“We don’t show that soon. A couple of weeks is better.”
“I was in Carlsbad once. Why don’t we go to Carlsbad?”
“What’s Carlsbad?”
“It’s a resort on the Rhine. It’s full of retired professors and old ladies with rheumatism. I’d like to go there, Jesso. Just for the contrast.”
“Just for the contrast this’ll do the same thing. Better, even.”
“Let’s go to Carlsbad.”
“Listen, Renette. You and me, from now on, we gotta stay out of sight. Then when I see Kator, after that we gotta stay out of sight. You don’t know your brother much, do you?”
“You hate him, Jesso?”
“No. But I want to stay alive.”
“You’re with me now”
“Boy!” he said. “You sure don’t know your brother much.”
“But I do. I’ve known him longer than you have.”
Jesso laughed. “You don’t count. Besides, you like him too much.”
Her cigarette glowed again and she exhaled. “I have great respect for him, Jesso.”
“Me, too,” he said.
His tone of voice wasn’t pleasant and Renette tried to see Jesso’s face in the dark.
“We are not talking about the same kind of respect. Yours is more like dislike.”
Jesso let his feet come off the railing and it made quite a racket. Then he leaned over the arm of his chair. He sounded harsh.
“Now you listen to this love story, Renette. First he hires himself out to do a killing, then he tries putting the screws on a guy already half dead. Next comes a double cross to make a corpse, then another one of the same, and I’m the guy he was doing it to every time. So don’t tell me to love your brother, kid, because he’s the one I’m going after, and when I go out for a hit I don’t do any loving.”
When he was through she could still hear the sharp ring of his voice, and for a moment she sat thinking about it, to get clear what he had said. A while back, just days, there wouldn’t have been any reason to think about it. There had been no Jesso. There had just been Johannes. And now the strength of Jesso was taking the place of her brother’s.
But she said, “I don’t excuse him. He needs no excuse.”
“I didn’t ask for excuses. Just don’t sit there and tell me the sonofabitch is the end. He isn’t. Or else I’d be dead!”
The strength of Jesso… Or else there would be no Jesso, she thought.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” he said, and he was out of the chair now, standing before her so she could see his black shape against the sky.
She didn’t know what to answer and then he did it for her. “You’re on mine. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m keeping you.”
“Jesso,” she said. “Do you know why I’m here?”
He was listening.
“Johannes sent me.”
He still didn’t move.
“To make you talk, maybe to make you weak.”
Then she waited for whatever would come next, but his shape against the sky didn’t move for a long time. At first, the way it started out, she didn’t know what it was, but then it was Jesso laughing. He laughed so hard that when he stopped she didn’t know how he had done it. He moved and sat down again.
“That poor sonofabitch,” he said. “That stupid sonofabitch.” He laughed some more. He lit two cigarettes, gave one to her. “So that’s why you’re here.”
“No. That’s why I came.”
“You stayed because of Kator?”
“Because of you,” she said.
“You know he’s through with you, don’t you?”
And then Renette laughed, because what Jesso had said didn’t mean a thing any more. What meant something was the way she felt, the way she suddenly felt that she was through with Johannes. He was out of her fear, her need, and her hopes.
“Jesso,” she said, “I can forget Johannes.”
“Good for you. But I can’t. He’s crapped out before, but I won’t forget him till he craps out for good.”
“Forget him, Jesso.”
“Why? Because he’s your brother?”
She felt he needn’t have said that. It was nasty, the way Helmut might have done it. But Jesso needn’t have.
“I don’t understand you,” she said, because she didn’t.
“Don’t try. Just watch me forget him once I’m through with him. Pretty soon I’m going to be through with him.”
But she still thought of Johannes the way she had thought of in the past, so she didn’t see what Jesso meant, what he was up against. She herself was through with Johannes, not needing him any more, but not being concerned with him didn’t make him her enemy.
“What you said before, Jesso, about hiding. You mean we run, from now on, we keep running and hiding?”
“That’s a crazy way to put it. And maybe we won’t. Maybe Kator will drop dead.”
She didn’t think he would. She was through with him but he was as strong as ever.
After a while she threw her cigarette over the railing. “Jesso,” she said.
He sat still for a minute. Then he flipped his stub and watched it sail across the road.
“Jesso,” she said again.
He got up, took her arm, and they went inside together. Nothing had changed and she wanted him as before. So far, nothing had changed.
Chapter Sixteen
It stayed that way for two days, but after two days the dullness of the place started to get her and something was getting Jesso too. It felt unfinished. If he hadn’t been with Renette, it occurred to him, he might not have thought of waiting. He might have taken the train straight back, hit Kator in the head with his hundred thousand bucks, and asked for the rest of it. But there was Renette and it was just as well to let Kator sweat for a while-but not any more. He had Renette, and now, for the last time, Kator was going to pay.
They caught the once-a-day bus back to Bad Brunn and when they passed the white house with the balcony they laughed at each other because they both, for their reasons, were glad to go.
“And after Hannover, Jesso, let’s go to Carlsbad.”
“How about the Riviera?” he said.
“Or the Riviera.”
“Or we can hit out to Africa. I’ve never been in Africa. Maybe big-game hunting, or whatever you do in Africa.”
“I like the Riviera better,” she said. “I know people there. We can stay there as long as we want, Jesso. I have a small chalet in Menton, from Johannes, and many friends who-“
“They’ll keep. For a while we keep moving.”
“Where, Jesso?”
“Just move. Out of the way, for a while, until-”
“Jesso,” she said. “I don’t like places out of the way. Did you live out of the way?”
“Now and then.”
