Lost Kin

by Anderson, Steve

  He stopped at the next corner and lit up a butt, leaning on his cane for actual support now. He was tired. Yet he used the pause to listen. He heard a faraway jeep or truck but the sound was thinning out, moving away from him. He took a glance back toward the empty street, then tossed the butt out onto the pavement.

  Tossing the butt was their signal. But nothing happened. After a moment, Max’s insides started to constrict. Where the devil was Harry? He had expected to hear something, anything, since Harry would be emerging from the rubble across the street. Still there was nothing.

  Just as Max took a step to make his way back he caught the silhouette of Harry, crouching as he worked his way across the street while sticking to the long shadow of a spire. Max sighed, and the constriction lessened. Smart fellow, his little brother. That shadow was the only good cover with this strong moonlight.

  The plan was thus: Harry would give the perimeter of the building a good going over and then wave Max in. Harry wearing the typical natty, mismatched clothes of a rubble dweller. If the coast was clear, he would reappear on the sidewalk and cough twice.

  Harry reappeared. He coughed twice. Well done, little one. But then Harry turned to him and gave a signal involving two fingers that Max recognized as an American military-style gesture. Harry disappeared back inside the rubble skirting one side of the theater.

  This was not in the plan! Max hobbled along the sidewalk stabbing with his cane, the anger rising hot up his neck. Harry was supposed to stay outside and watch the door after he went in. Dammit! This was not in the script at all. Harry could ruin the show.

  At the entrance, Max leaned a shoulder into one door but it did not budge. Peering in through the glass, he could see furniture piled up against it. He tried the other door. It swung open and almost pulled him in with it. His cane saved him. Yet the door let out a mighty squeak.

  He let out a booming sigh, not caring who heard now that he’d made so much noise. Maybe it was for the best that Harry was coming inside to get closer. Max hoped. Harry could be watching him at this very moment, or perhaps he had found his way up to a balcony or a box balcony if there were any. Not that Max could see them. It smelled moist and a little earthen in here, not from death but from seeping leaks and mud dried and re-soaked many times over, carrying with it, within it, who knew what pestilence.

  He felt his way along in the dark, down the aisle, feeling at the chair rows as he went, descending down toward the stage. The note hadn’t said where to go. So he would pull himself up onto the boards and sit. Where else were they supposed to find him? Selling sugared popcorn? Checking coats? Not his style.

  It had been a cinema of late but naturally it would have a little stage—before the age of film it had surely seen recitals and plays, Kabarett und Varieté. It was so dark, Max couldn’t see his hand. He pulled off his glove and stared at it and couldn’t see it. Using the cane like a blind man, tapping around and not worrying about the sound, he found the stage and climbed up. He probed with hands and feet. His toe met something light and it scooted, what he recognized as a wooden chair on stage.

  “Hello, Lieutenant Price.”

  A torrent ran through Max, electric and cold-hot and stiffening him with fear. The voice, of a male, had come from about fifteen feet away. He knew the voice. It has lingered in his head like the headaches other Germans got from the smog and debris of a destroyed city.

  Max forced out a nervous chortle. “No, you seem to be quite mistaken.”

  “Let’s not be coy now. You’re not going to try that business again, are you?”

  Sweat ran down the inside of his shirt. He wanted to call out to Harry, but only to make him run and flee and fast. He didn’t want Harry to hear this. Damn! What was he thinking, letting Harry come here?

  “I’m not trying a thing,” he said to the man. “I’m only responding to a request.”

  “Your English is still excellent. That’s so good to hear.”

  The piercing shot of fear was coming to a boil in Max’s blood, converting into anger. It certainly helped disguise a measure of his shame. There was a time when he would have glossed it over with a light little musical number, tell a joke, buy a fellow a drink. But no song-and-dance, knee-slapper of a tale, or slug of schnapps could put a shine on this.

  “Look here. Don’t get angry,” the man said. “It’s not going to help either of us.”

  “No? Then why don’t we turn up the lights and get this over with, eh?”

  “They’re out. Someone absconded with the circuit breakers—the whole unit to be precise.”

  Max reached inside his coat for his matches. He would shed the light on them. The horrid finality of his move made him pant as if he’d just carried a box of books up stairs.

  “Wait a moment: Isn’t there something you’d like to tell me?” the man said.

  “Where would I start?” Max quipped.

  “You brought someone with you. This is all I mean.”

  “Ah. Yes. Always a step ahead, aren’t you? But never mind that. This is between you and me here. Is it not?”

  “Yes. I suppose it is.”

  “May I?” Max said.

  “Please do,” said the man.

  “I only have matches. The times being what they are.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Max fired up his match in one strike.

  Aubrey Slaipe was sitting bolt upright, but he looked relaxed, his head to one side a little. Like this he might have been watching a recital performed by children. He wore civilian clothes—a dark overcoat draped over his shoulders that was fine in its plainness, elegant without the swish and probably nicer fabric than Max had seen in years. It didn’t stand out though. Only a man looking for it would notice the fibers. Slaipe’s left hand rested on his left knee. It held a black pipe, cupped in his hand. He had removed his dark hat. It rested on his right knee, a surprisingly wide-brimmed fedora. He had that balding head and his hair was graying, although Max remembered they were roughly the same age. For Aubrey Slaipe was no more than thirty-six. Even in the dim flickering light his skin was pink, clean-shaven. His observing, detecting eyes so large with so much white. Max’s match was burning out. He held the last flickers of flame to Slaipe’s right arm. There, just under the overcoat, the sleeve of his suit was folded up and pinned flat to his torso.

  Max let out a deep sigh. It extinguished the last ember, bringing smoke. His eyes squeezed shut in a mix of relief and stinging pain.

  “It’s still me, Max.”

  A lamp flashed on at Aubrey Slaipe’s feet. Max hadn’t noticed it there. Slaipe had set his pipe in his mouth to reach down with his one arm to switch it on. He seemed agile despite the injury.

  “You’re alive. I’m relieved,” Max said, unknowingly in German.

  “I can tell you’re relieved,” Slaipe replied.

  “Tell me—can you walk?”

  Slaipe stood. He held out his one good arm, showing it off, holding his hat with it. He pivoted around, revealing the pinned-up sleeve where his other arm used to be.

  “Why did you wait to turn that lamp on?” Max said.

  “I wanted you to find me your way. The way you wished to. This reunion can’t be easy for you.”

  A silence found them. Slaipe kept his eyes fixed on Max. The look reminded Max of a keen boy at the seashore, studying tide pools for tiny creatures to emerge.

  “I just realized we’re speaking German,” Max said finally. “Yours is so much improved.”

  “Thanks. I’ve been practicing,” Slaipe said. “It wasn’t until the surrender finally came that I began to realize I might still require it a while.”

  Harry found the side entrance and moved inside the movie house, feeling with his toes for debris and stray papers, anything that made a sudden sound. Dust grated under his soles as he shuffled and felt his way along down a narrow corridor and reached what had to be a backstage area, no wider than two people side-by-side and lined with timbers and boards and supports that c
ould strike his head at any moment. Good thing he had on a thick cap.

  He heard someone speaking, then two people. From the echoes, he could tell it was Max and another man, out on the stage. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it wasn’t heated. It sounded direct yet careful—that “what are you doing here?” sort of conversation he heard so many times between ex-lovers at some staff party or liaison to-do, bombed-out occupied Europe being such a damn small world …

  The possibly shame-tinged tone made Harry wonder if Max wanted him to hear this. Max hadn’t asked him to act as the backup inside, to play the mean face if need be, yet here he was. But who would he play the mean one for? Max still hadn’t told him the whole story, and it was Harry’s fault for not pushing his older brother.

  A match flickered. Harry could see Max facing him about ten yards away out in the middle of the stage. Another man had his back to Harry. He sat in a wooden chair. They faced each other as if waiting for the lights to come up and they were the panel for a presentation on something humdrum yet vital like the return of Bavaria’s wheat exports—better yet, it could have been a talk on the importance of prewar New York theater in the New Germany, with a number or two at the end performed by Max Kaspar truly. Then a lamp went on at the man’s feet, what looked like a camping lantern. The man stood and turned in a full circle, holding out his wide-brimmed hat with one arm and revealing that the other arm was missing under that overcoat draped on his shoulders like a cloak. And it hit Harry:

  It had to be the man from his building—the reputed US Trade Council Representative. The overcoat looked the same, and the hat. The erect yet relaxed posture.

  Max’s voice sounded thinner, under strain, and they switched to German. But Harry could not hear their words.

  Max wondered what Harry was seeing, hearing. It was nearly absurd to imagine now that this man Slaipe and he had been enemies just last winter. Why hadn’t they just stopped it all then? Say, look friend, I know the forces that wish us to kill or at least imprison us are overwhelming in their pressure and pressing ever stronger, but what do we have against one another? If we met on an ocean liner, we’d probably make fast friends and proceed directly to the cocktail bar.

  “Look at the two of us. It was always so ridiculous, was it not back then?” Max said to Aubrey Slaipe, switching back to English and trying to keep it light. If he didn’t, he thought the arteries to his heart might explode.

  “Some of it was, yes. Some of it was simply a job that had to be done. Finished off.”

  Slaipe had not changed. Max had his arms out to convey a lighter mood but they felt heavy, as if he was holding dumbbells. They lowered to his sides. “And, Justine DeTrave? What happened to that woman?”

  “She’s dead, I’m afraid. Oh, she survived your bit of business, but that brother of hers in the Walloon SS returned right about when the war ended and by then the Belgians were really looking to strut their stuff. They hanged her in the nearest town square, next to dear old brother. Her jaw was still wired shut, by the by. You did a number on her with the butt of that rifle.”

  “My god.” A heat welled up behind Max’s eyes, and his heart ached now, but it wasn’t for Justine.

  He lunged at Slaipe and hugged him. Slaipe stood rigid but let him. Max was crying. The tears ran into his mouth, down his neck. He pulled away and the tears splashed hot on his fingers.

  “You’re on stage. But I can see this is no act,” Slaipe said.

  Max wiped at his face, gasping. “I’m just glad you’re alive,” he muttered. “Of course I feared the worst. But what could I do? I only wanted to get free. Flee. From all of it. I told you that was all I had planned.”

  “Yes, you did. One could say that you saved my life. That DeTrave woman probably would’ve shot me again to cover up her silly plan. Or I simply could have bled to death right there in the snow. Not far from Smitty himself.”

  “Perhaps. Poor Smitty. Good god …”

  “In any case. One could also say that you left me there to die,” Slaipe said.

  “Certainly,” Max said, sniffing up tears. “I liked Sergeant Smitty, you know. Your right-hand man hated me, but I liked him. If I only could have known she was going to do what she did, I would have stopped her earlier. I would have.”

  “I want to believe that. But, the sad truth is, you did not want to know. Even when she gave you the clues.”

  “But who was I to tip off you? Eh? Just say to you: Look here, good fellows, I’m a German soldier spying in an American uniform, but never mind that; here’s what you really ought to know—the woman we’re staying with here while we’re stranded in this snowstorm like we are? She’s planning to do you two in because she’s the only resolute Belgian Fascist left in this part of the Ardennes and we, we three poor devils, just happened to stumble upon her snowbound house all at the same time.” Max had turned to face an imaginary audience, standing center stage. It was instinct, old habits dying hard, but the effect probably cheapened the truth. He turned to face Slaipe, shrugging, a little ashamed. His words were true enough. He shuffled back over to Slaipe and, although Slaipe’s face was shadowed, he saw the glints of Slaipe’s eyes and wanted to believe that their wet gloss was from sympathy and not the sickest schadenfreude there ever was.

  “You shouldn’t have run, Max. I do understand why you did. Supposing you stayed with me, helped me stop the bleeding, helped get me back to my lines.”

  “I would have had to finish her off.”

  “Kill her, yes. Let’s call it by name. Would it have been so very difficult?”

  “In hindsight? No. I would do it. I know how now.”

  “You see? But even if you had—what was I to do with you then? What would the forces that be have demanded I do, despite whatever pleas I might have made. Yes? Are you with me?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s about it. Just so.”

  Slaipe leaned closer. “And yet the most important thing is, you did save me from her.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? It does appear that you do. It’s kind of a wash, you see. We’re back where we were. I still have to make good on my word. We have unfinished business, me and you. I’m going to have to tie back the threads together.”

  “But, the war’s over,” Max said.

  “Is it? Which war? Did we have a signed contract based on such and such a period of armed conflict? I’m afraid not. Your obligation is to us, not to a war. Me. You remember what I said?”

  “I do.”

  “I said that you would have to go back to your own side, but working for us.”

  “There’s always a war,” Max muttered.

  “That’s right, Max. That’s correct.”

  They stood there a moment. Slaipe leaned on the back of his chair. It creaked like a tree trunk cracking. Oddly, sourly, the sound took Max back to those frigid, death-laden Ardennes woods that had delivered him right into Aubrey Slaipe’s hands—just when he thought he had a chance at breaking free from it all.

  “I’m sorry,” Max whispered.

  “So am I,” Slaipe said. “We’re all victims of it. But there are jobs that must be done.”

  Slaipe was supposed to be dead—this was what Max had ended up telling himself. No one had known of the seed that Slaipe now reaped. Max could not let Slaipe and Harry share notes, deliberate, collaborate. He shuddered at the thought. Pretending to shiver from the cold, he glanced around for Harry but he could see or hear nothing.

  Slaipe was watching him, an odd smile forming on his face. He looked over his shoulder. No sound came from backstage. That was where Slaipe was looking. Backstage.

  “What do you want from me?” Max said.

  “At the moment? I only wish to confirm that it’s really you.”

  “Listen. Look at me, please,” Max said, hoping to keep Slaipe’s attention. He broke into a grin. He offered his right hand for a shake, then yanked it back out of shame. “Let’s go get a drink, just you and me, Captain.”

  “I
t’s Major now, actually. But I’d prefer that you call me Mister.”

  “I …” Max heard the creaking of floorboards.

  A silhouette appeared on the stage, just out of the light.

  Harry.

  Harry felt he had no choice. After Max had hugged the man, which was shocking enough, Harry began to make out a little of their conversation. The man spoke with assurance and used particular words but as if his careful word choices were never an issue for him and hadn’t been since childhood. A man who knew what needed to be done—that it would get done. Then Max’s grin became a grimace, making him look like an actor who’d forgotten his lines as he suddenly kissed up to the man. Harry had to know what had made Max stoop so low. And, he could admit, left backstage he was feeling a little bit like he had as the youngest when the older ones played a joke on him. We’ll meet you down by the river, Henry—wait for us at the abandoned mill. Of course, Max had never taken part in such jokes as older brothers often do—Max was always the one who had come and rescued him.

  So there Harry went, out onto the stage. The man turned to him.

  Max froze. In better days Harry was certain that his brother would have strode on over, cradled Harry’s elbow and showed him off to his old acquaintance, introducing them profusely. Now he just glared and shook his head at Harry behind the man’s back.

  The man nodded Harry over. Harry stepped forward, into the lamp light. The man held out his hand. “You must be Harry Kaspar,” he said.

  Harry shook hands, nodding. He didn’t ask the man’s name, for Max’s sake, and the man didn’t look like he cared much either way. His intent eyes showed they had more important matters behind them.

  Harry stole a glance at the man’s missing arm.

  “The war,” the man said.

  “Come again?”

  “I lost it in the war.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Harry wanted to get things done, same as this man. But he was never quite sure what those things were until they were smack in his face. It had always been that way with him. That was what had gotten him into trouble back in Heimgau with the train business—he had let the wrong man tell him what needed to be done. He liked to think he knew better these days. So he pressed the matter: