The Informer (25 page)

A
rmina joined the funeral for Gaelle as the members of the Ring came down the avenue, two by two, all in rented tailcoats, striped trousers, and choker collars. The men followed the four black horses whose coats were as shiny as new shoes, and behind the men came their wives and girlfriends who weren’t formal members of the Ring but nevertheless still joined in. The marchers kept a two-step cadence, which ebbed and flowed and made the women’s skirts sway. The procession was made of two layers, or so it seemed, a collection of white faces above a mass of black clothes. And finally, behind the mob, a man came with a shovel in case the horses made a mess in the street.

The horseshoes hit the pavement with a silvery ringing, and the sound reverberated through Armina as though a blacksmith were hitting an anvil: she didn’t know why she recognized this silvery ringing, the associations of it so deeply buried as though it were a memory, but the sound left her with a sensation of some past grief combining perfectly with this one. The emptiness Gaelle left behind was like being in a room where things are obvious for the first time: how much Armina had cared, how much, in a way she found difficult to describe, she had been comforted by the scar. It had shown the possibilities of defiance, and yet, it had come to this. At least Armina could pay her respects.

Karl was a head above the rest, his hands swaying with the same motion as the woman’s skirts. His shirt was buttoned up to the neck, and his rough coat was clean, but he seemed half awake as he kept up with the horses, the mourners, and the hearse with the glass sides. The crowd was a good one, and he knew Gaelle would have liked that, since she had always said to him that her funeral would be the saddest on earth: no one would come.

Karl guessed the woman with the red hair was a cop, and as she came along, swaying with the cadence of the others and flinching at the ringing of the horses hooves on the cobbles, he wanted to unburden himself, to tell her what he could to help, but to do that, he’d have to say that he was there, on the street, when Breiter was killed, that he knew that last thing Breiter saw was his dog taking a crap. So how much could he say without making trouble for himself? The horses came along with the jingling of the harness, and the glass windows of the hearse showed the blue sky, the reflection of the buildings on the street like some vision from a seance, some suggestion of a passage to the underworld. Karl walked with it and thought, I’d like to get the bastards who did this to Gaelle. I really would. So, how much can I say? I was there? I know who was after her? Although, he thought, I know only some of them. There could have been others.

Franz Nachtmann wore a black version of his usual brown suit, waistcoat included, the chain of his watch more visible. From time to time he turned to see the members of the Ring, his expression one of sweet surprise, or charmed pleasure that so many members had turned out. Then he lumbered from side to side like a man carrying a heavy trunk. At least, he thought, Gaelle had kept her funeral insurance paid up.

Armina knew Gaelle would have liked the mysterious sheen on the horses’ coats, the dark tack of the harness, the steadfast expression of the coachman as the procession flowed through the cemetery gates like a snake going around a stump. And yet the marchers had an air of barely subdued hilarity, as though the open hole, the black clothes, the glass sides of the hearse, the trembling of the black feathers that stuck up from each of the four corners, even the man with the shovel were part of some ghastly joke that each one of them, at some point, was going to have to endure.

At the side of the grave, men and women looked at the hole in the ground while the black box disappeared from sight. The members of the funeral reached down for the earth that was piled near the grave, took a handful, and dropped it in.

Armina’s hands trembled as she picked up some dirt, too, and let it slip out of her fingers. In the dryness of it, she still felt a mysterious tug, as though Armina were more bound to Gaelle through this moment than she was separated from her by the tawdry things Gaelle had done.

Karl’s shadow swept up like someone dragging a black cape over the ground. Then he dropped some dirt into the hole, too, doing so slowly and with great delicacy. The other mourners shuffled forward, stooped to get some dirt, dropped it in, wiped their hands, and moved away. Karl’s indifferent glance swept over the crowd and then stopped at Armina. Then she glanced up, too, into his face. He went right on staring at her, stepping closer, his shape blotting out the sunlight. He made a gesture to the grave and shrugged, as though this were an infinite punishment for everything he had done.

“This is it,” he said.

“Why, you must be Karl,” said a blond woman with lousy skin and rings under her blue eyes.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m Binga,” she said. “Gaelle must have told you about me. I was Gaelle’s pal. We worked together.”

“She didn’t say anything to me,” he said, still looking down.

“Well, I was a friend,” she said.

“She didn’t have many friends,” said Karl. He turned to Armina. “A cop like you must have known that.”

“No, she didn’t have many friends,” said Armina. “Not that I ever saw.”

Karl rubbed his hands together, as though washing them. He looked at Binga and then at the crowd. Then he bit his lip and put out his hand to Armina, as though offering something. He pushed some dirt with his foot and frowned: how was he going to say it? He wasn’t a good liar. And yet, what he wouldn’t give to explain, to get some relief by just saying what happened. So, he stood there, suspended between the desire to speak and the desire to be quiet.

“Let me think,” he said.

The horses started that impatient pawing of the ground, like horses doing a counting trick in the circus. He shrugged and walked down the path between the rows of headstones, his shape disappearing among the enormous statues of angels, who didn’t look upward to heaven, but downward, toward the earth, their stone wings folded along their sides. His movement through the crowd, the plodding, frank gait, made Armina think of a mule walking through the surf.

Felix came up to the mound of dirt with his furious gait, as though his leg were a dog he kept to beat, and then kneeled at the side of the grave, where he picked up a fistful of the sandy, almost orange dirt, and dropped it into the hole, letting it fall through his fingers as though it were his own life’s blood that was seeping into the ground. Then he stood up and put the back of his wrist to the side of his eyes. He stepped back, dragging his leg in the dirt and leaving a new moon-shaped mark in the soil.

The mark was about a half inch deep, drawn as though with a compass, like someone making a map in the dirt to show the bend of a river. The tip of the toe of one of his shoes had made it when he pivoted on one knee while his stiff leg stood out behind him.

Binga appeared like one of the stone winged figures who stood on top of the monuments.

“Come on,” said Armina to Binga. “I think we should go to the party.”

“Why, I always like a party,” said Binga.

Immertreu’s restaurant had a long bar at the entrance, and opposite it there was a raised section where the mourners were already eating pig’s feet, sausage, and potato pancakes at the fifty tables that were arranged there. They drank from glasses of beer that were a foot and a half tall as they sat at tables by the dark wainscoting of the room. The men jostled Armina as she came in, and she was pushed back, into the crush by the bar. Nachtmann sat in his usual place with a small glass of port.

A clot of mourners came in the door, shouted for drinks, and pushed against Armina. Felix was here, too, caught up in the same group of men in dark clothes, and as they pushed him farther into the restaurant, he put out his hand and pulled himself up to the bar, like a wet dog coming out of the rain. The bartender put a plate of picked pig’s feet in front of him, and Felix picked up one of them, the pink jell quivering as he took a bite. He went on eating, his head to one side like a dog.

Armina worked her way out of the mob.

“I just thought I’d talk to you for a minute,” said Armina to Felix.

“Not now,” he said. “Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

He turned back to the plate of pink jelly and two-toed feet, his nicotine-stained fingers picking up a morsel and bringing it up to his lips. Then
he dropped the food and stared at the plate. He put his hands to the side of his face, elbows on the bar. Then he turned to Armina.

“A lot of people were after Gaelle,” he said. “She got herself in the middle.”

Felix picked up another pig’s knuckle.

“And all I know is she went off with a guy in a black car. She saw ten guys like that every night. Silver hair, nice clothes, talked like a college professor, smelled of some kind of perfume. Cologne or something. That’s it, see? A guy in a black car. Why, anyone could have gone after her.”

He dropped a shiny and milk-colored piece of cartilage on his plate.

Binga came out of the stream of mourners and grabbed Armina’s arm and took her two steps to the main room and then to a table close to the wall. The room was filled with the scent of new sawdust that had been put down for the party. Many of the mourners had already taken off their coats and stood with the black Xs of their suspenders in the middle of their backs.

Karl came down the bar and stood alone, his shoulders at the height of everyone’s head. Armina pushed through the mourners, who were now singing an obscene song about a woman in Budapest and what she did in the evenings when the lights went out. Karl was aloof from the hilarity of the place, and he turned his head in her direction.

“Why don’t you sit with us?” said Armina.

He followed her with the air of a man who was sleepwalking.

“Come on. Next to me,” said Binga.

“OK,” said Karl.

“So, what are you drinking, Armina?” said Binga.

“I don’t know,” said Armina.

“Don’cha want a little fun?” said Binga.

“A brandy,” she said to the waiter who was standing next to her.

“Bring three,” said Binga. “For each of us.”

The waiter brought over a tray on which there were nine glasses of brandy. The noise in the room became louder, as though the voices were on a rheostat and someone had just turned it up. Like a radio program. Binga reached for her brandy, which she took in one shot, bang.

“I don’t know why it is,” said Binga. “But being in that graveyard,
seeing those people in black, you know, why, it makes me sort of flirty. Sort of all, well, you know. Indecent. Do you feel that way, Karl?”

“No,” said Karl.

“Well, maybe later,” said Binga. “Have your drink. It’ll help you cheer up.”

Karl stared across the table, his dark eyes dry now, as though grief after a certain point were dusty and like a desert. He took up his glass, and rather than sipping it as he usually did, he took it in one quick swallow, bang.

“So,” said Armina. “What do you want to say to me?”

“You’re really a cop?” said Karl.

“Yes,” said Armina. “Inspectorate A.”

Karl turned to Binga and said, “Go to the ladies’ room. Get out of here for a couple of minutes.”

“Why, I’m not ready yet,” said Binga.

“You heard me,” said Karl. “Go on.”

She stood up unsteadily, picked up her drink, and neatly took the arm of a man in his shirtsleeves who was passing by.

“Feeling lonely?” she said. “These people here don’t want me around.”

“Sure,” said the man. “I’m always lonely.”

On the far side of the room men with the X of suspenders in the middle of their backs went on with the song about the woman in Budapest. They swayed as they sung, and threw their heads back, as though braying at the heavens.

Karl picked up the next drink and took it in one quick swallow, too, and put it down, bang! The men and women in the room became quiet and turned at the same time toward the door. Outside someone yelled, as though giving a military order, which mixed in with the cadence of boots, more yelling, and then, through the window, a column of men, all in brown pants and white shirts, walked by. The men in the room pulled on their coats. The Brownshirts outside yelled, then they sang a party song.

“Everything I’ve done came back to give me trouble,” Karl said. “You never think you can end up like this. Why, before I didn’t even know what alone meant.”

The men in the room began to move toward the door, and everything about their disorder, their finishing of a drink, their spoiling for a fight, left
Armina blinking, trying to be clearheaded and precise. Some glasses were left on a tray, the accumulation of them bright and somehow disordered: Armina stared at them, anxious that she was missing something, that she would come away with nothing and be left with the constant doubt and accusation that made the air seem heavy.

Karl looked up and then over the heads of the men who were going outside, where they were going to fight. He went on staring, thinking things over, glancing at Armina. The noise of the room made it difficult to think, to say the right thing, to come up with just enough, but not too much. One of the Brownshirts in the street threw a brick through the window, which collapsed into triangular shards.

“Gaelle picked up some thug, a Nazi, and he told her a secret,” said Karl.

“What was the secret?” said Armina.

“That they had a spy, a guy in the Soviet embassy who was telling them what the Red Front was up to. So, she told us about it. But before we could do anything, she went to the Nazis, too. They’d been leaning on her. See? She tried to get them off her back.”

“Who did she see when she went to the party?” said Armina.

“Hauptmann,” said Karl. “That was the name.”

More shouts came from the street.

“There was a man from Moscow in town,” said Karl. “See? He wants this Breiter thing quiet, too.”

“Do you know why?” she said.

“Munitions,” said Karl. “The Soviets were helping the German army rearm. Breiter worked it out.”

Outside, a man in uniform stood at the front of some men. He was here, he said, screaming above the crowd, to show solidarity with a woman who had been killed by the Red Front Fighters. A poor, ordinary woman, a fallen woman to be sure, but the man wasn’t here to judge her but to show his solidarity with her memory. The window at the front door shattered. The men broke up the furniture in the room to make a club, or reached into a pocket for a sock filled with sand, or a knife.