A sudden crash rattled the window.
The spell of the music shattered, and Freddie leapt instinctively for the cover of the rhododendrons. But it was too late: A man was standing next to the window, eyes perfectly round. It was Bowles, his commanding officer’s servant. He was staring at Freddie.
Freddie forced himself to stillness, did the only thing he could think of.When poor ghosts walk the earth…Like a man gone beyond guilt, Freddie raised a hand in lonely salute, and ducked into the shadows. He was shaking.
No one came after him. But the music did not begin again.
· · ·
Sometime later, a familiar step scraped the icy gravel and Faland appeared beside him, under the shadows of winter-black trees. Freddie leaned against one of them, still shivering. It hadn’t occurred to him to leave. “That’s why you want me to tell you stories. For your music.”
Faland was silent.
“But why do I have toforget?” said Freddie. Did he even want to remember?
He thought Faland wouldn’t answer, or if he did it would be a joke or a lie. But finally Faland said, “I made music for myself once.” He glanced up briefly, and Freddie saw a single star, there and gone in the grayness. “And put it into the world. But now I cannot create without destroying.”
“Why not?”
“Prying is so impolite.”
“That’s what your mirror does, isn’t it? You see who people are and play it back on the violin.”
With a faint, familiar malice, Faland said, “They have to pay for their wine somehow.”
Chilled, Freddie said, “Does everyone forget themselves?”
Faland shrugged. “People forget anyway. The war shatters them, remakes them. At least I make something of them. Otherwise they merely—fade to gray.”
Freddie said, “Make what? In the dining room, in the music—that wasn’t me. That was—that was just a scream.”
“Oh, child,” said Faland very softly. “It was you.”
Reality tilted again for an instant, as though his soul made Faland’s music but the music in turn remade him, round and round, ouroboros forever, until he was small enough to fit into the strings of the violin. He gritted his teeth, managed to say, “What’s the point of it all?”
Faland turned to look at him.
“What you played, tonight, it was justdinner music. No matter how strange or—or pretty. No matter that you got it from—from me, from all those things I told you. They heard, but it didn’t change anything. It didn’t matter. You don’t matter. But you could. I saw you in Ypres. You were like a king. Nothing touched you. You have that—and you just play games with people’s lives. Making and destroying. For what?”
“Well,” said Faland, a needling edge coming into his voice. “Perhaps I lack the right inspiration. You certainly have not given me the best of yourself, have you?” In his face was a flicker of hunger, almost lust. “Tell me what makes you wake screaming in the dark. The memory at the bottom of your soul. Give it to me.” His voice crawled over Freddie’s skin. “Tell me about the German.”
Freddie, his mouth dry, whispered, “What will you do with it?”
“Rend men’s hearts. Don’t even tell me you don’t want me to.”
Freddie said nothing. He was trembling. He’d go mad if he gave that memory. He knew it suddenly and clearly. It was a cornerstone of the tottering edifice of his soul. All that he’d become was in thatmemory: fear and courage, darkness and kindness. Lose it and he’d collapse like a house of cards. He couldn’t lose it. He couldn’t bearit.
Faland had stopped walking. He watched Freddie in silence. Waiting.He’d wait forever,Freddie thought in a daze, not sure if he was awed or horrified. He didn’t know what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, but he found himself whispering “You said that you were a bad soldier once. What did you do?” He thought Faland wouldn’t answer.
Faland said, “Why do you ask questions that you already know the answer to?” He relented. “I rebelled.”
He couldn’t think, with how his heart was beating. “How did you hurt your leg?”
“I fell,” said Faland. The dark eye ate up the light, darker than the haze of a tarnished mirror. “And then I woke up in darkness.”
The boy Wilfred would have been sick, and terrified. But Freddie didn’t know what to fear now. Perhaps the poet in him was exalted. Perhaps the poet understood. Perhaps Faland was a poet himself. He couldn’t speak. Faland’s voice was like frayed silk. He added, “And that is all the story you will get from me. I have shown you what I can do. I will show you more, if you will tell me why you wake up screaming, Wilfred Iven.”
POPERINGHE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
