Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“I heard.”

“Well, it’s good you’re here. Saves a trip,” he said, not explaining and moving toward the table. “ Wie gehts, Gunther?” He looked down at the cards. “Seven on the eight. Things a little blurry?” He picked up the bottle, gave it a quick glancing measurement, and put it aside.

“Clear enough.”

“I brought the Bensheim copies you asked for. I’ll need them back, though. We’re not supposed to—”

“According to Herr Geismar, unnecessary now.”

“What’s Bensheim?” Jake said.

“Where Tully was before Kransberg,” Bernie said.

“To cross the t ‘s,” Gunther said, opening one of the folders, then looking at Jake. “Not bold, methodical. So often there’s a pattern.

I thought, to whom was he selling these persilscheins? Which Germans? Perhaps someone I would recognize. An idea only.“

“So that’s what they look like,” Jake said, coming over and picking one up.

The usual buff-colored paper and ragged type wedged into boxes, ink scrawled across the bottom. The name on top was Bernhardt, no one he knew. A different page layout, yet still familiar, like all the occupation forms. He scanned down the sheet, then handed it back. Innocuous paper, but worth a reputation to Bernhardt.

“But as I say, no longer necessary,” Gunther said.

“Why’s that?” Bernie said.

“Gunther’s retiring from the case,” Jake said. “He wants to do his drinking elsewhere.”

“Still, you don’t mind if I look? Since you went to the trouble?” Gunther said, taking the folders.

“Be my guest,” Bernie said, pouring himself a drink. “Did I walk into the middle of something?”

“No, we’re done,” Jake said. “I’m off.”

“Don’t go. I have some news.” He tossed back the drink and swallowed it with a small shudder, a gesture so uncharacteristic that it drew Jake’s attention.

“I thought you didn’t drink.”

“Now I see why,” Bernie said, still grimacing. He put down the glass. “Renate’s dead.”

“The Russians—”

“No, she hanged herself.”

No one spoke, the room still as death.

“When?” Jake said involuntarily, a sound to fill the space.

“They found her this morning. I never expected—”

Jake turned away from them to the map, his eyes smarting, as if they had caught a cinder. “No,” he said, not an answer, just another sound.

“Nobody thought she’d—” Bernie stopped, then looked over at Jake. “She say anything to you when you talked to her?”

Jake shook his head. “If she did, I didn’t hear it.” His eyes moved over the map-the Alex and its impossible trial, Prenzlauer where she’d hidden the child, Anhalter Station, cadging a cigarette on the platform. You could trace a life on a map, like streets. The old Columbia office, delivering items with her sharp eye.

“So now it’s an end,” Gunther said, his voice neutral, emotionless.

“It didn’t start this way,” Jake said. “You didn’t know her. How she was. So-pretty,” he said inadequately, meaning alive. He turned to them. “She was pretty.”

“Everybody dies,” Gunther said flatly.

“I don’t know why I should mind,” Bernie said. “Everything she did. And a Jew. Still.” He paused. “I didn’t come here for this. To see another one die.”

“She was part of that,” Gunther said, still flat.

“So were a lot of people,” Jake said. “They just kept their heads down. Maybe they couldn’t help it either, the way it was.”

“Well, maybe she’s found her peace,” Bernie said. “A hell of a way to do it, though.”

“Is there another?” Gunther said.

“I guess that depends on what you can live with,” Bernie said, picking up his hat.

Gunther glanced up at this, then looked away.

“Anyway, I thought you’d want to know. You coming?” he said to Jake. “I still have things to do. Two days with these, okay, Gunther?” He touched the folders. “I have to send them back. You all right?”

Gunther didn’t answer, reaching instead for a folder and opening it, avoiding them by reading the page. Jake stood, waiting, but Gunther’s only response was to turn the page, like a policeman going through mug shots. They were at the door before Gunther raised his head.

“Herr Geismar?” he said, getting up slowly and walking over to the map, his back to them. He stood for a second, studying it. “Pick the place. Let me know before the funeral.”

Lena was in the big chair, legs tucked beneath her, wreathed in smoke rising from the ashtray perched on the wide arm, the room shadowy with a faint glow from the scarf-draped lamp. She looked as if she’d been sitting for hours, coiled into herself, too fixed now to move even when he walked over and touched her hair. “Where’s Emil?”

“Bed,” she said. “Not so loud, you’ll wake Erich.” She nodded at the couch, where the boy lay curled up under a sheet. Brian’s sleeping arrangements answered, in shifts.

“What about you?”

“You want me to share the bed?” she said, unexpectedly short, lighting a new cigarette from the stub of the other. “Maybe I should go to Hannelore. To live this way—” She looked up. “He says you won’t let him leave. He wants to go to Kransberg.”

“He will. I just need him for one more day.” He brought one of the table chairs over and sat next to her so they could talk in murmurs. “One more day. Then it’ll be over.”

She tapped the cigarette in the tray, moving the ash around. “He thinks you took advantage of me.”

“Well, I did,” he said, trying to break her mood.

“But he forgives me,” she said. “He wants to forgive me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t listen. I was weak, but he forgives me-that’s how it is for him. So you see, I’m forgiven. All that time, before the war, when I thought- And in the end, so easy.”

“Does he know that? Before the war?”

“No. If he thought that Peter- You didn’t tell him, did you? You must leave him that.”

“No, I didn’t tell him.”

“We must leave him that,” she said, brooding again. “What a mess we’ve made for ourselves. And now he forgives me.”

“Let him. It’s easier for him this way. Nobody’s fault.”

“No, yours. It’s you he doesn’t forgive. He thinks you want to ruin him. That’s the word he uses. And poison me against him. Anything crazy he can think of. So that’s the thanks you get for saving him.” She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes, blowing smoke up into the air. “He wants me to go to America.”

“With him?”

“They can take the wives. It’s a chance for me-to leave all this.”

“If they go.”

“We can start over. That’s his idea. Start over. So that’s what you saved him for. Maybe you’re sorry now.”

“No. It was in my cards, remember?”

She smiled, her eyes still closed. “The rescuer. And now here we are, all your strays. What are you going to do with us?”

“Put you to bed, for a start. You’re talking in your sleep. Come on, we’ll move Erich, he won’t mind.”

“No, leave him. I’m too tired to sleep.” She turned and looked at the boy. “I sent one of the girls to see Fleischman. He asks, can we keep him a little longer? The camps are so crowded. You don’t mind? He’s no trouble. And you know, Emil doesn’t like to talk in front of him, so it’s good that way. It gives me some peace.”

“What about Texas?”

“They want babies only. Before they become too German, maybe,” she said, more dispirited than angry. She rubbed out the cigarette. “All your strays. You take us in, then you’re responsible. You know, he thinks you’re going to take him to his mother. What do I say to that? After prison, maybe?”