by Craig Nova
Also by Craig Nova
NOVELS
Turkey Hash
The Geek
Incandescence
The Good Son
The Congressman’s Daughter
Tornado Alley
Trombone
The Book of Dreams
The Universal Donor
Wetware
Cruisers
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Brook Trout and the Writing Life
FOR WALTER BENNETT
Gaelle turned away from the man in the car and stepped out onto the sidewalk, the money in her hand. The instant she slammed the door, she was sure of it. They were coming for her. The black cars on the avenue seemed to be a funeral procession, their movement oddly ponderous and mysterious, too. She had sold information, and yet, at the time she had done it, the future had seemed so impossibly distant, but now, of course, it arrived like claustrophobia. Perhaps the next car would be the one she was afraid of, and if not that, then maybe the one after. She guessed they would slash her, but if she was lucky they wouldn’t do that or spend any time “talking” to her. Perhaps they would send a woman to kill her, but would that be any better?
It wasn’t the actual being dead, she told herself, that mattered so much as how she got that way. That’s why she hated knowing that it was coming, since it exaggerated her fear, the glint of the knife, the expression of malice, the frankness of the job. Perhaps she would be able to make them pay a price, since she had a small knife in her bag, but a lot of informers had carried knives, and what good had it done them? And she had heard rumors, too, that some of the women in the park had been blinded before they had been killed.
She hugged her shoulders and stood there, trying to find a way to cheer herself up. It was only a matter of going back to the darkness of the time before she had been born, but then this left her trembling, since she knew the darkness before she was born was a matter of coming toward the light, but now, if she entered it again (no, when she entered it again) she would be going away from the light. Please, she thought. Please. Then she stood there and trembled. It was the knives that got to her. How long did she have, one hour, two, a night? Maybe even an extra day.
The men who had come to see her, and a couple of the women, too, had tried to impress her, even though she had been paid. They had bragged about what they had done, what they were going to do, how much money was coming from Moscow, what lies the Brownshirts were going to tell, where arms were being stored. She had traded all of it, to the left and to the right, and she hadn’t done so badly, either, that is in terms of money. At least she had her funeral-society dues paid up to Immertreu, one of the Rings, or gangs, in the city.
Gaelle suspected there was a difference in military terms between being a source of information, a sort of glorified gossip, and a spy. Spies were taken out and shot. Or worse. Maybe they talked to a spy for a while first. But in the end it came down to the same thing. And each group had an army. The Socialists, who were trying to run the government, had the Reichsbanner. Then there were the Brownshirts. The Communists had the Red Front Fighters. There were other vaguely military groups, too, the Steel Helmets, Organization Consul, Organization Escherich. She had spied for all of them, or she guessed she had, since often she only knew that a bit of information had been important, but not to whom or why.
Felix smiled at her as she came away from the car, and even in this light his bad teeth were visible. He was sixteen years old, his jacket a little too large for him, but it didn’t make him seem like a child in a coat, but a man who had shrunk. You could see it in his tired, cagey eyes, and in his face, too, which was like that of a feral creature who knew that the most important quality was patience. His fingers touched a button on Gaelle’s blouse and then undid it to expose her underwear.
She gave him the money she had just made, and he reached into his pocket for the other bills and folded the new ones into the pile.
“It’s about like last night,” he said. “Maybe a little slower. But it’ll pick up after midnight. That’s when the gentlemen come out. Why, they may have to spend a little time drinking to get up their courage, but they’re good tippers, you know?”
Gaelle glanced at him uneasily and said, “Yeah. Late. That’s always the way.”
He was beginning to develop some peach fuzz and a little acne, too. Six months before she had found him looking for food in a trash can and had taken him to a restaurant. When he had finished a bowl of soup, a plate of sausages, boiled potatoes, and cabbage, he had said, “Now, why would you do something like that?” He had pointed at the empty bowl. “Why would you waste money on food for someone like me?”
“You’ve got to eat,” she had said. “Why, I’ve been hungry myself. After a couple of days you think about eating your shoes. You’ve got to eat something. Why, I may be trouble but I’m not so bad as to leave you hungry.”
His eyes had widened for a moment, but his surprise, which seemed innocent, only allowed a deeper look into that wary darkness. He shook his head as though someone had hit him with a stick. “Oh, you’d buy me food? You shouldn’t do that. No, you shouldn’t, my cream puff.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “That is an unnecessary expense. We will cut down on unnecessary expenses.” The bottom of the bowl had a little broth in it and he tipped it up to get that. Then he had said, “You and me. We can do some business.”
“You think so?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “You could use a little help.”
He lifted his pants and showed the holder he had made for the ice pick he carried inside his sock. The handle was taped to give him a good grip, and he pulled it out to show the tip, which had been ground on the curbs and stone sidewalks of Berlin. The tip showed like a star in the night sky. Then he put it away. The ice pick made him more trustworthy, or dangerous, although Gaelle saw the two as being intimately related.
He had started right away, holding the money, negotiating a price, making sure her clothes were clean and that she ate something when she forgot. He had been living in an abandoned building with some other boys his age.
Gaelle turned back to the avenue where the cars came along with that casual searching. She hadn’t thought of the information as a betrayal so much as a way of making a little extra money. And she liked the idea of having something serious on someone. It could work to protect you, or it could turn into a good reason for someone to get rid of you. She had thought it would work for protection, and now she saw that wasn’t anywhere near as likely as she had supposed.
So she stood there, looking at the lights, trying to judge which were looking for excitement and which were looking for her in particular.
“You look worried,” said Felix. “What’s bothering you?”
Gaelle just shrugged. She thought about that glint.
“I know,” said Felix. “Why, people think they can get away with things, that we’re just a limping boy and a girl with a scar.” He looked around. “Oh, I know how to look like I’m keeping my place. But they better be careful.”
“I’ve got things on my mind,” she said.
Well, he thought, maybe a gravelstone was allowed to be moody, but these women with a deformity of one kind or another had value in the nighttime market of Berlin. That’s something he could depend on.
“You’re not eating,” he said. “And you got to keep your clothes better …”
She wished she could go home and get into the hot water of her bath, where she looked at herself in the mirrors around the tub. Nothing had happened to her body. That was the same, even better now: she was thin, small breasted, blond, twenty-two years old. The scar on one side of her face had changed her forever, but in the slick skin of the burn her features seemed about to emerge, and it was this suggestion
of metamorphosis that people craved. People saw something trying to get out, and whatever this quality was, it made them gasp. Her scar was like seeing a movie star through filmy silk that hinted at a beauty greater than the one that might actually be seen when the silk was dropped. This possibility of emerging loveliness, at once contradictory and compelling, brought the high prices she charged in nighttime Berlin. Her face suggested everything that was beautiful and yet doomed. It was a perfect expression of the erotic, or of that tension between the impulse to live and the forces arrayed against it.
She had a wild desire to go home, too, to her parents’ apartment with its solid furniture, its tables and a sofa with lion’s feet, the pictures of hanging game on the wall, the scent of cologne that her father, an assistant manager in a bank, wore when he went out the door in his striped trousers, his vest, his dark coat. Her mother was always glad to see her, and wanted nothing more than to be in Gaelle’s presence, as though if the two of them could be together, why then there was hope. Still, the scar, which Gaelle had gotten in an automobile accident two years before, had changed everything: as far as her parents were concerned, the scar was evidence of a curse, of a lack of hope, of how they had been deceived by what they had assumed was the progression of ordinary life. Gaelle still felt the odd swaying of the automobile before it had turned sideways and rolled over and then the colognelike coolness of gasoline on the side of her face.
A car swept up to the curb with a slow, tidal movement, its brakes perfectly silent. A driver in front and one dark figure in back. Beyond the car the trees in the Tiergarten appeared like enormous black feathers against the lights of the city. The driver reached over and stared out the passenger window, as though he wasn’t sure this was the right place, but after a while he crooked one of his white fingers. Come here.
Gaelle wanted to ask for help, but it occurred to her that maybe it was better to say nothing. Maybe they might grab Felix first, and the less he was on his guard, the more he would operate like a canary in a basket in a coal mine. If they grabbed him, she’d try to disappear into the shadows, or run into the Tiergarten, getting rid of her shoes first.
“Go on,” she said. “See what they want.”
He stepped off the curb like a short, troubled man. He had a little limp, too. Maybe tuberculosis in his hip. Something like that. She knew a girl who had had such a thing. How could you get it there? Then she felt her isolation and her loneliness as a physical separation from other people, as though she were wrapped up in a clear substance that could only be penetrated by that flashing blade. So she was left with emotional distance from other people, but no protection. As she stood there, waiting, she had the wild impulse for a friend, a woman she could talk to or go shopping with, someone she could trust. The other women in the park smiled, pretended to be nice, even understanding, but every one of them would turn on her in a minute. All she had was Felix, and what was that?
If only I had a friend, she thought. Is that too much to ask?
“Hey, Felix,” she said.
He was halfway over to the car, but he turned and raised an eyebrow.
“What?” he said.
“Come back for a minute,” she said. “I got a funny feeling tonight.” She took the arm of his coat, as though she could slow things down that way.
“Well, you don’t eat anything,” he said. “What do you expect?”
“It’s not like that,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “How about a nice Kalbshaxe?”
She put her hand to her lip.
“Or something sweet?” he said.
“Just keep an eye out. Nothing that seems … you know.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Well, like someone who isn’t right,” she said.
“Who’s right around here?” he said.
“I mean extra that way,” she said. She tried to make a gesture, a movement of the hand that suggested something freakish or horrible.
“Well, sometimes they pay more, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. But I’m feeling funny.”
“You got nothing to worry about,” he said. “Won’t making some money make you feel better? Then we can get something to eat. See? Just listen to me.”
“Please,” she said.
“Please what? What?” he said. “Are you trying to say something?”
“No,” she said. “I guess not.”
“Trust me,” he said.
Then she realized that when they came for her they would appear normal. If she had a chance with someone odd, she should take it, because the obviously odd would be safer than the seemingly mundane man who had a taste for a gravelstone. The deformity always hit the normal ones the hardest, since this was a moment when they saw just how safe and protected their ordinary life really was. This experience of the abyss, of the enormous powers of chance or malice, left them trembling. One of these men had said being with Gaelle was “like being with God.”
Oh, yeah, she thought. Well, maybe not God, but his messenger. And would you like to hear what I have to say, or what the message is? Then she started trembling, sick with rage, thinking of the things she felt and knew … When that normal man had said this, she thought, Why, let me tell you. Let me tell you. Instead, though, she was silent. She had simply stared at the man who had said this.
“I’ll take a look,” said Felix. “Just a sec.”
He stood there, though, his glance going from one of her eyes to the other.
“I’m just uneasy,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
“Sure,” he said. “I get it.”
He walked up to the car, swaggering as he went, his overlarge jacket and his cap disappearing into the glare of the headlights from the avenue. How had this happened? Because she had needed money? She had sold what she had. She had endured insults and had people gawk at her. And now a silver flash was coming out of the dark? Her desire for a friend increased in direct proportion to her terror, but her need for someone only made her feel that much more alone.
Well, she would fight. No one was going to do something to her and walk away from it without getting hurt. The sound of the engine of the car at the curb made a sad putter. Felix stepped on the running board, and the car tilted over a little.
The man in the back had white skin, perfectly combed hair, a dark suit, and he looked at Felix with a languid interest. Felix smelled a faint odor inside the car, not perfume, not pomade, something sweet and off-putting. The man said, “Is that Gaelle?”
“You want something special?” said Felix. “We understand about gentlemen. Shy sometimes, you know? But just ask.”
“Just Gaelle,” said the man.
“There’s no ‘just’ about her,” said Felix.
The man shrugged.
“Of course,” he said. “Anything you say.”
“Do you want her, or not?” said Felix. “She’s been telling me how much she is ready to go all out. She doesn’t get in that mood all the time.”
The driver turned his head slowly, too. Everything about the car, the dark, boxy bulk of it at the curb, the sweet smell, the perfectly dressed man in the back, left Felix with the cool scent of money.
“Yes,” said the man. “We’d like her.”
“Just hang on,” said Felix. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He stepped off the car’s running board, the squeak of the springs, the small, silvery sound hanging there like a note against the dark. Then he looked around, thinking, Well, it’s her lookout. She can take care of herself, can’t she? He had his worries, too.
Gaelle adjusted her jacket, ran a finger through her hair. She remembered how her mother used to like to touch her hair, which her mother had said was like “spun gold.” The people she was worried about could come out of the shadows, the dim entrances of the buildings, from the trees in the park. At night, in Berlin, the ordinary was so perfectly blended with the unusual.
“He wants you,” sa
id Felix. “I got a little extra. Maybe a tip if you treat the gentlemen right? See?”
“Yes,” said Gaelle.
“Still feeling funny?”
“No,” she said. She shook her head. “I’m ready.”
“I feel funny, too, sometimes,” he said. “I get over it. A kind of mood, but that’s all it is.”
“Sometimes I really need you,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “We need each other. We don’t have to argue. It’s going to be fine.”
“We’ll go out for dinner,” she said.
“That’s the way,” he said.
Gaelle looked both ways. Maybe they would come in two cars. That was a possibility, she guessed. It would look like business as usual, and when she walked up to the car she was going to get into, they would come up in another one. They would want to know some details, too, and she knew they were good at that kind of work.
She came up to the car.
“Good evening,” said the man in the back.
“Good evening,” she said.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Gaelle.”
The car appeared in grays and blacks. The man wore a wristwatch, and he checked the time, the silver glint of it hanging there like a piece of foil. Only the driver and the man in the back, or, at least, she couldn’t see anyone crouching behind the driver’s seat. Still, it was possible someone was there. She wondered if there was something else that would tip her off, an impalpable sense of things about to explode: wasn’t there something in that moment? Then she thought, No, there isn’t. It’s absolutely ordinary.
“Would you like to get in?” the man said.
Gaelle looked around.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Take your time,” said the man. “We’ve agreed on a price. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” she said. She still looked around. She wondered how much Felix was holding for her. But it wasn’t going to be enough to leave, to start over, to go to Munich or some other place. And here, where could she go? Home? They knew where she lived, not only her apartment, but where her parents lived, too. Why hadn’t she been smart enough to find someplace that no one knew about, that she could go to, an apartment that she rented under an assumed name and that she hardly ever went to? Because, she thought, it always seemed like I could keep everyone in line. In line. She looked around.