David Gillham - City of Women

“I’ll be in contact,” he says, and slips on his peaked uniform cap. “In the meantime, I suggest you grow a pair of eyes in the back of your head,” he advises, then makes his way toward the stairs. “My sister will be back in an hour,” he announces over his shoulder as he negotiates the first steps downward. “In case you have an interest in her where abouts.”

When she returns to the flat, she finds Egon pouring more bull’s blood into his glass. “What did he say to you?” he asks.

“He said death is waiting for me.”

Egon gazes at her for a moment, unfocused, then lifts the goblet to his lips. “Death is waiting for us all ,” he tells her. “It’s only a matter of timing and negotiation. I’ve taught myself to live with that in order to survive. You should, too.”

“How have you done it?” she asks starkly.

“Taught myself?”

“Survived.”

His eyes lift and suddenly they are as deep as mine shafts. Without bottom. “Luck,” he answers.

“No. No, you don’t believe in luck.”

He frowns. “There’s something I need you to do for me,” he announces, setting down the wine goblet.

“I’ve heard that before,” she observes as he removes his mohair overcoat, then unclasps a penknife. Draping his coat lining over his knee, he carefully cuts the stitching loose, and produces a velvet pouch. “There is a man in Schöneberg named Melnikov. He’s a Russian. A former tsarist, but now officially stateless. We did business together before the war. I want you to take something to him.” Opening the pouch’s string, he taps out the contents. Blue-white diamonds. They look like tiny fragments of a star in the palm of his hand. “He’s always in the market for decent stones.”

Sigrid stares at their light. “So I am to be your bagman again.”

He looks at her, waiting.

“How much are they worth?”

“Enough,” is all he says.

“I will do whatever you ask,” she answers him. “But if you expect me to make a deal with this man, I know nothing about such matters.”

“You don’t have to. Tell him that Grizmek has sent you to him. He’ll give you a good price.”

“And who is Grizmek?”

“Me. I’m Grizmek,” Egon answers, killing the last of his wine. “It’s the name I use for this sort of transaction.”

“And does this man Melnikov, does he know who you are, really ?”

“Does anybody know who anyone is? Give me that handkerchief,” he tells her.

She obeys, and he opens it into a white square on the sofa next to him. She watches him set about selecting stones from the glimmer in his palm. “You’ve never said,” she breathes.

He affords her a cautious eye. “Said what?”

“Where you’re going.”

“West,” he answers, returning to his selection, holding one small stone up to inspect it in a bit of window light. “I have a contact in the Spanish diplomatic mission. A little man, with a big man’s title. For the right amount of cash, he will give me transit papers under any name I like.”

He knots the chosen stones into Wolfram’s handkerchief and offers her the small bundle, which she accepts. The diamonds feel obscenely light. Star breath.

“To Spain?” she says.

“To Madrid. From there I can make my way to Lisbon.”

She watches him return the unselected diamonds to the velvet pouch, and stick the pouch into the pocket of his trousers. “And from there?”

He lifts his eyebrows. Anywhere .

“What about your family? What about your wife and daughters?”

His eyes grow heavier. “I’m no good to them dead,” is all he says.

“And what about me ?”

A breath. He combs his fingers through his hair. “What about you?”

“You haven’t said that you want me with you.”

“You are with me.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Do I, Frau Schröder?”

“I’m just curious how I’m fitting into your plan. Once the bedroom calisthenics are finished, that is.”

“My plan is to stay alive,” he answers. “Very simple.”

Sigrid gazes at him. “With or without me.”

“You want me to be your lover, Sigrid? I am your lover. You want me to make you happy? I cannot. You want me to complete you? I cannot. You want me to survive? You must help me. I can only offer you what I have. The rest is your choice.”

“Yes, I think I’ve heard that song before.”

“What do you want ? That I proclaim undying love ?”

“It would be a start.”

“It would be a lie. There is no such thing. You dress me up in your husband’s clothes ,” he burns, yanking off Kaspar’s jacket. “You want me to play your husband. You want devotion and fidelity and all those things that, by the way, you yourself don’t believe in, and you want me to beg you to help me . The poor Jew, whom you finally have in your power.”

“It is not me,” she points out numbly, “who will be leaving.”

“Makes no difference.”

“I think it does.”

“So it’s ‘Come with me, Sigrid . ’ That’s what you’re waiting for? If I say, ‘Give up everything and risk your life,’ you would do it?”

“I’ve already given up everything. I’m already risking my life.”

“So then come , if you wish,” he snorts. “Why should it be my decision?”

“You won’t ask me?”

“I am not responsible ,” he bursts. “And I won’t be made responsible. Not for you , not for anyone but myself. That is the way God created me, so if you have a problem with that fact, take it up with Him.”

She stares back at him for a moment. So this is the way it will go. He will slip away to Lisbon. And Sigrid will be left to rescue his wife and daughters. Isn’t God humorous. She looks at the bundle of diamonds in her hand. Then looks at her watch and says, “Take off your clothes. We have an hour.”

AFTERWARD, he goes into the WC as she redresses. When he comes out in his skivvies, buttoning his shirt closed, he asks, “What are you doing?”

She has taken out Carin’s darning kit from its basket beside the settee, and is sewing up the hem of his coat lining. “I’m preserving your secret.”

“You’re what?”

“You left your little bag of treasure unprotected in your trouser pocket, so I’m sewing it back into your coat. See how even?” she says, displaying the freshly sewn lining. “No one will ever notice.”

He looks at her with a mix of satisfaction and suspicion. “So you are a seamstress. I never knew.”

“I have a question for you,” she says suddenly, freezing her needle in mid-stitch.

“A question?”

“What are the names of your daughters?”

She waits in the silence that follows, as if balancing herself on the point of the sewing needle.

“Is this a trade, Sigrid? You carry my diamonds, I answer your questions?”

“No. I simply think about such things. Imagine what their names might be.”

“Well,” he says, lighting a bitter-smelling cigarette from Carin’s silver table lighter, “then imagine I’ve given you an answer.”

In the morning, Kaspar is encamped in the toilet. It makes her run late.

“Sorry. It’s the Pervatin,” he explains blankly, walking into the bedroom in his undershirt and drawers. Pervatin, the little yellow stimulant tablets dished out to front-liners by the army to keep them alert. “It plugs you up.” He retrieves his uniform breeches draped over the back of the chair and steps into them. “It’s always challenging in the field. By November, the ground in Russia is too frozen to dig a latrine, so you just have to stick your ass out into the wind and grunt. Frostbite is not uncommon.”