by Mario Bolduc
Finally, Christina raised her hand and brushed his face, as she’d done so many times before, long ago in Auschwitz. The spell broke and Emil took her in his arms, holding her tight against him, before they fell together on the sofa, undressing each other without a word. Christina gave herself up to Emil’s touch, just as she’d done in Birkenau among the belongings of the prisoners and the disappeared. In the half-light, they made love passionately. The years, the lives they’d lived, none of it changed what had first brought them colliding against each other in a place of death.
Finally, Emil rolled onto his back, taking Christina in his arms.
She looked at him steadily, savouring the moment. “When they told me they’d found you, I didn’t believe it. I thought you were dead, another body in the camps.”
“And you in Paraguay.”
“What are you talking about?”
“With Josef Mengele and the others.”
Christina smiled. Emil understood that Ceauşescu had lied to him. The Securitate, as well.
“We managed to get out of Berlin in the last hours of the war. Among the ruins …”
“We?”
“Matthias and me. You remember Matthias Kluge?”
The accountant.
In the last hours of Auschwitz, when Dr. Hans Leibrecht pushed Christina off the truck, Kluge was the one who saved her and took her with him as they fled.
After the war, there were long months of privation in a devastated Berlin. A hunt was on for former Nazis. Matthias had been able to hide. And, slowly, little by little, a form of normalcy returned. The trial of those responsible for the horrors of the war in Nuremberg came and went. Reconstruction could begin. To many it was time to simply rebuild the present and put the past behind.
As with the Roma, so, too, with the Germans, Emil thought. To forget. To fall silent. To hide the painful events in the depths of memory.
“Matthias is a businessman now. He’s been quite successful.”
Emil couldn’t believe the bastard was still alive, and rich to boot. You had to wonder who’d actually won the war. While Emil had spent four years in a gulag, Kluge was lining his pockets.
God was a gadjo — there was no doubt about it.
“You married?” Emil asked.
Not immediately. After the war ended, Matthias and Christina had lost sight of each other for a time. Then, in 1950, they met again at a conference. Christina was employed as an interpreter for an American envoy for the Marshall Plan.
Christina stretched and grabbed her handbag. She pulled out a picture and showed it to Emil. “My daughter. She turned twelve last week.”
“She’s very pretty.”
Emil told her he’d married, as well. Eugenia had given him a daughter and a son. Nicolae Ceauşescu was the godfather.
Silence fell between them as it had in Auschwitz. Unease. Their lives had moved so far apart. Their love founded on a memory. On an intense, impossible, very precise moment in time, one they would never be able to recapture.
“Do you still play the accordion?”
Emil nodded.
Whenever he hosted a party, he didn’t need to be asked twice. Other times, when dark clouds hung over him, he locked himself in a room and played for himself. Emil now regretted not having brought the gormónya with him.
“What are you doing with those two?” Emil asked, referring to Markov and Vaneker.
“The Roma need you, Emil.”
“You’re playing at politics now?
“They’re convinced that soon the Soviets will be out of Eastern Europe. Germany will be reunited. That democracy will return to Romania, to Hungary, to Eastern Europe.”
No need to believe them, according to Christina. The Soviet Union would last a thousand years. Adolf Hitler’s dream was now the reality of Stalin’s successors and their pawns in Eastern Europe. And socialism would only become more violent the longer it dominated the political culture of these countries. It was necessary to organize, to resist. Romanians couldn’t look inward, not when so many foreign winds buffeted them.
Had Markov and Vaneker brought Christina here to convince him of their projects?
She seemed to guess his hesitation. “I’ve got access to a lot of money. I want to support the Romani cause. I want to do something for you in particular.”
Emil got to his feet, confused. She’d helped him so much already. Saved his life three times. And now she wanted to do even more for him.
“I need forgiveness. But I won’t get it. So repentance will do.”
Why should he carry somebody else’s guilt?
“Nothing has changed, Emil. My husband is only digging himself deeper into mediocrity, becoming as odious as my father was. He’s a bastard.”
Soon after they married, Christina had begun to notice strange behaviour. Matthias kept secrets, made excuses, lied. At first she thought her husband was seeing another woman. In the end, she discovered he was getting together with other former Nazi officers, those nostalgic for the swastika. Christina thought about confronting him, or leaving him after notifying the police. But, in the end, she didn’t do a thing. Matthias offered financial stability, so she decided to use his money at the service of the emerging Romani movement.
That was how she’d met Markov, who introduced her to Vaneker. She was in Romania to convince Emil to assume the full responsibilities of his name and his family, his duty toward his people.
“It’s my way to love you as much as I can now. To help all Roma. Indirectly, secretly, behind Matthias’s back.”
“With his money?”
“Yes.”
Emil closed his eyes. He didn’t care about the Roma. Or money. All he wanted was to take this woman by the hand and leave with her, go to some place unknown to everyone. To forget everything.
“I love you, Christina. I’ve always loved you.”
“I love you, too, Emil. I’ll always love you.”
26
Montreal, December 11, 2006
Max O’Brien sat in his Jeep, watching the scene unfold before him. A merry-go-round of low-level thugs selling weed or crack or whatever the house specialty was, waiting for their clientele in the park in front of the school. They were kids really, some of them with wispy moustaches, trying to look like hard men out of a movie. Several parents had parked their cars near the school entrance, a Hadrian’s Wall of overbearing concern standing between their kids and those in the park.
A few students began to trickle out of the school, and all at once, the bell rang, the dam broke, and the streets were full. The dealers had disappeared from the park and were now mingling among the students, attempting to find their usual customers. Max scanned the crowd for Gabrielle. There were teenagers all over the place now, their faces half hidden by long scarves or wool hats.
Max grumbled. He heard someone cursing behind his car. Turning around, he saw one of the dealers beating a hasty retreat from a girl Max recognized as Gabrielle. She seemed to be shouting something at him about getting out of her damn way, using words Max doubted Caroline would approve of. Max smiled. The girl certainly didn’t need Mom and Dad to get herself home safe and sound.
Max opened the door and shouted, “Way to go, Gaby!”
Gabrielle didn’t bother to turn around to see who’d called out. “Go fuck yourself, you old pervert!”
“Gabrielle …”
She turned around, recognizing his voice. “Robert?”
“Come on, climb in.”
Gabrielle hesitated.
“I’ve never killed anyone and neither has your father. He’s got nothing to do with the murders you’ve been hearing about.”
Gabrielle glanced inside the car, suspicious, before finally getting into the Jeep. She looked at Max questioningly, unsure of the reaction she should be having. With a pang of sadness, Max noticed ho
w much her attitude toward him had changed. He watched her for a long moment. She’d become a beautiful girl, with her long black hair, her blue eyes full of life, intelligence shining through. Just like her mother a lifetime ago.
“The police came to talk to me. Is it true what they’re saying?”
“Partially. My name is Max O’Brien. And I’m a crook. But I’m not a killer.”
Gabrielle paused for a moment, clearly trying to determine what her next move should be. “I’m supposed to call them if you try to get in touch with me.”
Max handed her his cellphone. “That’s your choice.”
Gabrielle didn’t move.
“Again, I haven’t killed anyone, nor has your father.”
She remained silent.
“Were the cops nice to you at least?” Max asked. “Were they polite?”
“Yeah, they were two young guys.”
“They told you their names?”
“Giovanni something, an Italian. I have his card at home. I can’t remember the other guy’s name.”
The flow of students had already dwindled; the dealers were gone, the streets almost empty again.
“Why don’t we go find something warm to drink?”
A coffee on rue Saint-Hubert under the eaves of the plaza. The coffee shop had served smoked meat and cherry colas for several decades. The neighbourhood was changing and was now all almond-flavoured coffee drinks and triple-chocolate cakes. Max needed to put events in order from the very beginning, from Kevin’s decision to go to Romania. And why had he chosen to take a sabbatical?
It had been a last-minute decision, according to Gabrielle. The high school he worked at wasn’t happy. The school had had to find someone to replace him on short notice, though it had figured things out in the end. Kevin had said he was leaving for Maine in early September, wanting to hike the Appalachian Trail to take in the fall colours. He’d make his way to the southern tip of the trail in Georgia by foot before resting for a few weeks and flying back in January. At least that was the plan.
It turned out that was all a lie. Kevin had flown to Romania.
Why?
Gabrielle had been staying with a friend while her father travelled. He’d promised to send her news regularly as he walked south.
“Do you have his letters with you?”
In her bag, Gabrielle had a pile of printed-out emails. Entire pages full of anecdotes.
“Hiking with a computer? Maybe a BlackBerry …”
Gabrielle shrugged. “So he never went to the Appalachians. Why did he lie about that, too?”
“He wanted to protect you.”
“From what?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Max studied the missives, mostly interested in when the emails were sent. Kevin had written to his daughter once a week, sometimes twice. Max understood what Kevin had managed to do: he’d disappeared without disappearing. Given signs of life to his family while being reachable only by email. No phone number, no address. Kevin all alone, hiking the trail. Meanwhile he was able to travel to Romania and get on with his true plan.
His last message was dated the same day he’d called Max.
“The road is long and often hard, but I’m moving forward,” Kevin had written. “I’m sure of it. One day, you and me, we’ll walk this same path together. With your mother, too, why not? Soon, Gabrielle, all will be as it was.”
Max swallowed back emotion. Kevin’s last message to his daughter just before being kidnapped.
Soon … all will be as it was.
What did that mean? As it was before the accident on the Saqawigan?
When Max looked back up, Gabrielle was watching him closely. “Do you remember taking me for ice cream?”
Max nodded. Today ice cream had a sour taste for him. As it did for Gabrielle.
“I’m sorry,” Max replied. “I should have brought you elsewhere.”
“I was happy to see you.”
Gabrielle welled up. She glanced away, avoiding Max’s eyes. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. Max still felt terrible at having forever tainted the taste of what had been her favourite treat.
“I’d like to take a look around the apartment,” he said finally.
From the living room, they could see a docked cruise ship in port, Île Sainte-Hélène behind it. A few pedestrians plodded through the cold cobblestone streets. Just below the window, a deserted bicycle path. In summer you felt as if you were participating in the lives of all these anonymous tourists who invaded the area.
Max could feel how the truth about her father had rattled Gabrielle. She’d always seen him as an honest man, and here he was accused of having caused a fire that had killed almost two dozen people on the other side of the world. Accused of being a crook, a con artist who’d ruined his own father. Too heavy a burden to bear for anyone.
He slipped into Kevin’s room. On the wall, posters from races his friend had run years before. A few pictures of him as a young man, standing on a podium or in the company of other athletes. The mail he’d received during his absence was piled on a dresser.
Clearly, the police had already gone through his letters.
Max unfolded Kevin’s credit card statement. The card hadn’t been used since September. The right-hand drawer to his desk was half open. Scattered, disorganized documents, probably the result of the police going through the drawer. Max scanned the documents quickly, finding nothing of interest. Notes Kevin had taken for his classes. Photocopies of a teaching manual. Various training techniques for teenagers. A letter to the director of Collège Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur, the local high school, agreeing to the terms of his contract for the next semester. And another letter, this one from the school’s principal, rebuking him for putting his colleagues in a bind just as they were preparing the new school year — a letter dated in July. Receipts from a parking spot near the high school, a late notice from bibliothèque de Côte-des-Neiges.
Curiously, among all the papers, a bill for renting some landscaping equipment signed by a Julien Desmeules. Max compared the date of the rental to the principal’s letter. Only a few days separated the two documents.
In the left-hand drawer, a pile of newspaper clippings. Articles about Kevin’s performances in various marathons.
A bookcase lined one side of the wall. Mostly sports books. He recognized the one from bibliothèque de Côte-des-Neiges by the sticker on its spine. A piece of paper stuck in the last third of the book. Max pulled it out. It was a phone number. Long distance.
Max went through Kevin’s phone bills, which were organized in a folder. He found the call. To Victoriaville in early June.
He opened a closet.
All of the Dandurands’ pain was thrown in his face all at once. Pictures of Sacha everywhere. And objects, as well, toys, clothes. It broke his heart to see.
A sanctuary.
“One day I found him kneeling before the closet, crying.”
Max turned around. Gabrielle was standing in the doorway, on the verge of tears. The girl threw herself into Max’s arms, and he held her against him as he’d done that day in the park after the Dairy Queen.
Back in the living room, while Gabrielle made coffee, Max called the number in Victoriaville.
“Boisjoli, Michaud & Ranger,” a feminine voice answered after several rings. Behind her, laughter, music. “We’re having our Christmas party. Perhaps we can call you back tomorrow if you wish to speak with a notary?”
Max insisted. He’d found this bill in Kevin Dandurand’s papers and all it had on it was this phone number. He was looking for information as to why this Dandurand character would have the phone number of a notary.
“And you are?”
“Sergeant Donald Gravel of the Quebec Provincial Police.”
“I’ll get you Mr. Michaud right
away.”
A hoarse voice, that of an older man. In his sixties at least, Max thought. An old small-town notary who’d seen it all before. Max wouldn’t be able to deceive him easily. Thankfully, the Christmas party was in full swing, which might mean the man had his guard down …
“How can I help?” he asked, chuckling, perhaps at a joke a colleague had just finished telling.
Max gave his spiel a second time. Michaud didn’t seem suspicious, only surprised. He didn’t know what the bill was for. Kevin Dandurand had never had any business with him or any other notary in his office. Likely an error.
“And yet you spoke in June, didn’t you? A few times, actually.”
Michaud hesitated, then said, “It was about something else entirely …”
He wouldn’t say any more, as if he realized, suddenly, how strange this call actually was. Max heard someone at the party laugh loudly. Then a voice calling for Michaud. The notary shouted back to wait a minute.
Max needed answers. He tried another line of questioning.
“A bill for a thousand dollars. That’s not nothing.”
Michaud laughed.
“I think Dandurand was trying to save on his taxes! I’m the one who should have billed him. Cost me $12.28 in postage to send an envelope to him in Montreal!”
“I don’t doubt you’re telling me the truth, Mr. Michaud, but it would certainly help our investigation if I could speak with your other client, whoever wanted to send a letter to Kevin Dandurand in the first place.”
More laughter. Clearly, Michaud was enjoying himself.
“Six feet under, that’s where old Lefebvre is! I doubt he’ll call you back!”
“And why did Kevin contact you?”
“My client’s affairs are confidential. If you wish to continue this conversation, please arrange a meeting. After the holidays.”
“It won’t be necessary.”