The Informer (33 page)

“Wait, wait,” said Felix.

“You had the pistol,” said the older Russian.

The older Russian pulled Felix against the wolf-colored brick. Armina stepped forward, her hand out, palm up. Felix’s skin was as gray as the lines of mortar that held the bricks together.

“Get out of the way,” said the older Russian to Armina. “We’ll take care of him now.” He swallowed and looked around. A bird flew across the sky. “Reminds me of home,” he said.

“Wait,” said Armina. “I need to ask something.”

“What?” said the older Russian. “I don’t understand.
Nicht verstehen.”

He spoke to the younger, boyish Russians, one with dark hair, the other blond. The blond hair was filled with highlights from the sun. One of the boys shrugged, then the other. What the hell, they seemed to say. We’ve got other things to do. They unslung their rifles, swinging them around from their left shoulder to their right, but they had trouble mounting the butt and had to try a couple of times. They swayed as they held their rifles up, and the muzzles described figure eights.

The charcoal-colored birds that had come to eat the insects now circled overhead, their shapes like glistening Vs against the sky, and as they turned in a widening pattern to find the place where most of the insects remained they cawed and squawked and fluttered against one another when they landed. The Russians glanced up at them and then back at Felix. The two younger ones worked the bolts on their rifles, flipping them up, pulling them back, letting the cartridge rise from the magazine, pushing the bolt
forward, slapping it shut against the wooden stock. The actions of the rifles made a sort of subdued cackle.

The older Russian pushed Felix against the wall.

“Stay there,” he said. “Right here. See. No moving.”

“Wait,” said Armina.

“Ask her about the potatoes,” said the blond one in Russian. “I always feel horny afterward.”

Felix put one hand to his thin hair, pulled his leg back so that it looked more normal.

“Wait until this is over,” said Felix to Armina. He gestured to the Russians. “You’re going to have some fun.”

She held up her hand. The older Russian stared at her and then spoke to the others. What was she up to anyway? What’s going on? They were getting hungry, too. Where were they going to get some bread? Some cheese?

“Look at you,” Armina said to Felix. “Look at your leg.”

He put his head up, chin out.

“You insult me when I’m facing this.”

He pointed at the Russians.

“You limp,” she said.

“That won’t get you anyplace,” he said.

“A minute,” said Armina to the Russians.
“Ein Minuten.”

The older one shrugged. The barrels of the rifles waved around.

“One,” said the older Russian.

“Wait,” said Armina.

“Some fun,” said Felix. “They like you.”

“None of them wanted you,” said Armina. “Those women in the park. Isn’t that right?”

“You think you can make me angry?” said Felix.

The older Russian blinked, glanced at Felix, then at the younger soldiers and tried to remember what he was doing. He swallowed and put his hand to the back of his mouth.

“Did Gaelle push you away? I bet she wouldn’t even take your money,” said Armina. “I bet she wouldn’t touch you. Not that way. Why,
she wouldn’t have anything to do with you. So, when Hauptmann asked you, you saw your chance. You’d do what you wanted and get paid for it.”

The look of the fawning street urchin seemed, for a moment, to be suspended on Felix’s gray face, like a mask worn at carnival. Then his face seemed slack, numb, without any expression at all, and it was this slackness, this emptiness that Armina realized had been the last thing the women in the park had seen. He reached down to his ankle, lifted the pant leg, and reached for the ice pick, but the older Russian grabbed him, pulled him up, shook him, and then took the taped handle with the long spike and the sharpened tip. Then the Russian threw it into the rubble, the thing making a small circle, like a propeller, as it flew away and landed among the black, squawking birds.

“So,” said Armina. “She wouldn’t take the money. Too disgusted for that.”

“The women in the park learned something from me. Oh, yeah. They did.”

Felix looked at her with that same slack expression, as though the nerves that controlled the muscles had been cut. “Aim,” said the older Russian.

Armina held up her hands. The Russians hesitated.

“Marie,” said Felix. “There was Marie. In the gully. Some young-looking ones. Too dumb to come in out of the rain. They fought a little. But not much.”

“And Gaelle?” said Armina.

“She could have saved me, see?” said Felix. “She could have brought me in from the dark. I washed her stockings.”

He took a dirty, stained silk cord from his pocket and let it hang from his hand.

“Isn’t this what you wanted to see?”

“What did he say?” said one of the younger Russians.

“Screw it,” said the older one. “How would I know? Ah, shit, I’m not feeling so good.”

He put his hands on his knees and vomited in slow, watery eruptions into the rubble. The younger ones waited, as though they had seen this before and knew he would get over it.

“That’s all?” said Armina to Felix.

“One here the other night,” said Felix.

His face seemed even more slack, gray, and inscrutable.

“Why?” said Armina.

Felix shrugged.

“They didn’t like me,” he said. “I could tell.”

The older Russian tried to lean against the wall but fell down and dropped the pistol. The blue metal clattered on the stones and rolled into the dust at the bottom. The younger Russians leaned forward, their rifles mounted, but they still tried to help up the older one. Felix starting running.

He didn’t go fast, but he limped quickly, up and down, as he went around the first mound of bricks. His coat flapped back, like gray wings, and his shoes made puffs of smoke like dust. Armina picked up the pistol, put the bead between the rear sights, just like in those endless hours on the range, and aimed for the heaviest mass, the middle of Felix’s back. He looked over his shoulder as the pistol went off, Bang, bang. He kept on running, then slipped down on one knee, tried to get up, took another couple of steps and sat down on a pile of rubble.

“I’m shot. I’m shot,” he said. “Can you believe it? Shot.”

He tried to get up, limped another step, and then sat down. Some black birds that were feeding on the insects rose into the air at the shots. They squawked and whirled, like a collection of black flags, and then, with a swoop, settled down again.

The young Russians turned to Armina, but now they seemed more sober than before. They swung their rifles around, neatly shouldering them, one arm through the sling. The safeties clicked off. Armina held out the pistol, flat in her hand, offering it. Then she put it down. She stepped back and held up both empty hands. The older Russian swayed back and forth.

Felix slobbered and gasped as he lay in the dust and gray bricks, his bad leg twitching now and then so that diminutive clouds, like dust devils, rose from his shoe and then drifted away. He said, “I’m thirsty.”

“That always makes me horny,” said one of the boyish Russians. He nodded at Felix.

“Yes,” said the other young one.

“She put down the pistol,” said the first young one.

“Yeah,” said the other. “She did.” He turned to the older Russian. “We aren’t going to need the potatoes.”

“No,” said the older Russian. He swayed like a wheat stalk in the wind. “I guess not.”

“You aren’t interested in her?” said the first young one.

“No,” said the older one. “I didn’t say that.”

The pistol sat in the dust like something that had been buried and was now just emerging, the diamonds of the grip already filled with gray dirt. Armina stepped toward it, but the first young Russian, with a speed that was like a trap being sprung, picked it up.

“You,” he said. “Woman. Over here.”

Armina stepped backward, keeping her eyes on the Russian with the pistol. It seemed to her that as long as she could keep her eyes on his they wouldn’t begin. She stepped backward into the rubble. Felix made that harsh, guttural breathing, like he was trying to cough up something he had been choking on for hours and the effort of it had left him exhausted and at the point where he was going to give up. His heels worked in the ashy dust, the puffs of it like doll-size ghosts.

The second young Russian took Armina by the arm.

“You have white skin,” he said.

“Redheads are like that,” said the older Russian.

“Yeah,” said the first young Russian.

“You think it’s red, too,” said the second young Russian.

He lighted a cigarette, the scratch of the match on the abrasive strip of the box making small stars. She thought of those nicotine-stained butts in the park before the war, and of those nights in New York when she had considered them, the memory somewhere, at 3
A.M.,
between accusation and terror. Now, the little sparks from the lighted match left the smell of sulfur. The first young Russian said, “Over here.”

He slowly lifted the hem of her skirt until her white skin, a garter, and the top of her stockings showed. The cool breeze washed over her skin.

“No,” she said. “I’m a police officer. You don’t want to touch me.”

“What did she say?” said the young Russian. “What’s that? Police?”

“Yes,” said the second young Russian.

“Have you ever heard that one?” said the first young Russian.

“No,” said the older one. “I’ve heard a lot of other ones.”

The first young one put his finger under the stocking top and pulled it down with a yank, and the fabric ran in a ladder down her leg. He ripped the other one. Behind her Felix said, “Some fun,” and then gurgled and made one last shape of dust before he lay perfectly still. In the squeak of the Russians’ leather belts, in the clink of their equipment, the light breeze blew across the landscape in a slow, feathery hush.

“Leave me alone,” said Armina.

“Let me finish my cigarette,” said the second young Russian.

“I guess that one’s gone,” said the older Russian, as he pointed with his elbow to Felix.

“Yeah,” said the first young Russian. “I guess.”

“Let’s forget this,” said Armina to the older Russian. “Nothing happened. We can just go home.”

“No,” said the first young Russian.

“What’s the rush?” said the older Russian.

“We’re just getting started. Don’t you like Russians?”

“Sure,” said Armina. “They’re fine.”

“Russians are the best,” said the first young one. “We’ll show you.”

“I believe you,” said Armina.

“Seeing is believing,” said the second young Russian.

“Show her,” said the first young Russian.

The three Russians had their eyes on the distance, as though looking at the horizon beyond the chop of the ocean. Armina thought of those nights in New York, when she went through the things she had tried to make sense of. The torn stockings. The cigarette butts. The marks. Then she went back to looking at the older Russian, trying to catch his eye, to stare at him. That would slow things down. And as she went on looking into his blue eyes, the first young Russian dropped her skirt. She thought, that was my only pair of stockings.

“What’s that?” said the older Russian.

“Let’s not wait,” said the first young Russian. “Come on. She’s here. What are we waiting around for?”

“Someone’s coming,” said the older Russian.

“So what?” said the first young Russian. “They can join in.”

The trail of dust, like smoke, appeared on the avenue that ran through the piles of bricks.

Felix was still and yet appeared ancient, like a figure from the ruins of Pompeii, the gray skin seeming to have been preserved for thousands of years: it made him anonymous and yet eternal, too.

Armina stepped back.

“She’s going to get away,” said the first young Russian. “What did we wait for? Now look what’s going to happen.”

“The British,” said the older Russian. “That’s who they are.”

The older Russian took Armina’s arm, touched her blouse, and said, “There are other fish in the sea.”

An army jeep came along the mounds, its slow, constant passage marked by the green paint of it, which looked like a leaf in a desert. Two men sat in front, one hanging onto the dashboard, one at the wheel. The one at the wheel had a little mustache and wore glasses. Frieda sat in the back, her dress rustling in the breeze of the Jeep’s locomotion, her arm seeming even more pipelike and thin as she pointed, with a sort of desperate attempt to make herself understood, at Armina and the Russians.

“All right,” said the older Russian. “We’ll look for someone else.”

“Nothing works out,” said the first young Russian.

“Oh,” said the older Russian. “I don’t know.”

The Russians stepped back, the younger ones shouldering their rifles, the sheen of the bluing and the polish of the slings showing as streaks of silver. They walked with a slow, constant march, not tired, not enthusiastic, just a frank attempt to get through the brick and the dust. Only once did one of the young ones look back at Armina, as though she were something seen from the window of a train, momentarily appearing and then vanishing forever, reduced now to something less than a memory. Just a woman standing in the dust and then not worth looking at anymore.

The jeep stopped in a cloud. The man with the little mustache and glasses said, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. No,” said Armina.

“Did anything happen here?” he said.

“No,” said Armina.

“Well,” said the man. “You were lucky. You can thank your friend here.”

He gestured to Frieda.

“Made quite a scene,” he said. “Threw rocks at us.”

“Near brained me,” said the other man in the front. “To get our attention. Why, I’m going to be all-over lumps for a week.” He rubbed his head.

“Well,” said the man with the mustache, “get in. We’ll give you a lift.”

Felix lay behind a low mound and his dusty shape disappeared into the rubble, like a stone thrown into the cobbles of a stony beach. No one in the jeep noticed he was there. The sky, which was a whitish blue, the color of gin in a bottle, was streaked with black where the birds flew in a widening circle. They flew around and around, as though the sky were an enormous glass bowl from which they couldn’t escape. Armina put her fingers together, each one trembling, as though she had been standing next to a train track where an enormous engine had gone by at eighty miles an hour: the trembling ran from her fingers into her arms, torso, and stomach, down into her legs and knees. She tried to make it stop, but instead she got into the jeep with a shaky, trembling stumble, and when she sat down, she knew that Frieda felt it when they touched, a constant, vibrant twitching that wouldn’t go away. Frieda felt it and closed her eyes and shook her head, as though she didn’t want to be reminded of it, or of anything associated with that shaking. She shook her head and bit her lip, and when Armina tried to thank her, she shook her head even harder. They sat side by side as the jeep went around the piles of brick, over the holes in the road, and every time they touched, Frieda pulled away and shook her head.