Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Not even then,” Jake said quietly. “She killed herself last night.”

“Oh.” A wounded sound, like a faint yelp. “Oh, she did that?” She glanced again at the couch, then down into her lap, her eyes filling. Jake reached for her, but she waved him away, covering her eyes with her hand. “So stupid. I didn’t even know her. Someone from the office. Don’t look. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’re tired, that’s all.”

“But to do that. Oh, how much longer like this? Boiling water, just to drink. The children, living like animals. Now another one dead. And this is the peace. It was better during the war.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Jake said softly, pulling out a handkerchief and handing it to her.

“No,” she said, blowing her nose. “I’m just feeling sorry for myself. Boiling water, my god. What does that matter?” Another sniffle, then she wiped her face, the shaking subsiding. She leaned back, drawing a breath. “You know, after the Russians there were many-like her. I never cried then. You saw the bodies in the street. Who knew how they died? My friend Annelise? I found her. Poison. Like Eva Braun. Her mouth was burned from it. And what had she done? Hide until some Russian got her. Maybe more than one. There was blood there.” She pointed to her lap. “You didn’t cry then, there were so many. So why now? Maybe I thought it was over, that time.” She gave her face another wipe, then handed back the handkerchief. “What are you going to tell him?”

“Nothing. His mother died in the war, that’s all.”

“In the war,” she said vaguely, looking at the sleeping boy. “How can you leave a child alone?”

“She didn’t. She left him to me.”

Lena turned to him. “You can’t send him to the DPs.”

“I know,” he said, touching her hand. “I’ll think of something. Just give me a little time.”

“While you arrange things,” she said, leaning back again. “All our lives. Emil’s too?”

“Emil can arrange his own life. I’m not worried about Emil.”

“No, I am,” she said slowly. “He’s still something to me. I don’t know what, not my husband, but something. Maybe it’s because I don’t love him, isn’t that strange? To worry about someone you don’t love anymore? He even looks different. It happens that way, I think- people look different when they don’t love each other anymore.”

“Is that what he said?”

“No, I told you, he forgives me. It’s easy, isn’t it, when you don’t love somebody?” she said, her voice drifting, back in an earlier thought. “Maybe he never did. Only the work. Even when he talks about you, it’s that. Not me. I thought he’d be jealous, I was ready for that, but no, it’s how he can’t go back if you use those files. The others won’t work with him, not after that. Those stupid files. If only his father—” She stopped, looking away and drawing herself up. “You know what he talks to me about? Space. I’m trying to feed a child on food you steal for us and he talks to me about rocket ships. His father was right-he lives in his head, not here. I don’t know, maybe after Peter died there wasn’t anything else for him.” She turned to him. “But to take that away now-I don’t want to do that.”

“What do you want?”

“What do I want?” she said to herself. “I want it to be over, for all of us. Let him go to America. They want him there, he says.”

“They don’t know what they’re getting yet.”

She lowered her head. “Then don’t tell them. Leave him that too.”

Jake sat back, disturbed. “Did he ask you to say this?”

“No. He doesn’t ask for himself. It’s the others-it’s like a family for him.”

“I’ll bet.”

She took out another cigarette, shaking her head. “You don’t listen either. Both my men. They already know. Maybe he’s right a little, that it’s personal with you.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know-no. But you know what will happen. They think everybody was a Nazi.”

“Maybe he’ll talk them out of it. He’s already convinced himself.”

“But not you.”

“No, not me.”

“He’s not a criminal,” she said flatly.

“Isn’t he?”

“And who decides? The ones who win.”

“Listen to me, Lena,” Jake said, covering the matches with his hand so that she was forced to look at him. “Nobody expected this. They don’t even know where to begin. They’re just soldiers. It’s got mixed up with the war, but it wasn’t the war. It was a crime. Not the war, a crime. It didn’t just happen.”

“I know what happened. I’ve heard it, over and over. You want him to answer for that?”

“What if nobody answers for it?”

“So Emil answers? He’s the guilty one?”

“He was part of it. All of them were-his ‘family.’ How guilty does that make them? I don’t know. All I know is we can’t ignore it-we can’t be guilty of that too.”

“Numbers, that’s all he did.”

“You didn’t see the camp.”

“I know what you saw.”

“And what I didn’t see? At first I didn’t even notice, you don’t take things in, it’s so- I didn’t notice.”

“What?”

“There were no children. None. The children couldn’t work, so they were the first to go. They were killed right away. That one.” He pointed to Erich. “That child. They would have killed him. That’s what the numbers were. Erich.”

She looked at the couch, then put down the cigarette without lighting it, folding her arms across her chest, drawing in again.

“Lena—” he started.

“All right,” she said, moving her legs out from underneath and getting up, finished with it.

She went over to the couch and bent down, rearranging the sheet on the boy, a gentle tucking-in motion, then stood watching him sleep.

“I’m like all the others now, aren’t I?” she said finally, keeping her voice low. “Frau Dzuris. Nobody suffered but her. I’m no different. I sit here feeling sorry for my own troubles.” She turned to him. “When they made us see the films, you know what I did? I turned my head.”

Jake looked up. His own first reaction, a bony hand pulling him back to make him see.

“And after, people were quiet, and then it began. ‘How could the Russians make us look at that? They’re no better. Think of the bombing, how we suffered.’ Anything to put it out of their minds. I was no different. I didn’t want to look either. And then it’s on your couch.”

Jake said nothing, watching her move toward the easy chair, running her hand along the back.

“You expect too much from us,” she said. “To live with this. All murderers.”

“I never said—”

“No, just some of us. Which ones? You want me to look at my husband. ‘Was it you?’ Frau Dzuris’ son? My brother, maybe. ‘Were you one of them?’ How can I ask? Maybe he was. So I’m like the others. I know and I don’t know.”

“Except, this once, you do.”

She looked down. “He’s still something to me.”

Jake stood and went over to the table, rifled through his papers, and pulled out a file. “Read it again,” he said, holding it out to her. “Then tell me how much. I’m going for a walk.”

“Don’t leave.” Her eyes moved down to the folder. “See how he comes between us.”

“Then don’t put him there.”

“You expect too much,” she said again. “We owe him something.”

“And paid it off at the Adlon. We owe him something,” he said, nodding his head at the couch.

She sank onto the broad arm of the chair. “Yes, and how do you pay? What are you going to arrange for him? Imagine his life in Germany. Renate’s child.”

“No one will know.”