Blood Ties

by Warren Adler

  His name was Alex. It was one of the few names she would remember from those years and he chomped cheap cigars, told dirty stories, laughed a lot, drank constantly from an ever present supply of cheap bourbon which he kept in the trunk of his car. She had acquired a taste for that very American booze by then. He called her "Fraulein," and had contrived a very elaborate amusement to sell his wares, in which she was the centerpiece. There was always a coterie of sleazy male shop-owners along Alex's well-worn trail who would overbuy based on a little extra provision in the sales pitch.

  He would invite them up to his hotel room in ones or twos and let her model the goods in front of the buyers. She had even developed a little routine, some rather clumsy gyrations as she stepped in and out of little panties and brassieres.

  "You like my Fraulein, Ned?" he would squeal, patting her on the rear and cupping her breasts.

  "Not bad," the buyer, already vastly motivated, would reply. Then he would hand him a pile of Hershey bars and refill his glass.

  "Like all Frauleins, she'll do anything for Hershey bars. Won't you, Hun." He would jab the fellow in the ribs. "Get it, Ned? Hun. H-U-N." They would all roar with laughter. She could remember all that with amusement. She liked it. She even liked the Hershey bars. Sometimes Alex would watch her provide the buyer with the extras and she liked that, too.

  "She sure does like to fuck. Don't you, Hun?"

  She would nod to that, smile broadly, and concentrate on her activity. Sometimes there were two buyers at once, and she could handle that deftly with Alex as the cheering section.

  "You're one helluva salesman, Alex," the men would say after the "showing" and they would get down to serious drinking.

  But in Fargo the long hegira came to an end, and they were raided like some common house of prostitution, a charge on which she was actually booked, fingerprinted, and jailed for one night. She could remember the smell and the cockroaches most of all, but inside, in the core of herself, she felt protected by the old myth. Nothing could ever destroy the old hate. Who could ever match what the Baron had done to her?

  She actually met Martin first in the jailhouse. He was a young cop then, pleasant, and shiny as a new penny, and he seemed interested in her. He called her "Miss" when he processed her for release. The underwear salesman had paid her bail, then had disappeared. She never cried over things like that. They had happened too often and were expected.

  But she was stranded in Fargo. She had instructed the bank to send her check along to Butte, which was their final destination, which meant that now, without Alex, she was dead broke with only two dollars to her name.

  There was a coffee shop across the street from the jailhouse and she sipped a number of cups of coffee watching the entrance for Martin to come out. Of course, she suspected her pregnancy by then, although the actual father was of dubious origin. It was the reality of this new child that challenged her sense of survival. She could look back on nearly ten years of rolling tumbleweed. Inside of her still lurked the silly little princess with neither the judgment nor wisdom to come out of the rain. Her courage was leaving her. She was getting older. She was frightened and in Fargo, North Dakota, eons away from the refuge of her old uncle's house.

  When Martin came out, she went to him. She simply opened her net and he fell in. His name was Barber and she was Helen Barber nearly twenty-five years, German-born Helen Barber who had an accent.

  She had decided in Fargo to go into a kind of hibernation, like a bear, to let events elsewhere shape themselves. Time was of little consequence when you had determined your patience in advance. Biding, she called it to herself. Martin was endurable. He was a big man, soft spoken, even polite. If he felt deluded or betrayed, he never mentioned it, accepting Midge's premature seven pound, seven month birth as nature's aberration.

  "My stuff works faster than most," he kidded his buddies who dutifully showed up for the christening. But their wives knew how to count to nine.

  "You sure that's mine?" he would ask looking at the tiny face in the cradle.

  "She is like her father between the eyes and her mother between the thighs." He was susceptible to that kind of humor.

  But "biding," while it sustained her, was not a science. Knowing when to set the time bomb for maximum destruction was quite another matter. From surreptitious correspondence with an old Baden-Baden friend, re-routed to a box number, she kept tabs on the von Kassels. She knew that the Baron was ailing. She knew about the family reunions. She was provided with sketchy details on the progress of her sons. The money continued to be paid through the reliable chain of the international banking system, although inflation had all but destroyed its value.

  Yet, she mused now, watching herself in the mirror, attempting a valiant repair job on the ravages of years, she might never have pursued the final act if Midge hadn't finally thrown her back on the old loneliness. The reality of the last quarter century was that Martin Barber had settled her, warmed her, cared for her, protected her. It was her fantasy that it was all a temporary thing. Actually, it was the most permanent thing in her life. She hadn't expected Martin's sudden death to throw her into morbidity again. He had simply expired one night of a heart attack in his sleep.

  "You're so goddamned depressed. Life goes on. Snap out of it," Midge entreated as she sat, usually in her torn bathrobe, peering vapidly and unseeing into the television set. She still followed certain habits, like treks to the post office box for the now infrequent letters from Baden-Baden. "I am so arthritic, Helga, and this hurts," the messages pleaded. "I don't know how long I can continue." She absorbed what little information there was to impart. Age had dampened curiosity as well.

  So she just sat there in her daughter's living room day and night. Her bed was the couch. Midge's husband was also a cop, like Martin, big, with tatooed arms from Navy days and, by then, they had already had two kids.

  "You're driving us all crazy, Mama." It was Midge's incantation. Then it became a chorus.

  "You got to get her the fuck out of here," Midge's husband would whine. He liked to sit around in his shorts, drinking beer, switching off her programs for the sports as if she didn't exist. She existed, all right. At first, they had been modest, quiet in their remonstrances, sanitizing their bitterness about her behind closed doors. She heard, of course.

  "She's my mother."

  "She's a shit. Get her out of here."

  "I'll talk to her."

  "Talk don't do no good. Blast her loose."

  She heard it, but ignored the warnings, which became both strident and blatant.

  "You can't just sit around, Mama."

  "I'm making plans."

  "You're driving us crazy."

  "I'll be out soon."

  "When?"

  "Soon."

  But the sense of transiency was not the same as when Martin was alive. Finally, Helga was out and wandering again. And the life with Martin had become another temporary episode. She moved eastward. As always, her checks followed. As long as she lived, the Baron had promised. Von Kassels were fanatics about their word. She was no longer attractive and the kindness of male friends was a thing of the past. Following the trail eastward, she meandered in Chicago, then Minneapolis, finally New York. Mostly, she watched television, went to the movies and kept to herself.

  In New York, she lived in a broken down hotel in the forties whose halls stank of urine and whose guests consisted of prostitutes and drifting addicts. Mostly, they left her alone. Occasionally she was taunted as the "nutty" lady. It didn't bother her. She was invisible.

  It was when the letters from Baden-Baden stopped coming that she felt the anxieties begin. She needed this as fuel to sustain her hate, to contemplate a course of action. It was one thing to continually plan, but quite another to act. Act how? And what of proof? All she had was the old Nazi passport and the evidence of her stipend. They would think her mad, a convict with a life sentence who will do anything for freedom. So she lived in the empty puff of her little vacuum
, reading nothing, rarely talking, watching endlessly the little tube of her portable black-and-white television set. And in the hours when the tube was blank she restitched the myth in her mind, like a constantly recreated giant tapestry. She wrote no letters. She received no letters. Occasionally her daughter called, but even that finally came to an end as time went on. Someone, long ago, had lit a fuse and she was simply waiting for it to run its course and explode. It did not lessen her anxiety to think in these terms. Besides, she was not certain that the explosion would mean her death. Hate does not expire like love. She had paid a great price for such wisdom.

  It came, like an unneeded punctuation mark in the middle of a sentence. Actually, she was changing channels and the name von Kassel barked out at her, caught her attention, and she turned the channel selector quickly back to the voice that had said it. There was a picture of the Baron, older now, looking at her through those lusterless eyes that seemed fixed with the final glare of rebuke, the last look she had had of him. A voice was talking about arms sales, referring to mysterious doings, describing vast enterprises vaguely echoing what she had once heard, information passed into the air like smoke, quickly dissipated, then disappeared. But what the voice was saying had less of an impact than the pictures. Her husband, pictured older, a grainy presence in a news film. Then another face, remotely familiar, the shape of the head, the eyes and nose, faintly like Konrad's. And her own lips and chin, a shape that retrieved her former vanity. Her mind was snapping photographs. Albert Kassel, the voice said. Then the picture of her grown son disappeared and, in its place, a huge building in New York, Park Avenue, a familiar skyscraper with mirrored windows, the camera washing swiftly up its sides and pausing near the top, then honing in. From here, the voice said, the brilliant young scion runs a vast enterprise. The information faded as she snapped the window in her lens and her heart pounded as if the fuse had reached that point in her, sparking the palpitation, and renewing the surge of life.

  Old images crowded her mind. Reunion, the announcer said. The old Baron was ailing. Family tradition. A gathering of the family every three years at the Schellenburg castle in Westphalia, built by the Knights of the old Teutonic Order. Now the reunion would be held six months earlier to deal with the realities of succession. She listened, remembered. Was this the signal she had waited for?

  Then the voice passed to other names and she contemplated the photos in her mind, the details of that hated face. The face of her youngest son, now grown, stirred little warmth. Hesitation disappeared. The time bomb had ticked, finally, to the zero hour. Once again, Helga arranged that her money be forwarded to a Frankfurt bank. The value of the stipend, ruined by inflation, had made her penurious, and she had been saving, living frugally. She applied for her passport. When it came she withdrew her entire account, booked a ticket to Germany, packed her meager belongings into a battered suitcase and with barely a look back toward the land of her exile huddled in her bit of paid space on the airliner. Her thoughts absorbed her and the face of the Baron hung in the air in front of her, an apparition, beckoning. It was time at last.

  Helga looked again into the mirror, hanging slightly awry over the battered chest. The glass seemed overlayed by a thousand images, fading one upon another like stacked cards, the last image her own, perhaps a Queen of Spades, the old maid, odd woman out. The face was bruised by time, the once lovely lips melted out of alignment, a red lipsticked gash now. The eyes were ringed with yellow fat, dripping tallow above chickeny skin below. Did they still glow blue? Like a tropical sky, her mother had said.

  She picked up the phone and asked for the Baron's suite. Karla's voice answered, strong, imperious, belying the wizened face she had seen the night before.

  "I must see him now," she said.

  "The parapet," Karla had commanded.

  "Where?"

  "Take the elevator to the top floor. It is a promenade now."

  Even hatred paled beside reality. Perhaps she had made a mistake, she wondered. Who were these people? Was it better, more satisfying, to live with her hate? That, at least, was sustained, comforting.

  Again, she shook off her hesitation, moving quickly to the elevator, pressing the top button. The shaft had been the castle's water tower, and she found herself at the top in a blaze of sunlight. A strong breeze whipped across the stone barrier, once both the vantage and defensive wall of the castle's feudal occupants. Above her, the banner of the Old Order whipped pugnaciously in the wind.

  The barrier was well over her head on the outside wall with arched windows cut into it. The inner wall, which snaked around the interior courtyard, was only waist high. A promenade had been created and boxed flowers lined the way.

  The path was gravelled and she heard Karla's tread before the aged figure turned the corner. She wore a coat and shawl over her head against the cold.

  Helga waited as the old woman came toward her. Karla had always been a pervasive presence, as cold as the castle stone. The old hate, rekindled, restored her courage.

  "Well now, Helga. It was a long way to come," Karla said, unwinded by the walk. It seemed so casual a remark, such as one might speak to a servant.

  "Yes," Helga answered, determined to keep her own eyes fixed on Karla's. But it was not meant to be. Karla had paused briefly for her first words, then moved along the promenade, Helga following abreast. Again she was following them, their lead. An incipient anger began to rise in her. She felt her face flush. But the rush of blood seemed to clear her mind.

  "We are going to meet him?" Helga asked, determined to keep her voice from trembling.

  "He is very frail. He is sleeping."

  "Then we will wake him."

  Karla continued to walk. The sun was rising. The Teutonic banner continued to whip noisily in the wind. When they passed an arched window, the breeze struck sharply.

  "Is it more money, Helga?" Karla asked. The silence had actually been brief in time, but long in suspense. Of course, they would think of that first, Helga thought.

  "There is never enough money," she said cautiously. She was too used to the strategy of survival to close that door.

  "So you came for more?" Karla said, looking straight ahead. They rounded another corner.

  "I'll tell him," Help said.

  "But I can easily take care of the money."

  "Yes. I know." The scenario of confrontation was never clear in her mind. She had expected resistance.

  "Really, Helga. There is no need to disturb him about this. No need at all. You did not have to take such a long journey."

  "I didn't come for money," she said. "Not specifically."

  Karla ignored the qualification.

  "Frankly, Helga, I'm surprised that you haven't come sooner. The sum we fixed thirty years ago seems paltry today. So how much should we arrange for?" She paused now, looking into Helga's face. But Helga had found her full courage. Her own eyes did not waver as she forced herself to stare back, unblinking. Karla's eyes moved first, downward, then she began to walk again. Helga noted the sudden fear with excitement. She felt her nostrils quiver. Is this the smell of blood?

  "I am here for other reasons," she said.

  "Oh. What can they be?" She was taking refuge now in sarcasm, another sign of fear.

  "I will tell him." Helga felt the power of herself, for the first time. She was tempted to tell Karla, but she was determined not to dissipate the effect.

  "Tell him what?" Again Karla had paused. Age had not diminished her arrogance.

  "It is a business between him and me," Helga said sharply now. There was another long pause. Gravel crunched under their feet.

  "Why?" Karla sighed. "It was all so long ago. What does anything matter now? He is fragile, failing. He probably won't live out the year. What is so important that it must be said now? It is nearly over." There was more than the hint of pleading. It is a sham, Helga warned herself, remembering her youth. Karla never pleads, never pleaded.

  "It is not over for me."

 
; "But it has no point. I can handle everything. Why rake over old ashes?"

  "You don't see it, do you?" Helga asked. Of course, she saw it. But they were fencing now. It is a feint, she smirked inwardly, feeling joyful at Karla's discomfort. Finally, Karla stopped, turning again.

  "Go away, Helga. Name your price. Only go away."

  "Not until I see him."

  "It will kill him."

  "What will?"

  Behind the falling mask, Helga saw the fear. Konrad's face superimposed itself suddenly in her mind. He was smiling.

  "There is no need for this, Helga. No need at all. Besides, your sons think you are dead. Think of them."

  "Why?"

  "Perhaps we have abused you, Helga," Karla said, her voice tight. "But you've found a new life, too. At the time it was necessary. You did, after all, betray us."

  "Us?"

  "Him. You betrayed him. But it was the family that was also betrayed. Your sons. Certainly you did not expect to go unpunished."

  "I was punished."

  "We provided for you."

  "We?"

  Karla's eyes flickered, misting lightly, revealing the pain beneath. It warmed her to see it.

  "I will see him and nothing you do or say will stop me."

  "Helga, in the name of God."

  "God?" She felt her smile begin, then broaden. "Since when do the von Kassels believe in God? This is a futile conversation, Karla. Either you let me see him or I will see him myself. I am no longer the stupid little princess that you can toss away with an empty promise. I am here to finish the charade."

  "Charade?"

  "To tell the truth."

  "But what will you say to him?" she persisted. There was no pretense now.

  "Things," she said.

  Karla's face showed the ultimate von Kassel look of contempt. It was an image that had never faded from her mind.

  "The von Kassels are everything," Karla said, the voice angered now, the words delivered between fixed lips. "Think of your sons."

  "You took my sons from me years ago."