country of Lon is again fighting with the enemy to the north. It is a war of great pomp and saber-rattling. The magistrate, the good citizen, invests heavily, and right away sends his oldest son away to fight, and his daughter, by the name of Lonie, only sixteen, runs away to volunteer as a nurse at one of the army hospitals in the capital. What can he do? The magistrate does the only thing he can—he makes a profit off the new industries that spring up around the enlarged military.
When the war has been going on for several years, it happens that the country begins to lose. The news coming over the radio is more and more chilling. Finally, distraught, the magistrate becomes sick; it’s the smallpox. It seems he will not be long for this world. Several tormented weeks.
But finally his fever breaks, and among his doctors there is much rejoicing. The magistrate will live. With his new, clear eyes—and it is a wonder he did not go blind!—the magistrate asks that each of his children be led in to see him. He breathes and is flooded with the joy of returning health.
But his children do not come in to see him. No, his children will never come in. It is his wife and the stout housekeeper who enter the room. Minnebie’s face is swollen almost beyond recognition.
“What has happened?” the magistrate asks, sensing immediately that nothing is right.
Minnebie turns her back. There’s something about her movements that has all the lost grace of an elephant. The stout housekeeper puts her arms across her wide chest. “I think it’s best if I do the talking, sir,” she says.
“All right,” the magistrate says helplessly.
“You see, sir, the enemy reached the capital.”
“I see.”
“In the battle for the city, your boy fell.”
The magistrate does not speak. He closes his eyes.
“At the time the young master was killed, the enemy had only just managed to surround the city, but it hadn’t fallen yet. He died valiantly in the effort to save it.” The housekeeper stands with her head bowed and her hands clasped behind her. For a moment she is silent. “I’m sorry, sir. He was a good boy.”
“Yes, he was a good boy,” the magistrate manages to say.
“Well, there’s more, sir. By chance there was Lonie working in the lazaret at the same time; she was at the sickbeds when they brought her brother in. He was alive for a few minutes still, but his body was trampled and his intestines spilled out like snakes. She said they moved as if they were living reptiles. The boy’s skull was smashed. After, they let her come home.
“But she wasn’t well, sir. How shall I describe it? She complained of headaches. She said she couldn’t get the sight of her brother out of her eyes. She was awake at all hours, we couldn’t get her to stay in bed. She said she was looking for a place to hide. She was terribly sleep-deprived, and if you ask me, she began to hallucinate because of it. But no one asked me.” She glared at her mistress. Then she whipped around and went on. “We did our best with her, but you see, we found her one day in the morning, up in the top of the house, she had cut her eyes out of her head. Her eyes were out, sir, by her own hand.”
“She cut them out herself?” asks the magistrate.
“Yes, that’s right,” says the housekeeper.
The magistrate swallows.
It crosses the magistrate’s mind that all along he had thought he was an angel, where in reality he must have been a devil.
The worst thing is that his wife, at the window, still seems unable to move or speak, and he senses there must be more. He waits.
“As you know, the …” the housekeeper goes on, stammering. “The war is lost.”
“Yes,” said the magistrate, “but perhaps … perhaps, not entirely lost—”
“No, truly lost,” she cuts him off, “and the money, your money, even this house … I’ll stay on until your health is better, sir, but then I’m afraid I’ll have to leave. Wages are wages.”
“Of course they are,” says the magistrate, beginning to have trouble catching his breath.
“I’ll try to keep this brief, sir, I don’t want to be cruel.” The housekeeper pauses, then speaks. “Jasper—you know he always got in such trouble—he tried to climb up through the big chimney, but he got stuck in the middle. Lonie was nearby and heard him crying.