Mysterium

He stood a moment watching the snow that had begun to fall beyond the double panes of the bedroom window. He thought about Christof. Christof still acted like a stranger. The way he looks at me, Demarch thought. As if he’s seeing something alien, something that makes him afraid.

∞

Bisonette telephoned after five days. “We think you should go back tomorrow,” the Censeur said. “I’m sorry to cut short your time with your family, but the arrangements have already been made.”

“What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“Only Clement Delafleur getting a little overzealous in your absence. I’m given to understand he’s hanging children in the public square.”

∞

He kissed Dorothea good-bye. Christof was presented for a kiss and consented to it. Probably he had been coached.

He told the Haitian driver to stop at the Bureau Centrality on the way to the airport.

Guy Marris was in his office. Demarch said he was stopping to say good-bye; he had been summoned back to duty.

His friend wished him luck and shook his hand. At the door, he tucked a sheaf of papers into the pocket of Demarch’s veston. Neither man spoke of it.

It had snowed a little, the Haitian driver said, but it would snow much more before long.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Linneth arranged with the school’s principal to take Dexter Graham back to his apartment, as inconspicuously as possible, in the principal’s automobile, which he still drove from time to time although his hoard of gasoline was almost exhausted. Mr. Hoskins was wary of her intentions but understood the urgency of the situation. She was aware of the way he watched her in the rear-view mirror. The distrust was mutual, but there was nothing to be done about that.

— Fresh snow had fallen, and the rear tires slipped each time they turned a corner. No one spoke during the drive. When the car stopped, Linneth helped Dex out of the -rear seat. His blood, she saw, had stained the upholstery. The principal pulled away quickly and left them alone, in the twining veils of snow.

Linneth guided Dex up the steps to his apartment. He was lucid enough to use his door key but he passed out again when he reached the blood-stained bed.

Linneth had learned emergency aid during her three years with the Christian Renunciates. She stripped his shirt and unwound the sodden, dirty bandage from his arm. Dex moaned but didn’t wake. The injury under the bandage leaked blood and suppuration in lazy pulses. Linneth cleaned it with water and a cloth, as gently as possible, but the pain was unavoidable; Dex screamed and twisted away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But this has to be done.”

“Get me something. The aspirin.”

“The what?”

“In the bottle on the kitchen counter.”

She fetched the small tubule of pills and peered at its label. The fragmented English defied interpretation. “Is it a narcotic?”

“A painkiller. And it’ll bring the fever down.”

She shook out four tablets at his instruction and he swallowed them with water. She said, “Do you have a disinfectant, too?”

“No. Uh, wait, there’s some Bactine in the medicine cabinet…”

“For cleaning wounds?” She didn’t like the way his eyes wandered. He might not be coherent.

“For cuts,” he said. “You spray it on cuts.”

She found the Bactine and experimented until she understood the operation of the aerosol bottle. When she came back to the bed Dex had closed his eyes again. He didn’t rouse until she bathed his injury with the disinfectant; then he screamed until she gave him a wadded pillowcase to bite on.

The wound was patently a bullet wound. The missile had passed through the fleshy part of his upper arm. She would have liked to close the injury with stitches, but there was no needle or thread at hand. He did have sterile cotton in a bag in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and she used some of that to pack the wound and a clean linen bandage to wrap it. But his fever was very high.

She pulled a kitchen chair near to the bed and watched him. Within an hour the fever had subsided, at least to her touch, and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. That was the effect of the antipyretics, Linneth supposed. Still, she didn’t like the way his wound had looked—or smelled.

The light from the window was thin and gray. The snowy afternoon had begun to wane. She called his name until he opened his eyes.

“Dex, I have to go. I’ll be back. If possible, before curfew. You’ll stay-here, won’t you?”

He squinted as if to bring her into focus. “Where the hell would I go?”

“Out to make more trouble, I don’t doubt.” She put a second blanket on him. The room was cold and he owned no fireplace or gas jets.

∞

She hurried through torrents of dry, granular snow to the town’s medical clinic.