The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

  It sounded like the end of everything. The noise of the explosion seemed to reach them in waves, one after the other. It was terrible. They could feel the fire. The last day would be like this.

  And when they turned to look, the boat at the end of the pier had simply ceased to exist. In its place was an inferno, black and red, shooting out in every direction, mirrored in the black water until it seemed to fill the world, burning their eyes so that they couldn’t bear to look at it.

  “What is it—what HAPPENED?” Esther screamed, burying her face in Christiansen’s chest. All he could do was put his hand on her hair.

  “It’s Mordecai’s Roman candle,” he said.

  26

  Linz, Austria: March 25.1948

  Esther never relinquished the key she had picked up on the beach that night. The next afternoon, in Marseilles, Inar bought her a thin gold chain for it so she could wear it around her neck. She thought perhaps she might wear it the rest of her life.

  They all left together, by sea. Inar had a little boat. He disappeared for a few minutes and then suddenly there it was, at the end of what remained of the pier. They all had to wade out into the water to get aboard—even Jerry Hirsch, who was alive after all but whose left arm was in a cast up to the shoulder—and they got away just as the first sirens were sounding. None of them had been hurt except Inar, who had been shot in the leg. The bullet had gone straight through, so he cleaned out the wound himself. It was a gruesome process and must have been terribly painful, but from the calm deliberation of his manner one might have supposed he was merely oiling a bicycle chain.

  They said their goodbyes in Valencia, early that morning. They would see Jerry again in Munich, but Itzhak and Amos were going home. Inar bought two tickets on the train to France. They stayed in Marseilles for two days, and on the night before they left Inar took her to hear a concert—a string quartet, but they didn’t play anything by Bartók. “You’ll have to get used to this sort of thing,” Inar told her. It made her feel as if they shared a delicious secret. After the performance Inar took her backstage to meet the violist, who turned out to be a friend from a place called “Juilliard.”

  The next day they stopped off in Bern for three hours. Inar left her to wait in the train station, and when he came back he was carrying his cello. He was smiling—it was the first time she had ever seen him really happy, and he was like a different person. It made her believe that the past might really be over.

  They had to wait a day before Jerry showed up at their hotel in Munich, and then Inar hired a car and they drove to Linz. It was evening by the time they arrived, too late for anything except dinner. The expression on Jerry’s face when he bid them goodnight at the door of the restaurant was strained and uncertain, as if he were embarrassed to be seen with them.

  “Why is he like that?” she asked as they walked back to the pension where they had taken a room. It had rained that evening and the sidewalks were still wet. “Why does he act as if he didn’t trust us?”

  “Because he doesn’t. Palestine will be partitioned in three weeks, and that’s all Hirsch can think about. Everyone who isn’t his friend is his enemy—that’s just the way his mind works.”

  “After all this, aren’t you his friend?”

  “No.”

  “But he has what he wants. It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “No. It won’t be over until tomorrow.”

  That night she sat on their bed in her nightdress, her arms wrapped around her knees, listening to Inar play the cello. She felt she could very happily spend the rest of her life just this way, in a tiny room with him, watching the way his strong fingers moved over the strings. She wondered how long it would take for her to learn to recognize all of the music he played, or if there was too much of it for that. Inar said there wasn’t a lot written for the solo cello, but she didn’t think she had ever heard him play the same thing twice. Sometimes he would even play something he had written himself, and then smile and ask her how she liked it. When she didn’t know how to answer he would just laugh.

  Tonight he played Bach, slow and tragic so that she wanted to cry. He could do that, make the music into something almost like a state of soul. He could make her believe he understood everything about her. She loved him so much it was like being in pain.

  And when he came to bed, and ran his hand down her back in a way that made her tremble, it was as if the music were still playing somewhere. It was as if they never would have another tomorrow. She felt helpless against his great strength, and that helplessness itself was a kind of ecstasy. But, no, the past was not over yet.

  In the morning Inar telephoned down for their breakfast. He seemed unwilling to let go of their little moment, almost as if he were afraid it would never come again.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked.

  “Nothing much. We’ll drive you to the Osterreichischer Bankverein, and you’ll go inside and clean out your safe-deposit box. It’s all perfectly legal—they must have your signature on file. Did von Goltz ever ask you to sign anything?”

  “Yes. A little yellow card the night we escaped from Waldenburg. He made a joke about wanting it for his memory book.” Suddenly she felt ashamed, unable to look him in the face. “Inar, do you mind so very much about the General and—the rest of it.”

  “Let’s not worry about what I mind and don’t mind. After today it’ll be as if it never happened.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  There was a knock at the door and a woman wearing an apron over her black dress brought in their tray. Inar had nothing except a cup of coffee, and while he sat in his chair and drank it he talked about his family in New York—it seemed he had an old aunt he liked very much, and cousins—and a place called “Broadway” where he had worked before the war.

  “Could you still work there? I mean, if you went back?”

  “Maybe as a bass player. I could pick up jobs as an arranger, or maybe even take up conducting. I could go into teaching—find a little ivy-covered university and give lessons on the cello and spend the weekends writing quartets. I might even like that. Don’t worry. We wouldn’t starve.”

  It was the first time he had spoken as if he assumed they would always be together. But when he smiled he made it seem like nothing but a wistful dream.

  When they went downstairs Jerry Hirsch was already waiting for them on a bench in the entrance hall. He was looking at a newspaper, which he quickly folded up and put away when he saw them.

  “I was reading the news from home,” he said. “The Syrian foreign minister is making lots of vague threats. I wonder if that means he hasn’t heard about Hagemann yet.”

  “I rather imagine it means he has. He must assume you’re in full production by now.”

  The look that passed between the two men suggested a division so old and so clearly understood by each of them that they hardly even needed to mention it. Their care with each other was a symptom of respect across an unbridgeable divide that had nothing to do with personal feelings. It simply didn’t matter whether they liked each other or not. They could never even pretend to be friends. It always made Esther profoundly uneasy to be around both of them together.

  “The woman who runs this place promised our car would be perfectly safe parked outside overnight. Was it still there when you came in?”

  Hirsch nodded. “This place is a long way from New York, isn’t it.”

  “Yes, it’s a long way. My leg is bothering me a little this morning, so why don’t you drive. Can you manage all right with your arm?”

  “Sure. It can use the exercise.”

  The bank was perhaps two kilometers into the center of the city. Nothing they saw on their drive suggested that Linz had sustained any war damage, but the people, if not actually ragged, were at least shabbily dressed, as they were everywhere in the occupied territories. It was a clear, bright morning, a proof that spring was really upon them. Inar sat with Esther on the rear seat an
d held her hand. He seemed far away.

  When they stopped the car, Inar got out and held the door open for her. He remained standing on the sidewalk, and when she turned around to look for him, just before stepping inside the bank, he smiled and waved in encouragement.

  The clerk who took care of the safe-deposit customers sat on a stool inside a tiny cage. Why this was necessary was unclear, since he didn’t look particularly ferocious and there was nothing in the cage with him except half a dozen registry books and a large metal card file. He was about fifty, thin and pinched. His hair was light brown and carefully combed and his skin seemed a little too large for him. He peered at Esther without smiling, as if unsure what she could possibly want in such a place.

  “Yes?” he said at last. “May I help you?”

  Esther pulled up the chain from underneath the collar of her dress and showed him the key.

  “I have a box here. My name is Fräulein Esther Rosensaft.”

  The clerk took down one of his books and looked something up. It seemed to take him a long time.

  “The number, please?”

  “3454641.”

  “Yes—would you sign this, please?” He pushed a yellow card toward her through the opening in his cage, and Esther wrote her name on it. He checked it against another card in his file. Nothing in his face betrayed whether or not he was pleased they were a match.

  “Yes. Now if you would please give me your key?”

  They went back into the vault together and the clerk took out a key of his own, which he kept tethered to a long silver chain that ran from a loop around one of his suspender buttons into his left-hand trousers pocket, and opened a small metal door from which he extracted a black box, also metal, the approximate size and shape of a kitchen drawer. He handed it to her with all the ceremony of someone ridding himself of a public trust.

  “I expect you would prefer to examine the contents in private?”

  Esther was shown into a room not much larger than a shower stall, where nevertheless there was a desk and a chair. She sat down and the clerk closed the door on her. It was a relief, she discovered, to be alone.

  The box contained nothing except a large manila envelope, strangely bulky. When she opened it she understood why. Inside was a set of papers, perhaps an inch thick and held together between stiff back covers, and a 9-millimeter Luger, standard Wehrmacht issue. There was also a note.

  Dearest Esther,

  If you are reading this you have survived in spite of everything, for which I am thankful. I leave you the pistol in case Hagemann is waiting for you outside, since you will have to kill him or he will certainly kill you. Be sure to disengage the safety catch and then, when first you see him and before your courage has a chance to fail, shoot him. Keep pulling the trigger until the magazine clicks empty. No one would ever think to punish you for ending the life of so wicked a man, so you will be safe. I would have given much to see his face when he sees what you have brought him from this dark vault. Please don’t fail me in this. I have a right to my little joke.

  Ulrich

  Yes, the General would have to have his little joke. In the first few minutes, as she struggled with the impulse to weep, she hardly knew what in her confusion of feeling took the first place. There was fear at the narrowness of her escape, and there was a bitter loathing. Had they all gone through so much for so little? It seemed so.

  No, this she would not show to Inar. They both had enough to forget without this. There was a wastepaper basket under the desk; she tore the note into the smallest pieces she could manage before she threw them in. She would have burned them if she could. She would leave the pistol behind.

  The clerk was waiting for her outside. They put the metal box back into the vault, and the clerk handed her back her key. That was all there was to it.

  Outside, Inar and Jerry Hirsch were both standing on the sidewalk, the sun on their faces. They looked as if neither of them had spoken in several minutes.

  “Is that it?” Jerry asked, not even trying to conceal his eagerness. He held out his hand and, without thinking, Esther gave him the papers. He opened the front cover and began flipping through the pages so that they crackled in the windless air. “I’m no technician, but it sure looks like the real thing. Holy Moses—wait ’til the boys back in Tel Aviv get a load of this!”

  Inar’s face went tight for just an instant and then he glanced at Esther and smiled, opening the door to the rear seat for her. When they were both inside, Jerry came out of his trance enough to walk around the front of the car and get behind the wheel, tossing the papers on the seat beside him.

  It wasn’t until he had started the car that he noticed the revolver in Inar’s hand, the same one he always carried. Esther had grown so used to the sight of it that she hadn’t even noticed he had it with him. The butt was resting on the top of the backrest and it was pointed directly at Jerry’s head.

  “Just drive,” Inar said quietly. His voice sounded tired. He leaned back against his seat, cradling the pistol on his lap. Perhaps as a precaution he reached across and took both of Esther’s hands in his scarred left hand, holding them gently but firmly. He didn’t look at her. “Stay where I can see you and don’t even think about playing the hero. You of all people know what a mess one of these things makes at close range. Let’s go.”

  “Jesus Christ, I should have known.” Jerry turned around to look at Inar, but he kept his hands up on the steering wheel. “Okay, pal, where to?”

  “I’ll let you know along the way. For now, just drive.”

  Jerry put the car into gear and headed slowly out into the traffic.

  What was going on? Esther was afraid even to ask. She searched Inar’s face for an answer, but he had retreated into a stony sullenness that revealed nothing. As he had so often in the past, he wore a mask behind which only his eyes seemed alive. She would have to wait and see, the same as Jerry. She would have to find out why he had ceased to trust her.

  They drove away from the center of the city. Every so often Inar would issue a brief command and they would turn off into another street. The people on the sidewalks paid them no attention. This drama seemed to concern only themselves.

  In ten minutes they were outside of Linz entirely. In fifteen minutes they were in the countryside. Inar directed them to a dirt road that led off into fields covered with yellow stubble.

  “Stop the car,” he said. When the engine was still he let go of Esther’s hands and reached across the backrest to the front seat to take the keys out of the ignition. “We get out here, Jerry. Bring the goods with you.”

  Outside it felt colder than it had in the city. There was even a breath of wind, enough to make Esther bury her hands in the pockets of her coat. She felt a strange excitement. No fear—what did she have to be afraid of, except perhaps that Inar no longer cared for her? Inar was not dangerous, not to her. Inar was not Hagemann.

  And yet the expression on Jerry Hirsch’s face said something quite different. As he stood there at the edge of the dusty little strip of road he was in the presence of his enemy. And he knew all about enemies.

  “Shall I give them to you now, or do you want to wait until after you’ve killed me?” he asked, holding the papers in their stiff black cover under his arm. “Who are we waiting for out here? I can just imagine.”

  There was a small stand of trees some sixty or seventy meters away, where the ground seemed to slope down as if to meet an irrigation canal or perhaps even a river. Inar held up his arm and pointed toward it.

  “Let’s go over there,” he said. “We’ll be out of the wind.”

  “Anything you say, pal. You’re the one with the gun.”

  The fields were hard, crusted mud, broken into patches like the surface of an old oil painting. Jerry stayed in front, and Esther and Inar walked behind. There was nothing to suggest his wounded leg was bothering him.

  Inar held his gun in one hand and Esther’s hand in the other. He was no longer worried about her int
erference, if that was what it had been; he simply held her hand the way any man might have, to let her know that he hadn’t forgotten that she belonged to him. It was the only way she could have known, because he never looked at her.

  They were almost to the trees before she saw the little stream, hardly two meters wide, that seemed to form some sort of natural barrier. The field on the other side was already tractored into neat little furrows, ready for the spring planting.

  “We can stop here,” Inar said. He let go of Esther’s hand and leaned against the thick trunk of a tree that looked ageless. It hadn’t regained its leaves yet and its roots were partially exposed on the side nearest the stream, which added to the impression. For the first time, Inar showed that he was tired.

  Jerry Hirsch stood waiting, tense and expectant. He seemed to be trying to decide who was absent, as if he looked for them to show up at any moment. When his eyes fell on Inar they were filled with resentment.

  “I haven’t sold out, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Inar pushed himself a little away from the tree trunk, as if to draw notice to his independence. “We’re not out here to meet anyone from the Syrian foreign office. This is strictly between you and me.”

  “Really, Christiansen? You amaze me. Then why here? Any business you have with me could have been settled in town over a couple of drinks.”

  “Not any business. They don’t like fires in hotel rooms. You’re going to burn that file.”

  “The hell I am!”

  Inar brought up the muzzle of his revolver and pulled back the hammer with his thumb. It was pointed at a spot just an inch or so below Jerry’s right eye.

  “Jerry, use your head. Why do you suppose I waited for you in Munich? I could have taken care of this three days ago. You’re here as my witness, so your bosses in Tel Aviv can sleep at night and I don’t have to spend the rest of my life waiting for you or someone just like you to show up wanting to know what I did with von Goltz’s recipe book. You’re here so that it can all end today. Burn the file.”