The Master Sniper

Repp drew in a deep gulp of the cool air and tried to keep himself calm as he walked across the great Romanesque bridge between the Lake of Konstanz’s two basins, the vast Bodensee to the east, and the Untersee, the more picturesque with its steep wooded shores, to the west. At the end of the structure, he passed under a medieval tower and stepped into the old city. It was a holiday town, cobbled and quaint, exactly the kind of place Repp didn’t care for. It had no purpose beyond pleasure, with its casino and boat tours and green lakeside park. It had never even been bombed and seemed uneasy in a military role, as if it were wearing an outlandish costume. The soldiers who clustered in its narrow streets seemed wildly out of place against the cobbles and arches and turrets and timbers and spires. Repp slid anonymously among them; they paid him no attention, shouting instead at women, or lounging about drunk before the Basilica of the Munsterplatz. Even the officers were in bad shape, a sullen, loutish crew; clearly they’d already surrendered. Kubels and trucks had been abandoned around the Platz and Repp saw rifles already piled in the square. Repp felt himself filling with anger as he pushed through them but he kept it to himself, one straggler adrift in a crowd of stragglers.

Repp turned off the Munsterplatz and headed down Wessenbergerstrasse. Here, in the residential sector, there were no soldiers, only an occasional old woman or man whose questioning eyes he would not meet. He turned up Neugasse, where the houses were shabbier still, looking for No. 14. He found it soon, a two-story dwelling, dirty stucco, shuttered. Quickly, without looking up or down the street of almost identical houses, and without hesitating, he knocked.

After a time, the door opened a sliver.

“Yes?”

He could not see her in the shadow. But he knew the voice quite well. She sounded tired. Unlike the other times.

“It’s me.”

The door closed, a chain was freed, and then it opened.

He stepped into the shadowy foyer, but she was not there. He went into the living room beyond. She stood against the wall, in the dark.

“Well, at last I’m here,” he said.

“So I see. They said a man. I should have known.”

“Ah,” he said, haltingly. The truth was, he felt a little unsure of himself.

“Sit down, sit down,” she urged.

“I’m filthy. I’ve been sleeping in barns, swimming rivers. I need a bath.”

“The same Repp: so fastidious.”

“Please — a bath.”

“Yes. Of course.” She led him through a shabby living room, hushed in draperies and blinds, flowers grimy on the wallpaper, and up some decrepit stairs. The house stank mildly of must and disinfectant.

“I’m sorry it’s so awful. But they said it had to be a house, definitely a house and this is all that was available. It’s outrageously expensive. I rented it from a widow who’s said to be the richest woman in Konstanz. It’s also said she’s a Jew. But how can that be? I thought they took all the Jews away a long time ago.”

“They did,” Repp confirmed. “You’ve got the documents?”

“Of course. Everything. You needn’t fear. Tickets to Switzerland.”

They walked down a short hall into the bathroom. The tub stood on claws like a beast. The plaster peeled off gray walls and the plumbing smelled. Also, the mirror was flaking off and there were water spots on the ceiling.

“Not the Grand, is it?” he said.

But she seemed not to remember. “No.”

She had been ahead of him all this time and now, in the gray bathroom, she turned and faced him fully.

She searched his eyes for shock.

He kept them clear of it.

“So?” he finally said. “Do you expect me to say something?”

“My face isn’t like it was, is it?” she asked.

“No, but nothing is.”

The scar ran vividly from the inside corner of her eye down around her mouth to her chin, a red furrow of tissue.

“I’ve seen far worse in the East,” he said. “They’ll fix you up after the war. Make you pretty again. Make you prettier, I should say. You’re still quite attractive.”

“You’re trying to be kind, aren’t you?”

Yet to Repp she was still a great beauty. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her blond hair was short now, but her body had that same suppleness and grace to it; she was thin, rather unlike the ideal Aryan woman, her hips too narrow for easy childbirth, but Repp had never been interested in children anyhow. She wore a pinstriped gray skirt and a flower-print blouse and had dark stockings on, which must have been very old, and high- heeled shoes. Her neck was long and blue veins pulsed visibly under her fair skin and her face seemed porcelain or some equally delicate thing, yet fragile though it appeared her eyes were strong and rather hard.

“I think there’s hot water,” she said. “And civilian clothes are in the bureau in the bedroom.”

“I must say, Margareta, you don’t seem terribly happy about all this.”

“I’ll go fix some supper. You must be very hungry.”

They ate in awkward silence in the dim, small kitchen, though the food she fixed was very good — eggs, black bread, cheese — and he felt much better after the bath.

“That’s the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

“They gave me so much money. Your people. The black market is extensive here.”

“Yes, it certainly must be. So close to Switzerland.”

“Sometimes you can get pork and even beef and veal. And sausage of course.”

“Almost as if there’s no war.”

“Almost. But you always know there’s a war. Not from all the soldiers around, but because there’s no music. No real music. On the radio sometimes they play Wagner and that terrible fellow Korngold. But no Chopin, no Hindemith, no Mahler. I wonder what they have against Mahler. Of all our composers, his work sounds the most like battles. That’s what they like, isn’t it? Do you know? Why won’t they allow Mahler?”

Repp said he didn’t know. But he was glad to see her talking so animatedly, even if he didn’t know anything about music.

“I like Chopin so much,” she said.

“He’s very good,” Repp agreed.

“I should have brought my Gramophone down. Or my piano. But it was all so rushed. There was no time, even for a Gramophone. The piano, of course, was out of the question. Even I realized that.”

He said nothing.

Then she said, “Whom have you seen recently? Have you seen General Baum at all? He always made me laugh.”

“Dead, I think. In Hungary.”

“Oh. A shame. And Colonel Prince von Kuhl? A delightful man.”

“Disappeared. In Russia. Dead, I suppose, perhaps taken prisoner.”

“And — but I suppose it’s useless. Most of them are dead, aren’t they?”

“Many, I suppose. The sacrifice was gigantic.”

“Sometimes I feel like a ghost. The only one left. Do you ever think about it that way?”

“No.”

“It’s so sad. All those young men. So handsome. Do you remember the celebration of the Julfest in 1938? I first saw you there. I’m sure you don’t remember. I’d just given up the piano. Anyway, the room was full of beautiful young people. We sang and danced. It was such a happy time. But of all those people, almost all are dead, aren’t they?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“But you haven’t thought of it?”

“I’ve been rather busy.”