The Lie

A Chapter by Sharrumkin

Alex walks with Peter to George's office. As Peter waits in the outer room George examines him. In doing so he reveals that Peter lied to Alex abut the doctor not offering him a position.

Chapter Seven

The Lie

The heavy rains had fled. It promised to be a good summer thought Alex as he looked out the window at the azure sky. With the sun's warmth he could feel new strength returning, not a great deal but enough to allow him to get out, more than he had been able to during the winter. He might even take up riding again.

Peter had settled into his role as a servant. He did his work well, never complaining and never asking about a salary. He seemed to have given up any thought of leaving. The dreams that had ravaged his sleep now left him in peace. However Alex had found that there were things that he could not persuade the boy to do. On Sunday Rebecca had come by with Anna. Peter had refused to speak to them withdrawing into his corner with a book.

On Monday he had received Ian Campbell. Ian had brought a raisin cake from his mother. Alex nibbled at the cake. The boy’s presence had kept him he from asking if Ian had found any information about him. George had also come by to visit. Only then had Alex been able to persuade Peter to wait outside until McKay had finished his examination. Most of his time since had been spent resting. So the week had passed each day the pain receding, his strength dripping back.

By Friday Alex had decided to take Peter with him to George's. The boy had to understand that Kilmarnock consisted of more than a room and an unimportant old man. A position at Kilmarnock Hill would be the best possibility for ensuring the boy's future. The boy would resist the idea at first but with time would come to accept it.

“We're going out for a few minutes,” Alex told him at breakfast. Peter said nothing. He would have preferred to stay inside with the books and the microscope. On Sunday Alex had shown him how to prepare slides by placing drops of oil upon them and how to focus the lens. He had told him the names of the strange creatures that lived beneath the lens. As Alex had rested Peter had spent hours looking at the bacteria living in milk, on human skin and in water. That had been the best part of Sunday certainly more interesting than what lay outside the room.

Peter hated Sundays. Sunday was for the others, not for him. Maminka had taught him that. Sunday was for the good people with good shoes, warm clothes and fat bellies. They wanted a day to give thanks to a pleasant, warm, fat god. That was why she had never taken him, Janos or Holena to church. Even later, when he had gone with Katrina and

the others he had known that it was not for something like him. Going to mass had been one of those things that he had to do but nothing more.

Alex should have gone to church. Instead he had just sat by the window and watched the other people pass. He should have gone, for the company if nothing else. He had given Alex the keys thinking that he would want to go.

Four different bells rang that morning. Four different churches, Alex had told him. Why four? He knew of only one church. What was his church, he asked Alex. The doctor just sat by the window drinking schnapps and looking down at the people. After they had passed he had shown him some more slides under the microscope. Later that day an old fat lady named Rebecca had come with the other lady Anna who owned the shop downstairs. He had not spoken to them. Why should he? They were not important. Alex was the only one who mattered. If the doctor had ordered him to speak he would have said something to them. Perhaps he should have. It would have pleased the doctor.

“We'll see Doctor McKay,” said Alex. “Maybe take a wee walk about the town. We need the exercise.”

“Yes.”

He hoped that Alex would change his mind. Alex did not. Hands thrust into his pockets, his feet kicking at the dust of the street, he followed the old man. He tried hard to keep staring at the ground, neither looking left or right, guided only by the heels of Alex’s shoes. Each time they passed someone the doctor would stop and chat for a few moments. That walk to the young doctor's office seemed endless. He knew what the people thought of him. Peter was so busy trying not to think about the strangers that he failed to notice when Alex stopped in front of a red brick building. He had gone on another two yards when a call from Alex stopped him. Peter found himself alone in the street. Imagining the entire community staring at him he reddened and dashed back.

When they stepped inside Doctor McKay's waiting room, Alex told him to sit in a chair.

Why was it, George asked himself, that every time he saw Alex he felt himself aging another two years? He pressed his right hand against his forehead, allowing his fingers to slide up over his hair and stopped his pacing in front of the office window. “I don't understand, Alex. We agreed that you would tell the boy that you could not keep him, at least not beyond the end of this week.”

“I know, but . . . things are different now.”

“How are they different, Alex?”

“I feel a bit stronger now.”

“For how long? A month? A week? That changes nothing. You know that.”

Alex tried to think of another excuse. “You were supposed to offer him a position. You never did. He'll have to stay until I can find something else for him.”

George blinked. “What are you talking about? I offered him a position when I left your office. Did he tell you that I didn't?”

The question placed Alex in a quandary. He would have to admit that the boy lied or lie himself. Alex lied. “No. Not in so many words.”

“He lied to you, didn't he?”

“He just wants to stay with me. That's all.”

“So he's been as honest with you as you have with him. My God, you two make a great pair, don't you?”

Alex tried to turn back to the question of securing Peter a position. “You'll think about it though if I can persuade him to consider it?”

George remembered Maureen's eyes of blue ice chilling him when he hinted that he was thinking of hiring Alex's tramp. She would have no part of bringing into their house someone who would cut their throats while they slept. “If you want to help Uncle Alex” she had added, “tell him to turn that thief over to the judge and persuade him to come home. Anything else is a waste of time.”

She did have a point about the judge, George conceded. "Look Alex, Judge Strachan is a friend of yours. Why not write to him. Perhaps he could do something. Why not ask him?”

“Aye.” Alex nodded. The thought had also occurred to him.

George opened a desk of his drawer and took a small folded piece of paper. “Those phrases that you wanted translated. “I showed them to a German tailor at Hatter's Bay.”

Alex busied himself with adjusting his spectacles. He read the two words written on the paper . “Priester priest.”

He nodded. “What about the other word?”

“Maminka? He didn't know. Said it wasn't German.”

Alex sat still, too puzzled to say anything. After a moment he asked, “Then what is it?”

“The man's a tailor Alex, not a linguist. He said that it sounded Russian. All he knows is that it isn't German. You, uh, coming by for supper next Saturday? Maureen will be expecting you.”

“Hmm? Oh, aye. Looking forward to it.”

Alex thought about two things. The first was that the boy had been speaking in two different languages. He must have therefore come from a region where two languages were spoken, German and the other possibly Slavic. Alex could think of three possibilities, Prussia, Austria or the Baltic territories of Russia. The second thing, the one of more immediate concern, was that the boy had lied to him about not having been offered a position by George. Why had he done that? It seemed without a purpose. A lie should have a purpose. Had Peter become so hardened to lying that he did it without thinking? Was all that he had told him about his wanting to serve him another lie? What else could he have lied about?

Peter, still sitting, looked up as Alex walked past. The old man neither looked at him nor spoke to him. He walked out onto the street and had turned, not back towards the office but towards the Royal Arms. He passed the tavern striding towards the great wooden dock that jutted into Lake Lomond. Peter puzzled but unquestioning, followed behind.

The dock had always been one of Alex's favorite spots. He enjoyed breathing in the freshness of the air being wafted across the lake. He could look on as the steamboats loaded and unloaded passengers and cargo. At the end of the dock he found an empty overturned barrel. He perched himself on it and looked out towards the lake.

The boy sat on the edge of the dock. He looked down at the waves lapping at the piles and wished that he had a stone to break them with. Then behind him he heard Alex.

“Doctor McKay said that he offered you a position. Is that true, Peter?”"A man whose word is worth nothing, is nothing."

Katrina had taught him well. If caught in a lie, never deny it. Look sorry and promise never to do it again. “Yes.”

“When I asked you if he had spoken to you about it, you said no. Why?”

Peter shrugged. It did not seem very important.

“I asked you a question. I expect an answer.” The gentleness had slipped into a stern command.

“I . . . don't know why,” Peter whispered. The assumption that he was ignorant and would always remain so had served him well in the past.

“Do you enjoy lying?”

“No.” Most of the time he did not enjoy it.

“Then why do it? The doctor made you a simple offer. If you didn't like it all you had to do was to say no. Why lie to me about it?”

“I am sorry.”

“Are you? Even if you are which I doubt, that still doesn't explain why.”

The boy stared down at the water. He waited for the doctor to continue. Would he strike him, shout at him; call him some form of filth? The man would punish him. That was fair. Once he did, this would be over. They would go on. He would have to be more careful in the future.

“You must think that I'm a very stupid man.”

The boy tried to concentrate upon the water not upon what was to come. He could hear the man rise. Peter closed his eyes, imagining scenes from one of his favorite books, Robinson Crusoe. He had envied Crusoe his isolation on his island. Then Peter noticed something strange. Alex's footsteps now receding had stopped. He turned to see the doctor standing on the edge of the dock, a step away from the road.

“All the other things that you said to me about wanting to help, about my being your lord, that was all a lie, wasn't it?”

Was it? Peter wondered. Perhaps it was. “It's all s**t,” he muttered more to himself than to Alex.

“Is it?”

Peter looked down. Having seen him for what he was Alex would send him away. That would be his punishment. Punishment was good. A person should be punished.

“That's the problem, lad, with lies. If you tell too many you forget where they start and where they end. A man is worth what his word is worth. No more. No less. A man whose word is worth nothing is nothing. Is that what you think of . …” His voice stopped.

Alex wondered what Peter, or, whoever he was would say? Whatever he said, whatever he did Alex had no reason to believe him. The boy had locked himself into his own lies. He reminded Alex of someone else that he knew. You are such a damn fool, Alex told himself. “Let's go home, lad.”

He turned and shuffled back towards Queen Street. The boy watched him for a moment. Then he broke into a run until he caught up with the old man.

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