“Is there a chance he’ll be blind?”
“They won’t know until he regains consciousness,” Zvi said. Then he added pessimistically, “Ifhe regains consciousness.”
A doctor came into the room. He looked at Gabriel and Zvi and nodded once briskly, then opened the glass door and stepped into the ward. The nurse moved away from the bedside, and the doctor assumed her place. She came around the end of the bed and stood before the glass. For a second time, her eyes met Gabriel’s, then she drew the curtain closed with a sharp jerk of her wrist. Gabriel walked into the hall, followed by Zvi.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be fine. I just need a minute to myself.”
The diplomat went back inside. Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back, like a soldier at ease, and drifted slowly along the familiar corridor. He passed the nurses’ station. The same trite Vienna streetscape hung next to the window. The smell was the same, too-the smell of disinfectant and death.
He came to a half-open door bearing the number 2602-C. He pushed it gently with his fingertips, and the door swung silently open. The room was dark and unoccupied. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. There were no nurses about. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
He left the lights off and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Soon the room came into focus: the empty bed, the bank of silent monitors, the vinyl-covered chair. The most uncomfortable chair in all of Vienna. He’d spent ten nights in that chair, most of them sleepless. Only once had Leah regained consciousness. She’d asked about Dani, and Gabriel unwisely told her the truth. Tears spilled onto her ruined cheeks. She never spoke to him again.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.”
Gabriel, startled, turned quickly around. The voice belonged to the nurse who’d been at Eli’s side a moment earlier. She spoke to him in German. He responded in the same language.
“I’m sorry, I just-”
“I know what you’re doing.” She allowed a silence to fall between them. “I remember you.”
She leaned against the door and folded her arms. Her head fell to one side. Were it not for her baggy nurse’s uniform and the stethoscope hanging around her neck, Gabriel would have thought she was flirting with him.
“Your wife was the one who was involved in the car bombing a few years back. I was a young nurse then, just starting out. I took care of her at night. You don’t remember?”
Gabriel looked at her for a moment. Finally, he said, “I believe you’re mistaken. This is my first time in Vienna. And I’ve never been married. I’m sorry,” he added hastily, heading toward the door. “I shouldn’t have been in here. I just needed a place to gather my thoughts.”
He moved past her. She put her hand on his arm.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Is she alive?”
“Who?”
“Your wife, of course.”
“I’m sorry,” he said firmly, “but you have me confused with someone else.”
She nodded-As you wish.Her blue eyes were damp and shining in the half-light.
“He’s a friend of yours, Eli Lavon?”
“Yes, he is. A very close friend. We work together. I live in Jerusalem.”
“ Jerusalem,” she repeated, as though she liked the sound of the word. “I would like to visit Jerusalem sometime. My friends think I’m crazy. You know, the suicide bombers, all the other things…” Her voice trailed off. “I still want to go.”
“You should,” Gabriel said. “It’s a wonderful place.”
She touched his arm a second time. “Your friend’s injuries are severe.” Her tone was tender, tinged with sorrow. “He’s going to have a very tough time of it.”
“Is he going to live?”
“I’m not allowed to answer questions like that. Only the doctors can offer a prognosis. But if you want my opinion, spend some time with him. Tell him things. You never know, he might be able to hear you.”
HE STAYED FOR another hour, staring at Eli’s motionless figure through the glass. The nurse returned. She spent a few minutes checking Eli’s vital signs, then motioned for Gabriel to come inside the room. “It’s against the rules,” she said conspiratorially. “I’ll stand watch at the door.”
Gabriel didn’t speak to Eli, just held his bruised and swollen hand. There were no words to convey the pain he felt at seeing another loved one lying in a Viennese hospital bed. After five minutes, the nurse came back, laid her hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and told him it was time to leave. Outside, in the corridor, she said her name was Marguerite. “I’m working tomorrow night,” she said. “I’ll see you then, I hope.”
Zvi had left; a new team of guards had come on duty. Gabriel rode the elevator down to the lobby and went outside. The night had turned bitterly cold. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and quickened his pace. He was about to head down the escalator into the U-Bahn station when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned around, expecting to see Marguerite, but instead found himself face to face with the old man who’d been talking to himself in the lobby when Gabriel arrived.
“I heard you speaking Hebrew to that man from the embassy.” His Viennese German was frantically paced, his eyes wide and damp. “You’re Israeli, yes? A friend of Eli Lavon’s?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “My name is Max Klein, and this is all my fault. Please, you must believe me. This is all my fault.”
5 VIENNA
MAX KLEIN LIVED a streetcar ride away, in a graceful old district just beyond the Ringstrasse. His was a fine old Biedermeier apartment building with a passageway leading to a big interior courtyard. The courtyard was dark, lit only by the soft glow of lights burning in the apartments overhead. A second passageway gave onto a small, neat foyer. Gabriel glanced at the tenant list. Halfway down he saw the words: M.KLEIN-3B. There was no elevator. Klein clung to the wood banister as he climbed stubbornly upward, his feet heavy on the well-trodden runner. On the third-floor landing were two wooden doors with peepholes. Gravitating toward the one on the right, Klein removed a set of keys from his coat pocket. His hand shook so badly the keys jingled like a percussion instrument.
He opened the door and went inside. Gabriel hesitated just beyond the threshold. It had occurred to him, sitting next to Klein on the streetcar, that he had no business meeting with anyone under circumstances such as these. Experience and hard lessons had taught him that even an obviously Jewish octogenarian had to be regarded as a potential threat. Any anxiety Gabriel was feeling quickly evaporated, however, as he watched Klein turn on practically every light in the apartment. It was not the action of a man laying a trap, he thought. Max Klein was frightened.
Gabriel followed him into the apartment and closed the door. In the bright light, he finally got a good look at him. Klein’s red, rheumy eyes were magnified by a pair of thick black spectacles. His beard, wispy and white, no longer concealed the dark liver spots on his cheeks. Gabriel knew, even before Klein told him, that he was a survivor. Starvation, like bullets and fire, leaves scars. Gabriel had seen different versions of the face in his farming town in the Jezreel Valley. He had seen it on his parents.
“I’ll make tea,” Klein announced before disappearing through a pair of double doors into the kitchen.
Tea at midnight, thought Gabriel. It was going to be a long evening. He went to the window and parted the blinds. The snow had stopped for now, and the street was empty. He sat down. The room reminded him of Eli’s office: the high Biedermeier ceiling, the haphazard way in which the books lay on the shelves. Elegant, intellectual clutter.
Klein returned and placed a silver tea service on a low table. He sat down opposite Gabriel and regarded him silently for a moment. “You speak German very well,” he said finally. “In fact, you speak it like a Berliner.”
“My mother was from Berlin,” Gabriel said truthfully, “but I was born in Israel.”
Klein studied him carefully, as if he too were looking for the scars of survival. Then he lifted his palms quizzically, an invitation to fill in the blanks. Where was she? How did she survive? Was she in a camp or did she get out before the madness?
