The Second Rider

by Alex Beer

  The few seconds before the door was finally opened were the longest of his life.

  “August!”

  He was immediately relieved when Luise rather than Xaver answered. She stepped out into the hall, pulled the door quietly shut behind her, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Where have you been? I was so worried.” She pressed her face to his neck and he felt warm tears soaking into his collar.

  “I wanted to give you all some time. How are you? How are the children? And what’s the story with Xaver?” The tension spreading over him was unbearable.

  She pulled herself away and kissed him. “I love you,” she said. “More than I ever loved him.”

  Emmerich felt a great weight fall away from his soul, and something happened that was totally new to him: his eyes filled with tears of joy. “We can help support Xaver,” he sputtered as he reached for her hand and put it on his chest. “And he can obviously visit the children whenever he would like. It’ll be no problem. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”

  “No . . . no . . . ” Luise began to tremble. She pulled her hand away and took a step backwards so her back was against the wall.

  “But why? It’s really not a problem for me.” He reached for her hands but she pulled them away.

  “I love you,” she repeated. “but I swore an oath. Before God and the church. In good times and bad, until death do us part. I have to uphold it.”

  Her words hit him like a punch in the gut; dizziness overcame him. “But . . . you thought he was dead. You started a new life, rightly so.”

  “But he’s not dead.” Luise looked at him with red eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You don’t have to sacrifice your happiness because of a few words you said years ago.” He took her tear-soaked face in his hands. “Luise, we love each other, the children are happy, and I can take care of you. Don’t throw it all away for an uncertain future with a stranger. Because that’s what he is. The man sitting inside our apartment isn’t the Xaver you married, it’s a stranger. War and imprisonment change people.”

  She nodded silently and stared at the floor. “He really is unrecognizable.”

  “Exactly.” Emmerich kissed the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair.

  “You don’t understand.” She straightened herself and took a deep breath. “Before God he is my husband despite it all. And in the eyes of the church.” To buttress her words she pulled from beneath her shirt the chain with the silver crucifix she never took off.

  “God and the church . . . ” Emmerich took a step back and felt dizzy again. “What have they ever done for you? Do they give you love? Food? Medicine? Do they make sure the apartment is heated? That the children can go to school?”

  “August!” Luise glanced at Frau Ganglberger’s door, where the sound of light breathing could be heard.

  “She can listen. The whole house can hear us for all I care. You belong to me and not to him. You’re my wife, not his. Marriage certificate or not.”

  “August, please,” she begged. “Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”

  “Get an annulment. We’ll write to the archbishop. If he’s really as good a man as you always say, he’ll understand our request.” He stepped closer to her and took her hand again. “What do you say?”

  “Ach, August. Of course I thought of that, but there are no grounds for an annulment. At least none that the church would recognize. I’m so sorry. I’m infinitely sorry.”

  She said a lot more, speaking with a tear-choked voice, but Emmerich didn’t hear her words anymore. The entire world was spinning too fast and he was getting dizzy.

  “Got it,” he said at some point, pulling a tablet out of his pocket and gulping it down. The compressed white powder stuck in his dry throat and filled his mouth with a bitter taste.

  “I’m so sorry!” Luise, paler and more frail than usual, rubbed her face with the sleeves of her shirt.

  “Me too.” Emmerich, who wasn’t good at goodbyes, turned and left without looking back once at the building that had until recently been his happy home.

  21.

  Emmerich wandered aimlessly through the city. He had a strong desire to drink himself into oblivion. The only thing that held him back was the idea of waking up in the morning naked and disoriented in the hospital again. His life was in a downward spiral that he didn’t want to accelerate—the abyss was coming toward him fast enough without his help.

  Without thinking and above all without feeling, he roamed the streets until fatigue and hunger became too strong for him to ignore any longer. He’d given up hope that his suitcase would be recovered. Pants, shirts, shoes, his savings . . . everything lost forever. Worst of all was the loss of his pendant. Involuntarily he groped at his chest and felt once again the unfamiliar empty space. Even if he’d never known his mother, the amulet was a sort of remembrance of her—his only connection.

  Since he still had no money and couldn’t afford a hotel, he had to reconsider Winter’s offer, like it or not. Winter’s grandmother and her snide remarks were the last thing he needed, but what else could he do?

  He went back to the commissariat, where the mood in the last few hours had gone in the completely opposite direction from his own. While he was filled with sadness and emptiness, here everyone was laughing, joking, and drinking.

  “August Emmerich, the hero of the hour. Hoist a drink with us,” called an officer whose name Emmerich couldn’t remember.

  “Not now,” he said, more gruffly than intended. “Where’s Winter?” he asked another colleague.

  “He left fifteen minutes ago.”

  “For home?”

  The colleague shrugged. “I don’t think so. Hörl took him somewhere to continue celebrating. Said something about boxing and Claire Bauroff.”

  Emmerich was too tired to look for Winter in the hustle and bustle of the Apollo or the dimly-lit Ronacher. When was the last time he’d rested? And the last time he’d eaten? The heroin had permitted him to ignore all signals from his body, which was now taking a vicious revenge. He felt like a balloon with the air let out. Like he didn’t have an ounce of energy left. Everything was suddenly taxing. Breathing, swallowing, life.

  “Thanks,” he said on his way out.

  The laughing and happiness of the men was unbearable, and besides, he badly needed sleep, which was impossible as long as the party was going.

  He went back out into the cold night, likely to end for him in an emergency shelter wedged in with a heap of those living on the margins. And tomorrow, for better or worse, he would have to bite the bullet and ask Sander for an advance against his next paycheck.

  As he turned the corner, factory workers on their way to the night shift came streaming toward him like ants. Their faces were tired and haggard, the hard work had left marks. Many of them walked awkwardly or bent over, as if a heavy weight were bearing down on them. Emmerich used to be happy that he was not one of them—today he envied them.

  “Hello, handsome.” A woman had stepped out of the shadows of a building entryway. She was petite and had her blonde hair up. As he drew nearer he could see that a few strands had come loose from the bun and were playfully caressing her pale face. It was tough to guess her age because she had so much makeup on, but she looked young. Too young. “How about it?” she asked, snaking the stole she had on her shoulders more tightly around her emaciated body.

  Emmerich wanted to just walk past her but something held him back. She seemed somehow familiar. But he couldn’t figure out when and where he’d seen her before.

  The young woman, too, seemed to remember him, because when he stepped into the light of a streetlamp her eyes widened and then she looked at the ground. “No offence meant,” she mumbled and tried to scurry off.

  “Halt. Wait a minute.” Emmerich grabbed her arm.
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  “Please don’t,” she begged.

  He let her go. “I don’t want to hurt you . . . I just want to . . . ”

  He paused as he realized why he recognized her. Hörl had detained her for illegal prostitution, and Emmerich had let her go. In his opinion there was no point to jailing the women—they weren’t working this line of work for fun, but because hunger and misery had left them no other choice. They’d been punished enough by life.

  She coughed and looked around frantically. “Where’s your colleague?”

  “I’m alone. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to do anything to you.”

  The street girl seemed to believe him, because her face relaxed noticeably. “You’re letting me walk a second time. It’s very generous of you.” She coughed again. “I can repay the favor if you want,” she said in a throaty voice.

  Emmerich used a finger to turn her head into the light of the streetlamp. She was unnaturally pale and had dark rings under her eyes. Placing his hand on her forehead, he confirmed what he had already suspected. “You’re sick and you shouldn’t be standing around out here in the cold.”

  “I have to earn money.”

  “The wind is going to pick up again. If you don’t take care of yourself you’ll be down for the count for the next few days. It makes more sense to go home now. Do you live nearby?”

  “A few streets over, in Favoriten, I have a maid’s chamber there.”

  “Come on, I’ll get you home,” he said, offering his arm.

  Favoriten was a working-class area full of factories and bleak squares. Unlike in the city center or in the rich neighborhoods around the edge of the city, there were no parks or trees for miles around and certainly no lovingly kept flower beds. Everything in Favoriten was strictly functional.

  “Here we are.” The young woman gestured to a sagging brick shell of a building with old, soot-covered windows. “Thanks for your kindness.”

  Emmerich buried his hands in his pockets and looked around. “Would you possibly know where the nearest emergency shelter is?”

  “On Puchsbaumgasse, I think. All the way at the end. You have to go there for work?”

  “I wish,” he mumbled, preparing to head off. “Good night and feel better.”

  “Wait!” called the young woman. “Do you want to come up?” she asked. “I have tea. Not good tea, but it warms you up.”

  “Love to.” He took the invitation with barely a thought. Anything was better than the city’s emergency shelters, those smelly, grim sources of disease. He followed her through a narrow entry corridor full of garbage, and then up a creaky wooden staircase. It reeked of piss. “Isn’t blocking the corridors against the house rules?”

  “Of course, but it hasn’t been enforced for years.” They were only on the second floor but the woman was already short of breath.

  Emmerich detested the wealthy landlords who shamelessly enriched themselves on the plight of others. But he was too tired on this night to get worked up over it.

  On the top floor his companion pointed to a low, sooty door at the end of the hall. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

  “No worries, I’m used to it, and anyway you’ve spared me waiting for morning in the stuffy, damp air of the shelter.”

  “Watch your head.”

  She opened the door to a windowless room that was so small that Emmerich felt as if he had entered a dollhouse. The pitch of the roof made the room feel even more cramped. To the left was a thin straw mattress, to the right a chair heaped with clothes, and on the back wall was a little shelf next to a brick stove. It was drafty and cold. Emmerich looked in vain for a place to sit down.

  The young woman handed him a tattered cushion and motioned to the floor, which was covered with a threadbare carpet. “My name is Minna, by the way.”

  “August.” He sat down and looked at the wall, which was covered with colorful posters, postcards, and sketches. “You seem to be a great admirer of Paraguay.”

  Minna turned to him and was suddenly a completely different person. Her eyes lit up, her face regained a little color. “It’s the country of my dreams,” she gushed, reaching for a dented pot and going out to fill it with water from the spigot in the stairwell.

  “Tell me about it,” Emmerich urged when she returned and set the pot on the stove and lit a fire.

  “I don’t even know where to start. There are so many wonderful things there.”

  Minna opened a tin can, spooned crumbled brown leaves into two cups, and stared off dreamily until a quiet bubbling signaled that the water was boiling. She carefully filled the cups and handed one to Emmerich.

  He took it gratefully and wrapped his chilly hands around it. “Just start somewhere. I could use a nice story or two.”

  “Then you’re in the right place.” She sat down on the mattress and ran her hands softly, almost tenderly, over a poster showing exotic birds. “Someone once told me that Paraguay is the land of flowers and fruit. It’s always warm there, the people are friendly, and there are exotic animals.” She smiled and looked for a moment almost like a little girl. She blew cautiously into the steaming brown liquid, took a sip, and started to cough.

  “You alright?” asked Emmerich.

  She shook her head. “Vienna is making me sick. This apartment is making me sick. The people make me sick. Everything does. I hate this city.” Her eyes gleamed again as she ran her hand over the image of the birds once more.

  And only now did Emmerich realize. He should have recognized it right away—the deathly pale skin, the drawn cheeks, the cough and the shortness of breath; children died like flies from the same thing back at the orphanage. Minna had what they called the Vienna Disease. She had tuberculosis. She would soon be coughing blood and running a high fever and having convulsions. She’d get thinner and weaker and one day she’d nod off forever. And this day was not far off, nearer in fact than she wanted to admit.

  “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’m not going to die,” she said as if reading his thoughts. “The climate in Paraguay can cure me, that’s why I’m moving there.” She reached under her pillow and pulled out a brochure that was so worn out it must have been read a thousand times already. “Paraguay is distinguished by an extraordinarily healthy climate,” she read aloud. “Yellow fever, cholera, typhus, and other enemies of mankind are unknown in the country. Tuberculosis can be completely cured there.”

  “And how do you plan to get there, if I might ask?”

  “With the resettlement company called New Home. They’re helping me emigrate. I’ll live in an Austrian settlement near Asuncion.” She leaned forward and pointed to a picture hanging behind Emmerich of pretty houses dotting a picturesque river bank. A jewel among the cities of the earth was written below the image. “You know what? To mark the occasion I’m going to heat up the stove.” Minna pulled a few small pieces of wood from a bucket, put them in the brick stove, and lit them. “Soon I’ll be in a place where I’ll never need heat again.”

  Emmerich just hoped that would be Paraguay and not Eternity. “You don’t need to do it on my account—”

  “Yes, I do.” She sat down on the mattress again and sipped her tea while the comforting warmth spread through the tiny room. “Without you my plans would have died.”

  Emmerich didn’t know what the young woman was talking about, and just looked at her. Her eyes were clear, her skin was dry and pale—nothing suggested she had already gone into a feverish delirium.

  She had caught his skeptical look and handed him a piece of paper with a list written on it. “To Bring” was the title.

  “Passport, six photos, certificate of residence,” he read aloud. “Certification from the tax authority that all obligations have been met up to the date of application. Morality reference.”

  “You let me go. Only because of you do I
have a clean morality reference. You can’t join a settlement without impeccable character. From that perspective you saved my dream and with it my life. A little heat is the least I can do.”

  Emmerich nodded abstractedly. A thought was crossing his exhausted mind, something he couldn’t grasp in his worn-down state. Trying to remember, he stared at the list until his eye stopped at a number: 10,000 crowns. His alertness came back to life. “The capital investment is that much? That’s quite a sum.”

  Minna’s smile disappeared. “Why do you think I turn tricks? With what I was making as a maid I’d never have gotten the money together. But this way . . . I’m young, and some men pay really well. And besides, the woman I was working for before treated me terribly. So this work isn’t much worse, really.”

  “Even so . . . I’d never have guessed that the price was that high.”

  The heat crept through Emmerich’s body like a gentle anesthetic. His eyes grew heavy, and he had difficulty listening attentively.

  “It covers transit costs, plus I get a small plot of land and a place to stay in Paraguay. I hadn’t expected it to cost so much either, and I nearly signed a contract with a different agency. That one was half the price.”

  “But?”

  He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. Just for a second, he thought. Just going to rest for a second.

  “A friend of mine wanted to emigrate to America with that agency, to the United States . . . ” Minna chattered on without noticing that her guest was slowly fading.

  Emmerich heard her words faintly as if from a distance. “ . . . put the money aside . . . took off with it . . . vile swindler . . . criminal organization . . . ”

  Then he fell asleep.

  Emigrate!

  Emmerich woke with a start and rubbed his face.

  In an instant he was wide awake. The men in Poldi Tant had been talking about it, and the men at the homeless shelter had also said that Dietrich Jost wanted to travel to Brazil.