“Yes,” said Faland. “I remember everything.”
“I don’t,” Freddie whispered. “I don’t remember any of them.” His mouth had gone dry.
“Well,” said Faland, “you paid with them, didn’t you?”
“I— You can’t possibly—” But Freddie’s eye caught Faland’s and he knew abruptly that hecould.He searched his memory.Howwould he even know what he’d lost? “How many nights?” he whispered. “How many stories have I told you?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Who are you?”
Faland was leaning on the bar now. “I? A relic in a brave new world. Does it matter? You told me willingly.”
Freddie said nothing. He found himself wishing he hadn’t realized. He wanted to sink back into torpid peace. His gorge rose.
Faland’s hungry gaze seemed to swallow every detail of Freddie’s horrified face, before he straightened and said, “Off you go, then.” He pointed. “There’s the door, go.”
But Freddie stood still.Go?he wanted to scream.Go where?But if he stayed, he’d— Oh, God.
Faland’s voice dropped effortlessly, took on an intimacy that made Freddie’s whole body quake. “You asked me once why I’m here. Well, I shall ask you. Why areyouhere? Don’t you know?”
Freddie’s eyes never left Faland’s face.
“Because out there you can give up every piece of yourself for nothing, let the mud swallow you, nameless and naked, or you can sell yourself to me, story by story, for all the delights of peace. There are two evils”—his voice turned wry—“and I am the lesser. Besides, where would you go?” The words seemed to drip down Freddie’s body, and pierce his heart. “Imagine for a moment that your sister were not dead. Do you think, for even an instant, that she’d be glad to see you?”
Freddie was silent.
“Shall I say it for you?” said Faland. “Deserter. Traitor. Coward. You’ve already decided. If you go out and they catch you, you won’t be honorably dead anymore. You’ll be another poor fool who ran.They’ll put you up against the wall in the courtyard of the mairie in Poperinghe, and they’ll shoot you.”
Freddie didn’t say a word.
“And your German,” Faland said. “Winter? He tried to warn you, didn’t he? Told you to be brave. But you weren’t. This world wants nothing of you save your death, Wilfred Iven.Yet I want more.I think you know that too.”
Freddie groped for a reply. He’d always had words. He’d been a poet. But now the only thing that came was fragments: “No—I’m not a coward.” He couldn’t think. He couldn’t even move when Faland put out a crooked finger and tilted his head back.
“No?”
Freddie was like a puppet under the other man’s fingers. He stood perfectly still. “How can you do these things?” he whispered.
“That is not the question, is it?”
Die,Freddie thought.Of course it is better to die than to sell my soul, piece by piece.Then he thought,Is it?He realized, to his horror, that his loneliness was trying to answer for him. He had tipped his face into the other’s hand, yearning after the mortal warmth in the violinist’s palm, and even more, the terrible understanding in his eyes. Faland might ruin him, Freddie thought. But he’d know him first. Out there, Freddie was just a body dressed in drab.
Faland pushed back Freddie’s hair, bent lower, and murmured, “Stay then.” In his eyes was an endless hunger. “Tell me a story.”
Freddie tore free and ran for the door.
· · ·
He didn’t know which door, of course. He groped for the nearest, opened it, and ran through. The door opened onto a long corridor, carpeted, with sconces burning low on the walls. The whole way was lined with doors. Freddie ran past them all. He ran until his first blind panic had faded and was replaced by disjointed thoughts.I have to get out of here. But there’s nowhere to go. Better to stay. What does it matter?
Winter had tried to warn him. Laura wouldn’t have wanted thisfor him. He came to another long hallway, full of doors. He must get out. Was it this door? He tried it. Locked. All the doors were locked. Creeping dread filled him. Take that staircase? Where was he even going?
He looked back, like a child checking that the bogeyman hadn’t followed him home.
The drowned man was there. Standing, dripping, in the hallway, his face fish-belly white, blue-lipped. Grinning, endlessly patient. The drowned man would always be there…
Freddie bolted again. He ran until his legs seized. Until he caught his foot on nothing and fell and couldn’t bring himself to rise. He curled his body into a ball, and waited for the corpse’s clammy hand. It was no more than he deserved.
