Mysterium

Thibault parked his car in the shadow of Ellen’s garage. The neighbors would know he was here, of course; discretion was only a gesture. But he doubted Ellen spoke often to her neighbors.

She opened the door at his knock, her eyes traveling to the bag that contained a quart of barracks whiskey in a glass jar—the real object of her desire.

She waved him inside. They sat together at the kitchen table. Thibault had grown almost accustomed to the strange unkempt sybaritic luxury of the house, with its broadloom (stained), sleek machines (dusty), glittering countertops (chipped). Still, it struck him every time he crossed the threshold, a dizzy feeling. How mysteriously these people had lived!

He had found Ellen at the roadhouse on the highway not long after the occupation began. The roadhouse had become notorious as the place where a soldier might meet a woman who would barter her virtue for ration coupons. It quickly became a brothel in all but name.

In a sense, Thibault had rescued Ellen from that. She had worked tables there when the roadhouse was respectable and she had been unhappy with the new clientele: crude farmhands, mostly, dragged unwilling from their provincial pigpens. Thibault, who took pride in his Manhattan pedigree, had saved her from an amorous private who was trying to impress her by showing off his glass eye—“the only one-eyed gunner in the Army of God,” though he was more likely to be found on latrine duty than near the artillery. Samael, what an army they had brought here!—battalions of the halt, the lame, the blind.

Thibault had driven Ellen home, his first illicit journey through the town of Two Rivers. She had been grateful. Would he stay the night? He would stay the night. Would he come back? He would come back. Would he bring some food? Of course.

Tonight the boy was away somewhere, which was all right with Thibault. Ellen cooked a desultory supper and advanced directly to the jar of copper-kettle drink-me-down. Her drinking was heavier and faster these winter nights. Too bad. There was something unappetizing about a drunken woman. Not that Thibault was about to turn and leave.

“Clifford’s staying at a friend’s house,” Ellen said. “We have the place to ourselves.” And she ducked her head in a gesture she probably imagined was coquettish.

Thibault nodded.

“That boy,” Ellen said. “His ideas. Luke.” She stroked his cheek. “Are you really going to burn us all up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Digging ditches around the town. He says. To keep in the fire. To keep it from spreading.”

She stood and leaned against the kitchen counter. Thibault was not really drunk yet, only a little loose in his skin, as the farmers said. His eyes traced the curve of her hip. She wasn’t young enough to be genuinely beautiful… but she was pretty enough.

He was only vaguely alarmed by what she was saying. “A person hears rumors,” he said. “All kinds of rumors…”

“A bomb, Cliffy says.”

“Bomb?”

“An atomic bomb.”

“I don’t understand.”

“To burn us all up.”

He was genuinely baffled by the word atomic, but otherwise this was old news— though he was surprised it had traveled as far as Ellen. No doubt Two Rivers was going to be razed; the firebreak wasn’t hard to figure out. Perhaps it did involve an “atomic” bomb. Maybe that was what the Proctors had built out in the forest. Anything was possible, Thibault supposed.

She wanted to be reassured. He said, “I’ll take care of you, Ellen—don’t worry.”

“Cliffy says you won’t be able to.” She took a long, deliberate drink of the barracks whiskey. “Soldiers get burned up too, Cliffy said.”

“What?”

“The Proctors don’t care. They really don’t, you know. They’ll burn up everyone. Even you, lovely Luke. Even you, my charming soldier.”

?

He woke the next morning with a headache and a sour stomach. Ellen, unconscious next to him, looked to Thibault like a lump of stale flesh, slightly greasy in the daylight. He glanced at the bedside clock, then moaned. He was late! He was on watchtower duty this morning. Maybe Maroix or Eberhardt had signed on for him. But maybe not. He had the nagging thought that he already owed too many favors.

He dressed without waking Ellen and drove away into a chilly gray dawn. At quarters, he signed the car back into the motor pool and ran for the barracks. He needed today’s duty chit and a plausible excuse—but all he had was the chit.

It didn’t matter. Two roster police and a fat Proctor were waiting at the barracks.

?

The Proctor was named Delafleur.

Thibault recognized him. Delafleur had been everywhere lately, fluttering about in his black pardessus and Bureau uniform. The new chief Proctor, people said. The voice of the Centrality.

Thibault swept his cap off and nodded his head. Delafleur came nearer, his jowly face swinging close to Thibault’s, the expression on his face a mixture of contempt and sorrow. “Things have changed,” he said, “and I think you were caught unawares, Monsieur Thibault.”

“Patron, I know I’m late—”

“You spent the night at the house of—” And Delafleur made a show of consulting his notebook. “Madame Ellen Stockton.”

Thibault flushed. Which of these pig farmers had betrayed him? His head throbbed mercilessly. He couldn’t force himself to raise his eyes to meet Delafleur’s. He felt the Proctor’s breath on his face—the man was that close.

“Tell me what you talk about with the woman.”

“Nothing of any consequence,” Thibault said, grimly aware that he was begging now. He tried to smile. “I wasn’t there to talk!”

“That won’t do. You don’t understand, Monsieur Thibault. The town is on the verge of panic. We want to prevent lies from spreading. Two infantrymen were attacked in their car on night patrol while you were in bed with this woman—did you know that? You’re lucky you weren’t killed yourself.” He shook his head as if he had been personally insulted. “Worse, there are rumors being repeated even in the barracks. Which could have tragic consequences. This isn’t an ordinary offense.”

In the end Thibault told him what Ellen had said about the bomb—the “atomic” bomb—but he was careful to defend her honor: Ellen didn’t really know anything about this, he said; it all came from the boy, from Clifford, who behaved oddly, who was often out of the house. And Delafleur nodded, making notes.

Thibault had never liked the boy, anyway. The boy would not be a loss.

?

The Proctors took him to the makeshift stockade in the City Hall basement and locked him in a cell there.

Thibault, who hated confinement, paced his cage and remembered what Ellen had said.

They’ll burn up everyone, she had said. Even you.

Was that possible? It was true, there had been some muttering in the barracks and at mess hall—Thibault had never taken such things seriously. But there was the firebreak. That was real enough. And the tower in the forest. And his imprisonment.