How Quickly She Disappears

by Raymond Fleischmann

  “It’s a lady’s doctor,” Elisabeth said, “you know,” and even though this wasn’t exactly an explanation, John nodded as if it was.

  “Sure,” he said. “No, I mean—” He stopped himself and, briefly, a perplexed sort of sternness crept into his face. But then he shook it away. “All right. Okay. That’s fine. Let’s just eat when you get back, all right? We can talk more then.” He even managed to smile. “We’ll celebrate.”

  “Yes,” Elisabeth said. “Absolutely,” and then she had her purse slung over one shoulder and her hand was reaching for the door.

  “Do you have a car service?” she asked a young man at the front desk.

  “A car service?” he said. “Like a—”

  “A taxi. Are there any taxis around here?”

  “Oh, a taxi, sure.” But then the flash of understanding immediately vanished from the man’s face. “Well, no. We don’t have a taxi or anything like that, no.”

  “Is there a—”

  “Well, actually, there’s a mechanic down the street,” the man said. “Elmer’s Oil. That’s Elmer Whitlock’s shop. He’s got a car that he sometimes—”

  “Left or right?” Elisabeth said. She was already halfway to the door.

  “Left,” the man said. “Left, left. Tell him Artie sent you.”

  “Can it wait?” Elmer asked her two minutes later. He was tall and skeletally thin. Although he wasn’t dressed like a mechanic—he wore slacks and an orange button-up shirt—his hands were thick with calluses and covered in dirt and oil.

  “Honestly, it’s something I’d like to take care of right now,” Elisabeth told him. “I can pay whatever you like.” She reached for her purse. “What do you usually charge for rides? I’ll double it.”

  “No, no,” Elmer said, shaking his head. “You don’t need to pay me anything extra. It’s no big deal. I just wondered if it could wait. I’m just a lazy good-for-nothing.” He smiled and started loping toward a nearby car—a rusty red DeSoto with only one working headlight. The other dangled by a wire like a chunk of bait at the end of a fishing line. “Well, come on,” Elmer said, waving her along. “Come on. Come on. Let’s get on with it, then.”

  Any hint of annoyance in his voice seemed to disappear as soon as they were driving.

  “So, the pen, huh?” Elmer said. He grinned widely and glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Got a brother-in-law locked in there myself. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Just one of those things, is all,” and as he said that, Elisabeth understood that Elmer had assumed she was visiting her husband or, at the least, a relative. Why shouldn’t he? And, for that matter, why should she correct him? It was easier just to go along with it.

  “Sure,” she said. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Still smiling, Elmer glanced at her again in the mirror. “He know a Bill Leighton? Lived in Portland way back when? Fat guy. Big, huge, fat guy.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Ah, no problem. That’s okay.”

  The car’s radio was softly playing, and for a moment they listened to Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo” in silence. “Dinner in the diner. / Nothing could be finer / Than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina.” The car bumped down a little ways, and now Elisabeth saw that they were driving on dirt. Clouds of dust swirled around them.

  “Well,” Elmer said, shifting the car into a lower gear, “if you see a Lieutenant Reid when you’re checking in, tell him I said hello. That bum still owes me ten bucks for some work I did on his truck.” He laughed. “Tell him I’m calling the cops on him, all right?”

  Elisabeth had never visited a prison before, let alone any prison large enough to be called a penitentiary. Something about that word seemed impressive. Intimidating. She pictured row upon row of barbed-wire fences. She pictured guard towers. Spotlights. Rifles poised to break into sniper fire at a moment’s notice. She pictured a modern-day fortress.

  In fact, the Fairbanks penitentiary wasn’t any larger than some high schools Elisabeth had seen—and it wasn’t much more fortified either. After a quick exchange at a shabby guardhouse, they passed through two gates and then pulled into a circle drive. The penitentiary was four stories high on its west side, one story tall on its east.

  “Can you wait here?” Elisabeth said, leaning forward.

  “How long will it take?”

  “I really don’t know. Just keep the meter running.”

  “The meter?” Elmer said, but then he shook his head and slouched lower in his seat. “All right, sure,” he said, grinning. “I’ll keep the meter running.”

  Hours, she thought as she pushed the door open. They probably have visiting hours, and she certainly didn’t know what they were. She had never gotten that far. In the past, when she had called to inquire about visiting Alfred, the conversations had been quick and short on details. Alfred was locked down, so there wasn’t any need for her to know about visiting hours. Now that she realized her mistake, she felt certain that they would turn her away.

  But, after winding through hundreds of feet of chilly hallways, she found herself standing in front of a man who, with his wilting eyelids and frowning lips, didn’t seem to give a damn about anything. If the penitentiary did have visiting hours, he probably wasn’t even aware of them.

  “Sign here,” he said, pointing to a spot on a form that he slid across his desk.

  Gray-haired and monstrously overweight, he reminded her of an aging walrus she had once seen at the Philadelphia Zoo, a creature whose only activity in life seemed to be laboriously gasping for breath.

  “Now sign here,” he said, pointing to another spot. He never even asked for proof of her identification.

  She waited for ten minutes. She sat alone in the visitation room: a dim, drafty box lit only by a row of naked light bulbs and a pair of windows fifteen feet above the ground and flush against the ceiling’s paneling. Near one corner of the room was a windowless door. COURTYARD, an uneven line of letters read above it, and Elisabeth could tell from its skewed proportions that the letter O was a zero. With ten chairs placed on either side of it, the room’s only furnishing was a narrow table, its surface tattooed with hundreds of carvings: names and initials and crossed hearts of the people who had once sat here in the drafty dreariness. People like her. But despite the etched remains of measureless longing and love before her, Elisabeth was alone, and she felt that as deeply as ever.

  She sat near the middle of the table, hands folded flat in her lap. She was thinking of Alfred as he had looked on that day in July, that day in the cache. Captured. Cornered. Slick skin. Feverish eyes. A killer, and a conspirator. That was the man she expected to walk through the door and sit down across from her.

  But that man wasn’t here. A guard pushed open the door, and there Alfred was, leisurely strolling toward her. His hair looked soft and recently washed. His cheeks and chin were neatly shaved. His clothes looked crisp—a plain blue collared shirt and beige cotton pants with two small pockets in the front. He looked content and utterly at ease. No shackles wreathed his hands or feet. His eyes seemed to sparkle even in the feeble light of the room.

  “Elisabeth,” he exclaimed, walking toward her. He beamed, and his smile was so genuine, so filled with pure delight, that it was all Elisabeth could do not to smile back. Alfred pulled out the chair across from hers. “You got my letter, I presume?”

  CHAPTER 23

  Elisabeth sat stiff, Alfred watching her from his seat across the table. He was calm. His eyes were bright and eager.

  “Yes,” she said. “I got your letter. It came last Thursday.”

  Alfred smiled, and he leaned forward a little, clasping his hands in front of him. “So,” he said, “this is my gift. This is my visit.”

  “This is your visit.”

  Bashful, he bowed his head, taking his eyes off Elisabeth for the first time s
ince he had walked into the room. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, grinning like a boy talking to his crush. “This is wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Why?”

  He cocked his head.

  “Why is it wonderful?” Elisabeth said. “Why are you so”—she knew the right word, but she didn’t want to say it—“enamored of me?”

  “Is that how I’ve come across?”

  You’ve come across like a psychotic, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. She held herself back. Why? Because she was afraid of him, partly, afraid of how he might react. It was well within the realm of possibility that he would reach across this table and slap her, throttle her, burst forth with some fit of rage as intense as the fits of passion he had shown in his letters. She wasn’t stupid: His letters were the work of a man unhinged. And what could she expect from a man unhinged? Anything. Anything and everything.

  But, beyond that, somewhere else deep inside her, she didn’t want to reveal her true reaction to his letters because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Part of her, a very small part, felt like a girl who just didn’t like a boy as much as he liked her. And that made her feel a little sad.

  “‘Enamored’ is one way to put it,” she finally said.

  “I’d say more like”—he leaned back—“protective of you. Do I love you? I have love for you, if that’s the same thing. But I believe you’re misinterpreting my words for lust. I don’t lust for you, Elisabeth, but I do care for you. Very, very much.”

  “And why is that? You barely know me.”

  At that he laughed, wagged a finger at her. “I know you well, my dear. Better than you realize. Do you remember the word I used in my letter?”

  “Gleichgesinnte.”

  “Yes,” Alfred said. “And that’s exactly what we are. We’re kindred. We have a lot in common, you and I.”

  “You’re talking about my sister?”

  “Not in the way that you mean,” Alfred said, crossing his arms over his chest, “but we do share a similarity in that regard. Do you know that I lost a sibling as well? A brother. A twin, actually. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not the same as you and Jacqueline, but it’s similar. My brother died when we were six years old. Typhoid. There was a terrible epidemic in Munich that year. Six years old, but I remember him very well. Yet more, I feel him. I feel his presence to this day, but just barely. And I imagine it’s very much the same thing you’ve felt since Jacqueline disappeared. A kind of”—he raised one hand and, thinking through his words, circled it in the air—“a kind of grasping. It’s not a void, exactly. It’s not an absence, is it? Because your sister and my brother have never really left us. They’re still part of us, and they always will be. They’re still with us. But then again, they’re not. And so the result is like . . . it’s like when you distantly hear music. Or when you think you hear music, and you listen very closely, but you can’t be sure that you’re hearing anything at all. Your sister still feels present, but barely beyond your fingertips. That’s what it’s like, isn’t it? Distant music. That’s what it’s like for all the wretched people like us. Isn’t that right?”

  It was. How she felt about her sister was very different from how she felt about her mother or her father or, for that matter, how she felt about Mack. These people were gone, utterly wiped off the face of the earth, but her sister—her sister stared back at her every time she looked into the mirror. It wasn’t just that she believed Jacqueline was still alive. And it wasn’t just that she believed they would one day be together again. It was something deeper. It was because they were sisters, and because they were twins. They were split from the same substance. They were themselves, and they would be forever. Elisabeth knew exactly what Alfred meant.

  But she didn’t feel like admitting it.

  “It feels something like that,” she said.

  But Alfred only smiled. His whole face widened. Then, in a rush, he leaned forward again. “So, tell me,” he said. “What would you like to talk about?”

  “Several things.”

  “Such as?”

  She hardly knew where to start, or how to start. But she knew that she had to be careful. She didn’t want him getting defensive—and she didn’t want to give away too much. She didn’t want to reveal what she already knew. She needed to draw him in. Intrigue him. She needed to play the game.

  “I’d like to know more about you,” she said.

  “There’s a lot to learn.”

  She smiled. “Tell me more about your time in Germany.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “I’d like to know about your service in the war,” Elisabeth said. “You were a pilot, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Were you decorated?” Slow down, she thought. Ease your way into it. But she couldn’t help herself. She was thinking about the box of ribbons and medals. So many medals.

  “Decorated?” Alfred said. “You’re asking if I killed a lot of Englishmen?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “You sound like one of the other prisoners here,” Alfred said. “Next you’re going to ask if I support Herr Hitler. Are you going to try to slit my throat, too?”

  “Has someone really tried to slit your throat?”

  Alfred lowered his eyes. “We’re not very popular these days,” he said. “Countrymen, you know.”

  “No, I guess we aren’t. But I’m not talking about the war today. I’m talking about the old one.”

  “Why do you care how many Englishmen I killed?”

  She was still. She gave him nothing. “Just curious.”

  And, to her surprise, that was good enough for Alfred. He thought for a moment, scratching a spot on his cheek. “Well, I’d love to impress you,” he said, “but if we’re being honest, my greatest achievement was getting through the war alive. My skill wasn’t killing. My skill was surviving.” He leaned forward. “Much like yours.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean your whole life. You’re a survivor, Elisabeth. You persevere. You keep going, despite so much tragedy. We’re very much alike in that way, you and me.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I think so,” Alfred said. “My parents, an aunt, two uncles”—he squared his shoulders, setting both hands on his knees—“all gone. Three years was all it took for me. You’re not the only orphan here.”

  “How did they die?”

  “How do you think? You asked about the war, and I’m telling you about it. My parents died during the Turnip Winter, my mother’s sister from the pandemic, and my uncles were killed in Ypres. That war took everyone from me.”

  “Not your brother.”

  He froze, and for a moment Elisabeth thought that she had hurt him. Perhaps she meant to. But then Alfred smiled, and his eyes seemed to flicker.

  “That’s true,” he said. “Not my brother.” He relaxed. “But the point remains: You and I have many things in common. We’re survivors, Elisabeth. You and me, and Jacqueline, too. Survivors all.”

  “I wish you’d stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Speaking in ambiguities about my sister,” Elisabeth said. “You act like this is all a game to you.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Then why aren’t you giving me answers about her?”

  “Because,” Alfred said, “you aren’t asking the right questions. I told you we could talk about anything, and you’re asking me about the war. Honestly, of all things, you’d like to talk about the war?”

  Now Elisabeth crossed her arms over her chest. She had to restrain herself from raising her voice. “All right,” she said. “Then let’s talk about why you killed Mack. Or about how you were involved in what happened to my sister. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds
fine,” Alfred said. “By all means, let’s talk about Mack and Jacqueline.”

  “Then let’s start with the first.”

  Alfred sighed. “I did what I did because Mack was going to keep you from me, and I couldn’t let that happen for either your sake or mine.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “How was he going to keep me from you?”

  “He was going to . . . pollute our relationship. If I hadn’t done what I did, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. You and I, we wouldn’t be talking about Jacqueline, and I wouldn’t be setting you on the path to finding her. You wouldn’t have let me, because you wouldn’t have had a chance. Mack would have kept you from me. I would have been cut off from you.”

  “You’re still speaking in ambiguities.”

  “If these are ambiguities, then ambiguities are all you’re going to get.” But then Alfred frowned, shrugging one shoulder. “For now.”

  She shook it off. She had to move. She had to investigate.

  “And my sister,” she said. “What do you mean by ‘involved’?”

  “I mean just that. I played a part in her disappearance. It’s quite fair to say I was involved, yes.”

  “You mean, you took her?”

  “No, no, no,” Alfred said, “I did not,” but then he paused, and all the air in the room seemed to disappear. “But I know the person who did. And I know where I can find him today. And I know that Jacqueline is alive, and so I know that we can find her together.”

  “Then give me his name,” Elisabeth said. “Tell me who took my sister.”

  “A young man,” Alfred said, “who claimed to be her friend. But he wasn’t. He tricked her, and he took her.”

  Elisabeth stared. Stony. Unblinking. Unyielding. Yet her chest was heaving, and a throb was pulsing behind her eyes. Jacqueline’s little bird. It was all fitting together. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t a fool. The pieces fit.

  “But why did he take her?” Elisabeth said. “What did he do to her?”