Then had come a week of torture: letters, unanswered. Interviews, rejected. Visits to the city magistrate, a wallow in impotence (the old fellow worried his knuckles, looked Anton over, asked, “Have you proof that your sister has been raped, tortured, or coerced to prostitution?”). No power on earth could oblige Hiltan Posnr to meet his wife’s brother.
Anton had felt plunged into a bog of nightmares: Julita given to Posnr! The pig man! Rich, but foul. More powerful than anyone but the Magar, but hated and feared. Immensely successful (his sausages chewed as far away as Paris), but still just a provincial, belching bore, withdrawn into his forty-hectare wallow, downwind from which houses had to be torn up and moved.
It is Ravel he profanes. Anton forces his hands not to clench.
Posnr glances up, still giggling. Anton’s look of rage and disgust nearly finishes him. He doubles over, tears runneling both cheeks. The dog hiccups.
I could kill him! The idea flashes through Anton’s mind: the hard bottle, the slippery deep shit, the hogs. But he does not want to be a killer. And what if the man overpowers him? Posnr has shoulders like smoked hams, fists like Clydesdale hooves. And I have a brain, thinks Anton. A useless brain!
“You’re a vile man.”
Instantly he regrets his words. Posnr lifts his head, suddenly alert, eyes predatory. “You to be talking. Who cut and ran? Who took his last pay from the mill and scurried off to study music? Left mother and dad to stumble through a poorly year? Glah. She’s not been silent, my little Julita. She hates you for leaving them. She says so.”
Anton turns his back on the pig man, ramrod straight. Fights for breath.
“She hates you, she hates you—”
He whirls around. “I’ll do anything you ask. Please let her go home with me!”
“Not to be, boy.”
“I’ll work for you.”
“You! You’ll stoop that low for little sister, eh? Dip your toe in pigshit?”
“I’ll pay you back. Everything you gave to them.”
“A music school dandy.” Posnr looks as if he might be sick.
“I worked in the mill for years.”
“Stop it, boy. You’re a runt pup, we won’t argue that.”
“Don’t keep her, sir. I can—”
“You can be damned! She’s my wife! Maybe she don’t love me yet, though she hates Brother Anton more, but she’ll mellow. And my Julita knows her place. I know what you think. That I’m a savage, an idiot. But I’ve got more brain than you, my little charmer. I’m not as big as some in Bucharest, but in this town I’m on top. On top! The Magar says it—know your place. I send him hogs. He lets me be.” With a thick finger he stabs at Anton. “And you have forgotten your place, nephew, and for that you will pay a pretty coin!”
Anton does not move or speak or breathe. Posnr watches him another moment, spits, lowers his hand and his eyes. The silence pulls out. When he looks up again, his face is changed: equally cold, but over his asymmetrical eyes has settled a glaze of milky fascination.
“I had my way with her. What kept me waking nights.”
Anton’s whole body twitches.
“I can have my way with you, too, boy. I can say, ‘Come carry me out of this shit hole,’ and you will. That’s what I want.”
Anton only stares, bewildered. Posnr’s gaze slides to the dog.
“I want you to do it now.”
“And you will—”
“Now, I said.”
He can’t believe it. He is opening the gate, slushing over the gravel margin, and then, agonizingly slow, he puts his black buckled shoe down in the shit. His foot disappears, then the cuff of his trousers.
There is no bottom!
Posnr howls with laughter.
Anton finds solid ground at mid-calf. Balanced, he plants his other foot. Deeper. Warm below the surface. The dog yelps sharply. He feels the gray ooze in his shoe. Another step. And another.
Posnr is leering with delight. Anton tastes bile.
Another.
Posnr gurgles. Throws his bottle away. Waves his hand, in a kind of bloated lilt.
Four more steps. The buckle on his right shoe gives way.
Posnr is singing. Horrible, unspeakable.
Posies for the mayor, poppies for the king
Three. Two.
Violets for the merchant-man
One.
With his golden ring!
“Now then! Keep me clean, boy! Ha!”
Crusted boots clump Anton’s thighs. Thick arms drape over the young man’s shoulders. Posnr’s bulk slides down, and gasping, staggering, Anton catches him, hoists him. The dog drools.
“Higher!” The brandied voice in his ear. Somehow, he nudges Posnr a few inches up his back. Turns. Pulls. His bare right foot leaps free like a wrenched stump, descends again. His left follows.
“No matter what, you don’t drop me, see?”
Another step. The gate hangs open. A wet lip grazes his ear.
“You’re a kind lad.” Something new in Posnr’s voice. Fatigue?
Shame?
Then the dog growls, and growls louder. Barks, hysterical. Posnr’s limbs tighten like pythons. A splashing, sucking sound from behind. Anton reels, sways, recovers.
The dog’s teeth close on his wrist.