Episodul 231 · Someone to Ask

By the following afternoon, Soles was back in the station office, with his bag between his boots and the signed release order on the desk.

He wanted the return journey settled before they found another reason to keep him. The man in gray had asked for his account first.

— At a forester’s cabin, Soles said. Alone.

— Resistance?

— At the inn. Then at the bridge, and at a stream. By the cabin he couldn’t keep going.

The man in uniform looked at the dressing beneath Soles’s shirt.

— And then?

The Hunter’s knife had stayed on the bench. Soles could still see where the man’s hand had left it.

— He put it down.

The man in uniform paused over the form, then wrote something below the time of death. Beside his elbow lay the photograph Soles had sent from the road. Neither man asked why the knife had been out of the Hunter’s hand.

The man in gray turned the release order around and checked the signature he had put on it.

— Completion confirmed. You’ll receive the travel details this afternoon.

Soles kept his hand beside the page.

— And Bull?

The uniformed man opened another folder. Fatal training incident. The words stood beneath the date; below them were the accounts of the assault that had begun it.

— The finding has been submitted, the man in gray said.

They had kept that part of the bargain too. Soles took his copy of the release. The transfer form from the Hunter’s pocket remained folded inside his coat; he had kept the photograph on his own phone.

— Reporting arrangements will be sent to you, the man in uniform said.

— At home.

— Yes. Your service continues.

Soles put the copy away and stood. His left forearm pulled beneath its dressing as he lifted the bag; changing hands pulled the cut at his ribs and the one at his shoulder instead. He settled for holding it close and went back across the yard to collect his clothes. At the gate, someone called from his right. He had to turn before he understood.

In his room, the return ticket was waiting on the agency phone. Soles checked the destination twice, then put it down and called Maxim.

— You alive?

— Yes.

— Good. Tell your employers. They seem to think answering a phone is classified.

Soles leaned against the edge of the bed. He had planned to begin with the train time.

— Are you busy?

— For you? No. For the dog chewing my slipper, very.

A muffled complaint came through the phone, followed by the scrape of a chair.

— There. What is it?

Soles looked at his hand. The report was finished. The people who had wanted it were satisfied, and there was nothing left on the desk to correct.

— I haven’t been all right.

Maxim said nothing for long enough that Soles checked the screen.

— I’m here, he said.

— I kept thinking I’d ring when I had something better to tell you.

— You can ring with something worse.

Soles let his head rest against the wall. He had kept working so nobody would have to ask how he was. Haya had hidden what hurt him in the same way, with another job finished and nothing said. Calling Maxim had been harder than telling the office what they wanted.

— I don’t know what I can explain on the phone.

— Then don’t do it on the phone. Tell me the train.

He read the time aloud. Maxim repeated it and asked which station. They went over the journey, including a change Soles had missed on the ticket. When they finished, Maxim stayed on the line.

He closed his eyes against the wall. Haya stood beside the new light in his garden. Soles had watched him die and kept reaching for the useful hands. Now those hands offered a place to sit.

Soles touched the forester’s sleeve. Rough cloth caught his fingers. Haya looked straight at him.

Rest.

Soles opened his eyes. He stayed on the bed until his breathing eased.

He had done his own killing. The memory offered him no way to put it somewhere else.

— Thank you, he said.

— You’re welcome. Now stay there a minute. I need someone to explain to this animal that I own two slippers.

After the call, Soles found the woman in the training jacket putting equipment away. She looked toward the bag over his shoulder.

— Thought you were leaving.

— I am. Could you watch me try something? I keep missing what happens around me.

At the far end of the room, rolled mats stood in a rack beside the cupboards. The bench she had been clearing faced them at an angle. Soles set his bag by the door and explained what had happened beside the boiler. He told her how little of the rest of the room he had noticed.

She moved a weight off the bench. Soles told her about his ear, and she came around to his left before answering.

— Show me.

— If you watch me the whole way, it doesn’t work.

— Useful thing to know.

She returned to sorting the equipment. Soles went behind the rack, where the mats broke the line between them. In the narrow space there, he held a fold of his sleeve between his fingers, as Haya had held the torn seam while he worked.

For weeks he had tried to summon the man who knew how to wait. Now he remembered how Haya had sat with the driver until the other man’s breathing eased. The waiting had belonged to someone.

He let out a breath and asked for a little of that quiet.

It came while he was still awake.

He could feel the response settle through his shoulders into his feet. The edge of the mat was close to his cheek; beyond it, the woman counted something into a box. He moved along the rack, keeping the rolled canvas between them, and reached its end before she looked up.

Her glance crossed the cupboards and stopped.

— There you are.

He had moved too far past the last mat. She was looking straight at him now, and he could feel how useless it would be to keep trying to become part of the room.

He released the fold of his sleeve.

A weight struck the bench. He flinched at the sound; he had missed her lifting it.

— Again? she asked.

He told her what he had missed.

— Same place, she said. I’ll give you something else to listen for.

The second time, the quiet came with the breath. He kept close to the rack, but when she called his name he answered, and her eyes found him at once.

She made him stop there.

He sat on the bench while she finished with the weights. His shoulders ached with an effort no one watching would have seen, and the room seemed louder than it had before.

This time, when she asked if he needed a minute, he took it.