The Innocent

by Ian Mcewan

  She said, “He’s knocked down your shelf. He must have fallen onto it.”

  “He did it deliberately,” Leonard said. “He knows I put it up.”

  Maria shook her head. He did not see why she should be defending him.

  She said, “He’s drunk.”

  The door opened and Otto was before them again. Maria retreated to her chair by the pile of shoes, but she did not sit. Otto had doused his face and had only partially dried himself. Lank, dripping hair hung over his forehead, and a droplet had formed at the end of his nose. He wiped it with the back of his hand. Perhaps it was mucus. He was looking toward the ashtray, but Leonard blocked his way.

  Leonard had folded his arms and set his feet well apart. The destruction of his shelf had got to him, it had set him calculating. Otto was six inches or so shorter and perhaps forty pounds lighter. He was either drunk or hung over, and he was in bad physical shape. He was narrow and small. Against that, Leonard would have to keep his glasses on and was not used to fighting. But he was angry, incensed. That was something he had over Otto.

  “Get out now,” Leonard said, “or I’ll throw you out.”

  From behind him Maria said, “He doesn’t speak English.” Then she translated what Leonard had said. The threat did not register on Otto’s pasty face. The gash in his lip was oozing blood. He probed it with his tongue and at the same time reached into first one and then another of his jacket pockets. He brought out a folded brown envelope, which he held up.

  He spoke around Leonard to Maria. His voice was deep for such a small frame. “I’ve got it. I’ve got the something from the office of something-something” was all Leonard could make out.

  Maria said nothing. There was a quality, a thickness to her silence that made Leonard want to turn around. But he did not want to let the German through. Otto had already taken a step forward. He was grinning, and some muscular asymmetry was pulling his thin nose to one side.

  At last Maria said, “Es ist mir egal, was es ist.” I don’t care what you’ve got.

  Otto’s grin widened. He opened the envelope and unfolded a single sheet that had seen much handling. “They have our letter of 1951. They found it. And our something, signed by both of us. You and me.”

  “That’s all in the past,” Maria said. “You can forget about that.” But her voice wavered.

  Otto laughed. His tongue was orange from the blood he had licked.

  Without turning around, Leonard said, “Maria, what’s going on?”

  “He thinks he has a right to this apartment. We applied for it when we were still married. He’s been trying this one for two years now.”

  Suddenly, to Leonard, it seemed a solution. Otto could take this place, and they would live together in Platanenallee, where he could never find them. They would be married soon, they did not need two places. They would never see Otto again. Perfect.

  But Maria, as if reading his thoughts, or warning him off them, was spitting out her words. “He has his own place, he has a room. He only does this to make trouble. He still thinks he owns me, that’s what it is.”

  Otto was listening patiently. His eyes were on the ashtray, he was waiting for his chance.

  “This is my place,” Maria was saying to Otto. “It’s mine! That’s the end of it. Now get out!”

  They could be packed up in three hours, Leonard thought. Maria’s stuff would fit into two taxis. They could be safe in his apartment before dawn. However tired, they might still resume their celebration, in triumph.

  Otto flicked the letter with his fingernail. “Read it. See for yourself.” He took another half-step forward. Leonard squared up to him. But perhaps Maria should read it.

  Maria said, “You haven’t told them we’re divorced. That’s why they think you have a right.”

  Otto was gleeful. “But they do know. They do. We have to appear together before a something-something, to see who has the greater need.” Now he glanced at Leonard, then round him to Maria again. “The Englishman has a place, and you have a ring. The something-something will want to know about that.”

  “He’s moving in here,” Maria said. “So that’s the end of the matter.”

  This time Otto held Leonard’s gaze. The German was becoming stronger, less the derelict and drunk, more the operator now. He thought he was winning. He spoke through a smile. “Ne, ne. Die Platanenallee 26 wäre besser für euch.”

  It was as Blake had said. Berlin was a small town, a village.

  Maria shouted something. It was certainly an insult, an effective one. The smile went from Otto’s face. He shouted back. Leonard was in the crossfire of a marital row, an old war. In the volleys he caught only verbs, piling at the ends of staccato sentences like spent ammunition, and the traces of some obscenities he had learned, but inflected into new, more violent shapes. They were shouting at the same time. Maria was ferocious, she was a fighting cat, a tiger. He had never guessed she could be so passionate, and he felt momentary shame that he himself had never aroused her this way. Otto was straining forward. Leonard put his hand out to hold him back. The German hardly noticed the contact, and Leonard did not like what he felt. The chest was hard and heavy to the touch, like a sandbag. The man’s words came vibrating up Leonard’s arm. Otto’s letter had put Maria on the defensive, but whatever she was saying now was striking home. You never could, you didn’t have, you aren’t capable … She was going for the weaknesses, the drink perhaps, or sex, or money, and he was shaking, he was shouting. His lip was bleeding more. His saliva spotted Leonard’s face. He was pushing forward again. Leonard caught his upper arm. It was hard too, impossible to deflect from its movements.

  Then Maria said something intolerable, and Otto tore from Leonard’s grip and went for her, straight for her throat, cutting off her words and any possible sound. His free hand was raised, the fist was clenched. Leonard caught it in both hands just as it began the trajectory to Maria’s face. The lock on her windpipe was tight, her tongue was forced out, purplish-black, her eyes were big and beyond pleading. The blow still carried Leonard forward, but he pulled down on Otto’s arm, swung it up and round his back, against the joint, where it should have cracked. Otto was forced to turn to his right, and as Leonard firmed his two-handed grip on the man’s wrist and pushed the arm higher up the spine, Otto let Maria go and spun to free his arm and face his attacker. Leonard released him and took a step back.

  Now his expectations were fulfilled. This was the thing he had dreaded. He stood to be seriously hurt, disabled forever. If the front door had been open, he might have made a run for it. Otto was little, and strong and vicious beyond belief. All his hatred and anger were on the Englishman now, everything that should have been Maria’s. Leonard pushed his glasses up his nose. He did not dare remove them. He had to see what was about to happen to him. He put his fists up, the way he had seen boxers do it. Otto had his hands by his side, like a cowboy ready to draw. His drunk’s eyes were red. What he did was simple. He drew back his right foot and kicked the Englishman’s shin. Leonard dropped his guard. Otto punched out, straight for his Adam’s apple. Leonard managed to turn aside, and the blow caught him on the collarbone. It hurt, it really hurt, beyond reason. It could be broken. It would be his spine next. He raised his hands, palms outward. He wanted to say something, he wanted Maria to say something. He could see her over Otto’s shoulder, standing by the pile of shoes. They could live in Platanenallee. It would be all right with her, if she would only think it through. Otto hit him again, hard—very hard—on the ear. There was a ringing sound, an electric bell sound from every corner of the room. It was so venomous, so … unfair. This was Leonard’s last thought before they went into the clinch. They had their arms around each other. Should he pull the tight, hard, disgusting little body in closer, or push it away where it might hit him again? He felt the disadvantage of his height. Otto was right into him, and suddenly he understood why. Hands were groping between his legs, and finding his testicles and closing around them. The grip that
had been around Maria’s throat. Burnt ocher blossomed in his vision, and there was a scream. Pain was not a big enough word. It was his whole consciousness in a terrible corkscrewed reverse. He would do anything, give anything, to be free, or dead. He folded over, and his head came level with Otto’s, his cheek grazed his, and he turned and opened his mouth and bit deep into Otto’s face. It was not a fighting maneuver, it was the agony that clenched his jaw until his teeth met and his mouth was filled. There was a roar that could not have been his own. The pain was diminished. Otto was struggling to be away. He let him go and spat out something of the consistency of a half-eaten orange. He did not taste a thing. Otto was howling. Through his cheek you could see a yellow molar. And blood, who would have thought there was so much blood in a face? Otto was coming again. Leonard knew there would be no escape now. Otto was coming with his bleeding face, and there was something else too, something coming from behind, black and high up on the periphery of vision. To protect himself from this as well, Leonard stretched up his right hand, and time slowed as his fingers closed around something cold. He could not sway it from its course, he could only take hold and participate, let it carry on down, and down it came, all force and iron, the sign of the kicking feet, down it dropped like justice, with his hand on it, and Maria’s hand, the full weight of a judgment, the iron foot crashed down on Otto’s skull, and pierced the bone toe-first and went deeper still and dropped him to the floor. He went down without a sound, face forward and he was stretched full out.

  The cobbler’s last still protruded from his head, and the whole city was quiet.

  Seventeen

  After their engagement party, the young couple stayed up all night and talked. This was how he was trying to see it two hours after dawn, as he waited in line with the rush-hour crowd for his bus out to Rudow. He needed a sequence, a story. He needed order. One thing after another. He boarded the bus and found a seat. His lips were forming the words as he carried through the actions. He found a seat and sat down. After the fight, he brushed his teeth for ten minutes. Then they put a blanket over the body. Or was it, they covered the body with a blanket, and then he went in the bathroom and brushed his teeth for ten minutes. Or twenty. His toothbrush was on the floor, among the broken glass, under the shelf that had crashed down. The toothpaste had fallen in the basin. The drunk knocked down the shelf and the toothpaste fell in the basin. The toothpaste knew it would be needed, the toothbrush didn’t. The toothpaste was in charge, the toothpaste was the brains …

  They did not, could not, remove the last. It stuck up under the blanket. Maria laughed. It was still there now. They covered up the last, and it was still there. The quick and the last. The quick found a seat, the last had to stand. As they moved along Hasenheide the bus filled. There was standing room only. Then the driver called down to the pavement that there was no more room at all. That was comforting somehow; no one else could get on. For the moment they were safe. As they dropped southward, against the rush-hour flow, the bus began to empty. By the time they reached Rudow village, there was only Leonard, exposed among the lines of seats.

  He began the familiar walk. There was more building going on than he remembered. He had not been this way since yesterday. Yesterday morning, before he was engaged. They took a blanket off the bed and spread it over. It was not respect, why had he ever thought it had to do with respect? They had to protect themselves from the sight of it. They had to be able to think. He was going to pull the last out. Perhaps that was respect. Or concealment. He knelt down and took hold. It moved under his touch, like a stick in thick mud. That was why he could not pull it out. Was he going to have to wipe it off, rinse it under the bathroom tap?

  They tried to cover up the lot, and it looked silly, a worn-out shoe at one end, at the other the mystery shape looming up, pinching all the blanket that should have been the shoe’s. Maria started laughing, horrible fall-about laughing, full of fear. He could have joined in. She did not try to meet his eye, the way laughing people do. She was alone with it. She was not trying to stop, either. If she had stopped she would have started crying. He could have joined in, but he did not dare. Things could get out of hand. In films, when women laughed like that you were supposed to slap them hard round the face. Then they were silent as they grasped the truth, then they started crying and you comforted them. But he was too tired. She might complain or tell him off or hit him back. Anything might happen.

  It already had. Before or after the blanket, he did his teeth. The toothbrush was not enough; as a tool it was insufficient. When he asked her, she fetched him the toothpicks. That was what he had to use to remove what was trapped between an incisor and a canine. He was not sick. He thought of Tottenham and Sunday lunch and his father and himself with the toothpicks, before pudding. His mother never used them. Somehow women did not. He did not swallow the morsel and add to his crimes. Now, every little thing was a plus. He washed it away under the tap and hardly saw it, just a glimpse of something shredded and palest pink, and then he spat and spat again and rinsed his mouth.

  And then they had a drink. Or he had already had one to help him lift the last. The wine was gone, the good Mosel was in the skirt. There was nothing but the Naafi gin. No ice, no lemon, no tonic. He took it into the bedroom. She was hanging up the clothes. Not pissed on—there was another plus.

  She said, Where’s mine? So he gave her his and went back for another. He was by the table pouring it, trying not to look, when he looked. It had moved. There were two shoes now, and a black sock. They had not turned it over, they had not actually checked to see if it was dead. He watched the blanket for a sign of breathing. It had started with the breathing. Was there a tremor, a little rise and fall? Would it be worse if there were? Then they would have to call an ambulance, before they’d had a chance to talk, to sort out the story. Or they would have to kill him again. He watched the blanket, and watching it made it move.

  He took his drink into the bedroom and told her. She would not come and look. She was not having it. She had her mind made up. It was dead. The clothes were all hung up and she shut the wardrobe door. She went next door to find the cigarettes, but he knew she had gone to look. She came back and said she could not find them. They sat on the bed and drank their drinks.

  When he sat down, his testicles hurt. And his ear, and his collarbone. Someone ought to look after him. But they had to talk, and to talk they had to think. To do that they needed a drink and a sit-down, and that hurt, and so did his ear. He had to get out of these too fast, too tight circles. So he drank the gin. He looked at her as she looked at the ground in front of her feet. She was beautiful, he knew that, but he could not feel it. Her beauty did not affect him the way he wanted it to. He wanted to be moved by her, and for her to remember how she felt about him. Then they could face this together, and decide what it was they were going to tell the police. But looking at her, he did not feel a thing. He touched her arm and she did not look up.

  They had to get together so they could be sure they were believed. The police might think she was beautiful, they might even feel it. He only knew it for a fact. If they felt it, they might understand, and that might be the way through. It was self-defense, she would tell them, and that would be all right.

  He took his hand off her arm and said, What are we going to tell the police? She did not speak, she did not even look up. Perhaps he had not spoken. He had meant to, but he had not heard anything himself. He could not remember.

  He was walking past the refugee shacks. It hurt to walk. His collarbone only hurt when he lifted his arm, his ear when he touched it, but his testicles hurt when he sat down and when he walked. When he was out of sight of the shacks, he would stand still. He saw a kid with ginger hair, a carrot-top. He had short trousers and scabby knees. He looked like a little bruiser. He looked like an English kid. Leonard had seen him often enough before on his way to work. In all this time they had never spoken or even waved. They just stared, as if they had known each other in a previous life
. Today, to bring himself luck, Leonard raised his hand in greeting and half smiled. It hurt when he raised his hand. The kid would not have cared if he had known that, he just stared. The grown-up had broken the rules.

  He walked on around the corner and stopped to lean against a tree. Across the road they were building an apartment house. Soon this would not be countryside any longer. The people who lived here would not know what it had once looked like. He would come back and tell them. It never did look very good here, he would say. So it’s all right. Everything is all right. Except the thoughts, on and on.

  There was nothing he could do. He touched her arm again, or it was the first time. He asked his question again, or he asked it for the first time and took care that the words were actually spoken.

  I know, she said, meaning I share your question, I share your worry. Or perhaps You’ve asked me this already, and I heard you. Or perhaps I answered you just now.

  To keep things going he said, It was self-defense, it was self-defense.

  She sighed. Then she said, They know him.

  Yes, he said. So they’ll understand.

  She said in a rush, They liked him, they thought he was a war hero, he told them some kind of story. They thought he was a drunk because of the war. He was a drunk who had to be forgiven. The off-duty ones sometimes bought him a beer. And they thought he was also a drunk because of me. They told me that when I asked them round here once. I wanted protection, and they said, But you’re driving the poor devil crazy.