Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

He exits at the third floor. The smell of lavender follows him out and down the hall, where it’s joined by the fug of a thick gravy. Someone’s dinner will be ready long before five.

It crosses his mind that you would never in a million years walk into this apartment building, along this corridor with its carpet-muffle of orange and red paisley, through the duvet of dinner smells and geriatric perfume, and expect to find a high-level Soviet defector. Simon has selected everything for invisibility.

The door marked 321 is at the end of the hall. A corner unit. Jack removes his hat, stands in front of the peephole and knocks. He has butterflies in his stomach. Simon has been characteristically low-key about the whole thing, but the facts speak for themselves. Jack is about to meet — has been entrusted with the well-being of — a man whose life and work and presence here derive from the crucible of international relations which at this very moment are affecting the lives of everyone on earth. He takes a deep breath. Considers knocking again.

Finally, a fumbling behind the door. Slide of a deadbolt, the knob turns, the door opens a few inches. Above the safety chain, a stripe of white face, scant grey hair. Spectacles.

“Herr Fried?” he says. “I’m Jack McCarthy, sir. Willkommen in Kanada.”

The door closes. The slide of the safety chain and it opens again, a little wider. Jack extends his hand. “It’s an honour to meet you, sir.”

Oskar Fried takes his hand briefly. The man feels frail.

Jack looks into the light grey eyes. Fried’s face, delicately lined parchment, pale. He is somewhere between fifty and seventy-five. “May I come in, sir?” he asks, because Oskar Fried has made no move. He appears shell-shocked. He must have been through one hell of a trip.

Fried turns and retreats slowly, almost at a shuffle. Jack follows him into the apartment. The smell of tobacco. Familiar. The lights are off, the curtains drawn, as though he were in hiding — which he is, though presumably the Soviets haven’t the first clue where to look for him. Jack glances around. The dull greens and browns of a furnished apartment; the tobacco masks a generic air freshener designed to mask a generic loneliness — the smell of the solitary male. Wall-to-wall indoor-outdoor, respectable lampshade yellowed with years of nicotine, a cheap print of Niagara Falls over the perfectly decent couch. Jack will have to get the man out to the PMQs for a visit to a real home as soon as possible.

“How are you settling in, sir?” he asks. “Uh, brauchst du, uh, brauchsten Sie etwa?”

Fried doesn’t smile at the attempted German, but says by way of reply, “Do you bring money?” His voice is thin, his accent more raw than Henry Froelich’s. Uneroded.

Jack smiles. “I’ve got it right here, sir.”

He takes a small brown envelope from his inside breast pocket and hands it to Oskar Fried.

Fried takes it. “I thank you,” he says, with an old-world inclination of the head that puts Jack in mind of Froelich again.

“You’re most welcome, sir.”

Oskar Fried is a spare man — as though he had been drawn with a pencil. His glasses are wire-rimmed, not the robust black frames Jack had pictured. He was right about the bow tie, otherwise there is no trace of the meaty Brylcreemed physicist he had envisioned. Fried’s white dress shirt is buttoned up but still loose at the neck, revealing the narrow cords and loosening flesh of undernourished and advancing years. Jack recognizes the permanently starved look of some Europeans — no amount of good food can possibly make up for the war. Henry Froelich has that look, although, even with his stoop and lean cheeks, Henry’s face is warm and mobile. Oskar Fried looks to be etched in sandstone. Seventeen years behind the Iron Curtain will do that. His suit jacket and trousers are of indestructible brown wool manufactured sometime in the last fifty years. But even in a lab coat, he would look like … a clerk. Jack feels disappointed, then immediately guilty. The man is exhausted. Traumatized. Stranger in a strange land.

Jack walks over to the window—“May I?”—and opens the curtains, squinting at the flash of daylight.

Fried jumps to his feet. “Nein, bitte.”

Jack draws them closed once more and turns to see Fried holding an ice bucket. He blinks to readjust his eyes and sees that the bucket contains bits of bark and stone. Growing up from its midst, supported by a coat hanger, is a flower. Purple, almost black.

“Orchid,” says Fried.

Jack smiles and nods.

“Dunkel,” says Fried. “Not light.”

“It grows in the dark,” says Jack.

Fried nods, almost smiles.

Jack feels a rush of pity for the man. Is it possible to be farther from home than he is now? And has the U.S.S.R. ever really felt like his home? He may very well have found himself in the wrong part of his homeland at the end of the war, trapped in what was suddenly East Germany. Forced to make the best of it. And now, a chance at freedom. He has been brave enough to grasp it, this wisp of a man. And perhaps generous enough too. “Herr Fried, I want you to know that we appreciate what you’re doing.”

Fried listens closely, nodding.

Jack continues, slowly and clearly, “I want to thank you for coming.”

“You are welcome,” says Fried.

Poor bugger holed up here, taking the thanks of the free world from some RCAF type he doesn’t know from Adam. Answering to a name not his own. “Look, sir, when you’re settled in, you call me at work, okay?” Jack takes the money envelope from Fried and writes down his office number and below it his home number. “This number here,” says Jack, pointing to it, “is my home. But only for emergency, verstehen Sie?”

“Ja . Emergency.”

Once Jack has arranged to bring Fried out to Centralia — for brunch this Sunday, perhaps — there will be no reason for him not to use the home number. But until Jack has been able to introduce Mimi to the “visiting professor,” and to think of a plausible friend-of-a-friend scenario, it is best that Fried call him only at work.

“Would you like to come for a quick spin around the city?”

“Spin?”

Jack moves his hands as though on a steering wheel. “In ein Auto . A drive?”

“Yes, I drive.”

“No, would you like to come for a drive with me? Now?”

Fried shakes his head.

“Well when you change your mind, sir, this is a beautiful part of the country— sehr schön.” He points to the sad painting on the wall. “Niagara Falls. Magnificent. And if you like flowers”—Fried nods—“there’s a greenhouse at Storybook Gardens, wouldn’t be surprised if they had orchids.”

Jack rubs his hands together and looks around — hi-fi, good, no TV, however, although there is a set of rabbit ears on the win-dowsill. Too bad, it would help Herr Fried’s English. “Have you got enough food, sir?”

Jack steps into the small galley kitchen and opens the fridge. Fried follows and stands at his shoulder.

It’s well stocked — Simon has seen to that — but it’s bound to get lonely, eating alone night after night.

He longs to ask Fried what he will be working on; to hear his opinion on the current crisis in Cuba, get him to talk about the space program. But that subject is off limits for now, Simon has made that clear, and anyhow the poor chap is already spooked. Culture-shocked.

“Sir, would you care to join my family this Sunday for—?”

Fried is already shaking his head, but Jack continues, “My wife’s a great cook and she speaks pretty good German, besser denn mein , eh? In fact we’ve got a German neighbour, a science type like yourself—”