It was the way the stranger had looked at Klara, as though she were something to be consumed—something that would be. No one had ever looked at her like that before, and it was troubling in several ways, the foremost being that she liked it, or some part of her did. He entered the village in his tottering cart in the early afternoon; his arrival represented diversion at a slack hour and the villagers assembled to gawk and wonder, asking every question which came into their minds: Where had he come from? Why had he left? Where was he going? What was awaiting him there? They were after the news of the world, and the road-weary vagabond fielded these and other queries patiently but without enthusiasm. A lull revealed itself and he removed his hat, asking if he might stay overnight in the village, to rest and replenish his supplies; when his wish was granted, he returned his hat to his head, grinning a grin that Klara identified as devoutly impure. As if intuiting her recognition, he jerked his head to locate her in the crowd, staring levelly and with something more than boldness; and as he was handsome in that dark and brooding way which certain impressionable young women find irresistible, she discovered she couldn’t look away from him, and she became afraid in a manner she couldn’t pinpoint or define.
Climbing down from his cart, the stranger moved through the crowd, and to Klara. He wore a dirty jerkin with nothing underneath; his bare arms were wiry and hairless and deeply tanned. He had a gold tooth and was missing the lower half of his left ear, and when he took up her hand she began shivering, tremors rippling up her back and to the shoulder. He kissed her across her knuckles. She looked down at the cool spot where his lips had met her skin, and this was the end for Klara. It was as good as done.
She spent the rest of the afternoon in perpetual movement, running non-pressing errands and paying visits to people she did not much care to see, just so long as she wasn’t alone with her thoughts, or with the stranger himself. Fearful he would come to her in bed, she made Mewe sleep beside her. When the stranger didn’t come, she couldn’t understand why this bothered her so, as though they’d had a plan to meet and he’d broken it. In the morning she awoke early and made her way to the well to wash her face. In passing the stranger’s covered cart, she cleared her throat. Laying out her soap and towel on the well wall, she washed, and waited. After a time she heard a rustle of grass behind her, and she smiled, but didn’t turn around; when something bristly pressed against her leg she drew back, gasping—but it was only Memel’s dog arching against her, and she laughed at herself. When she was finished rinsing the soap from her face, she reached for the towel but it was no longer there.
“Why do you hide away from me?” asked the stranger. He was standing at her back, and very close to her. She gazed at the marble-black sphere of the water’s surface at the bottom of the telescoping well. Her heart was thumping so violently she felt it might unravel. “I don’t trust you,” she said. “You make me feel strangely.”
He put his hands on her hips and turned her around to face him. The towel was resting over his shoulder. “Isn’t it somewhat pleasant, though?” he asked.
“I don’t know if it is or not,” she said. “It’s something like a fever, actually.”
Water was dripping from her hair and nose and chin, and the stranger took up the towel and began drying her. He did this gently and thoroughly, and when he’d finished he wrapped the towel around her throat and breastbone. She was shivering again, and she asked, in a quavering voice,
“When will you go away from here?”
“Soon. But I’m not ready to go yet.”
“When will you be ready to go?”
He laid his hand on her face. “I will be ready to go after.”
She nearly gasped when he said it. He turned and walked back through the grass and to the village, the dog following in his wake.
In the afternoon she tried another tack, which was to attempt to make friends with the stranger. He was leaving the marketplace and she fell in step with him; in a convivial voice she pointed to his ear and asked, “How did you come to be wounded, sir?”
He looked at her amusedly, as though he was aware of what she was playing at. Tugging at what remained of the ear, he said, “That is a question I can’t answer. One morning I woke awash in blood, and it was away.”
“It was severed in your sleep?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“Some enemy or another. No one came forth to claim responsibility.”
How matter-of-fact he was, she thought, as though the incident hadn’t been a bother beyond the mess it had made. “What sort of man would do that to you?” she asked.
“Why do you assume it was a man?”
“Oh, but a woman could never do such a thing.”
The stranger became remote, his thoughts gone back in time. Soberly, he said, “I’ve known them to do worse.”
Klara blushed at this. It made her inexplicably but unmistakably jealous, and she was frustrated by the feeling. When she gathered herself, she asked politely, “Do you have many enemies?”
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“And why is that?”
“I can’t think of why. But, they seem to gather wherever I go.” Now that same impure grin as before grew upon his face. Klara gathered her hands together and rested them atop her hip.
“Why do you smile like that?”
“Like what?”
“That way, there.” She pointed. “It’s a smile that hides something.”
“I have nothing to hide from you.”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, perhaps I do after all. And good luck finding out what it is!”
The stranger laughed at this, laughed at her, and Klara left him alone once more. She busied herself cleaning the shanty and making dinner preparations, but she couldn’t free herself from her thoughts of the man. Mewe came to sleep beside her that night but she sent him away. No matter; the stranger did not appear. In the morning, after breakfast, she sought him out. He was sunning himself in a field of lupine between the village and castle. He smiled at her as she came near. “I don’t know how you stand it, living here,” he said. “It’s so terribly dull.”
“It is not dull.”
“It’s consummately dull. It’s immaculately dull.”
“I love it,” she said, and she did.
In a humoring tone, he asked, “Tell me, what do you love about it?”
“My father, and my friends. The animals, the rivers. I love the seasons; I think they’re just the right length of time, don’t you?”
The stranger didn’t answer.
Klara said, “I love the fields, there—” She nodded toward the sloping green expanse beyond the castle. The stranger sat up to look.
“What’s over the rise?” he asked.
“More of the same.”
“Do you ever go there?”
“Sometimes.”
He looked at her directly. “Will you take me there?”
“But why?”
“Don’t you think it’s about time we were alone?”
“We’re alone now.”
“Alone, but not alone-alone. I want to be alone-alone.”
He stood up and looked over her. He was quite a bit taller than she.
“Will you be alone-alone with me,” he said.
He led Klara away, over the crest of the hill. His hand was callused and gripped hers tightly. She could smell his body, and the fluttering in her stomach was violent to the edge of nausea. She wore no shoes, and watched her feet moving up and back through the grass and flowers. She wasn’t precisely sure what she was walking toward but she wouldn’t have turned around for the world. Once they were over the rise she tucked her hair behind her ears, looking about for a piece of level ground. Finding one, she pointed. “There.” They walked toward the place.