The Violent Century (30 page)

– No, Fogg says.

– They left, the old woman says. Did I make them leave? Did I force them? She seems to be appealing to him. Her hands rise, palms open, old fingers with broken nails. I am a woman, she says. What power do I have?

Fogg looks at her. Wonders where she’d been, what she’d done. The smell of the cabbage makes him want to gag or light a cigarette. Stares at the woman, remorselessly.

– You are a German, he says.

All the answer she’ll ever receive.

Reaches an officious hand towards her. Give me your papers, he says.

She stares at him. He stares back. Fog rising outside, closing on the windows. Quickly now, he says. The woman reaches into her dress and comes back with a worn ID book. Fogg opens it, looks at it perfunctorily. The woman’s photo. The handwritten details of her life, in Russian and German. Fogg keeps it in his hand. Without the ID book, the woman is nothing. It is her life he is holding, her essence. The way witches and wizards were said to decant their soul into a material object, to keep it safe. He is holding the woman’s soul.

There is something dangerous, illicit about it. That sense of power over another human being. Perhaps, he thinks, this is how the Nazis felt all the time. Perhaps that’s why they did what they did, the death camps, and the Einsatzgruppen, the war. Something intoxicating about that power, whether over one person, or millions.

Fogg clears his throat. How many tenants do you have here? he says.

– Seven, the woman says.

– Seven people?

– Seven families.

Fogg holds the ID book. Moves it, idly. The woman’s eyes are fixed on his hands, follow the ID book’s movement.

–
All
families?

– Yes.

Fogg shrugs. Maybe I have the wrong place, then, he says.

He makes to hand the woman her ID book back. As she reaches for it, however, Fogg seems to change his mind. He withdraws it, with that same air of officialdom, of official boredom, and watches as the woman’s hands drop to her side.

– I’m looking for a man, Fogg says.

It’s the old woman’s turn to shrug. There are many men in this city, her shrug seems to say. Many living. Many more dead. Too many men. Just take your pick. But there are none here to interest you.

– A young man, Fogg says. The woman’s eyes slide to her ID book. Her broken nails are yellow around the edges. She looks up at Fogg, defiance in her eyes. Of young men we have no more, she is, perhaps, saying. We have used up our young men and now even their bones are ground to dust.

– Blond, Fogg says. So blond his hair looks white.

Watches her closely. Like snow, Fogg says, softly.

The woman shakes her head violently. There is no such man here, she says.

Fogg reaches into his pocket, comes back with money. United States dollars. The woman’s eyes widen when she sees the notes. Are you sure? Fogg says.

– I am telling you, the woman says. There is no such man here.

Fogg holds the money. The woman watches it, as if hypnotised. The money in one hand. The ID book in the other. Fogg weighs them before her.

– An Übermensch, Fogg says. Watches her. The woman shakes her head, No, no.

Fogg’s voice is low, confident. We can protect you, he says. The woman flares. Her hand shoots up. Like you protected my sister when your soldiers raped and killed her? the woman says. She was out on the street looking to get bread for the children.

– You said the Russians killed her, Fogg says, taken aback by her reaction.

– British, Russian, American … the woman says. You’re all the same.

Fogg stares at the old woman. The old woman stares at Fogg. It’s a stand-off. Neither of them seems willing to give in first.

Fogg, at last, smiles. Makes the money disappear. Like a magician. The woman stares at his other hand. Fogg courteously hands her back her ID book. She takes it quickly, pushes it into a hidden pocket in her dress.

– Well, thank you for your time, Fogg says. Sorry to have bothered you.

Nods. Walks to the door. Then stops. Turns back. Smiles again. Reaches into his pocket and comes back with a handful of American sweets.

– For the children, he says.

They peer out behind the woman’s legs. A boy and a girl. Fogg stretches out his hand and they come to it, shy but determined. They take the sweets from him. Their little fingers are hot and sticky. Fogg straightens, nods. The children retreat to safety behind the old woman’s legs.

– Gute Nacht, Fogg says.

He walks outside. Closes the door. Hears the old woman locking it behind him. He takes a deep breath of air. It feels so much fresher after that oppressive smell inside, that cabbage boiled to its death. He stares into the night, feels the cold on his skin. He raises his face. A whiteness, falling. Tiny kisses.

Fogg looks up, into the falling snow.

126.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– I visited the boarding house but encountered no one but for the proprietress, who denied all knowledge of a man answering Snow Storm’s description residing at that address—

The Old Man reads out loud from the page; his voice fills the room, its drone a soothing spell woven across dust motes and light beams, bouncing soundlessly at the speed of thought. Could you make your sentences any more convoluted? he says, accusingly.

Fogg doesn’t answer. Perhaps he is half asleep, seduced at last by the night and the lateness of the hour and the heat of the room. Tea is a distant memory. The Old Man returns to the report. Wets his finger, turns the page. The sound of the page like the fluttering of wings. The Old Man reads. I made a search of the premises and was satisfied with the woman’s account, following which I left.

Raises his head. Stares at Fogg. Shakes his head, slightly. And that’s all she wrote, he says.

Fogg shrugs.

– That’s all she wrote, the Old Man says, softly. Remember that? Something else to come out of that war.

Fogg raises his head at that. Nods.

Remembering.

– I knew a few guys like that, he says.

127.
NORMANDY, FRANCE
1944

The bombs are falling, and overhead Allied planes streak low across the sky, De Havilland Mosquitoes and Supermarine Spitfires, Liberators and Hurricanes and Invaders. Fogg and Mr Blur sit in a trench, leaning against sandbags, and the sky is a maelstrom of coloured lights, a fireworks show. General army soldiers man the machine guns. The Germans are up ahead, only a short distance away, the invasion is a reality now but the Hun is giving back a bloodied fight, Fogg has seen more dead bodies litter the beaches of Normandy than he could ever forget, they will rise from the waves and from the sand in his dreams for years to come, bloated corpses shambling in their worn uniforms as giant poppies grow out of the ground until they envelop them in red.

Fogg smokes a cigarette. Mr Blur sits with his little legs crossed beside him, holding an envelope in one hand. The envelope is torn and crumpled and covered in mud and spots of what looks like rust but might, in fact, be blood. Mr Blur hesitates as he holds it in his hand. Fogg turns to him, raises his eyebrows in a mute query, Mr Blur shakes his head. Want me to read it for you? Fogg says. Volunteers. Mr Blur mulls it over. Shakes his head. No, he says. I’ll do it.

Slits open the envelope. Carefully. His nails are long and clean despite the war. Withdraws a single sheet of thin paper, aerogramme-style. The ink is blue. Hesitates again. Someone shouts – Incoming! They duck instinctively for a moment, heads between thighs, as the bomb explodes. Well get on with it then, Fogg says. The sound of machine-gun fire fills the air, the smell of cordite, bitter like nutmeg. Well? Fogg says.

– Don’t rush me!

The bombardment goes on all around them. Fogg ashes the cigarette. Mr Blur reads out loud.

– Dear Ron.

– There is no easy way to say this.

He stops. Looks to Fogg, who looks away. Giving Mr Blur the illusion of privacy. Another bomb, somewhere nearby, and a scream cut short.

– There is no easy way to say this. I met another man.

Fogg looks away. Smokes as Mr Blur reads the rest of the letter silently, to himself. It is not, Fogg notices, a very long letter. At last he is done. He holds the thin sheet of paper in both hands. Stares at it for one long moment. Then he folds it neatly and slides it back inside the envelope.

– And that’s all she wrote, he says, with a sad smile. It is the smile Fogg remembers, for years afterwards. That sad little smile on Mr Blur’s face, a moment before someone shouts – Incoming! And then they’re both up and this time it’s close, too close, the soldier ahead, Fogg never even learned his name and now he never will, the soldier is thrown backwards through the air as the machine gun explodes, the gunman is dead before he even hits Fogg and shards of molten metal spray across the dugout and it’s the only thing that saves Fogg, that dead nameless soldier and that’s all she wrote.

128.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– So then what happened? the Old Man says. Looks at the page. Drums his fingers on the desk. Raises his eyes and looks at Fogg.

Who says, I don’t remember.

The Old Man waits him out. It’s all in the report, Fogg says. Reluctant.

– Which report? the Old Man says.

– The other report. The one I made directly to you. After the … after what happened then.

– When you left the old woman’s boarding house.

– Yes, Fogg says. When I went outside.

129.
BERLIN. THE SOVIET ZONE
1946

Snow falls like a benediction. It touches Fogg’s upturned face. It turns the world white. It muffles sound, it blankets the world in silence. It makes Fogg smile, a hunter’s smile, a smile of anticipation. Then there’s a roar of wind, which he is only partly prepared for. He half turns, raising his hand to protect himself, and a figure comes flying out of the whiteness at him, like a ghost, like a white ghost; it knocks Fogg back, slamming into him and it is solid, a white thing of snow and flesh, and Fogg rolls, landing on the ground painfully.

He hasn’t got the time to react. Wind and snow reach for him like hands, lift him up bodily, slam him against the wall of the boarding house. Fogg curses, angry now, punches upwards in an uppercut that connects with something soft and he hears the other grunt. The pressure eases, for just a moment. The white shape flitters back, disappears behind the falling snow. Fogg spits blood and grins and calls the fog to him and it comes, like an obedient dog. The very air is singing. It is a two-tone cry that rises, that vibrates like strings through the air and the moisture in the air, through condensation, water molecules, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, nuclei, quarks. An elemental music.

One tone, rising, thrums through Fogg’s body, through his very soul: it is the sound of subatomic particles responding in a collapsing wave of probabilities, of molecules forming and re-forming around him, of a great and comforting gathering fog:

While the other, a discordant tone, is one he had heard once before, that night in Paris. It is a song of molecules not
dispersing
, becoming diffuse, but rather pressing together, forming into something hard and yet soft, a whiteness not a greyness, snow where there should be fog, ice where there should be smoke. Fogg launches himself from the wall, comes flying at the other, fog shards like blades sweeping before him, slicing through ice. For a moment both fog and ice clear and he sees the other cleanly, the blond hair and the blue eyes and the laughing mouth and he says,
Schneesturm
.

– Herr Fogg, the other says, mockingly, and his smile grows wider. Then he is gone and a blast of snow hits Fogg in the face, cold and smarting, and reminding him, strangely, so strangely of a winter before the change, when his father worked in the market and brought him along, and let him loose, and he played, with the other children, along the bank of the frozen Thames, making snowballs and throwing them at each other.

But that was a long time ago, he thinks, and the anger rises in him like the notes of a song and he laughs, and the fog rises around him, obscuring the world in a spectrum of grey. He launches himself forward but he can’t see the other, the white one, and the snow dances around him, trapping him. Then a punch, out of nowhere, catches him in the ribs, a fist sinks into his belly and he gasps, doubling over, and for a moment the fog fades and the world is dominated by pain and snow. He is aware then of eyes at the windows, of the silent watchers, those defeated old Germans, those tired survivors behind their flimsy walls; watching this silent re-enactment of the war, but they had already lost; and that knowledge gives him power, and he rises, twirling, indifferent to the pain, and raises up a being of fog, a simulacrum; and he can sense the hidden Schneesturm doing the same.

Their avatars meet in the middle of that bombed-out street of East Berlin. Snowman versus fog creature, Fogg’s golem the more amorphous of the two. The snowman swings a great arm for a punch but it passes through the fog creature harmlessly and its own elbow, solidified by particles in the air, jabs into the snowman’s abdomen, and it raises a mighty blade of fog and dirt and swings it. It cleaves the snowman’s head clean off.

– You think you’re a hero? Fogg screams, into the night. You think you’re a fucking
hero
?

Somewhere, a cry of rage. The snowman’s head flops wetly to the ground. Fogg hears tiny sounds and turns, a moment before Schneesturm appears behind him. Fogg blocks the German’s arm, the blow glances off, then Fogg’s own angry attack pushes Schneesturm back, step by step, he loses his mocking smile and Fogg swings at him and catches him on the side of the head and Schneesturm falls to the ground and then Fogg is over him, leaning over the man’s fallen body, and somehow Fogg’s gun is in his hand and it is pointing directly at Schneesturm’s face, it is steady, Fogg’s hand is steady on the gun.

– Don’t, the man on the ground says. He is very still. Fogg is breathing hard. Give me one good reason why, Erich, he says. Looks at him. Remembers Tank. Remembers Paris. A moment of silence, stretching. Then …