It took Freddie a moment to pick out Faland. He was across the room, his back turned. Freddie’s first emotion at the sight of him was relief. As though familiarity were stronger than any reflexive horror. He tried to claw his anger back. He needed the courage.He’s going to turn round, and I’m going to ask him again which one is the door outside. And he’s going to tell me, and I’m going to go. I’m no puppet.
But Faland didn’t turn.
Freddie’s skin prickled. Faland was facing the grand mirror over the bar. He had put down his violin. He wasn’t laughing or talking or pouring wine. Freddie found himself stealing toward him. The room was packed, but Faland was all alone in his corner of it. Freddie came up behind him. He didn’t see Winter and Laura in the mirror. He didn’t see anything he understood at all.
The mirror flickered with images. A throne. A dead forest, a red-laced sky. A city shining gold like the peeling gilt of the hotel and a light that made Freddie want to sob…
Faland turned. Freddie tore his gaze from the mirror. Faland snatched up a bottle of wine and drank, throat working as he swallowed. “Come to pay up, Iven?”
“What do you see?” whispered Freddie. “In the mirror—what is it? What do you want?”
Faland put the bottle down. “Oh, no. No, I never promisedyoustories. I don’t have any you’d care to hear, anyway. They’d freeze your blood. No, tell me a tale, Iven, I’m waiting.” His hand had fallen on the violin case; his fingers flexed. His face was flushed with wine, his eyes glassy with it.
“Why?” said Freddie. He’d had noble visions of standing beforeFaland in defiance, demanding his freedom. But what he said was, “I’d work for my keep or—or anything. You can’t just—just take my—you have no right!”
Faland said, bitter as aloes, “It’s the pattern of the times. Were you expecting honest justice? There’s none. It’s a new world now. It eats you up, sinners and saints, all alike.”
“Tell me who you are.”
“You know,” said Faland. “Or you think you do. But you don’t. No one’s the same now. Not even I.”
“You lied when you said it’s my choice to leave. I couldn’t. All the doors were locked.”
Faland drank again. “You didn’t really want to go. You still don’t. You think you can best me, and you know there’s no victory to be had outside.”
The mirror was dark now. Faland had nearly finished the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. In his face, in that light, was the shadow of a terrible beauty, timeworn like his hotel. The light silvered his hair. Freddie, with clairvoyance borne of despair, recognized Faland’s expression. With slow surprise he said, “You hate this place, don’t you? You hate everything. You hate the war as much as I do.”
Faland drew the cork on a new bottle and raised it in toast. “Yes, I hate it, clever boy. It’s a hell with no master, that men made themselves.” He drank. “Of course I hate it.”
Freddie whispered, “But can’tyouleave?”
Faland set the bottle aside,thump,on the bar. His voice dropped confidingly. “Oh, yes. But do you know the worst of it, Iven? I love it too. Have you been thinking me a poor victim, just like you? No. Do you know what men do here? They turn to me. They choose me. They sayBetter you than that.Over and over they choose me.” Avarice now as well as despair in Faland’s eyes. “They hand their souls to me. As you did. That’s why I’m here. Because I cannot bring myself to go.”
Freddie’s throat had tightened with shrinking horror, and the worst of it was he still hovered halfway between recoiling andyielding. The glitter of Faland’s lighter eye was frightening in his flushed face. His voice dropped. “But, you know, you’ve only ever told me things you want to remember. You could tell me things you want to forget.”
Freddie’s throat closed. Faland waited.
There weren’t words for some memories. The very language he’d learned in his boyhood did not feel equal to describing some memories. They were better off left wordless. Formless, hidden. Forgotten.
Forgotten…He looked at Faland with sudden hunger.You could tell me things you want to forget.
Of course, to do that, first he had to remember.
“It’s not all bad, is it, Iven?” said Faland softly.
Freddie stood caught between conflicting impulses. He thought Faland knew it, and savored his distress. His gut knotted in fear. He was yielding, he was glad to yield, and he was so afraid. “Please,” he whispered, but he didn’t know what he was asking for.
Faland just watched him. No mercy at all in that face, but who needed mercy when someone looked at you like that, like he understood every thought that passed through your mind? Like he would know every nuance of your soul before he devoured it?
Freddie bowed his head. He thought a moment. “It was raining in billets, when the order to advance came and we…”
· · ·
He told Faland everything he could remember of that advance on the Ridge, and every word hurt. The formless days that had lain like bitter fog in the back of his mind must be given phrases, given color and shape and hours and minutes. Conjured there, in the flickering dimness of the hotel:This happened, and that and that.No euphemism would satisfy Faland, no barrier, however small, between experience, mind, and voice.
The words dragged him back, made him live it all again, caught helplessly in his own mind until he was sweating and sick and gasping, as though mud and gas and rain could be embodied frommemory. The tale took him all the way to the pillbox. “And then it was dark,” Freddie said, gasping for air.
“And then?” said Faland, gently.
