by Craig Nova
Hauptmann was as before, sitting in the backseat in a cloud of his pomade, his collar white, his tie neatly knotted, his long, delicate, and manicured fingers reaching from the backseat to the window on the curb side. Then he gestured to Felix, and Felix put his head in the car so that the two of them could talk. Hauptmann gestured. Felix nodded, yes, yes, yes. Gaelle thought about Karl’s size and his ugly face, which looked as though he had been brought into the world with a club. She smiled when she considered his hair, which stood up like the bristles of a brush, and how much she liked to run her hand through it. When he laughed, it sounded like large ball bearings thumping around in a leather suitcase.
“He wants you,” said Felix.
Gaelle looked around.
“Maybe I better come along, too,” said Felix. “Maybe I can help.”
“Really?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “You know, he might have another lighter.”
They walked to the car and Hauptmann opened the door, the black shape of it swinging out with a creak. The driver stared ahead. The headlights on the avenue made multiple shadows of the driver move through the backseat, and the silhouettes left the backseat cluttered with half-formed shades. Felix held the door.
“After you,” he said. “After you.”
“Gaelle,” said Hauptmann. “How nice to see you.”
She sat down on the fuzzy material, just like that on a train, and Felix climbed in after her, closing the door and putting down the jump seat, where he perched with an almost complete stillness.
“Have you been well?” said Hauptmann.
“She’s been OK,” said Felix. “Still not eating.”
“Oh,” said Hauptmann. “You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
“That’s what I tell her,” said Felix. “But it’s like pulling teeth. She don’t listen.”
“I’ve got things on my mind,” she said.
“I guess we all do,” said Hauptmann.
The car pulled away from the curb, and Gaelle felt the surge and coast as the driver changed gears and let in the clutch. The scar was on the side toward Hauptmann, and he spent a moment looking at it. Gaelle tried to think of Karl and how they would spend a little time together.
I need some time to think, or to come up with a story, she thought. Why can’t I lie now when I need to?
“Does the scar hurt?” said Hauptmann.
“Not in the way you’d think. It’s not a physical pain but an uneasiness. Have you ever touched half-burned newspapers? It’s like that sort of, dusty and dry. It puts my teeth on edge.”
Up the avenue by the river the streetlights made the fog look like it was made of diamonds.
“How many young woman have been found in the park in the last couple of months?” said Hauptmann.
“A few,” said Felix.
“What’s the point of talking about this?” said Gaelle.
“Well, we’re concerned about your safety,” said Hauptmann. “You don’t want to end up like one of them.”
She looked around the inside of the car, where the supports of the window suddenly appeared like the bars in a cage. The odor of the pomade was stronger, and the ominous stillness of Hauptmann left her staring at the door handle. At the end of the avenue the lights bled into the fog, like watercolors on damp paper.
“Have the police talked to you?” said Hauptmann.
“Look, do you want to have a good time or not?” said Gaelle.
“Oh,” Hauptmann said. “I want to have a good time.”
Gaelle turned her face to Hauptmann and smiled. Then she put her hand on his leg. The lights and shadow alternated in the back of the car, and with each change, Gaelle’s dizziness got worse.
“So,” said Hauptmann to Gaelle. “You haven’t talked to anyone about Breiter. About what happened in the street?”
“No,” said Gaelle. She moved her hand along his leg, just brushing her fingers over his lap. “I’m not going to say anything.”
“You said something to us,” he said.
“Well, that’s different,” she said.
“But you wanted money,” he said.
“Well, so what?” she said.
“Where are we going?” said Felix.
“I thought we’d take a drive along the river,” said Hauptmann. He turned to Gaelle. “Would you like that?”
“Anything you say,” she said.
“You haven’t told anyone about Breiter? You haven’t mentioned him to anyone?” said Hauptmann. “I just want to be sure.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Gaelle. “It’s all Greek to me. Who cares about this guy? You know?”
“We care,” said Hauptmann. “We care a lot.”
Gaelle felt the stop and glide of the car, the pressure of the seat in her back when it accelerated, and she listened to the clip clopping of the horses in the street as the car entered the wall of fog that boiled up from the river. The car came to a stoplight right next to the river. Gaelle looked at the door handle. Felix sat with his hands folded in his lap, still and almost serene, his eyes blank, and when she tried to get his attention, he seemed impervious, lost in his own thoughts. The signal changed.
The car moved into the fog, and Gaelle reached down and took the handle, which was cold, but very smooth, and then the door was open and she was out, at the side of the car. She went around the back, into the middle of the avenue, where she stood between two lanes.
“I’ll find her. She’s just moody,” said Felix. He got out of the car. “I know how to handle her.”
“Good,” said Hauptmann. “We’ll make it worth your while. As I said.”
“Sure,” said Felix. “But we haven’t talked money.”
“She’s going to get away,” said Hauptmann.
“I can find her,” said Felix.
“All right, all right,” said Hauptmann. “Name the price.”
Felix gave him a figure. Hauptmann counted out the bills, flip, flip, flip. He handed them over and Felix took them.
Felix looked both ways in the fog and went through the traffic, the horns honking, the cars stopping one behind the other with Felix in the middle. He dragged himself along with a keen impatience, like a man who has been waiting for his chance and has finally seen it.
Karl, she thought. Darling. Oh, please. Please help me.
In the middle of the bridge Gaelle tasted the mist, which was a mixture of oil and exhaust and the somewhat marshy residue from the river, although it had a scent of diesel or gasoline that the barges left. She looked back the way she had come and saw a figure on the bridge, just a black outline. It could have been Hauptmann, although it was hard to tell. Hauptmann was taller than that, but the fog made it hard to judge things.
A barge sounded its foghorn and the ache of it made her feel a little closer to Karl. Then she turned and started to walk quickly, almost jogging, the clicking of her shoes on the cobblestones only audible after the horn stopped. Whoever was behind her knew she was trying to get to the river.
She crossed the bridge and went along a park that was next to the water: some trees, some benches, cobblestones, a statue, a man on a horse. Now, in her frame of mind, it seemed as though statues of men on horseback were after her, too. She went up to a tree and stood next to it. Was there a chance that the man behind her had gone the other way?
Still, as she waited, it seemed to her that this is how she had been living for years. The caress of the fog was familiar and the chill of it was similar to her realization that she was not like other people, and that, for reasons she didn’t understand, she was marked. How could God have loved her so little? This question added to her mystification and her loneliness. Someone once said that the scar had spit in her soul, and as she felt the fog, she thought, yes, that is what had happened. At least until Karl came along.
The lights from the other side of the river made a wall of red, blue, and yellow, mixed together like a collapsed rainbow, as though the thing see
ped down right there. A man crossed the bridge, holding a cane. She waited by the tree and noticed that its roots had pushed up the cobbles that surrounded it.
The barge horn sounded again, so plaintive and piercing that Gaelle found that she was close to tears. How could she cry here? she thought. Well, maybe I am sick of this fog, which stinks, just as I am sick of the river, so much like the wet side of a snake. If she could just find Karl, it would be all right.
She came to the small stone building where the men who worked in the park kept their brooms, shovels, a wheelbarrow, some bags of fertilizer, which they used in the spring, and when she reached up to the heavy chain that held the door shut, she found that the lock hadn’t been closed. It was just hooked together. She pushed it open, and then closed the door behind her.
She sat on the overturned wheelbarrow and listened to the barge horn, which became more and more faint. She put her hand to her scar as she smelled the dirt and fertilizer. Outside, someone went back and forth in the park, and after a while she recognized this as a circuitous, but still orderly, searching. The chain rattled as whoever it was out there realized, as she had, that the door wasn’t locked. She tried to imagine that darkness before she was born, and to tell herself that where she stood now, in the small shed, was like being in that darkness, especially with the smell of dirt. The door opened.
“Oh, Jesus, Felix,” she said. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s me.”
The barge sounded its horn.
“Thank god. Hauptmann scared me.”
“I know,” he said. “What’s inside here? Maybe I can find something. Step back in.”
“Why?” she said.
“I’ll show you.”
She stepped back.
“The dirt floor here is pretty soft, isn’t it?” he said. “You’d think it would be hard.”
“Listen, Felix,” she said. “I’ve got to get away.”
A slash of light came in from the crack where the door wasn’t closed, and in it she saw that silver flash.
“I want to think things over,” said Felix. “I want to make sure.”
“About what?” said Gaelle.
“Why, there are a lot of people who are interested in getting rid of you,” said Felix. “That’s all I need to know.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Gaelle.
“It’s like waking up,” said Felix. “When you see your chance.”
“Come on, Felix,” said Gaelle.
“Too many people are after you,” said Felix.
“I know,” said Gaelle. “It just happened. I didn’t plan it.”
“And if something happened to you, why, a lot of people could be blamed for it.”
“Why are you saying that?” said Gaelle. “Turn around.”
“Why?” said Gaelle.
“Turn around and I’ll show you,” said Felix.
“Oh, Felix,” she said. “What are you doing?”
The horn sounded.
“Do you hear that?” he said.
“Yes,” said Gaelle. “I hear it. What a sad sound.”
He rustled in the dark as he pulled up his pant leg to get the silk cord, which he kept in a pouch next to the ice pick. “Aren’t you getting enough sleep?”
“I don’t ever really sleep right,” said Felix.
“Felix, do you want me to make you feel nice? Is that what you want?” she said. “Just tell me.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “Just listen to the horn.”
“I’ll do anything you want,” said Gaelle. “I can be good at it.”
“The horn,” said Felix. “It runs right through you, you know?”
“Oh,” said Gaelle. “It seems as though I’ve been hearing it all my life.”
“No kidding,” said Felix.
The shed was surrounded by the last of the fog, which was gray and beardlike, just shreds of mist that rose from the river. The small park was filled with the lapping of the river against the stone bank, and Armina hesitated, as though the river and the chopping sound, especially loud under the bridge, contained some hint of the mortal aspect of this moment, as though finality had a fluid essence. Then she went up to the shed, where she knew what she would find. “A woman with a scar,” the Schutzpolice man had said when he called. “In a toolshed by the river.”
Why did I ever mention her name? thought Armina. To impress Ritter, to show that I was doing my work? She stooped in front of the door.
Uniformed policeman stood around in clumps—their visors bright with Vaseline, their buttons shiny, all of them fatigued. The fish scent of the river was stronger that ever. Linz was there, too, his beard more blue than ever, his skin white, his knobby fingers holding a cigarette. “The usual,” he said. “In here.”
“The usual?” she said. “Yeah,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?” Plenty, she thought.
The shed smelled like a root cellar, and Armina half expected a mound of potatoes in the corner, covered with gray earth as they were piled against the wall. She kneeled next to Gaelle, who’s hair was still bright in the otherwise dull place. By the light that came in from the door, the scar still seemed as rigid as ever, as much a mask as though Gaelle were still alive. At least the eyes were closed. Then Armina leaned closer, into that mixture of perfume and sweat, and touched the scar. It was covered with makeup, the pancake beneath the powder that Gaelle had gotten at the department store. So, thought Armina, it had done some good after all. She must have gone back to buy some powder.
She stood up and looked around. One foot was bare, and the shoe, near the door, had a broken heel. The bunched-up skirt, pulled-down stockings, the marks. Ground out cigarettes. At Gaelle’s side there was a mark, shaped like a new moon, as though someone had dragged the toe of a shoe through the soft dirt.
“Did you know her?” said Linz.
“You could say that,” said Armina.
“How did she get that scar?” said Linz.
“Car accident,” said Armina.
“Hmpf,” sad Linz. “She must have been pretty before that.”
“Yes,” said Armina. “That’s right.”
“Too bad,” said Linz. “Well, look around. This one is yours, too. The underpants are in the corner. Everything else is as always.”
“All right,” said Armina.
She sat down on an overturned wheelbarrow, her head in one hand. Then she looked at Gaelle. On the river, beyond the door, an enormous barge moved along, the bow wave in a silver curl, which went on forever. Then the chop hit the stone bank again.
“We’ve got the address of her parents,” said Linz. “That’s the first thing.”
Armina put out her hand. Linz had written the address on a small slip of paper, like a ticket. Outside, she sat on one of the benches. The pigeons flew around in a circle and their wings made a steady pop pop pop. Everything around her, the river, the buildings, the shed, added to her claustrophobia, which was indistinguishable from anger. The slight nausea that came with it was made worse by the stink of the river.
“You’re not looking too good,” said Linz.
“Me?” she said. “Hard night, I guess.”
“Sure,” he said. “I know what you mean. But what else can you do?” He looked at the river. “Well, good luck.”
“That’s what you have to say?” she said. “Good luck.”
“Hey,” he said. “Take it easy. I’m sorry.”
She nodded and stood up.
The glass door of Gaelle’s building was in a heavy frame with a brass handle, and the architecture was fortresslike, although these days the suggestion of security seemed all the more frail and useless. Armina’s shape was reflected in the brass banister of the stairwell. Her elongated appearance here or in the glass of an old window had been utterly insignificant, but recently these stretched or compressed images, so much like in a fun house mirror, seemed like hints as to what was really happening. She was being warped, twisted. Then she tried t
o imagine the sound Gaelle once made as she ran down these stairs.
Armina knocked on the door. Gaelle’s mother wore a dressing gown and her hair was in disarray, partly blond, partly gray, and the skin under her eyes appeared bruised by fatigue. The woman stared at Armina. In the background Gaelle’s father said, “Who the hell is it at this hour?”
Gaelle’s mother didn’t move.
“Well?” said Gaelle’s father.
Armina held out her identification. Gaelle’s mother looked at it carefully, already wanting to make sure there was no mistake and that whatever was happening here wasn’t one of those things that turn out to be just a misunderstanding. Armina had the desire to lean against a wall or to sit down, to rest for a minute. Anything to stop this.
“Uli, you better come out here,” said Gaelle’s mother.
“Oh?” said Gaelle’s father from down the hall. “Why is that?”
“The police are here,” said Gaelle mother.
“It’s Gaelle,” he said. “Isn’t it? When is it going to stop? In trouble, I’ll bet. It’s enough that we had to go off to some godforsaken place to see your sister yesterday. Don’t you think I would like to spend a week in a sanatorium, eating cutlets. My God, how long has it been since we have had a milk-fed cutlet?”
“May I come in?” said Armina.
“Please,” said Gaelle’s mother.
They went into the living room with its horsehair sofa, a chair that was broad and high with carved wooden legs, bookshelves that had glass covers. Doilies were spread on the tables and on the arms of the sofa, and underneath a vase on a table filled with dried flowers and cattails. On the wall a painting was hung that showed game on a table in what appeared to be a hunting lodge: the feathers of the bird were done with such attention to detail that each fiber was as clear as a tendril of frost on a window. Gaelle’s mother sat down.
“Uli,” she said. “Please come in here.” She turned to Armina. “Won’t you sit down?”
Armina nodded, swallowed, and sat at the edge of a gray chair, her hands together in her lap.
