The Wooden King. Thomas Maxwell McConnell

to pee, shook himself, buttoned again and went back to the library table. With Miroslav’s magnifying glass he examined a photograph, leafed back several pages to stare again at a string of six men reined together at the neck, crossed wrists bound before them. A warrior stood to the side, chin lifted, his spear and proud shield. Only he looked into the magic box. The others gazed each at a different patch of dirt in the jungle and waited for the word of this new master, this latest sword. The legend read CAPTIVES OF THE SLAVE TRADE. Under the glass the gray and grainy day of their humiliation. What looked like a gash on the left shoulder of the second man. Wound sustained in a losing cause. You could not see them with a magnifier but flies gathered there, creeping to the shore of blood to sip, the flesh creeping away in defense. You could see the raised tattoos, the striations of scarified cheeks. Chronicle of their tribe, now ended. Neighbor plunders neighbor and the spoils of war go under the hammer. In ancient Rome the market bustled and in Africa it goes on still. And here. It continues here.

      “Sir?” The clerk smiled with her mouthful of teeth. “Sir. We can’t locate that other volume.”

      He smiled in return. Poor girl. Incisors jutting as in the American cartoons they used to show.

      “I’m terribly sorry. It must have been misshelved.”

      “I understand.”

      She smiled again, so sad, and he felt his own smile sadden and depart.

      “We will search for it, however.”

      “Thank you very much.”

      She left for her counter, plump behind shifting beneath her skirt. He thumbed some pages, glanced over random passages, at his watch.

      “Trn.”

      He looked up at Dolezal taking a last step forward.

      “I see you’re hard at it.”

      Trn shrugged. Dolezal leaned over his paunch to raise the book, examine its spine.

      “Come on, man. You’re not still on this? Now’s the time to get on with all that research we’ve longed after. A state salary and no teaching to be done.”

      “At any rate,” Trn said, “some still draw a salary.”

      “I heard.” Dolezal stroked his walrus mustache. “Sad business about Miroslav’s pension.”

      “Especially sad for Miroslav.”

      “Why did they drop him, do you know?”

      “I suspect someone lied.”

      “Well,” Dolezal said, “good thing he has a son-in-law to look after him. Kupka has finished his book and begun another. I saw him here last week. I’ve an article on political economy coming out next quarter.”

      “Congratulations.”

      “Did you hear they’re organizing a conference after the new year, in Prague? At the German university.”

      “Who’s organized it?”

      “You know who. They’ll pay train fare. Free trip to the capital. Might inspire you to other work.” Dolezal removed his glasses, gasped on the lenses, plucked up the sweater stretched over his belly to wipe them. Squinting at the book he said, “I really thought you would have moved on to something else by now.”

      “What could be more appropriate?”

      “How so?”

      “Five trains left yesterday for the interior of the Reich. I’m sure you saw it in the papers. Five special trains in a single day.”

      “But that was voluntary. They raised their hands to go. They’ll be well paid.”

      “Isn’t voluntary an ambiguous term under the circumstances? And more importantly, from the standpoint of political economy, if the Reich’s so desperately overcrowded and requires Lebensraum why do they need foreign labor?”

      Still squinting Dolezal replaced his glasses, his nose wrinkling to set them right as he glanced about with round walrus eyes.

      “You should be careful,” he said.

      Trn lifted his cuff, closed the book as he stood.

      “So. I must be off. Goodbye, Trn.”

      “Goodbye, Dolezal. Congratulations again.”

      At the counter the clerk asked, “Will you be taking it with you, sir?”

      “No. No thank you.”

      “Thank you for returning it to the desk, sir. You’re always very kind to do that.”

      “The least I can do.”

      “We’re so shorthanded now that—”

      She looked left, right. The German swivel.

      “I suppose,” Trn said, “we should be grateful they’ve allowed the libraries to remain open.”

      “Thank you again, sir.”

      The wind was down and he carried his hat, paused to look back at the torsos of the four titans shouldering the library porch, the tension received down their shoulders from their bowed necks. He overtook the bearded kino man limping behind his piping cart, scanned the posters of an American Western, "Stagecoach," and wondered if Aleks might like to see it, John Wayne and Geronimo. In the next block the tram drew up with a blonde in one window. He eased into the bench directly behind her, the whorls of her ear, the fresh blush of autumn in her cheek. Mirrored in the glass her lashes blinked sleepily. Blonde, Germanizable. Twenty-seven minutes according to his watch. He crossed his legs and gazed at the window. Just time to ride the way north and walk to get the boy from school.

      They left Horst-Wessel-Allee for Hermann-Göring-Strasse and took the slope rising slowly toward the square, the street so busy they could not walk abreast, Aleks in the middle with a hand for Alena, a hand for Trn, leading them through the jostle, the songs. The way widened into Wehrmacht-Platz, the second Christmas of the war, their second German Christmas. In their staved pools round the old public well the black carp drifted through cold water. The buyers peered over, considered, pointed, the men in long rubber gloves reached to haul out the Christmas feast. “O Tannenbaum” from a chorus in one corner of the square, “Stille Nacht” from the competing steps of St. Jakub. All the towered clocks said afternoon but the light failed in the sky, the square so crowded, as if each cobblestone must be occupied.

      From wooden stalls like old barns, gaps between the rough and warped boards, the merchants hawked their grog and sweaters and wooden tops, fur caps and mufflers. A trio of policemen in black rounded helmets extended their fingers over a fire in a barrel. Smoke or steam or the fogs of breath everywhere rising. Aleks reached into a basket of stuffed animals guarded by a stout woman in an apron that fell to her muddy boots. She gummed a smile. Two of his fingers strayed over the rough fur, the leather patch of a nose.

      “Look. Here they come already,” Trn said bending to be heard. “Are you prepared?”

      A girl and a boy in their teens, the first in pure white, came to look down at Aleks and the angel said, “Have you been a good boy or a naughty one?”

      “Yes,” Aleks said, “very good.”

      The devil brandished a black cloth sack. “If he’s been naughty,” he growled, “he’ll be on his way to Hell in my bag.” His voice took a sudden hurdle at “Hell” and overturned like a cart cracking at the joints. The angel laughed and covered her smile after. He had black powder on his face, a hat with horns of black paper. Aleks wouldn’t look at him.

      The devil lowered his chin and coughed in his throat and tried once more. “Can you sing us a song, little boy?”

      “Yes, I can sing a song.”

      Aleks began, his voice thin and falling like his face till at the end only with his eyes did he glance at the angel, who smiled and kept smiling because now Aleks’s face was hidden behind his brim and