by Craig Nova
Ah, he thought, stop thinking like that. Do you want to get soft? There are two kinds of people in the world: those who dish it out and those who take it.
Gaelle lay on her bed on her stomach, her back bare, the dimples in her hips showing below her waist. The dimples were so deep they looked as though a small diamond could disappear in one of them. She stirred in her sleep, vaguely restless, which was what the opiates did to her. Restless and warm. She rolled over and opened her legs, as though offering herself. Felix sat on the tub and watched her from the bathroom. The sun never touched her skin, and now it looked so white as to be like the moon, powdery, pale, and it made her seem bathed in light. Felix was attracted to that as much as anything else, as though spending a few moments with her was a way to get out of the darkness of the park. What he wouldn’t give to be ordinary and to have a chance to start again.
He had never slept with a woman in a normal way, and he guessed this was because he was shy, or because he didn’t know how to ask. But maybe it wasn’t a matter of asking, so much as being obviously asked by a woman, and how did that happen? Or how did you get someone to hint that it would be all right if you asked? How could he be so cavalier about negotiating a price for her, walking right up to the cars in the dark, sticking his head in and judging what he could get, but now as she lay there and he wanted to ask for himself, he felt oddly ashamed. Keep your place, he thought. Don’t ask. But how could he get out of that horror, those hours when he appeared to be vulnerable in the park and then took his revenge? He wanted to get down on his knees in front of Gaelle and say, Please, please. Let me come into the light, let me touch your skin. Let me get away from what I am.
It was possible to come up with some money to offer her, but he didn’t think that was the right thing to do. The breaking bubbles, his attempt to be close to her by washing her clothes, the tenderness with which he touched the stockings, had nothing to do with money. Could you receive the touch that changed you forever, that made you hope for an almost impossible connection between you and another human being, by spending money for it? And then he wondered if she would be offended. He hoped that she wouldn’t be, and yet he didn’t want her to think of him as another one of those assholes in a car with a couple of bills in hand.
This led him to wonder just how he did want her to see him. Innocent, he thought. I want her to see me as someone who hasn’t been turned into something … like what I am. And what’s that? he thought. Someone who knows what’s what and can take care of himself. That’s what. Still, for the moment, maybe she could see him as being like the young men he had seen who were on their way to the Gymnasium. Full of possibilities. Not hurt.
He let the mystery of her attraction dismiss everything else: he felt her tugging him toward her, as though she were some massive celestial object. He sat there, glancing at her open legs, and then tried to turn away, but he couldn’t keep his eyes away from her for long. He wanted her to like him. He guessed it was washing the stockings that got him thinking this way, and once he started in this soft way of thinking, it was hard to stop. It felt good. Well, he wanted to be a team with Gaelle and for them to depend on each other. He wanted her not to touch him like she did those men who paid her money, but with real feeling, with consideration, and love. But this was something that was as mysterious as sex. In fact, he had to admit, he was more mystified by the possibilities of love than anything else. He knew it by its absence. There was something missing in his experience, and it was so large as to make him feel almost panicky, but it wasn’t a panic that could be relieved. It just came up to the surface and made him squirm and then disappeared again. It left him like this, facing this woman, desperate to ask for something he didn’t think he could ever have.
He turned back to the sink and let the water out, the stockings collecting in the bottom like some drowned thing, like a delicate creature from the bottom of the ocean. They had the texture of an oyster, particularly the lace at the top. This was as close as he ever got to being affectionate with her, and so he took his time, being careful with her stockings, as though if he rinsed them gently and hung them up with dedication, he was getting closer to her. Finally he rinsed them one last time, hung them up over the line above the tub, and then he sat there on the porcelain side of it and listened to the steady dripping. She lay there, one leg open, her body seeming muscular and trim, her ribs showing, her small breasts seeming impossibly innocent, girl-like and sad here, too, given what she did every night. He thought that maybe he would like to lie next to her, just to feel warm.
He took off his shoes. His pants, underwear, and shirt. He tried to think of her as he was supposed to, that is, as a woman who worked in the nightlife of Berlin, who came home, smelling of the twenty men she had slept with, needing to bathe, her underwear stiff with semen, her breath smelling of wine. Then he limped to the edge of the tub, sat down, and put his head in his hands. He wanted to think of her this way, but it was impossible. He sat there, cursing himself for being such a sap and so ridiculous, but she kept pulling him toward her. He sat there, on the verge of tears: how could he get across to her? It was difficult because he couldn’t even say to himself what he wanted exactly, but he knew the first thing was to lie down on the bed, just to be next to her, to feel her skin against him. If she only knew how much good she could do him. Why, he could start over. He could love her. He thrilled at the words. He could emerge from his old self and drop the monstrous as though it were nothing more than a coat. He would be new.
He stepped out of the bathroom. It was cold in the room, and he was amazed that she didn’t feel it. He got into bed with her. She turned and mumbled. He lay next to her, and as she turned and pushed against him, he was embarrassed that she would feel it so obviously, sticking at her, so he turned on his back. The warmth between the two of them was a substance he had only dreamed of, a sweet feeling that he had anticipated once when he had been in a church and seen a painting from Italy, with the clouds illuminated by the most benign sun. He put his lips next to her and whispered, “Gaelle.”
Gaelle what? he thought.
He got up and went back into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His gray face, his lousy teeth, gray eyes and gray-blond hair, his prematurely aged expression betrayed the brutality of his needs. It was obvious even to him. He was so needy, so hungry that he was deformed by it. He didn’t know which he hated the most, that he was this way or that it could be seen so clearly. He wanted her to break down that isolation and to have the bad feeling go away. God knows there was enough of that bad feeling in the park. And why was he letting go now? Didn’t he have the strength to do what he had to do, to live without love or anything like it? He stood in the bathroom, feeling alone.
“What are you doing?” Gaelle said.
She stood next to him, then pushed him out of the way and sat down on the toilet. He heard the small tinkling noises and then she wiped herself and stepped to the bidet and washed herself off.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m acting funny, like I’m going to cry or something.”
She looked right at him, then as she dried herself with a towel, she went back to bed, glancing at him once over her shoulder.
“Come lie down with me,” she said.
He walked into the room and sat on the bed and then got under the covers. She turned him over and lay behind him.
“Let’s just lie like that,” she said.
“I never, you know …,” he said.
“What are you trying to say?” she said.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “About doing it.”
“Well, you’re going to have to wait,” she said.
“Why?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just want to have you warm here like that. OK?”
“I washed your stockings,” he said.
“Did you?” she said. “Well, that’s sweet.”
“I did a good job,” he said.
“Thanks,�
�� she said.
He lay next to her, feeling the warmth between them.
“You know why I like you?” she said. “You can adapt to anything.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Sure you can,” she said.
“I want to …,” he said. “You know. With you.”
She shook her head. Then she rolled over, and he curled up behind her. She could feel it against her, but she pushed it away.
“No you don’t,” she said. “Not with me.”
She sat up a little and showed him her face. She looked very tired now, pale, as though she hadn’t seen the sun in a long time.
“You think I’m too much of a rat,” he said. “Just a convenience. I can wash your stockings and get you things, but that’s it.”
He stood up at the side of the bed, a thin, sixteen-year-old boy with an old face. Then he turned toward her dressing table and picked up a bottle that he threw against the wall, the thing shattering in a wet and glassy pattern.
“Stop it,” she said. “What’s gotten into you?”
He went on looking at her.
“It means so much?” she said. He picked up another bottle and threw it, the glass shattering. She looked at him with that speculative glance she turned on the men who paid her. “Come on.”
Then he sat down at the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. She reached out for his back and felt him sobbing. After a while she heard him say, and felt the intensity of the words in his back, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Finally, he pulled away, went into the bathroom and got dressed. He got a broom and a dustpan and started to clean up the glass. She sat there, watching him, touching her face and from time to time biting her lip. Then she said, “OK. Let’s forget it.”
He finished cleaning up, and then she made him sit down next to her.
“You’re all I’ve got,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“I need a friend,” she said. “That’s all.” He nodded.
“Come on. Come over here,” she said. “It only takes a minute.” He looked at her and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. I know my place.”
“I hurt your feelings,” she said.
“No,” he said.
Then he started crying like a boy of six who had spilled his ice cream. He sat at the edge of the bed, heaving, eyes closed, face collapsed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
He put his head into her naked lap, and she felt him sobbing against her.
“Oh, baby,” she said. The pupils of her eyes were very small. She glanced around the room as though it were vaguely confusing. “It will be all right. We’ll make the best of it. We’ll be friends. I’ll trust you,” she said.
She felt him shaking his head against her naked thighs.
“I didn’t mean anything,” he said.
“I understand,” she said.
“No you don’t,” he said. “I want you to like me.”
“Sure,” she said. “I like you. I really do.”
He started crying all the harder. She sat there with his head in her lap and smoothed down his hair.
“Don’t be like that,” she said.
“OK,” he said. “OK. Just give me a minute. I’m all messed up. I get all screwed up. It’s hard to describe.”
“Look,” she said. “I can take care of you in a minute. There’s nothing to it, really.”
He shook his head against her thighs. No.
“Maybe some other time,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” he said. He got up to wash his face, and in the bathroom, as he splashed himself with water, he smelled the scent of lavender. Then he stood there, looking into the mirror, watching the change in his gray expression, the constant stiffening of his features as he assumed his previous threatening look, his eyes the color of pewter under his brows. That was better, he thought. Look what happens to you if you are like a turtle without a shell. He’d stick with what he knew: looking frail and helpless but waiting for his chance to use the cord, the sharpened ice pick. Why, he stood right at the edge: he could let himself go, and the farther he fell, the bigger he became, and this attraction, this increasing scale was like a dream of perfection. No one could touch him, not in this pursuit of the darkness and the glistening depths where those shapes moved with such promise. Nothing could compare with that, and if he had a chance he would go to the museum of antiquities, where he could stand, seemingly frail and injured, but equal to everything that had been built up over thousands of years: that was the promise of the dark. Why, he was like an angel, a dark one to be sure, but he could feel the beating of those wings, which had such power and which left behind such cold wind.
Mani stared at the cracks in the wall of his room with a new interest, since every object, the lamp by his bed, the gray sheets, his writing paper and pen, his few books, had undergone a metamorphosis since the business in the street with Breiter. Before they had been neutral, or a little grubby, but now they seemed to accuse him for being impulsive. And he hadn’t done it to get ready to fight the thugs in Berlin so much as he had wanted a distraction from the accounting. He stood up and looked in the box where he kept the receipts that were stained by the cockroaches, yellowed by having been left in the sun, the ink smeared by beer and wine he had applied, as though spilled, to make them look more authentic. They were poor things, he thought, and he had staked his life on them. The paint on the wall of Mani’s room had faded from its original color, a froglike green, to the pastel of a new leaf, and he sat with the receipts in his hands and looked at that washed-out color, as though it were evidence of how time—that Judas—went to work to betray secrets, to reduce strength, to leave people vulnerable. The man from Moscow was in the city, and Mani knew it.
That slight rustle behind the plaster was just a rat, wasn’t it? He thought that he should get a large water glass so that he could put it against the door or the walls to hear better what was happening outside. He told himself he’d have to stop biting his lip, too. It would give him away. Then he looked down at his hands and saw that his fingernails had been bitten down to almost nothing.
Then he thought, That’s not a rat. That’s someone coming.
A knuckle tapped against the door. At the same time, he heard another sound, which was actually a rat in the wall, and for a moment he waited, hearing the two sounds come together right where he sat at the edge of his bed. Was he going to pretend he wasn’t here or go open the door? He wished he was able to make up his mind and stick with his decision, whatever it might be. The most important thing was to survive, to look for the opening, to take it.
He opened the door about an inch and saw Kathleen, the woman who ran the kitchen downstairs. She was in her late forties with a sunburned face, gray hair, and blue eyes. Her lips were close to his, almost as though she was going to give him a kiss, and then she whispered, “Someone downstairs is asking for you.”
“Who?” said Mani.
“I don’t know,” said Kathleen. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“OK,” said Mani.
“OK what?” said Kathleen.
“OK. OK,” said Mani. He swallowed. “I’ll come down.”
“I don’t like the looks of him,” said Kathleen.
She shrugged and turned back into the hall, going away with a diminishing scratching sound as she shuffled her feet along the floor and then went down the stairs. Mani closed the door and dressed, and he kept thinking, as much as he resisted it, that the rat was the sound of his lies, his fraudulent accounting being revealed for what it was.
In the restaurant Karl sat in his usual corner, enormous, humped over the table, nursing a brandy, his head bent over his hands, which were clasped together. He looked up, though, when Mani came into the room, and with the slightest gesture, the lifting of one scarred brow, the slight movement of his shaggy head, he seemed to say, Look out. I mean it.
The man from Moscow sat at a table near the rea
r of the room. From his vantage point he could see the door to the street and the one from upstairs. On the table in front of him he had a small cup of coffee, which his fingers touched from time to time, although he didn’t drink from it. His entire attitude was one of quiet, stern caution and infinite patience. His fingers were beautiful.
“Mani?” said the man from Moscow.
“Yes,” said Mani.
“Sit down,” said the man from Moscow.
“Who are you?” said Mani.
“Schmidt,” he said. “Gerhard.”
He held out his passport, which Mani looked at for a moment. No one was better than the people in Moscow at making false documents, and this one was one of the best. He turned it over in the light, admiring the workmanship, the paper, the ink, the stamps, the signatures. The smell. Maybe it was real. Much better than the box of stained receipts upstairs.
“Well, Herr Schmidt,” said Mani.
Herr Schmidt wore a dark jacket. His topcoat and hat were on the chair, and the hat looked like a brown duck that had just been shot. Next to the man’s foot, on the floor, there was a small leather suitcase.
“So, how was the trip from Moscow?” said Mani.
“Oh, fine,” said Herr Schmidt “You can watch the country go by. You can concentrate. You can think things over.”
Mani sat down. He wanted to have some coffee, to wake up, to be right. It was almost as though the man had been waiting for him to come down here, half asleep. The way prisoners were awakened in the middle of the night. Kathleen, though, was in the kitchen. Was it worth going in there to get some coffee, or would it just show that he was vulnerable, not alert?
The features of “Schmidt” were angular, thin, and his eyebrows were prominent so that his eyes were shadowed, but not completely, since there in the dark some of the overhead light was reflected. It was like looking into a well by moonlight. Deep, with a little glow in the distance.
If Mani could just have a cup of coffee.
“Here,” said the man. He pushed the cup over. “Have mine.”
