The Informer (21 page)

“I’m worried about being cut,” she said. “When I think of people coming after me, I’m sure that’s what they’re going to do.”

“Nothing like that is going to happen,” he said.

He had a sip of wine and went on looking at her.

“I’d forgotten what it’s like to feel young,” she said.

“But you’re not even twenty-five,” he said.

“It’s not the years,” she said.

She leaned across the table and rubbed his face with her scar, as a caress of the most piercing intimacy, and said, “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

The horn throbbed.

“Why,” she said. “You’re getting teary.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Why is that?” she said.

“I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “The afternoon goes so fast when you are having a good time.”

He sipped his wine.

“See,” she said. “The shadows are already coming out over the water. Sort of blue.”

They had a little soup and salmon sandwiches, small ones that made Karl ashamed of the size of his fingers. The air on the lake was cool, but after a while she reached over and touched her dress and found that it was dry.

“Good,” she said. “I’m going to go into the bathroom and change.”

Then she stood up and went down the deck of the ship, along the bars of the rail, and as she stopped at the door to go inside, she turned and looked over her shoulder, the glint of light behind her, her hair blowing around her face, her smile genuine and inviting. She went inside and he sat there, looking over the faces in the crowd.

She came back and he said, “We’re going to have to be careful going home.”

“What are you worried about?” she said.

“I’m just uneasy,” he said. “Maybe because I’m happy.”

“We’ll go with the mob of people,” she said. “That’s the safest thing.”

“No,” he said. “Let’s get off at a stop before the one where we got on. We’ll wait in the woods. Then we’ll take a late train.”

He took her hand.

“We’ll hide for a while. Will that help?” she said.

“Maybe,” he said. “We can hope.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s a nice thought, isn’t it?”

A
rmina held the pistol in her bag on her lap as the train went to the shooting range in Wannsee, and on the way, it passed the Tudor houses in the suburbs, the beams of them dark like the wood of an old gallows. Then she considered the details of the boathouse, and the odor of dirt, the torn stockings, and the cigarette butts overwhelmed any attempt she made to excuse herself.

The brick building had stains around the window where the sooty rain had been running for years. The range officer sat in his office, although he kept the door open so he could see who came in. He ate blood sausage and bread, cabbage and potatoes, and he moved his bulk of more than three hundred pounds to reach across his desk for the tongue depressor that stuck out of a pot of mustard. Then he used his knife to plow the food toward his fork, which he gripped overhand, like a wrench, with a piece of sausage skewered on the tines. Armina watched him eat, her pistol in her handbag.

The range office gave her a box of ammunition and two targets, the first to practice on and the second to qualify. She walked out to the rear of the range where the frame for targets stood in front of a wall made of sandbags, hung the target up, walked back, and signaled to the range officer. He lifted his fork with a piece of sausage, yellow with mustard, as a sign to begin. She put two pieces of soft rubber in her ears, loaded the pistol, which was a revolver, and looked at the target. She listened to the wild throb of her heart and thought, Yes, clarity.

The target had a round, black center, arranged in concentric circles, each one numbered and separated by a small line. She had to get a score of at least seventy, which was difficult at this distance, although if she hit the line between two rings she was given the higher score. The trick was to feel her heartbeat: to hold her breath and to wait until the pistol dropped that
small amount, the bead flat with the rear sight, absolutely level with it, just below that black circle.

She concentrated on those evenings when she and Rainer had been in Austria in the hotel there when she had let go, both of them looking into the other’s eyes. The thrill of letting go had come over her in a rush of points along her hips and legs and even down into her heels, and the surprise of it reminded her of the cascading lights of the fireflies in the pine grove in Austria. They were related in some way: those lights in the dark grove and the tickling, lovely thrill.

The pistol went off, Bang! Bang! Bang! She listened to her heart, which came out of an interior darkness. Her sense of responsibility and the turmoil it caused reminded her of a place she had heard about in America where tar bubbled up from the depths and carried the remains of enormous creatures to the surface, toward the light, and the bones, the muck, the stink, and the atmosphere of the depths haunted her, as though they were her own terrors, her own guilt, which rose like the bubbles of gas from the depths. The monsters had been concealed, but now, with their upward movement they were coming to the surface.

She took the target over to the range officer, who looked at it and said, “Ninety-one. You don’t need the practice sheet. Here. Give it back.”

She handed over the second, blank target.

“What were you thinking about to shoot that way?”

His blood sausage and cabbage and potatoes with bacon and vinegar were almost gone. He had a glass of beer, too, which was the color of lemon custard.

“Food,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “That might help.”

“A steak,” she said. “You know, the way they have it in Paris.”

“I’ve never been to Paris,” he said.

“They make it with shallots and wine,” she said.

“What’s a shallot,” he said.

“Sort of like a small onion, which they sauté in butter and then they put in some red wine and cook it down.”

“Then what?” he said as he licked his lips.

“They put in some beef stock and cook that down,” she said. “Then
they cook the steak, you know, they sear it, and then put it on a plate and cover it so it cooks in its own juices. And after a while they cover it with the shallots, then serve it with fried potatoes.”

“Well,” he said. “I will have to go to Paris sometime.”

He signed her card, which showed that she had qualified again.

“No wonder you shoot that way if you are thinking about food like that,” he said. “Yes, I really will have to go to Paris.”

On the way home she found a watch in the window of a jewelry store. It was large enough to fill her palm, and it had small Roman numerals on it, hands that looked almost too delicate to be anything but drawn with ink. She bought the watch and took it home, and when Rainer came in she said, “I’ve got something for you,” and held it out.

He smiled at her and took the watch, holding it up and letting it glow there in the dim light of her living room, a sort of spun gold orb there in his palm, and as she reached to open it so he could see the fineness of the hour hand and the second hand, he put his face close to her fingers, and as he kissed them, he said, “I can smell the gunpowder on your hands.”

They sat quietly, and after a while she said, “Tell me about the jungle.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s what you want? Ferns, the long lines of ants, like black chains, all carrying little bits of leaves, the rain. The sound.”

“You could put your hand on my neck. It’s stiff,” she said. She turned her back to him and bent forward, exposing her neck. “Tell me about the jungle.”

“It rains,” he said. “It comes down in such sheets. You can’t keep anything dry.”

“Is that right?” she said.

“It’s so hot,” he said. “And everything has the odor of the jungle. It’s a smell of orchids and leaves and something else, too, a kind of scent that is mysterious.”

“Here. Let me pull up my shirt. Put your hand on my side. Right there. Can you undo that?”

“The wet makes everything shiny,” he said. “Like silver, like sweat, sort of, like tears.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can imagine.”

“Can you?” he said.

“Not the jungle, but the tears,” she said.

“Everything drips,” he said. “The trunks of the trees, the leaves, the creepers, the flowers, and you can see long silver strings. That is the basic combination, you know, silver and green, with the gray trunks of the trees. And then it comes alive. Everything that was quiet in the rain starts up again, insects, animals.”

“You can take that off,” she said.

“Oh, it gets so hot and so damp suddenly, since everything turns to mist. You can feel it on your skin and when you breathe,” he said. “You’re going to tear the buttons off my shirt if you do that.”

“I like the ripping sound,” she said. “Tell me about the orchids. Do they tremble? Do they become wet in that heat? And do the women in the jungle wear them in their hair? Is that how they bitch up their men?”

“That and some other ideas,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

She put her fingers to her nose to smell the gunpowder as she recalled the vibrant air in the gun range, that Bang, bang, bang. The bead in the rear sight and the beating of her heart, which had the suggestion of one clear, certain thing she could depend on.

T
he Studio for Ballroom Dancing was on the third floor of a brownstone in a part of town that was a mixture of the genteelly run-down and the outright poor. The mechanical and almost cheerful sound of a piano came from a window where a sign said
BALLROOM DANCING LESSONS, BEGINNER’S CLASS THIS AFTERNOON. PARTNERS FROM FRANCE.
Mani stood in the street, hands in his pockets, looking up at the sign, but rather than going in as he wanted to, he went up to the corner where the piano was difficult to hear. Even the utilitarian piano playing had an effect on him, as though he could imagine what inspired music would sound like, and this anticipation of sincerity and beauty left Mani disoriented with forbidden ideas. He had seen one of the dance partners a few days before in her red dress as she had stood at the window, and now he imagined her small black shoes and the hush they made over the floor and how this blended with the rustle of the petticoats and the hiss of satin. How reassuring that sound must be.

The stairs went straight up, each step covered with a rubber tread as shiny as licorice, and as Mani climbed, the sound got louder until at the top of the stairs the music was so loud as to make up in volume what it had lacked in spirit. The main room of the dance studio had white walls, a hardwood floor, and the piano. The piano player wore a black dress that came up to her chin and down to her wrists, where her pale hands, almost blue, really, worked at the keys. Diagrams on the wall, with numbers and arrows and dotted lines, gave the sequence for each dance, and the outlines of the shoes in these posters looked like someone had stepped in black paint.

Three women sat on chairs by the window, all dressed in formal gowns, although the hems were worn and the cloth was musty with old perfume and powder. The one in red was in her middle twenties, trim, although
her hair was messy, her lipstick a little too bright, and her petticoats showed. She looked out the window and smoked a cigarette with her nicotine-stained fingers.

Mani paid his fee, took his seat along the wall, and waited for other members of the class to arrive, and as the piano played and the other men came in, none of whom glanced at him, he tried to enjoy the anticipation of doing one small thing he had always wanted. He concentrated on the dance posters, as though learning the steps could give him a few moments of peace. Gaelle, Herr Schmidt, the invitation to Moscow, and what that meant (would they leave him in the river when they were done with him?) all seemed to be manageable in the face of those numbered steps. 1, 2, 3, forward, 1, 2, 3 to the side. A poster showed how a man was supposed to hold a woman as he danced with her, one hand at the side of her lower back, one hand held so that she could rest her fingers in it. Light, delicate, romantic. He closed his eyes when he thought about the touch of those fingers. The most important thing was to take care of himself, to do the right thing, but for a moment he wanted to get away from that.

The dancing master wore a tailcoat and striped pants with a gray waistcoat and dainty shoes. He demonstrated a few steps for the students, his shoulders gliding in a way that kept them at the same height from the floor and parallel to it. Mani wanted to be able to do that. He craved it as though he were hungry.

Ten or so students lined up along with Mani, and as the piano played, they took steps one way and then another, although none of them knew the steps as well as Mani, who had a preternatural ability to remember. The dancing master watched him for a while, nodded, and said to Mani, “Have you ever danced before?”

“No,” said Mani. “Not really.”

“Surprising,” said the dancing master. “You seem to have a gift for it. A knack.”

He gestured to the French woman in the red dress who came across the room, her skin white against the satin, her nicotine-stained fingers extended to Mani. He held out his hand to her, offering it, and she took it as he put his right hand against the side of her waist. The French woman looked over his shoulder at the wall and then out the window, and as they
went around the room, with Mani making small mistakes, for which he apologized, he smelled her perfume, her powder, and the scent of her hair.

Mani wanted to dance. He had done other things, too, that were not correct. He had wanted to write a poem about a woman who lay in the sun, her skin wet with a silver film, and he wanted to show how the heat, the moisture, the wetness all revealed a wild, eternal delight: damp skin, damp underarms, damp underwear, tears of happiness or at least of pleasure so intense as to make everything clear, all silver, somehow related to the stars. Powerful and so innocent, too. He knew a poem like this was a sign of his failure, and he wondered if Herr Schmidt understood such things about him. If you were part of the machine of history did you have such impulses? Of course not.

“Are you from Paris?” said Mani.

“Lyon,” she said.

“Oh,” said Mani. “Is it nice there?”

“There’s not so much to do,” she said. “It’s easy to get bored in a place like that.”

“Have you been in Berlin long?” he said.

She sighed.

“No,” she said.

Mani looked around the room.

“You dance beautifully,” he said. “It’s like … I don’t know how to describe it. Like flying.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

“And it makes it possible to talk, too,” he said. “I’d like to talk.”

“And what do you want to say?” she said. “There are times when I feel a little funny,” he said.

“Like how?” she said, perking up a little, as though she were intrigued by this.

“As though the walls are closing in,” said Mani.

“Well, what do you expect when they have classes in rooms this small,” she said. “I feel it all the time. Especially when I’m sitting there between lessons. We’re not supposed to leave.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mani. “I know. When you can’t get away. When you are waiting.”

“It’s the worst,” said the woman. “Trapped.”

“Yes, trapped,” he said.

They went around the room, the windows sweeping by.

“Remember,” she said, “One, glide, two, glide, three, glide. That’s better.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eyes for a moment, and then watched the walls and windows.

“You can talk some more if you like,” she said. “It’s OK. They don’t mind if we talk. He,” she said, gesturing to the dancing master, “even likes it.”

“I’ve made so many mistakes,” said Mani.

“You’re not doing so bad,” she said. “Take it from me. There you go. Glide. Glide.”

“It could have been different,” he said.

“It’ll get better,” she said. “Practice.”

The piano seemed to thump along like a machine.

“You don’t dance so badly.”

Mani bit his lip.

“You’re doing just fine. Being scared is the worst part. If you can get over that you’ll be fine.” She looked around. “Don’t worry about that wall feeling. They’re going to get a new place. See? It will be bigger and they will have a real orchestra, not this piano. You can come back then. You’ll feel better.”

She swayed with a tensile resilience, muscular and slender, and he kept his hand on her waist, where he felt the movement of her hips. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the seams of the gown under his fingers and the movement of the partner from France as she responded to his slightest touch with a fluid dip and step that seemed to acquiesce, to accept and to say, Yes, glide, yes, glide, yes.

“I was scared, too, when I started,” she said. “You’ll get over it. You’re doing just fine.”

“I wish I had more time,” he said.

“Well, you can take another lesson. Do you have the money?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. Come back for another lesson. You really have a talent,” she said. For an instant she looked into his face and smiled genuinely. “Really.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“Come back for another lesson, silly,” she said. “That’s all there is to it. How can you dance with that woman whacking the piano?” she said. “You could think if she played it instead of beating it.”

She shrugged.

“Get yourself a little book. Study the steps. We’ll go dancing sometime.”

Mani swallowed and concentrated on the lightness of her hand in his, the texture of the satin, the slight, raised seams along her waist. Her hips made a little dip and sway when she stepped backward and to the side. He guessed that was Chanel powder she was wearing, but he didn’t know for sure, since he had never really smelled it. He thought, Please, please don’t end. Just a little longer. The piano stopped.

“We could go to a bigger place. You won’t feel that way,” she said. “All right?”

“Yes,” said Mani.

She turned and walked back to the bench, and he listened to the rustle of satin, her shoes on the floor, and felt the lingering touch of her hand in his palm. The piano began again and the dancing master gestured to Mani to get back into line, but he just turned and walked away, past the diagrams on the wall and out the door.