“I think I’ll run her past the gas station just to see what the fellas think.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.”
When Leah Oppenheimer opened the door of the apartment on the third floor, Jackson lied and said, “I came as soon as I got your note.” Actually, he’d had another drink first.
“You are so very kind,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “Do come in.”
As she led him into the room where she had served tea and sliced Milky Ways, Jackson had the feeling that he was being led into a funeral parlor by the most bereaved relative of the deceased. It was still cold in the room, and Leah Oppenheimer had her camel’s-hair coat on.
“I am sorry, but there is no electricity,” she said, indicating two candles that burned near the table where tea had been served. “No heat either, I’m afraid, but do sit down.”
“What’s happened?” Jackson said, choosing the same chair that he had sat in before.
“It’s horrible. It’s so horrible that I can’t believe it.” Her voice almost broke, and now that she was under the candle light Jackson could see that she had been crying.
“Tell me.”
“My brother, he... he...” Then the tears started, as did the sobs. Jackson rose and patted her on the shoulder. He felt clumsy. She reached for his hand and held it pressed against her cheek. She cries the same way she writes, Jackson thought, found his handkerchief with his other hand, and gave it to her.
“Here,” he said, “blow your nose.”
“Thank you.” She blew her nose, wiped away the tears, and looked up at him. “You’re always so very kind. I feel I can trust you. I... I’ve always felt that from the first moment we met.”
Jackson tried not to gimace. She’s reading it, he decided. She has this mental script that some idiot has written for her and she reads from it.
“Better?” he said, freeing his hand and using it to give her shoulder another pat.
She nodded.
Jackson resumed his seat and said, “Tell me about it. Tell me about what’s so horrible.”
She folded her hands in her lap and looked away, as though it would make the telling easier. “My brother.”
Jackson waited. When she said nothing after several moments, he said, “What about him?”
Still looking away, she said, “They say he has killed somebody else.”
Jackson sighed. “Who’re they?”
“Lieutenant Meyer. He was here earlier. He said my brother shot and killed a man at the Opel plant. What could he have been doing at the Opel plant? It’s at Russelsheim, you know.”
“Who did he kill?”
“A man. He held a trial, found him guilty, and then killed him.”
Jackson took out his cigarettes, thought about offering Leah Oppenheimer one, decided against it, lit one for himself, and said, “I want you to do something for me.”
She looked at him then. “Of course. Anything.”
“Tell me exactly what Lieutenant Meyer said.”
It took her a while, nearly half an hour, what with her asides, rhetorical questions, and the several long periods during which she said absolutely nothing, but instead gazed silently down at her hands.
When Jackson felt that she was through, he said, “That’s it? You’ve told me everything he said?”
“Yes. Everything.”
“Where is your friend?”
“Eva? She and Lieutenant Meyer went out. It will be their last night together for perhaps some time. They will probably be out quite late. She wanted to stay with me, but I told her no, that it wasn’t necessary, that it might be better if I were alone with my thoughts.”
She’s reading again, Jackson thought.
“So I was alone for a time, and when I could no longer bear it, I sent you that silly note. You were so very kind to come.”
“Why isn’t Lieutenant Meyer going to be around for a while?” Jackson said.
“Why? Because he feels he had to go to Bonn, of course.”
“Of course. But why Bonn exactly?”
“Because that’s where my brother’s going. Didn’t I mention that?”
“No. You didn’t.”
“It’s important, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jackson said. “It’s important.”
It took Jackson a while to convince her that she should accept his invitation to dinner. Several times he almost gave up, but instead persisted, and when at long last she accepted, she suddenly found she couldn’t go the way she was dressed.
“It will only take a minute to change,” she said.
It took her twenty minutes, but when she came out of the bedroom she looked far different from the way she had looked when she went in. She looked, in fact, Jackson thought, almost beautiful.
She had done something to her hair, although he was not quite sure what except that it was no longer worn in her usual maiden-lady fashion. Instead, it fell in soft waves almost to her shoulders. She also had done something to erase the evidence of her tears — perhaps a skillful application of makeup, Jackson thought, but wasn’t sure, because there was no evidence of makeup except for the faint touch of lipstick that she had added.
The dress helped, too. It was a plain black dress. Your simple, basic black, Jackson decided, which probably cost a hundred dollars. It was cut low and close enough to show off her breasts to good advantage, and for the first time he wondered how it would be to go to bed with her. He was faintly surprised that he hadn’t wondered about that before, because, like most men, he usually speculated about it shortly after meeting a woman. Any woman.
She stood there in the center of the room, almost shyly, as if she were not at all sure that he still wanted her to go.
“You look very nice,” he said. “Very pretty.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes.”
“What do they call this in the States?”
“Call what?”
“What we are doing.”
“I think they call it going to dinner.”
She shook her head. “No there is another word that I’ve read. They call it a — a date, don’t they?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is this like a real date?”
“Absolutely,” Jackson said, praying that she wouldn’t simper.
Instead, she smiled shyly and said, “It will be my first one, you know.”
“Your first one ever?” Somehow, he managed to keep the shock out of his voice, if not the surprise.
She nodded gravely. “My first one ever. Do you still want me to go?”
“Sure,” Jackson said, and smiled as though he really meant it and was rather amazed to realize that he did.
23
Although the beer was no better than usual, the Golden Rose was crowded that night. It was so crowded, in fact, that the printer had to share a table with two other people, a man and a woman, who had almost nothing to say to each other. Bodden decided that they were married.
He had been waiting nearly thirty minutes when Eva Scheel came in. She stood at the entrance just past the heavy curtain, one hand clasping her fur coat to her neck as she tried to spot Bodden in the crowded, smoky room. He waved. She nodded and started toward him.
She sat down at the table after first giving the silent couple an automatic “Good evening,” which they muttered back, their first words in nearly twenty minutes.
“You have eaten?” she said.
Bodden nodded and smiled. “Earlier. A fat chicken. Very tasty. The sour one down in the cellar cooks well. And you?”
“At the American officers’ club. A steak. They recently decided to let Germans in. Proper Germans, of course.” She looked around the room and frowned. “We must talk. But not here. Is your room far?”
“Not far.”