by Craig Nova
“This is it,” he said.
“Why, you must be Karl,” said a blond woman with lousy skin and rings under her blue eyes.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m Binga,” she said. “Gaelle must have told you about me. I was Gaelle’s pal. We worked together.”
“She didn’t say anything to me,” he said, still looking down.
“Well, I was a friend,” she said.
“She didn’t have many friends,” said Karl. He turned to Armina. “A cop like you must have known that.”
“No, she didn’t have many friends,” said Armina. “Not that I ever saw.”
Karl rubbed his hands together, as though washing them. He looked at Binga and then at the crowd. Then he bit his lip and put out his hand to Armina, as though offering something. He pushed some dirt with his foot and frowned: how was he going to say it? He wasn’t a good liar. And yet, what he wouldn’t give to explain, to get some relief by just saying what happened. So, he stood there, suspended between the desire to speak and the desire to be quiet.
“Let me think,” he said.
The horses started that impatient pawing of the ground, like horses doing a counting trick in the circus. He shrugged and walked down the path between the rows of headstones, his shape disappearing among the enormous statues of angels, who didn’t look upward to heaven, but downward, toward the earth, their stone wings folded along their sides. His movement through the crowd, the plodding, frank gait, made Armina think of a mule walking through the surf.
Felix came up to the mound of dirt with his furious gait, as though his leg were a dog he kept to beat, and then kneeled at the side of the grave, where he picked up a fistful of the sandy, almost orange dirt, and dropped it into the hole, letting it fall through his fingers as though it were his own life’s blood that was seeping into the ground. Then he stood up and put the back of his wrist to the side of his eyes. He stepped back, dragging his leg in the dirt and leaving a new moon-shaped mark in the soil.
The mark was about a half inch deep, drawn as though with a compass, like someone making a map in the dirt to show the bend of a river. The tip of the toe of one of his shoes had made it when he pivoted on one knee while his stiff leg stood out behind him.
Binga appeared like one of the stone winged figures who stood on top of the monuments.
“Come on,” said Armina to Binga. “I think we should go to the party.”
“Why, I always like a party,” said Binga.
Immertreu’s restaurant had a long bar at the entrance, and opposite it there was a raised section where the mourners were already eating pig’s feet, sausage, and potato pancakes at the fifty tables that were arranged there. They drank from glasses of beer that were a foot and a half tall as they sat at tables by the dark wainscoting of the room. The men jostled Armina as she came in, and she was pushed back, into the crush by the bar. Nachtmann sat in his usual place with a small glass of port.
A clot of mourners came in the door, shouted for drinks, and pushed against Armina. Felix was here, too, caught up in the same group of men in dark clothes, and as they pushed him farther into the restaurant, he put out his hand and pulled himself up to the bar, like a wet dog coming out of the rain. The bartender put a plate of picked pig’s feet in front of him, and Felix picked up one of them, the pink jell quivering as he took a bite. He went on eating, his head to one side like a dog.
Armina worked her way out of the mob.
“I just thought I’d talk to you for a minute,” said Armina to Felix.
“Not now,” he said. “Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
He turned back to the plate of pink jelly and two-toed feet, his nicotine-stained fingers picking up a morsel and bringing it up to his lips. Then he dropped the food and stared at the plate. He put his hands to the side of his face, elbows on the bar. Then he turned to Armina.
“A lot of people were after Gaelle,” he said. “She got herself in the middle.”
Felix picked up another pig’s knuckle.
“And all I know is she went off with a guy in a black car. She saw ten guys like that every night. Silver hair, nice clothes, talked like a college professor, smelled of some kind of perfume. Cologne or something. That’s it, see? A guy in a black car. Why, anyone could have gone after her.”
He dropped a shiny and milk-colored piece of cartilage on his plate.
Binga came out of the stream of mourners and grabbed Armina’s arm and took her two steps to the main room and then to a table close to the wall. The room was filled with the scent of new sawdust that had been put down for the party. Many of the mourners had already taken off their coats and stood with the black Xs of their suspenders in the middle of their backs.
Karl came down the bar and stood alone, his shoulders at the height of everyone’s head. Armina pushed through the mourners, who were now singing an obscene song about a woman in Budapest and what she did in the evenings when the lights went out. Karl was aloof from the hilarity of the place, and he turned his head in her direction.
“Why don’t you sit with us?” said Armina.
He followed her with the air of a man who was sleepwalking.
“Come on. Next to me,” said Binga.
“OK,” said Karl.
“So, what are you drinking, Armina?” said Binga.
“I don’t know,” said Armina.
“Don’cha want a little fun?” said Binga.
“A brandy,” she said to the waiter who was standing next to her.
“Bring three,” said Binga. “For each of us.”
The waiter brought over a tray on which there were nine glasses of brandy. The noise in the room became louder, as though the voices were on a rheostat and someone had just turned it up. Like a radio program. Binga reached for her brandy, which she took in one shot, bang.
“I don’t know why it is,” said Binga. “But being in that graveyard, seeing those people in black, you know, why, it makes me sort of flirty. Sort of all, well, you know. Indecent. Do you feel that way, Karl?”
“No,” said Karl.
“Well, maybe later,” said Binga. “Have your drink. It’ll help you cheer up.”
Karl stared across the table, his dark eyes dry now, as though grief after a certain point were dusty and like a desert. He took up his glass, and rather than sipping it as he usually did, he took it in one quick swallow, bang.
“So,” said Armina. “What do you want to say to me?”
“You’re really a cop?” said Karl.
“Yes,” said Armina. “Inspectorate A.”
Karl turned to Binga and said, “Go to the ladies’ room. Get out of here for a couple of minutes.”
“Why, I’m not ready yet,” said Binga.
“You heard me,” said Karl. “Go on.”
She stood up unsteadily, picked up her drink, and neatly took the arm of a man in his shirtsleeves who was passing by.
“Feeling lonely?” she said. “These people here don’t want me around.”
“Sure,” said the man. “I’m always lonely.”
On the far side of the room men with the X of suspenders in the middle of their backs went on with the song about the woman in Budapest. They swayed as they sung, and threw their heads back, as though braying at the heavens.
Karl picked up the next drink and took it in one quick swallow, too, and put it down, bang! The men and women in the room became quiet and turned at the same time toward the door. Outside someone yelled, as though giving a military order, which mixed in with the cadence of boots, more yelling, and then, through the window, a column of men, all in brown pants and white shirts, walked by. The men in the room pulled on their coats. The Brownshirts outside yelled, then they sang a party song.
“Everything I’ve done came back to give me trouble,” Karl said. “You never think you can end up like this. Why, before I didn’t even know what alone meant.”
The men in the room began to move toward the door, and every
thing about their disorder, their finishing of a drink, their spoiling for a fight, left Armina blinking, trying to be clearheaded and precise. Some glasses were left on a tray, the accumulation of them bright and somehow disordered: Armina stared at them, anxious that she was missing something, that she would come away with nothing and be left with the constant doubt and accusation that made the air seem heavy.
Karl looked up and then over the heads of the men who were going outside, where they were going to fight. He went on staring, thinking things over, glancing at Armina. The noise of the room made it difficult to think, to say the right thing, to come up with just enough, but not too much. One of the Brownshirts in the street threw a brick through the window, which collapsed into triangular shards.
“Gaelle picked up some thug, a Nazi, and he told her a secret,” said Karl.
“What was the secret?” said Armina.
“That they had a spy, a guy in the Soviet embassy who was telling them what the Red Front was up to. So, she told us about it. But before we could do anything, she went to the Nazis, too. They’d been leaning on her. See? She tried to get them off her back.”
“Who did she see when she went to the party?” said Armina.
“Hauptmann,” said Karl. “That was the name.”
More shouts came from the street.
“There was a man from Moscow in town,” said Karl. “See? He wants this Breiter thing quiet, too.”
“Do you know why?” she said.
“Munitions,” said Karl. “The Soviets were helping the German army rearm. Breiter worked it out.”
Outside, a man in uniform stood at the front of some men. He was here, he said, screaming above the crowd, to show solidarity with a woman who had been killed by the Red Front Fighters. A poor, ordinary woman, a fallen woman to be sure, but the man wasn’t here to judge her but to show his solidarity with her memory. The window at the front door shattered. The men broke up the furniture in the room to make a club, or reached into a pocket for a sock filled with sand, or a knife.
Armina worked her way through the crowd, back to the bar where Felix finished a pig’s foot, his fingers slick with gelatin.
“Oh,” said Felix. “You again.”
“Do you know a man by the name of Hauptmann?” she said.
“Hauptmann?” said Felix. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” said Armina.
His dark, ash-colored eyes moved from the bar to look at her.
“You better by careful, missy,” he said.
Another window broke with a tingling, almost festive sound. The mob from the dinning room went by Armina, and as she struggled against it, Karl took her by the arm. He pulled her out of the stream of men who were going to the front of the room, and said, “Come on. Out this way.”
The fighting started outside on the curb in front of the restaurant. The women screamed and tried to get their coats. Outside the leg of a chair hit a man on the side of the head with a sound of bones being broken with a cleaver. A pistol went off, and the air was filled with potatoes stuck with nails, and here and there fists emerged from the mass. A few signs waved this way and that, like battle flags at the moment when all is won or lost. In the distance police whistles were frail and useless.
“But there’s something else, too,” said Armina. “Isn’t there?”
“Yes,” said Karl. He looked around. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“But there’s something else,” said Armina.
“Yes,” said Karl. “I was there when Breiter got it.”
“And it was politics?” said Armina. “Is that why Gaelle was killed?”
“Yes,” said Karl. “But I don’t know who did it. Someone on the right? The man from Moscow? I wish I knew. Oh yeah.”
Karl took Armina by the arm and pulled her against the stream of men who tried to get to the front of the room. “Out this way. I’ll show you.” Karl pushed through the men, dragging her by her arm, and in the crush she saw Felix. He finished the last of the pig’s knuckles, and as Armina went into the hallway with Karl, Felix went on staring at her. He mouthed, “Careful.”
Armina saw the back door, where Karl let her go, and as she came out the door, she thought about that mark in the dirt by the grave and Felix’s nicotine-stained fingers.
Armina came out of the rear of the building and walked around to the front where the voices of the men sounded like machinery in the midst of an accident: the intensity of the garbled threats, of the shouts, was like the shriek of brakes, the grinding of steel as an engineer tried to stop hundred of tons of locomotive. Here and there on the cobblestones, beneath the funeral pants of men from the Ring, bodies lay with their shoes in a V. The limbs of the unconscious were oddly loose, like rubber, and the shoes flipped back and forth as they were trampled.
Felix came out of the restaurant, looked one way and another, and pulled his head down, the gesture at once protective and familiar. Like a turtle, thought Armina. That’s what it is. Felix kept his eyes on the men in the street, and when they surged one way, like surf sliding up a beach, he moved along the storefronts. Felix didn’t look like much, but she guessed that was part of what made him dangerous. Just a kid, a limping boy who seemed to be stunted no matter how old he was. Forever shrunk. She put her hand in her purse and touched the pistol—sleek, heavy, and yet not giving her what she wanted, since the pistol seemed like hard chaos rather than the order she needed.
A little privacy, thought Armina. A chance to get him by himself. A chance to talk with no one around. An out-of-the-way place, quiet and private.
She stayed some distance behind as Felix dragged his leg and leaned forward, as though into a wind. He seemed harmless as he moved with that stopping and starting, and yet his awkwardness still suggested the coiled nature of a hidden danger, like a sapling trapped under a log. It was the stiff leg, she thought, that made that mark in the dirt.
Felix turned into the park, his up-and-down, stumbling gait scaring the pigeons, which rose in a trembling, shimmering mass against the sky. The shadows of the park at this time of year seemed blue-green, like dirty seawater. He went along the path by the benches where lovers sat in the evenings.
Armina went along the path, too, and she thought about that mark in the soft dirt of the stone shed where they had found Gaelle—about two feet long, vaguely curved like a new moon—about the depth someone would make to plant seeds, carrots, say. Armina tried to reassure herself with the memory of carrot tops, bushy and bright green with the texture of lace.
The birds seemed cheerfully insistent, and she tried to remember the names of the birds she had learned as a child. Chettusia gregaria. The Sociable Plover. Gregaria. She was reassured by that. Or a Eurasian Woodcock, Scolopax rusticola. Or the Bohemian Waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus garrulus. That was another one. Garrulus. She reached into her handbag to touch the pistol. Time seemed to collapse ahead of her, as though the future were so close as to deny almost any possibility she liked. She knew something was coming and yet she was amazed that everything seemed the same: ordinary late afternoon, birds flitting from tree to tree.
Felix sat on a bench, hands in his pockets. In the afternoon light, the trees and the grass were different shades of green, one a little more intense than the other, and the brush was a muted color, like military fatigues.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Have you?” said Armina.
“Sure,” said Felix. “I can tell when someone wants to talk. It’s my job. Why, people always get this look when they’re going to ask for something, you know, something kinky. Kind of shifty. Why, they say, will Gaelle do this or that?”
He stopped and looked around.
“She’s not going to be doing any of that,” said Armina.
“No,” said Felix. “At least where she’s gone she’s not going to have to do that. Why, you wouldn’t believe what people wanted to do to her. And she was such a tough mutt, you know. There’s nothing she co
uldn’t take.”
He stood up.
“Come on, let’s walk,” he said.
He stepped closer to her, almost as though he wanted to take her arm.
“Your perfume smells nice,” he said. He put his nose a little closer and sniffed, the gesture so frank and intimate that Armina began to slap him, but then she stopped. Not yet, she thought. Not yet. “You know what I heard? Perfume reacts differently with different skin. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’d heard that.”
His head rose and fell as he walked next to her.
“So, where are we going?” she said.
“Just a walk,” he said. “I talk better when I’m walking, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Let’s get off the path. Over here.”
“You seem to know the park pretty well,” said Armina.
“You could say that,” said Felix. He smiled and showed his bad teeth.
“OK,” she said. “How about here? What do you have to say?”
“Don’t you want to walk with me? Or are you too good for that? There’s a nice gully on the other side. Over there.”
He raised an arm toward an open field covered with silver highlights from the moisture in the grass. A bird dipped as it flew in a looping path, like wires hung from one telegraph pole to another. The mark in the dirt had been about an inch deep, shaped like a scythe.
“It’s private,” he said. “We can talk.”
He reached down and rubbed the side of his bad leg.
“It aches so much these days,” he said. “Must be the damp, or something.” He went on caressing his thin leg with a repeated touch, as though he were pushing the pain into the ground.
“You think I’m just a kid with a limp and bad teeth,” he said.
