The Informer (27 page)

Then she tried to think of something else, and as she looked at the sky, she thought of Rainer, of sitting on top of him, of dragging a nipple across his lip, of letting him smell her, of dragging an underarm across his face.

She wished her hands would stop shaking and that she could breathe a little more slowly, but when she inhaled, she wanted to pant. And even in the cool air of the park at this hour, she was sweating.

Felix was up ahead. The brush moved, and that large black dog came back again, as though it had been hunting and was retrieving a shot bird. It panted and went by, leaving the scent of its breath.

At the entrance to the park, she saw that up-and-down locomotion, like a carousel horse. Businesslike, frank, not too hurried.

She caught him in front of the restaurant where the funeral had been. The street fight had stopped for a while, but then reinforcements had arrived on each side. The thugs had come in groups of four or five, dressed in plus fours, ties tucked into their shirts between the second and third button. Members of the Ring had scuffled with the thugs for breaking up the funeral, but then they had retreated. What, after all, they seemed to say, was the point of this? It was time for another drink.

But as the members of the Ring had retreated, the Red Front had arrived, their clothes rough, faces scarred, hands large with the jobs they had done: bricklayers, machinists, brewers, truck and train drivers. They arrived with a sullen attitude and something else, too, which was an obvious interest in finding a way to do the most damage. What would really hurt these assholes?

Now small groups mixed together, a few of the Red Front opposite a few thugs. The shoving and hitting still had a tentative quality, as though the right thing were to wait a minute to see who was here, where people were, and how to do some damage. Karl stood among them, exhausted, grief stricken, his head above the other members of the Red Front.

The Red Front had sticks and they tried to hit the kneecaps of the men in brown pants and white shirts who rushed them in squads of three and four: the street was filled with a mass of shoving men, fists raised, arms
pushing—the entire group looked like a number of scrums going on at the same time.

Armina took Felix’s arm.

“You,” she said. She was surprised by how thin he was—his bicep was like a broomstick in a sheet.

“If you’re smart,” he said. “You’ll leave me alone. Why, we just talked things over. Next time we might do more than talk. Nachtmann will help me. Nachtmann.”

She gave him a shake.

“Leave me alone,” he said.

“Tell me,” she said. “What did you do?”

“I’m looking for Nachtmann,” said Felix. “He runs the Ring. He knows some other friends of mine.”

“Tell me,” she said.

“Get lost,” he said. “Go away.”

She gave him a shake.

“I don’t know anything,” he said.

Armina pushed him toward the members of the Red Front who were hitting and pushing into the mass of men. Every now and then the sound of a direct hit, a muffled snap, came out of the scrum. A man fell here and kneeled on all fours, his nose dripping.

“I’m going to give you to the Red Front,” said Armina. “Do you think they’d like to have someone who is an assassin for the thugs? That’s what you are, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you killed Gaelle?”

He shook his head.

“Karl,” yelled Armina. “Karl!”

Karl hit a man who fell to the pavement like a puppet whose strings had been cut. And as the man lay there, among the shoes and legs that moved back and forth, Karl stood over him, head down, as though grief and fury combined to make a variety of invisible but still heavy rain. The man on the ground lay perfectly still, either wise enough to hide, to play dead, or because he was protected by his unconsciousness. Finally, as though profoundly tired, Karl turned toward Armina, and then he started walking in her direction, pushing people out of the way, his large hands almost the size of the heads of the men he shoved out of the way.

“What do you want?” said Karl.

“You know Felix, don’t you?” said Armina.

“Yeah,” said Karl. “I had to pay him once.”

“We were just talking,” said Armina.

“About what?” said Karl.

“I was wondering what you would do if you could get your hands on the man who hurt Gaelle,” said Armina.

“You’re asking me?”

Felix pulled his arm against Armina’s grip. What would it take, this small gesture implied, to break away? He glanced down at Armina’s leg. Would she be able to catch him? Then he looked up at Karl, and when he did so he turned his head back, as though looking at a star overhead.

“Yes,” said Armina.

“Maybe I’d take my time with him,” said Karl. The men went on fighting behind him, and the sound of their scuffling, their kicking, hitting, the rough dragging sound as someone was pulled away onto the sidewalk, combined to make a sort of disturbance, a sound that was felt as much as heard. “Yeah. That’s what I’d do.” He looked down at Armina. “Maybe I’d take my time.”

Felix tugged again. Armina tightened her grip.

“You’re bleeding,” said Karl.

“I fell down in the park,” said Armina.

They all stood there in front of the fighting men. Felix kept his head down, looking one way and another. Little flashes of light appeared again, small burst of spectral colors, like pinpricks in the buildings, the spectacle of fighting men, the sky. The blood ticked in a long rill of moisture that ran down the back of Armina’s leg, into her shoe, and then out onto the cobbles of the street.

“Where’s Nachtmann?” said Felix.

“I don’t know,” said Karl. He turned to Armina. “Have you heard anything?”

“Have I?” said Armina to Felix.

Felix shook his head: it wasn’t the gesture of refusal so much as the angry disbelief of having run out of things to do.

“Psssst,” he said to Armina. “Get me out of here.”

She gave him a shake so there would be no misunderstanding.

“Well?” said Karl.

“No,” said Armina.

“Let me know if you do,” said Karl. “I’ll be around. Don’t wait. Come to me if you have something. I’d consider it a favor.”

“Come on,” said Armina to Felix. “Over this way.”

“Yeah,” said Felix.

She gave Felix another shake.

“We understand one another?” said Armina.

“Yeah,” said Felix.

They walked along the storefronts and over the broken glass on the sidewalk. For a moment Armina thought that the triangular pieces were related to those flashes she had seen. Then she said to Felix, “Well, well?”

He looked around, biting his lip.

“Yes,” said Felix.

“Yes what?” said Armina.

“I’m ready to work something out. But don’t say nothing here. See?”

I
n the stairwell of the Inspectorate Felix told Armina he didn’t know how old he was. Maybe sixteen, he guessed, seventeen. But not twenty. He had lived for a while with his mother and sister in a basement, but his sister had asthma, and Felix couldn’t stand her breathing, which took such effort. “Like she was digging a ditch with a pick,” said Felix.

The stairs had the usual scent: soap and cigars. Felix sniffed it and looked around, as though this stink were a sign. Typing in the distance. They went around the landings, Armina with her hand on Felix’s arm, and as they went, he pressed against her hand, as though they were on a date, as though he liked her touch. It made her want to let him go.

“Maybe we could come to an accommodation,” said Felix. “Maybe I could work this off. You know, do something to make up for Gaelle.”

“I don’t think so,” said Armina.

“I see all kinds of things,” said Felix. “Why, I wouldn’t even charge you much. It would be a bargain. Like some of those women in the park. Why, you’d be surprised at the things I hear.”

She turned and looked at him.

“I’d like to work it off,” said Felix.

They went by the second floor where the frosted glass glittered.

“Where are we going?” said Felix.

“Upstairs.”

“Is that where your office is?” he said.

“No,” she said.

“You didn’t get hurt, did you, when you fell down?” he said.

She gave him a shake that made his teeth click.

“If I were you,” she said, “I’d keep quiet about it.”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “That Gaelle. Just look at the trouble she got me into. And after all I did for her.”

“What you did for her?” she said.

“Stop jerking me,” he said.

“What about Hauptmann?” said Armina. “He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“He’s a serious man,” said Felix. “You don’t want to look into this.”

“Hauptmann paid you?” she said.

“I made a little something,” said Felix.

“But you did more, didn’t you?” she said. “You did other things. You took a cigarette … to Gaelle.”

“I know what I did,” said Felix.

“So why did you do that?” said Armina.

Felix shrugged.

“I wanted to make it look like the others. That I read about in the newspaper,” said Felix. “If you’re smart, you’re going to let this go. I’ve got one word to say to you.”

“What’s that?” she said.

“Hauptmann,” he said. “He’s my friend.”

“But Gaelle was your friend, too,” said Armina.

“It’s done,” he said. “There’s nothing to say.”

The typing was louder on the floor of the political section. Armina and Felix came through the door from the stairwell and into the room where the typists worked: two rows of five, all women in black dresses with skin so pale it looked like desert sand at dusk. They had long hair, but each one had pulled it back into the same tight bun. They worked with a steady, frank clicking, and threw the carriage back at the end of a line—then they went back to typing until a small bell rang when they came to the end. It was a small sound, like a child’s triangle. The motion of shoving the carriage back was as though they were all trying to hit something, an insect, say, and that they always did so from the left. They didn’t look up as Armina and Felix walked to Ritter’s office, where Armina pushed the door open without knocking.

Ritter sat at his desk, jacket off, pen in hand, a sheet of paper in front
of him illuminated by his lamp. He smoked a cigarette, the tip of it newly lighted and crisp as a small red button. He drew on it and made it even brighter as he considered the spectacle in front of him, Armina in her dirty clothes, some blood on her hands, her hair in disarray, Felix next to her, stunted, face scared with acne, his eyes going around the room as though he were looking for something to steal. Ritter instinctively looked down, at Armina’s leg, at her shoes, and the seeping trickle that made a shape on the floor, like a small red country on a map.

“This is Felix,” she said.

He raised a brow.

“Felix?”
he said.

She shook Felix’s arm again. He winced and pulled away.

“Leave me alone,” said Felix. “Stop pulling on me.”

“So?” said Ritter. “What’s this?”

“He’s got something to tell you,” said Armina. She shoved Felix forward. “No lies.”

“Maybe I could work this off,” said Felix.

Ritter drew on his cigarette and watched Felix. The two of them had the same faraway expression.

“Work it off?” said Ritter.

“He killed Gaelle,” said Armina. “Didn’t you?”

“I’d rather work it off,” said Felix to Ritter.

Ritter sat back, flicked the ashes of his cigarette into a black onyx tray. He pushed around some of the things on his desk, a cigarette case, a small rattling box of matches, a pen. Then he inhaled again and sighed, so that the smoke came out in a pale display of uncertainty. Women typed beyond the door.

“Go on,” said Armina.

“It just sort of happened,” said Felix.

“But you did it, didn’t you?” said Armina.

“We’re going to want to know how,” said Ritter. “Details. Will you give them?”

“I’d rather work this off,” said Felix.

“Tell him about Hauptmann,” said Armina.

“Hauptmann?” said Ritter. “Hauptmann?”

Felix looked from one of them to the other. A red crescent of blood ran from the door to the place where Armina stood on the gray linoleum. The blood had gotten into her shoes, leaked over the back of the heel, and some of it ran toward her toe, but before it got there it dripped to the floor, and when the typing stopped, the blood made an almost audible sound, a slight tick tick tick. Felix sat down in the chair in front of Ritter’s desk, head forward, as though exhausted, but every so often he looked up at Ritter with an air of recognition. Then he went back to his inventory of the desk: maybe he could pick something up.

“You’re hurt,” said Ritter. “You need to have that looked at.”

“Here he is,” said Armina. “And he’s going to tell us all kinds of things. He isn’t going to work it off, either. He’s going to tell us. Hauptmann paid him.”

Armina stood there, the tickling on the back of her thigh diminished now. Ritter pushed a button on his desk. Almost instantly a member of the Schutzpolice came into the room, his buttons shiny, his visor bright with Vaseline, his expression as blank as a stone.

“Take him downstairs,” said Ritter. “Hold him.”

“Come on,” said the Schutzpoliceman.

Felix stared at Ritter.

“It’s nice to meet a gentleman,” he said. “I know what a gentleman likes, see?”

“Take him downstairs,” said Ritter.

The door shut, and as it closed, the sensation of the two of them being alone seeped into the room like a gas.

“You’ve got to get yourself looked after,” said Ritter. “Do you need a ride? I’ll have a car downstairs for you.”

“He’s going to tell us what we need to know.”

“All right. All right,” said Ritter. “Whatever you say. But right now you need to get yourself looked after.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” she said.

“Good work,” said Ritter.

A
ksel stood on Unter den Linden with the other members of his group, each dressed in brown pants, white shirts, their hair neatly combed. They rested and looked one way and another, and then they started walking down the avenue past the Soviet embassy, where they stopped for a moment and milled around. After a while, Aksel said, “Come on. Let’s get going.”

The main university building had a courtyard, just behind the gate, and a wing was on each side. Students carried books through the gate and smiled and nodded at Aksel’s group.

“Do you see him?” said Aksel.

“Not yet,” said a tall boy with red hair.

“There’s a few I’d like to talk to,” said another member of the group. “Professors my ass.”

Rainer thought of Armina as he came out of the main building and went across the cobblestones of the courtyard. It was a warm day, and he carried just one book, which he had been reading in his office. It had nothing to do with botany, the chemistry of orchid reproduction, the complications of breeding new species, the fragrances that had an impact on survival (drawing in insects, for instance, to orchids that fed on them). Rainer read for pleasure from time to time, and this was a book by Stefan Zweig. A clever and delicate book about a particular moment in a woman’s life. Then he looked up. There were eight or ten of them.

Rainer tried to look from one face to another, as though if he could reach them one by one, he might have a chance. They stared back. Up the avenue the trees stretched away like an illustration in a book about perspective. Then he started walking.

“What are you reading?” said Aksel.

“What business of it of yours?” said Rainer. No, he thought, no. That is the wrong tone.

“There are writers who aren’t worth reading anymore,” said one of the young men. “From the past. Dead. They are the wrong race.

With ideas we don’t like. That have nothing to do with us.”

“With Germany,” said another.

“What would you know about Germany?” said Rainer.

“We know how it’s going to be,” said Aksel.

“No you don’t,” said Rainer.

He turned and went up the avenue, into those converging lines of perspective. It was like looking up some railroad tracks that fused into one distant spot, which, he guessed, was like the future, so far away and so confined. Then he thought, You aren’t doing yourself any good, thinking that way.

The young men came with him, not too far behind, but not so close as to allow him to talk to them without having to raise his voice. There were other people on the avenue, polite-looking men and women, dressed in dark clothes, some of the women carrying parasols against the sun. The men wore dark ties and stiff collars and the women wore stockings and shoes with heels. Rainer looked back over his shoulder. The young men were still there.

Maybe they would go all the way down to the Brandenburg Gate, and if he went into the park, they would follow him, and he wished that he hadn’t gone this way. Still, he had to get home, and that would take him close to the park. Was he going to let himself be pushed around, just like that?

The young men came closer, one on one side and one on the other, and as they began to surround him, just coming up next to him, he picked up his pace a little. They did, too. The other people on the street glanced at him and went on walking. No one wanted any trouble, and when he looked back, over his shoulder, he saw one of his fellow professors come out of the university gate, glance once in Rainer’s direction, and then turn the other way.

He turned to face the young men. They stopped and formed a circle around him while he stood with his back against an iron fence. The beauty
and precision of the world of the book that he carried seemed to exist right here, as though the object were not a thing, but alive or at least part of an imaginative world. So he stood there, looking at the young men. They looked back.

The heavy pants the young men wore, their white shirts, the buildings behind them, the cars in the street, the bright and clingy dresses that the women with parasols wore all had an extra clarity, as though everything were preserved in glass.

“What’s that you’re reading?” one of them said.

“What’s it to you?” said Rainer.

They grabbed the book and threw it on the ground and one of them kicked it so that it fluttered along the stone gutter. Rainer was struck by how much it looked like a dead bird, wings out, animated only by the kick. Rainer stepped down and went after the book, and when they kicked it again, he continued walking. As it slid along it seemed not to be just the object that was skittering this way, not the printed paper, but the entire world of the book that was being kicked. Rainer apprehended this as a physical sensation, although it was hard to distinguish it from a fury that made him nauseated.

They let him come up to the book. And as he reached down to pick it up, one of them began to kick it again, and as he did, Rainer said, “I wouldn’t do that. I really wouldn’t.”

The young men thought it over.

A group of young men from the Red Front Fighters crossed the street, and when they approached, the members of Aksel’s group stepped back a little, their eyes turning as one toward the young men in rougher clothes, with their caps and scarred faces. They didn’t retreat so much as spread out a little farther down the street, so as to be able to fight better. Before they left, Aksel said to Rainer, “Maybe some other time.”

The men in brown pants moved back where they would have a little cover at their back. When the young men from the Red Front Fighters came up to Rainer, they looked at him with a quiet fury, and one of them said, “We should have let them take this one.”

“It’s all right,” said another. “His time is coming. We have a new literature
based on science. On the inevitable.” He looked at Rainer. “Your time is over. We will obliterate you.”

“I teach science,” Rainer said stupidly.

“We have new science, too,” said the young man.

Then they went in the opposite direction, as though some mutual truce had been negotiated between the two groups. They slipped away, moving up the sidewalk in a mass, and made people cross the street or step into the gutter. Rainer turned and walked away, up Unter den Linden until he came to the Hotel Aldon, where he went into the bar and asked for a brandy.

Everything here was ordinary, elegant, shiny. The chandelier was bright, and people moved with a quiet gait over the heavy carpet, the sound of their feet subdued and soothing, but when he glanced down, he saw his fingers were shaking. It was nothing, really, he thought as the brandy lifted his mood. Nothing at all. Everyone had difficulties, and this was his. So what?

He wanted to call Armina, but what could he say? He wanted the expectation of her arrival, the experience of being together, as though they touched when their eyes met. That moment, when their eyes met, was the one he craved: it was the sense of one mind touching another.