ breathy rustling. The darkness has deepened in the last few seconds and students cross before them very quickly, heading for the shelter of buildings. All at once the murky light gives way to abrupt illumination and the men in the truck flinch, an instant before a stammering crack of thunder. The students are running now. “Oh, oh,” Edward says, “we’ll be lucky to get there before the rain hits.”

  Minutes later they’re at their destination. Safely under the roof of the colonnade that looks onto the inn’s courtyard, they watch large drops slap the pavement while lightning prints fitful silhouettes of buildings across the street. Edward looks at the rain and sighs. “This storm could take a while,” he declares, and he goes to phone their boss to ask for further instructions. “I think we just got ourselves a little free time,” he tells them with a smile. Vaniok and Jory stand in the long colonnade that’s open to the courtyard, their faces washed by the suddenly cooled air. Far away, at the other end, a guest at the inn, a stout old man in a white suit, stands with his knees bent, arms hanging at his side, looking into the rain, then he shuffles off laboriously. “What weather,” Vaniok says. “Storms that would come once a year in the homeland are normal here.” Jory nods and they listen to the rain for a moment before Vaniok goes on. “Edward is a good-hearted man, I know that. He doesn’t talk to you because he doesn’t understand you.”

  “I should learn about basketball, you mean?”

  “No, but he’s puzzled by you, he doesn’t know what to talk about with you.”

  Jory is silent for a time. As he looks into the rain, though, listening to its fierce drumming against the roof, his erect posture suddenly loosens, he takes a quick, nimble step toward the courtyard as if he’s intending to dash out into the downpour for the sheer pleasure of getting soaked. His shoulders have lifted, he seems to have become lighter. He reaches out beyond the protection of the roof, letting his hand get wet. Smiling to himself, he inhales deeply, breathing in the stormy air. When he speaks he surprises Vaniok by saying, “Edward has a nose just like a cousin of mine whose hobby is mountain climbing. Maybe I should ask him if he climbs.”

  “I don’t think …”

  “Who knows?” Jory throws up his hands. There’s a brightness in his eyes Vaniok hasn’t seen often. “There might be some connection,” Jory says. “Edward climbs ladders to paint. It could be that the nose is the indicator of a preference for height.”

  “I see: you’re joking.” Vaniok looks at him.

  “No, really: I’m going to ask him.”

  “Good.” Vaniok isn’t quite sure about where Jory is taking this. But he too is caught up in the spirit of the storm. “Ask him. Yes, I’d like to see you do that.” He laughs. “Come on, let’s enjoy our free time.” They enter the building: thick rugs, muted lighting, graceful furniture, vases of fresh flowers, the odor of orderliness, a sense of shelter.

  They haven’t taken a dozen steps on the carpeted floor before Jory springs forward. “Look who’s here,” he calls out with obvious pleasure. Down the long corridor they glimpse Ila in her gray housekeeper’s outfit and they wave to her. She waves back, then comes toward them in the silvery light of the storm outside, her short white apron swaying with her hips as she walks.

  “Hello,” she smiles when she reaches them. “So we’re all here together. ‘We make a nation,’” she says, quoting one of the patriotic songs of the homeland.

  “A nation with very attractive women,” Vaniok responds.

  “A nation of gracious flatterers,” she answers and Vaniok beams but Ila is looking at Jory. “What are you two doing here in my domain?” she asks.

  “A secret assignment,” Jory says, and he begins to tell her with much gesturing. “Important furniture is being transported: chairs, tables, desks with concealed drawers.” His eyes widen dramatically. “And look at the accompaniment,” he points to the fury outdoors. His voice is soft and insistent, he might be a salesman offering her a bargain on the furniture.

  Ila nods encouragingly, a likely buyer. “Yes,” she says, “I see.”

  “We’re taking them to the library,” Vaniok explains. The three of them are caught up in some kind of excitement, like people who’ve survived a dangerous accident. They’re standing near the door to the colonnade. All at once lightning bleaches the world outside the inn: for an instant the scene resembles a photographic negative; then a loud explosion of thunder reverberates and the hard fall of rain intensifies. “Don’t you just love this kind of storm?” Ila declares. “Maybe we’ll all be trapped here for the rest of the day.”

  “And you could show us where the food is,” Vaniok says. “This could be pleasant.” Jory too smiles at the prospect. At the moment the fantasy seems believable.

  For a time the three of them are silent. Vaniok glances at the clock on the wall. “Do you believe in signs?” Ila suddenly asks. “Do you two think you came here because you had to move furniture?” She looks at one, then the other. “No, no, fate has sent you here for a reason. You just helped me make up my mind about something.” She laughs. “Actually, it’s something I already decided about.” Ila can’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “But your coming here confirms it: it’s a sign that the three of us should have a traditional picnic for Constitution Day.”

  For a moment no one says anything and the words echo in this alien place. Constitution Day: the holiday commemorates the date, almost two hundred years ago, when the homeland, in the midst of one of its worst periods, adopted an enlightened form of government. Though this act didn’t keep the country from falling almost immediately into even further turmoil, with repeated occupations by foreign powers and periods of domestic tyranny, the idea of the constitution has always been a reference point for the nation’s entry into the modern world, and the holiday is one of the most joyous in the calendar.

  “But Constitution Day is more than a month away,” Vaniok points out.

  “But we’re in another country,” Ila says, “and spring comes earlier here. I think we can stretch things a little, as long as we keep the spirit.” She lifts her finger. “We can all go in my car to the ocean this weekend—I haven’t seen it since I got here—and we can have a traditional picnic.”

  “What an idea!” Vaniok smiles. He wants to be convinced by his cousin’s arguments. Like Ila, he hasn’t been to the ocean either. The plan excites him. He looks at Jory as if to claim through kinship partial credit for this wonderful suggestion. At the same time, he’s remembering past Constitution Day picnics. “What about the traditional foods?” he asks.

  Ila waves her hand. “Some of them I can make, some we’ll improvise.”

  “I think it’s a brilliant idea,” Jory exclaims. “I’ll bring the liquor for the Constitution Day toasts.” Outside, the fierce rain beats insistently. How can there be so much moisture in the clouds? In the midst of it, though, the three of them stand together, the only representatives of their country in this place, and they can’t be touched by the forces unloosed in the turbulent heavens.

  Edward appears at the other end of the corridor, walking toward them slowly. Vaniok waves to him but raises a hand toward Ila. “The constitution,” he says.

  “The constitution,” the others resp
ond. Vaniok vaguely remembers a party at which a baby-faced priest was singing patriotic songs. Where was that, he wonders.

  “I have to get back to work,” Ila says. “But do I have your promises?”

  “Yes,” they answer at the same time.

  After the storm has passed, the men transport the chairs to the library and arrange them for the conference, they ride back through the cool, wet campus to the warehouse, where Edward drops them off and returns the truck. It’s too early to quit but too late to start any new jobs so Vaniok and Jory go to the sheltered area where the men traditionally pass the time and stay out of sight when there isn’t any work to be done. There, in a dim corner of the building, they drop into vinyl chairs. Ila’s plan for a Constitution Day party has got Vaniok thinking about home.

  “Are you a fisherman?” he asks Jory. A generator hums nearby.

  The other shrugs. “A little. I wouldn’t make any great claims. But,” he adds, “I love to eat them.”

  “There’s nothing like pike from the Deep Lakes,” Vaniok declares, “cooked in a frying pan with onions.” He licks his lips. “Do you know,” he says, “the biggest fish I ever caught cost me my blood.” Jory looks at him encouragingly. “I had no net,” Vaniok explains, “I hooked a huge pike from the dock but he was so big I didn’t dare try to pull him up all that distance out of the water for fear of breaking my line. So I kicked off my shoes, then I maneuvered the pike near shore where it was shallow and I jumped in after it. At last I had to reach in and stick my hand in the fish’s gill to lift it and I cut my palm doing it.” He remembers the red flag of blood in the clear water, the pike’s hard, pirate’s eyes, his own bare feet looking strangely disembodied against the rippled, sandy bottom. Afterwards, he felt a solitary triumph as he smoked a damp cigarette under a willow, the fish on the grass before him, its speckled sides glistening. If he were to close his eyes now he’s sure he’d smell the wet grass, the fishy water, the cigarette, that whole wonderful moment.

  “Have you done any fishing here?” Jory asks. “There’s a lake just outside of town, isn’t there?”

  Vaniok nods. “I only went there once, but you’d never confuse it with one of the Deep Lakes. It’s more brown than blue, for one thing. The university owns most of the land around it,” he says. There was a sign at the top of a sloping road that showed the long L-shape of the lake. From above, Vaniok saw the sleeve of water bend behind the trees but he’d already heard the barking dogs. “The university has some kind of laboratory there where dogs are used in experiments,” he says. “I heard them barking, lots of them. You could tell they were inside somewhere.” It was a disturbing sound: not playful barking or the excited cries of the hunt but something unnatural, hopeless.

  Jory nods, but says nothing. Something about the dogs’ barking seems to have reached him as well. They’re silent again and it’s obvious both of them are thinking of other places.

  At the end of the summer, on the feast of St. Olo, Vaniok and his friends had a fishing contest. It was a ritual: there were ten of them and they all spent that day on a particular lake in the region. The largest fish caught between sunrise and sunset on that day would win the prize, a battered old coffee pot they called St. Olo’s Cup that was so full of holes it couldn’t be used for coffee but which the winner would proudly keep for the next year. They got up before the sun rose, ate the traditional breakfast of pancakes and berries and were rowing out through the marshes while the morning air was still cool and the reeds emerged mysteriously out of the mist. There was a lot of drinking during the day and practical jokes—the competition was less important than the companionship; at the same time some contestants had special lures they refrained from using for a full month before the contest and it wasn’t unknown to have a local priest bless your tackle. Pulling in at the end of the day, Vaniok always felt the beauty of that lake, grateful for having been allowed to spend the day on its waters with his friends. Whatever fish he caught, he looked forward to the evening when the day’s catch would be cooked and there would be more drinking and storytelling. Vaniok never won St. Olo’s Cup, but he had a persistent fantasy that his friend Toran would catch a large pike in the last hour of daylight, which would send most of the other boats heading for shore to get an early start on the night’s festivities. Vaniok, though, would stay out on the water where, just before the sun set, he’d land an even bigger pike. It would be a story they’d tell for as long as the tradition continued.

  Now, far from that lake, Vaniok knows that no one will ever tell that story, no one will hear it. But thinking of those times has brought another memory: he was on a dock, a woman beside him, when a military plane swooped close to the water. It was after old Ferik’s party, he realizes, and the woman’s name was Lora. He never saw her again.

  “What is it?” Jory asks. “Are you crying?”

  Vaniok shakes his head. He’s not crying, though his eyes are moist. “I was thinking about fish,” he says. “I was thinking about the taste of that pike I caught.” He feels angry and ashamed.

  “I understand,” Jory says. “We all have these memories.”

  Vaniok wants to deny this: no one has his memories. But he nods. “Yes,” he says.

  Later that night Vaniok awakens in his apartment, bathed in a pleasant but elusive emotion. He lies there looking into the darkness, with no need to confront the world, to try to interpret it; he’s content to lie there, just breathing. He must have had a dream but he’s forgotten it; still, some trace of its texture lingers and for a time he just lets himself be moved by something he can’t identify. Soon he realizes that his pleasurable feeling has become a state of sexual arousal and he runs his hand gently along the length of his erect penis. He closes his eyes to the dark and allows his mind to drift. He sees Polly, the black woman who works in one of the campus restaurants. She’s pretty and friendly, he loves to hear her pronounce his name. Now he imagines himself as the lone customer in the restaurant. On the counter he holds his cut hand. “Let me look at that,” Polly says. “Oh, does it hurt?” She takes his lighter hand into her dark one and she runs her finger along the cut, then she bends down to kiss it. Now Vaniok is masturbating. His heart floods with tenderness for Polly, who keeps pronouncing his name, and soon they’re naked together. Then, as he nears climax, Vaniok realizes it isn’t Polly he’s with, it’s Ila, and the sound of his name is now different. Tenderly she pronounces his name as he runs his hands along her smooth skin, calling back to her, “Ila, Ila.”

  When it’s over he lies there, clear-headed, drained. But he’s happy. Lying there in the alien darkness, Vaniok is happy. “Ila,” he says aloud to the room.

  “Look at the way that house is leaning; I’ll bet a drunkard lives there.… Aren’t those trees like an island in the middle of that field?… I think we should have turned back there.… No, no, this is the right way.… What did that sign say?… But we’re supposed to be going east, not south.” The only words spoken in Ila’s car are in the language of their past and Vaniok is light-headed, as if he’s already had a few drinks from the bottle of amber-colored liquor they’re planning to open when they actually have their picnic on the beach. He hasn’t realized how much he’s missed talking like this, the three of them arguing about directions, pointing out landmarks, reading the signs aloud, in the old words that change the shapes of what they see outside the car. He vaguely remembers some story from his childhood: angels were traveling the earth in disguise, trying to find their way back to heaven. That’s it, he thinks; this is a earful of angels, passing among strangers. He could tell this to the others but spoken aloud it would sound silly. Still, he’d like to ask them. Can’t you feel it, he’d say, how separated we are from everyone around us? After all, even the few countrymen in the area came here so long ago they don’t remember the same place, their language is filled with words from here. Angels. Speeding along the highway.

  Cigarette smoke, silver in the sunlight, dances in the rushing wind. “Another bridge,” Vaniok
calls out, just for the sheer delight of running the words across his tongue. “Look at all that land.” He uses the older form of the word, favored by poets, a blunt syllable that can refer to the soil, the nation, even the grave. He wishes he were at the window, closer to the spacious countryside hurtling past, where he could feel the wind on his arm. It’s the first time he’s been this far from the university town and everything he’s seeing is new. The size of the farms is impressive; the recently opened stretch of highway on which they’re driving, the graceful bridges overhead—everything speaks of the bottomless wealth of this country. Out here, the hills have become less steep, with a gentle roll like the sea’s, the horizons have been pushed into the distance, the cloudless sky is immense. At some point recently sand has begun to come up under the red earth, the soil itself changing as they move toward the ocean. Every minute or so another bridge soars over the car, dragging its shadow; a cluster of short trees rushes up, then gives way to broad green fields. The wide band of road curves before them, the three bodies inside the car lean, then the highway straightens, pointing toward the coast once more. Another clump of woods, more open fields, the world is racing by. Where are they going? Anywhere, everywhere.

  That’s something else he’d like to tell the other two: we’re on our way to the future, a blank tablet unrolling before us, clean, unmarked, full of possibilities. But what does it matter whether or not he says everything he feels? The small talk, the cigarette smoke, Ila’s swift, impatient driving—this is enough to make him happy. And if he isn’t by the window he’s at least seated beside his cousin, between her and Jory, who, thank God, seems to have come around in the last few days. He’s still a bit stiff for Vaniok’s taste, but he isn’t a Laker, after all, he’s from the capital; at least he’s civil, he looks as if he might even consent to enjoy himself today. Smoking a cigarette, his hair blowing in the wind, his eyes narrowed against the sunlight, Jory might be anyone on his way to a picnic by the seashore. Even so, Vaniok can’t help thinking of the shadow-stealer in the old story, a pale lanky creature who lived in the tall clock by the stairs, holding his breath all day behind the swinging pendulum, only to emerge at night when he crept through the house looking for the shadows of children who hadn’t stayed in bed. “The shadow-stealer has come out in broad daylight,” Vaniok imagines himself saying to Ila, a thought that brings him pleasure. Some time when they’re alone he’ll tell her his fantasy about angels passing across the countryside too. He’s glad he’s the one sitting beside her, since it hasn’t escaped his notice that Jory’s improved disposition seems to have a lot to do with her. Still, Vaniok is determined not to be bothered by any of this, he intends to savor the moment, speeding along this highway, headed for the ocean with his countrymen.