Those Who Save Us (38 page)

Please, Jack, tell her. It is dangerous. She could fall.

Jack chuffs smoke out through his nostrils. Then he calls, Not so fast, Strudel.

He slits his eyes at Anna.

Don’t worry, he mutters. It’s not
her
fault. I would never take anything out on
her.

Jack, says Anna. Her voice falters. She clears her throat and tries again. Jack, I wish you would call her by her proper name. She is now American. We both are American. We have leaved Germany and everything in it far, far behind...Do you understand what I am saying?

Watch! Trudie screams.

Standing on the pedals, she topples into a drift, from which she emerges powdered head to foot with snow. She brushes herself off, laughing.

Anna touches Jack’s sleeve.

Jack—?

Jack moves out of reach and drops his cigarette to the wooden floorboards. He grinds it out beneath the heel of his workboot. He bends to retrieve the stub and bounces it in his palm. Then he throws it into the bushes and goes inside.

Anna turns to follow.

Where are you going? Trudie demands of her mother, indignant.

To make breakfast, Anna tells her. You may stay out for a while. But not too long.

She finds Jack in the kitchen, head lowered, knocking his knuckles against the table. She catches his hand and raises it to her lips. She presses them to each callus on his palm. Then she leads him upstairs to the bedroom. He comes slowly but willingly enough.

Although the room is now full of light, Anna disrobes completely. She undresses Jack as well before guiding him to the bed. They are both quiet. There is nothing to say; there is so much to say that Anna will never say it. She will never tell him, although perhaps they both know, that as Anna presses against him, initiating the lovemaking that might bring them a child of their own, it is not her husband she thinks of.

Trudy, May 1997

59

MAY IN MINNEAPOLIS IS LILAC TIME. AS IF TO COMPENSATE for the punitive winter, the city explodes with flowers overnight—making it, if only for a week or two, one of the most beautiful places on earth. First there are sunny starbursts of forsythia; then the cherry and dogwood trees burst into life, showering petals everywhere, pink and cream, drifting thick as snow on the sidewalks. But it is the lilacs that truly herald the coming of spring: lavender and white and blue and sometimes a purple deep as grapes, they bloom in the alleys and over backyard fences and in graveyards. Beauty is everywhere, including the most unexpected places. There is no respite from it. And to Trudy, this abundance seems a personal insult, a trick of nature as cruelly calculated as certain forms of torture to inflict the maximum pain in the minimum time.

On this glorious Saturday morning, Trudy is in the passenger’s seat of Thomas’s van, en route to an interview in Min-netonka. She has asked him to drive, saying it is silly that they should take two cars to one destination—a point with which the ever-amenable Thomas instantly agreed. Of course, Thomas is agreeable by nature, but he is being so gracious that Trudy wonders if he suspects her real reason for wanting him to play chauf-feur: without him, she might forsake the interview altogether. This is the first Trudy has conducted since Rainer’s departure, and not only has she almost forgotten about it—having scheduled it a month in advance—she has lost her taste for the entire business. Despite Rainer’s assertion to the contrary, Trudy can’t help feeling that her Project must have played some part in his decision. She has done nothing to prepare for today’s meeting other than making a halfhearted call to the subject, Mr. Pfeffer, to confirm the appointment; she has not done her research into his background nor come up with her usual list of questions, a breach of work ethic that would have been unthinkable in the days before Rainer left. She will have to wing it.

Thomas is driving past Lake of the Isles, the water throwing light into the cab of the van, and Trudy twists in her seat to watch it go by. Through the trees she sees families picnicking on the shoreline, lovers walking with their arms around each other’s waists, the ubiquitous panting joggers. She cranes until it is out of sight, then faces forward again.

Are you okay? Thomas asks. Forgive me for saying so, but you look a little ragged.

Trudy is picturing Rainer standing by a man-made lake ringed with palms, its water like a bath; taking his daily constitutional along canals slithering with alligators. He would walk steadily through the simmering heat, his fedora replaced by a white straw Panama. Trudy roots through her briefcase for a Kleenex.

Allergies, she mumbles. Damned lilacs.

Thomas leans over, pops the glove compartment, and hands Trudy a somewhat elderly SuperAmerica napkin. She daubs the corners of her eyes.

Thanks, she says gruffly.

You’re welcome.

Thomas turns onto Highway 7 and drives for a few minutes in silence. Then he says, I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Goldmann.

Trudy sits up straighter.

How on earth did you know about that?

Ruth told me.

Ruth! Trudy says, bridling. God in heaven, does everybody have to know everybody else’s business around here? You’d think we were all in high school!

Sorry, Thomas repeats. I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up. Clumsy of me. I apologize.

No, don’t, it’s fine, Trudy mutters.

She glares through the side window and applies the napkin again.

You know, says Thomas after a pause, I lost my wife two years ago. About this time of year. Car accident. I was driving.

Oh, says Trudy. Oh, Thomas, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.

Thomas cracks his joints on the steering wheel. It’s all right. I mean, it’s not, but of course you wouldn’t know. It’s not exactly something I advertise. And I only bring it up now to let you know I’m in your corner. Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends. So I understand. That’s all.

Trudy looks at him. He is wearing black sunglasses that make it impossible for her to see his eyes, but his face seems serene enough. Yet Trudy feels bad, not only because of what he has told her but because she has never thought much about Thomas outside of the Project. He is just always there whenever she needs him, ready with his equipment and benign smile and words of encouragement. Trudy has a sudden flash, shocking but not unpleasant, of what Thomas would look like in the nude: a potbelly and slightly concave chest, either with scant hair around the nipples or completely smooth. She takes a small breath.

Thank you, Thomas.

You’re welcome, Trudy.

They are in Minnetonka now, a privileged suburb of huge houses set far from the road on properties the size of golf courses. Old trees reach across the street to entangle in a canopy that allows only a few coins of sunlight to fall through. Thomas slows, canvassing the bronze nameplates and address plaques screwed into stone columns, and turns into the drive of 9311 Hawthorne Way.

Heavens, he says mildly of the house at the end.

Trudy silently concurs. Mr. Pfeffer’s residence is more of a showcase than a house, a towering structure of glass and steel that seems to float on its vast green lawn, an architect’s dream of contemporary angles. It is not the sort of place Trudy would choose to live in even if she could, in her wildest dreams, afford to: with those glass walls one would be as dreadfully exposed as in a dollhouse. Particularly at night. But Trudy has to grant that it is impressive, if only for the money it must have taken to construct.

And Thomas is apparently following a similar train of thought, for as they climb from the van he asks, What does this guy do?

I don’t know, Trudy admits.

You don’t? I thought that was one of the questions you always ask over the phone first.

Well, I do, says Trudy, but to tell you the truth, I don’t remember.

She takes out her portfolio and flips it open. Of course, there is only Mr. Pfeffer’s scrawled address, but the action prods her memory as to the long-ago contact conversation.

He was fairly evasive about his profession, now that I think of it, she tells Thomas. All he said was,
Oh, I do a bit of this and a bit of that; I’m a man of many interests, dear lady.

Thomas gazes around as he and Trudy proceed up the flagstones of the front walk: at the manicured grass, the clever lack of any landscaping that would compete with the house, the wink of Lake Minnetonka behind it.

No wonder he was evasive, Thomas comments. He probably robbed a bank.

Probably, Trudy agrees, and then jumps, startled, for Mr. Pfeffer opens the door before she has pressed the bell.

Come in, come in, he says, ushering them into a foyer with the echoing dimensions of a cathedral. Welcome to my home! Is it not a lovely day?

He rubs his hands, then jumps aside to let Thomas pass with his cart. He is a small and dapper man, this Mr. Pfeffer, with the wiry build of a tennis player and a head as bald as a cue ball. His hair, when he had it, must have been black, for his eyebrows still are. They climb his tanned forehead in delight as he looks Trudy up and down.

But the morning is not half as lovely as you, dear lady, he adds. I suppose this is to your advantage as an interrogator, yes? I will be putty in your hands.

Trudy blinks and touches her hair, which now nearly reaches her shoulders. She has been too dispirited to have it cut. Surely Mr. Pfeffer is poking fun at her.

But he tilts his head and eyes Trudy with bright, robinlike appreciation. He is wearing a three-piece charcoal suit of fine Italian design, Trudy notices, and she is amused to see that the rose in his lapel is the exact shade of yellow as the silk handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket.

Tell me about yourself, Mr. Pfeffer says.

Well, as you know, I’m a professor of German Studies at the university, and I—No, no. Please, something more interesting. Are you married?

No, says Trudy. I was once, but—

No? says Mr. Pfeffer. He makes a face of astonishment. But how surprising. How can it possibly be that such a charming lady as yourself is unattached?

Trudy tries to smile, but when her eyes fill she turns toward the glittering blue expanse beyond the clerestory windows.

Thomas, carrying a sound boom past them, says quickly, This is an incredible house, Mr. Pfeffer. What is it you do for a living?

Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that, Mr. Pfeffer replies, not looking away from Trudy. I’m a man of many interests, dear fellow...But how rude I am! I have not even offered you a refreshment. Please, this way.

Cupping Trudy’s elbow, he escorts her into an enormous living room. Trudy gives Thomas a grateful glance as they pass. He reaches out to press her arm, then occupies himself with setting up screens near a white Steinway.

Mr. Pfeffer pats a leather couch.

Come, he says, sit here by me.

Trudy does. She is amazed to see, among the glinting chrome furniture, the sprigs of orchids in Meissen vases, a hotel tea cart at Mr. Pfeffer’s elbow. It is stocked with a silver service and little crustless sandwiches and—can they be actual crumpets? They must be: a pyramid of small cakes, the hybrid of English muffin and scone.

Tea? Coffee? Crumpet? asks Mr. Pfeffer.

Just coffee, please, says Trudy.

She accepts a cup and smiles at him, more successfully this time.

Where in Germany were you born, Mr. Pfeffer?

Felix, dear lady, please. I come from the forests of Thuringia; I was born in a dank little hovel there, the seventh of eleven children, if you can believe that . . . The closest city was a small one, Weimar— but of course you would be familiar with it, given your field of study.

Trudy sets the coffee on her knee, feeling as though she has been doused in cold water. To hear the name of her own birthplace in the mouth of somebody who has actually been there produces not only a chill but the images so much a part of her that she is rarely conscious of their existence: more mood, almost, than memory. A muddy street running past a shabby store front. The winding stone wall alongside. The field behind the bakery, gray and white with snow. The dark smudge of the Ettersberg woods at its edge. A bare lightbulb swinging. Melancholy. Fear.
Brötchen
under glass. And the officer, of course, standing in the doorway or upstairs in the bedroom. His light wolfish eyes.

Trudy manages a sip of coffee.

What a coincidence, she tells Mr. Pfeffer. I was born there as well. But closer to the center of the city.

Mr. Pfeffer rears back in delight.

Were you! But you are quite right: that is an extraordinary coincidence. However, I could have guessed you were a native German from your given name. Trudy is short for Gertrude, correct?

Yes, it is. I can’t imagine what my mother was thinking.

Mr. Pfeffer laughs. It could have been worse. You could be a Helga, for instance . . .
Und sprechen Sie jetzt Deutsch?
Do you know what my name means in our original language?

Ja,
natürlich.
Auf Deutsch, Pfeffer ist
Pepper.

Mr. Pfeffer claps. Ah, yes, your accent is Thuringian! But I was not referring to my surname. I meant my first: Felix.

That I don’t know, says Trudy. Is there a direct translation?

No, says Mr. Pfeffer. But it means happy. Or, I should say, happy-go-lucky.

He wags a finger at Trudy.

My mother, Hannaliese Pfeffer, was a smart woman. She named me well. I have been lucky all my life.

In what way? Trudy asks.

In what way? Mr. Pfeffer repeats. His brows again rise, wrinkling skin the color and texture of caramel. Why, in almost every way. I am blessed with good health and an optimistic disposition. My business interests in this country have thrived, as you can see. And in Weimar, during the war, while so many of my compatriots were dying in such nasty ways in the Russian snow or the deserts of Africa, my business ventures exempted me and fed me and kept me warm. Until my unfortunate incarceration, that is. But I managed to survive, and here I am—whereas so many others of my generation are rotting in the ground . . .

Mr. Pfeffer pats Trudy’s knee, his hand lingering perhaps a bit longer than it should.

And if that isn’t lucky, dear lady, he says, his small brown eyes shining, what is?