Frau Hinkel pretended not to hear, busy with the cards. “But it’s difficult for you, the judge. You see here, the eyes face in two directions, not just one, so it’s difficult. But you will.” She laid out another set. “You have interesting cards. Contradictions. The paper keeps coming up. The luck. But also deception. That explains the eyes, looking both ways, because there is deception around you.” Speaking as if she were working it out for the first time, what must have been a routine. “And always a woman. Strong, at the center. The rest-it’s hard to say, but the woman is always there, you keep coming back to her. At the center. May I see your hand?”
She reached over and traced a line down his palm. “Yes, I thought so. My god, such a line. In a man. So deep. You see how straight. One, your whole life. You have a strong heart. The rest, contradictions, but not the heart.” She looked up at him. “You must be careful when you judge. The heart is so strong.” She turned to Lena, still holding his hand. “The woman who finds this one will be lucky. One love, no others.” Her voice sentimental, a professional after all. Lena smiled.
She laid out one more set. “Let’s see. Yes, the same. Death again, close. Still the luck, but take care. We have only what might be. And deception again.”
“Does it say who?”
“No, but you will see. The eyes face one way now. You will see it.
Jake shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “Is there travel?” he said* leading them back to the fortune cookie.
“Oh yes, many trips.” Offhand, as if it were too obvious to bother about. “A trip on water soon.” Another safe guess for an American.
“Home?”
“No, short. Many trips. You will never be home,” she said softly, an abstraction. “Always somewhere else. But it’s not a sadness for you. The place is not important. You will always live here.” She tapped the heart line in his open palm. “So it’s a lucky life, yes?” she said, turning over the cards and handing them to Lena to shuffle.
“Then mine will be lucky too,” Lena said, cheerful.
Count on it, Jake wanted to say, just pay the twenty-five marks.
But when Frau Hinkel laid out Lena’s set, she looked at it for a moment, puzzled, then gathered up the cards again.
“What does it say?”
“I can’t tell. Sometimes when there are two of you it confuses the cards. Try again.” She handed the deck to Lena. “They need to have your touch only.”
Jake watched her shuffling, earnest, the way Hannelore must have listened to the radio.
“Yes, now I see,” Frau Hinkel said, laying down the rows. “A mother’s cards. Very loving-so many hearts. It’s important to you, children. Yes, two of them.”
“Two?”
“Yes, two,” Frau Hinkel said, sure, not even looking up for confirmation.
Jake glanced at Lena, wanting to wink, but she had grown pale, disconcerted.
“Two of everything,” Frau Hinkel said. “Two men. Kings.” She looked up, intimate. “There was another?”
Lena nodded. Frau Hinkel took her hand just as she had Jake’s, getting a second opinion.
“Yes, there. Two. Two lines running there.”
“They cross each other,” Lena said.
“Yes,” Frau Hinkel said, then moved on, not explaining. “But only one in the end. One perhaps has died?” Another safe guess for anyone in the waiting room.
“No.”
“Ah. Then you have decided.” She turned the hand to its side. There are the children. You see, two.“
She went back to another row of cards.
“Much sorrow,” she said, shaking her head. “But happiness too. There is an illness. Have you been ill?”
“Yes.”
“But no longer. You see this card. It fights the illness.”
“The one with the sword?” Jake said.
Frau Hinkel smiled pleasantly. “No, this one. It usually means medicine.” She looked up. “I’m glad for you. So many these days-no medicine, even in the cards.”
Another row.
“You were in Berlin during the war?”
“Yes.”
Frau Hinkel nodded her head. “Destruction. I see this all the time now. Well, they don’t lie, the cards.” She placed down a black card, then quickly drew out another to cover it.
“What does that mean?” Lena said, alert.
Frau Hinkel looked at her. “In Berlin? It usually means a Russian. Excuse me,” she said, suddenly shy, a shorthand message. “But that is the past. See how they come now? More hearts. You have a kind nature. You must not look at the past. You see how it tries to come back-see this one-but never strong, not as strong as the hearts. You can bury it,” she said oddly. “You have the cards.” Laying them on, another row of red.
“And now? What will happen?”
“What might happen,” Frau Hinkel reminded her, fixed on the cards. “Still two. Decide on the man. If you have done that, then you will be at peace. You have had sorrow in your life. Now I see—” She stopped, scooping her cards together, and when she began again her voice had become airier, now truly the voice of a fortune cookie. Good health. Prosperity. Love given and received.
When Lena gave her the money, smiling, Frau Hinkel patted her hand in a kind of benediction. But as she opened the curtain for them, it was Jake’s arm she took, holding him back.
“A moment,” she said, waiting until Lena was in the other room. “I don’t like to say. What will be. It’s not my place.”
“What is it?”
“Her cards are not good. You cannot hide everything with hearts.
Some trouble. I tell you this because I see your cards mixed with hers. If you are the protector, protect her.“
For a second, flabbergasted, Jake didn’t know whether to laugh or be furious. Was this how she got them all to come back, time after time, some worrying trick? Thoughts that go bump in the night. A hausfrau with a waiting room full of anxious widows.
“Maybe she’ll meet a handsome stranger instead. I’ll bet you see a lot of those in the cards.”
She smiled weakly. “Yes, it’s true. I know what you think.” She glanced toward the other room. “Well, what’s the harm?” She turned to him again. “But who’s to say? Sometimes it’s right. Sometimes the cards surprise even me.”
“Fine. I’ll keep an eye out-looking both ways.”
“As you wish,” she said, dismissing him by turning her back.
“What did she want?” Lena said at the door.
“Nothing. Some American cigarettes.”
They started down the stairs, Lena quiet.
“Well, there goes fifty marks,” Jake said.
“But she knew things,” Lena said. “How did she know?”
“What things?”
“What did she mean-close to death, a woman?”
“Who knows? More mumbo-jumbo.”
“No, I saw you look at her. It meant something to you. Tell me.” She stopped at the doorway, away from the glare of the street.
“Remember the girl in Gelferstrasse? At the billet? She was killed the other day. An accident. I was standing next to her, so I thought she meant that. That’s all.”
“An accident?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
