First Thrills, Volume 3

by Lee Child

  “Remember how graceful Kurt was?” Herman’s hands sketched arcs in the air. “He should have been a dancer, not a soldier. He flowed when he moved, like a cat.”

  Joachim clenched his right fist, the one that Herman could not see. “I don’t know any Kurt,” he answered in a level voice.

  “That wasn’t you holding his hand at El Dorado that February? Or was it Silhouette? One of those clubs. Weren’t they wonderful? And the pianos. I love piano music, although I never learned to play myself.”

  Joachim said nothing. His mother had forced him to practice two hours a day.

  “It’s a wonderful thing to make beautiful sounds with your fingers.”

  Joachim shifted his gaze to the floor; the slats were coated with about a centimeter of freezing mud and crisscrossed with ridges created by his shoes. “It would do you no good now.”

  “Just knowing would be enough.” Herman scratched his back against the door. “I could play the songs in my head and beat time on the ground.”

  Joachim wanted to warn him. “Will that help when you’re hungry? Or tired? Or cold?”

  Herman nodded. “If I can feel the music, I won’t think about my stomach, or my body.”

  Joachim pulled his arms tighter around himself. His elbows cut into his hands, almost numbing them. “You will.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’ve never been there.” Joachim crossed his legs, savoring the thin ribbon of warmth where his right leg lay on top of his left. “You can’t know.”

  “I don’t need to know what it’s like there to know myself.”

  “You won’t last long. Your kind never does.”

  “Is that why you’re afraid that the people here will recognize you? Are you afraid they’ll realize your triangle should be as pink as mine?”

  Joachim prayed that the man on his right slept. That everyone in his end of the car slept. “No, it shouldn’t. I’m Jewish, but I’m no fag.” He stressed “fag,” trying to make it sound hard and ugly.

  “Wasn’t Kurt the most exquisite fag?” Herman’s voice caressed the word. “But not after the Gestapo was through with him.”

  Joachim’s stomach cramped.

  “They ruined those delicate cheekbones. He could barely walk when they were done.” Herman watched Joachim, a gleam in his eye. “I think he escaped to Switzerland.”

  Joachim’s stomach relaxed. The car rattled along.

  “Where are they sending us?” Herman asked again.

  “Dachau, I think,” Joachim said, angry at himself for not lying this time. He’d also heard they might be going to Auschwitz, but he didn’t tell Herman that.

  “Dachau is only a few hours by train from Constance, from Switzerland.”

  “You wouldn’t be allowed on a train.”

  “So I’d walk.” Herman rubbed his palm over the rough stubble on his shaved head.

  “A few hundred kilometers in the snow? Anyone who sees you will turn you in. Or shoot you. You are the enemy now.”

  “I’d reach the border.”

  “The Swiss won’t let you in.”

  “I won’t go through the checkpoint.” Herman smiled. “I’d lift a boat and row across Lake Constance.”

  “Nazis guard the boats. You’d never make it.”

  “What a way to die.” Herman sighed. “Free and on the water.”

  Joachim stirred on the bench. He had loved to swim as a boy and had been the best swimmer in his school. “You shouldn’t think of dying,” he said to the door. “It’s not … careful. You have to be careful.”

  “Have you ever had Swiss chocolate?” Herman asked.

  Joachim clasped his hands in his lap.

  “I can almost smell it,” Herman continued. “Thick dark chocolate with bitter marzipan.”

  “Or with—” Joachim did not finish his sentence, surprised that he had even begun it.

  “Peppermint,” Herman finished. “Crisp peppermint.”

  Joachim pushed his chin against his chest. His shoulders were taut and raised, and he forced them down. He would not think about chocolate.

  Herman swallowed. “I wanted to go to school in Zürich. A friend of mine went. Came back in thirty-three as a Nazi. I was stunned.”

  Joachim raised his head. “It’s hard to lose a friend that way.”

  Herman searched Joachim’s face. “It’s hard to lose a friend any way.”

  Joachim tried to imagine the friendship he could have had with Herman in Berlin. Then someone farther down the car coughed, and he forced his mind to go blank.

  Herman rubbed his hands together. “When do we arrive in Dachau?”

  “I don’t know. Try to sleep.”

  Herman almost fell when the train abruptly slowed to climb a steep grade. “I could run faster than this train.”

  Joachim laughed, quietly and cynically. “What good is that? Do you want to run to the next car? Get there earlier?”

  Herman’s words tumbled out. “We can get out of that door. It’s not wired on very well. We could jump off the train and no one would notice.”

  Joachim’s stomach clenched again. His hands trembled. He could not remember when he had been so terrified. Even when the Nazis came for him, he was not so afraid. “The Nazis notice everything.”

  “Not everything,” Herman said, staring at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “Not everything.”

  “If they catch you, they will kill you. Slowly.”

  Herman smiled. Suddenly he looked very old, and Joachim flinched away from him. “Aren’t we dying slowly now?”

  Joachim thought of the cold outside, the Nazis who were sure to be around with rifles, the incredible distance to the Swiss border. They would never make it. Never.

  He spoke to his worn wooden shoes. “Eventually the war will end, and Germany will lose. They will set us free then.”

  “Maybe,” Herman said. “Eventually.”

  Joachim stared at a brown stain on top of one shoe. Blood? he wondered. “It won’t be too long.”

  “Are you daring to dream?” Herman mocked him as he turned to the door. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not careful.”

  Joachim’s voice trembled. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “By this time next week we could be in Switzerland, with Kurt.”

  “Or we could be dead.”

  “Or we could be dead,” Herman repeated. “We could be dead anyway. At least this way we get to decide.”

  Muscles tightened in the backs of Joachim’s legs. He wanted to stand. But he did not know what kind of death waited outside. It would be a death, probably a sooner death than awaited him at Dachau. A sooner death.

  Herman dropped his warm hand onto the crown of Joachim’s head. “I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?”

  Joachim shook his head. He needed time. He hated his cowardly survival instinct.

  “Kurt didn’t escape to Switzerland,” Herman said abruptly. He withdrew his hand, the spot he’d warmed now colder than the rest of Joachim’s head. “Kurt died.”

  Joachim’s stomach convulsed. His voice almost broke when he spoke, but he brought it under control. “I don’t know any Kurt and I don’t care what he did.”

  He gazed into Herman’s eyes, surprised that they were such a vivid blue. They reminded him of a mountain lake he swam across as a child. Joachim dropped his eyes first.

  “Be careful then, Joachim Rosen.”

  Herman forced the door out, grunting as his arms shook with the strain. Slowly, the wire stretched. Joachim admired his strength. He could never force the door like that.

  “Good-bye.” Herman dropped out of the train into the snow.

  For the first time since they took him, Joachim wept. He did not cry with the loud, wet wails of his childhood. He sat and wept the dry, silent sobs of a new grief.

  The prisoner next to him reached over and put a cold hand on his arm. Joachim slowly brought himself under control.

  The train jerked to a stop and knocked him to the floor
. He pulled himself back onto the bench. Whispers ran the length of the car. Why were they stopping?

  Were they in Dachau already? Herman had escaped at the last instant. Joachim tried to imagine him rowing across Lake Constance to a land filled with chocolate, but instead pictured him bleeding in the snow.

  The familiar aroma of cigarette smoke wafted in. Behind him several prisoners inhaled the smell greedily, but Joachim shrank back. That odor meant soldiers.

  The car door jerked open, and Joachim threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the scalding light. Dark profiles of three soldiers with guns loomed in the doorway, a prisoner sagged between two others. They heaved a body in and slammed the door.

  Joachim alone crossed to the inert figure, giving up his precious seat on the bench. He knelt and rolled him over. Dim light from the window illuminated a battered face. Herman.

  Joachim shook him, thinking of Kurt’s beautiful face broken by the Gestapo. Herman’s head lolled on his shoulders. He looked dead.

  Joachim put a finger under Herman’s nostrils to check for breath just as the car jolted back into motion. Off balance, he fell across Herman’s body. Herman’s heart beat against Joachim’s chest. Joachim smiled. He lay there a moment, remembering other men and other nights.

  He pulled himself to a sitting position and peeled off his own jacket, shivering. He wiped blood from Herman’s face with its tattered sleeve, tracing the angle of his cheekbone. Herman moaned.

  Joachim’s shaking fingers unbuttoned Herman’s jacket. He lifted Herman with one hand and pulled his jacket off, wincing at the darkening bruises on his ribs.

  Another prisoner put a skeletal hand on Joachim’s naked arm. “Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to be pink at Dachau.”

  Joachim squeezed his hand.

  The prisoner pulled back. Joachim finished switching jackets with Herman. Now his own jacket bore a pink triangle, Herman’s a yellow one.

  The prisoner turned away.

  Joachim cradled Herman’s head in his lap until the train stopped hours later. The doors opened onto darkness.

  “Raus!” yelled the guards. The prisoners stumbled out.

  The guards marched through the weary prisoners, separating them into two long lines. They sent Joachim to one line, Herman to another. Joachim looked at the pink triangle on the man next to him. Herman was safe.

  But then Joachim noticed the other triangles in his line: red, black, and purple, but no yellow. Herman stood in a line of all Jews.

  Joachim read the station name off a sign. Not Dachau at all. Not a work camp.

  The sign read Oswiecim. He closed his eyes. The German name for Oswiecim was Auschwitz. A death camp. He smelled sweetish smoke from the crematorium.

  Joachim opened his eyes and searched for Herman. Herman’s blue eyes met his. Herman nodded. He knew, too.

  Joachim’s line moved toward a convoy of trucks, Herman’s into the darkness. Joachim realized that the yellow triangles were never coming back. He pulled his jacket closer around his thin frame, one hand lingering on the pink triangle. Strains of Wagner drifted through the cold air surrounding both of them.

  * * *

  REBECCA CANTRELL writes the critically acclaimed Hannah Vogel mystery series set in 1930s Berlin, including A Trace of Smoke and A Night of Long Knives. She lives in Hawaii with her husband, son, and too many geckoes to count. For more details, see www.rebeccacantrell.com.

  The Thief

  GREGG HURWITZ

  Momma came into the living room and asked where I got the Power Rangers pencil case and I didn’t say anything. I just scrunched my eyes shut tight and pretended I’d gone away.

  She said, “Tommy, you’re a teenager. You can’t keep stealing stuff from the kindergarten kids. If I call Mrs. Connelly and she says something went missing, you’ll be in big trouble and you’ll skip dinner.”

  The last part about skipping dinner floated in through my scrunched eyes and settled in my stomach and made it hurt. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She sighed and pressed her hands to her curly brown hair. “I can’t trust you, Tommy. And that’s an awful thing.”

  When her mouth got like that it meant I should get out of her way for a while, so I went back to my room and sat on my bed. My dad left after I was born. I don’t have a picture of him in my head. Just the picture on my bookshelf next to my comics. My favorite is Wolverine. No one knows how strong he is inside. He’s got a skeleton made of adamantium. You never see it, really, just bits and parts, except one time he got in this plane crash and he burned down to his skeleton and I didn’t like that at all. He looks like a normal guy, but I like that he’s stronger than he looks, way stronger, beneath his soft skin. I’m fat. Momma says the proper term is “heavy,” but I know what it’s really called from the kids outside Mrs. Connelly’s classroom at school. They aren’t special, those kids, but I’d trade not being fat for not being special.

  I could smell the pot roast from the kitchen and it made my stomach hurt some more thinking about not getting any because of a tin pencil case that you can see your reflection in even if it’s wavery.

  Momma says she can’t trust me when it comes to stealing things. But that’s not true, at least not always. Like I know that she keeps a shoebox full of money in her closet and I’ve never stolen that. And she has this pearl necklace and a CD of Frank Sinatra and I don’t want those either. It’s just some things I have to have. Like the long, shiny shoehorn I took from the Foot Locker. Or glowy green bubble gum people leave on sidewalks. We have a problem with the salt and pepper shakers from Momma’s work, and she searches me before we leave just like the cops do black people on TV. And the cook at the diner just laughs and says, “Let him take ’em,” and she says, “You have no idea what I put up with, Frank.”

  There was a knock at my door and she came in and sat next to me on the bed and I closed my eyes again, tight. She said, “It’s okay. I forgive you.”

  So I said, “Can I keep the Power Rangers pencil case?”

  Momma said, “No.”

  I opened my eyes. I said, “I thought you forgive me.”

  She sighed again and said, “Help me, Jesus.”

  So I said, “Okay. You can give back the pencil case,” because I don’t like when she brings Jesus into it.

  The doorbell rang, and she said, “Oh, that’ll be Janice.”

  Ms. P works with Momma at the diner and they go to movies sometimes and do each other’s hair and drink pink wine out of the skinny glasses. I followed Momma out to the front door. Ms. P said, “Who’s that handsome fellow there?” like she always does even though she knows it’s just me. Ms. P wears pretty magenta lipstick like in the sunset I drew in Mrs. Connelly’s class. I like sunsets.

  I didn’t say anything about not eating pot roast and Momma must’ve forgotten because I took two servings and even had grape juice. I liked the sound of Ms. P’s voice in our kitchen. We don’t have people come over to our house much. Usually, Momma goes out and leaves a TV dinner in the microwave and the numbers already put in so I just have to push the green button. I watched Ms. P’s magenta lips all through dinner. They crinkled and smiled. Magenta is my favorite color.

  After, Momma said, “Why don’t you go read your comic books?”

  And I said, “I don’t read them. I look at the pictures.”

  And Momma said, “Well, whatever, same difference.”

  I never know what she means by “same difference” since the two words don’t really go together and they sort of cancel each other out if you ask me, but no one ever asks me. So I went to my room. But I didn’t really go to my room. I opened and closed my door and then I tippy-toed down the hall again so I could listen to Momma and Ms. P. That wasn’t very nice of me, but I’m home alone most nights so when I can hear other people talking in the house, it’s a treat.

  I hid behind the little half table at the end of the hall. Ms. P’s purse was there, right by my head, and her keys, which had more key chains than keys,
which made no sense.

  Momma kept saying, “It’s so hard, Janice.”

  And Janice kept saying, “I know, honey. I know. But he’s a sweet kid.”

  And Momma said, “I feel so alone,” which made me feel weird because Momma’s not alone, since I live with her.

  Momma said, “Sometimes I just miss grown-up company, you know?”

  And Ms. P said, in a different kind of voice, “I know.” Then she said, “There was that salesman I fixed you up with last year.”

  Momma said, “He was nice and owned a house, unlike the jerks I used to date. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work. He wasn’t enough of a loser to interest me.”

  They laughed about that. Then Ms. P said, “I heard he met someone, moved to Cleveland.”

  “Maybe I blew it,” Momma said. “He was very nice. Plus he wasn’t hard on the eyes.”

  Then Ms. P said something in a low voice and they both laughed.

  My shin itched so I reached to scratch it and I hit the table and Ms. P’s keys jangled and I said, “Oops.”

  Momma said, real pointy-like, “Tommy!”

  And I said, “Uh-oh.”

  And Momma said, “Come out here, Tommy.”

  And I didn’t say anything. I just hugged my knees and squeezed my eyes shut but then I heard some rustling and opened my eyes and Momma was standing right there.

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  She said, “Remember the guest rule when I’m in the living room?”

  And I said, “Oh yeah,” like I’d just remembered it, but I don’t think she believed me.

  As I went down the hall, I heard Ms. P say, “You’re too buttoned up in all this. You deserve something for you. A warm little something on the side.”

  But Momma just gave a giggle and said, “I can barely remember.”

  I went into my room and closed the door, which made me sad because I couldn’t have their voices keep me company, but a closed door was part of the guest rule. So I played for a while and then read Batman until I got to the Joker, who always scares me too much because he smiles all the time but he’s not happy. And someone like that you can’t trust. And that’s an awful thing.