Episode 127 · A Folding Chair

The sirens stopped at the service gate. Car doors, two, four. Footsteps on gravel, hurried at first, then slower, like men who did not know what they were stepping on.

The investigator came first along the path between the greenhouses, a flashlight in his hand. Behind him, two uniformed officers stopped where the gravel ended and the bank began, and went no farther. The beam passed through the steam in thin white strips.

He looked at them first. Not Varren. Them. Soles saw him count them the way he had counted them on the office stairs: Tesa, water still running from her clothes, the broken cast held to her chest. Krista, kneeling beside Soles, the old line on her throat purple in the flashlight. Maxim, flat on his back, his ankle swollen to the size of a fist, raising one hand to say he was all right. Soles, his left hand full of blood and the other beneath his coat.

Then the light moved across the bank to the folding chair.

Varren sat there with his hands on his knees, calm, his face still wet. He did not stand. He looked into the flashlight without blinking.

— Good evening, he said.

The investigator did not answer. The light moved down without hurry to Varren’s hands, to the cord with two knots on his left wrist, and stopped there.

— I told you to stay home, the investigator said without turning toward them.

— He called us, Krista said.

— And you went.

— We all went, Soles said.

Only then did the investigator turn. He looked at Soles the way he had in the office, his eyes dropping slowly toward the place beneath the coat and rising again. This time too, he asked nothing.

The flashlight moved farther along the stone bank and stopped on the gloved hand protruding from the bank.

The investigator stood motionless. Soles heard him breathe through his nose, slowly, the way a man breathes when keeping himself from stepping back. Then he did take a step. Forward.

The shoulder and arm came out of the stone as if from water frozen all at once. The star of cracks had smooth edges, as though the stone had grown around the arm. The black glove shone wetly in the light.

The investigator came to within one step and bent down. He did not touch the hand. He touched the stone beside it with his fingertips.

— It’s warm, he said quietly, almost to himself.

— So is the water, Soles said.

The investigator pulled his hand back and held it in the air for a moment, fingers spread. Then he wiped it on his coat.

— What is this?

Soles thought honestly, with everything he had, and found nothing he could say aloud without sounding like a man who needed a hospital for something other than a rib.

— I don’t know, he said.

It was true. The investigator looked at him and saw that it was true, and Soles saw him seeing it and felt, for the first time since knowing him, something like pity for the man. He had come with a flashlight looking for a person and found a bank for which no regulation said what to do.

— Call the fire brigade, the investigator said over his shoulder. In the morning, not now. Have them bring a chisel, a drill, whatever they have. And no one writes anything until morning. Not in a notebook, not in a phone.

One of the officers headed for the gate almost at a run, and Soles understood he was not running only to get there faster.

Varren stood from the chair.

He rose slowly, one hand on his knee, and the remaining officer put a hand to his hip. Varren walked to the investigator across the wet stones, stopped two steps away, and held out his hands, wrists together, palms up.

— I paid Kerr, he said. You’ve already read it. Now you’ve heard it from me too.

The investigator looked at those extended wrists, at the cord with its two knots.

— Do you know what that means? he said.

— Better than you do.

The investigator took the handcuffs from his back pocket. He did not hurry. He fastened the right wrist, then the left over the cord, and tightened them to the second click, no more. Varren looked at them the way he looked at a well-made part.

Soles stood. Krista held his sleeve for a moment, then let go.

He walked over to them and stopped in front of Varren, close enough to see his eyes without the flashlight. The investigator took one step aside and said nothing.

Varren looked at the handcuffs. Then at Soles, and the corner of his mouth lifted into something like the smile from workshop mornings, when he came with warm bread and a question he already knew the answer to.

— I could leave, he said quietly, for Soles alone. Even with these. Even after the door closes. You know that.

— I know.

He did. Even now, with Diplomat and Doctor gone, with the Garden drawn tight inside him to the size of a street instead of a world, Varren could have broken that chain like cord. Something you practice long enough no longer belongs to the voices. It belongs to you.

The chain drew taut between Varren’s wrists. He looked down. He stayed that way a moment, then brought his hands together until the links hung loose again.

— I’m not going to leave, Varren said.

— Why?

Varren thought. For the first time that evening, Soles saw him search for an answer he did not already have prepared.

— Because it will be quiet there, he said at last. And because you know where I am.

Soles read him for the second time that night and received the same answer: none. Varren stood before him with his hands cuffed and let everything show: a tired man, relieved. That did not reassure Soles at all.

— Can I take it? Varren asked, looking toward the folding chair on the bank.

The chair stood open beside the water, steam passing between its slats.

— It’s a chair, Varren said. It’s not a weapon.

The investigator was silent a long time. Then he walked to the water himself, folded the chair with a dry wooden snap, and tucked it beneath Varren’s arm across the cuffs.

— As far as detention, he said. Someone else decides there.

— Thank you.

Varren started toward the gate between the investigator and the officer, the folding chair under his arm like a man going fishing. At the edge of the old garden, he stopped and turned. Not toward Soles. Toward the others.

He looked at Tesa, narrow-eyed, the cast against her chest. At Krista, who did not lower her gaze. At Maxim, who pushed himself onto one elbow to see him.

— You did well, Varren said. All four of you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

No one answered.

Varren nodded as though he had received an answer and left. Soles watched the flashlight disappear among the greenhouses and listened a while longer to the gravel and the squeak of the chair. Then not even that.