Fireshadow (5 page)

Six

Vinnie

Twilight, the sky a blaze of crimson, stars winking into nightly existence between the branches with an intensity he'd never experienced in the city. Springy pine-litter soft and dry beneath him, Vinnie concentrated on one of the pinpoints. The immensity of distance was a distraction from dangerous, hypnotic memories stirred by the fireshadow.

Even with eyes and mind on the void above, part of him was still aware, still feeling the presence of the flames trapped beside him in their stone prison, the ring of rocks containing the licking fire much as a magic circle or pentagram might hold some primal power at bay. In the chill night the fingers of heat that stretched and caressed the tender skin of his face lent warmth but no comfort – the touch of a devil, he thought.

Crunch of footsteps on gravel. Sitting up.

‘Hi there.'

The girl from the campervan stood uncertainly a few feet away, outside the dancing ring cast by his fire.

‘Hi.'

‘Do you mind if I join you? My grandfather goes to bed early, I'm afraid.'

She loomed into his space, into his thoughts. Even in darkness, with only the flickering red and yellow glow for illumination, Vinnie was uncomfortably aware of her eyes – piercing, blue, probing, taking in his face, the scar.

He didn't want this. Didn't want the intrusion, or the judgment which he knew must follow. Didn't want to be called to explain his presence in this haunted clearing. But could he refuse? Hers was the first voice he'd heard since the previous morning, and despite himself Vinnie was drawn to it, taken suddenly and unexpectedly by the idea of conversation – any conversation – with a stranger, with someone who didn't know. Didn't know him, didn't know his family. Someone with no interest in the state of his mental health or his ability to ‘let go'.

The girl stood expectant, her weight nervous on one hip.

‘Sure, take a seat.'

A smile, hesitant. Should he be smiling?

‘I'm Vinnie.'

‘Helen.'

Pine needles crackled as she settled beside him, firelight skittering across her face, throwing half of it into deep shadow. Her handshake was so different from the sterile, professional touch of the nurses or the perfunctory contact of his parents.

‘I hope I'm not intruding. I'd finished cleaning up from dinner and really didn't feel like reading – we've been doing that all afternoon – and I saw you sitting over here so I thought . . .'

‘Nah, that's okay.'

The forest woke around them and a chorus of insects screeched at the night, bringing with it the rustle of predators and prey alike.

‘You getting away from it all for a while?'

‘Something like that.'
Drop the subject
, his tone implied, but gently, and she did. ‘What about you?'

‘I volunteered to bring my grandfather here. He's visiting from Germany.'

‘And he wanted to come here?'

‘He's got his reasons.'

Now it was her voice carrying a quiet warning. Both sat in silence, listening to the night.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?'

‘If you're having one. I'd love a tea.'

‘I've only got one mug.'

‘I can get mine from the campervan.'

‘Beaut.'

Vinnie watched her receding figure – a nice one, he noted – slipping through the shadows to the dark, crouching shape of the campervan, then busied himself filling the billy. When he returned from the creek, she was already by the fire, poking at the coals with a long twig, a packet of biscuits and a stainless steel mug on the ground.

‘So, Vinnie, what do you do?'

What do you do? The question brought with it a surge of panic, nauseating in its unexpectedness. Vinnie fought it down, struggled for an answer.

‘Dunno. Not a lot.'

‘Unemployed?'

‘Been in hospital.'

Silence again. The awkwardness of strangers feeling their way around barriers.

‘What about you?'

‘I'm at uni. First year.'

The billy bubbled and Vinnie poured, the two mugs throwing ghost-plumes into the night air.

‘That's good. It's colder here than I thought it would be.'

‘Yeah. You got plenty of blankets in that van?'

‘Grandad's in the van, I'm camping out. A man his age needs a little privacy. So do I, for that matter.'

‘Right.'

‘What about you? You warm in your little tent?'

‘Yeah. Got a good sleeping bag.'

‘Have a biscuit.'

The crackle of cellophane sounded foreign in the forest darkness.

They munched. Her company was good. He was enjoying it. That admission, and all that it implied, came as a surprise. He didn't voice it, didn't want to, and knew instinctively that he didn't need to. Sitting in silence, companionable and pleasant, came the realisation that tomorrow he would find himself reassessing some things, some aspects of the person he'd become.

Dregs of tea thrown into flames, the fire hissing an angry retort.

‘I'd better get off to bed.'

‘Yeah, me too.'

‘You going to be around tomorrow?'

‘Guess so. No other plans, anyway.'

‘I might see you then. Nice meeting you, Vinnie.'

And she was gone into the night, leaving Vinnie alone with the quiet skitter of nocturnal business, and his thoughts.

August 1943

Erich stood in the rain, the driving, icy rain, willing it to dissolve him, wash him away, take from him all the buzzing madness he could feel building up and up inside himself. A couple of hundred metres down the hill the lights of the perimeter glowed through the sleet-hazed night and the occasional searchlight probed the gloom lethargically. If one caught him in its gaze there'd be problems, questions, but Erich didn't care. All he was aware of was his need for the rain to pound from his head the memory of Günter writhing in agony on the bed, four guards holding him in place while the doctor sawed.

It had taken a little over half an hour. A bloody, horrible thirty minutes of frantic activity. The doctor, calm and controlled, hacking steadily at the shattered limb, severing tendons, muscle and bone and issuing calm instructions to Erich, who daubed antiseptic onto raw tissue. Then the cauterising, the sizzling stink of flesh and hot iron, and then, finally – mercifully – silence.

Now Günter lay quiet again, lost in morphined sleep. The sheet fell flat on the mattress where his leg had been, gradually staining with blood that seeped from the bandage-swathed stump. The hospital was a muggy fog, a stinking combination of wood-smoke, blood and antiseptic, and Erich needed to get outside, into the rain, into the clean, pure, storm-charged air. The doctor slouched exhausted on a chair beside the bed, his shirt-front stained crimson, barely even aware of the door slamming.

The rain drove harder, lightning crashed somewhere out in the forest, and Erich turned his face to the driving streams, savouring the delicate sting on the skin of his eyes and lips. He let them sweep him away, take him off to familiar places, smells, sounds, voices.

‘Erich?'

Someone called from the hospital verandah – a person disembodied by the darkness and the driving power of the storm.

‘Erich?' The voice became his sister's, looking at him in his uniform, half-brother, half-man, leaving forever to catch a train to the Italian front.

‘Erich!' His mother's quiet sobs in the midnight darkness, unaware of her son – her soldier boy – listening silently at the door.

‘Erich.' A hand came to rest lightly on the shoulder of his sodden uniform. Something wrapped itself around him, warm, enclosing, pushing away the freezing power of the night and the rain and bringing him back through time, through space, into the icy present of an Australian forest winter.

‘Grandfather says you need to come in now.'

She'd been sent to the guard's mess during the amputation, and had returned afterwards, alerted by the four guards returning, bloody and shocked, to their own quarters. They'd tried to persuade her to remain a little longer, to have another cup of tea, not wanting her to return so soon to the blood-stained stink of the tiny hospital, but there was something in their eyes, in their manner, that made her frightened – not for herself but for her grandfather and the boy – so she'd half run, half stumbled back through the compound gates, over the mud and into the hospital.

‘Erich, come on.'

Alice tugged gently at Erich's shoulder. Earlier in the day, standing proud in his thin brown uniform, he had tried to carry himself like a warrior, like a man. Now she felt her touch raise goose flesh on his chilled skin and the warrior was gone. Now she saw only a lost boy in a foreign thunderstorm, his fear and grief not quite fully swept away by the rain.

‘Come inside.'

Hugging the lapels of the magenta greatcoat, drowning in its warmth, Erich allowed himself to be led back up the stairs and into the hospital.

Seven

Vinnie

Vinnie slept late, emerging bleary-eyed into a world already well awake. Kangaroos, their morning feeding over, had long retreated from the clearing into the forest to wait out the day. The campervan and tent were silent, their occupants either still asleep or off somewhere else. Keeping a hopeful eye in the direction of the other camp site, Vinnie prepared his breakfast.

He had enjoyed her company. No question about it. Her lack of curiosity, her willingness to simply accept the moment of companionship by the fire had appealed. It was nice just to be himself again.

He needed to go into town. The couple of days in the bush had exhausted his supplies faster than he'd expected. There were also things he needed and hadn't thought of, items like string and pegs.

The walk out took him past the campervan, its interior silent, its windows shuttered. Almost as soon as he stepped onto the trail and into the forest he was aware of movement in the treetops. Bush cockatoos, picking up his path and flitting in his wake, occasionally heralded his approach to the rest of the world with loud, grating screeches. His pack, free of tent and food, was light on his shoulders. It seemed no time at all until he was on the outskirts of town.

The small supermarket was open and a couple of old blokes were sitting and smoking on a park bench out the front. Vinnie could sense their eyes tracing across his face, absorbing the livid welt, making their own silent conclusions.

‘Poor bugger,' one remarked when they thought he was out of earshot.

The shop was cool, dark, the shelves cluttered with the usual cans and groceries but also the necessities of small-town life: hardware, fishing tackle, four-wheel drive accessories, tennis balls. A hand-painted mural covered the wall above a row of refrigerators. The artist had painted the whole region – rivers, roads, forests, camp grounds. Vinnie found the old town site where he had pitched his tent. Nearby, the remains of the prison camp were represented by a barbed wire fence and guard towers. The scale made it look much closer to Dwellingup than it seemed when walking the trail.

‘Can I help you?'

The speaker, a woman in a green apron, stood a couple of metres away, filling a freezer with boxes of fish fingers. Vinnie turned to face her and she visibly stifled a gasp.

‘No, thanks.' A muttered response. He retreated back from the lights of the fridges into the protective shadows of the aisles.

Tinned meat. Tinned fish. Tomatoes. Oil. Washing detergent. Tea towel. Pegs. String. Vinnie worked his way along the four rows of shelves, filling a small wire hand basket. At the checkout counter, a teenage girl rang up his purchases, her eyes locked on the scanner, or the till, or above his head, or anywhere but his face.

Cheeks burning, Vinnie emerged into the day. The light was fierce, scalding. It was close to midday. He found himself craving the solitude of the bush, the company of the cockatoos. On the way out of town he stopped at the pub, an old building with grubby lino floors and walls festooned with logging implements – saws and axes reminiscent of medieval torture. He bought a six-pack of beer and the man behind the bar sold it to him without question. He had always been big, and the scarring made it difficult to guess his exact age. That's one advantage, he thought.

While the barman was sliding the beer into a brown paper bag, the door swung open and a man in uniform entered. Vinnie started, at first glance thinking it was a cop. Closer inspection revealed the man's garb to be that of a forestry official.

‘Morning, Ernie.'

The man behind the bar nodded.

‘Morning, Jim.'

‘Busy day?'

‘Not so far. That'll be twelve-fifty, thanks. How about you?'

Vinnie paid the man and took his purchase, loading it into his pack.

‘Pretty quiet. Heading out to the old POW site this afternoon. A couple of people camping there at the moment, I'm told.'

‘Trouble?'

‘Nah, just want to have a look, make sure they're doing the right thing. Got a missing kid that the cops have asked me to look out for.'

‘Runaway?'

‘Yeah, something like that. Don't have all the details, just need to keep an eye out. A logger dropped him off here the other day . . .'

Vinnie hurried outside.

A telephone box stood on the other side of the road outside the tourist information centre. His mind racing, his pack in the dirt, Vinnie dropped a coin into the slot, listening to the hum through the earpiece. The phone gave thirteen rings and then the machine cut in, the greeting light and cheerful.

‘Hi, this is the Santianis'. No one's home so please leave a message.'

Katia's voice. Redolent with memory. Unchanged, happy, outgoing. He remembered the day his father made her record the message, and his refusal now to erase it, unable to bear the thought of wiping that last trace of her from the house. So now callers were greeted from the grave. Messages left for a ghost – except she was still alive, wasn't she? Kept in some kind of half-existence by his father in the thirteen words on that tape. Kept alive in the pocked and scarlet skin on Vinnie's face and neck.

The beep prompted him. His voice suddenly scratchy and hoarse.

‘Hi. Mum, Dad. It's me. Uhm . . . I just wanted to tell you not to worry, I'm . . .'

‘Vinnie?'

The machine clicked into silence, his father cutting across the recording.

‘Yeah.'

The line hummed. Linking them while at the same time holding them separate.

‘Where the fuck are you, boy?'

‘Listen, Dad . . .'

‘Your mother's going bloody insane worrying about you.'

‘Dad, let me explain . . .'

‘I'm not interested. Tell me where you are.'

Vinnie took a deep breath, his heart echoing.

‘I'm okay. Tell Mum.'

The earpiece clunked back into its cradle.

Shouldering his pack again, Vinnie drew a couple of ragged breaths, steadied himself against the weight and walked towards the bush.

August 1943

‘Here, you must eat.'

Günter lay, pallid and somehow empty, staring out the mud-streaked window and ignoring the bowl of porridge that Alice proffered.

‘He doesn't speak English.' Erich looked up briefly from his book.

‘He doesn't need to.' The girl reached out, rested her hand lightly on the soldier's arm, easing his attention back into the real world.

The murmur of rain was muted by the walls of the hospital. A dim, grey light filtered into the room and a couple of hundred yards away on the other side of the camp wire the dark tree line crouched, solemn and forbidding. Now and again large black birds, similar to crows or ravens, would flap silently through the rain, flitting ghost-like between the treetops.

Distracted by her touch, the soldier looked from Alice's face to the enamelled bowl and back again, managing a thin smile and a nod of refusal before returning to his brooding.

In the week since the operation Günter, who had been kept more or less unconscious for the first few days, hadn't eaten or spoken. Even after he had woken to discover the loss of his leg, he hadn't said a single word. Just lay staring into space or out of the window. When the doctor wasn't around he smoked cigarettes smuggled in by Erich but refused to talk, in German or otherwise.

The starvation was destroying him – the once fit and muscled body already shrinking and wasting before their eyes.

‘Please, Günter.'

‘Let me try.' Putting down his textbook, Erich crossed to the bedside and took the bowl from her.

‘Günter,' he said in German, ‘you are making this pretty lady worried. You, of all people, know that when a beautiful woman offers you food, you must eat.'

The man gave no sign that he had even heard Erich's voice, let alone understood the attempt at humour. He just lay and stared, seemingly lost in a world a long way from the wire and tree enclosed prison. Erich shook his head in frustrated anger and turned from the bed.

‘What is the point of eating now, young one?'

Günter's guttural accent, which on his first morning had struck Erich as both common and strong, now rang weak and empty. The voice of someone who already considered himself dead.

‘If you don't eat, you won't heal.'

Erich turned again to the sallow face which regarded him from the pillows.

‘This won't heal.' Günter rested his hand lightly on his stump. The sound of his laboured breathing filled the room, the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bedclothes seeming forced. ‘This scratch will be with me forever.'

‘What is he saying?' The doctor, who had been working at his desk, had risen at the first words of the conversation and crossed to stand beside Erich.

‘He doesn't want to heal.'

‘Tell him that he must eat.'

‘He knows. He doesn't want to.'

‘Does he know that Stutt has ordered me to force-feed him if necessary?'

‘I'll tell him.'

Erich translated the news and to his surprise Günter laughed – a hollow empty chuckle.

‘Tell the good doctor that I would like to see him try. Even without a leg I can still stand up for myself.'

Erich couldn't help but smile a little at the joke.

‘Not even you, Günter, could stand up to this man once he sets his mind to something.'

‘No?'

‘No. Besides, you owe him your life, so you should do what he says.'

The soldier turned his head back to the window. ‘Did you know that I have a wife back home?'

‘I did.'

‘What use will I be to her now? Better I think that the doctor here had not wasted his time on me.'

Erich allowed the words to hang in the air while he considered his response.

‘Does she love you?'

Günter shrugged. ‘She says she does.'

‘And you believe her?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then your question is stupid. Of course you will be of use to her. More than you will be if you become a skeleton, force-fed on baby food.'

‘What would you know of love, youngster?'

Suddenly the man in the bed was sitting up as best he could, propping himself up on one thin arm, his breathing more ragged with the effort.

‘What did you say?' The doctor interrupted, alarmed by the sudden flash of anger. Erich gestured him to silence.

‘I know enough from listening to the men in my division to understand that when someone loves, then a little thing like a missing leg is nothing. I know that when a man is facing a machine-gun-nest then some things, like the woman he will be leaving behind, are a lot more important to him than whether he has big ears or a missing tooth. And I know enough to realise that if a little wood-chopping accident is enough to make you useless in her eyes, then she probably doesn't love you at all.'

The words had poured themselves from him in an unexpected torrent and Erich's hand flew to his mouth, steeling himself for Günter's anger as what he had said sunk in. But the soldier stayed still, half propped on one elbow, regarding the boy not with anger but with quizzical amusement.

‘And you know all these things, do you? At the tender age of twenty-two?'

‘Actually, I'm seventeen. And yes, I do.'

‘Ah. Well then.'

Without further comment, Günter sunk back onto the pillows and nodded his consent to Alice, who began to spoon the congealing porridge.

‘What was all that about?' Doctor Alexander regarded Erich curiously.

‘Nothing important, Herr Doctor.'

‘You must have said something significant. I thought for a minute there that he was going to launch himself at you.'

‘We discussed his wife.'

‘His wife?'

‘Yes, sir. I told him that she probably didn't love him, and that he was most likely right to starve himself.'

‘You didn't, did you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

The doctor smiled. ‘Erich, sometimes I really do think that you would make a better doctor than me.'

‘Thank you, Doctor.'

‘Only some of the time, though. So don't go getting ideas. Now, how about going up to the mess and seeing about getting some tea?'

‘Yes, Doctor.'