Jonathan Rabb - Rosa

Hoffner cut in. “I’m Nikolai Hoffner.” He extended his hand. It was enough to distract Lamprecht.

“Yes, hello there,” said Lamprecht; he took Hoffner’s hand. “Are you with our Lina?”

“She asked me to come, yes.”

Lamprecht refocused. “So look, dear. They’re the money, and they’re just over by the-”

“By the drawings,” Hoffner cut in again.

Lamprecht seemed confused by the interruption. “Yes,” he said. He was searching for something else to say; when nothing came, he settled for, “Well, all right, then.” He then forced a smile and-clearly outmatched-headed back into the crowd.

Hoffner said, “Is he as unpleasant as he seems?”

“Not always.” And with surprising energy, she added, “All right, I’ll take you for a look. But from a distance. I’m not that keen to be on display tonight.”

The drawings were off on a side wall in a group of three, all of which seemed to be of the same subject in different stages of completion: mourners peering over the body of a dead man. There were variations in the facial details, in the number of mourners, in the angle of a torso or a hand, but the one constant was that of a mother and child gazing down into the dead man’s lifeless face. Hoffner quickly realized that the mother was the only woman in any of the drawings; more fascinating, she and the child were the only ones staring directly into the face. The rest of the gathering either gazed out or looked down into nothingness. It made it impossible not to stare with her.

Hoffner knew the gaze. He had woken to it several times himself, but had said nothing. He never knew why Lina stared at him as he slept. He had never thought to ask.

He said, “You’re right there in the middle in each of them. That must be good. She must like you to put you there.”

Lina was less enthusiastic. “It looks like I haven’t eaten anything in weeks,” she said. “It’s not very flattering.”

Hoffner knew that wasn’t the point. “You look fine. And it’s not supposed to be you.”

Lina seemed ready for a nice sulk, when a voice just behind them said, “He’s right, you know, so stop your complaining.”

They turned. A woman had appeared from behind a small door: by the sounds of the gurgling water beyond, Hoffner was guessing the toilet.

It was a sad face with thin lips and well-manicured eyebrows. Hoffner would have said somewhere in her fifties, but the gray hair might have made her older.

“Don’t move,” said the woman. “If we stay like this, no one can see me here, and then you’ll have made me very happy.”

Hoffner said, “And if someone wants to use the toilet?”

The woman liked the question. “There’s always the window, Herr Inspector.” Before Hoffner could respond, she said to Lina, “I’m assuming this is the older one, because if it’s the younger one”-she raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow-“my God, then you’re in trouble.”

Lina made the unnecessary introductions: even a Kripo detective could visit a museum now and then. Hoffner had recognized Kathe Kollwitz the moment he saw her. Funny how Lina had never mentioned it: “A woman; two marks an hour.” That was all she had said.

“You know who that is, of course,” said Kollwitz, peering past him at her drawings. “You’re probably the only one in here who does.”

Hoffner looked over. He had been so focused on Lina’s figure that he had failed to pay any attention to the dead man. Even so, the face remained unfamiliar.

“They let me see him the morning after he was shot,” Kollwitz continued. “At the morgue. The family brought me in, as if I could add anything more to their tragedy. It’s all rather nauseating, isn’t it?”

Hoffner now recognized him, albeit without his customary beard and spectacles. “Liebknecht,” he said.

“I saw him speak,” said Kollwitz. “Very passionate, very rousing. I didn’t much go in for the violence, but they did.” She nodded at the figures in the drawings. “The workers. So I gave him to them. I imagine they’ll be the ones to miss him most.” Her gaze deepened. “It’s all very rough, but I think some of it’s right.”

Hoffner had never put much stock in fate. Lina, on the other hand, saw signs in everything. A girl selling flowers along Friedrichstrasse had no other choice: how else could she imagine a life beyond it? The coin placed in her basket from the year of her birth, the piece of newspaper blowing into her hand with a phrase that she had dreamt of the night before, the color of the coat on a man dashing over to buy a few roses for his wife: these were the markers along the way that told her that she was following the right course, that life had more in store for her than she could possibly know at present. All she needed was a bit of patience to see it through. She had mentioned one or two of her “sightings” to Hoffner and had laughed at them, admitting to their silliness, but with just enough hope in her voice to betray what she needed to be true.

A drawing of Karl Liebknecht inspired nothing so fanciful in Hoffner. Not that he saw it as a random occurrence within a universe lost to chaos: that idea, now all the rage, was equally absurd. Coincidence was born of proximity. Kollwitz was simply the perfect candidate for Liebknecht’s memorial; her drawings and posters of browbeaten Berlin had made her the willing, or unwilling, voice of the working class. That one of their own-a lean, less than beautiful girl with a striking gaze-had drawn Kollwitz’s eye was hardly beyond possibility. It had drawn Hoffner’s as well, albeit for different reasons. Who was to say, then, that artists and detectives were not the ones most likely to see something beyond a stare? It was as much whimsy as Hoffner would concede. Of course, had Kollwitz produced something on Rosa, now that might have been less easy for him to dismiss.

“I wanted to do something on Luxemburg,” said Kollwitz, “but that’s not as clear-cut, is it?” She looked up at Hoffner. “So what do you think, Inspector? Is she off in Russia, or have we seen the last of Red Rosa?”

At least the cosmos had a sense of humor, thought Hoffner. He said, “Are you that keen to have her back?”

It was clear Kollwitz was enjoying this. “It’s not for me that she’d be coming back, now is it, Inspector?”

More than you realize, Frulein, he thought. “Did you know her?” he said.

“Should I have?” she said quizzically. “Yes. We met once, at a concert, two old women enjoying some music. We told each other how much we enjoyed each other’s work. It was very polite.”

He said, “I would have thought the two of you would have been kindred spirits.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” said Kollwitz dryly. “I’m sure history will have it that way. And Emma Goldman, too. Lump all of us in together. In fact, we might just be the same person. Wouldn’t that be something?” She smiled. “I thought she was a devotee of feminism. I asked her, and she took it as an absurd question. Women, Jews, it didn’t matter to her. Socialism didn’t care about those distinctions, so why should she? Everything would be made right after the great event. I thought it was very. . honest. . though not terribly helpful. But she did do profound things, and for that I’m infinitely jealous. You don’t have a drink, Inspector. Let’s go get you one.”

Hoffner gazed over at Lina and was reminded that, yes, he really was the old one. For all that was behind her stare, Lina looked as if she had just spent the last few minutes lost in a foreign country.

They made it halfway to the drinks before Kollwitz was torn from them. Hoffner’s last image of her was of a small gray rabbit being sucked into a bottomless pit of groping hands. She went bravely and even managed a little smile back to them before she was gone. Hoffner took a whiskey and wondered how much longer they would need to be here.