Good People

by Nir Baram

  She could tell he was afraid she would pre-empt him and ‘expose his true face’, as Reznikov did to Styopa. That she would use methods he couldn’t even imagine—were there any such?

  She brought her face close to his. Her eyes were on the level of his chin. ‘It’s impossible to leave him alone in the bed,’ she whispered into his flushed neck. ‘He could die while you’re standing here like a lump!’ ‘Two minutes,’ he said. She waited while he dressed, and when he didn’t appear she knocked on the door again. He came out in a black military jacket, with a dark scarf around his neck and a small satchel in his left hand.

  ‘Do you have everything?’ she asked, and he nodded. She looked him up and down for a pistol or knife hidden in his socks, or shoes, or in his satchel. She should frisk him, but she didn’t dare. Aside from that, she needed him and it was better to act as if she trusted him. He had to believe that their friendship could be remade.

  They went downstairs. She heard him panting behind her and decided to increase the distance between them. Even if he seemed weak and compliant, she had to remember that this man, unlike her, had killed people with his own hands. Just like her, he was weaving intrigues for the end of the night.

  Nikita Mikhailovich continued to lag behind her. She turned around and urged him to hurry. The meaning of what she had done did not escape her: Nikita Mikhailovich wouldn’t forgive her threats. He would not rest until he could liquidate her. Maybe not tonight. Maybe in a week—when the crisis had faded, when an opportunity came his way. She mustn’t labour under the delusion that it was possible to heal the rift. Thomas Heiselberg, if he woke up, could extricate them from the tangle; it was strange how, even after he was stripped of his tricks, and even when his flaccid body had been laid bare to her, part of her still clung to the way he presented himself to the world. After all, that wasn’t a groundless deceit. She still remembered how, a few hours ago, as though in a former life, he had stood smiling beside her in the glade, and toyed with her until her head was spinning.

  She pushed the door of her apartment open. In that instant, as she stood between the door and the cupboard, it seemed to her that a body had been moving around the room and immediately sank onto the bed. But the darkness made her doubt her eyes. She approached him. Heiselberg lay in the foetal position, panting. She checked his pulse. It had grown stronger, and in general he seemed more alert. A torrent of relief warmed her body, and she sparked up. When she turned back, by the weak light of the moon she could see Nikita Mikhailovich leaning against the wall and drumming lightly on his belt.

  She stood opposite him. ‘He’s breathing,’ she said.

  ‘Very good,’ he answered.

  She moved to the middle of the room.

  Nikita Mikhailovich approached the bed and leaned over Heiselberg. ‘The satchel, please,’ he ordered.

  She laid the satchel at his feet. Control over their fate had passed into his hands. She was afraid he would kill Heiselberg while he was treating him. But there was no logic to that—the death of a German representative in her room would be fatal for both of them. No, Nikita Mikhailovich would wake him up, they would help him obtain clothing and then he would take care of himself. He must have a plan for returning to Lublin, and he knew how to improvise, to make up for the hours he had lost, and to wriggle out safely.

  ‘Nikita Mikhailovich,’ she said hoarsely. ‘It’s still possible to solve all this.’

  He heard her conciliatory tone. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’ she asked.

  ‘If he hasn’t died by now, he’ll live.’

  ‘Can you wake him up?’

  ‘I’m doing that.’ He spoke with a note of pride. He was recovering his wits. She slid onto the floor and sat with her back to the wall.

  ‘I’m giving him smelling salts now.’ Nikita Mikhailovich was using his doctor’s voice.

  She closed her eyes. There was no doubt about it: Heiselberg was awake when they arrived. He was pretending to be unconscious to gain time, to find a solution. He would only come to life when he understood exactly what was going on around him and how he should act. She had a sudden insight into his silence.

  ‘Nikita Mikhailovich,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry that I woke you and urged you to come here against your will. I apologise if, in my emotional state, I said things that could be interpreted as a threat. That was not my intention. I respect your rank and your senior status. I have always admired your decency and your distaste for intrigue. Since my arrival, I’ve served you and the NKVD to the best of my ability. You have treated me with great generosity.’

  ‘This isn’t the time to review our history,’ he said. ‘Believe me, we’ll get to that.’

  Did he suspect that she was talking to the German? But it wouldn’t occur to Nikita Mikhailovich that the German spoke Russian. French was the language of the committee, so he wouldn’t suspect. What else did Heiselberg need to know? Through the window, the moon had been enveloped by dark clouds. It would be morning in two hours. She got to her feet, went to the small table and lit the candle. Then she leaned against the wall again and remembered how on the morning of Morozovsky’s interrogation she had floated around the interrogation room, cackling like a silly goose. Instead of grasping his intentions, she had fallen into his plot, approached him even after he dipped his finger in the boiling tea. She thought she understood how the psyche works at times like that—she was somehow absent from the evidence of her senses. The critical moments are usually silent; the scream is only heard after everything is finished. That wouldn’t happen this time.

  ‘Please put out the candle, Comrade Weissberg.’

  Her body straightened of its own accord, as if she had been yearning for the sound of his voice, emphasising every syllable. She blew out the candle and gave herself over to the relief that flooded her. Had she acted well? From now on, things were in his hands. No doubt he had prepared a perfect plan that would satisfy everyone.

  Thomas Heiselberg was sitting up on the bed, looking at his naked feet. Nikita Mikhailovich sat down on one of the orange stools and tapped the floor with his shoes.

  Heiselberg pulled up his trousers and disguised the rubbing of the cloth against his skin with a slight cough. Except for these sounds, the silence in the room was absolute. He got off the bed, tightened his belt, brushed away the scraps of his shirt and combed his fingers through his hair again.

  ‘Nikita Mikhailovich Kropotkin’—his voice revealed that he had comprehended everything. There was no doubt: the man had talent. But his strange appearance—he went over to the window, and his naked chest touched the pane—aroused a vague fear in her.

  ‘Comrade Kropotkin!’ he called out again.

  Nikita Mikhailovich stood up.

  ‘Perhaps you would be willing to lend me your shirt,’ Thomas asked in Russian. ‘I am sure you’ll agree that it’s not proper for me to return to Lublin dressed only in my jacket.

  Nikita Mikhailovich didn’t respond. He was a circumspect man and wouldn’t utter a word until he had processed this new information: the German representative knew him by name, he spoke fluent Russian and he dared to ask for his shirt. He looked at Thomas Heiselberg and at Sasha by turns, as if he understood now that he was trapped between the two of them.

  ‘I am sure you know, Comrade Kropotkin, that this little episode has to remain among ourselves. I understand your suspicions. You think that Comrade Weissberg is afraid you’ll take revenge against her, and therefore she will attack first and expose your true face—I believe that’s the correct expression here. After all, you know our darling Comrade Weissberg well; in the light of her previous actions, it’s hard to believe she’ll have mercy on anyone, no matter how close they might be to her, or that she will refrain from doing something vicious to neutralise a threat. She doesn’t believe you’re capable of restraining your thirst for revenge, and you don’t believe she’ll hesitate to act against you. Am I correct?’

  The realisation that he knew everyt
hing about her filled her with bitter despair. She felt naked. It was her deeds that shocked people, Russians as well as Germans. She had been judged already, become an example of evil. He had treated her with respect, warmth even, while feeling only disgust for her, telling himself, ‘Look how she’s made herself pretty for you, the monster who destroyed her parents!’

  But less than half an hour ago, outside Nikita Mikhailovich’s apartment, she, too, had brandished her reputation to frighten her superior. So why did she feel desecrated when Heiselberg did the same?

  Nikita Mikhailovich made a sound that might have been a stifled laugh, but it was swallowed in a cough. He spat onto the floor. He wouldn’t agree to any deal, Sasha thought, but nevertheless she still believed that Heiselberg could work some magic.

  ‘Listen to me, Nikita Mikhailovich,’ Heiselberg said amiably, brimming with good will, as if promising to get an old friend out of trouble. ‘Obviously you are endangering yourself by doing nothing, because Comrade Weissberg might decide to act first. I don’t make a habit of lying: this is quite possible. People like us can’t trust someone else. But it would be regrettable if you destroyed each other because of this lack of trust. And what if your anger tempts you to get even with your protégée, who was willing to betray you? Come on, Nikita Mikhailovich, our children rebel against us, that’s how the world works. And in any case, assuming you can overcome her, what about the power of Maxim Podolsky, her husband? And let’s not ignore the German representative: for purely professional reasons, Comrade Weissberg is dear to my heart. Even from Lublin I can harm you by finding evidence, for example, that you spied for Germany. You’re surrounded, Comrade Kropotkin, and the only thing you can do is take off your shirt and give it to me. Oh, I’ll need shoes too. If I leave now, maybe I can cross the border in time. As you may imagine, I have made the necessary arrangements, but I’m already very late, and the people who are supposed to be satisfied with my flimsy documents will soon lose hope and leave their posts. And that’s something we don’t want to happen.’

  The room was too small for the three of them. One slight movement by any of them might become an invasion of the other’s space. Nikita Mikhailovich was pressed between the dressing table and the clothesline. He needed a drink. If he asked, she would say that she had nothing except water. Vodka would fire his resolve. She felt her legs and discovered they were scratched.

  ‘What guarantee can you give me that she won’t act against me?’ His question surprised her. He wasn’t the sort to make deals like that. Even his tone sounded false.

  ‘In our dealings, there are no guarantees,’ Heiselberg declared cheerfully. He had apparently concluded from the question that Nikita Mikhailovich accepted his account of the situation. ‘You know that as well as I do. Logic dictates that you’ll serve your own interests, if you can each accept the other’s survival.’

  Heiselberg walked over to the basin. He knelt one step away from Nikita Mikhailovich, rinsed his face, splashed water on his chest, then wet his hands and again combed his hair back with his fingers. He did it naturally, as though he were at home. Only a cheerful whistle was missing. Having recovered from the attack that almost killed him, he had found new strength, as if nothing could frighten him now, not even death. Certainly not Nikita Mikhailovich.

  He had a rare talent for hope, not only in his smooth talk, but in his very being, in the childish faith he placed in his ideas, which he truly believed were destined to remake the world. She knew why he had won her heart in the glade, and why she was ready to do anything to save him. A part of him—not all, and not all the time—believed that their parade, too, would remake the world in its own image.

  But, precisely for that reason, he would never learn what he could not understand. He deciphered people according to his formula of characteristics and motivations, and thought that everyone, except madmen, would accept its validity. He would never understand people like Nikita Mikhailovich who lived solely by their rigid principles. He always felt like offering such people inducements, including ways of enhancing their careers, that he believed it would be perfectly rational to accept. For Nikita Mikhailovich to violate his own tyrannous dictates was like leaping off a bridge.

  ‘I’m not convinced you understand the problem,’ said Nikita Mikhailovich, while Heiselberg wiped his dripping chest. ‘I’m a gentleman and not a believer, and I am sure you are aware of the difference. But there is one thing that I do believe: every secret will eventually come out. Even if you pressed a knife to my neck, I wouldn’t accept your proposal. I didn’t come here because I was afraid of young Comrade Weissberg, but because your death in her bed might cause a crisis. In any case, if I can help a sick person, it’s my duty to do so. Maybe you’ll think I’m self-righteous, but to remove my shirt and give it to you, to be a part of your insane plot, to cooperate—as Comrade Weissberg is—with a German representative who entered the district for which I am responsible with forged papers, is contrary to everything I believe in.’

  Fear surged in her: it was over. He wouldn’t budge. He was determined to remove her from the district, from the parade committee, and from his orbit. Now she would have to do battle with a man who had shown her warmth and friendship.

  ‘Really, Nikita Mikhailovich.’ Heiselberg’s voice trembled slightly. He looked out the window. ‘You’re talking like a Red Cross volunteer. We all know your past.’

  ‘I’m the first one to admit to my deeds,’ said Nikita Mikhailovich earnestly. ‘I make a spiritual accounting every night, and it isn’t always flattering. I am aware that my position enables me to do what I do. In other words I accept the authority of the Party. You might doubt the methods, but all my actions have a purpose. Your plan…it’s simply inconceivable. It achieves nothing except my survival, even if I decide to trust a woman whose character you describe so well, and a Nazi official, who is hatching all sorts of cosmopolitan plots with a Jewess against her direct commander.’

  ‘There’s no plot,’ Heiselberg protested, trying to conceal his despair. ‘It’s the right action for everyone’s good.’

  ‘You really are a gentleman,’ bellowed Nikita Mikhailovich. ‘It’s great to see you concerned for a woman whom you wanted to have replaced on the parade committee.’

  ‘We’ve already discussed that,’ Sasha said at once, ‘and resolved our differences of opinion.’ When, she thought, had the bastard managed to do that?

  A thin strip of light crawled into the room. Heiselberg laughed, and maybe he even winked at her, as if a fraction embarrassed. She smiled at him as though to hint that this was a trivial matter and he should concentrate on the main thing. She wasn’t insulted by the news that he had sought to replace her—there was no obligation of loyalty between them, nor could there be. Was she insulted because he, unlike other men, remained indifferent to her charms and intelligence? She remembered something Kolya had said on the plain: ‘Nadka says that the NKVD has made a wunderkind out of you again.’ Now she understood what Nadka meant: None of us saw you as a poetry wunderkind, so you looked for another way to star, and in your ascent you erased us all. How could that be correct? Was there a place in your soul where all the little ruses melt, where denial caves in and the truth is revealed?

  ‘Nikita Mikhailovich,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand Herr Heiselberg. He’s the man who wrote the Model of the Polish People. He gave advice about deportations and arrests, executions, labour camps, the treatment of the Jews. I believe that he’s committed to the parade because he sees it as a noble event for peace. Maybe he has a yearning for personal redemption. It’s impossible to know how a man feels who was responsible for such criminal behaviour, for persecuting people simply because of the blood that flows in their veins. In any event, good deeds won’t clean our hands of the blood. Who knows better than I? If you act against me, you’ll jeopardise the parade, and I know you would rather we struggled for peace than war.’

  She hoped Heiselberg had missed the pleasure she had taken in condemning his m
odel. Like a beloved song, the accusations had rolled off her tongue, and she regretted she hadn’t expounded further about the crimes committed under his inspiration.

  ‘God help us,’ declared the German. ‘A man has no more secrets.’ She lowered her eyes—she didn’t dare look at him once the information they held against each other had been laid bare in ugly sentences, for the benefit of Nikita Mikhailovich.

  ‘I must leave you now,’ said Nikita Mikhailovich. ‘I have a busy day ahead of me.’

  Heiselberg gave him a wild look. Now there was no recourse for him. By the light of dawn she saw his spreading pallor. Perhaps it cost him an effort to stand, and that was why he was leaning against the window. ‘You understand that we can’t allow that?’ he said. ‘I’ve never met anyone so stupid in my life! Do you believe we’ll allow a self-righteous nun to endanger the most precious thing of all?’

  ‘You’ll allow it,’ Nikita Mikhailovich chuckled. ‘And how! Comrade Weissberg, you said, I recall, that noble actions won’t wipe the blood off your hands. Show us your bleeding hands, please.’

  Heiselberg slumped. He appeared to acknowledge his defeat and lose interest in the whole event. She linked her fingers behind her back. ‘The only thing you’ll find there is the bandage that she never takes off,’ Mikhailovich said to the German. ‘Did she tell you how it happened? It seems that one of her defendants poured hot tea on her hand. When was that, Comrade Weissberg? Late 1939? A small burn, and since then: the bandage. Our doctor changes it for her every two months. He tells her: It’s almost completely healed, Comrade Weissberg. You don’t need a bandage at all.’ Nikita Mikhailovich took pleasure in imitating Dr Zimyatin’s high voice. ‘But she stubbornly orders him to change the bandage, and keeps her eyes on the ceiling. A little burn—she can’t look at it. So blood? And of dead people?’