Wolf's Mouth

by John Smolens

  This took him by surprise, and briefly he seemed disarmed, so to speak. “Anton.”

  “I understand, Anton.”

  Almost reluctantly, he stepped out of the way, allowing me to approach his father. Kommandant Vogel’s white cane lay folded up next to him on the park bench. At the sound of my footsteps, he patted the seat beside him. “Please, Captain Verdi.”

  I sat next to Vogel, keeping to the other end of the bench. Anton had taken up a position some ten yards away, standing by a trimmed hedge. Vogel continued to look straight ahead, seemingly admiring the fountain. He was sitting to my left, and I could easily pull my gun from the holster under my left arm and fire. I glanced at Anton, who was scanning the grounds. “I see a resemblance.”

  “He is my son, yes.”

  “He’s what, thirty, give or take a year? You have trained him to do your butchering.”

  “He has learned obedience.”

  “When will this stop?”

  “When we are told—we all have our orders.”

  “The war is over, Vogel. It was over years ago. For you and me it was really over while we were in Au Train.”

  His skin was waxy, pale, and when he shook his head slowly the cords in his neck seemed to vibrate with the effort. “Anton read to me from a brochure about this fountain. It’s quite a technological marvel—you know I was trained as an engineer, so I can appreciate such things, even if I can’t see them. Fountains are interesting, don’t you think? They are a very public form of art. People flock to them because they represent something about a country, its culture, the dreams and ideals of its citizens. The Führer had a great belief in the power of architecture, how it would unify the German people. Since his death we must be even more vigilant in pursuing and protecting his dreams and ideals.” Vogel turned his head slightly in my direction. His attempt at a smile was more a grimace. “Wars never really end, Captain Verdi. You should understand that, coming from Italy. Now that there are so many communists running your country, do you not think people are putting up resistance? Of course, here it is different. There is something about democracy that makes people weak, forgetful. This is such a hollow place—I’m sure you’ve observed this. There’s very little sense of the past, just shallow children’s stories about cherry trees and never telling lies. A people without a history—they always talk about the future, but the future will not be theirs. You must see that this won’t last. They have no real strength, no discipline.” He raised his face to the sunlight. “Instead they would rather enjoy themselves. They are more interested in sitting by a fountain, mindlessly basking in the sun.”

  “What you are doing,” I said, “what you did to Mile Ionescu and Hans Krantz, this will not lead to some sort of victory. Orders or not, you are merely exacting revenge. This is all you have left.”

  “People who disobeyed orders must be brought to account.”

  “Tracking down people like Stemple and me, it will not bring the Reich back. Your Führer is dead, Vogel, and so are his ideas.”

  “We must carry on. Our work is not finished.”

  “So you take orders. Where are your commanders? South America?”

  “We are gathering strength. This democracy is very useful, very pliable.”

  “They must be eating and drinking well in Brazil. They ran off with whatever money and valuables they could carry with them and they are in hiding, while you and your son are up here. You’re still a prisoner, Vogel. You’ve never really gotten out of Au Train.”

  He tilted his head—a gesture of sympathy. “And you actually believed that you could escape? If that were so, you would not be here. Alone. We are both still in that prison camp, Captain Verdi, and the sentence that was passed twelve years ago is still valid today. Time does not diminish justice.”

  Anton was staring straight at me. His hands were in his jacket pockets, and I had no doubt that he was holding a gun. If I moved quickly, I could pull out my revolver and fire at Anton first. Vogel would be helpless. And this was what gave me pause—even if I managed to take down Anton, I would be left with a frail, unarmed blind man sitting on a park bench. Ideology didn’t matter, nor did any responsibility for the pain and suffering of others. I realized that to shoot him would be as wrong—and ultimately as pointless—as what he had done to people like Hans Krantz. Even the knowledge that shooting him might prevent the execution of others didn’t work. I couldn’t do it.

  I looked toward the fountain. In the setting sun, plumes of gold water arched above the wide pool. “I wish you could see this fountain,” I said. “The colors right now, with the sun setting behind it. But for you there is only the darkness.”

  “Captain, do you ever hear from your friend in camp, the little fellow, the communist?”

  “Adino Agostino.”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “The one whose Achilles tendons you had cut.” Vogel almost appeared amused—I was incapable of comprehending the true significance of such an act. “He has spent all these years with his family, handicapped. He is the one with real courage.”

  “I recall he was quite talented in the football matches. He had promise.”

  I could have shot him then. At that moment, I could have reached inside my jacket, pulled the Beretta out of its holster, pressed the muzzle against his ribcage, and pulled the trigger. But still, I didn’t. “It’s just occurred to me,” I said, looking at Vogel. “I’m not here because of what you might do in the future. That I simply can’t know. You’re right—it is all about the past. That’s all we have, the past. In this, you and I are the same.” Vogel turned his head toward me slightly. “But your son,” I said. “He must be very obedient, and it has been difficult for him.” Anton could hear what we were saying, and something in his posture stiffened. Not threatening, but threatened. “His mother, Elena?” I asked Vogel. “You will have him kill his own mother? And his half sister? Will it come to that?”

  I can’t say with certainty what happened next. I’ve thought it over, tried to visualize the exact sequence of events, but I can never be sure. All I know is Anton moved, and I suspect he did so because I must have done something, given some indication of my intent at that moment. But I don’t exactly recall reaching inside my sport coat.

  All I know is the result: Anton drew a gun from the pocket of his jacket. I think I might have stood up, though I’m not sure. He held his arms outstretched toward me, and then I was staring at the sky. I was lying on my back—I remember that the ground was hard and uncomfortable. Pebbles pressed into my shoulder. I was having great difficulty breathing. There was chaotic movement around me, and through it all the jets of water rose high above the fountain and crashed down into the pool, creating a sound as loud and persistent as a waterfall. There were voices; there was screaming, it seemed, but it was difficult to tell with the noise of the fountain.

  The sky above me was blue. Cloudless. A rich, early evening blue. I tried to concentrate on that blueness. It was getting harder to breathe, and there was this pressure on my left side. I could not tell exactly where, though it occurred to me that my heart might be damaged—certainly my lung, because there was fluid interfering with my breathing. I was gurgling every time I inhaled, and I could taste blood.

  And then she was there. Audrey Vickers. Librarian. Bettendorf, Iowa.

  She was leaning over me, her wide face blocking the blue sky. She was wearing glasses, and I couldn’t remember if she’d been wearing them before, on the bus. Plain, wire-frame glasses, a type you rarely see women wear anymore. She looked confused, horrified, but also remarkably self-possessed. I was aware that there were others around me—other deaf-mutes—and by comparison, I could tell that they were in a panic. I wondered how they had come here to the fountain if they couldn’t hear the gunshot. Or was it gunshots—again, I wasn’t sure.

  Audrey Vickers must have touched me, because when she raised a hand to push her glasses up her nose, her finger left a smear of blood on the corner of the right lens.


  I remember trying to speak, but it was impossible.

  My breathing was becoming more difficult.

  I closed my eyes, for how long I don’t know.

  I opened them when Audrey Vickers touched my face with her hand. She had this inquisitive look on her face. There was now a policeman crouching beside her, his expression grim and hard, very hard. I turned my head slightly—it was a real effort—and saw a revolver—my revolver—in his hand. Beyond him I could see the park bench and the hedge. There was no sign of Vogel and his son Anton. When I looked back at Audrey Vickers I tried to speak, but couldn’t. She leaned closer. I opened my mouth again. My lips must have been covered with blood. I could taste nothing but blood by then. She was looking at my mouth, and I realized she wanted to read my lips. Finally, I whispered, “Dov´è?” She came even closer. “Dov’è Chiara?”

  Audrey Vickers straightened up. She looked at the policeman and shook her head.

  IV. 1991

  23.

  I died.

  The doctors told me: I was dead on the table for several minutes, until they managed to get my heart beating again. It wasn’t sleep with its landscape of dreams. It was nothing. Nonexistence. Nothing.

  And then I was alive again. For days afterwards I lay in a hospital bed, in pain, heavily medicated, and I kept trying to understand the fact that I had died. But I couldn’t understand it. I only knew that I was alive again. I wanted to thank God for that.

  Now, years later, I still don’t know exactly what happened at Scott Fountain on Belle Isle. What I do know is that I had survived, and that Vogel and his son Anton had disappeared. People who were there at the fountain gave different accounts to the police and the newspapers. A few said there seemed to have been an argument, which resulted in the shooting. But most said that they hadn’t noticed anything unusual until shots were fired and a man was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. There followed panic and confusion, and no one took notice as a young man led a blind man away from the fountain.

  What I do know is this: the bullet missed my heart by inches, and the damage to my lung has adversely affected my health ever since.

  Those first weeks after the shooting, while I was in that hospital bed, I insisted that Claire remain in Sault Ste. Marie. Braun returned to Detroit, thinking at first that she would stay there, that it was possible to resume her life there. But none of us, it seemed, would be able to resume the life we’d led before the shooting.

  As soon as I was able, I left the hospital. I was weak, my breathing difficult. My left arm was in a sling. My dressings had to be changed regularly. Braun accompanied me on the trip to Sault Ste. Marie, thinking that she would stay with us only until Claire and I were settled. But the weeks turned into months. Braun kept saying that she would soon return to Detroit, but there was always a reason to stay a little longer. I suffered infections and bouts of fever. Claire was having increasing difficulties with her pregnancy and was in no condition to care for me by herself. We were, all three of us, hiding out in the apartment above the Zampas’ garage. We received no mail. We had no telephone. If we needed to make a call, we went over to the Zampas’ kitchen.

  Giannopoulos had no idea where Vogel and Anton were, and he took care of my gun. The unregistered Beretta on Belle Isle didn’t exist.

  Most fall afternoons we’d take a walk through town—an unusual sight in Sault Ste. Marie, then in the mid-fifties. On the sidewalks and in the stores we couldn’t miss the furtive glances and the overt stares.

  “We’re a freak show,” Claire said one afternoon. “The pregnant woman, the wounded man, and . . . what are you?” she said to Braun.

  “The tart,” Braun said. “The Detroit tart.”

  They laughed, while I avoided doing so because it only caused searing pain in my chest.

  We entered the park that bordered the locks. An ore boat, which had come up the St. Mary’s River, slowly rose on the flooding waters. This was our daily entertainment, watching these massive ships, some a thousand feet long, rise and fall in the locks, before heading out into Lake Superior or downriver to the lower Great Lakes, transporting taconite to Chicago, Detroit, or Toledo. Beyond the locks, the harbor was a marvel of industry, boats and barges passing beneath a smudged sky. The ominous, perpetual racket of the blast furnaces at Algoma Steel thundered across the water from Sault Ste. Marie, Canada.

  “You should go back before winter sets in,” Claire said.

  “To Detroit?” Braun said. “I don’t think I can live there again. Everything’s different up here. I’m different up here. In Detroit, I was spoiled and pampered. After my mother married Larry Collins we lived in Grosse Pointe Farms, and when I was fourteen I was packed off to a private school in Boston. It was the kind of place that was supposed to straighten out rich girls and help us find rich boys at nearby colleges and universities. With me, it didn’t work. I got kicked out of school.”

  I wanted a cigarette, but my doctor had forbidden them. The lake was twenty-one feet higher than the river and we watched the ship rise as tons of water gushed up from beneath the lock gates. We never ceased to marvel at the pure force of water. “You’re staying because you feel needed,” I suggested.

  “That’s something I’ve never experienced before, being needed,” Braun said. “But it’s also that my whole life I’ve been trying to escape. I always thought things would be better somewhere else. Here, I don’t need the clothes, the makeup, any of that. Strange, isn’t it? Here, you don’t care how things are somewhere else. Here, things just are.”

  Claire and I knew what she meant, and we didn’t speak of it again. Most afternoons we walked to the locks to witness the activity on the harbor. An ore boat is not a beautiful or graceful ship; its design is purely functional, its purpose to convey iron ore, limestone, and coal. Yet watching these vessels pass through the Soo became an essential ritual, equally sacred and visceral, providing momentary respite from our own lives, which lacked definition or direction.

  So Braun stayed, nursing us both through the U.P. winter. The wind off Lake Superior often drove the temperature down to twenty, thirty, forty degrees below, and the snow—hundreds of inches of snow, drifting so high that some people came and went from their houses by a door on the second floor. Most mornings Mr. Zampa’s truck would rumble beneath us while it was still dark and we were huddled under our blankets. Sometimes, when I was feeling strong, I’d make the rounds with him as he plowed driveways and parking lots through the night, sharing a bottle of grappa. The winter was as beautiful as it was brutal. The cold pared our desires down to the need for food, clothing, and shelter. The days were hard, exhausting, and we became bound to our neighbors by a shared sense of survival.

  The baby was due the third week of February.

  Those last few weeks we were all in a virtual state of hibernation. Claire could barely get out of bed. At that point I was sleeping in the other bedroom and Braun was on the foldout sofa in the living room. Though the central heater rattled away and there was a wood-burning stove in the living room, we still could see our breaths most mornings. Long johns, two pairs of wool socks, baggy corduroy trousers, flannel shirts, sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves with the fingertips cut off—that was how we dressed indoors. And we combated the cold with food: meats, breads, potatoes, and Mrs. Zampa’s pasta in a ragù sauce made with ground venison. Throughout the fall, gutted deer carcasses hung from trees about the neighborhood. By December, backyard rinks had been erected and flooded, and after school the cold air was filled with the sizzle of skate blades, the knock of hockey pucks. Frequently I walked to the grocery store, pulling the Flexible Flyer I used to transport food and supplies back to the apartment. I had cash. Cash for food, cash for the rent. I had cash because Leon had bought my business, and he’d arranged to have our belongings sold off from the apartment. I resisted calling Tony and Ginger, believing that it was safer if they didn’t know our whereabouts. Our life in Detroit ceased to exist.

  By then Claire was
in great discomfort, often pain. Dr. Muse was making regular house calls. He provided some pills that made her drowsy, and for hours she’d be fast asleep beneath a heap of blankets. She couldn’t keep anything down other than a little toast and broth. It was the middle of the night, during a blizzard, when her water broke. I remember the smell of her soaked bedsheets. She said, “Get me to the hospital before everything freezes.” It had all been prearranged: Mr. Zampa drove us in the pickup, the plow pushing fresh snow aside. Mrs. Zampa called Dr. Muse, who arrived at the hospital before us. Braun and I spent hours in the waiting room, drinking coffee spiked with grappa, which Mr. Zampa kept in his truck. He was too nervous to stay, so he went out and did his rounds of plowing and returned at first light with Mrs. Zampa, who had her rosary beads wrapped around her wool mittens.

  A little after seven a.m., Dr. Muse came out into the waiting room. Though he was in his hospital greens, he still wore his heavy rubber galoshes, the loose buckles jingling like coins in the pocket. He asked to talk to me alone, and we went out through the swinging doors to the corridor, where he talked about the complications. He was noncommittal about Claire’s chances. “It’s a girl,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “Five pounds, seven ounces. Congratulations.”

  The next couple of days we kept a vigil at the hospital. I stayed in Claire’s room day and night. She looked shriveled and her breathing was shallow, constricted with crackling phlegm. She could barely lift her head off the pillow, and I had to hold the glass of water in front of her face and direct the straw toward her mouth. Her eyes, large and glossy, were saying something to me, something I didn’t want to acknowledge. But her gaze was so persistent that finally I nodded my head.

  “The baby,” she whispered. “We name her Mary, after the St. Mary’s river. Or would you prefer Marie, after Sault Ste. Marie?”

  “I like either.”