The Second Winter (26 page)

“No,” she said, speaking at last. “Nothing at all.” And Oskar was struck by her strong Polish accent.

The German’s hand relaxed on the pistol. He tucked it back into its holster, then directed Polina to the bed again with a nod of his head. “A thousand crowns,” he repeated. “A thousand.” He examined the jewelry, picked up the earring, set it back down. “You have the mate to this?”

“Yes.”

“So you do have more?”

“Much more,” Oskar said.

“
Much
more.” The German straightened his spectacles on his nose.

Out the corner of his eye, Oskar was watching Polina. On the edge of the bed, she had dropped her chin onto her chest and was staring at her hands clasped in her lap. “Perhaps she would like this ring.” The words were uttered before he realized that he would speak them.

The German turned to face him. “What’s that?”

In his peripheral vision, Oskar saw that Polina had raised her eyes, too. “This ring,” he said. He took a step to the desk, picked up the ring that still belonged to him. It was a diamond of five or six carats at least, set in an antique platinum setting. “It must be worth a thousand crowns by itself.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes. I do.” Oskar wondered where this sudden courage was coming from. “And I think maybe she would like to wear it.”

“As far as you’re concerned, boy,” the German said, “she isn’t even here. Is that understood?” Hermann’s fingers strayed once again to his pistol.

Oskar shrugged. He gathered the other jewelry into his hands, together with the ring. “A thousand crowns,” he said. “Do you have it?”

“Yes,” the German said. “I have it.”

Oskar continued to look at the jewelry, but his attention remained fixed on the girl. “Then pay it to me, and I will give you the rest.”

The German’s mouth curled. “You don’t expect me to hand you the money without seeing the rest of the jewelry first, do you?”

Oskar held his ground. “I do.” Polina was gazing at him.

“Bring me the rest,” Hermann said, “and then we will talk about payment. Not before.”

Oskar was aware of the slightest movement from Polina. She had given her head a quick shake.
No
. “No,” Oskar said, as if his voice was an echo. “If you want the rest, you will pay me now.” Polina showed him the hint of a nod. “Otherwise I will walk away from here, and you will never see me again.” He collected the jewelry into a single hand, then shoved it back into his jacket pocket.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

When Oskar faced the German, the gun was drawn from the holster again. The hollow point stared back at him like a dilated pupil. “Pay me first, and I will give you the rest.”

The German gripped the pistol’s hammer with his free hand, ratcheted it backward. A bullet clicked into the chamber with oiled precision. “Place the jewelry back on the table.”

“The ring I just put into my pocket,” Oskar said, “alone is worth a thousand crowns, isn’t it? I am not a fool. I can see that it is. I can see it in your eyes. And this isn’t the best of it. I only grabbed a handful. I have ten times more than this.”

The German’s jaw muscles worked beneath his cheeks. Then the tip of the pistol dropped. “You’re telling the truth,” he said simply. He nodded to himself, finally slipped the pistol back into the holster.
This boy was speaking the truth
. Oskar watched him cross the room and open the wardrobe. When the door stopped moving, Polina was framed in the mirror. The German pulled a small safe from the upper shelf, then carried the black metal box to the table, opened it with a key from his pocket. Oskar’s eyes remained fixed on Polina’s reflection while the German removed a packet of bills and counted them out onto the table. “There. One thousand.”

Oskar’s hands shook as he took the money from the German. Though he had no way of knowing it, this was some of the profit that Hermann had made from the sale of the
Gregersens’ paintings. He began to count the bills, but almost immediately lost track.

“It’s all there,” Hermann said. “A thousand crowns — some of it in reichsmarks.”

Oskar continued flipping through the bills anyway. He had no idea how much he was holding, but he didn’t stop until he had touched every note. He shoved the money into his pocket on top of the pendant. “Okay. Here is what I will do. I will leave now, and when I get downstairs, I will ring the intercom, understand?”

Hermann nodded.

“You will answer yourself — not the girl. I will tell you where to find the rest.”

“Agreed.”

As much as he wanted to be gone from this strange apartment, Oskar didn’t want to leave the girl alone here. He took an awkward step toward the door.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Oskar kept walking.

“In your pocket,” Hermann said, raising his voice.

Oskar stopped, fumbled with the jewelry. Now that his business was almost concluded, his nerves were frayed. His palms were sweaty. He lay the jewelry onto the table again in a heap — the bracelet, the chain, the earring, the diamond ring — then at last left the room. The stairwell was a blur. His shoes slipped on the treads. He clasped the metal railing, kept himself from tumbling down the stairs. The clatter of his heavy footfalls followed him into the bare lobby. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he leaned against the wall. He wasn’t just breathing, he was panting. Slowly, he became aware of the porcelain tile against his temple. He pushed himself upright, shoved the door.

Outside, he barely recognized this street as the same one he had walked less than half an hour before. The intercom was as cold as ice on the tip of his thumb. He leaned into the button, closed his eyes to the swirling snow.

“Tell me,” the German said. His voice was thin and weak over the cheap speaker. “Tell me where it is.”

“Across the street —” Oskar said.

“Where across the street?”

Oskar interrupted him. He didn’t wait for the German to finish his question, he didn’t wait for him to understand. “— there’s a doorway. If you look inside the doorway, you’ll see a hole in the wall. That’s where you’ll find it — in the hole — in a suitcase in the hole.” Then he let go of the button and began to run. His clumsy, ugly farmer’s shoes slid on the slippery pavement. He caught himself on the side of a building, continued down the sidewalk in his awkward, loping gait. By the time the German had reached the bottom of the stairs, his footsteps were a distant swish.

It was already dark at five o’clock when Oskar backtracked through the Nazi quarter to Hermann’s address. The huge windows that lined the German’s apartment were lit, and the electric light hung in the snow. All day, the sky had crumbled into the streets, and there was no sign that the blizzard would let up. With the roads nearly impassible, Copenhagen had become a ghost town. Oskar took up sentry in the doorway across from the bakery where he had hidden the jewels, grateful for the cover of the storm. When the occasional pedestrian passed, he shrank backward, held his breath, found refuge in the shadows.

By seven, Oskar was frozen to the bone. His shoes were wet, his toes ached. He wished that he had gloves — he had lost
feeling in his fingers. The wind was gusting, and the cold swept through his clothes and clawed its way beneath his skin. Still, no matter how uncomfortable he became, he knew that he wasn’t going to leave until the lights were switched off inside. Not until there was no more chance that the German would leave the girl alone in the apartment.

When the door swung open across the street, Oskar dipped out of sight. Hermann emerged from the building, and Oskar’s heart pounded. He had waited for this opportunity all day, and now it was actually happening. He watched until the German had disappeared down the sidewalk, then crossed the unlit street. The glow from the windows upstairs fastened a long, smoky shadow to his feet, which darkened as it trailed him over the snow.

When he touched the button to sound the intercom, the line remained dead, and he buzzed again. Finally, the speaker hissed. “Who’s there?” It was barely a whisper.

“It’s me,” Oskar said, fumbling for words. “I was here earlier —”

“I know who you are.”

Oskar listened to the open line, breathing, unable to think of more to say.

Ten seconds passed before the door clicked open. Oskar’s hand was already on the lever. He stepped inside. The stairwell was dark. His shadow slid up the stairs in front of him. When the girl opened the door, the light chased it back down. “Stay there,” she said from the landing, and he stopped. “What do you want?” His face was red from the cold. His lips were chapped and torn. His hair was thick with clumps of ice. “If he comes back, he’ll kill you.”

Oskar didn’t speak. He wiped his nose dry with the back of a numb hand.

“What do you want from me?”

Oskar saw the huge diamond glinting on her finger. The German had given her the ring after all.
Perhaps she was happy here
. Perhaps he had misunderstood — perhaps nothing had passed between them.

“Why have you come back?” she demanded.

“How old are you?” Oskar asked her.

Polina peered past him, down the stairs. This late in the evening, the building was quiet. Most of the apartments were occupied by businesses. Upstairs, though, an old woman lived with her daughter and a boarder. Polina kept her voice low. “Your age, I think.”

An emotion Oskar didn’t recognize welled in his chest. “I came to help you,” he said.

“What do you mean?” When he took a step toward her, she took a step in retreat. “Stay there.”

“Are you in love with him?”

The girl shook her head.

“Where are you from?”

“From Kraków.”

“In Poland?”

The girl didn’t respond.

Through the dark that separated them, Oskar read her desperation. “Let’s go,” he said.

The girl’s mouth formed the beginning of a nervous smile.

“Now,” Oskar said. “Let’s go now. I’ll take you away from here. You can come with me — home — I can take you home.”

“I can’t leave,” the girl said.

“Why not? Of course you can —”

“He paid for me,” Polina said. “Do you understand? He is my — I belong to him.”

Oskar thought about the money the German had paid him. It meant nothing to him. But was it enough to buy her freedom? And then he remembered the pendant. He pulled the necklace from his pocket.

“What is it?” the girl asked him.

In the shadow of his cupped hand, the jewels scintillated. “We’ll give him this.”

The girl considered the necklace, then made up her mind. “We have to hurry. He only went for a drink.”

Oskar pushed past her, into the apartment. His first impulse was to leave the pendant on the desk, where he had placed the other jewelry that morning.

“No,” the girl said. “On the bed.”

This made sense to Oskar, because this in fact was the nature of the exchange. Crossing the studio, he lay the pendant onto the hard pillow. The girl stood next to him, looking at it with him. The large, pale sapphire captured the rays from the exposed bulbs and cast them back into the room, she thought, like pieces of an empty sky. Then she spit on the bed. The small wad of mucus landed beside the pendant on the pillow.

“My name is Oskar,” Oskar said.

“Mine is Polina.”

“Polina,” Oskar repeated. It was, to him, a beautiful name.

“One more thing,” Polina said. She took a step to the wardrobe, kicked the door with her heel. The mirror dropped in a single sheet, hit the rough-hewn planks, shattered into a thousand sharp pieces. The crash of breaking glass overwhelmed Oskar. A second later, a mosaic of small reflections dazzled him. He reconstructed Polina from among the shards, momentarily hypnotized by the jagged portrait. Then Polina’s shoes splintered the broken glass. She was already leaving.

Oskar took one last look around the barren room, then followed her down the stairs to the street. They left the door open behind them, swinging in the wind on rusty hinges.

An hour later, when Hermann left the bar, his head was light. Fortune had smiled upon him, to be sure, and he had celebrated. A glass of champagne had turned into a vodka tonic and then another. He could still taste the oil of lemon on his tongue. Walking home, he hardly noticed the snow. He was turning over his conversation with his commanding officer. His request for a transfer back to Berlin would be considered favorably — that is what he had been told. In less than a month, he would be able to return with his newfound treasure to Germany. His future would be secure, his daughter’s, too. The electric light flooding from the windows upstairs led him back to the building. When he reached the lobby, the door was latched shut again. He searched for his key, twisted the frozen lock, stepped inside.