“But I knew he was a gambler, a risk taker; he couldn’t walk away from a bet.
“‘Both of us,’ he said. ‘Come on, go for it, no need to be scared. Nothing’s gonna happen. This mild breeze, we can outsmart it. You’re right. It’s truly awesome weather for swimming.’ He jumped up, undressed, threw his shorts and T-shirt in the sand and grabbed my hand.
“‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK, give me a moment.’ I slipped out of my shoes, out of my jeans. We set off, into the water, up to our ankles, up to our knees. You could feel the force of the wind, the force of the waves. He was already way ahead. I could hardly see him as the darkness gradually swallowed him up. And I . . . I stopped. Just stopped. He didn’t notice. Or he didn’t care. He yelled, shouted for joy, sang—all the time going farther and farther out into the water.
“What an idiot, I thought. How did Hanna fall for someone like you?
“He was really far out by then, at the point when the ocean bed falls away sharply, where you lose the floor from beneath your feet. He began to swim. Into infinity.”
She laughed bitterly. “I could still hear him, his breathless shouting. I was still standing in the same spot, the water whipping up against me up to my hips, each time the waves broke, spraying me in the face. I knew he was already lost. In the sea, the wind, the darkness. Eventually I could no longer hear him. I heard the crashing of the waves, I heard the storm, but Tonio . . . I could no longer hear him. I don’t know whether he struggled, whether it was difficult or easy. I only know that at some point I could no longer hear him.”
Silence. She didn’t turn, merely stood rigid, leaning against the windowsill, the blackness in front of the window like the blackness at sea had been back then.
I’m freezing from Gertrud’s words, I thought. I’m freezing right here and now.
But you don’t freeze that quickly, you hear the words and take them in, lock them into a part of your brain, where they rumble and rumble around until they explode and flood you with their truth. And then there’s no escape.
“If it makes you feel any better, Hanna,” Gertrud said eventually, “if it makes you feel any better, I lost my footing too. The same moment he did. And it was all so simple. So easy. And I backed away, slowly, slowly, step by step, out of the water and onto the sand. I stood there then. For a long time.
“‘Big Sea,’ I whispered. ‘Big Sea, you’re my friend, my accomplice, my partner.’ I raised my hand in greeting, behind his back, behind Tonio.”
Another silence and an intake of breath. The words penetrated my consciousness, her words—the ones she spoke at the beginning of her story, at the beginning of this dreadful truth.
Blue-black, I thought, my Tonio, blue-black the water permeated your dying, and I saw it, I saw the images, Tonio, your fight as the storm tore into you, threw you back and forth, as the waves broke over you and drew you down into the depths. I saw how amazed you were when you realized your strength would not be enough, that it would be the end, that it was the end.
I wanted to cry, to cry, my Tonio. She destroyed you, robbed you of your life, robbed you of me. The coast, such an expanse of beach. How you loved the black sand. Lilli came into my mind, your daughter, our daughter, and the fact that I’d . . .
She continued. Gertrud continued with the flood of her story, allowing me no respite.
“I came back to you, Hanna. Into the house, into the bedroom where you were sleeping. The empty space in the bed beside you, the cover thrown back, the pillows crumpled. You were sleeping, Hanna. You had no idea about his . . . going over into another world, wherever that was. I stayed sitting next to you, waiting for you to wake. Waiting for the morning, giving in to the flood that forced its way from me, that flood of tears that flowed and flowed and flowed. At last there was light over the sea, and suddenly there were people shouting: the German, the German! And, Hanna, you woke and sat up and you were shocked by the sight of me sitting on the bed, and you heard the voices and went out, down to the sea, where the voices were coming from. They had already found him, more quickly than I’d thought. He had washed up a little farther down the coast. They had laid him on a stretcher and brought him back for us to identify.”
She shook her head. “The depths,” she said, looking as though she were still amazed by it, “the depths didn’t want him. Would they have taken him in paradise? Do you think so, Hanna? Do you think so?”
She turned to me. I said nothing. She nodded. “Are you crying?”
It was only then that I noticed I was crying. Yes, I was crying—wasn’t there reason enough to cry?
She continued, slowly: “You went over to him, threw yourself on top of him, moaning and lamenting, your hair flowing over him like a sheet of copper. As for me . . . Nothing touched me anymore, nothing. Not the fact that he was dead, not your despair—only your hair, Hanna, your hair, that was spread over him like a cloak. That’ll warm him, I thought, on the long journey ahead of him. Hanna’s copper hair will warm him.”
She breathed deeply as if she’d been working hard. “And the next day you disappeared. Packed your bag, cleared out, vanished. Away, away, away.”
She nodded, brushed both hands over her face. “And I . . . I was alone.”
She went to the fridge, took out cheese and sausage, bread from the bread bin, a tomato, an onion, placed them all on the table, a wooden board, a kitchen knife. She cut the bread, the cheese, the sausage, and the tomato. She began to eat greedily, as if she’d eaten nothing for three days.
I looked at her. I wanted to go, wanted to get out of there—away from her, away from that house, away from that town. But it was as though I was paralyzed, and I knew that if I moved so much as a millimeter, I would begin to shake and never stop.
“Why?” I asked at last. “Why?”
She stopped eating and stared at me, suddenly shocked.
“Why?” she echoed. “Why?”
She thought about it, shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know anymore. Perhaps because . . . you and him . . . because we both . . . oh, I don’t know. It happened. It simply happened—the night, the storm, the things he said, the . . .” She let out a sob. “When I read those letters, Tonio’s letters to you, it was as though I’d written them to you myself. I missed you, Hanna, missed you so much, always.” She stretched her hand out to me. “You don’t know it, Hanna, but you broke my heart.”
It was enough. Too much. I started shaking. I stood and started for the door, to fetch my daughter at last, to go away with her, never to return. But Gertrud still hadn’t finished. Her voice hit me in the back.
“And suddenly you were here again. And you were pregnant.”
I stopped.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
And the sadness overwhelmed me.
“With Lilli,” she said. “With my Lilli. My grown-up, wonderful daughter. She saved me. I was able to stay alive for her sake.” A pause. Then she said, “She never missed you. She never needed you. She’s my daughter. You would never have been a mother to her.”
I don’t remember what I felt, I don’t know what I thought. Nothing, perhaps. A vacuum. The vacuum of those many years. What an irony of fate, that she of all people . . . Gertrud of all people . . . She had taken everything from me—my lover, my child. I felt the sadness come.
“She’ll never forgive you! A mother who sells her child. What kind of a mother is that?”
A mother who sells her child? Is that what I was? Had I . . .
For a moment I closed my eyes, thought about back then, thought about the apartment key, thought about the savings book that held so much money.
Hans had invited me into his study when everything appeared to be going well, when I was finally recovered, when I had decided to return to Munich and continue my studies. He looked at me awkwardly and asked me to sit. On the desk was a savings book, an apartment key, and a lease.
“This is all yours,” he said and cleared his throat. “It should
make things a bit easier for you. Because . . . It’s because . . .”
He broke off. I looked up into his face, sensed his embarrassment, and was myself embarrassed. We didn’t talk much more after that. He asked about my plans, and I told him I didn’t have many to begin with, things would work out. I stood, took the savings book, the key and the lease, thanked him, and left.
Yes, I was a mother who sold her child.
I turned to Gertrud and saw she was beginning to fall apart. Like a tent that slowly collapses. Like a sandcastle that trickles away as sand dries out.
“She’ll never forgive you for selling her.”
She was right. That’s how it was. Lilli would never forgive me. And I’d never forgive myself.
There was a smell of damson jelly. That smell filled my nostrils. Gertrud stood, stumbled against the wooden board, against the knife. It fell to the floor, clattered down by my feet. I bent down. Without thinking, I picked it up. Suddenly, I had it in my hand.
72
These fifty-somethings are a bunch of washed-up wimps, Kristin thought. The only things worth knowing about them are their wallets.
She had to smile. This adventure was getting fun—she hadn’t had the slightest idea she had so much criminal energy in her.
Rummaging in her purse for her cigarettes, she looked around. It was an upmarket bar—it stank of money. The corners of her mouth turned down in recognition of the fact. It was upmarket places like this that made the world go round. She stood and went over to the door, where there was an ashtray on an artfully concealed stand. As usual, she couldn’t find a lighter in her capacious bag. She waved a waiter over and asked him for a light. He fetched a book of matches, struck one, and held the flame to her cigarette before giving her the rest of the book.
“Voilà, madame,” he said with a smile. She gave him a friendly smile back.
A cigarette, then another. Between them she drank a coffee. Her impatience grew. Where was he? They didn’t have forever.
He finally arrived, later than yesterday, looking a bit gray and wiped out, as though he’d gotten some bad news from somewhere. He sat down at the same table where he’d sat the day before, ordered a sherry, didn’t pick up a newspaper but merely stared straight ahead. He didn’t notice her even though she’d been watching him here for two days now.
That piqued her a little. She looked great. Why wouldn’t he notice her? Men are stupid, she thought, thick as bricks. They deserve everything they get. She grinned again.
Of course, sometimes something nice happens to them. But certainly not always. That wouldn’t do. It would make life boring.
She laughed softly. Suddenly, the man raised his head and looked in her direction. She froze briefly, feeling a tingle run through her body. Would things get more exciting now? Had he seen her?
No, he looked through her like a pane of glass. His thoughts were miles away, his eyes vacant.
OK, she thought, you can’t say you don’t deserve it. You’re going to bleed.
The man called the waiter over, paid, stood, and left. She followed him slowly. He went the same way as the previous day, unhurried, lost in thought, as though he had all the time in the world. No surprises. Boring. Washed-up old bastard.
Kristin felt sure of herself. The next step was in place. They didn’t have forever; no one had that. But he—he had no time left at all.
The girl? The girl was out of the action. She would no longer be in their way.
73
He held the letter in his hands—if you could call it a letter. It was just a piece of paper in an envelope. So it’s all falling apart, he thought. Nothing left.
He leaned his head back, shut his eyes, and sat like that for a while. Eventually he got out his cell phone, wrote a text, and pressed “Send.”
74
“They’re creeping into my head,” Tonio said, looking out through the window at the fading daylight. “I can’t stand them anymore.”
“Who?” she asked. “Who are you talking about?”
She snuggled up to his shoulder. He had his arm around her, was playing with her hair.
“The patients,” he said. “The patients on my ward. The dying. They’re all dying. Sometimes two a day. Sometimes none. But they all die eventually.”
She placed a finger on his lips.
“If I had to count them,” he said, nuzzling it with his lips, placing little kisses along it without thinking, “if I had to count them, it would be never ending.”
“So many?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. So many.”
“Is that why you left? Why you vanished?”
He thought about it, nodded. “Yes,” he said, “that’s probably why. Because I couldn’t stand it any longer. Because it wasn’t working. Because I felt I was going mad. But here . . .”
It had all gone better. Almost gone well.
He told her about the anger that had grown inside him, which she had also experienced back then, and the fact that this anger had faded in his grandfather’s apartment. As the apartment had grown ever more empty, ever quieter, he too had become ever more empty, ever quieter.
“Somehow they managed to rescue me a little, my grandfather and my father,” he said. “And I know it sounds really pathetic, but somehow they’ve given me a new life.”
“Yes,” she said drily. “That’s true. The life of a gangster with the police after him. That’s certainly something. A shaven-headed gangster, too.”
He grinned. “Well, you can’t have everything. You’re not complaining, are you, my gangster’s moll?” He began to tickle her. She twisted in his hands.
“No,” she laughed. “Help! No! Stop it!”
He obeyed, and they embraced again. Silence. She buried her head in his shoulder, felt his lips on her head.
“I’d never be able to do it,” she said softly, “work on a ward like that. Looking death in the face all the time. I was always sure that I couldn’t. And I admired you because you could. Do you know that?”
“No, I didn’t know. On the contrary, I always wondered why a woman like you was the slightest bit interested in me. I didn’t understand it at all.”
“A woman like me?”
“Yes. Tough, clever, beautiful, ambitious.”
“Is that what I am to you?”
She raised her head and looked at him.
“Yes, that’s what you are to me. You just are. And you could have had someone completely different. Not some nobody of a nurse.”
“But I didn’t want anyone else,” she said, stroking his chest and belly.
He smiled. “True,” he said. “You didn’t want anyone else. And now you’ve become a gangster’s moll. Do you think your parents would like that?”
“So what?” she said with small grin. “My parents are just my parents, and I’m me, and I’ve never asked their advice about any of my guys. I’ve been grown up for quite a while now.”
He laughed and stroked her face gently. She closed her eyes, savoring the gentleness of his touch. They remained silent as the daylight faded.
“Did you never see your father?” she asked eventually. “Never? Honestly? You didn’t know anything about him?”
He shook his head. “No, never laid eyes on him. I knew nothing. He never existed as far as I was concerned. I only had my mother and my grandparents.”
“And your mother never talked about him?”
He considered, realizing that he had never had such a conversation, that he was telling her things no one else knew.
“Yes, she did. Once. I was fourteen. One day, my grandmother handed my mother a newspaper and said, ‘Look here. Read it. Does he look familiar?’ My mother turned pale and went out. She came back two hours later. That was when I asked her.”
“And?”
“She told me about him. That he was a crazy kind of guy. That she had fallen in love with him on the spot but she’d known from the start he wasn’t a man who would stay. That she got pregnant.”
/> “After that?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. I looked at that newspaper article. It said that he’d drowned in Greece. There was a photo of him lying there with a woman bending over him. You could hardly see anything of him. Only his legs and this woman above him, mostly just her long hair. But you know that photo. And the newspaper article.”
She nodded. Yes, she knew it all.
“I never thought he was anyone particularly special,” he continued. “He was merely my progenitor, not my father. I pushed it to the back of my mind, forgot about it. Or at least tried to.”
He fell silent, smiled at her, lost in his thoughts. “And then that letter came from the lawyer and I found it all—the bundle of letters, newspaper clippings, documents.”
Things had begun to snowball, moving faster and faster, out of control.
He pushed Kristin away gently, stood, and moved to the window. “I didn’t want any of it, you know. I didn’t want her to die, I didn’t want . . . It all just happened.”
She nodded. “I know. Of course I know.”
“She . . . she could be my sister.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
“She probably is my sister.”
She heard the amazement in his voice. She looked at him, his back, his shaven head that she hadn’t quite gotten used to yet.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll see.”
She wondered if he was someone who would stick around. She wasn’t sure, but the question no longer concerned her, and neither did the answer—because she was beginning to love him.
75
. . . yes . . . alien two wrote back, . . . i know . . .
As if he really knew what she meant, as if he had the slightest idea what she was talking about. Franza was amazed. It couldn’t be possible. It was an illusion. So much unfinished business: Port in Vienna, Max with his faithful-hound expression here, the red book with the blue ribbon, Lilli out there somewhere, and she herself was here, unable to sleep, simply unable to sleep . . .
Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) Page 26