Episodul 21 · Obligations

Serren’s reply came on Saturday morning through Krista. He could receive them Monday at five, in the pavilion. Beneath the confirmation, she had forwarded one more sentence from his message:

If this concerns the obligations assumed upon admission, it would be best to specify what, exactly, you believe remains outstanding.

Soles remembered the message Krista had shown him at the table. They had asked about Kerr, his recommendation and the conditions of his admission. They had not claimed that anyone owed them anything.

Did you speak to him separately? he wrote.

No.

He unfolded the sheet of questions and added another: what obligations did Serren think they had come to demand?

He confirmed that he could make it and asked Krista to begin the conversation.

Why?

The note about the chair and the word he had said to Maxim was still on his phone. He knew what was in it without opening it.

Because you know him. And because I’ll want to get to Kerr too quickly.

All right. But if he gets to Kerr before you do, don’t stop him.

I won’t.

He called Maxim after noon. This time he told him before the meeting: the day, the time, the place, and who was going. He read Serren’s sentence word for word, because he felt that from memory it would begin to sound different.

Maxim listened to the end.

— Obligations, he repeated.

— We didn’t write anything about obligations.

— Then he thinks you know something you don’t.

— Or he thinks I’m someone else.

There was a scrape of a chair over concrete.

— Monday at five I have a delivery on the other side of the city, Maxim said. I can move it earlier. I’ll wait in the truck on the street behind the garden. I won’t go in.

Soles almost said there was no need. He remembered his bloody hand on the truck step and let Maxim finish.

— All right.

— And if you come out through a different door from the one you entered, you message me.

— I’ll message you.

— Not just when you’re home again.

— I know.

— Good. I’m trying not to learn about our plans from paramedics.

Varren came by on Sunday. He brought bread, as usual, and a box containing something the woman at the shop had recommended without telling him what it was. They opened it at the table and examined it with the seriousness of two men unwilling to be the first to admit they did not know how it was supposed to be eaten.

— I think you heat it, Soles said.

— I think she sold us whatever she had left.

They heated it. It was good.

Soles told him about Serren’s message and about Maxim, who would wait in the truck. Varren listened while tearing the corner of a slice of bread into smaller and smaller pieces that he did not eat.

— So you’re not going alone.

— No.

— Good.

He said it simply, and Soles thought he saw his shoulders ease. Varren gathered the crumbs beside his plate.

— And after? he asked.

— After what?

— If Serren tells you why he vouched for Kerr, what do you do with that?

Soles thought about it. In the first few days he would have answered on the spot. Now the question seemed heavier than the ones they had put on the sheet.

— If someone sent Kerr, Soles said at last, I want to see him. I want him to tell me to my face why.

— And if he did? If you understood?

Varren kept his eyes on the crumbs.

— Understanding doesn’t mean forgiving him.

— No. It doesn’t.

— It means I know who I have to stop.

Varren nodded, wiped his fingers, and stood to put the kettle on.

— Most people never get to know who they hate, he said with his back to him. They hate a shape. A shadow. Knowing exactly who it is is almost a luxury.

— It doesn’t feel like one.

— No. Not to me either.

Later, after Varren left, Soles went out into the garden. The evening had cooled, while the greenhouse still held some of the day’s warmth. He watered the rows at the far end and stopped at Mary’s flowers. There was nothing he needed to do there. He stayed anyway until water began to gather around the stems and Mina came to see why he was standing still. He shut off the hose.

He thought about what he had told Varren. That he wanted to see him. The words were true, but they had left a strange taste, like repeating a promise once made to someone else.

He went inside.

Before bed he visited the other garden. The tree and the luminous plants remained where he had left them. Leonatus stood beyond the narrow leaves; Decimus stood behind the broader ones. Neither turned when Soles spoke.

He wanted one of them to tell him how to speak to Serren. The king’s last morning came back instead: men waiting around a dying man, hands close enough to help.

Soles opened his eyes. He left the questions where he could find them.

On Monday he worked in the shed until three, because otherwise he would have looked at the clock every ten minutes. He straightened a crooked support, then had to correct it again. The bandaged hand let him hold the wrench, but not tighten it all the way. Twice he had to stop and wait for the throbbing in his fingers to pass.

At four he changed and put the sheet of questions in his breast pocket. The note about the chair stayed unopened.

Krista was waiting at the public entrance to the garden with the permitted copy of the ledger reference and a thin scarf she kept adjusting even though there was no wind. When she saw him, she looked first at his hand, then at his face.

— Did you sleep?

— Enough.

— You lie as badly as Maxim.

— You’ve met him once.

— It was enough.

They took the main path toward the bridge.

— I wrote to him this morning, she said. He didn’t reply again.

— Maybe there was nothing to reply to.

— Maybe.

On the bridge, Soles glanced at the dark water and kept walking.

Beyond the iron fence, the yellow truck was parked by the curb, Maxim behind the wheel. Soles messaged him.

Going in.

The reply came before they reached the pavilion.

I see you.