by Craig Nova
The paper trembled in her fingers, and as she looked at Ritter she was appalled he could see her anger in such a small gesture. She looked down at the sheet and then at Ritter as she made it stop.
“So?” said Ritter.
“Harvey Becker, Konrad Richter, Otto Mayer,” she said.
“Who are they?” he said.
She held the paper while she kept her eyes on him. Was she going to let him push her around, just like that?
“They’ve hurt their wives,” she said. “Put them in the hospital. They’re getting worse.”
“Good,” said Ritter. “Stick with them. That’s where you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”
She stood up and waited, certain that if she moved toward the door she would be acquiescing. He didn’t look up. She squared her shoulders, waited.
“Well, thanks for coming in. Let me know if you turn up anything else. But, be smart. Forget Hauptmann.”
She stood there for a while, but finally she went to the door, certain that just by turning, by moving, some communication had taken place. Well, she would have to find a way to resist, as though it were possible to retrieve that moment in which they had both been so perfectly poised and when anything was possible. The typing started again and the scent of cigars rose from the floor below.
In her office she opened the map of the park again, smoothing out the paper, which made a sound like remote thunder, and when she did she thought of a Russian toast, “To us, fuck them,” but then she thought, Who is “us”? Me and my imaginary correspondent? Stop, she thought, just stop. You have enough to worry about.
Felix’s gray skin added to the effect of his oversize coat. He looked around, from under his brows, as though he wanted to hide the fact that he was taking things in, and then he groomed Gaelle with his nicotine-stained fingers, smelled her underarms, smoothed the dress over her small hips, checked to see that the seams in her stockings were straight. “You’ve got to watch yourself,” said Felix to Gaelle. “Why, you’re an expensive item, and you want to look like it.” The nicotine stains on his index and second fingers had the shape of a hemisphere.
Armina walked up the avenue and stopped behind him as his fingers touched a button on Gaelle’s blouse and then undid it to expose her underwear. Then he said, with his back to Armina, somehow knowing she was there without seeing her, “Why, you must be a cop? What do you want?”
“I’d like some help,” said Armina.
“You hear that, my sweet?” he said to Gaelle. “Help.” He faced Armina. “You don’t think much of me, do you? My skin’s gray and wrinkled. So, I must be a punk, right? Isn’t that what a cop thinks?”
“I don’t think much of anything at all,” said Armina.
“Oh,” said Felix. “I know what my place is. I’ve been taught what it is. You won’t catch me reaching for anything above my station. Why, look at my leg.” He walked back and forth and hit his leg with the flat of his hand. “See? I’ve been taught.”
“A lot of girls are frightened,” said Gaelle. “What are you doing about it?”
“That’s why I’m here,” said Armina.
“Well, well,” said Felix. “And you come down here for people like us? For a limping boy and a girl with a scar?”
Felix shook a cigarette out of a blue package with a furtive air, and lit it with a match he struck on his thumbnail. He worked on the cigarette with a quick sucking, the smoke coming out of his nostrils in two long plumes, like a horse breathing in the cold.
“You’re going to stunt your growth if you keep smoking like that,” said Gaelle.
“Don’t make me laugh,” said Felix. “That’s an old wives’ tale.” He turned to Armina. “I take what I get. I don’t ask for more. People like us, what can we expect? Mercy? Why, Gaelle, wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yes,” said Gaelle. “I’d like that.”
“We’ve got a poor man’s mercy,” said Felix.
“What’s that?” said Armina.
“Why, you won’t catch me giving an opinion on anything. Oh, no,” he said. “I know what’s what. And where I’m supposed to stay. I’ve been taught. You know what these streets are like if you haven’t got any money?”
A car came along, slowed down, the driver’s eyes on Gaelle. Then it speeded up again and disappeared into the clutter of automobiles.
“Do you ever go with older men?” said Armina.
“So, you want help with Marie Rote?” said Felix.
“That’s right,” said Armina.
“It’s above me to make a comment. But there were times when I had my doubts about Marie Rote. She went with men who were nutters. Why, she’d even go with Crazy Peter.”
“She was dumb,” said Gaelle.
“Well, that’s the way of it,” said Felix. “Why, I don’t think you can imagine the kinds of people who are around here after dark.”
Armina looked at him.
“I think I can,” she said.
Felix shrugged. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled.
“Look,” said Gaelle. “Let’s say a girl helps you. She starts playing around with one of these guys, you know, like the one you’re looking for. What if the guy finds out she’s just a tool of the cops? What is the guy going to do? How is he going to protect himself?”
“That’s what I’m trying to say,” said Felix. “It’s just me, so you don’t have to listen. But playing around with some of these guys in the park is not a smart thing.”
“I’m asking for help,” said Armina.
Gaelle walked back and forth, her hips sleek in her dress, her shape luminescent in the lights from the cars.
“Let me think about it,” she said.
Gaelle turned her face as a challenge: was Armina a snob, a woman who was smug and condescending, who wouldn’t even go shopping with someone like Gaelle? And in the gesture, in the odd vulnerability of the moment, Gaelle realized that’s just what she wanted to do. They might go to the department stores, look through the lingerie, have lunch in that place where each room had a different theme, a jungle complete with rain, an American Wild West scene, a street in Paris. The fantastical quality of the decorations made Gaelle think that all things were possible, even friendship.
“Let me think about it,” said Gaelle. “Do you have a card or something?”
Armina took a card from her handbag. Gaelle passed it over to Felix, who held it by the tips of his fingers, as though it were crawling with germs. He shook another cigarette from the blue package and lighted it, the smoke rising around him in a curling mass.
“So, tell me,” said Armina. “What’s a poor man’s mercy?”
“Cunning,” said Felix as he put the card in his pocket.
Gaelle woke in her small apartment and swung her feet onto the floor. Bruises, in the shape of fingertips, were on her thighs and arms, the yellowish green color like a leaf in the fall. She stood in front of the mirror and turned to the side. There were more bruises on her hips. Then she dressed in comfortable clothes that covered the marks and went downstairs and across the street to the park where women took their children to play. A child of three, with blond hair who was wearing a white shirt and brown pants with matching suspenders, came over to the bench where Gaelle sat and played a game of sticks, which turned into marking the sandy path (a river, an island, a foreign country) and then he put out his hands to her to play pat-a-cake, one hit here, on hit there, the touch of his small hands on Gaelle’s having a power that was out of all proportion to the moment. He didn’t notice the scar, but when she pulled up the sleeve of her shirt to play pat-a-cake, he said, “You got a boo.” “Yes,” she said. “I guess I do.” He went back to patting her hands, first one and then another, and finally his mother came along and took him away, frowning once at Gaelle. “Don’t you know better than to frighten children?” she said. Then Gaelle sat on the bench with the marks in the sandy path at her feet, the childish river, the island, the foreign country. The voices of other children who played here c
ame and went with the cadence of birds, their laughter light and almost infectious. Gaelle touched the bruises on her arm and remembered the yellow-leaf quality of those on the inside of her thigh. She decided to go to a bar not far away, a place where she waited in the back for a man who brought opium and morphine from the East. For a moment Gaelle imagined that the boy’s map, the one in the sand, was of Afghanistan. She came out of the park and turned down the avenue.
Aksel leaned against a kiosk on which there were posters for political meetings, advertisements for a cabaret, a picture of a woman in fishnet stockings who winked over her shoulder. He shifted his weight as he kept his eye on her apartment house door, although just when she came out of the park, he turned in her direction.
He wore his white shirt, dark pants, and he had on a coat, too, a brown one that came down below his knees. He looked one way and another and then approached her.
He was taller than she remembered, and he walked next to her with a slight swagger, and as she went along, she felt the lingering buzz of the child’s hand and the sting of the accusation that she had frightened him. The boy hadn’t noticed her face, and it was only with children at this age that she could be herself. Now, still hearing the mother’s words, she turned to this Aksel character. Who did he think he was? Someone to push her around? To accuse her? As though the scar were something she had done wrong? Did he want to make use of her? To have some fun with? Go on, she thought, make your pitch. Maybe I’ll show you a trick. The touch of the child’s hand lingered, and with that galling sense of accusation, she looked up at Aksel and then right up the street. She didn’t know if it was worth letting him have it. Maybe it was better to go to the bar to meet her friend who went to Afghanistan.
She walked a little faster.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t be like that. Wait a minute.” It was a cool afternoon, and one of her cheeks was pink, her hair filled with highlights, her lips full. “I’m busy now,” she said.
“Look,” he said. “I just want to talk things over.”
“What do you want to talk about?” she said.
“Well, I don’t know. I just want to talk,” he said.
“Sometimes I feel that way. So what?” she said.
“Do you? A young girl like you?” he said.
“I’m not so young,” she said.
He looked around.
“I’ve been thinking about you. All the time,” he said.
“You?” she said. “Aren’t you interested in perfection? Girls with perfect skin, beautiful hair, long legs, pink cheeks. Classic. Isn’t that the word you would use?”
“I just want to talk,” he said. “I can’t explain it.”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s the forbidden part, isn’t it. Well, take a look.”
“Don’t be like that,” he said.
“Go on,” she said. “Look if you dare….”
They walked along Unter den Linden up to the Lustgarten, where they climbed the steps of the Altes Museum. Inside they stood in the temple of the Roman gods, the statues of which were arranged in a circle, the messengers, the gods themselves, all on columns. The place had a scent of old stone and dampness, too, as though some essence of the Nile exhibits in the next room lingered around the gods. Gaelle and Aksel sat on a stone bench at the side of the temple, their hips almost touching. Well, she thought, it’s too easy with this one. She’d make him pay for the mother’s accusation. No one should speak to her like that.
“So, why would you want anything to do with a damaged woman? Isn’t that the way you’d think of me?” she said.
She turned the scar to him.
“It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “There’s something in it. Something beautiful.”
They looked at the gods and heard the distant and muted sound of people walking in the museum, the echoes suggesting the passage of time and the way distant events lingered.
“You can talk to me,” he said. “You really can.”
“Just think what your pals will do to me when they get the chance. You know, when they win. With your ideas of perfection. Hmmm. I bet they’d ship people like me to someplace far away.”
“Look,” he said. “You and I are more alike than you think.”
“All right,” she said. “Let’s put it to the test. Are you ready?”
“Me?” he said. “What kind of test?”
“Make me trust you,” she said. “Show me you aren’t just getting a cheap thrill out of me. That’s what a lot of men do.”
“I’m not like that,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re different? How many times do you think I’ve heard that?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
The stone gods put off a damp scent.
“This is a hard city to be alone in,” he said.
“You think I’m worried about that?” she said. “Why I’ve got all kinds of friends.”
She faced him and looked from one of his eyes to the other.
“How can I get you to trust me?” he said.
“Tell me something that is dangerous to talk about.”
“It means so much to you?” he said.
“I want you to prove this doesn’t bother you,” she said. She touched her face. “To get you to prove you aren’t laughing at me. Or using me. I want something from you.”
“You go first,” he said.
“Why should I?” she said.
“It’s a two-way street,” he said.
She swallowed. And yet, in the moment, she had the desire to be honest.
“I keep making mistakes.” She blinked. “That’s the truth.”
They sat quietly in the room of the old, dead gods. He kissed her on her neck and eyes and she moved toward him, into a beam of light that came from the front door of the temple. Then she put her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer. He trembled.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll make you trust me. I’m not afraid.”
She smiled to herself and looked at the gods.
“Something dangerous now. That’s the only thing that means anything.”
He leaned back, out of the light. Then he turned back to her. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said.
She nodded, her upturned, slick face in the beam of light that came into the temple.
“We have someone in the Soviet embassy, an employee. He’s a German, but he works for the Soviets. He tells us everything about the Red Front. How much money they get from Moscow, what they are going to do, where they are going to demonstrate. Then we wait for them. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Why we even know where they are keeping guns.”
She swallowed and looked around.
“You didn’t expect a real secret, did you?”
“No,” she said.
“Nothing so big, right?” he said.
“What’s the name of the man who’s doing this?” she said.
“Hans Breiter,” he said. “I’ll even give you his address. Ahnsdorf Strasse. Number fourteen.”
Now, as she sat there, she knew that he had put his life in her hands, and as she realized the power of that, she felt warm, more certain, a little happier, but suddenly more afraid, as though she had something she thought she had wanted, but now that she had it, she wasn’t so sure. Still, underneath it all, she remembered the way he had kissed her, the weight of the sun as it had come into the circle of gods.
He took her hand.
“Let’s just sit here for a moment. I never thought people felt like this,” he said.
The scent of the old stone of the gods surrounded them and the miasma of it was a damp smell that Gaelle thought must be the wake that time left behind. Then she put her head back and let the sunlight hit the scar: it was a warm, living caress that felt like hope itself. She had something to work with.
Gaelle sat with Mani against the wall of the main room of the Red Front’s restaurant. She spoke and gestured with her hands, obviously pleading a case. She had made a mistake on the train,
that was true, but this was something real, and it was proof that she was up to it, that she could be trusted. That she was needed. She hadn’t given up on proving herself and she wasn’t a coward, not damaged goods, whose father was a banker. It was up to Mani to see things clearly.
Mani pursed his lips, as though considering something for sale, and then went back to looking at her with that steady evaluation. Usually, he thought, they lasted a little longer than this and they didn’t start hanging around with the thugs quite so fast, either. She took out a piece of paper on which she had written: “Hans Breiter. Ahnsdorf Strasse. Number 14.” Then she held it, offering it as evidence of how useful she really was.
The white walls had faded to a cream color from cigarettes and the smoke that came from the fireplace at the side of the room. The ceiling fixture made a cone of light that ended in a circle on the floor. Men sat at tables in groups of two or three, all dressed in heavy pants and coats, large shoes, their thick hands holding a glass of beer or rubbing a face as they waited for the next chance, the next street fight, the next piece of action.
Karl sat at a table, and the brandy glass in front of him seemed about the size of a thimble in his fingers. He had a sip, looked at Gaelle and Mani, his doubt about both of them showing as a sour expression. He stood up, too, his size becoming more obvious as he rose from the shadows, as though emerging from the depths. His slightly humped physique seemed coiled more than deformed as he came across the room to Mani and Gaelle. He brought the last of his drink with him.
“What’s going on?” said Karl.
Gaelle’s pale skin was a little pink. She had washed her hair, and the shine of it looked nice.
Mani showed him the piece of paper.
“So, who’s that?” said Karl. He rolled his shoulder, as though sitting still was hard and that these long periods of waiting gave him a cramp.
“This asshole is telling the Brownshirts what we are doing. He works for the Soviet embassy,” said Mani.
“The Brownshirts are around a lot of times when we think we’ve been careful,” said Karl.
“This is why,” Mani. “Right here.”