by Ward Just
Guten Tag, she said.
They met the next day, and the next. He did not ask her any more questions. They talked of neutral things, or rather he did. He explained that he was a student, in Europe to study. He was studying politics and social change at the Sorbonne, he said. But his studies were not demanding and he had free time, except most evenings he went to lectures, at the university and elsewhere. He did not have many friends in Paris so he went to the lectures faute de mieux. The lecturers were stupid but he went anyway: French logicians, he said, jacking off. He had used the American expression and when she looked at him, wrinkling her nose, obviously puzzled, he had explained in street German. She blushed, then laughed, imagining French logicians masturbating on a well-lit stage in a drafty lecture hall at the Sorbonne. Her laugh delighted him, and he elaborated. Sometimes they masturbated each other, but mostly it was just themselves, each to his own, one on one. A complicated masturbation, he said, the lecturers looked like circus contortionists, and of course they continued long after orgasm. It was a measure of their ingenuity and endurance, and mastery of the theoretical material. That was the point of it, to wring every last drop of semen from their exhausted testicles, beating themselves up in the process and, it went without saying, seducing the audience.
She laughed and laughed.
He went on: The audience. A hundred students, mostly French with some English and Germans, and little bands of publicized nationalities with grievances. Vietnamese and Chinese at the rear of the hall, separated by a wide aisle, declining to recognize each other. Dutch, South Africans, Egyptians, Cubans, Palestinians, Portuguese, Basques. Half a dozen Americans, four black, two white. Five women, one man. The Portuguese were interesting, always making careful notes, rarely speaking. They were a dark, wet people, superbly sullen. He had attempted to strike up conversations with the Portuguese, but it was impossible. CIA. They thought I was CIA, he said. It was also difficult to speak to the Dutch and to the Palestinians, and to the American women; they all thought he was CIA. He got on well with the lecturers, however. The lecturers spoke of “objective conditions.” So many stations of the cross, or points on the compass. They had a childlike faith in “objective conditions,” social, economic, political, sexual.
They know nothing, he said.
Then: Do you want to know how little they know? I’ll show you.
He disappeared into a wine shop and emerged with a parcel. They continued to walk, near the Louvre now. The great formal garden spread out before them. He put his arm around her, nuzzling her neck as if they were lovers. She did not object, understanding that this was part of his demonstration of how little people knew. Still, she liked his arm around her, and the way he smelled, and his soft talk. She knew he would protect her, though the garden was peaceful. It was dusk and strollers were about. Lights winked on. They fell into step behind a middle-aged American couple. The woman’s voice was high and hectoring; it was a complaint about money, he said. He translated for her, muttering into her ear as a lover would. They had been cheated in a restaurant, the god damned French, thieves. The man walked slowly, using a cane. They were well-dressed Americans, obviously prosperous; no doubt on their way to the Crillon or the Ritz for a cocktail. Walking very slowly now, the man indicated a bench; he wanted to rest. He guided her to the same bench. The prosperous Americans sat at one end of the bench, they at the other. He kissed her, lightly on the mouth, and spoke a few words of German. The American woman nudged her husband. He said, You are very beautiful.
After a moment, he rose and took her by the hand and they walked back the way they had come, to the Louvre. He did not pause to nuzzle or kiss her. He was walking quickly and when they had gone a few hundred feet he stopped, and they turned around. The American couple were still sitting. While they watched, the man struggled to his feet and they moved off together, in the direction of the Place de la Concorde. The woman was still complaining.
He said, See how easy it is.
They walked back to the bench, where he retrieved his parcel, a bottle of Beaujolais.
If it had been a bomb, he said, “Boom.”
Oh, she said.
Objective conditions, he said.
Boom, she said.
He said, They are representatives of the American race. The objective conditions of the American race, though premature. He said they reminded him of his grandparents, the grandfather who drank too much and the grandmother who was never silent. She was a handsome athletic woman who never shut up. She believed she was being cheated always; the proles were out to get her. An ignorant woman married to a drunk, both of them with money to burn. But they didn’t burn it, they drank it up, or bought furs, or a swimming pool for the back yard, and club memberships, and congressmen. But they could not buy security, the house in Lake Forest was double- and triple-locked; it had dogs, a costly security system, and live-in servants, and still they were frightened. For good reason. They talked of the way things used to be, and would never be again.
She said nothing, looking at him with curiosity. He had spoken rapidly in German and although she had listened carefully, she had not understood it all. Yet it thrilled her, hearing about his grandparents; she thought she knew him better now. She looked at him and saw not just him but others, forebears; an American world, people with money to burn, a grandmother who never shut up and a grandfather who drank. She wondered whether these were his mother’s or his father’s parents. Now she took his arm, leaning into him. The American couple were almost out of sight.
He said, My father’s father, my other grandfather, one tough mensch. He’s dead now, cancer. He knew when to fight and when not to fight. A worthy adversary, not like the other one. He lived in America but his heart was in central Europe. He never really left central Europe. He liked listening more than talking, knew that things were different, and wanted to know how, and what. He already knew why.
She nodded.
He said, We shall see.
She said, What?
He said, Would you like to go to a party? Meet some friends. Exciting people. No French or English. No Americans. No lecturers.
She did not understand. She thought he had no friends.
They are not from the university, he said. These are other friends.
She said, I have to be home.
He said, All right. I’ll walk you home.
She nodded, surprising herself; but things were different now. He had told her about his grandparents, and their life in America. It gave her a feeling of security; there was a background to things. She took his hand. He did not know where she lived, and had never seen her apartment. It was not a long walk and along the way they stopped at half a dozen places—fountains, statues, a bench, a trash barrel—to plant the bottle of Beaujolais, loitering nearby for a minute or two. And always, when they returned, it was there in its inconspicuous brown wrapper. No one paid any attention to them or to it. It was just litter.
She said, “Boom,” and laughed.
They walked slowly hand in hand. She lived in a shallow cul-de-sac off the rue de Sevres. He expressed delight, so near St. Germain. He opened the front door and she checked the mailbox in the courtyard, rooting around amongst the letters and magazines. And that was how he came to discover that she was the journalist Max Mueller’s daughter—or mistress, or ward. He had not known that Mueller was married, and it would be unlike him to have a young mistress. Max Mueller was puritanical, conventional in his personal habits, no man to draw attention to himself. At any event, that was his reputation, and now there was his name on the doorbell, and on one of the letters that she held in her hand.
He said, You are going to have to tell me your name.
Gert, she said.
He said, I am Wolfgang. Wolf.
She looked at him in an odd way, unable to express what was in her mind. She was unable to form the words, but as so often happened, he guessed her question, the hope being father to the thought.
He said, I meant what I said
. You are very beautiful.
She smiled shyly, pleased.
He said, I am going away tomorrow, but I will be back in a week. It is nothing much, just a little business. Perhaps we can meet again when I return, and go to a film. She nodded agreement. And have a bit to eat after the film? Yes, she said.
He asked, Do you like me?
She replied, Yes.
He said, Why are you afraid of your father?
And standing in the courtyard, night coming on, she did not know what to say, how to reply. She looked up at him, so tall, his face solemn in the darkness, waiting. She felt as if she had known him all her life. Her thoughts seemed to crash into one another, like bumper cars at the amusement park, wheeling and butting and random. But she could neither sort out these thoughts, nor arrange them in sequence. Her own history, she knew, was a stubborn violent muddle, never continuous; she was always at the edge. But while she knew it, she could not say it. She could not give voice to her deepest self.
He smiled at her.
Dead men on furlough.
What did he say?
But she knew very well. It was Lenin’s phrase. Where had he heard it? Lenin’s words echoed without warning from another region of her mind, suddenly loose like animals in a cage. She willed herself to stay still, and say nothing more. It was an expression of her mother’s; Lenin’s description of old Bolsheviks, exhausted by overwork, and the years of violence, poverty, conspiracy, and fear. Nothing could surprise them, and their emotions were wrung dry; yet they labored on in cold devotion, believing neither in God nor in man but in fate. That was now her mother saw her father, in her fear and hatred. The first time she said it, he slapped her. The second time, he beat her. She was forced to watch the beating, her father’s arm swinging steadily as a metronome. She remembered he used only one hand, hold her, Gert, close to him with the other. She could smell the heat of his body, and feel his muscles move. He held her head so that she had to watch. He was hitting her mother with his closed fist. Terrified, her mother never moved from the chair.
2
THEY WAITED, mother and daughter, for the times when he would leave. “On business,” he said, as if he were a bourgeois on a commercial journey to Leipzig or Prague. They stayed apart from the others in the house; at night her mother wept. Then one day she left the house earlier than usual and did not return that evening; there was no explanation. Her father was away also, but was due back soon. She remembered the others whispering, a dense sibilance in the little house; she thought of it as the hissing of snakes. Later—a week, a month, perhaps longer—she was taken by one of the men to the nearest city. En route, they stopped so that the man could relieve himself. It was an autumn day, when mist covered the hillside. She ran, but he caught her. Her dress was torn and she was bloody. She knew he was close behind her, in pursuit. She saw his shadow. She stumbled and crashed down the hillside, rolling over and over; she fell a long way. She remembered her fists bouncing against the earth, and the mist overhead, and her own strangled cries as she came to rest in a shallow gully, his arms around her. But to her dismay that was all she remembered, her eyes squeezed shut, deafened by the fall, hurting everywhere.
In the city they lived in a small apartment. She never knew its name, it was a drab apartment in a gray industrial city somewhere in the east. The man never left the apartment except to buy food and newspapers; and then he locked her in. He did not touch her again, but looked at her as if he wanted to, or to explain something; but he never did, and she always turned away, stunned and silent. She did not speak, pretending that she heard nothing, understood nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing. When one morning she discovered that she had begun to menstruate, she said nothing about that, either; she recalled a conversation with her mother, about an episode each month. It was normal, a natural, physical thing. Blood was evidence of life. She knew she must remain absolutely silent about her episodes, because while they were normal they were also private; they were hers, not his. She forced all sensations, all knowledge, inside. After a while, she did not have to pretend. There seemed to be several worlds that she could enter at will. Part of the time she was in one world, part of the time in another. When she was asleep there was a third, the most vivid and consoling, a world of primary colors in violent combat, and her resolute mother nearby—an exhilarating and vivifying solidarity between them. She replaced the mother she remembered, conjuring up this: a muscular, strong-minded, determined woman, very like the heroic stone figure in the little square outside her window. She looked at it every day.
One afternoon she heard the man talking. He had a visitor. She put her ear to the keyhole, being careful to make no sound. It was Max this and Max that. They spoke in an undertone, a mixture of German and another language. The visitor was a haughty figure who never removed his hat. He did most of the talking. She understood him to say that her father was arriving soon, perhaps tomorrow. She did not know how long he had been gone, but it seemed a very long time. He had gone away suddenly, destination unknown, and now he was returning. So he had not forgotten her after all. She listened patiently to the two men talk, smiling when the haughty visitor raised his voice, silencing the other one. She heard her own name, but could not discern the context. She did not like it, hearing her own name. Then, after a final whispered instruction, the visitor went away. There was something strange in his voice, a sinister undertone, something unsaid. She turned quickly to her bed.
She did not sleep that night, terrified of what might befall her. She knew her father would punish her for what she had done, and what had been done to her. He would beat her as he had beaten her mother. She would have to sit quietly in the chair as her mother had done, accepting blow after blow to her face. She lay in bed thinking and when the idea came into her mind, she was not surprised; it had been there all along, an idea as obvious as left and right or north and south. She slipped out of bed and walked into the living room. She could hear the man snoring on the couch. It was a warm night and he was nude, his back to her. She stepped quickly to the closet and reached into his leather jacket, where she knew he kept his revolver. She had seen him cleaning it. She believed that if she killed the man who had taken her from her home, she would be absolved from her father’s anger. What he had done to her would die with him; killing him, she would kill the deed as well. She would take revenge herself; no one else would have to. So she took the revolver from the man’s jacket and walked to the couch and shot him in the right temple, just above his ear. She was surprised, the gun made no sound. He groaned once and turned his head. He looked at her, his eyes wide with surprise. There was just the smallest hole above his right ear, and almost no blood at all. She watched his eyes glaze and his eyelids flutter. He moved his hands over his chest as if he were an orchestra conductor; then they fell down, covering his sex. At the last moment, perhaps he had been embarrassed. He groaned again and collapsed, settling into the couch. All the tension went out of him. She stood looking at him, smiling; then she began to laugh. There was something comical about him now, modestly covering himself in the presence of a young woman; a dead man absurdly concerned with his sex. She leaned forward, staring at him in the steely moonlight; his face was a ghastly slate gray, scarcely recognizable. In some ways this one had seemed puritanical, he had a peasant’s rough morals; but he had been corrupted, and his last conscious thought was shame. Or mortification. Or perhaps it was only a dying man’s reflex.
She moved back a step, into the shadows, wrinkling her nose at the smell of gunpowder, and shit. From the shadows his silhouette was indistinct, a smudge in the darkness. She still had the weapon in her hand, the thing heavy, hard to hold, but lethal; it was slick with oil. How quickly life left him, no time to say good-bye, or anything at all. No time to make peace. No time to protest. He’d looked at her with the most open surprise: one minute alive, the next dead. He knew it, too. He’d looked down the gun barrel, and had not moved. It was so easy, it was the easiest thing she had ever done. And she was the
only witness, her word would be potent. She had to think now of her explanation, for surely the authorities would be notified. The explanation could not be personal, and it must be true. All her life she had lived in a political world, even if she knew little of theory or practice or dialectic; she knew that some acts were correct and some not. She could not tell a lie, and did not want to; that was for others. She was moving back and forth among her various worlds, stepping out of the shadows, staring at the dead man’s silhouette. The truth was, the fact of it was, that he had killed himself. His morbid world killed him, he had reaped what he had sown. He was a suicide from the moment by the side of the road when he had reached for her, his fingernails tearing her skin, his decadent laughter filling the air. And she had been obliged to run. There were many millions of people in the world, and he was but one; he had had the bad luck to want to interfere with her. It could have been anyone else, but it was him; he was nothing special, or different. He was not disciplined, though. He had made his own appointment with death, had arranged for it as surely as any of the savage martyrs. And when the time came, his life was taken from him; it was not important who pulled the trigger. That was a detail, one word in a long-running sentence. Truly, he had set the events in motion himself, by his behavior; as had her father when he went away and did not return; as had her mother when she went away without explanation. When things went out of control, when there was no discipline, when there was no reliable history, there was no reliable future. It was left to her to guarantee the future. Someone had to act, and all acts had consequences. History was indifferent, but it must be served. History had no scruples.
She bent over the dead man, hesitating while she thought. Her thoughts were not coherent, nor consecutive. She knew she had authored a unique event, something particular, and now she had to shroud it in mystery to conform to history’s laws. History was anonymous, and inscrutable; though not to her. She knew she could read the time. She had the capacity to intervene; she had the will. She turned the dead man’s right hand palm up and fitted the revolver into it. His fingers were supple, as if made of putty. She lifted the heavy hand and let it fall, and it dropped on his stomach, the revolver barrel making a little red mark, a scratch. She stepped back, smiling, scrutinizing what she had done. He did not look peaceful, this dead man. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, and the look of surprise had been replaced by a look of profound malevolence. With her forefinger she pushed his upper lip over his teeth, but the moment she released her pressure the lip crawled up again. But his expression had changed. Now it was almost benign; it was a kind of benign contempt. Fine, she thought, appropriate to the circumstances. She craned her neck to look out the window into the moonlit square, and the female carved in stone, a muscular woman holding a banner. Then she walked into the kitchen and washed her hands. She drank a glass of milk, and then she went to bed.
