by Lavie Tidhar
66. THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE the present
– Unaccounted-for days, your stay in Paris, the Old Man says. Oblivion shifts beside Fogg. Fogg doesn’t answer.
– It’s understandable, the Old Man says. Fogg looks up. Oblivion crosses his legs. The Old Man’s voice is soft, compassionate. You were looking for Vomacht, weren’t you, Fogg, the Old Man says.
Vomacht, Vomacht. That name again. Hanging like smoke in the room. Fogg doesn’t reply, neither confirms nor denies. A note of finality in the Old Man’s voice. We are not here to tell stories to each other, he seems to say. We are here merely in pursuit of the truth.
– You figured even falsified intelligence must have a kernel of truth in it, the Old Man says. Turns another page in that damned dossier on his desk. Nods his head wisely. Hitler said something similar, once. For a lie to work it must have some truth in it to begin with. Or something of that nature, anyway.
Pauses. Oblivion looks sideways at Fogg. For a moment their eyes meet. Fogg looks away. The Old Man takes a sip of tea. Rests the china cup back on its saucer. Delicately. A chime as the two meet. The Old Man, softly: So what did you see, Fogg?
Like a hunter done with the laying of a trap. You were my best watcher, Fogg. The very best. A silence. Into it the Old Man’s voice, a whisper, an insinuation.
What did you see, Fogg, that lost week in Paris?
67. PARIS 1943
He shadows the girl for two days, in fog and rain, trying not to think of Tank, of that botched operation, of rocket-men lying like broken mechanical toys on the ground. Late at night, lying on the narrow bed in a room too hot and too cold at once. Thinking of his mother back in England. Of the whistle of a train. Of the smell of wet leaves. Of a faraway place called Auschwitz, of which not much is known, somewhere in Poland where only the Jews, like lemmings, go.
But it isn’t the thought of Tank that keeps him awake at night, tossing and turning, it isn’t the thought of the operation; not even of Vomacht.
Fogg is thinking only of the girl.
Fogg had a hunch. Fogg stayed on in Paris, arguing with Oblivion, a bitter fight.
Standing there at the Gare du Nord. The whistle of a train. The smell of wet leaves. The smell of rich perfume and cheap cigarettes. Oblivion’s long body clad in a raincoat. Fogg is just Fogg. Bored German soldiers patrolling. Spit had gone separately, was already out of the country. Oblivion says, We need to get on the train. Come on, Fogg. Reaches for him.
Fogg shrugs him away. I told you I’m not going, he says. Oblivion’s white face seems chiselled of marble. He has that classical Roman statue look. Anger in his eyes, though. His voice is cold as the rain. You don’t know what you’re doing, he says. Fogg, listen to me—
– No. I have to—
– Damn it, Fogg!
– Leave me alone, Oblivion!
A soldier turns to look. Nudges his friend, who also turns. Two men shouting at each other on a platform attract attention. Fogg makes himself relax. Body language. Smiles. Oblivion smiles back. Pats him on the shoulder. You’re not leaving me a choice, he says, quietly, through the smile. The soldiers turn back, bored. Men yelling at each other in France are a common occurrence. What do you expect. No, Fogg says, I’m not.
A conductor whistles. Oblivion’s hand still on Fogg’s shoulder. His fingers digging, hard, into flesh, into bones, hurting Fogg. Get on the train, Oblivion says, quietly, still smiling. Now, Fogg. We have to leave.
– Get your hands off me, Oblivion.
– Damn it, Henry! A different note in Oblivion’s voice. Hurt, Fogg realises. It makes him feel peculiar. He’s almost giving in. No, he says, but softly. He puts his hand on Oblivion’s wrist. Feels the pulse of Oblivion’s heart through his skin. I have to, Oblivion. I have to do this. Please.
– Please.
Oblivion looks at him. What’s behind those pale blue eyes, Fogg wonders, Oblivion’s eyes are as clear as windows, nothing but empty sky behind them. Blue sky and clouds. Fogg feels the pressure on his shoulder easing. Feels Oblivion’s heartbeat, faster, then faster still. Hears the conductor whistling again. Smells wet leaves, oil, a woman’s perfume. I just have to do this, he says. Oblivion nods. His face never changes. Only the beating of his heart against the tips of Fogg’s fingers betrays what’s inside. Goodbye, Henry, he says.
Fogg shifts in place, suddenly awkward. Things to say, no way to say them. Cover for me, he says. Oblivion nods, once. Then he turns and boards the train and is gone.
Fogg stays on the platform. Watching as the wheels start to turn. As steam rises into the air and the train starts its motion, accelerating along the platform. Watches as it disappears into the distance. Then he walks outside.
Into light and air and rain. Walking along the Seine with the rain falling around him. The sun peeks around a cloud, for just one moment, its light breaking through the drops, and Fogg can see a rainbow, an illusion of colour blossoming out of water and light. It stretches over the Seine, over Notre Dame, like a message he can’t decipher, a sudden explosion of colour in a black-and-white world. For just a moment he stops and takes a deep breath, as if he could inhale not just air, but light and colour, with that physical act; as if he could make himself come alive, gain substance, gain shape and definition and scale.
But it’s just air; and he stands there, by the river snaking below, and stares, transfixed, at the rainbow, rising over the river, a bridge in the sky, an impossible dream of colour; and then a cloud covers the sun again and the colours fade, and Fogg remains standing there, in the rain, in a world washed grey.
Again he picks up the pace, the Seine on his right, Notre Dame rising in the distance, the fog wraps around him, hiding him from German patrols and unfriendly Parisians, he is the shadow man and he stalks towards his target. He’d found her by instinct, by a whisper, by a sense that the informant hadn’t been wrong.
This is what Fogg reasoned:
What, he thought, if the information was genuine? If Vomacht really was visiting Paris?
What if, instead of betraying them, the informant had been captured by the Gestapo and they, in turn, had then used it to their advantage? The operation could have been in its late stages by then. Fogg and Oblivion already in Paris, the backup team waiting, everything ready and then Spit comes back with the details – but by then the informant had been turned by the Nazis, and it’s a trap, Vomacht kept clean away as the British Übermenschen walked right into the ambush. It was just dumb luck they got away.
And then: Tank didn’t get away, did he, Fogg.
No.
Well screw Tank, he thinks, with sudden savagery. If it’s flavoured with guilt or shame then so what. Screw Tank, he knew the risks when he signed on to do this job. Screw him. No one asked him to help. No one asked him to take the fall. Fogg doesn’t want to think about Tank.
Instead:
If Fogg is right then Vomacht may still, in fact, be in Paris.
And so he goes looking.
He goes looking but, instead, he finds the girl.
68. THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE the present
Silence in the room, and warmth, and motes of dust. Fogg suddenly craves music. Something to break that oppressive, waiting silence. Reminds him of the interrogation room in the Berlin-Mariendorf DP Camp, in forty-five.
Echoes from the past, faint voices like dry leaves. Tell me about Erich Bühler, the Old Man suggests to Maria Becker. Tell me about Schneesturm. The sound of Jewish children singing outside. The sound of someone getting shot. The sound of a blackjack hitting a jaw, the sound of teeth spat on the floor. Only now it isn’t poor Maria Becker, secretary for SS Obergruppenführer Krüger in Warsaw, who is in the chair. It’s him, Fogg. And the Old Man still asking the questions.
Fogg wants to stand up. To shout. Get it over with! Remains sitting. Remains silent. The Old Man wets a finger and turns a page in the dossier before him. Vomacht, he says. Oblivion, stirring. Vomacht. The Old Man pulls out a photo. Pushes it towards Fogg. It’s the
same photo they were given in Paris, before the mission. Shot with a long lens, and blurry. No good photos of the good doctor. He is by a lake, beside him is a young girl. He is holding her hand. Fogg takes the photo. Glances at it, casually. Puts it back on the desk. The tea warm where it rests on his knees. Waits. So does the Old Man.
– Well, it’s of little consequence, the Old Man says. Takes back the photo. Drums his fingers on the surface of the desk. Vomacht, despite our best efforts, kept eluding us, he says. Didn’t he, Oblivion?
– Sure, Oblivion says. Noncommittally.
– He wasn’t alone, either, was he, the Old Man says.
– Sir?
– Rumour had it that he had a daughter, the Old Man says. An only daughter.
– Rumours, Oblivion says. The Old Man laughs, shortly. Quite, he says. Still. Do you remember what else the rumours said, Oblivion?
Ignoring Fogg. Excluding him from the conversation. Fogg’s fingers tightening on the china cup in his hands.
– Yes, Oblivion says. Unwillingly, it sounds like. But playing his part. They said he had a daughter, didn’t they. And that she was there, with him, when he activated the device, in thirty-two. When it changed.
– Vomacht’s girl, the Old Man says. Yes. Spreads his hands, fingers splayed, as though searching for meaning, an answer. What was her name? he says. Vomacht’s girl. Do you remember, Oblivion?
Oblivion shakes his head. Perhaps a no, perhaps a criticism. Doesn’t look at Fogg. But the Old Man is. Fogg? the Old Man says. Perhaps your recollection is better?
But Fogg has had enough. Fogg feels a sort of red fog descending. That anger that’s been building up, the pressure, a kettle having to let out steam or it will explode, simple mechanics—
He shoots up, it feels so good to – just – let – go – to breathe out that anger, he lifts up the tea cup and the saucer, warm tea slushes on the floor, runs down Fogg’s arms, he turns, like a discus thrower, lets fly the cup, the saucer – they fly through the air and hit the wall and smash satisfyingly into bits. He stands there, breathing hard, tea running down his arms.
– Klara! he says. Shouts. Her name was Klara!
Stands there, breathing heavily. Fingers curled into fists. A tea stain on the wall. Fragments of china on the floor. A silence. The Old Man takes a sip of tea. Puts his cup down. Nods. Klara Vomacht, he says. That’s right.
Interlaces his fingers. Regards Fogg thoughtfully. But we used to call her something else, didn’t we, Fogg? he says. She had another name. Do you remember it, Fogg?
Fogg looks at the Old Man, and the Old Man looks back at Fogg. Who sits back down. Wordlessly, Oblivion gets up and brings him a tea towel. Fogg wipes away the tea on his arms. Oblivion accepts back the towel and drops it on the tray and sits back down.
– Yes, Fogg says, tiredly.
The Old Man waits.
– Sommertag, Fogg says. Drained. But not yet defeated.
– We called her Sommertag, he says.
69. PARIS 1943
But what do we really know about Sommertag? About Fogg? The dossiers are left carefully empty, the pages blank. We can only see her through his eyes. Does he lie? His fantasy, his summer’s day. Her innocence, that word we keep circling around. But there were no innocents in that war.
Can we trust him?
Can we trust anyone?
We sift through this account, but do we believe it, do we accept Fogg’s recollection at face value? The fog of history rises to obscure. Details lost in the mist.
Fogg, a watcher.
Watching the girl through the mist and the fog.
That week in Paris. Can you truly fall so wholly in love? Fogg burned by war and treachery: perhaps he needed something to believe in. Something to cling to. A dream, a flame. Something to burn bright and pure and true.
Everyone needs something to believe in.
And yet. And so.
Paris. Fogg. The girl:
For once, she is alone. The third day of watching and the girl sits alone in the café, her companion nowhere in sight. Fog creeps along the gutters and crawls up the windows of the café, obscuring Fogg. Obscuring the girl. She is drinking hot chocolate. Yellow and red leaves litter the ground on the street outside. Somewhere a violin plays, an invisible street performer teasing out lonely, haunted tunes.
Fogg watches the girl, spellbound by some invisible force. Turing, at the Farm: talking of gravity and electricity, the motion of atoms, nuclei and orbiting electrons, mimicking the movement of planets around stars. The very small matching exactly the very large. Things we don’t understand, Turing says, in his quiet voice. The way he sometimes looks at Oblivion. The way Oblivion sometimes looks back at him. And then going smaller, into the things electrons are made of, a Never Never Land of uncertainty. That’s how Fogg feels right now, if he had to describe it. Watching the girl the way Turing sometimes watched Oblivion. And perhaps, in that quantum fluctuation that no one can see, some connection, like an electric charge, is made. And the girl gets up and leaves some money on the table and walks out, and she’s alone. She pauses for a moment in the doorway of the cafe, smells the air. Looks ahead. Looks, in fact, directly at Fogg.
Who moves as if he has no control of his destiny. Perhaps, we wonder, somewhat uneasily, none of us ever does. He moves with a slow, wondering inevitability. Like swimming. Towards the girl. Like lodestones being pulled together by that mysterious energy, the motion of invisible particles that is electromagnetism. The girl is wearing a summer dress, with a coat over it. Her eyes are blue like the sky, her hair is the colour of the sun. Fogg is grey beside her. Then he stops and she does, too, and they stand there, in the middle of that Parisian street, having run out of room, and look at each other.
Fogg’s throat is dry. His palms are sweaty. The girl is very calm. He can’t read her face. Her eyes. She says, You are the shadow man.
Matter of factly. As if, by the very act of speaking, she has made him known.
– What? Fogg says.
– Wherever I turn my eyes, I can see you.
– You’re the Vomacht girl, Fogg says, and then the words are out there; they have been said, and cannot, now, be unsaid, unthought.
The girl looks at him quizzically. Yes, she says. Yes, I suppose I am. My name is Klara.
– Klara.
She laughs. It lights up tiny fires in her eyes. Fogg moves in place. The fog rises around them, blankets them in their own special world. You are English? Klara says.
– Yes, Fogg says.
She nods. Her eyes examine him. His face. You have come to kill me? she says.
– What? Fogg says. Takes a half-step back. Like he’s dancing. What do you mean? Why would I? Words taper into nothingness. She just stands there, looking at him. The intensity of her gaze acts on Fogg like gravity. He says, How could you see me? I was never visible.
– You are … changed, too, are you not? Klara says. I can see all the changed. We are brothers and sisters, my father’s children. He made all of us.
– You will forgive me, Fogg says, and he can’t say where the words are coming from, from what deep, hidden spring they well. The boldness of them. You will forgive me but … I do not look at you as one looks at one’s sister.
Oh, she says. For a moment it seems to him she is hiding a smile. Oh, she says, looks away, looks back at him. She is very near to him. He can feel her warmth. I do not see you as a brother either, she says, softly.
What does she see? We know many things, but even we do not entirely understand love. Perhaps love is need, and love is selfish, it is self-preservation. Perhaps she can see the future and she does not like it. Everybody needs somebody, we think, uneasy again.
Fogg looks at her face. Her skin is pale. He strokes her cheek with the back of his forefinger. His trigger finger. Leans in closer. He can smell her hair. It smells like summer. You have not told me your name, she says, whispers, the words are soft and light against his cheek. It’s Henry, he says. Henry, she says, a
s if tasting the word. Henry.
– Klara, he says. Yes, she says. She smiles, and it transforms Fogg, there is nothing wistful or reflective about her smile, it is so …
Innocent, he thinks. Like something from another time. She leans into him and her lips touch his, lightly at first, then harder, pressing against his, and he presses back as they kiss, surrounded by the fog.
70. THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE the present
But was she ever an innocent?
None of us, we think, are.
The Old Man studies Fogg. Like an etymologist studying a fascinating word. Turning it around and around, looking for its flaws.
The older you get, the more conscious of time you become, the Old Man says.
Oblivion stirs.
– Sir?
The Old Man looks to Fogg, who doesn’t reply. Who closes in on himself, like a card player facing another man’s not-yet-winning hand.
– Time used, the Old Man says. Time wasted … time unaccounted for.
The tea cups are empty. No one seems inclined to refresh them. And Fogg’s is on the floor, smashed. The Old Man is suddenly more expansive. Seems in a philosophical mood now. Leans back. Supports his head with his hands behind him. But his eyes are hard, Fogg thinks; Fogg, who had seen the Old Man do this hundreds of time, from the Berlin-Mariendorf DP Camp in forty-five, to barren rooms in nameless towns, tents in no-man’s-lands, prisons, cells, detention centres, the Bureau’s own interrogation rooms. Fogg, who knows every move and step of this dangerous dance. No. Fogg isn’t fooled.
– Time unaccounted for, the Old Man repeats. Like a lost week in Paris, he says. Looks at Fogg, who shrugs. Well, the Old Man says. It is of little enough significance, I suppose. It was wartime, after all.
– Yes, Oblivion says, as if he’d just woken. Looks at Fogg, looks away. Not giving anything away either. The Old Man looks from one to the other. As if he is weighing all their actions, all their tiny giveaways.