The Russian Passenger

by Gunter Ohnemus

Later, when Sonia and I were in bed, she suddenly punched the wall.

  What’s the matter?

  I’m so furious, Harry. I’m so confused. You’re against the witness protection programme because you won’t be able to see Susannah any more, right? It’s not because of me. You’re against it because you’ll be parted again, the two of you. And the protection programme is far more final than German history. There’ll be no reunion because a reunion could prove fatal.

  I laid my hand on her forehead. I’m against the programme because I can’t leave Susannah any more. I mean, I don’t want to live in a world where I can never see her again. And I’m against it because we can’t leave each other, you and I. If they separate us we’ll both be all alone in the world. There’ll be no one left. No one we know – no one we’re allowed to know. It’s as simple as that. And as terrible.

  Saturday

  It’s Saturday again. Two weeks later. We’ve changed hotels twice, and the passing days have brought an alternation of mist and sunshine, Sonia and Susannah, hope and emptiness. There’s been no news from Washington, and then there was that frightful night beside the sea. Friday of last week. We’ve been staying at Susannah’s since then because the San Francisco police are looking for us now too. Or rather, for me.

  On Friday, on Friday of last week, on that goddamned Friday, I’d gone jogging with Susannah in Golden Gate Park. The evening was rather cool, and we ran a bit faster than usual. Susannah was telling me about a new software programme, but I wasn’t listening. That’s to say, I wasn’t listening with my ears and didn’t understand a word, but my entire body was listening. As before, her voice was like a gentle, pleasant breeze that caressed my cheeks and every part of me. Her voice was in my hair and my blood and everywhere, and I could have spent the rest of my life running through Golden Gate Park at her side, nothing more. I kept looking at her face. Her forehead. Her nose. Her mouth. It was a long fascination, a song without end, a gentle shock I never wanted to get over. I looked at her forehead, her nose and her mouth, and suddenly there was a recurrence of another shock I’d had not long ago.

  A few weeks before I met Sonia I was standing in a Munich bookshop with a book in my hand. It was going cheap, Bavaria in the Aftermath of World War II, or some such title, a volume of photographs dated 1945–50, around the time I was born. I was leafing through it and looking at the pictures: bomb damage, children that looked the way I did in photos of the period, the American Library, GIs, demos, vaudeville dancers with plump upper thighs, and then, all at once, a picture of my mother. My head started spinning as I stood there in that bookshop. My mother stood in a classroom full of schoolboys, pointing to a blackboard with her left hand. The photo had been taken in 1946, when Tess had just turned twenty-four. She was smiling the way she always smiled when she’d asked a question. Then I looked at the writing on the blackboard. The characters were unfamiliar, and I wouldn’t immediately have recognized them as Hebrew but for the caption below the photograph: “A Hebrew lesson in the primary school of Munich’s Central Committee of Liberated Jews.” The photograph was in a chapter headed “Displaced Persons”. That’s just what I myself have been for a long time, a displaced person. An expellee. Someone with no place to go, but someone who has expelled himself.

  I was disappointed when I saw the Hebrew characters. It couldn’t be Tess after all. The face, the smile, the outstretched hand, the bare arms – everything was like her. But it couldn’t be her. Besides, she wasn’t living in Munich at that time, two years before my birth. Nor, of course, did she know Hebrew. Yet the person in that bookshop a few months ago, the person in that classroom in June 1946, was Tess. It was her and it wasn’t.

  Susannah doesn’t resemble Tess in the least, and yet, as we ran along side by side, I’d been reminded of that picture. Someone I’d lost had suddenly reappeared. I told her about the photograph.

  She stared at me in surprise, stared at me for a long time. Then she laughed. That would be great, she said. All my family’s hatred would have been in vain. All my mother’s hatred, and all my brother’s. Michael always shared my mother’s sentiments, and she treated him like the Messiah. Her own personal Messiah. He was her first-born son, after all. Josh wasn’t as important to her. Better than a girl, but not as important. A supernumerary. Michael used to leave the room whenever you came to see us. He never looked at you, remember? My mother never left the room. She merely waited for you to say something stupid, some monstrous enormity she could reproach me for afterwards. But you aren’t stupid, and you very seldom say anything monstrous. No more often than me and Albert Einstein, at least. Yes, it’s true: my mother and Michael would have obliterated you. She and her Messiah. Josh would have made a far better Messiah. He’s so emotional, he never allows himself to be ruled by his emotions. Like my father. He uses his head, whereas people like Michael are happy to be able to feel anything at all. For them, hatred is a sign of progress. My mother was utterly beside herself when Michael got married. She sobbed as if it were a funeral. She didn’t cry when Josh got married, and when my turn came she was delighted to be rid of me … Hey, would you like to know what Josh and Michael do for a living?

  Tell me what Josh does.

  He’s a psychologist. What else could he have done? He would never advise anyone to dismantle the masculine aspects of their personality. Josh has never been scared of me. Just like you.

  We were already sitting in her car in the parking lot, ready to drive off, when she added: Aside from Josh, I was the only member of the family who liked you even a little bit.

  At least that made two of you, I said.

  She kissed me. When we drew apart I saw a cyclist standing in front of the car. He must have been riding past and had come to a stop. He was standing some six or seven yards away, dressed in a black cyclist’s outfit – one of those skintight, streamlined jobs. His face was invisible beneath a black helmet and sunglasses. Taking a pad and pencil from his little rucksack, he looked over at us, or at the car, and jotted something down. It looked as if he’d made a note of Susannah’s licence number. He tore the sheet off the pad and replaced the pad and pencil in his rucksack. Then he removed his sunglasses. It was Pancho, the Mexican I’d kneed in the guts that night!

  He grinned and waved the slip of paper.

  I’ll have to have a word with him, I told Susannah. I may be some time. Go home. If you don’t hear from me within the next three hours, call the police.

  Mafia? she asked.

  No, I said, just someone I had a run-in with a while back. Now he’s got your licence number. If you call the police, tell them you’re being harassed by a Mexican. Threatened, even. He may be called Pancho, but that could be a false name. You mustn’t tell them anything about me. My name mustn’t be mentioned or I’ll be done for. So will Sonia.

  Okay, she said. Be careful.

  I got out and walked towards Pancho, who hadn’t stopped grinning at me. Then, when I’d almost reached him, he pedalled off. He started circling me in the almost deserted car park, maintaining enough of a gap between us for me not to be able to catch him. He kept his eyes on me the whole time. Susannah drove slowly out of the parking lot and into the street.

  I tried to explain to Pancho that it had all been a misunderstanding. That I’d thought he meant to mug me. That I’d panicked.

  He kept riding around me in a circle, still grinning. I offered him money, but he just grinned even more.

  Ha, you and your beautiful lady friend! he said. He spoke with a strong Latino accent – a fake accent. He hadn’t had a trace of one when we’d first met. It was his way of taunting me, presumably.

  Leave her out of this, I said. She’s just someone I go jogging with.

  Jogging? Is that what they call it now, he said, smooching in a car?

  I offered him money again.

  I could certainly use some of your money, he said, but my cojones wouldn’t approve. My cojones very proud and very offended. My cojones want their revenge. You hurt the
m bad and they want their revenge.

  I’m sorry, Pancho. I’m really sorry. It was a misunderstanding, that’s all.

  Not for my balls. Not for my proud Mexican balls. My balls don’t misunderstand. I’ll get your money anyway, but first I’ll get you. The money I’ll get from your lady friend.

  He continued to circle me, chanting derisively, over and over: Pretty baby! Pretty, pretty baby!

  Give me that piece of paper, I said, knowing that it wouldn’t do me any good. Susannah’s licence number is very memorable. It’s “BLUBOY” followed by some numerals that are just as easy to remember.

  Pancho crumpled the slip of paper, put it in his mouth and spat it out in my direction. Pretty, pretty baby, he parroted, tapping his forehead repeatedly. I supposed this meant he wouldn’t forget the licence plate in a hurry.

  Then he rode slowly off, heading north.

  Pretty baby! Pretty, pretty baby!

  Bluboy! Bluboy!

  Jogging lady!

  Fucking lady!

  Bluboy! Bluboy!

  Run, lover boy! Run, run, run!

  Pretty baby! Pretty, pretty baby!

  I ran after him. I didn’t know what he had in mind. Perhaps he had been shadowing us for a long time and planned to lead me into a trap in some side street, where his friends would be waiting for me. Or perhaps he meant to humiliate me – to wait until I was too exhausted to defend myself, then attack me. But I continued to run in his wake.

  Run, lover boy! Run, run, run!

  I ran and ran.

  Pretty baby! Pretty, pretty baby!

  I ran and ran, further and further to the north.

  I won’t touch you! I called after him. I simply want you to leave us alone!

  Run, lover boy! Run, run, run!

  Pretty baby! Pretty, pretty baby!

  Sometimes he allowed the gap between us to close, only to put on speed again. We crossed Lincoln Park and kept on going in the direction of the sea. I felt an agonizing pain in my lungs and came to a halt, barely able to stand.

  I’ll give you money! I shouted. But it wasn’t a shout, it was a croak I could barely hear myself.

  I ran on. On and on I ran, and on and on he pedalled, but the truth was, he was really chasing me. He was just waiting for me to exhaust myself and collapse. Through the trees we went, heading in the direction of South Bay. At one stage he stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  Come on, lover boy!

  Run, lover boy! Run, run, run!

  Then, very slowly, he recited Susannah’s licence number. That was when I grasped what I’d known all the time: Pancho couldn’t be allowed to survive. He was totally uninvolved. He was innocent. It was all just a terrible coincidence, but Pancho couldn’t be allowed to survive. He had that licence number in his head. He would never forget it, and he would never leave Susannah in peace. That number in his head was his death warrant. Or mine. It occurs to me as I write this – not that I thought of it while I was chasing him – that Susannah would also have been in the clear if he had killed me. He would have been a murderer, and she had seen him, and he would never have dared approach her. On the other hand, the guests at her party had seen me. They would have recognized my picture in the paper, and then nothing in the world could have saved Susannah and Sonia. But that’s just hindsight. When I was chasing Pancho my one desire was to beat the number out of his body and out of his head.

  All at once I felt immensely calm, immensely strong. I ran on as fast as I could. The pain in my lungs and legs had gone. I had only one ambition: to overtake Pancho and kill him.

  He must have sensed the sudden change in me, because he pedalled harder. It was almost dark by now, and then came the moment when he made a mistake. He looked round at me for just too long and collided with a tree or a root, I couldn’t see exactly.

  He got up at once and retrieved his bicycle, but the front wheel was buckled. No one was going anywhere on that machine. I drew nearer and nearer. By the time I was almost on top of him he had a knife in his hand. I lunged at him and felt a sharp pain in my left forearm. The pain lasted only an instant, but that was long enough for Pancho. He kicked me in the stomach and ran off.

  Come on, lover boy!

  Run, lover boy! Run, run, run!

  I sprinted after him. The path dropped away and ran steeply downhill towards the sea. I felt branches whipping my cheeks, then nothing more, as if my body had ceased to exist. I was all hatred and strength and violence.

  When I reached the shore I saw a big expanse of boulders and Pancho’s shadowy figure clambering over them.

  He scrambled on to a rock higher up and waited there for me. Perhaps he still had his knife. I looked up at him when I was only a few yards away. Pretty baby! he began to chant, but the mockery had left his voice. He was out of breath.

  Come down, I said.

  He didn’t budge.

  Not letting him out of my sight, I knelt down and groped around for a stone until I found one the size of my fist. Then I slowly straightened up. All I could see was the outline of Pancho’s head, and all I wanted was to hurl the stone at that head whose only sin was a licence number it would never forget.

  I missed. Pancho laughed, and all I felt within me was cold hatred. Icy calm.

  He was still laughing as I bent down, picked up another stone, and hurled it in his direction. He tried to dodge it but slipped and fell headlong on to the rocks below.

  Silence fell. A terrible silence.

  I picked up another stone and slowly made my way to the spot where he had to be lying. Or waiting for me, perhaps with a knife in his hand.

  But Pancho wasn’t waiting for me. He was simply lying there, waiting for no one. Cautiously I bent down, laid my hand on his forehead, and said: Pancho. He didn’t stir. I put two fingers on his carotid artery. Nothing. I couldn’t feel a thing.

  That was the last I remember. I must have passed out. I don’t know how long for, but when I came to I was lying on the rocks beside Pancho. I felt his throat once more. Then I ran back up the path. I ran and kept on running, without any idea where I was going. I simply ran on and on.

  I had reached a road when the headlights of a car came up behind me. The car was slowing, I noticed. It drew level with me, but I ran on. It kept pace with me, and I heard the driver’s window being lowered.

  Fritz!

  It was Susannah.

  Fritz, stop! Please stop and get in.

  My God, what a sight you are, she said when I was sitting beside her.

  Why didn’t you go home and stay there? I said.

  I couldn’t just sit around, not knowing what had happened to you. What’s with Pancho?

  Pretty baby! I shouted hysterically. Pretty, pretty baby!

  What’s the matter with you?

  Pancho’s dead.

  My God! Did you kill him?

  No, I didn’t. Not directly, at least. He fell.

  I could see how relieved she was.

  Come on, she said, we’re going home. It’s not far. You could use a hot bath, You’re bleeding, and your face is all scratched.

  Sunday

  Some tourists found him down on the rocks the next day. His bicycle was also found. Pancho’s real name was Garcia Sanchez. He’d left Los Angeles for San Francisco two years ago. The police suspected an act of revenge by some gang from LA.

  I should really have got a doctor to look at the knife wound in my arm, but we couldn’t take the risk. Susannah suggested driving down to Tijuana – a Mexican doctor wouldn’t ask any questions – but I found that an obscene idea. I was responsible for the death of that unfortunate Mexican. How could I get a Mexican doctor to treat me? We had to risk letting the wound get infected. I had the shivers and ran a temperature for a few days, partly because of hypothermia, but my arm looks pretty good now. The scar will never disappear.

  Two days later the police abandoned their act-of-revenge theory. All the suspects in LA had an alibi. Besides, the bloodstains found on Pancho’s cloth
ing hadn’t come from him. Blood group A1. Mine, of course.

  The police now believed that Pancho might have lost his life after mixing it with a tourist. He had once or twice been arrested on suspicion of mugging tourists in the San Francisco parks, but nothing had ever been proved against him. This was not so far from the truth.

  Sonia has to leave the hotel, said Susannah. They’ll be checking all the hotels.

  Sonia took a taxi to the airport so that superficial investigations would suggest that she had left. Susannah picked her up at the airport and drove her home. This is precisely what shouldn’t have happened, I told Susannah. Now you’re landed with both of us. You’re in as much danger as we are.

  She simply laughed. Then she looked grave. That poor guy. I doubt if they’ll trouble to run a match on your blood. He was just an anonymous Mexican, after all. Even if his name was Pancho or Garcia, he was still an anonymous Mexican, so why bother? Awful, isn’t it? He died because, far away in Europe, the Russian Mafia wouldn’t let a woman go, and because of all that’s happened since. A terrible series of coincidences.

  The series gets longer and longer, Susannah. And now I’ve killed the guy.

  You didn’t kill him. He fell.

  He fell because of me. Anyway, I would have killed him because he’d have involved you in my problems. Because Sonia and I would have been blown.

  I became involved in your problems long ago, Fritz. And I don’t believe you’d have killed him. What would you have done, grabbed a rock and smashed his skull in?

  I did kill him. Or as good as.

  * * *

  One or two more brief reports appeared in the papers. That, it seemed, was the most that could be done for Garcia Sanchez. But the police are bound to be checking the hotels for me. For a tourist who may have been involved in his death.

  Thursday

  At first I thought I was dreaming when I heard the door creak. It was dark, and I’d been fast asleep, and then I didn’t think I was dreaming any more. The door really had creaked. The door of my room in Susannah’s house! In the middle of the night! Fear shot through me once more – a long, violent jolt of fear. Then I gave up. Let them come for me, I thought. Let them kill me. I can’t go on.