by Craig Nova
Felix had been able to get fermentable garbage and yeast. While the garbage, warm water, and yeast bubbled in the kitchen, and while Manfred came to keep an eye on it, Felix and Frieda went to the park to gather wood. They worked along some of the paths that Felix remembered from before the war, and from time to time he looked up to see the gentle swaying of Frieda in her dress, which was so worn as to seem almost sheer. Felix had an axe head on a stick and a pruning saw with a taped handle, and they cut and dragged wood back to the kitchen. They stacked it against the wall in neat piles, the cut ends white and clean against the bricks. The bubbles rose from the mash with a yeasty, damp odor, and a sound, too, of something that seemed to be alive.
“It won’t be long,” said Manfred. “We’re almost ready. Let’s hope no one dies drinking this stuff.”
Felix shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think we have to worry.”
Then he and Frieda went outside and found a place on a mound not too far from the kitchen, and from the top of it he was able to see a long ways. The sun came out, and Felix looked as though he might have been sleeping, but he was not. He just didn’t want to seem obvious that he was looking out. Frieda sat next to him, staring into the distance, at the sky, the ragged buildings, absorbing the heat of the sun. She leaned against Felix: it could have been an accident, but she was delighted by the small, almost vernal heat that came up between them. He glanced over at her and thought that more than anything else he would have to wait. That was the first thing.
He sat there, drowsing in the sun, his eyes half open, his feet in mismatching shoes, one bigger than the other, and overall he appeared like a large, ill-dressed lizard, skinny, squinting, trying to obtain whatever he could from the sunlight. In the distance Russian soldiers went along, their shapes rising and falling as they climbed over the beams and bits and pieces that had somehow survived, broken tile, plaster, wire and ceramic sockets, iron banisters, the gears and works of an elevator, all collapsed now into junk. A couple of them came close to Felix, and as they did, they sniffed the air. Was that what they thought it was?
“You,” one of them said. “Liquor.”
“Not yet,” said Felix.
“When?” said the Russian.
“Soon.”
Armina woke from a dream where the orchids hung against the jungle wall like enormous red, pink, and blue butterflies that had suddenly stopped flying but still had their wings open, as though pinned against the green velvet of a case. In the jungle the water dripped and made a tapping sound in the leaves and then she woke to someone knocking on the door of her room in that same cadence as the falling drops.
“All right,” she said. “All right.”
The man in the hall wore an armband, which is what the police had these days for a uniform, and his hatchet of a face looked like it had been used on something it could never cut, like iron.
“I was sent to get you,” he said. “We’ve found something.”
He waited outside while she dressed. The box of the powder she used instead of bathing sat on the bureau, a heavy piece of furniture that had survived the last few years. She put some of it on her shoulders and underarms although she avoided the triangle of mirror she had propped up in the corner. She had become thin and her skin was as white as the powder. It disappeared on her like someone dropping a pebble into the rubble of a rocky shingle. She missed Rainer, and to try to make herself feel a little better, she put on her one pair of nylon stockings, which gave her the slight memory of those times when she had dressed to meet him. It was a small thing, but that is what she had.
In the street she walked next to the policeman, although they didn’t speak. Armina kept trying to navigate by the old map she had learned by growing up here, and while she kept looking over the mounds of rubble she realized that the piles of brick were replacing her old sense of geography. Still, she wanted to resist this, as though her old ideas, even of landscape, had some essential quality.
They came to a semicircle of men with armbands who stood around something on the ground between two piles of bricks, and when Armina climbed over the rubble, it clicked and rolled around her feet. The young woman lay on her stomach, her sad, worn dressed pulled up to show the usual marks on her legs and hips. She lay against the dust and rubble with that same appearance, as though gravity had her in the strongest grip possible. In the dust there was a mark, about a half inch deep and shaped like a new moon.
Armina looked at the woman’s bare feet, which were next to her mismatched shoes. The scent of the powder the woman used was the same as Armina’s. The clouds dragged along, the shadows slipping over the landscape with an absolute silence. Armina lifted one of the shoes, looked at the heel, worn down to nothing, the nails inside sticking up an eighth of an inch. The young woman’s heel had the pattern of the nails, as though it had been molded to wear the shoes. Armina sat down and thought of the miles it had taken to make those indentations. Maybe, after a while, the indentations made the shoes feel as though they really fit. Then she stared at the sky, where the clouds hung with such indifference. When Armina looked around, the landscape appeared somehow claustrophobic, as though the dust were so thick that she couldn’t get away from it, or maybe this was just the fact that she had difficulty breathing. More than anything else, she had the desire to close her eyes, to put her head down, as though she could get through the next minute by being absolutely still. Maybe she could count, but what came after one? Two? She swallowed and stared at the sky, but then she closed her eyes again, as though the scale of it was too much.
Ritter walked up, too, took a glance, and turned away. A man with an armband brought Armina the woman’s underwear and gave them to her.
“Here,” he said.
Ritter stood in front of Armina and said, “Same old shit.”
Armina shook her head, not knowing precisely what it was she objected to, the difficulty in breathing, the smell of dust, the nail holes in the woman’s heels, the pedestrian remark, the horrible sense of becoming smaller, as though she were shrinking right here. For an instant she thought this is what the fatigue of the last years did: it made her smaller, as though indifference were going to have a physical quality. It left her straining, as though she could resist it by strength, by effort that was as much physical as moral.
“Come on. There’s no need to be like this.”
“What?” she said.
“Don’t act like this,” Ritter said.
Armina held the underwear in her hand. It had been worn so often as to be almost transparent.
“And what way is that?” asked Armina.
“Look,” said Ritter. He gestured to the landscape, the piles of bricks that looked like a rolling and gray sea, marked by the shoals of buildings that stuck up from the swells.
“I can see,” she said.
“Can you?” he said. “Well, then what is there to say?” He gestured at the woman in the dust.
In the light of the rising sun the dust on the young woman’s hair was like a film of gold, speckled with the gypsum from the mortar. In the distance the wind picked up and the dust blew in ghostlike shapes, each defined with the golden speckle. This field and the years that had produced it left the natural result of horror, which was just that: did one murder more or less matter? The notion that one more didn’t matter was the indifference of fatigue, the result of having been ground down. Armina looked at the shoes and the worn cloth in her hands.
She stared at the gray dust next to the girl where that mark had been left by someone who had a stiff leg and who had trouble standing up. He had moved the tip of his toe as he struggled, scoring the dust with the curved shape. He had left ten or so cigarette ends, each smoked down to the end, just a half an inch, and each one of them was yellow after having been made wet by the dew.
So, she thought, Felix is still here. He hadn’t been imitating other crimes when he had killed Gaelle. It had been him all along.
“Pull yourself together,” R
itter said.
“It makes a difference,” she said.
“What does?” he said.
“Another body,” she said.
He shrugged.
“Look around,” he said.
She glanced at the open field, the enormous sky, the shapes of clouds like mastodons.
“Think what you want,” he said. “For me, well, I’m tired. We’ll do what we can. Round up the creeps. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
SHE WENT TO the black market behind the Reichstag where the first sellers had arrived with the last of their possessions: a mirror, a collection of books, some shoes, a French saucepan. One man had a clock covered with gilt leaf that was only partially chipped. Another had a fur coat, although it looked like it had green mange growing on it. Armina asked each one about Felix and where he was doing his business, but each one looked at her with a weary dismissal, as though she were asking about something a long way away that they didn’t want to remember. It was as though she spoke to them through a curtain of fatigue.
“Don’t know,” they said. “Can’t help you. You want a mirror? We can work something out. OK?”
“No, thanks,” she said.
The interior of the Friedrichstrasse train station was the same, although many of the benches had been carted off for firewood. The floor was still shiny, like an ice rink, but people had brought their things to set up housekeeping, bags and suitcases, blankets, a folding chair, newspapers that were used to stuff arms and legs of coats and trousers. The overall atmosphere was one of uneasiness that came from hungry waiting. A few young men, in clothes that were only marginally better than those of the squatters, stood along the walls and in the places where the light didn’t show so much. Women walked from side to side, some of them in old high-heeled shoes, their lips bright with homemade lipstick.
The Moth sat on the same bench. He was thinner, but his reddish hair was the same color and his face still had a crimson rash. His green eyes, rimmed with red, looked around as he sat in an oversize coat, the pockets of it filled with lumpy objects, a piece of cheese, a heel of bread, an onion, a dirty handkerchief, and a knife. He had lost an arm, and one sleeve was pinned up with a woman’s hat pin.
“Well, well,” he said to Armina. “To think, after all these years. Inspectorate E, wasn’t it?”
“Inspectorate A,” she said.
He shrugged. What’s the difference, he seemed to say, between old friends.
“I’ve changed,” he said. “Look, just look at my sleeve. No arm. How do you like that?”
She shrugged.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Are you?” he said. He looked right at her now, his eyes lined with crimson lids. “Tell me. Say it.”
“I’m sorry about your arm,” she said.
“You know what I have trouble with? Counting money. See? I do it like this.”
He reached into his pocket and took out some bills, put them on one thigh, crossed his other leg over them so just the edges stuck out. Then he used one hand to go through them, one, two, three, four…. He looked around the room with a dare: let someone try to touch his money. No one even looked in his direction.
“You see,” he said. “I’ve got friends.”
“I’m sure you do,” she said.
“Have you noticed, that at the worst of times, when people are most confused, they are filled with desire? Why, don’t you see, it is a variety of hope. And then, let me tell you, it is a buyer’s market. There’s nothing you can’t get.” He gestured to a woman at the entrance, who stared at the Moth. She looked thin, obviously hungry, and she took a step forward, but then the Moth stopped her.
“Unless you want her,” said the Moth.
“No,” said Armina.
“Well, remember she’s here,” said the Moth. “Not, of course, that I have anything to do with it. Not really. I just keep my eyes open.” He looked up at Armina.
“So,” he said. “What can I do for you? Or is this just a social call? To see if I made it.”
“I’d like to talk to you,” she said.
“Oh, a social matter. I’m touched. Sit down,” he said.
Armina put her hands in her pockets and sat down next to the Moth. Somehow, if she had her hands hidden away it wouldn’t be so bad.
“So,” he said. “Now that we’re cozy like, what do you want?”
“Felix,” she said. “A boy with a limp. He worked with a gravelstone, a woman with a scar before the war. He’s grown up now, of course, but he’s still around.”
“How do you know?” he said.
“I’ve seen his work,” she said.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “And people like that are always less than truthful. Have you noticed how devious they can be? Why, you’d think after doing what they do, they’d want to tell the truth. Because after all, they know it, don’t they?”
A young man went along the floor, looking for cigarette butts, which lay here and there like squashed insects. He picked them up and put them in a paper bag. Armina wanted to say that yes, that was one truth, the kind of thing that Felix knew, but maybe there were others.
“Don’t you agree?” said the Moth. “Who can compete with what they know? You?”
“Have you seen him?” said Armina.
The Moth looked her up and down, leaned a little closer, and the things in his pockets pressed against her thigh.
“If you’re my friend, you’ll help me,” he said. “My sleeve is coming undone. Put it back up, will you?”
Armina stood up and stepped to his other side. He kept his reddish eyes on her as she hesitated. The sleeve of his coat was heavy with grease and smelled of woodsmoke and the sour scent of the city, the stink of decay and carrion. She pulled out the stick pin and the sleeve fell down in what seemed to be a despairing gesture. She folded it again, high and tight, and she pinned it snugly against the stub of his arm, which he pushed against her hands.
“At the edge of the park. Near the Reichstag. He’s got a still,” said the Moth. “Do you feel better now, my friend? After all, I’m one of the few people you can really depend on, heh? Are you reassured?”
“You could say that,” she said.
“Well,” he said. “That’s good. Everything is as it should be. Don’t be a stranger, my dear, now that I’ve helped you.”
Frieda leaned against the wall of the burned-out kitchen. Felix had no pressure gauge, but Manfred had taught Felix to put his ear close to the copper pot and to listen to the sounds. If the mash made a roiling noise and a quick bubbling, not to mention a hissing from the screw, it meant the still was getting ready to blow. Felix put more wood under the fire, watched the flames splay out on the bottom of the cooker, listened to see how it was going, and then sat down next to Frieda. She leaned against him now and then, trying to get comfortable, and once she turned to look right at him. She rarely looked at anyone straight on, but now she did so, her pale and beautiful blue eyes set on him.
“Sometime you and I should take a walk,” said Felix.
“Where would we go?” said Frieda.
“Oh, we could go into the park,” said Felix.
“What would we do?” she said.
She looked at him again, her glance piercing and frank.
“Oh, we’d walk around,” he said.
“What would be the point of that?” she said.
“Getting away,” he said. “You know, out of here, away from things.”
She leaned against him.
“I’d like that,” she said.
“Sure, you would. Sure,” he said. “Why we’d pretend it was like before the war. Just walking along.”
“Would you like that?” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “It would be all right.”
“That would be nice,” she said.
“Maybe soon,” he said. “This week. After we sell this lot.”
“We could save a little for ourselves,” she said.
“I won’t need anything li
ke that,” he said.
The light from the window became more dim and a little blue. The fire under the cooker burned all the brighter as the light failed, and when Felix stood up to look out the window, his shadow fell across the wall. He stood still, hands on the sill, and looked out the window.
At first he thought that there was something wrong with his eyes. From time to time he saw little speckles of light, which, if they hadn’t made him uncertain as to what was happening, would have been almost beautiful: little flecks like the glowing bits that came off a sparkler. But, this was different: the entire northern sky, beyond the broken-tooth horizon, seemed to be moving, and not only in motion, but it advanced with a silver and blue throbbing, like a silver curtain that was blowing in the wind. Felix closed his eyes. A slight, distant buzz came across the rubble.
The wall approached. The silver part of it looked like someone was tossing bits of a broken mirror into the air. Felix realized, when the first of the insects landed near him, that the blue came from the mass of dragonflies that made the wall, the conglomeration of them forming one swarming mass. The insects were blue with silver wings.
Felix squinted. Then he stood and put a hand to his eyes, like a man saluting the distance. Yes, he thought, bugs.
“My uncle said he’d seen a swarm like that,” said Frieda. “Before the war.”
The light dimmed and the wall came across the park. Frieda and Felix went outside while a chattering sound, which was a rush of transparent wings, like cellophane, swept up to the building. The insects were oddly delicate in Frieda’s hair, almost caressing. Just a bunch of bugs, he thought.
The insects moved south, and as the wall thinned out over the park, a woman with red hair and freckles, dressed in a gray coat, emerged from the mass of them. She was only visible as an outline, like a figure in the fog, but then the sun returned and she became visible as she came toward Felix and Frieda, although occasionally she looked back, over her shoulder, as though pursued.
