“Your hand, Nicki,” she said, still with the potato. “Glad to see you didn’t feel it.”
Hoffner looked at the back of his hand. Two thin scratch marks ran across the veins, undeniably a woman’s nails. They had begun to scab. He laughed quietly. “Fichte’s got a girl,” he said as he dabbed at them with a bit of saliva. “We went for a drink. He wanted to get a friend for me.” Hoffner went back to the soup. “I wasn’t inclined- this time.” Over the bowl, he saw the hint of a smile in her eyes.
“Pretty?” said Martha.
“Not the one with the nails.” When he saw the full smile, he added, “She’s all right. Too thin.”
“Do you want them for dinner sometime?”
“Not if we can help it.” He continued with the soup. “Where’s Sascha?”
Martha looked up from her food and peered over at the door.
Hoffner turned to see his older boy standing there. Sascha was in his school uniform-short pants and tie-his jet-black hair combed crisply, his expression quietly defiant. Had he been wearing the jacket, Hoffner might have mistaken him for an adolescent
“Hello, Father.” The boy addressed him as if he were one of his school instructors. Probably Herr Zessner, thought Hoffner. He taught physics. Sascha hated physics.
“Hello there, Sascha.” Hoffner had given up trying to diffuse these first few moments, terrifying as they were. He turned back to his near-empty bowl and did his best to find a last few drops with his spoon. “We’re off to Johannisthal two weeks from Sunday,” he said. “You’re welcome to join us, if you like.” When Sascha failed to answer, Hoffner pulled off a wedge of the bread. The boy continued to stand in silence.
“You know he doesn’t like that anymore,” said Martha, her voice with the hint of a reprimand. Hoffner knew it was for Sascha’s benefit.
“Doesn’t like what?” said Hoffner, knowing exactly what she was referring to. “Air shows?”
It had been a slow process, this, the losing of a son. Hoffner would have loved to point to the most obvious moment for its origin-Martha on the ground, Sascha staring at him in disbelief-but, if he was being honest, he knew he needed to go back further than that. The choice to remain faithful to his wife had sapped Hoffner of something vital. Rather than simply narrowing the focus, it had eliminated the beam entirely: he had shut it all down. In an odd way, that moment of infinite regret had been the final dousing of the flame. Sascha had even forgiven him for it, but by then Hoffner had become unreachable. He might have convinced himself that it was to keep the temptations at bay. He did, for a while, but even Hoffner knew better than that. It had only been a matter of time before the boy had given up trying. Recent events had simply taken Sascha over the edge.
“He wants to be called Alexander,” said Martha. “He’s asked you several times.”
“That’s right,” said Hoffner, nodding as if he only now remembered. “I must be losing track with all these name changes around here. Georg, Alexander.” He turned to Sascha. “But yours has nothing to do with age. You’re simply ashamed of your Russian past.”
The boy held his ground. “I’m surprised you’re not, Father.” His voice sounded more like his mother’s than he had wanted; the sharpness in his tone, however, more than made up for the pitch.
Hoffner almost let himself get drawn in. Instead he turned back, took the wedge of bread, and dunked it in the tiny puddle of soup. “No, that’s true. We Bolsheviks do like to stay together.” He took a bite.
“Don’t make fun of him, Nikolai,” said Martha. “You don’t have to go to that school every day.”
Hoffner looked across at her, the first hint of frustration in his eyes. He swallowed. He could sense that Sascha, too, was unhappy that his mother had come to his defense. “Yes,” said Hoffner, his tone now more pointed as he mopped up the last of the soup, “I suppose giving in to them is the best choice.”
Sascha had reached the limits of his self-control. His cheeks flushed; his large eyes grew larger still. “You think you know, but you don’t,” he said with as much restraint as he could. “You think you can laugh about it, like you laugh about everything else. Well, I’m glad they killed them. I’m glad they killed those Reds. I’m a German. A
Sascha saw his mother start toward him; with a look, he stopped her. He waited for his father to turn. When Hoffner continued to stare into his bowl, Sascha bolted from the room. Martha stood to go after him, but Hoffner quickly reached out and held her back. She turned to him. She said nothing.
The ring of the telephone startled them both.
It was a recent addition. Headquarters had been insisting for years that Hoffner have one installed: a detective inspector needed to be reached. Hoffner saw it otherwise: the one at the porter’s gate was sufficient; nothing could be that pressing. Prager, however, was not to be denied. So, with the new flat had come the new device. To Hoffner’s way of thinking, they might just as well have removed the building’s walls: anyone could break through now, so what difference did it make?
In the year they had had it, the telephone had rung twice: the first at a prearranged minute so that Hoffner could sing to Georgi on his birthday; the second for a misconnection. Neither time had the ring occurred later than four in the afternoon.
Hoffner let go of Martha’s arm, jarred if not slightly relieved. The look on her face had turned to panic. He gave her a reassuring shake of the head, stood, and headed out into the hall, she behind him, stopping at the living room door as he found a light and moved across the room to the telephone. She waited in the hall. Georgi was already at her side as Sascha appeared from behind the two of them.
Hoffner said, “Go back to your room, boys.” It was a tone of voice he rarely used. Georgi and Sascha quickly moved back down the hall and Hoffner picked up the receiver. “Hello?” It was Fichte. He sounded frantic. “Yes, it’s me,” said Hoffner.
“She’s missing,” came the rasped voice over the line.
“Calm down, Hans,” said Hoffner. “Who’s missing? Where are you?”
There was a pause. Fichte tried to control himself. “At headquarters. The morgue. No one’s here.”
It took Hoffner a moment to digest the information. “Headquarters? What are you doing at the morgue? Calm down.”
Another pause. “Lina wanted to see.”
“You took the girl-” He stopped himself. Again, he needed a moment. Then, in a strong, controlled voice, he said, “This is a police matter. Anyone on the line, please disengage.” The sound of the operator’s click brought him back to Fichte. Again, Hoffner spoke very deliberately. “You need to explain to me, Hans, why you took Lina to the morgue, and then you need to tell me who is missing.”
“We’d come before,” said Fichte, his panic mounting. “It was nothing. The guard let us look around.”
Hoffner had trouble believing what he was hearing. With a practiced calm, he said, “All right. And who is missing?”
There was a long pause on the line. Finally Fichte said, “No one’s here. No guard. And the body-”
“Which body, Hans?” Hoffner cut in. He could hear Lina in the background. “Not a name, Hans, just left or right.”
Another silence. It was clear Fichte was trying to orient himself. “Right,” he said. “Right is missing.”
“All right,” said Hoffner. “Send the girl home. She’s to say nothing. You understand?” A muted “Yes” crackled on the line. “Stay there. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He paused. “You’re not to do a thing.”
Hoffner placed the receiver in its cradle. He stood there staring at it for several seconds. Missing. What was Fichte-the thought turned his stomach. Hoffner looked at Martha. She was already holding his coat.
The first cabs began to appear up by the Hallesches Gate: at this hour, the great marble Peace Column at its center-a nod to a way of life the German people had yet to grasp-stood as the outermost edge of the city’s nightlife. The few cabs that did venture this far south raced around the bright-lit obelisk at speeds of almost forty-five kilometers an hour, all too eager to get back north and the possibility of a fare out to the rarefied air of Charlottenburg. Hoffner had no choice but to stand out in the middle of the roundabout, his badge held windshield high, before he finally flagged one down.
At the Alex, a trio of seasoned
