The Wooden King. Thomas Maxwell McConnell

doing all I can.”

      “Don’t blame it on the war again.”

      He was taking breath to speak when she said, “I know. It’s time for you to take Aleks to school,” and tore the covers open to the cold.

      In Wilson Wood they talked of Trn’s boyhood in the country, of walks he’d taken, wheat to his shoulder and lowing cow heads over the fences with their wet tongues and furry chins and once in winter a man with reins skiing behind a black horse in a pasture of snow. Gypsy wagons on lost roads bending through the forest and trampers on holiday dressed as cowboys and Indians because of books by a man named Karl May. Hitler had read Karl May but Trn didn’t add this. Before them like crystalline gossamer in the morning sun a great web loomed and they waited silently for its maker to appear till the air erupted among the trees. Nations of birds struggled from their branches and cried to escape but before they could take flight another report disturbed every leaf. Trn reached for Aleks already reaching for him and huddled the boy behind a pine, bark bristling at his shoulder, Aleks panting under his chin, resin and spring’s sweet decay and a burn that scorched the sunbeams slanting through the wood where smoke coiled the trees.

      A fourth or fifth shot cracked before they heard the voices, the laughing. Aleks whispered, “Is it cowboys?”

      “Hurra!”

      “Feuerfrei!” one of them cried and shouldered his rifle and fired and the bark of the pine next to them splintered into yellow meat. Another clapped the rifleman on the back, “Nein, nein, nein,” and chuckled and shouldered his own weapon.

      Trn waved out one arm. They were only twenty paces away now. “Bitte, bitte, meine Herren. Wir sind zwei Zivilisten.”

      They all had their tunic collars undone in the heat, cloth caps folded in their belts, sweat standing their hair. Six, seven, laughing. A day in the wood, away from the sentry box or the drillplatz. They came forward in their tall boots as Aleks left the tree and one of them made much of him, ruffled his hair, brushed some straw from his shoulder.

      “Ach, mein Bruder,” he said, smiling as he looked at Trn. “Ich habe einen Bruder, der sechs Jahre alt ist.”

      He held Aleks’s chin, asked how old he was and Aleks looked at Trn. Trn said the boy was six now and the soldier roughed Aleks’s hair again. With a rifle butt one of them shattered the spider’s web and had to pick the filaments from the stock while the others laughed. The one with the younger brother apologized when Trn explained that families often walked the valley floor, picnicked here. They slung their rifles and went the way they’d come, began to sing.

      “Dear Fatherland, put your mind at rest.”

      “Are you all right?”

      “Did you see their guns?”

      “I did.”

      “Firm stands and true the watch, the watch on the Rhine.”

      “He let me touch it.”

      “I know.”

      “It felt hot. The metal felt hot when I put my finger on it.”

      “I’m sure it did.” Trn pulled crumbs of bark from the boy’s dark hair, gave him a good brushing down to his brown knees. “You look almost like you did when we set out. Almost presentable.”

      He brought him near inside one arm before standing.

      “What a story I have for Grandfather and Mother now,” his eyes agleam, his cheeks glowing. Miroslav asked what sort of rifle was it and said perhaps it came from the gun works across the city and was forged by Czech hands and how even in wartime irony took no holiday and Alena said they were both fools ever to go into the woods anyway and could not go again.

      The match flame disappeared into the bowl of the pipe and reappeared amid the gray smoke. Miroslav shook it out and tossed the matchstick into the ashes in the tray. Trn began to replace the pieces on the chessboard.

      “And so,” Miroslav said, “after a long time in the antechamber circling his thumbs Hess was brought before Churchill and Churchill said, ‘So you’re the madman.’ ‘Oh no,’ Hess replied, ‘only his deputy.’”

      Trn laughed with him.

      “You know,” the old man said, “now that Hess has flown the coop to Scotland the thousand-year Reich has become the hundred-year Reich.”

      “How is that?”

      “A zero has been subtracted.”

      Trn smiled and the old man drew on his pipe and said through the curls of smoke, “I see someone who is tired.”

      Aleks took his hand from his eye.

      “I’m not tired.”

      “Come on, young man,” Trn said. “Stand and we’ll make ready your couch.”

      The boy strained his jaw to hold his lips together but a yawn stuttered through.

      “Good night, gentlemen. I’ll see you in the morning.”

      “Good night, Grandfather.”

      “Good night to you, Grandson.”

      In the bedroom Trn gathered up the armload of bedding from his wardrobe, the boy’s pajamas folded on top.

      “Be sure he brushes his teeth properly,” Alena said from her book. “And we’re almost out of toothpaste.”

      “I’ll get some.”

      He lowered the music to a whisper, switched off the second lamp, tucked the sheet round the cushions while Aleks dressed for sleep. He had unfolded the blanket when the cuckoo came over the radio from Vienna, four notes that instantly widened the boy’s eyes.

      “That’s the highest state of alarm,” Aleks said. “That means they’re almost here.”

      “We’ve got time. Just put on your clothes over your pajamas. Maybe we won’t be down long.”

      He opened the bedroom door again.

      “There’s a warning.”

      She rolled her eyes toward the laundry on the rack in the corner, her underthings, some handkerchiefs of his. “I’ll have to get dressed again.”

      He went back through the sitting room, nodding at Aleks’s progress—“Hurry, Daddy”—knocked at Miroslav’s door.

      “Yes?”

      On his bed the old man sat with ankles crossed, pipe cupped in his hand.

      “Air raid.”

      “I’d like to get my hands around that cuckoo’s neck. Won’t they leave us in peace?”

      Feet thudded down the stairs and a voice laughed, “Schnell, schnell.” A weight leaped onto the landing so that their door shook in the jamb. The old man raised his eyebrows.

      Trn said, “I’ll go see if the Asterovi need help and meet you there.”

      Aleks in the hall looked up at him.

      “Shall I get my coat?”

      “Yes, it will be cool.”

      “Where are you going?”

      “Upstairs for Mrs. Asterova. Why don’t you get Mother’s and Grandfather’s coats for them. I’ll see you downstairs in a moment.”

      “The twins have already gone down.”

      “Haven’t they though.”

      The eyes peered dark and large from the pale face.

      “Did you get my mask?”

      “Tell Mother. I’ll be with you in the cellar.”

      He