Pavel & I (2 page)

‘Thank Christ it was a midget. Just imagine he was fully grown. Doing an ax job out in an alley.

‘It doesn't bear thinking about.'

That was his story anyway, Boyd White's, the night he killed the midget, packed him away in a suitcase, and carried him up four floors to Pavel's two-bedroom in a quiet part of Charlottenburg. Boyd was California-born, a crook and grifter by vocation, a hard man grown fat in a city of starvation. For the most part he spoke like a second-rate stooge from a Chandler novel, though he had his moments of eloquence, too, like the present one in which he conjured up cats' tails taking aim at the winter moon.

You have to wonder about those cats, though, emaciated to be sure – how did they ever survive? It was the winter of '46, winter of death, people freezing while taking craps in the outhouse, you heard the spiel. Most cats in the city had long been eaten, their fur turned into gloves and collars, the black market awash with viola strings. Berlin that winter was dog-eat-dog and worse, and that night its vengeful gods had thrown a wrench into Boyd's spokes, if you will pardon my metaphors, and here he came running to the one friend he had left in the city, ran up four floors and barged through the door without so much as a knock, the middle of the night and a dead midget in his fist.

What the hell was he thinking?

When the door had opened and Boyd'd come in, Pavel had been down on his knees again, straining before the chamber pot. It had
taken him a moment or two to collect himself, struggle up against his kidneys' weight. Then he had stood and studied the bulk of the trunk pulling at Boyd's arm, the crease of worry that ran through the man's face; had taken in the patch of wet that had collected in one of the suitcase's brass-encrusted corners, threatening to drip.

‘What's in the suitcase?' he'd asked, stiff fingers struggling to button his fly.

‘You have a look,' Boyd had grunted, letting go of the trunk and shuffling over to the bed to sit down. He'd lit a cigarette, silver Zippo lighter, had inhaled. ‘It's not as bad as it looks.'

It certainly didn't look good. The midget was four foot one, maybe four two, Boyd had had to bend him to make him fit. Not that he wasn't bent enough already. As far as Pavel could tell both legs were broken, and one of the arms, at elbow and wrist, and some of the head was missing, too. The body was leaking blood from all ends; it had soaked into his expensive tan suit and gave him a jellyfish slipperiness that sent a wave of nausea through Pavel's guts. Quickly, ashamed of himself, he turned the face over, but, of course, he didn't recognize it. He did not know any midgets. There was a pencil moustache and the teeth were broken. Inside lolled a serrated tongue.

Gently, getting down into a crouch to do it, Pavel closed the lid of the trunk, then limped over to the sink to scrub his hands. He had to hack a piece of ice from out of a bucket and run its jagged edge over fingernails and knuckles. It was as though he was carving away the blood stains, planing his skin like a carpenter.

As Pavel stood there, the ice pick sticking to his palm, hammering away at the ice, Boyd coughed and offered up his tale. ‘I swear to God I never saw him coming,' he said. Pavel only half listened, his soul turned inward, tuned in to his breathing, his heart's anxious goose-step marching him back to the war's many corpses. God, how he hated that midget just then. And all the time he stood there, his fingers white against the sink, Boyd talking kittens, he kept wondering
whether the boy could hear him through the bedroom door, and worse yet, understand.

There is no telling people. Take Pavel, for instance. By rights the midget should have broken his back, coming for a visit at a time like this; put him down like a sick dog. You picture him: a slight man, eyes like wet coals. Curved woman's lips and skin so delicate you could trace the veins. The ears almost translucent, black hair worn parted, the teeth rocking from lack of fruit. A weak man in all respects. He had bad kidneys, and that was just the start of it. Pavel suffered from that terminal disease called empathy, forever trying to exchange points of view even with the boot that kicked him. He was a quiet man, intensely sincere, often silent for hours on end though capable of passionate outbursts during which his tongue kept tripping over the edge of words and everything came out as a muddle. He'd backtrack time and again to correct himself, for above all he wished to be
sincere.
A weak man, you see, brought up for the previous century, for a world of calling cards and drawing-room courting; for chessboard gambits and the Novel; for a quiet love of life. By rights he should have been, in his time and place, a sacrificial lamb. As it was, he turned into a bloodhound the minute he took the midget's scent.

You don't believe me? I spent hours and days eye to eye with Pavel, just us in the dark, some bars between us and the scuttle of roaches. I know Pavel like the back of my hand. And yet, time and again, I was surprised by him; he threw me, more than once, and there were moments when it felt like I had to start all over again.

Boyd, by contrast, does not compare. Boyd was twentieth-century through and through: a braggart, a womanizer, a boor. Boyd talked tough and had fists to back him up. Men liked Boyd, as did women; he wore spats as an affectation and thought them a sign of originality.

Forget about Boyd. I only spoke to Boyd once, and even then he had nothing of interest to say.

But we weren't talking about Boyd. We were talking about the boy, Anders, who stood ears pressed against the bedroom door, and tried his hardest to understand. What he was asking himself, in German no doubt, the word sticky in his child-mouth, was this: What the fuck is a
mit-chut
?

Whatever it was, it was dead, and Russian. The death did not bother the boy. He had seen plenty of it, had stolen from the stiff grasp of corpses more than once. Nor did he care that it was a Russian. What was there to care? One stiff was as good as another. He understood, too, why the man Boyd had not left him behind in the snow. The
mit-chut
was important, one way or another, and it was unwise to kill those who were important, even in Berlin. The boy and the crew he ran with had learned the city's rules. You robbed those who looked like they had something, and avoided those who looked like they had too much. Russkies, Tommies, Amis – they were all off limits. You sweated locals, those who had made it through the war with a bag of gold under their pillows but were too stupid or too compromised to have found protection. This the boy had learned and learned well. You didn't break the rules and walk away unbroken.

Which was to say that the man Boyd had made a mistake, and now he was sweating over it, with the thermometer at minus five. The boy had seen him around, driving his car, trading on the black market. He was a whore-man, a
Zuhälter.
He did not know the English word for it.

The conversation carried on. Anders listened, his ear at the keyhole, holding his breath so it wouldn't drown out the voices.

‘What do you want to do?' Pavel asked. He sounded cool, composed, only his teeth were chattering. The boy felt a pang of pride.
Pavel wasn't like the fat American. He had backbone, despite the disease.

‘How the fuck do I know? If it wasn't so fucking cold, I'd drive him out to the river. Sink the little bastard.'

‘You could drop him in the woods.'

‘Too many guard patrols. Besides –'

‘Besides?'

‘He might still be useful. The midget.'

‘Did he have papers?'

‘Nothing. No wallet, no briefcase, not even a fucking wedding ring.'

‘Okay, Boyd, I want him out of my bedroom. Let's carry him into the back room. The boy will give you a hand.'

He called him in then, but the boy had already started opening the door. He made a show of helping the man lift the trunk, but left him with all the weight. They manoeuvred it into the second bedroom and propped it up against the wall next to the window. It was surprisingly small, smaller than Anders, he measured himself out against it.

A mit-chut,
thought Anders,
must be some sort of dwarf.

When they returned to the front room, Pavel was back on his knees, trying to pee. Boyd seemed unembarrassed about the act. He sidled up next to him, frowning a little when he saw the blood. Once Pavel was finished and back on his feet there was a long silence. The boy kept away from them, trying to figure themout, the roomso cold he could count his every breath.

‘So you're circumcised,' Boyd said after twenty. ‘You a fucking kike or something?'

Pavel smiled at that, and Boyd smiled back. The boy didn't understand the joke.

‘He needs penicillin,' he said, addressing the man for the first time, and got ready to duck in case he should try to hit him.

‘Oh yeah? Says who, pipsqueak?'

They stared at each other like gunslingers from a cowboy film. The boy knew all about cowboy films. He wished he had a gun.

‘Boyd,' said Pavel, ‘this is Anders. Anders, this is Boyd White. He and I used to be in the army together. He is –'

‘I know what he is. He's a
Zuhaälter.
'

‘Yes,' said Pavel softly, ‘he's a pimp.' He smiled at the word and stroked his aching back. It seemed to the boy that there had been reproach in his voice.

Boyd shrugged like it meant little to him. He peeled a pack of cigarettes from out of his shirt pocket, offered one to Pavel and then, grudgingly, one to the boy. Anders pocketed it without a word, thinking he would have it later, when Boyd was not around. The two men stood in the room, smoking, cupping their cigarettes in identical ways. It was Boyd who spoke.

‘You could go back, you know, Pavel. The army. Wasn't as bad as all that, and they are desperate for interpreters. Christ, you speak all four languages. You could live like a king.'

Pavel shrugged and blew smoke. ‘What are you going to do now?'

‘Shove off before one of his friends runs off with my wheels.' Boyd pointed at Anders with his cigarette. ‘Make some inquiries about the midget. I'll come back with some drugs, coals and cigarettes.'