Before Page 16

  He throws the flame and there is a last near moment of silence, the unassuming sound of birds and cicadas, the flame on the bedspread. Foom. The bed explodes and Simon ducks out onto the balcony; the drapes are afire, licking quickly onto the ceiling, and just before he turns to go down the outdoor stairs, Simon sees the fire blackening the mattress.

  He walks down the spiral staircase and does not look back until he has nearly crossed the lawn. The birds now seem to be calling out an emergency to one another, and the sun porch is completely engulfed and a dark cloud is rising from the roof, rolling against the sky. His green Mercedes is up here, through this small grove of woods, on the abandoned dirt road.

  He drives in a calculated fury down the darkening coast. He has a suitcase in the backseat with clothes and cash; in another car that waits for him in a drugstore parking lot there are more clothes and cash and a number of new identities. After half an hour of driving he gets onto Route 9, controlling his speed a little more carefully; the road winds above cliffs, by cold, majestic homes that are lit against the sky. His headlights sweep over oak, ragged pine trees. Here the road rises; the sea stretches before him, a dark eternity. Here is the dirt pull-off. He slows, and then, where the dirt begins to pitch downward again, he opens the door and now goes out shoulder first, rolling, a crack to his head and elbow, scuttling under the scrub brush. Stunned, he watches the Mercedes drift down, picking up speed, toward the guardrail; just yesterday, at eleven at night, he checked that the rail was loose enough not to hold the weight of the car, and the car snaps through easily now. The drivers’-side door swings open as the car bumps over the cliff, taillights blazing, and the vehicle is gone with a heavy, brief explosion of sound. Ghost-Man ducks, for a car whooshes by, lights washing over the trees above where the Mercedes has gone. There are lights on in a mansion high above him, but he doubts he was seen if someone was on the lawn; all they would have noticed, quite distantly, would have been the hesitation of the car and the lights continuing into the trees, then going out. Still, he must quickly get moving.

  He raises himself painfully—tests his joints. His arm seems all right. By the time he makes his way to see the car it is almost fully submerged, taillights and green disappearing sluggishly into the waves. He goes back behind cottonwood trees and thickets of sumac and witch hazel, picking his way along the rocky coast—something he practiced yesterday as well—until he is out of eyesight of the mansion. Then he is on the dark highway. Everything seems large and solid, too still, suddenly, after his frenzied evening. A ten-minute walk and he is at an intersection that leads to a small village; the pharmacy is only two miles away. A dog is barking, and the sound and smell of the sea become more distant. There are insects sounding here in the weeds. Ghost-Man walks, watches pale summer homes in the darkness.

  * * *

  Many hours later, at a hotel in Pennsylvania, Ghost-Man gets up and throws sheets aside and does not turn on lights. His arm at the elbow and shoulder is bruised, throbbing. There are rivulets of water light dancing on his shade and ceiling, and he raises the shade and sees what woke him: Someone has turned on the lights of the pool.

  He is on the second floor and as he looks down a group of drunks are coming out, laughing, some jumping into the water, and someone—the manager—is admonishing them and the pool light goes out again and what is left is the roof of the hotel, a flag flying, an astonished moon. And the drunks go off to bed and very soon a square light of window just below, across the courtyard, comes on, and the occupants have drawn only lace curtains and Ghost-Man can see a man and a woman, just arrived from the night of revelry, kissing. The woman reaches both arms across, swiftly takes off her dress, then falls on the bed, pulling the man atop her, her legs enveloping him. There is laughter. Ghost-Man watches. His hands grip the windowsill; his eyes remain fixed on the figures below.

  NINETEEN

  In the darkness behind her lace curtains Tika is being filled, and she lets herself go with Jesse’s lovemaking, lets herself scream with it, for Susan is gone and her landlord’s bedroom is in the back of the building and it seems as though the darkness is a conspirator, and she loves that she can tease Jesse and make him grow hard and then he can take her like this, and these moments of release. Whenever Susan is here their lovemaking is tense and exciting and quiet, but now she screams with Jesse’s thrusting, and it feels that her mouth could not go wider, and when Jesse turns her over she pushes her face into the pillow and takes that cloth with her teeth and feels the rawness of her scream in her throat, her chest, vibrating in her collarbone.

  She lies in his arms after, backed up to him, shielded by his lovely nakedness. The faint light from the street comes through the curtains and in a swath across the bed, across the door of the bedroom. The clock beneath her bedside lamp reads 4:05, burning numbers that make her bracelet there, her watch, red as well. The streetlight dims and is blocked for a moment and Tika turns and looks to the window but nothing is there.

  She nestles back to Jesse, his thick arm in sleep thrown haphazardly across her breasts. She strokes his forearm, massaging with her fingers the muscles surrounding thumb, strong wrist. In his sleep, he groans. She thinks about the moment she can bring Jesse to, as he makes love; he works for so long that he is exhausted, and then she can say something into his ear, or touch his scrotum, or arc her body toward him and spread her legs a little wider and it is suddenly as if another being in him takes over—this is how it is for her, too—and in that place beyond exhaustion Jesse pushes beyond his pounding heart; he tells her that in orgasm he sees, momentarily, light. Tonight before her own orgasm she saw the circle of Arabian dancers, the spinning veils and gowns and hands; she made a circle of her legs, wrapped them around Jesse, holding him, bringing him into his light.

  In a dream later Tika hears the sound of a woman crying with grief. Someone has lost a dog. Who is saying those things? Not Kascha, for Kascha has told Tika many times that she would like a dog, but that with her travel schedule it wouldn’t be fair. Such sad, hysterical grief. Tika feels the mattress shifting, Jesse sitting up—that cannot be a dream—but her arms are so heavy and independent that she has not a chance of rising. She senses Jesse’s lips on her cheek, hears his voice saying, “I’ll check it out, honey.” His weight lifts and she thinks she says, Thank you, sweetie, thanks for taking care of it. Someone is very unhappy. But she is not sure she’s said the words, is almost positive she did not, and Jesse’s footsteps creak across the floor and soon she hears him go out the back.

  She and Jesse have pulled into a gas station and the landscape around them is barren and as they get out of the car there are a lot of people there looking for a dog. Someone walks on the roof of the station. How the hell would the dog get up there? She wakes to footsteps on the floorboards coming from the back door. She stretches for a moment, anticipating Jesse, and she will ask him about the dog. The dog? Not a dream then, but a woman crying with grief, saying, “Someone killed my dog,” and this wakes Tika and there is a man who is not Jesse standing there, looking at her fiercely in this darkness and she screams and his hand is on her mouth and she is struggling, turning, pulling away and the hand is roughly replaced by cloth that smells of gasoline, she is choking on it and her hands are slapping back in terror but the cloth is jerked tighter and she screams in her throat and smells flesh of fist and the man pulls her upright, to get her on her knees, her neck cracking with this force and the voice is saying, “Sshhh, Christ, just listen. Just listen to me. I just will tell you, and then you’ll know, and I’ll be gone, just for once stay still and fucking listen —”

  Tika reaches and grasps the lamp and swings her arm with it hard, the cord snapping from the wall. She has aimed for the window, but the lamp falls short, ceramic and lightbulb shattering, and the gag tightens fiercely as Tika scrambles, trying to reach the clock, anything that she can throw. “Goddamnit, fuck,” the voice is saying, tight and controlled, close to her ear, “just won’t fucking listen.”

 
Snapping her head back, the man begins to drag Tika off the bed. Still she kicks, tries to get her hands back at him, her fingers into his eyes, listening to the man breathe, horse breaths, and he says, “Oh God, oh my fucking God”—is he crying?—“now you fucked up everything. I could have just fucking talked to you. That’s all, to make you see.”

  There is rapping, pounding at the front door; Jiri’s cane, Jiri is here. Oh, sweet Jiri. “Tika. Tika. What is going on? Open this.” And there is a hesitation and then Jiri is smashing the glass and the man holding Tika is saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” and Tika hears Jesse’s voice at the back of the house, pounding on the door there, and the man and the cloth suddenly are gone, a knife, a package of papers sprawling on the floor, and when Tika looks up she sees the figure of the man in her bedroom doorway, his head turned toward the back, for now Jesse is breaking the door open and yelling her name in the hallway, and the man, in that dim light, that heavy smell of fuel everywhere, swivels his head and disappears and bangs through the front door, and Tika looks through the window, and then Jesse is beside her, holding her, and on the porch the man from the darkness and Jiri are grappling, Jiri’s white fingers holding the man’s waist; in their struggle Tika sees a moment, a glance of Jiri’s teeth in the dark.

  TWENTY

  Jiri has his arms fixed around the waist. There are blows to his head, as if a board is being swung at him repeatedly. He shuts his eyes, hunches his shoulders, squeezes into bone; it is like holding a desperate, wild spider. Just hang on, goddamnit, he tells himself, just don’t bloody let him go.

  There is a guttural scream from the man above, a hard cracking behind Jiri’s ear.

  They are at the edge of the stairs. Then they are falling.

  * * *

  Now there is a heavy sound of crickets in the weeds. Jiri can hear them from where he is, at the foot of Tika’s stairs. The medics have just lifted him onto a gurney, an odd, cool feeling of swooping and then solidity, and the blue-white-red lights of police and rescue squads make steady explosions in the leaves nearby. The medics, Jiri realizes, think he is unconscious.

  “—doused her place with gasoline and was going to set it on fire,” one of them is saying, quietly, as he carefully straps belts about Jiri’s torso. “They think he killed someone in Medford tonight, and that he was the one, like a year ago, who murdered those two women a few miles away in Somerville and burned them in their houses—”

  A black man above Jiri, gently fitting foam about Jiri’s head, gives a low whistle. “God forbid. I remember that. These people are lucky.” Jiri sees the dark skin, nostrils, large hands moving.

  “This guy, here,” says the first medic, “he held him until the boyfriend and the police came.” Then, realizing Jiri’s eyes are open, he says more loudly, “Hey, fella. Rest easy. You’re quite a guy. You’re gonna be okay. How are you feeling?”

  But Jiri cannot speak. The eyes of the medic show a quick concern, and then the face is smiling again. “Just rest easy, fella.”

  But there is something I need to know, Jiri tries to say. It comes out a moan. Goddamnit. Now Anna’s sweet head is above him, against the lights of Tika’s house, and her head lowers and she is kissing his fingers. And Jiri wants to tell her not to worry but the words do not come; he tells himself to be patient and just then his father is here, on the other side, holding Jiri’s other hand. Behind his father’s form Trowbridge Street is a spectacular jungle of the leaves and red light of the fire trucks, the crackling of police dispatches. What is this place, Jiri? his father says. His father is in silhouette against the red, and when Jiri cannot answer him, he presses Jiri’s fingers as if in prayer. It is so startling—so breathtaking—to see his father that Jiri feels he will weep and tries to raise his head but he cannot move it.

  One of the medics is telling Anna that she can ride with him and they are making sure his head is stabilized and the gurney is moving now, branches running above, and Jiri wonders where Tika is, but when they raise the gurney, a strong clicking of metal, he can see that she is right here, where his father was, saying, “Jiri, oh, Jiri,” and she is all right, and That is what I needed to know. The musician with the glasses is behind her, holding her shoulders, good boy. The boy was tough and fought with the man when Jiri no longer could.

  The raising of Jiri’s body brings the cool sensation again and there is pain in his head and neck. They take in the legs of the gurney, and trees over Jiri are sliding, becoming the white ambulance ceiling.

  “We’ll meet you guys there,” Tika says.

  “Yes, honey,” Anna says.

  Jiri feels suddenly that his back is horribly strained and he tries to say so and Anna is next to him and there is a sharp smell of alcohol and Jiri sees the medic looking at Anna. Then the doors close; they become a distant pair of windows, distant leaves glittering, vibrant—is he a boy, looking at the leaves of Bohemia?

  Anna speaks in Czech to him, very close, and far beneath them the wheels of the ambulance roll, moving over the familiar surface of Trowbridge Street. Streetlights whisk through the windows, then steady in a turn, and the ambulance accelerates again, the siren starting up, and they are on Cambridge Avenue, rushing fast through the September morning, Anna holding Jiri’s hand tight between her own.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to express my gratitude to my editor, John Parsley, for his empathy and patience and wise eye, and my agent, Maria Massie, of Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, for helping put these pages into print.

  I was blessed in the revising of this book by Carl Beckman, Kerrie Clapp, Richard Fleischer, Emily Hamilton, Jack Herlihy, Stacy Howe, Ruth and Josef Hůrka, Kristin Livingston, Linda Martin, Sean McKenna, Conan McKye, Mark Morelli, Cristina Mueller, Marwa Othman, Carol Thomas, Enid Thuermer, Frank Reeve, Vĕra perl, Freddy Sullivan, and librarians at the Tucker Free Library in Henniker, New Hampshire, including Helga Winn, Lori Roukey, Betty Rood, and Jill Stearns. Ken DeStasio, a speech language pathologist at the Rutland Regional Medical Center in Rutland, Vermont, helped me determine the course of this story, and we lost him far too early. All of these people helped me with research, read my work in progress, and gave me hope.

  Others, in a very difficult time, gave me the strength to keep going with this manuscript and lifted me onto their shoulders: Bill Cantwell, the family Dubus, Margit and Wayne France, Matt Miller and my brother, Christopher Jan Hurka, and his family—Caryn, Ian, Nick, and Noel. Dr. Montford (Bunny) Sayce has somehow kept his faith in his student all of these years.

  I thank Dr. Peter Paicos and his team at the Winchester Wound Center in Medford, Massachusetts, and the administrators, nurses, and medical teams at Winchester Hospital in Winchester, Massachusetts, for their unfailing kindness to my family and my father.

  Dr. Jerome (Jerry) Zacks, of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, was a true angel of mercy for my family and gave my father extra time with his loved ones. Heather Heckman-McKenna kept close watch on my heart—thank you so much, wonderful Heather. Ellen Nickel-Stone held me and showed me the stars.

  And my father, Josef Hůrka, worked tirelessly on this book with me until he went to those stars—revising, translating, making sure of the accuracy of the work, particularly regarding intelligence and Resistance information. So Dad, thank you, as always: We are forever soldiers together.

  J.H.

  ALSO BY JOSEPH HURKA

  Fields of Light

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  BEFORE. Copyright © 2007 by Joseph Hurka. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 
; Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, copyright © 1964 by The Orion Press, Inc. Original copyright © 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  First Edition: May 2007

  eISBN 9781466880009

  First eBook edition: July 2014