Valeria's Last Stand, page 24
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “He’s no more guilty than any of us. You’re making a scapegoat out of him is what you’re doing. Look at you. It might as well be a riot.”
The men muttered under their breaths.
“Have your drinks and go home. Let the chief inspector do his job. He knows what needs doing. The chimney sweep will pay for his actions.”
The men grew somber, genuinely somber, for six seconds. That was the number of seconds it took for the first of them to get behind the bar and a set a mug under the tap. After that, it was a free-for-all. They helped themselves to the last of the liquor. They did what Ibolya had said and drank as much as their stomachs could hold. They ran home and returned with their wives and girlfriends, who got drunk as well. They danced. They sang. They threw each other up in the air. It was the biggest party the town had ever seen. The noise from the revelers carried through the village and even reached the mayor and his visitors in the hotel. They were surveying the town from the roof. A glow started up that lit up the centrum like a spotlight. The Koreans oohed and aahed. They promised another factory. The mayor felt a tear roll down his cheek. Progress.
Ibolya and Ferenc saw the glow in their rearview mirror as well. They stopped and looked back. Then they smiled at one another and never looked back again.
Dogs came. Children awoke from their slumbers. The entire village, every man, woman, cow, and mouse, saw the glow of light. The future had arrived.
For many years afterward, people present that night would remember it as the most exciting night of their lives. Everyone alive that day would talk about where they were the night Ibolya’s tavern burned down.
The potter sat quietly and watched the events unfold. He already felt a pang of nostalgia for the way the village used to be when he was younger, when they were all younger. He couldn’t help but feel a tug of sympathy for the lot of them. If it wasn’t clear before, it was clear now that tomorrow they would wake up in a new world and have to navigate their way through it. Only this time, they would be older and feebler. Hopefully they were wiser as well. They would have to be or they would be lost. They would have to adapt or be left behind. He looked at Valeria. At least they didn’t have to do it alone.
“Doctor’s here,” the chief inspector announced. “Don’t worry, old man. You should be all right. Nothing a few stitches and some gauze won’t fix. Though I imagine it will be plenty hard to make a plate from here on out. See what two-timing gets you? Stick to big-city prostitutes. That’s my motto. Excuse me, Miss Valeria.”
The potter moaned. Valeria shook her head.
The chief inspector stood up and looked around for his deputies. He spotted them singing in front of the fire, the chimney sweep pinned between them.
“Hey! What are you shitheads doing?” he called out. “Get him to a cell. Then come back and we can all get drunk.”
The doctor approached and examined the potter’s wounds. He looked at the potter’s hands, especially the right one, for a few minutes. He pursed his lips.
“Not good,” he said. “We’ll need to get you to the clinic. I’m afraid you’re going to miss the festivities. You need a thorough cleaning and lots of stitches. You’ll need a lot of pain medication. A tendon in your right wrist is severed. We can stitch the tip of your finger back. The left hand isn’t so bad. It’s just a gash. Considering your age, though, you won’t be able to use the right one for a long time, maybe never. You’ll need looking after until you get enough strength back to really grip something. Do you want us to call your apprentice?”
The potter shook his head.
“I’m here,” Valeria said. “He’s with me.”
The doctor nodded and led them back to his car. “We really need to get you to the clinic as quickly as we can,” he said.
“Can we drive by the train station?” the potter asked. “Only for a minute. It can’t wait anymore. There’s something we need to see.”
He turned to Valeria.
“I’ve made you a present,” he said, smiling. “This one won’t ever break.”
Valeria smiled back. She looked out the window at the rising whorls of smoke, at the men beginning to stumble home, at the strays that were watching warily from the shadows. She rested her hand on the potter’s leg. She had done it. She had yielded. She had allowed herself to open up. For the first time in fifty years she felt hopeful about something, and that feeling—it was love—filled her up. It filled her up so much she felt like she could cry. She didn’t. Instead she began to whistle. It seemed appropriate. She whistled and looked forward to the rest of her life.
Acknowledgments
There are always so many family and friends to thank. Too many. Here’s my list; Zita and Benji. Mom and Dad. Karinda, Jason, Eli, and Ezra. Thank you Karoly and Margit, Roland, Robi, and Emily. The Lawleys—every last one of them. My readers: Christine Lawley, David Goldsmith, Sarah Pennington, Veronika Gunter, Anthony Grooms, Rita Olah, and Brenda Mills. My really smart friends and mentors: Jo Ann Adkins, Lawrence Hetrick, Alisan Atvur, Brigid Hughes, Judit Sollosy, CLMP, Laurel Snyder, Rick Campbell, John Lawley, Andrew Jozak, Rob Jenkins, Jack Riggs, Steve Wallace, and Roland Weekley. I want to thank Agnes Krup for helping work through the earliest drafts and talking the book up. More important, I want to thank her for seeing the possibilities and encouraging me before anybody else did. Thank you, Agnes. And of course, I might not have gotten anywhere without the literary magazine Prairie Schooner and the excellent instincts of one Mr. Bill Clegg at the William Morris Agency. He cold-called me from London and made suggestions that made the book better overnight. Thank you for your tireless help, Bill.
A Note on the Author
Marc Fitten was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1974. At the age of nineteen, he left the United States for Europe where he studied, traveled, and taught English. He lived in Hungary for four years during the nineties, and a transforming Europe made a deep impression on him that has influenced his writing. This is his first novel.
First published in Great Britain 2009
This electronic edition published 2009
Copyright © Marc Fitten
The right of Marc Fitten to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved.
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Marc Fitten, Valeria's Last Stand
