dressed,” said the waitress. The guard agreed that, yes, he was dressed warmly.
“He can’t be far,” he added. He couldn’t have got very far, the waitress repeated. Bloch noticed a damaged set of antlers over the juke box. The waitress explained that it came from a stag that had wandered into the minefield.
From the kitchen he heard sounds that, as he listened, turned into voices. The waitress shouted through the closed door. The landlady answered from the kitchen. They talked to each other like that a while. Then, halfway through an answer, the landlady came in. Bloch said hello.
She sat down at his table, not next to but across from him; she put her hands on her knees under the table. Through the open door Bloch heard the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. The child sat next to it, eating a sandwich. The landlady looked at him as if she hadn’t seen him for too long. “I haven’t seen you for a long time,” she said. Bloch told her a story about his visit here. Through the door, quite far away, he saw the little girl sitting in the kitchen. The landlady put her hands on the table and turned the palms over and back. The waitress brought the drink Bloch had ordered for her. Which “her”? In the kitchen, which was now empty, the refrigerator rattled. Through the door Bloch looked at the apple parings lying on the kitchen table. Under the table there was a bowl heaped full of apples; a few apples
had rolled off and were scattered around on the floor. A pair of work pants hung on a nail in the doorframe. The landlady had pushed the ashtray between herself and Bloch. Bloch put the bottle to one side, but she put the match box in front of her and set the glass down next to it. Finally Bloch pushed his glass and the bottle to the right of them. Hertha laughed.
The little girl had come back and was leaning against the back of the landlady’s chair. She was sent to get wood for the kitchen, but when she opened the door with only one hand, she dropped the logs. The waitress picked up the wood and carried it into the kitchen while the child went back to leaning against the back of the landlady’s chair. It seemed to Bloch as if these proceedings could be used against him.
Somebody tapped against the window from outside but disappeared immediately. The estate owner’s son, the landlady said. Then some children walked by outside, and one of them darted up and pressed his face against the glass and ran away again. “School’s out,” she said. After that it got darker inside because a furniture van had pulled up outside. “There’s my furniture,” said the landlady. Bloch was relieved that he could get up and help bring in the furniture.
When they were carrying the wardrobe, one of its
doors swung open. Bloch kicked the door shut again. When the wardrobe was set down in the bedroom, the door opened again. One of the movers handed Bloch the key, and Bloch turned it in the lock. But he wasn’t the proprietor, Bloch said. Gradually, when he said something now, he himself reappeared in what he said. The landlady asked him to stay for lunch. Bloch, who had planned to stay at her place anyway, refused. But he’d come back this evening. Hertha, who was talking from the room with the furniture, spoke while he was leaving; anyway, it seemed to him that he had heard her call. He stepped back into the barroom, but all he could see through the doors standing open everywhere was the waitress at the stove in the kitchen while the landlady was putting clothes into the wardrobe in the bedroom and the child was doing her homework at a table in the barroom. Walking out, he had probably confused the water boiling over on the stove with a shout.
Even though the window was open, it was impossible to see into the customs shed; the room was too dark from the outside. Still, somebody must have seen Bloch from the inside; he understood this because he himself held his breath as he walked past. Was it possible that nobody was in
Johnny Shaw, Matthew Funk, Gary Phillips, Christopher Blair, Cameron Ashley