by Craig Nova
Mani took his leather bag from the closet, opened it, and then sat down on a chair and looked at the collection of objects on his bed, a cheerful net bag of lemons among them, which he had bought at considerable expense. Reports of scurvy had come from Moscow. He supposed one lemon a week would do the job. There were twenty lemons altogether, and he held them in his fingers, head down, trying to decide if he would have the time to eat them all.
Next to the lemons were two pairs of woolen pants, five cotton shirts, two sweaters, a jacket, and a tie. He hardly ever wore a tie, and while he didn’t think he would be asked to wear one in Moscow, since all of that was a thing of the past, he still had seen photographs of meetings in Moscow where the men had worn ties as they stared at the camera. Mani had spent some time looking at these faces, which he knew were those of men who were about to die, but if they knew it, they were careful about showing it. In fact, they all had a similar smile, a sort of frank expression that was more poker-faced than cheerful: it gave nothing and accepted everything. He supposed that his face looked the same, although he didn’t go to the mirror to see if this was true. Instead he sat down and tried to think of something that would keep him alive. Who could he betray? Could he make a case against Herr Schmidt? And wasn’t this just the kind of thing that the men in those pictures from Moscow had tried to do? Their expressions so perfectly revealed failed plans, lies that backfired, small mistakes that had finally come back to haunt them. Mani needed to be ruthless, and yet while he thought this and knew this to be the right solution, it left him tired. Maybe he could just wait.
He started packing again. Some socks, underwear, a pair of boots, belt, shaving things, and a brush, a razor, which he held in his hand. Then he went back to picking up his clothing and putting it down as though this spare, stripped-down collection of items, all ruthlessly practical, contained some hint of how he had ended up this way. The sad collection of things, which revealed the paucity of his life and the barrenness of his sensibility, showed that the owner of them was the kind of man who was impulsive and stupidly self-congratulatory. He had been impulsive and had taken action, had killed Hans Breiter because he wanted to prove that he knew what was best, and look what he had gotten himself into. He hadn’t listened to the people who had power, and power, he now realized, was reality. He held the lemons to his nose and closed his eyes, as though if he were in his own personal darkness he could avoid an obvious fact. No one had ever been so superficial. And yet he wanted to believe, as a variety of hope, that he could be dangerous.
He kept what was left of the money from Herr Schmidt in the suitcase that it had come in, and now he put it on the bed and looked at the bundles of bills that were still there, six altogether, not a lot, but not something to be sneered at. He usually kept it in the bottom drawer of his dresser, but he sat there and thought of the people who could come into his room when he was away. Then he pulled the chest away from the wall, pried back the baseboard with his knife, and hollowed out a place in the lathe and plaster. The rats worked in the wall, scratching and thumping around, as though they were running across the head of a tight drum. Then he put the baseboard back, cleaned up the plaster dust, which smelled like lime, and flushed it down the toilet. Finally, he put the chest back against the wall.
He began to put his clothes into the open mouth of the suitcase, as though it were a hippopotamus and he was feeding it clumps of grass. His underwear was gray and had holes in it along the waistband.
The accounting lay on the bed, too, and he hesitated when he picked it up. What could be more telling than an accounting, since it was a record of small details, money spent, bills paid, that showed just what he had been doing, and the only thing more telling than an accurate accounting was a false one. This wasn’t a good job, and if anyone looked into it, they would see that he had cooked the books.
On the wall opposite him there was one of the few posters he had actually ordered and paid for: it showed a man with his arms rolled up, the muscles in his biceps large, his eyes set on the distant, vital future. A woman was with him, strong, too, with firm breasts and trim hips, dressed in pants, her hair in a bandana. He had made receipts for fifty different posters, when he had only produced fifteen.
He’d make the decision about going to Moscow at the station: it gave him a little control to say that he would make the decision in an hour, in a half hour, in fifteen minutes. Downstairs, in the café, he walked through the mismatched chairs, the walls that were the color of fog, as though the smoke had been able to cling to the walls, and in the kitchen Kathleen prepared the evening meal, her knife coming down on the block, whack, whack, whack. The domestic cadence of it left him swallowing hard, biting his lip.
He went down the avenues of the city, looking behind him from time to time and both ways whenever he crossed a street. Churches, cafés, and restaurants, an enormous department store all went by in a jittery rush, even the places where he had been in street fights: often they had been nothing more that a quick smash and bang, just a shove and a wallop and the chance to throw a rock or a ball bearing, or a potato with a razor blade in it. He stood in these places and longed for the clarity of the beginning of a fight when the moment was defined by taking action, the first sound of contact, and the relief of letting go.
He went up the steps and into the main waiting room of the train station where he was supposed to meet Herr Schmidt. The clock showed that he was still early. He stood in the middle of the station with his leather bag, with his rough clothes, and let the people move around him. He had the sensation of being in the rush of water that pushed him, like a swimmer in a riptide, toward the Moscow Express.
He went to the gates that led to a platform and watched one of the engines come in, the enormous push rods like thigh bones, although this human aspect, so melded with the machine, made the locomotive seem an emblem of a machine of the century, hostile to people, seemingly unstoppable. He stood on the platform, watching the steam as he tried to figure out how much danger he was in.
In the station the wooden benches had seats that shone like ice. The clock showed that he had two hours more. Mani didn’t want the decision to go or not to be made by just waiting around until it was impossible to do anything but to get on the train to the east. He tried to imagine when the train crossed into Russia and the moment when the light would seem to be turned down a little. He knew the tricks of an interrogation, but what good was that? It only made him more vulnerable, since he knew what was coming. At least he wouldn’t eat the salt fish; that would make him thirsty. That’s what he had to work with. No salt fish.
A man sat at the end of one of the benches, his face red, as though he had a rash. He wore a green sweater with large pockets that bulged with the things inside. From time to time a young man or woman came up to him, and he nodded and smiled and sometimes gave them some money from an enormous wallet that was held shut with a green rubber band. The man’s eyes were green, red rimmed, and from time to time he looked around the station, and once he stopped at Mani and raised a brow? Is there something you’d like?
Mani looked away. He watched the door. The clock showed an hour and fifty-eight minutes more. Herr Schmidt might take Mani by the arm and lead him to the platform where the porters stood in blue uniforms with bright buttons and where the waiters for the dining car, each one dressed in white, emerged from the steam of the engine. He imagined that the clock was sawing through the last of his time and that the sawdust it made was a line of black ants that started at the clock and went down the marble wall beneath it, each one, each black creature moving this way and that, stopping and starting, like finality made visible.
He picked up his bag and walked around the interior of the station. The decision was going to be made, he told himself, by the time he got to the first ticket line, and then it was going to be made by the time he got to the doors to the restaurant. He looked in at people drinking beer and talking to one another: he stood there, looking in, and when the people came out of t
he door in a rush to catch a train, they bumped against him or brushed him with a shoulder. What would happen, he wondered, if he just missed the train? Could he brazen that out, make plans for later and hope that everything got so muddled that he would be forgotten?
No. Herr Schmidt would stay in Berlin and track him down, or he would go to Moscow and then have Mani brought along later.
At the baggage check he pushed his bag across the counter, and when he received his pale blue receipt for it, he walked through the station, past the restaurant, and when he was outside, smelling the lingering steam and coal smoke, he thought, Well, have I done it? Have I decided not to go? Then he put his ticket in his pocket and thought that the most important thing was to get away from the station. Surely, he didn’t want to make another bad decision, and the best thing was to walk around so that he could think about it. Maybe he’d just miss the train. Things like that did happen. Maybe he’d go up to the dance studio and see the woman in the red dress. He thought of her sweaty perfume, her hair that smelled of a nutty fragrance, the way she floated over the floor.
Karl was waiting in an alley near the rear of the station.
“Hey. Mani. Are you going someplace?” said Karl.
“I’ve been invited to Moscow,” said Mani. He said it as a threat, as though he had access to some power that was beyond Karl.
“Have you?” said Karl. “Well, don’t you want to say good-bye?”
“Sure,” said Mani. “I’m not sneaking away or anything….”
“That’s all you’ve got to say to me?” said Karl. “That you’re not sneaking away …”
“Well. Good-bye,” said Mani.
“Here,” Karl said. “Take my hand. Let’s shake on it.”
Mani shook his head.
“No?” said Karl. He took Mani by the arm. “Over here. Aren’t you glad to see me? I thought we were friends.”
“Sure,” said Mani. “Sure. We were always pretty close. I could always count on you.”
Karl gave Mani’s arm an impatient shake.
“Don’t be that way,” said Mani.
“Let’s go up the street here. We’ve got a little business to do,” said Karl.
“I don’t want any trouble,” said Mani.
The sidewalk was uneven, part cobblestones and part stone slabs, the combination a little disorienting at times. Four-story houses lined the streets and many of them had storefronts on the first floor. Mani and Karl walked by the spot where Hans Breiter had been killed.
“So, you’re getting cold feet about going to Moscow, right?” said Karl. “You just decided, sort of suddenly, not to go.”
Mani nodded.
“That’s the way it is with you,” said Karl. “You decide. Then you don’t like it.”
“It feels right in the moment,” said Mani. “Don’t think it doesn’t.”
“Oh, I know,” said Karl. “What you do always feels right in the moment, but then it doesn’t look so good. I’ll bet that even now, just after you decided not to go, Moscow is beginning to look good again. Now that we’re together.”
“Let go of my arm, will you?” said Mani.
Mani’s teeth rattled when Karl gave him another shake.
“Where are we going?” said Mani.
“Up to your room,” said Karl. “Don’t be so impatient. Let’s try to relax. Let’s take it easy for a while.”
“All right,” said Mani. “How’s Gaelle? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Karl. “I said we should drop it. And then what do you do? You go around to hire someone to come after us.”
He gave Mani a shake.
“Look,” said Mani. “Things are different now.” He looked around. “I’ve changed.”
“Really?” said Karl.
“I’ve gone dancing. I’ve taken lessons. There was a woman from France I danced with. So light on her feet. She put her hand in mine like some creature, a bird or something that was alive,” said Mani.
“Dancing,” said Karl. “Well, well. Dancing.”
He took Mani’s arm and gave him a shake.
“Dancing,” said Karl. “What kind?”
“Ballroom,” said Mani.
They stopped in front of the wall with the door to the Bar Restaurant. The air smelled of the evening’s soup, cooking sausage, and the bread that Kathleen made. At the back of the restaurant they went up the stairs to Mani’s floor, and when they were in his room, Karl said, “The money.”
“Over here,” said Mani. He pulled back the chest and pried the baseboard away from the wall, then reached in and took out the last of the money, which he handed over.
“Do you have another hiding place?” said Karl.
“What a dirty mind you have,” said Mani.
Karl shrugged.
“Do you have any others?”
“No,” said Mani.
Karl looked at him for a while and then said, “Well, all right.”
“That’s it?” said Mani. “Can I go?”
“It’s time to go back to the station,” said Karl. “You’ve got a train to catch.”
The rats dug in the walls and the footsteps sounded in the hall as someone came upstairs from the café. The clock on Mani’s dresser made a tick tick tick, which suggested the brass gears and levers, the springs and small screws, the movement of the cheap mechanism. From time to time a car went by in the street with a sad tearing sound, like silk being ripped for a bandage.
“All right,” said Karl. “Let’s go. Time’s short. Let’s take the tram.”
They went up to the corner and took the streetcar, the blue sparks appearing along the overhead wires with a snapping sound. From time to time Mani looked around and tried to find a way to run or he looked carefully at the people on the street, as though trying to decide if someone could be trusted, but Karl jerked his arm as a warning. None of that. Sit still.
The passengers still waited in the station, the floor glassy beneath their feet, all of them dressed in their best clothes, tweed coats, dark shoes, leather gloves. Everything about them, their anxious waiting, their glances at one another, suggested some final moment, as though they knew this trip was going to be a last one, and the clutter of them in the waiting room, the movement of three hundred people, left Mani dizzy. If he could just get everyone to stop so he could think.
“Get your bag,” said Karl.
Mani slid his ticket across the counter and stood there, like a man waiting for a verdict. The clerk slid the suitcase across the counter, and when Mani hesitated, Karl said, “Take it.”
“I don’t know,” said Mani.
“You can stay here with me,” said Karl. “Or you can take your chances in Moscow. Which is it?”
Herr Schmidt came into the station with his small suitcase and a white paper bag, in which he had some sausage and some bread. The paper was grease stained. His legs seemed longer here than ever, like a surveyor’s tripod, and his waist, marked by his leather belt, seemed to be just below his chest.
“There he is,” said Karl.
“Could we let bygones be bygones?” said Mani.
“What bygones?” said Karl.
“I was your friend,” said Mani.
“I don’t think so,” said Karl. “I asked you not to do something and what did you do?”
“And this is all over a woman?” said Mani.
“Yes,” said Karl.
“I’d like to stay,” said Mani. “Maybe we could work something out.”
“I don’t think so,” said Karl. “If you go to Moscow, at least you have the time on the train. Nothing will happen until you get there.”
“Yeah,” said Mani. He licked his lips.
“Maybe you can think of something,” said Karl.
“Do you know of anyone who came back, from a trip like this?”
“No,” said Karl.
The hush of escaping steam and then its scent, a mixture of moisture and oil, came from the platforms beyond the
gate. A conductor cried out one long wail of reminding. Mani closed his eyes, then nodded, bit his lip. Then he turned and walked across the station where Herr Schmidt was waiting.
They went through the gate to the tracks and into the billows of steam, which rose around the green columns that supported the roof and the infinite squares of opaque glass. Karl stood at the top of the ramp, and just before Herr Schmidt took Mani by the arm and led him into the white, roiling mist, as though both of them were going to disappear forever, Mani glanced up at Karl and lifted his hand in farewell. It was an abrupt, sharp gesture, so mechanical as to remind Karl of a guillotine. Then the two of them went into the steam of the Moscow Express.
Felix’s wrists stuck out from his coat, and he slouched because he was embarrassed by how fast he was growing. He sat with Gaelle on a bench back from her usual place, and Felix unwrapped his bread and butter and a piece of sausage. Gaelle listened to the sound of the butcher paper, which was pink, almost cheerful, as it crinkled. Felix spread it over his lap and began to eat, head down, chewing steadily, looking up every now and then to make sure no one was coming. He always ate that way: out of the way, no trouble to anyone. Gaelle pinched her cheeks to do something about the paleness of her skin.
“That’s good,” said Felix. “Get a little color in your skin. Makes you look innocent.”
“Me?” said Gaelle. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s what they want, don’t you see?” said Felix.
“Not always,” she said. “Let me tell you.”
A black car with a passenger in the back stopped at the curb, and the engine made a slow, sad puttering. Felix folded up his paper and put it in his pocket and said, “Look. Bruno Hauptmann. I knew he’d be back. You remember him, right? He’s the jackass with the ginger in the champagne. He didn’t want nothing but talk.”
Gaelle turned to look.
“Have we got anything good to tell him?” said Gaelle. “Some gossip. Have you heard anything juicy?”
“Nothing that he’d be interested in,” said Felix. “Make something up. Start a rumor. Keep him happy. A good lie. Say you fucked a member of the government. Name a name. That always gets them.”
