Story: Tourmaline (part six)

Tourmaline

(part six)

It was at dawn you saw them, moving under cover of the climbing fogs. This morning’s had yet to burn off. But when he’d walked to the shore, then along it, the sun at last scouring in, Anton thought he would carry his coat over his arm.

The usual boats pushed off at the cove; the boats that rowed to the anchored ones and bought fish. Anton’s ear was attuned to snatches of peninsular speech. He was able to make out “fish”, “stupid”, “goodbye”.

He recovered his book from the rock, where wind might by chance have blown it to the sea. He turned. He was blocked by a man with a metal ice box.

“Wait.” The wind was obliging to the stranger, and the hood of his jacket fell back. “You were saying something just now.”

Anton recognized the other Anton. “Oh, well, I was talking to myself.”

In taking off his coat, he had taken his hand out of his pocket and flashed tourmaline.

“Say it again.”

“I was…”

“Practicing. Let’s hear how you’re getting on.”

Anton sent three curses to the other Anton. But the expression of the face was arch and pitying. Anton Leonhardt is socially disabled, and we wait.

“Ehca bei feidda djoui-acht.”

“Bekom haies.”

Sarcasm. Goodbye, Anton had said, the polite goodbye, and ground the shape of a foot in the soft pebbles of the beach.

“Do you have two sisters, Anton?”

If he had named the family, called out Swisshelm within earshot of the three-wheeled motorbike, and the officer who had ridden it to the causeway’s end, he would not much more greatly have breached the rules.

The officer’s face was a mouth between dark lenses and chin-strap.

Anton Swisshelm, the better of Palma’s helpers, had made note without staring, of tourmaline. He was resolute keeping his face forward, his gait steady. Only he had twitched a shoulder slightly at the words.

But the officer might notice even that.

The G.R.A. used the university’s lecture halls to show their films. This round explained the new rationing scheme. You went to the building, and stood with your ticket at the door until the film ended and the projectionist pretended to reload it. Your ticket was confiscated and you were sold the next. But you were not sold it, because you had no money. The price was discounted from your allowance. The allowance was a benefit of compliance, and the tickets, and the attendance, were required.

6

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (conclusion)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)