Rosa

upstream until he caught sight of something familiar though oddly not: he stopped. It took him another moment to fully process what he was seeing. He felt a strange compression in his head, a numbness where the burning had been. He stood there, unable to turn away. Bodies jostled past him, a station announcement crackled above, but all he could do was to stare at his father and this girl and feel the cold rush of an untapped violence.

Hoffner sensed it before he saw it. He opened his eyes and stared back through the flow of bodies. He must have tensed, because Lina instantly turned to follow his gaze.

There was a dreamlike quality to the next few moments, Hoffner placing the bags on the platform, stepping past her, moving toward the boy. He could see himself doing all of it, but he felt none of it. Lina knew to stay where she was.

Hoffner drew up and said, “Alexander.” The word carried no weight at all, the sound of his own voice almost foreign to him. Hoffner tried again, but all he could manage was a long breath out as Sascha stood unnervingly still. Finally Hoffner said, “This is. .” His words petered out. Is what? he thought. There was no way to see it for anything other than what it was. Hoffner was again struck by his own impotence.

“This is what you are, Father,” said Sascha with quiet hatred.

Hoffner heard the certainty in the tone, the betrayal more wrenching given the last few weeks of goodwill between them. Hoffner’s crime had now stripped away any boundaries: Sascha could accuse without any thought of reprisal. The boy wanted to hear his hatred justified, and Hoffner had no reason to deny him that. “Yes,” said Hoffner. “I suppose it is.”

Confirmation only made things worse. The truth brought Sascha to the edge. His breathing grew forced, as if he might strike his father.

Hoffner tried to calm him. “Look, Sascha-”

It was too late. Sascha glanced over at Lina. He felt shamed to be seen by her: she had no right to know him. Uncoiling his rage, Sascha looked back at his father and thrust the flowers into his chest. “Why don’t you give them to her?” he said. Hoffner tried to answer, but Sascha pushed past him and ran into the crowd. There was a moment when Hoffner thought to go after the boy, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do if and when he caught up with him. This was a consequence that, perhaps for the first time, he had no hope of meeting.

Hoffner looked back for Lina. She was gone as well, along with her case, leaving his off by itself. Hoffner’s isolation had never felt so stark.

He stood there for several minutes until a voice broke through. “Herr Hoffner?”

Hoffner turned around and saw a pretty face with bright eyes peering up at him. He needed a moment to recall the girl. It was only then that he even considered why Sascha had been here. Coincidence and proximity, he thought: the cosmos was having a go of it tonight. He did his best with a kind smile. “Frulein Geli,” he said. “What a delight to see you again.”

She smiled and said hopefully, “I thought I might have seen Alexander, mein Herr?”

“Really?” said Hoffner, thinking as he spoke. “I don’t think so,” he said lightly. “He asked me to meet you, and to make sure you got these.” Hoffner handed her the bruised flowers.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh, really! Will I be seeing him tonight, mein Herr?”

Hoffner picked up her case and said, “Fathers never get the full details, Frulein. I’m simply to bring you to Herr Kroll’s, though I imagine they’re preparing something quite wonderful for you.”

Hoffner had given her hope; it was the least he could do for the boy.

Sascha ran until his lungs gave out. He steadied himself against a wall and hunched over. Only now did he think of Geli waiting for him on the platform, a double anguish to add to his rage. It was too late to go back for her now. He felt queasy and cursed his father: ruined even that, didn’t you? He spat with disgust just as a tram was pulling up across the road. Sascha glanced over and read the route heading: Kreuzberg. He took it as a sign.

Inside, he drew stares from the other passengers as he paced at the back; he didn’t care: he needed to keep himself moving. At Friesen Strasse he leapt out and continued running past the porter and across the courtyard, up the four flights to the flat, only stopping for breath when he had shut the door behind him. He heard his mother in the kitchen, and moved down the hall toward her.

“Nikolai?” she called. “Is that you?”

She was washing something in the sink when he stepped into the room. He realized that his shirt was damp through. Sascha rubbed an arm across his mouth to wipe away the sweat, and Martha turned around.

She looked pleased if a bit confused to see him. “Alexander?” she said. “I thought you were meeting Geli.” It took her a moment to recognize the state he was in. “What’s the matter?” she asked uneasily. Sascha was still catching his breath. He took off his coat and threw it on the chair. “You’re soaked through. What is it?”

Sascha was working on impulse now: nothing mattered beyond the telling. He said, “Sit down, Mother,” as he moved back and forth across the floor. She took a few steps toward him, but he put up a hand. “Please, Mother,” he said more insistently. “Just sit down.”

She had never seen him like this; Martha did as he asked.

Sascha continued to move as he spoke. “I saw Father,” he said. “At the station. Just now.”

It was the way Sascha said it, the way his eyes darted about, that told Martha exactly what the boy had seen. She listened, but the details hardly mattered. There was of course the humiliation of hearing it all from her son, but she had long ago refused self-pity: pity of any kind placed the fault with her, and she had no interest in that; it had taken her years to understand it. Sascha’s initiation, however, had come less than an hour ago. What pain she felt was for the weight of his new-won burden.

He stopped talking. Instinct told her to go to him, but she knew comfort would only compound his agitation. He needed her to share in his outrage, and she had none to give. With no other recourse, she stood and moved back to the sink. She began to fish through the water for the shirt she had been washing.

For the first time in minutes, Sascha stopped moving. He said, “Have you been listening to what I’ve been saying, Mother?” Martha heard the stifled rage. She nodded and brought the soap to the cloth. “And you have nothing to say?”

She continued to stare down into the water. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”

He stared at her incredulously. “I tell you what he’s done, and you go back to cleaning his shirts? Are you that pathetic?”

She turned to him with what anger she had. “You want me to hate him as much as you do, but I can’t do that. I know what he is, Sascha, what he does, and why he does it, probably better than he does himself. And I am sorry for all of that, but I won’t let you ask me to be pitiable for him. I stay with him because I choose to stay with him no matter what he is. And not out of sacrifice or duty or fear. Hating him would only make me wretched, and that is something I will not do. Not even for you.”

For Sascha, hers was a betrayal more devastating than his father’s. He had come to even the slate, to find in her a confirmation for his own feelings, but she was letting it all go. It was as if his father were laughing at him. Everything Sascha had wanted at the station now flew back. He stepped over and took her wrists and held them furiously. He didn’t see the shock in her eyes as he shouted, “Why do you say that? Why can’t you see what he is? Why?” She said nothing and he struck her across the face and she fell to the ground.

Sascha stared at his mother in utter disbelief. His sense of shame was immediate. He went to reach for her, but he saw his brother standing by the door, petrified. Sascha’s head and hands began to shake. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. He raced past Georgi and out of the flat.

It was twenty minutes later when Hoffner found them in the kitchen. Georgi was rocking on her lap. Before he could ask, Martha said, “He’s been home and gone. He left his coat.”

Hoffner saw the bruise on her cheek. “What did he say?”

She gazed up at him; there was no feeling for him in her eyes. “What do you think he said, Nicki?”

“And what did you tell him?”

Martha pulled Georgi closer into her; the boy was oblivious of the conversation. “I told him that we all make choices, some better, some worse. And we live with them.”

Hoffner had never heard her speak like this. “You should have told him what he wanted to hear.”

“And what was that?” she said coldly. She needed to hear it from him.

Hoffner waited and then said, “That I’m a son of bitch, and that I deserve his hatred.”