Undermajordomo Minor (3 page)

T
he assistant train engineer, named Eirik, was entertaining disappointment in the tavern after hearing news that his junior colleague Alexander would be made full engineer, an insult considering Eirik's seniority and years of loyal service to the company. He had had nine plum brandies when Alexander entered the tavern, nodding his small greetings all around but making no announcement of his advancement, which somehow was worse than if he had, for it was plain just to look at him that he was distending with pride. He took a seat beside Eirik and laid a palm on his back. Eirik felt a measure of pity in that hand, and he rolled his shoulder to remove its weight. Alexander volunteered to buy Eirik a drink but he declined. “Thank you all the same, but I'm not quite destitute yet.”

“I wish you wouldn't take it that way,” said Alexander.

“Wishing is a pastime for disappointment, nothing more,” Eirik replied. “Take it from one who knows.”

Now Alexander became serious, and he spoke with an edge to his voice Eirik had never heard before: “Look, now. We've got to work together. Tomorrow morning and each morning after. You and I have always got along well enough; I do hope there won't be any problems between us now.”

Eirik found himself regarding the ringed baby flesh of the man's neck, imagining what it would feel like to grip it in his hands. And in that same unsettling way one realizes he's left the
door to his home ajar, Eirik knew that he could kill Alexander. Not that he would, but that it was possible.

“There won't be any problems coming from me,” Eirik said, and he excused himself, bowing exaggeratedly before weaving from the tavern and into the road. He went home for his supper but found no solace there, his foul mood compounded by his wife's miserly cheese portion. His wife was always miserly with her cheese portions but the amount he received that night was even more scant than usual. He sat at the table alone, staring at his empty plate and considering his private theory, which was that his wife secretly ate the cheese herself while he was at work.

“More cheese,” he called.

Her voice, from the larder, was unemotional: “There is none left.”

“How in the world did we eat through an entire wheel in less than half a month?”

“What can I tell you? You eat it, and then it's gone.”

“But I don't eat it, that's just the problem.” He moved to the kitchen and found her stacking plates, her back to him. “You eat it!” he said.

She stiffened, then turned to look at her husband, loathing everything about him: his weak chin, his sour odor, his lopsided mustache, his stoop. The thing was, she really did secretly eat the cheese. No sooner would Eirik leave for work than she would go for the hidden wheel and tug away a goodly sized piece, savoring this in a corner nook otherwise unused save for this lone and lonely activity. But she was unsatisfied in most every aspect of her life, and the cheese was one of the very few pleasures she had. And now it appeared that this, too, would be stolen from her.
All right, then,
she thought.
Take it all, even my smallest happiness.
Reaching her arm deep into the cupboard, she removed the hoarded cheese and laid it on the counter before making for the privacy of the attic, where she wept in the full-throated style, feeling just as sorry for herself as a person could ever hope to feel.

Eirik stood awhile, swaying and listening to his wife's jerky, breathy sobbings. He knew he should move to comfort her but found the desire to do so entirely absent, being far too excited about this unexpected surplus of Gouda.
I'll pay her a visit after a snack, perhaps,
he thought, and brought the cheese to the dining room table, consuming the entire half wheel in addition to a bottle of elderberry wine, afterward passing out in his chair and suffering through a cycle of horrific dreams and visions: Alexander furiously copulating with his wife while eating his, Eirik's, cheese; his wife lying on the table nude while Alexander carved elegant swaths into her broad white calf with a paring knife, for she herself was fashioned from cheese; that his penis was cheese which broke off while he urinated; that his penis was cheese his wife nibbled on while he slept—all through the night like this, and so in the morning, in addition to the state of his head from the wine and plum brandy, his sense of peace was compromised as he set out for work.

He arrived at the station ten minutes late with bloodshot eyes and a halo of fumes swarming his head. Alexander recognized the man's impairment and felt a professional impulse to chastise him.

“So you kept it up last night?” he asked.

“I did what I had to do.”

“And now?”

“Now I'll do the same.”

An uneasy beginning, then. They spoke little as the hours went by. Eirik's pain and insult were stubbornly insistent but he knew he would get through the day, and that the next day would not be quite so bad. In passing time, he thought of the loveliness of a glass of brandy, the first glass after a shift, the way it drew down his throat and coated his insides with flammable heat, afterward leaving an aroma of smoked plum smoldering in his nostrils and mouth when he exhaled. It was very invigorating, that first plum brandy, and he began to look forward to the tavern with earnest, uncomplicated appreciation. His anger diminishing, he decided he would buy his wife a wheel of cheese on the way home from the tavern,
and that he would encourage her to eat as much as she wanted, in plain sight—just so long as he could have his fair share as well. And when this ran out, so what if they had to buy another? Perhaps he wasn't a full engineer, but he earned a good wage and there was room for occasional extravagances so long as they weren't too dear. Eirik hit his stride with his coal spade and the flames shimmied and spit in the firebox. Sweat ran off his nose and chin and into his eyes, and this was agreeable to him. Life was not such a trial after all, he mused. It wasn't easy, but then, how dull an experience it would be if it were so. He began to whistle, and this meant that he was happy.

Alexander sensed the change in his partner's mood, and felt calmer for it. Allowing his mind to drift, he fell to thinking of the difficulties of his youth: his mother dead mere months after his birth; his father, waylaid from sorrow, vanished one autumn morning, never to return, never sending word. From the start Alexander was instilled with the knowledge that whatever shape his life took, it was up to him alone to sculpt it, and so to have risen to the level of engineer, he couldn't help but feel proud of himself. Surely this is understandable, but half an hour shy of Bury, he made the mistake of verbalizing his satisfaction: “My maiden voyage as engineer,” he said. “I can't deny it, but it feels good.” He turned to Eirik, who said nothing, but looked stonily ahead. Alexander said, “Won't you allow me a moment of boasting, old friend?”

“Boast away,” Eirik said. “I won't stop you.”

“Why can't you be happy for me?”

“Who's to say I'm not?”

“But how would I know if you were?”

Eirik jammed the spade in the coal tender. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Alexander became sheepish. “Typically, when a man has a turn of good luck, his fellows will offer their congratulations.”

At this last word, Eirik's black mood returned, a virulent poison which leached through to the deepest parts of his soul. Alex
ander's neck looked velvety soft to the touch, and Eirik's fingers began to twitch and grip. He resumed his feverish shoveling and as the train barreled along the rails he waited for his hatred to ebb, but it never did, and in fact it only doubled and redoubled, so that he felt lost to it. Resignedly, he waited for the best moment to exorcise this feeling.

The train eased into the station at Bury. Alexander peered out, an attitude of calm defining his person. He turned to Eirik, meaning to offer some minor encouragement or compliment, when he saw his co-worker was watching him with a fanatical look, his eyes dreadful, grotesquely transformed. The look made Alexander wary, and he asked, “What's the matter?”

“You want me to congratulate you?” Eirik asked.

“Don't you feel it's in order?”

“Indeed it is. But you're
certain
you want me to?”

What manner of test was this? Would Eirik strike him with a fist? Well, then, better to have it out. Alexander was a healthy man, if portly, and had seen his share of tavern battles—he was not afraid of the stingy wretch who stood before him. Resting his hand on the brake lever and gripping it in his fist, he struck an upright and confident pose, and said, “I'm certain, Eirik. Let's have it.”

The spade stuck out at an angle from the coal tender. Later, speaking to his cellmate, Eirik would muse that it was as if the spade were leaning toward him, offering itself for assistance. He swung it in a quick, tight circle, bringing the edge down on Alexander's hand, severing cleanly the man's foremost three fingers, while the fourth hung as if on a hinge. This swayed up and back and Alexander stood there watching the blood drain from the stumps with the look of a man who had just witnessed a baffling illusion.

“Congratulations,” Eirik said. He collected the fingers with the spade and tossed them into the churning firebox.

L
ucy knew none of this, and would never know. By the time he arrived at the station Alexander had been led away in a dizzy stumble, and Eirik was being helped down from the train and onto the platform by the constable. It seemed a friendly gesture, and Lucy found nothing amiss about the two men as they walked away, though he was curious about where the assistant engineer might be going five minutes before the scheduled departure, and why the constable was so insistent about holding the spade.

Rain fell in plump drops which made Lucy blink and wince, but he didn't mind getting wet. He felt triumphant about the lie he'd told Marina, and rather than hinder his optimism, the foul weather merely added to the feeling he was embarked on an adventure. He entered the third-class compartment, stowed his valise, and found a sliver of space among the charwomen and laborers and scattered elderly. No one spoke, and Lucy wondered why it was that the impoverished classes were biased toward public silences.

The train was delayed for reasons already discussed, and Lucy passed forty-five minutes in the airless cabin while the conductor and stationmaster searched for someone to fill in as engineer. He was lost to his own plotless thoughts when there came a knock on the window from outside the train. He turned and saw Marina hovering in the air above the platform; her fist remained aloft next to her face and she wore the pleased expression of the cat after a kill. The effect of her countenance, along with her float
ing in the window like that, was unsettling to Lucy, and he felt a premonition of danger which brought about a head-to-toe rash of gooseflesh.

Now he noticed a pair of brutish, hairy hands were holding Marina aloft at the waist; presently these hands returned her to the platform, and she and Tor stepped back, that they might both see inside and be seen by those inside the compartment. They stood arm in arm, smiling at Lucy, perfectly at ease with each other. If they had had an argument relating to Lucy's lie then it was past. The conductor happened by and Tor called the man over, speaking imploringly to him and pointing at Lucy directly. The conductor watched Lucy while Tor spoke; when Tor had finished, the conductor made for the train, and Lucy's compartment.

“May I see your ticket, please?” he said.

“My ticket?” said Lucy.

“Please.”

“Why do you want to see my ticket?”

The conductor held out his hand. Miserably, Lucy passed it over. The man studied the stub and shook his head. “Whatever is that gentleman talking about?” Looking out the window, he addressed Tor and Marina, rapt in their waiting. “It's third class!” He waved the stub back and forth. “A third-class ticket!” Tor held a hand to his ear, pretending not to be able to hear. Marina slapped him on the arm, as though he were being too cruel; and yet, she didn't truly want him to stop—she was enjoying the sport they made of Lucy. The conductor waded through the compartment to the window and slid it open. “The young man has a third-class ticket,” he said.

Tor, perplexed: “The stick-like fellow? The red-faced chap just there? The famished one? You're certain he's not in first class?”

“Would you like to see the ticket for yourself?”

Tor performed a slight bow. “I would never deign to tell you your own business, sir,” he said, and he rested his mitts on his hips and pursed his mouth, an approximation of confounded frustration.
“Oh, but I was certain he was to be in first class. The young man possesses a noble bearing, wouldn't you say?”

The conductor, along with the others in the compartment, regarded Lucy dubiously. “Well,” said the conductor, “the lad is where he is meant to be. And I don't know what else to tell you about it.”

“Yes,” Tor agreed. “What else is there to say, after all?”

“Good day,” said the conductor, closing the window.

“Good day to
you
, sir,” Tor answered, his volume halved by the pane of glass. He offered a parting wave to Lucy, and to the compartment in general; Lucy did not respond, but others around him did. Now Tor and Marina turned and walked into the village, arm in arm, and by the looks of them they were deeply in love. Everyone watched them go; once they were out of sight the collective attention returned to Lucy. His face was no longer red, but pale, his gaze darkened, impermeable.

“Friends of yours?” asked the man beside Lucy.

“No.”

“They're a handsome couple.”

Lucy closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to be alone in the well-appointed room he housed deep within his mind.