Faland added, “Ifshewon’t hesitate to risk her life, are you going tolether?”
Imagination failed him. He was so much less than he’d been.
“I didn’t think so,” said Faland.
Freddie bit his lip. “I have to know she’s all right at least.”
A faint gleam in Faland’s lighter eye and the tumble of half-mocking music went silent. “Well,” he said. “I could help you in that, perhaps.”
“Can you?”
“Yes.” He was looking straight at Freddie now, and the dusty silence in all the ruin was far worse than the background of violin music.
“What do you want?” Freddie whispered. He thought he knew the answer.
But Faland surprised him. He did not ask about the pillbox. “Tell me a story that frightens you.”
“Why?”
“You are full of questions for a man solely concerned with the fate of his beloved sister.”
Freddie still hesitated. “And if I tell you…”
“Then you will see her, and not endanger her life. I swear it.”
Freddie said, “But you know what frightens me. I’ve told you—” He didn’t remember what he’d told Faland.
Faland began tuning his fiddle, as though in anticipation. “Not that. Tell me why you scream at night.”
“No,” Freddie whispered. The memories that woke him screaming all involved Winter. He wasn’t ready to—
Faland said, “Leave her to her fate, then, what do I care?” He drew his bow lightly across the strings, made a moue of dissatisfaction at the sound, tuned the violin again.
He couldn’t go to Laura. That much was clear. The brother she’d loved had died in the pillbox. But if he could do even this small thing, from afar, to ensure her welfare, then it was cheap at the price of any memory. And again, he felt himself yield. “Your word?”
“Yes.”
Freddie was silent, then. What frightened him? Memories were growing harder for him to dredge up, and when they came they were fainter, like ink too much handled. And Faland wanted to hear about one of the days that had no words, that should stay in his mind, always unvoiced. He thought of the night he believed Laura had died, opened his mouth with the road to Brandhoek already glittering foully behind his eyes. But he was suddenly afraid that the memory of grief was part of the edifice that fixed his love for her in his mind. Could he not rid himself of sorrow without losing the rest?
Faland waited.
What, then? Was he afraid of the hotel? No. He was afraid of how much he never wanted to leave the hotel.
Without consciously deciding, he found himself speaking of the walk from the shell hole to Ypres. It all came back to him: the noise, the smell, Winter’s hands holding him back from the water, holding his soul together. His courage, leavening the horror, the only reason Freddie had come out alive, and sane. He retched on the words, and didn’t know whether it was from the memory or his sorrow at losing it. Already the color of Winter’s eyes seemed less immutable in his mind. But he told it.
This time Faland listened with his lips a little parted. As though he could drink up Freddie’s whole life, swallow it for nourishment.
At the end, Freddie was weeping, and Faland let out a long, delighted sigh.
Freddie said nothing. He looked up and the hotel was beautiful, warm and gilded, although shabbier than ever and the broken glass was still on the floor. Reality was a crumbling thing, a rotten tree.
“Is this place a ruin?” he whispered.
Faland reached out and tucked a strand of Freddie’s hair behind his ear. Freddie hadn’t noticed how long it had grown. Caressingly, he said, “Not to you, little soldier. Not as long as you’re with me.”
The fire was so warm. Faland’s fingers were tangled in his hair. “I saw a ruin,” he insisted.
Faland said, “Don’t look at it. Look at me instead.”
