by Craig Nova
Gaelle made out his face, which was not so much different from that of any man she saw on the street, or whom she had taken into the park. She thought about that part of it for a moment, amazed that she had allowed all of those things to happen, those nights when she was trying to prove she was someone other than who she was. Maybe this man had been one of her customers. Mani said, “All right. Just bump into him and move to the left.”
“The left,” said Karl. “Don’t get confused.”
“You don’t look so good,” said Mani.
“Maybe he’ll think she’s sick,” said Karl.
“It’ll all be over in a minute,” said Mani. “Just remember that.”
“I like it when it takes a little extra time,” said Karl. “Like here. Look. The dog is doing his stuff.”
He shook his head, as though considering the fact that the last thing this man was going to ever see was his dog taking a crap. Or, almost the last thing.
“All right,” said Mani.
Gaelle started walking. The buildings were fading from the last blue color of the day to a gray, speckled quality, and here and there the lights came on in a domestic glow. How wonderful it would have been to go into one of these houses, so much like her own, and to come into a living room that smelled of dinner, of beer, of strudel, of sausage. And what, she thought, had she really wanted? She had been alone. She had wanted safety.
It was as though the entire street, the colors, the people, all had no use for her at all, and that she was somehow unwanted, despised, outside warmth or concern. She was by herself, and she knew it. She looked up at the windows, the domestic light leaving her with some wild hope that this would stop.
He wasn’t that fat, really, and her collision with him was almost a relief.
“Herr Breiter?” she said.
“Yes?” he said.
The dog stopped for a moment and turned to look at her, just like its master. Gaelle stepped to the left. The man looked at her, his back to Karl. “Do you want something?” he said.
Karl took another step. The dog started barking, not at Gaelle, but at the large man in the rough coat who appeared in silhouette against the windows. Karl seemed to be reaching for something in his pocket, and for a moment the dog lunged forward, as though it thought Karl was about to extend a treat. The man Gaelle had bumped, however, watched her. Then Gaelle took another step, hearing that sound and then feeling Mani’s hand as he took her by the arm.
All three of them went by Breiter, who lay in the street as though he had a nosebleed and thought this was the best thing to do, the color of the blood in that fading light like liquid soot, or oil. The dog went on barking, lunging from side to side, but it was still confined by the leash. And when Gaelle passed the door of the apartment building that Breiter had come out of, she looked up and saw, to her horror, that the door had opened, and the woman who had appeared before stood there again, her hand to her face.
Then the woman in the doorway ran down the steps, her hair already in disarray, her heavy figure moving from side to side. She threw herself down next to the man on the sidewalk and tried to pull him up, to hug him, and then rocked back and forth, closing her eyes.
“Oh, no,” she said over and over. “Oh, no. We didn’t even really need the bread.”
Gaelle and Mani walked up to the corner, where Karl glanced at them once and turned away, going down the avenue without saying a word. Mani said, “I’m going down this way. You keep going straight. It’s better to split up.”
She waited while a streetcar went by with that little fitzing as the machine got electricity from the overhead wires. She was mesmerized by the sound and the smell of ozone. Odd, and yet familiar. That was what she was left with now as she remembered the way the man fell, the barking dog, the look on the face of the woman who came to the door. Then she crossed the street, putting one hand to her face, and went along the next block, where the domestic light was more troubling than before, since she seemed forever excluded from it.
There was a café on the corner and she went inside and sat at a marble table and had a fruity schnapps. She had been wrong about something. Before this evening she thought that she had been lonely, just as her vanity had been injured when people used her and asked her to do things without caring about her, but these self-pitying moods were nothing compared to the way she understood things now. It was as though she had been excluded from everything, and that she was a stranger here, in this place, in this city, everywhere, and the people who could most understand her, or at least knew what she had done, were the ones she wanted to see least of all. She sat there, having a drink, until a man smiled at her. After a while he came over and asked if he could buy her a drink, and she said, “Yes. You can. Sit down.”
“Nice evening,” he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
“I guess it depends on your point of view,” she said.
“I always like this time of night,” he said. “Just when the lights come on. It’s all soft and friendly.”
She bit her lip.
“Not always,” she said.
Armina unfolded the map of the park and began to go through it in an orderly way, from one rectangle made by the folds to another, and as she tried to think, to concentrate, to come up with some detail that while seeming mundane was actually filled with meaning, a shadow swept up the frosted glass of her door, like a vulture spreading its wings. She thought of Gaelle, who seemed to be suspended on a tightrope: maybe she would help. Maybe she wouldn’t. And this uncertainty left Armina with a sense of claustrophobia: all of her effort to stop what was happening to young women in the park came down to decisions like that. It left Armina with a constant turmoil, as though something coiled in the darkness of her interior life.
Ritter stood in the doorway, a small piece of paper in his hands. Behind him, in the common room, a detective struck a match with a long scraping sound of it on his shoe and put a cigar to his mouth, which he drew on until the end made a cherry-colored button. The piece of paper in Ritter’s hand trembled.
“Can you come with me?” he said. “I need some help.”
They went down the stairwell, switching back and forth at the landings, and Armina felt this downward tug as something familiar, like the way water swirls around a drain. A black car was waiting at the curb, and Ritter got in, then Armina, and finally Linz. Both Ritter and Linz seemed uneasy, like men with a bomb in a suitcase. Every now and then the driver went around a cart that was pulled by a horse and piled high with furniture. Even in the car they could smell the countrified odor of the horses.
The avenue ahead of them stretched away, under the web of the wires for the streetcars, the rails of the tracks shiny, the bricks of the road covered with a filmy residue that came from the smokestacks in the city. Ritter swallowed and looked around, once at her, once at Linz, and then up the avenue.
“Where are we going?” said Armina.
“A friend was killed. Shot in the street,” said Ritter.
“Oh,” said Armina. “A friend.”
“A good friend,” said Ritter.
“It helps to know who someone was,” said Armina. “That is if we’re going to find out who did this. Do you want my help or don’t you?”
Ritter looked down at his white hands, and in his contemplation of the manicured nails, the knuckles, the small, light hair on the back of his fingers, he obviously thought about whether it was a good idea to tell the truth.
He turned to Linz.
“Who do you think he was?” said Ritter.
“Well, he worked for the Soviet embassy,” said Linz. “I knew him a little bit. Saw him from time to time. He was supposed to be with the trade section, but I doubt that.”
“Yes,” said Ritter. “That’s right. So, who killed him?”
“Some thug,” said Linz. “Someone on the right. They like doing that to anyone who works with the Soviets.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ritter. “I think someone
else did it.”
Linz shrugged.
They pulled up to the sidewalk where Hans Breiter lay on his back, his nose bleeding, some silvery drool coming from his mouth. Uniformed policemen kept curious people away, although there weren’t so many of these now, since the novelty of a dead man was less than it used to be.
Breiter’s wife broke through the door of the house and ran down the steps, pulling at her hair as she pushed her way through the Schutzpolice who made a circle around the body.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Ritter.
Through the legs of the men in uniform, Armina saw a bright rill, like a red snake that stretched from the man on his back to the gutter. Armina got out of the car.
“Wait,” said Ritter, gesturing to Breiter’s wife. “You don’t want any of that. Let someone else deal with her.”
“Come on,” said Armina. “Let’s talk to her.”
The street had the forlorn emptiness that a traveling circus leaves behind when it folds up its tent and moves on to the next town. Armina got out of the car and tried to take the woman’s arm, but Frau Breiter pulled away from her and started running up the block. Frau Breiter scratched at her own face, and when she turned back, to take one last look at the man in the street, it appeared as though she were wearing war paint.
“Oh, no. Oh, no. I told him. How many times did I tell him? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no,” said Breiter’s wife. The Schutzpolice walked her back up to her apartment, where she climbed the steps, her hand reaching out for the stone banister with a gentle touch as though she were saying good-bye to something. Then she started again, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“I wish she’d shut up,” said Linz. He looked down at the man in the street.
“Let’s start by going door to door,” said Armina. “Before people forget. I’ll go along here, directly across the street.”
Linz and Ritter looked at each other, thinking it over. “Wait a minute,” said Ritter.
Armina glanced at the buildings and guessed that there were probably thirty people, maybe more, who had seen or heard something. As she looked around, she noticed that the two men were still looking at her.
“Let’s say he was up to something,” said Ritter.
“Like what?” said Linz.
“Oh,” said Ritter. “He might have been selling a little information. You know, like how much money the Red Front gets from Moscow. Things like that.”
“The son of a bitch,” said Linz.
Ritter shrugged.
“Maybe he was a patriot,” said Ritter. “And, do you think the embassy would want it to get around that they had hired someone like that? Why, some heads would roll, wouldn’t they?”
“Maybe,” said Linz.
“I think you better check with your colleagues,” said Ritter, “before we get into this.”
The line of blood, like a line on a road map, turned one way and another, around the cobbles on the sidewalk until it came to the edge of the curb and there it ran straight down into the gutter, where it made a darkening pool. Linz looked at it and then turned up the street.
“Do you think that maybe someone in the Red Front found out about him?” said Ritter.
“I don’t know,” said Linz.
“I think it’s best to keep quiet about this,” said Ritter. “It’s not in anyone’s interest. Who knows where it could go, a thing like this? A guy in the embassy doing all kinds of things. Surely, it’s in your interest to be quiet. Let me worry about mine. Leave it that I am protecting a friend’s memory.”
Linz kept his head down.
“So, we have a deal,” said Ritter.
“I can’t speak for everyone,” said Linz. “But I think so. It’s obvious that having this come out isn’t going to help anyone in the Soviet embassy.”
Ritter turned to Armina.
“We’re going to let this go,” said Ritter. “As a favor to Linz here. Breiter was a spy. He got what was coming.”
“But I thought he was a friend of yours,” said Armina.
“When you think about it,” said Ritter, “that’s a complicated word. At least I can protect his memory. Who has to know what he was up to? Let’s just say I have reasons of my own to be circumspect.”
“What reasons are those?” said Armina.
“Linz?” said Ritter. “Is it all right if I say a little something?”
“Yes,” said Linz.
“The Soviets and the German army did some business. Breiter worked it out. That’s all. No one wants that to be known. Not the Soviets …”
“No,” said Linz. He shook his head. “No. We want to say nothing.”
“And not us,” said Ritter. “Who wants it to get around that the German army and the Soviets were partners?” He shuddered a little with some melodrama, but underneath all that, he had a genuine chill.
“Breiter could have been up to all kinds of things,” said Linz. “Who knows where it could go? Children. Young women. He knew all kinds of people.”
“He was that kind of guy,” said Ritter. “Couldn’t keep his mouth shut …”
The body in the street seemed to become even more still, as though life departed in a slow process, like evaporation. “Maybe it’s even a good thing,” said Linz.
“So,” said Armina. “You want to do nothing about this? You drag me out here and then you decide you don’t really want to know.”
“Calm down,” said Ritter.
“Get lost,” said Armina.
“What?” said Ritter.
“You heard me,” said Armina.
They all turned and looked at Hans Breiter.
“There’s nothing to be gained,” said Ritter. “Don’t you see?”
“Leave it alone,” said Linz. “Sometimes it’s best to do nothing.”
“So, it’s just us,” said Ritter. “And what are we going to say?”
This was, or so it seemed to Armina, an ordinary block of gray buildings, solid, even fat stoops, cobbles in the sidewalk, bay windows, and in the distance clouds at the end of the street where the sky could be seen. Yet, to Armina, it seemed to shimmer, precisely as if it had been a hundred degrees, and in the rising heat, which gave the air a metallic, silver finish, as though it were vaporized glycerin, every brick, every window, the brass doorknobs, the cars on the street with their lines of chrome, the occasional iron fence all seemed to undulate in a way that was almost impossible to see. And along with that Armina had the sense of lightness, of being disconnected from gravity, and this hideous freedom left her almost frightened, since it was a sign of just how angry she had become. No, she thought, that’s not heat. Not exactly.
She turned to face Ritter.
“Are you all right?” said Ritter.
“No,” she said.
“Now look,” he said. “Act like a grown-up.”
“And you condescend to me, too,” she said. She found that she was touching her handbag to find her pistol and then she was glad that she didn’t have it.
“Leave this alone,” said Ritter.
“And the woman in the park,” said Armina. “That, too. Even though I think we should look at Hauptmann.”
“I told you about that,” said Ritter. “So what?” she said.
“I’m warning you,” said Ritter. “I have my limits….”
“Your limits,” she said. “Well, I suppose you do. But I want to tell you something, too. I have mine.”
They stood opposite each other. They were the same height, and their noses were close together. She could smell the soap he had shaved with in the morning.
“I want to look at Hauptmann,” she said. “I’ve got someone to help me.”
“Who’s that?” said Ritter.
“A girl who works in the park,” said Armina. “Gaelle. She’s got a scar.”
“Has she agreed?” said Ritter.
“I’m working on it,” said Armina.
Cars went by in the street with a sad puttering. An ambulance arrived, and the men got out with a
stretcher. Ritter watched as Breiter was strapped down, covered up, then lifted into the air, and this moment of levitation, the awkward swaying of a man on a litter, seemed to be an essential part of a man’s disappearance, his airy departure. And as Breiter vanished into the back of the ambulance, Ritter shrugged, as though that were the end of it. Some blood was in the street, but that would be gone soon, too, and then no sign would exist at all. Then Ritter shrugged and turned away, his shape going back to his car, where he got in, closed the door, and spoke to the driver. The car pulled away, and he didn’t look back.
Felix put soap into the sink, added water, held Gaelle’s stockings by their tops, and slowly let them into the sink, the feet first so that the champagne-colored lingerie folded into the layer of bubbles. He took his time, since this chore had a quiet intimacy about it, especially with the scent of her soap. He was curious about the delicacy of the material, and as it got moist under his fingers, he was surprised at his sudden gentleness. He had always wondered what a man who wore armor felt like when he stepped out of it, and now he understood. Like a turtle out of his shell. He wasn’t keeping his place, and he knew it. His place was the dark, where he could get those young women to trust him: that was cunning, how he used his limp, his youth, his lousy skin to seem as though he wasn’t a threat at all.
He pulled the retractable clothesline from its holder, which was like a tin yo-yo, and stretched it from one tiled wall to another. Then he sat down on the side of the tub. The soap bubbles broke and reminded him of the slight tick of wet lips as they opened to give a kiss. This wet popping was like everything he didn’t have but craved, a delicate touch, an understanding caress. Was it possible that one touch from another human being could make everything different? He would have been embarrassed to admit it, but he thought this was the case. He put his nose into the bubbles. It made him more certain than ever. It reminded him of the scent of Gaelle when they first started fresh in the evenings.