The Vanished

‘No.’

‘Did he talk to anyone while he was here?’

‘No-ah well, perhaps to Sybille.’

‘Sybille?’

The barkeeper shrugged again. ‘Ein Flittchen,’ he said.

‘Is she here now?’

The guy let his eyes move slowly over the room, squinting against the pall of smoke. He shook his head.

‘Will she be in tonight?’

‘It is possible. One never knows with Sybille.’

I said slowly, in German, ‘Why do you think the soldier may have talked to her?’

‘She sat with him for a time, the first night- Saturday.’

‘And after that?’ MacVeagh asked.

‘He sat alone,’ the barkeeper said. ‘He sent the girls away when they came to his table. Some soldiers and myself carried him to one of the rooms in back two or three times. Once I had to take him alone.’

‘Was the soldier drunk when he arrived that first night?’ I asked. ‘Or did he become drunk in here?’

‘I think he was not drunk when he came.’

‘Was he nervous or afraid or angry?’

‘He appeared very weary-an old man.’

‘That’s all?’

‘I can remember nothing more.’ The barkeeper glanced over his shoulder, and there were a couple of customers yelling for service at the other end of the bar. His eyes flicked over MacVeagh and me again. ‘I have no more time for talking now.’

‘Okay,’ MacVeagh said. ‘But you point out Sybille to us if she comes in. We’ll be at one of the tables.’

‘Ja, Ja.’ He turned his back to us and hurried away along the boards.

MacVeagh and I carried our beers to one of the empty tables and sat down, and immediately two of the girls who had been sitting to the right of us at the bar came over. MacVeagh looked them up and down with plain contempt-they were nothing for his ego-and said something in German that I did not understand. One of them laughed shrilly, and the other looked offended; they both shuffled away.

A half-hour passed, and the place began to fill up with soldiers and civilians alike, pressing two- and three-deep at the bar. The stale, steam-heated air was bloated with shouts and laughter and the strident electronic discord bursting forth from the juke. I began to get a headache, and there was a tightness in my chest from too many cigarettes and the sour atmosphere. I coughed a couple of times and spat up phlegm into my handkerchief, and I thought: Oh God, not this again.

At the bar in front of our table, there was some kind of commotion. The knot of humanity split into two halves, flowing away, like an amoeba reproducing. Two guys, both of them wearing civilian clothes, one in lederhosen, were shoving at one another, yelling. Then the one in the lederhosen put his back to the bar and hit the other in the stomach, bending him double. He followed up with a looping right hand, and the first guy came windmilling backward, in a direct line to where I was sitting.

I kicked my chair away and got on my feet, turning my body, bracing myself. I caught the guy on my left hip, stopping him cold, and then I put both hands on his shoulders and sent him back the way he had come. He ran into the one in lederhosen, and the two of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Two big Germans, bouncer- types, came out of nowhere and scooped the pair off the floor like they were bags of meal and got rid of them through the front door. Somebody shouted in German, and there were some cheers and a round of applause, and an American acid-rock thing came on the juke.

I sat down again and MacVeagh looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. ‘You handle yourself damn nice, buddy.’

‘Yeah-well.’

‘You ever in the service?’

‘Pacific Theater, Second War.’

‘Infantry?’

‘Army Intelligence?’

‘Yeah?’ MacVeagh said, in a way that told me he was not particularly impressed.

We had another beer, and MacVeagh wanted to talk about the war-he had been a private first on the beach at Normandy; but my headache had steadily worsened and the tightness had grown more painful in my chest, and I did not feel like talking. I was thinking about chucking the whole business for tonight when the ornate door opened and a black-haired girl in a short green dress came down the steps into the room.

The mutton-chopped barkeeper saw her and made a signaling motion to MacVeagh from behind the plank. The girl stood looking things over at the bottom of the steps, and MacVeagh got up and waved to her with the same kind of contempt he had shown the two Flittchen earlier. She put on a professional smile, paused, and then walked with an exaggerated hip-sway to where we were sitting.

She was maybe twenty-five, lush and ripe now like a piece of fruit at peak season, but it was only a matter of time before the first sweet flesh would turn into blotched and tasteless pulp, rotting and discarded at the base of the tree which had borne her. She had a wide mouth and bovine eyes and, characteristically, round dimpled cheeks literally whitewashed with makeup.

MacVeagh asked her sharply if she spoke English. Distaste was apparent in his voice.

She bobbed her head vigorously. ‘Sure, I can good English speak. Christ, yes!’

‘Your name is Sybille?’

‘You know me?’

‘Yeah, we know you,’ MacVeagh said. ‘Sit down, we want to talk to you awhile.’

‘You buy me a drink?’

MacVeagh’s mouth twisted, but I said, ‘We’ll buy you a drink, Sybille. What do you want?’

She pulled out a free chair and sat down and pressed her heavy breasts against the edge of the table. She looked directly at me, ignoring MacVeagh. She said, ‘I drink a gin fizz.’

‘All right.’

‘Oh shit,’ MacVeagh said.

‘I’ll handle this, Jock,’ I told him, and his eyes answered, You know all about handling whores, huh, buddy? but he did not say anything. He lifted his beer and looked off in another direction.

I got a gin fizz for Sybille and watched her drink a little of it; then I said slowly, ‘About three months ago, on a Saturday, there was an American soldier in here drinking. His name was Roy Sands. He spent the whole weekend here, drinking and passing out and sleeping it off in one of the rooms out back. Do you remember?’

She smiled, frowned, smiled again. ‘Oh sure, I remember.’

‘You were sitting with him at one of the tables, weren’t you?’

‘For a little time,’ she said. ‘Then he wants to be alone.’

‘Why?’

‘To drink the schnapps.’

‘Why did he want to drink so much schnapps?’

She shrugged. ‘I think he was unhappy.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘No, but his eyes and mouth are unhappy.’

‘Can you remember anything he said to you?’

‘He ask me why did it have to happen.’

‘Why did what have to happen?’

‘Ich weiss nicht. I don’t know.’

‘All right. What else did he say?’

‘That he wants to be alone. No more.’

‘Did you talk to him again on Sunday or Monday?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see him at all after that weekend?’ I asked her. ‘Did he come in here again?’

‘I never see him any more.’