Peter Rabe - A Shroud for Jesso

He was waiting on the other side of the road and they went to the whitewashed house together.

The room had a balcony. Inside was the low ceiling of the peasant house, a tile stove in one corner and a monster closet against one of the walls. The rest of the room was mostly bed, and the bed was mostly feather blanket.

“Let’s lie down,” she said.

Jesso put the suitcase in the closet and stepped to the bed. “Like rolling in dough,” he said.

“Good.”

She stretched herself out and sank into the feathers. “Watch your clothes,” he said. “You haven’t got any others.”

“I’ll take them off,” she said.

She got up and stood with her back to him so he could get at the buttons. He undid them.

“Come,” she said. She lay on the feather bed and he sat down beside her.

“Soft,” he said. “Better than that lousy ride on-”

“Your clothes are still on,” she said.

“Yeah. Sure.” He undressed.

“Jesso,” she said.

The sun was going higher outside and the village street was empty because the men worked in the fields and the women worked in the gardens. None of that meant a damn to Jesso or Renette, and later they went to sleep.

Renette had to borrow a pair of shoes from the landlady because her high heels weren’t any good outside. And Jesso bought a clean shirt from her, a heavy linen thing that smelled of lavender because the landlady had been widowed for almost ten years and since that time there had been no call to take her husband’s things out of the trunk.

They went to the Gasthof, where the bus had stopped. Inside there was a sweet odor of freshly ground flour and the smell of beer. The wet beer stink was strong, but after a while they didn’t notice it. They ate at a long wooden table-boiled potatoes, boiled beef, and boiled cabbage, and then coffee that was gritty on the tongue because it had been boiled too. Only the beer was good. Jesso had some, but Renette just smoked and sat by.

After a while they took a walk past the last houses and through the fields. The evening air was full with hay odors and the spice of herbs. It was very quiet. Only insects were singing in the air. They thought of walking a piece farther, to the bridge over the creek ahead, but the mosquitoes got thicker and they turned back.

It was better on the small balcony. They sat in the dark and smoked.

“Sleepy?” he asked.

“No. I slept during the day.”

“I know.”

She laughed and then her cigarette glowed. When it went down again she leaned close, toward his chair.

“Are your legs on the railing?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I bet nobody has sat here like that for years.”

“Ten years, maybe.”

“Yes,” she said.

Jesso stretched in his chair, recrossed his legs.

“For a while that’s going to be the news around here.”

“For a while?”

“A week. Maybe two weeks.”

“Make it a day. Maybe two days.”

“We don’t show that soon. A couple of weeks is better.”

“I was in Carlsbad once. Why don’t we go to Carlsbad?”

“What’s Carlsbad?”

“It’s a resort on the Rhine. It’s full of retired professors and old ladies with rheumatism. I’d like to go there, Jesso. Just for the contrast.”

“Just for the contrast this’ll do the same thing. Better, even.”

“Let’s go to Carlsbad.”

“Listen, Renette. You and me, from now on, we gotta stay out of sight. Then when I see Kator, after that we gotta stay out of sight. You don’t know your brother much, do you?”

“You hate him, Jesso?”

“No. But I want to stay alive.”

“You’re with me now”

“Boy!” he said. “You sure don’t know your brother much.”

“But I do. I’ve known him longer than you have.”

Jesso laughed. “You don’t count. Besides, you like him too much.”

Her cigarette glowed again and she exhaled. “I have great respect for him, Jesso.”

“Me, too,” he said.

His tone of voice wasn’t pleasant and Renette tried to see Jesso’s face in the dark.

“We are not talking about the same kind of respect. Yours is more like dislike.”

Jesso let his feet come off the railing and it made quite a racket. Then he leaned over the arm of his chair. He sounded harsh.

“Now you listen to this love story, Renette. First he hires himself out to do a killing, then he tries putting the screws on a guy already half dead. Next comes a double cross to make a corpse, then another one of the same, and I’m the guy he was doing it to every time. So don’t tell me to love your brother, kid, because he’s the one I’m going after, and when I go out for a hit I don’t do any loving.”

When he was through she could still hear the sharp ring of his voice, and for a moment she sat thinking about it, to get clear what he had said. A while back, just days, there wouldn’t have been any reason to think about it. There had been no Jesso. There had just been Johannes. And now the strength of Jesso was taking the place of her brother’s.

But she said, “I don’t excuse him. He needs no excuse.”

“I didn’t ask for excuses. Just don’t sit there and tell me the sonofabitch is the end. He isn’t. Or else I’d be dead!”

The strength of Jesso… Or else there would be no Jesso, she thought.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” he said, and he was out of the chair now, standing before her so she could see his black shape against the sky.

She didn’t know what to answer and then he did it for her. “You’re on mine. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m keeping you.”

“Jesso,” she said. “Do you know why I’m here?”

He was listening.

“Johannes sent me.”

He still didn’t move.

“To make you talk, maybe to make you weak.”

Then she waited for whatever would come next, but his shape against the sky didn’t move for a long time. At first, the way it started out, she didn’t know what it was, but then it was Jesso laughing. He laughed so hard that when he stopped she didn’t know how he had done it. He moved and sat down again.

“That poor sonofabitch,” he said. “That stupid sonofabitch.” He laughed some more. He lit two cigarettes, gave one to her. “So that’s why you’re here.”

“No. That’s why I came.”

“You stayed because of Kator?”

“Because of you,” she said.

“You know he’s through with you, don’t you?”

And then Renette laughed, because what Jesso had said didn’t mean a thing any more. What meant something was the way she felt, the way she suddenly felt that she was through with Johannes. He was out of her fear, her need, and her hopes.

“Jesso,” she said, “I can forget Johannes.”

“Good for you. But I can’t. He’s crapped out before, but I won’t forget him till he craps out for good.”

“Forget him, Jesso.”

“Why? Because he’s your brother?”

She felt he needn’t have said that. It was nasty, the way Helmut might have done it. But Jesso needn’t have.

“I don’t understand you,” she said, because she didn’t.

“Don’t try. Just watch me forget him once I’m through with him. Pretty soon I’m going to be through with him.”

But she still thought of Johannes the way she had thought of in the past, so she didn’t see what Jesso meant, what he was up against. She herself was through with Johannes, not needing him any more, but not being concerned with him didn’t make him her enemy.

“What you said before, Jesso, about hiding. You mean we run, from now on, we keep running and hiding?”

“That’s a crazy way to put it. And maybe we won’t. Maybe Kator will drop dead.”

She didn’t think he would. She was through with him but he was as strong as ever.