After the Downfall

He didn’t get a chance till late in the afternoon. He spent some of the time in between asleep on the nice, new mattress. All too soon, it would be full of bugs, as the old one had been. He didn’t like that, but after more than five years of war in Europe he didn’t think it was the end of the world, either. He’d been lousy and fleabitten and bedbug-bedeviled before. You itched, you scratched, you killed what you could, and you got on with your life.

When Drepteaza came in – accompanied, as usual, by tough little Bucovinan guards – he bowed lower to her than he had to Rautat. “I thank you,” he said, the polite particle properly in front, and waved to show why he was thanking her.

The native soldiers laughed at him. Drepteaza smiled, “You say, ‘I thank you’” she told him, using the feminine form of the pronoun. Hasso swore in German, which made him feel better and didn’t offend anybody here, and thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Too goddamn much stuff to remember! Drepteaza went on, “And I say that you are welcome. You will be here a while. You may as well be comfortable.”

He doubted he would ever be comfortable in this world. The twentieth century had too much that simply didn’t exist here. Electricity, hot and cold running water, refrigeration, glazed windows, phonographs and photographs, radios, cars… But, again, he’d done without most of that stuff for years. You didn’t have to have it, the way so many people thought you did. Life was nicer with it, sure, but you could manage without.

“And you’ll earn these things,” the priestess said. “We do expect to learn from you, you know.” She repeated herself in Lenello so he could have no doubt about what she meant.

“I understand,” he answered, which wasn’t the same as promising to deliver. Whatever he gave the Bucovinans would hurt the Lenelli. The hope that he would give them things that would hurt the Lenelli was the only reason the natives hadn’t murdered him instead of taking him prisoner.

Drepteaza eyed him shrewdly. “You understand, but you don’t want to do it. Plenty of real Lenelli do, and you aren’t one.”

You’re just as foreign there as you are here, so why not help us? That was what she meant, all right. She wasn’t quite right, though. Hasso felt more at home among the Lenelli than he did here, and he doubted things would have been different had he landed here first. The Lenelli came closer to thinking the way he did. They were conquerors. They were winners. Bucovin was a land trying to figure out how not to lose. It wasn’t the same.

He couldn’t say that to Drepteaza without insulting her. So he said something simpler: “I swear – swore – an oath to King Bottero.”

“I’ve heard about it.” The swarthy little priestess looked at him. “How much would your oath matter if you weren’t sleeping with that blond cow?”

“Velona’s no cow!” Hasso exclaimed: the first thought that sprang into his head. You could call her all kinds of things, but cow? If you called her a cow, you’d never met her and you had no notion, no notion at all, what she was like.

Drepteaza gave him the native equivalent of a curtsy; it looked more like a dance step. “Excuse me,” she said with wintry politeness. “That blond serpent, should I call her? That blond wolf-bitch?”

Those both came closer. Still, Hasso said, “I don’t insult you or your folk.”

This time, Drepteaza looked through him. “The Lenelli are not your folk. You said so yourself.”

And he had, again and again. “But – ” he began.

“But what?” The priestess sounded genuinely confused. Then her eyes widened. She said something in Bucovinan that he didn’t get. She must have seen he didn’t, for she went back to Lenello: “You really love her!” She couldn’t have seemed more appalled had she accused him of breakfasting on Grenye babies.

He remembered that Velona had sounded just as horrified herself when she realized the same thing. “Well, what if I do?” he said roughly, doing his best to forget that.

“Moths fly into torch flames because they must. Do they love them when they do?” Drepteaza said – the exact figure Velona had used.

Hasso’s ears heated. “I don’t know. I’m not a moth,” he said.

“No, you’re not, which only makes it worse. You have a choice, and you choose to be a fool,” Drepteaza told him.

The more she argued with him, the more she put his back up. “What am I supposed to do? Tell my heart no?” he asked.

“You would if you had any sense. If you had any sense – ” Drepteaza broke off and threw her hands in the air. “Oh, what’s the use? If you could show a fool his folly, he wouldn’t be a fool anymore.” She turned and spoke to the guards in Bucovinan: “Come on. It’s hopeless. He’s hopeless.”

Hasso understood that just fine. Yes, she was a good teacher. She just didn’t want to teach him anymore. The closing door and the thud of the bar on the outside falling back into place had a dreadfully final sound.