Mewe was sitting out front of his shanty, staring at nothing, a drawn look on his face. When he saw Lucy, he startled and sat upright. “You’re not dead?” he said wonderingly.
“No, I’m not dead. Hello.”
“But where in the world have you been?”
“Away.”
“Where are your shoes?”
“I lost them.”
“Why is your suit in rags?”
“I have suffered through an era of unluckiness.”
“Yes, as have we,” Mewe said, leaning back. He pointed at the stool beside him and Lucy sat.
“Why do you have that stone in your hand?”
“I’m going to kill Adolphus with it.”
“That would be quite a trick.”
“You don’t believe I’ll do it?” asked Lucy.
“I don’t believe you will, no. Because Adolphus has already died.”
Lucy said, “What?”
“He’s died. They’ve exploded him.”
“Who has?”
“They have.”
“What does that mean, exploded him?”
“It means that he is no longer of a piece.”
“Where is he?”
“Here and there—that’s what I’m telling you.”
“Where is the main part of him, Mewe?”
Mewe pointed to Klara’s shanty. Lucy stood and entered. Adolphus lay on the table in the front room, naked to the waist, and his head was not on his shoulders. It had been taken off cleanly, to the base of the neck. There was a charring at the edges of the wound but his body was otherwise unmarked, and Lucy stood by, considering the incongruousness of this specimen: healthful yet headless. He had no feeling in him as he stared at the corpse, no relief, no sense of triumph. In a little while he laid the stone on the table where the head should have been. Mewe came into the shanty and stood next to Lucy. “It was a cannonball, do you know? A cannonball took his head off.”
“Oh,” said Lucy.
“They say his body stood awhile without the head, and that when it collapsed, it folded, as though he were lying down to go to sleep. After, they brought him back here, to Klara. Only she’d already gone.”
“Gone?” said Lucy.
“Yes, the Baroness has taken her away.”
Lucy shook his head. “What does that mean?”
“Klara went to the castle to see if there was any news of you. She and the Baroness met there and came to some agreement. Klara told me she would work for the Baroness as her lady-in-waiting. Anyway, they’ve left.”
“Where did they go?”
“West, is all Klara said. They took Rose with them, too.”
“Where is Memel?” Lucy asked.
Mewe pointed to Memel’s door and Lucy entered to find Memel lying atop his mattress in suit and vest and boots, hair combed and parted, hands folded across his heart, and his flesh was gray, for he too was deceased. There were candles burning about the room, and long-stemmed flowers had been cast over his body and onto the ground around him. Lucy stood at the foot of the bed, breathing in the scent of the blossoms. Mewe was in the doorway, looking at his old friend with a mournful expression.
“Let me understand it,” Lucy said. “Memel has died, and Klara and Rose are gone, and the Baroness has also gone, and Adolphus has lost his head.”
“All true,” said Mewe.
“Will you explain to me just what happened while I was away, please?”
Mewe cleared his throat. He said, “Adolphus came here claiming you’d tried to kill him. We couldn’t picture it, but then you’d disappeared, and when Klara and I went up to the Very Large Hole to look for ourselves, we found your pipe there.” Mewe pulled the pipe from his pocket and tossed it to Lucy. Lucy caught it and held it in his palm.
“And so Klara thought I’d died,” he said.
“Yes, when we saw the pipe, we knew that you had, and were very sorry for it. Actually Klara was more than sorry for it. Adding to her upset was Memel’s decline; after he passed away, Adolphus was always hovering nearby. He got it into his mind that he and Klara should marry at once, and he wouldn’t let this alone, so that finally she had to explain it was impossible.”
“Impossible,” said Lucy.
“Yes.”
“And why was it?”
Mewe said, “But of course she didn’t love him in that way, Lucy. Not since she met you.”
Lucy watched Mewe carefully after he’d said this. He wanted so badly to believe that it was so.
“Adolphus took the rejection poorly,” Mewe continued, “so that when there came news of an attack against his troops up the mountain, he hurried off to do his part. The soldiers who brought his body down said he was fighting with something more than bravery. At last he simply ran toward their cannons, and that was the end of him.”
Lucy returned to the front room and stood again before what remained of Adolphus. Flies were socializing at the thickly clotted neckhole and he experienced an obscure pity for his antagonist. “I wonder what they were fighting about,” said Lucy.
“Some men just like to kill each other, I expect,” said Mewe. He had remained in Memel’s doorway, and was looking over his shoulder at Lucy. “And what now?” he asked. “Will you stay on at the castle, do you think?”
“I don’t think I will, no.”
“Will you return to your home?”
“No.”
“When will you leave?”
“Just now, I suppose.”
Mewe had turned away from Lucy; he was hiding his face, and Lucy asked,
“Are you all right?”
When Mewe looked back, Lucy saw that he was silently crying. “Everything is ending,” he said. He hurried out of the shanty and Lucy watched him leave, afterward standing in the quiet, cool stillness. Thinking of the time he had passed in the space, there entered into his mind an accumulating hum, and now Lucy was struck with a bolt of the most splendid sadness. It overcame his spirit, his breath ran thin, and his legs went stringy from it.
Revisiting Memel’s room, he folded back the dead man’s lapel, tucking the pipe into his coat pocket. He had never enjoyed using the pipe, and it felt correct for Memel to have it in his permanent possession.
Lucy left the shanty and struck out for the castle.