“Stop! Stop!!!”
Arms waving in front of her, she nearly threw herself in front of the bus, breathed out in relief when it stopped and even welcomed the cursing of the driver with a smile on her face. The man was making his way to the end of the bus. Gerlinde pushed her way after him, not hearing the discontented grumbling around her, not seeing anything besides that hat, those shoulders, that back.
He stopped before the window and was gazing out of it now onto the street that was losing itself in the sunshine. Beside him, Gerlinde couldn’t get her breath. With a trembling hand, she reached for his sleeve and barely brushed it to get his attention.
“Vati?”
The man turned around and regarded her in surprise. “I’m sorry, Miss?”
English. English language; wrong face. Wrong everything around her. Wrong street, a wrong bus that she should have never taken.
“No. Nothing. Nothing at all.”
She was backing away slowly from his politely uninterested expression; from the trap she’d brought herself to. New April, old Gerlinde. Not gone anywhere, still very much alive.
She dragged herself back to the market, found Tadek without any difficulty – where have you been? I thought the Ivans had kidnapped you! – and threw herself into his arms and wept, with her face smothered against his shoulder.
“I ran after him, Tadek. I thought it was all in the past and yet I ran… ran, like a madwoman. I thought it was him and I ran.”
17
October 1946
Argentina was kind to Otto Neumann. From its sunlit squares, he brought with himself a golden tan and a new passport, along with a set of horn-rimmed glasses and a beard which he fiercely despised, yet which saw him through the customs without any questions asked. If anything, it was sympathy the customs officers expressed. A victim of the regime, returning to his obliterated Fatherland to mourn it in taste. His papers were excellent in this respect and he had read enough of Marx, while in exile, to answer all the possible questions concerning his political affiliations.
The questions didn’t follow. The papers held out, just as von Rombach had promised they would and the few rare Amis he’d met in the streets hardly gave him a passing glance. His apartment, provided through the same reliable circle, was big and airy and the landlady wished to know as little as possible about her new tenant and took care to disappear at once whenever he accidentally encountered her ghostly figure in the foyer.
Outside, a small orchard was shedding its golden attire. Across the street from it, an old fountain stood, waterless and green, on the pockmarked borders of which students often sat and smoked after their lectures were over. Von Rombach must have gone through great pains to find this particular apartment for his old comrade, Neumann. It was here that Otto had first seen Gerlinde in her white medical gown.
He had hardly recognized her that day, so much she had changed. Tall, slender, sharp, all angular and confident, debating something loudly with someone blond and obviously in love with her. The wind carried torn shreds of her phrases. Something to do with ethics and medical experiments. One of the students wasn’t taking her seriously and kept making jokes until she climbed on the edge of the fountain and began outright shouting something that had made the jokester cringe and that made Otto cringe even more and not just cringe but seek refuge in the curtain-draped safety of his bedroom. But even there, through an open window, the wind hurled accusations at him through its mouthpiece – hundreds of people tormented for nothing! Nothing scientific in it at all! Torture and mutilation for the sake of torture and mutilation!
Names of the camps.
Names of the people.
Otto slammed the window shut and sat for a very long time on the edge of his bed, clasping the covers with his sweating palms. His face was hot. His eyes stung with perspiration that dripped off his creased forehead. Before that day, before he had seen her, she was the same young girl from his picture that he, with the heaviest heart, had left on the bureau before setting off on this journey. Betske, an old comrade from the RSHA’s Amt IV, tried talking him out of it and insisted that sending someone for the girl would be much more practical and less risky – wise words that fell on deaf ears.
“She won’t go with anyone else. It has to be me.”
Betske surrendered but called him a right idiot. Now, sitting in this room which suddenly felt as though it was entirely devoid of air, Otto began entertaining the thought that perhaps Betske was right.
No. Nonsense. They wouldn’t have converted her so easily. She was his daughter, after all. Her loyalty was with him and him only.
Otto repeated those words like an old monk at prayer each morning and took care to keep the window shut so as not to hear anything else by accident.
Today was the day. Von Rombach had sent a message through one of his connections that Gerlinde had been spoken to, was in a bit of shock but delighted to get the news and was ready to go at Otto’s earliest convenience. The set of papers had been made for her in advance.
The “connection” was wonderfully nonchalant in delivering von Rombach’s words that weren’t included in the written message. The Amis had long stopped worrying about her affairs and all but dropped her case and even moved out of her house altogether. Just that Jew still lived there but he was an entirely different affair altogether. A harmless young sod and nothing to worry about. And that boyfriend of hers (spoken with great disdain), Erich Wirths, a veteran of the war (with even greater disdain). But no matter. Alfred would be following them soon after. He and Gerlinde would marry in Argentina immediately, as had been arranged a long time ago and
