Christopher's Ghosts (41 page)

With all his attention concentrated on Stutzer, Christopher had lost track of Yeho. Now he felt a hand on his arm. Yeho said, “Come, we’ll talk for a minute.”

Christopher said, “What about him?”

“He’s yours now, a promise is a promise, but you should know what’s what before you talk to him.”

Yeho was being an uncle to Christopher. His voice, his manner, even
the pressure of his hand suggested affection, trust, a special connection. He seemed to be telling Christopher that whatever resentment he might have felt earlier, whatever cross words may have been spoken, were now forgotten.

Christopher said, “So what is what?”

“Not here,” Yeho said.

“Why not?”

“He has ears.”

“Me too, but I couldn’t hear what you said to him or what he was saying to you when I was six feet away.”

“He was telling his story. Everybody has a story he wants to tell.”

“So they say. But what were you whispering to him? What promises have been made? I don’t want to turn my back and have him disappear.”

Another impertinence. It was too much to bear. Yeho shrugged and threw up his hands. It was too dark to see this, but Christopher sensed the gestures. Yeho sighed heavily. He said, “You’re telling me you don’t trust me?”

“Nothing personal, Yeho. I just want to talk to him.”

“Look who’s talking about personal. So what do you want to do first, listen to me or talk to him?”

“I want to hear what you’ve got to tell me. I don’t want to hear it down here. We can do it on deck.”

“What about him?”

“We’ll take him with us.”

“In the towels?”

“He looks like he could use some fresh air. So can I. Yeho, I don’t want to be in a confined space with him, where I can smell him. Not for another minute.”

Across the room Heidi and the mimes continued to hold Stutzer in the beams of their flashlights. Wrapped in his white towels, his face obscured by the cowl, he looked a hundred times less sinister than he had looked twenty years before as a tailor’s dummy.

In a voice heavy with resignation, Yeho said, “You want to go upstairs, we’ll go upstairs.”

It was a long way up. Heidi led the way at her usual scamper. The mimes
handled Stutzer. In his bare feet and weakened state he had trouble with the ladders and by the time they reached the deck he was badly out of breath. The moon was full again tonight. A torpid sea sparkled in its light. Christopher found the North Star. The ship was moving westward now, but very slowly. The usual stream of shipping flowed by in the distance, lights burning. A mile or two to the north he saw an island and recognized its silhouette—Bornholm, the Danish island he and Rima had almost reached.

They were on the foredeck. On the deck above, officers and seamen were at their stations on the bridge, but the rest of the deck was deserted. Heidi and the mimes tended to Stutzer. After his climb he was wheezing asthmatically.

To Yeho Christopher said, “I don’t think he’s going to overhear us.”

Yeho, unresponsive and glum, waited until Stutzer was a little quieter, then snapped his fingers and made a gesture. The mimes walked Stutzer, who now seemed to be too weak to do anything without assistance, to the bow of the ship and helped him to lower himself to the deck. Rather than sitting he fell to one knee. The others, standing in a semicircle, still wore their black hoods. Stutzer tugged his white cowl into place and bowed his head. They looked like mummers posing for a Lenten procession.

Yeho took Christopher’s arm. “We’ll walk while we talk,” he said, “I’m stiff after all that sitting.”

From the moment Heidi and the mimes put on their hoods Christopher had believed that Yeho was going to let Stutzer live. If he was going to die, why protect their identity? Let him live for what purpose, live where, live how, live why?

Yeho had the Eastern habit of lightly holding hands with a confidant while they talked. Fingertips touching, he and Christopher walked back and forth across the deck. For the first few transits, Yeho seemed to be gathering his thoughts. He kept silent or at least wordless while making small, apparently involuntary noises—clearing his throat, muttering to himself in whatever language he happened to be thinking in at the moment, coughing.

At last he said, “I guess you’ve figured it all out, but I want to be sure you understand what’s happening and why it’s happening.” He looked up brightly into Christopher’s blank face. “Also why it’s for the best.”

Christopher waited for him to go on. Yeho had been speaking German to Stutzer most of the night and he spoke German now. He spoke guardedly, so that Stutzer could not overhear. The wind was rising, so some of his words were blown away.

In English Christopher said, “Can he understand English?”

“I don’t think so,” Yeho said. “Why would he? Did he ever speak English to you or your mother and father or”—he paused—“anyone else you knew?”

“No.”

“So what’s your point?”

“If we speak English you can talk louder and I’ll be able to hear you.”

Christopher steered Yeho to the narrow stairs that led to the bridge deck. They sat down together, Yeho perched two steps above Christopher so that they could look into each other’s eyes.

“What we need now is tea,” Yeho said. He pointed a finger at Heidi. Even in the dimness she picked up the signal and when he made a drinking motion, went inside to fetch what he wanted. As though things could not go on without her, they waited in silence for Heidi to come back. Although Christopher could hear diesel engines idling and smell their exhaust, the
Olaster
was not moving under power, but was being carried along on the current. At last Heidi came back with a tray of steaming tea glasses. Yeho took one and drained it. Christopher handed him his own untouched glass.

Yeho said, “You don’t want it?”

“He doesn’t like it,” Heidi said.

“Is that true?” Yeho asked, amazement in his voice. He said, “To tell you the truth I’ve got a little sore throat, all that talking to the Standartenführer. The tea helps. Why don’t you like it?” He was making small talk. He seemed loath to come to the point.

Christopher said, “To me, sometimes, the tea seems a little too sweet. Yeho, it’ll be morning soon.”

Yeho said, “Okay. I’m going to tell you everything. You can ask questions, but if something is missing it’s because I don’t know what goes in that pigeonhole or I forgot it. Okay?”

“Fine. But please remember that I already know the story of his life.
There’s no need to go over it again.”

“So what interests you?”

“His future.”

“Easy,” Yeho said. “He thinks we’re going to put him back on shore. He’s going to work for us—make that
pretend
to work for us.”

“Why?” Christopher asked.

“He says he hates the communists because they castrated him.”

“You believe him?”

“What is truth? It’s a temptation to let him think we believe him. We could put him in place, let him work for us for a while, then tip off MfS, and bingo he’d be back in the gulag being whipped and starved and worked to death, his worse nightmare.”

“Just how tempted are you, Yeho?”

“What I want to do is try him in open court. But as I already told you, the problem with Stutzer has always been that he cannot be tried for his crimes. When he was a Nazi he killed everybody he ever met in his life except you, even his own men by leading them into a trap. Hubbard is dead, who knows what happened to your mother. You’re the only witness. As far as we know, nobody else who ever saw him lived to tell the tale.”

Christopher said, “So my role as you see it is to identify him in a court of law?”

“We both know that can’t happen,” Yeho replied. “Anyway, what charge would be enough? What sentence? Would hanging or a firing squad or tying him covered with honey to an anthill in Africa be enough?”

Christopher said, “Yeho, stop. If nothing is enough to even the score, tell me, please, what you plan to do with him.”

Yeho said, “I’m going to let you talk to him some more. Then we’ll decide. Right now it’s your turn.” Yeho hissed and when Heidi looked up, pointed a finger first at Christopher, then at Stutzer. To Christopher he said, “Go. Take your time.”

In the bow of the ship, Stutzer was crouching now instead of kneeling. Christopher stood over him. He said, “Stand up.”

Stutzer rose painfully to his feet. Swaying a little, he stood at attention, heels together, back rigid, eyes straight ahead. His posture was a confession that he wished to make a good impression. He was at his
captor’s orders. However, now that the moment for interrogation had come at last, Christopher had no questions for him. He did not care what Stutzer remembered or did not remember or whether he understood that Christopher was who he was.

In loud German Christopher said, “You remember this place?”

Even louder, as though he had a greater right to the German language than this impostor, looking Christopher straight in the eye, Stutzer replied in English, “Everything!” He pronounced the diphthong as if it were the German
z
. His tone was prideful. Yeho was right: this man liked himself. He was proud of his memories.

Christopher had had no intention of doing what he did half a second later, no inkling, even, that he was going to do it. As if someone else were using his body, without forethought, without emotion, Christopher picked Stutzer up and threw him over the side of the ship. Stutzer weighed so little that Christopher half expected that he would drift on the wind like a big insect. Instead he fell like the bag of bones that he was, white towels fluttering away in the night, and made a phosphorescent splash when he hit the water.

No one cried man overboard. A searchlight came on and swept the water. Christopher expected to see nothing. But the circle of bluish light found him and blinded him.

Stutzer was alive, thrashing as if trying to swim the trudgeon. His movements, wild and uncontrolled, resembled the gestures he used to make when having one of his tantrums. If he was screaming, no one could hear him. The thrashing, frantic at first, slowed as the cold took hold of him, and after a few seconds, not longer than that, he sank beneath the surface, creating a dimple in the water that sealed itself almost at once. No one but Christopher had moved or spoken. For several minutes the light stayed on the spot where Stutzer had drowned, but no boat was lowered, no life preserver flung. No effort whatsoever was made to rescue him. At length the searchlight went out. The diesels throbbed, the screw bit into the sea. The
Olaster
shuddered and made way.

Not much had happened. Not much had changed.

Paul, from whom Christopher had not heard in years, said, “My God, how I loved her.”